But perhaps the dead had no interest whatsoever in the things that lay behind them. Perhaps they would talk about what it was like over there. How it felt to stand on the other side. Summoned. Called home. Gathered in. Transformed.

Then he dismissed such thoughts. They seemed sentimental, almost ridiculous, and he began to suspect that the dead, just like the living, would utter nothing but trivialities. They would whinge and brag; they would make complaints and idealize memories. They would grumble, scold and cast aspersions. And, of course, they would talk about their illnesses. In fact, it was possible they would talk about nothing but their illnesses, their lingering sickness and death.

The man sat on the bench under the crooked birch tree until the sun went down behind the cemetery wall. He stretched out his arms as if measuring the patch of ground in front of him, then lowered them. He breathed in the air again. It smelled of damp earth and elderflower. Then he got up and left.

It was closing time on Marktstrasse, and the tradespeople were carrying the crates and stands of underwear, toys, soap, books and cheap tat back into their shops. Roller shutters were rattling down on all sides, and at the end of the street the greengrocer’s cries rang out as he stood on a crate distributing the last of the melons.

The man walked slowly. He dreaded the thought of spending the evening sitting at the window looking down at the street. From time to time he raised his hand to return the greeting of someone he didn’t recognize. People must have thought him a contented man, glad of every step on the sun-­warmed pavement; yet he felt insecure and out of place on his own street.

He stopped in front of the plate-­glass window of what used to be Buxter’s butcher’s, and leaned in towards his reflection. He would have liked to have seen himself as a young man. But the eyes gazing back at him no longer held any spark capable of igniting his imagination. His face was just old and grey and rather shapeless. At least there was a small bright-­green leaf caught in his hair. He flicked it away and looked back. Margarete Lichtlein was walking along on the other side of the street, confused as ever, pulling her handcart full of the shopping she had never bought. He nodded to her and moved on. He walked faster now. A thought had come to him, or rather a notion, concerning time in his life. As a young man he had wanted to pass the time; later, he had wanted to stop it, and now, in his old age, he wished for nothing more fervently than to regain it.

This was the thought that occurred to the old man. He didn’t yet know what he should do with it; in any case, he wanted to go home first of all, as it got chilly after sundown. He would go to his store cupboard and permit himself a little drink. Then he would put on his comfortable brown trousers and sit at the kitchen table, with his back to the window. In his opinion it was only like this, with one’s back to the world, in peace and quiet and with no distractions, that a thought could be thought through to the end.