Spring festival. The Chinese lanterns sway in the wind, and three fights break out before it even gets dark. Everything’s the same as always, then suddenly completely different. A yellow skirt. A laugh. A pebble in a shoe. Falling in love is inflammation. More courage is needed to take her hand than, later, to undress in front of her. But at least there’s no need for much conversation just yet.

Let’s leave the window open tonight. – The cats will watch us. – Fine by me: come here! I love her. I love her stomach. Her behind. Her face. Her voice. I love everything she says and does. We vanquished Death that night. And the cats had fun.

Then it was over. Yet nothing happened. There wasn’t even another man. She just left. There were reasons that she stacked up in front of me like bricks. I heard them and forgot them again. She packed her things and moved in with her mother. Later, she left town. We hugged each other goodbye, and she said: I’ll call you.

Another collection: moments with her. Yellow summer days. The wet hamster on the mat. The feet in the shoebox. Three deodorants for the price of one. Smothered laughter. The business with the blackbird. The black smoke above the poplars. Us under the tree. On the sofa. On the kitchen table. In the grass. In the field. In bed.

Our table is now my table again.

There were others afterwards, of course. It was never the same, but who wants that, anyway? And later on I had a cat. He was old, his fur was dull and mangy, his tail had several kinks in it and one of his back legs protruded stiffly from the hip like a stick. His right eye was cloudy and moved only slowly. Perhaps it was blind. But his teeth were yellow and healthy and he could still run like a youngster, despite his damaged leg. We liked each other right from the start. He came up to me and slunk around my trouser legs. He was in bad condition, skinny and weak, and it took a while to feed him up. What didn’t go away was his stench. There was nothing to be done about it. He stank like a dustbin. I got used to it, though, in time. It was only after he died that I noticed the scent of springtime and the smell of my own body again.

I think I talked to that cat more than I did to most people.

The blue-­black night sky. Drunks beneath the window, bellowing and roaring after their friends or after their own yearnings. Then silence again. A shadow across the roof. Apparently there are bats in the town hall again, the first in decades. The phone rings. It stops again. Your stomach grumbles. There’s half a bread roll on the table. But the table is far away. Everything is far away. Only the bat is sitting on your forehead. It sits there and looks at you and covers your face with its wings.