The landlady went on whispering. ‘He’s just like his mother. Alike as two peas in a pod. A person can see it in the dark! He doesn’t look like Herr Gurdweill at all — Siedl says the same. But he certainly takes after Herr Gurdweill in his character, so quiet and honest, just like his father, pssss! But I do say, and so does Siedl, that his mother doesn’t spend enough time with him, aie, aie, aie! A fine woman, Herr Gurdweill’s wife, a very fine woman. But she’s got no time, no time at all, that poor mother!’

Gurdweill wrapped Martin in the towel and dried him, put him down on the bed, and struggled to push the tiny clenched fist, which his son insisted on putting in his mouth, into the swaddling clothes. The twilight gathered in the room. Stooping slightly, her skinny arms hanging in front of her withered body, like some four-legged animal standing on its hind legs, the old woman stood and watched Gurdweill’s every movement.

‘Herr Gurdweill does it very well,’ she chattered on. ‘Everything just as it should be, pssss! Better than a real woman, even … Well, a clever man can put his hand to anything. As my dear husband, may he rest in peace, used to say. If not for Herr Gurdweill, what would become of him, the poor little mite, aie, aie, aie! Seeing as his mother has got so little time for him! What a piece of luck, I must say, that Herr Gurdweill is such a clever, handy man. Golden hands, pssss!’

Gurdweill finished swaddling the baby and put him down in the carriage. He put his finger to his lips to request silence, and began rocking the carriage and humming an old tune whose origins he had long forgotten. Frau Fischer went out of the room.

Half an hour later he was standing in his rolled-up shirtsleeves bent over the tub, which he had pushed against the door in order not to wake the baby, and wringing out the already washed white swaddling clothes. The oil lamp gave off a dim light. Through the half-open windows the evening streamed in, with the muffled city roar filtered, as it were, by the distance it had travelled, and purified of base materials. Gurdweill liked this dim, distant roar; a familiar mood, compounded of contentment and the desired degree of lofty melancholy, stirred inside him without quite taking hold. From time to time he straightened his back, which was beginning to hurt. Something urged him to break into song, but he repressed this urge with a vague feeling that it was impossible to give way to it now. Immediately he remembered the sleeping Martin, and the reason for the prohibition. But as if to spite him, the desire to sing grew stronger and stronger, until he could barely restrain himself. ‘Idiot!’ he exclaimed aloud.