‘Come here, rabbit! Tell me — who do you want him to resemble, you or me?’ she enquired with suppressed mockery.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Gurdweill, and kissed her on her hair. ‘There’s no real difference. If he’s like you, he might be stronger, and that, of course, is all to the good. And if not, that’s all right too. After all, I’m not a sickly person, and I’m not a weakling either, even if I’m not tall.’

‘No,’ said Thea with a laugh, ‘you’re not tall. And you can hardly be blamed for that. Go and fetch me the book on the table. And put the oil lamp here, on the bedside table.’

Gurdweill went in his stockinged feet to do her bidding. Then he took his shoes, which he had left standing next to the stove, and began to put them on.

Thea said, without turning her head, ‘Run along, rabbit, and put the coffee on. I feel like a cup of coffee.’

‘Perhaps it would be better to put it off until later? In an hour or so? You shouldn’t drink a lot of black coffee now. It’s not good for him …’

‘Wha-at?!’ Thea turned her head. ‘It’s got nothing to do with you! It’s my own business! What do you understand about it? Go and do as you’re told!’

Gurdweill accordingly went to the kitchen and put the sooty coffeepot on the gas burner.

‘Terrible weather, pssss!’ said Frau Fischer, who was also busy cooking something. ‘True Christmas weather. You’re a young man, Herr Gurdweill, and you don’t care; but what about me? Aie, aie, aie! In old age a person feels the snow as if it was falling right inside his body! Warm rooms and warm clothes don’t help. Yes, yes, Herr Gurdweill! I didn’t make it up; don’t think it was me. It was my dear departed husband who said it. A wise man, my second husband, pssss! And now I feel it in my body, right here’ — she pointed to her back, encased in a thick woollen jacket and wrapped in a big red shawl — ‘and here’ — she pointed to her thigh — ‘and that’s apart from my stomach, of course.’

The old woman’s shrivelled head, with her wispy grey hair sticking lifelessly to her skull, looked tiny in comparison to her, swollen cumbersome body. She reminded him of a plump, round chicken with its head buried under its wing.

‘The only thing that keeps me going,’ she continued in a whisper, ‘is a good cup of freshly ground coffee. There’s nothing to beat it! But for my coffee I’d have been dead long ago. An old woman alone. Pssss!’