Or that kid in the marsh. Nothing to be done about it. We start dying the moment we first think about death. Listen – it’s quiet! Tessler’s are taking a break. Sitting there eating their sandwiches while the sheet metal cools down. And the swallows are already circling above the town hall. But why’s the florist’s closed? Not even a sign on the door. No flowers today. Well then, slide the brochures under the door. A cool draught from inside blows over the fingers. Gregorina. Her very name a promise. Try to picture the florist. Her figure. Her hair. Her face. They say it’s faces that stay with you. But that’s not true. None of them stay with you. Not even your own. Especially not your own.

In Weingasse it’s quiet again. An alley so narrow the sun hardly ever finds its way in. Tiredness setting in now. Deep breaths. Sit down. On the steps of number nine. Thermos flask in side pocket, tea in winter, juice in summer. Biscuits in every season. The first pigeon is already pattering about in front of you. The stone is cool, it smells of dusty cellars and olden days. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about home. The upstairs room. The curtains, the bed, the blankets and pillows. The small face that seems always to be getting smaller. Completely white, whiter than the blankets and the pillows and the towels, freshly washed and piled up alongside. The little hand. As light as paper. Come on, get up! A biscuit for the pigeon, then you’ve got to keep going. Only four more streets. But it gets harder towards the end. Stabbing pain in the knees, and a trapped nerve in the shoulder. The doctor says it’ll get better, but he doesn’t have a clue. The doctors don’t know anything. Or perhaps they know everything and are just comforting you, and that’s the worst. Four streets. Three. Two. Pedalling away, racing your tired shadow. That’s not the point. You’re supposed to bring something back, that’s the point. Something every day, just something small. A note. A stone. A chocolate. Put the bike on its stand under the apple tree on Weichselstrasse, reach up and stretch, a little higher, and there it hangs: just right, big and red with a fleck of green. It has to be flawless. Undamaged. Further on, the last houses. The last few letters. The end up ahead. Number thirty-­four. The black wooden house with the moss in the cracks and the plastic pond. Four frogs with yellowing crowns, but no water, not for years. The last letter. The sunlight flashing through the hedge. There’s still time. And it’s downhill all the way home.

Heide Friedland

There were sixty-­seven, if I remember rightly. One more or less doesn’t make any difference. The man with the brooms doesn’t count. He always carried two brooms around with him. He used to prop them up against the bar in the Golden Moon, and when he’d had a few too many, which was quite often, he’d start talking to them. He called them Charlie and Taff and sometimes he would run his fingers through their bristles. He doesn’t count.