It was after ten. Gurdweill felt a disagreeable dryness in his mouth, which came, presumably, from his empty stomach. At the same time he was dying to smoke a cigarette. He crossed Rotenturmstrasse and turned into a side street, where he stood still and counted the coins left in his pocket from the day before. Then he counted them again, although he already knew exactly how much he had. The schilling would do for a simple meal, and the rest for cigarettes. He bought a packet of cigarettes and lit one. For a moment he considered going home to work, but immediately decided against it. It would be a shame to lose a single minute of this lovely day. He found himself passing a little park and sat down on a bench. He leaned back luxuriously and put his hat down next to him.

Beside him sat a ragged old man with a mangy grey beard, making himself a cigarette from the filthy butts lying on a crumpled old newspaper in his lap. Absorbed in his task, with his head bent over the newspaper, he did not notice Gurdweill looking at him.

‘Who knows’ — the thought came unbidden into Gurdweill’s mind — ‘who knows if I won’t end up one day like this old man … And so what if I do? What difference does it make?’

He took out a cigarette and offered it to the old man, saying with exaggerated politeness, ‘Allow me, sir, to offer you a cigarette.’

For a moment the old man seemed to hesitate, then he stretched out his hand and took it. He turned it over and examined it gleefully on all sides, stuck it between his lips and removed it to look at it again, and then tore off a bit of newspaper, wrapped it carefully around the cigarette, and put it in the pocket of his ragged coat.

‘A thousand thanks, young sir! May God reward you! I’ll keep it for tonight, before I go to sleep. That’s when it tastes the best — when I’m in bed at night.

‘Would you believe it,’ he immediately continued, ‘I went to see a doctor once, in the hospital at Neuhaus, a long time ago, ten or twelve years, and he told me to stop smoking. “It’s poison,” he said. He was a clever man. “Every mouthful of smoke you swallow,” he said, “leaves a black spot inside you as big as a thumbnail.” He actually showed me the spot on a white handkerchief. I saw it with my own eyes. But I couldn’t stop smoking. I stopped for half a day and that was the most I could manage.’

And he went back to rolling his cigarette.