And, time and again, children. Seated in rooms. Staring behind curtains. Crawling through grass. They sit up, haul themselves to their feet, slip, fall, scream, cry, laugh, do it again and again. They can. They’re healthy, and don’t know how lucky they are. Sometimes, in a pushchair, a tiny crimson face. A foot, so small you can hardly believe it. And the big kids. Standing around smoking. You remember now: you did, too, exactly there. On the wall. Behind the hedge. On the bench in the bus shelter. Childhood is the place of first times. Keep going. It’s got warm. Hot, actually. But not unpleasant. The wind in your face. It comes from far across the fields, bringing the smell of burnt straw. Another memory. Push it away. My child. Don’t think about it. My child. Keep going. Down Mollardweg into Grünstrasse, seven envelopes and no brochures, round the corner, and then, finally: Marktstrasse. Pulsating artery, always throbbing with life, that’s what it says in the publicity brochures on display at the town hall. The face of the town. Or its heart. Its pride and joy, at any rate. But it’s just a street, really, no more than four hundred metres long. The lorries have to mount the pavement in order to squeeze past each other. It’s true, though: always something going on. Over there, Yılmaz the men’s tailor emerges from the cave of his shop, yawns and stretches, then totters half-­blind into the sunlight, so thin he barely casts a shadow. Makes trousers and suits and brews Turkish tea. Strongest tea in the world, he says, and laughs: even the dead jump up and start dan­cing! Now he totters over to ­Lehmkuhl’s. Oldest building on the square. Tables on the pavement, lunch for four euros fifty including a drink. Yılmaz needs to watch out that car doesn’t hit him, or the bike right behind it. The cyclist is a teacher. Typical. What’s a bell for? Probably preoccupied. Probably maths. Head full of numbers, and on his way home already at midday. On the other hand, better a bike than a tram. They were going to put one of those in here as well. Didn’t come to anything. And, of course, thank God for that. Who needs a tram, for heaven’s sake? In a town where you can walk from north to south in twenty-­five minutes, west to east in less than twenty? No free tables in the Pastry Cook. All full of old ladies. The very finest cakes, but unhealthy, of course. Anything enjoyable is unhealthy. The whole of life is one long health risk from beginning to end. The ladies don’t care. They sit there with their slices of cake, all done up, dressed to the nines, for what or for whom no one knows. Most of their husbands were laid to rest in the field long ago. Hardly any left. Now it’s their own memory the ladies are preserving. Blouses, cardigans, silk scarves. Handbags the size of suitcases.