I got up and stepped outside again. The evening was warm; it smelled like rain. The lamp came on at the street corner and moths fluttered in its light.

I understood the business. I knew everything there was to know about it, and in time I learned to understand the customers, too. You can learn a lot about people by watching them choose their fruit and vegetables. I noticed when they touched a peach with their fingertip, like a lover’s skin. I saw how they bent over the crates to smell the lemons and nuts. How they wrapped a lettuce in newspaper, lovingly, like a baby in a blanket. I listened when they talked about their worries, their husbands, wives and children, their misfortunes and illnesses. And I didn’t stop listening when they got annoyed about something, when they shouted, waved their arms and pointed their fingers, convinced they knew exactly what’s what.

Sometimes Father Hoberg came by. He looked at the tomatoes in the sunlight, weighed the apricots in his hands, and eventually he started talking about God. I told him I was just a greengrocer and knew nothing about such matters. But the priest was stubborn. He asked me questions to which I had no answer. He irritated me, with his fervent voice and his restless hands that pounded on my wooden pallets. Torrents of words poured out of him, one after another, and then I got angry and started talking and shouting as well. I couldn’t understand why God was supposed to be truth and truthfulness when his creation was so imperfect. Nor could I see any sense in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, where neither women nor children were spared. This made no impression on the priest. God’s mercy is infinite, he yelled. But by then I wasn’t really listening any more, and I don’t think he was hearing my words, either, and so we talked and shouted at the empty air until our strength failed us and we stood facing each other as if awakening from a delirium.

May His mercy drop also into your heart, said the priest, and give me two bunches of spring onions.

*

I stood in that shop for forty years. I loved the work and was never ill for more than a day. Over time, my weight wore a hollow in the floorboards at my post behind the scales, a little pit in which I felt secure. I never married, and I didn’t long for children. I was seldom lonely, had no great desires and was sensible enough not to fulfil my dreams. I donated money towards the reconstruction of the church, and to the food bank at Christmas. I gave poor Margarete Lichtlein an orange every day after her son’s accident. I asked my questions of people, not God. I listened to you all. I looked you all in the eyes. I forgave you when you sprayed the shopfront and smashed in the windows. When you called me camel-­driver, I laughed and stuck a picture of a camel caravan on the door. I laughed whenever I liked. There were so many days when I left my sadness in the cellar. I honoured my parents, paid my taxes and scrubbed the pavement every evening. I took nothing with me and left nothing behind. I had only this one life.