RICARDO IS COUNTING AGAIN. FOUR BOTTLES OF SODA WATER. Two cartons of milk. Five bananas. While he counts he taps every object with his finger. Starts over from the beginning and then adds another banana so the price is easier to calculate. His glasses are greasy and there’s a crack down the middle of one lens. Everything he does he does slowly, and depending on Josef’s mood this can either drive him into a white-hot rage or impart a feeling of deep peacefulness.

Edith’s quick movements. The way she closed the door behind her with her foot, bread pinned beneath her chin, the laundry in her arms.

With Ricardo he thinks hard beforehand about what exactly he’s going to have him pull off the shelves. Sometimes he shortens the list halfway through because things are moving too slowly for him. Ricardo likes to grab each item off the shelf separately. It doesn’t help to list off three items at once that are right next to each other—rice, lentils, beans. He only comes back with one.

Every single thing is given its dignity. Here’s the semolina. Here’s the tobacco. Here’s the milk.

Oh, how he’s come to love this.

* * *

On the way back a car passes him, trailing a brown cloud of dust. He holds his breath. He rides past the old pochote tree that has grown so crooked that no one wants to cut it down.

The car that passed him is waiting in the driveway. A taxi. Dörsam has gotten out and holds up a bag of crackers. “You live up there, right?”

Josef goes up the stairs ahead of him. At the top he points toward the veranda. “Have a seat, Herr Dörsam.”

“Well, well,” mumbles Dörsam. “In Buenos Aires you always made yourself scarce, true. But I heard only good things about you. That you were a hard worker. A good handyman. The Germans have you to thank for all their garden fences. How’s the work at the Geographic Institute? Good?”

What is Dörsam getting at? That it’s thanks to Dörsam that he has a good job? Yes, that he knows.

“I can’t complain.”

“You never could complain. You always had it good.”

The midday heat has settled in on the veranda. Josef goes into the kitchen, grabs two glasses, hesitates, then tosses a few ice cubes in them before filling them with water. He has a thought: he could grab Dörsam and throw him over the railing, or go get Maria’s revolver from the nightstand and gun him down, then throw his body in the river, which of course is nice and deep.

When he comes back, Dörsam has taken off his jacket, even slipped off his suspenders.