‘Yes, of course.’

‘But then you’re finished too.’

‘I’m ready for that,’ he says.

Then he hears laughter somewhere so clearly that he is struck dumb, and cringes, and speaks the truth.

‘No, no, the three taps must not come for me! The house must not see what sort of a person I am. Let them believe I am somebody.’

He drops his eyes in shame, although there is no one to see him here in private.

He has nothing particular to look back on. Thirty years. Years of study. He sits here at his desk, as he has always done, among piles of paper. There is dust on the table. Books and thick stamp albums. He has huge collections of them. And he sits here working on them, writing about them for smart magazines and periodicals. He is alone in the world. His closest relatives are gone, the others are strangers. He has a friend called Anna whom he visits now and then. He has a room in the huge house, and he has a job that permits him to stay in his room all the time. He consults enormous tomes and measures perforations and watermarks. He looks for possible faults in drawings of post horns, presidential profiles and parrots.

But who can work in such a state of unrest, when the house is cracking, when one can feel the pressure in one’s body as if one’s ears are stopped up?

It is a long time since any proper work was done at his desk. Dust is collecting on the surface.

He goes across to the blank window-pane. He leans his forehead against it but finds no coolness. Then he goes back to his chair. The stamps lie in front of him but he doesn’t touch them. He is simply listening to the house cracking. His eyes are vacant from listening.

Of course, he thinks, food. Mealtimes. It must be time for a meal. One must stick to routine.

His apartment is well organized. He goes over to the wall and opens a door. Food is laid out there on a small table. Food already prepared, a warm drink on the hot-plate, and plenty of it, at a time when many people are ransacking their homes in search of bread. There is a chair for him in there as well. He sits down on the chair and picks up his food, listening anxiously for the cracking sound and for the expected three taps. He eats only a little at a time and chews slowly, listening all the while. Then he has no more appetite, closes the door, and returns to his desk, his papers and stamps.

Ah yes, and now I must regulate my digestion, he thinks after a while.

He goes across to another wall and opens a door there too. A door to a narrow passage. He disappears down it.

Then he is back again, listening.

No, nothing.

The house is quaking in the soundless storm. It feels as if the black window-panes are bulging outwards. They do not crack, but bulge out from the pressure.