‘You don’t know what it’s like, Herr Gurdweill,’ the old woman went on, ‘when a person grows old. Aie, aie, aie! You can’t fall asleep, you hear the clock striking three o’clock, four o’clock … On the twenty-fifth of July I’ll be seventy-one — seventy-one years old and not one day less! How old would you say I was to look at me? Quite a bit less, I’ll be bound!’ Gurdweill assented with a hypocritical nod of his head. ‘And you know what, Herr Gurdweill, at night I think of you — you don’t know how much I think of you! Pssss!’ She flapped her hand energetically to indicate an amazing amount. ‘Now you’re a decent man, Herr Gurdweill, a very decent man, if I may say so. Do you think of me too? No, of course you don’t … Ah, well … I’m an old woman, a widow. It’s ten years now since my second dear husband died.’ And after a short silence she added: ‘You should get married too, Herr Gurdweill. A person gets sick and tired of being alone. Sick and tired! Pssss!’

‘What was your second husband’s profession?’ asked Gurdweill, who had finished shaving and was busy sharpening his razor for the next time.

‘What was that?’ The old woman inclined her head towards him and pointed to her left ear. ‘I’m a little hard of hearing. From the day that my dear second husband died I’ve been a little hard of hearing.’

‘His trade,’ Gurdweill put his mouth to the old woman’s ear and shouted, ‘What was your second husband’s trade?’

‘Why are you shouting like that, Herr Gurdweill? I can hear you, I can hear you very well! Aalbert,’ she pronounced the name with a heavy stress on the first syllable, ‘the son of my first dear departed husband, you know, is apprenticed to a tailor. He’s a good boy, Aalbert is. In two years’ time he’ll have finished his apprenticeship. It’s a fine profession, tailoring.’

Gurdweill began to wash his face, and the old woman proceeded at her leisurely, sloppy pace to make the beds. Her wispy grey hair, which had come loose from its braid, wagged about on her neck like the short, thin, pointed tail of some tiny animal. After a few minutes she approached him again.

‘Today, Herr Gurdweill,’ she said in her usual whisper, ‘I feel well, thank God. My second breakfast went into the lower stomach, thank God!’ She patted her belly. ‘When food goes into the upper stomach’ — she pointed to her ribs — ‘aie, aie, aie! It lies like a stone. It hurts the whole day long and I can’t take another bite. But today I feel as healthy as a young girl!’