‘Come now, Frau Vrubiczek, that’s a little exaggerated. Anyone can make a mistake, of course, but doctors don’t harm their patients on purpose.’

‘My old lady,’ said Vrubiczek, ‘is terrified of operations. It’s an old sickness with her — ever since her sister died after an unsuccessful operation. Twenty years have passed since then and she’s still inconsolable. But you can’t generalise from one case. Sometimes you get a shoe so worn out that it’s beyond repair — and then everyone blames the shoemaker, who tried to mend it and failed! The opposite can also happen, of course: when a shoe that could still be mended falls into the hands of a bad shoemaker. But you can’t generalise from that.’

‘No, no,’ protested Frau Vrubiczek, who was standing by the table, her eyes wet with tears. ‘You always see the best in people because you see them from a distance, and from a distance a bit of glass can glitter like a diamond too. I begged them not to operate. Sturdy as an oak she was, Herr Gurdweill. You can ask Karl,’ she jerked her head in her husband’s direction, ‘he knew her well. We’d already been married a good few years. Lovely as a summer’s day she was — nineteen years old! And those murderers took her and cut up her stomach. I shouted at them: “Leave her alone! There’s no need for an operation! She’ll get better of her own accord!” Have you ever heard the like, a person has a stomachache and they immediately take out their knives! Everyone said: “The doctors know! If the doctors say it’s cancer, then it’s cancer. And the only cure for cancer is surgery.” That girl would still have been alive today, I can promise you, just like you and me, if not for those doctors! What do they care? One person less in the world! So what?’

She collapsed onto the chair next to her and began again. ‘And do you think, Herr Gurdweill, that they let her off with one operation? Two! Two operations, one after the other, the poor girl. The first, they said, had succeeded, but they needed another one. A very complicated phenomenon, they said, a rare phenomenon, and one operation wasn’t enough. Have you ever heard the like? It’s perfectly obvious to me that the first time they cut in the wrong place — I’d stake my life on it! So they cut her up again, and she died. What else? Who could go on living after having their stomach cut up twice over? Not even the strongest man in the world!’

‘Enough, Julia,’ her husband coaxed her, ‘you can’t bring her back. Instead of upsetting yourself like this, why don’t you make us something to drink? Coffee, for example? The living take precedence over the dead, my dear, and we must take care of their needs first of all.’