Gurdweill nodded in agreement. He was already familiar with the shoemaker and his clear mind, full of healthy thoughts about every aspect of life, thoughts that seemed to grow out of the depths of the earth itself, as strong and enduring as it was. In Vrubiczek’s presence he always felt fortified, more firmly rooted in the soil: a feeling similar to the sensation that overcame him in the countryside, far away from the city and its pressures. At these moments he would feel at peace, and everything would become clear and straightforward, like a boldly outlined design.

Vrubiczek stopped working, wiped his hands on his dirty apron, and began rolling himself a cigarette. He offered one to Gurdweill as well. Then he looked at him with his clear, true eyes, as innocent as the eyes of a baby but full of wisdom too, and said sympathetically: ‘But you don’t look well, Herr Gurdweill. You seem worried about something too.’

‘It’s nothing. Perhaps I’m a little tired.’

He himself did not know why he did not look well. He felt perfectly fit and could only attribute it to his lack of sleep in recent weeks. For some reason, however, he was displeased by the fact that the shoemaker had noticed it.

He sat smoking his cigarette in silence, watching Vrubiczek as he stooped over the inverted shoe, knocking the nails into the heel with rhythmic, monotonous blows. Little by little Gurdweill sank into a kind of quiescence, a half-slumber of the senses. His elbow propped up on his knee and his chin cupped in his hand, he abandoned himself, with a certain enjoyment, to this semi-comatose state. His back was turned to the glass door leading to the street, and the noise coming from outside seemed to recede further and further into the distance, until all that remained was a dull, vague murmur without beginning or end. Now a slightly husky male baritone broke into some popular song in the neighbouring courtyard and rose above the murmur. The song was apparently a very sad one, but it did not touch Gurdweill’s heart. On the contrary, it seemed to Gurdweill that the man was not singing at all but announcing something, straining his voice so as to make himself heard above the shoemaker’s hammering, which for some reason he found supremely ridiculous. ‘Ah, if only Thea could hear him: how she would laugh! And Vrubiczek himself,’ he reflected, ‘sitting here for forty years … Yes, forty years on end knocking in one nail after the other — that too is strange and incomprehensible, if you only stop to think about it …’