But, I thought, no! and shook the thought from me as a dog shakes water from its coat. That briefcase was of no relevance to me and my projects, there was no way in which it could be traced back to my father’s death. I should not have opened it, I told myself sternly. That was all.

7

On my way to the break room later that morning, I saw that there was an envelope in my mailbox. I tore it open and read the contents as I put the coffee on to brew. It was a bill from the hospital. There had been a misunderstanding earlier this year, and a kind but clearly confused woman had mistaken a perfectly normal remark I had made for something more sinister. It was difficult to recall all the details, as that had been the night I learned of my father’s death, when there were more important things on my mind. One cannot be held accountable for every little thing one says. It had not been my intention, as she had evidently thought, to do anything dramatic. Natural, wasn’t it, I thought, as I puttered around the break room, to have been upset that night, and unfortunate that the old woman had misunderstood.

When, some time later, I returned to my office and looked at the clock, I registered that it was noon with little interest at first. Then I thought, Noon! And sprang up and pulled on my coat, sending the blinds scuttering down the window. Noon was the hour of the lunchtime concert of the Kindertotenlieder, and now even if I hurried I’d be late.

I pushed open the double doors of the breezeway and stepped out into the bright midday sunlight. Below me and to the right was the med school quad, with its green patch of lawn and trio of willows. Little groups of students were scattered here and there on the grass, eating their lunches. At least, I thought, as I stepped through the automatic doors that led to the hospital, I would be unlikely to encounter any of my colleagues at the concert; as a rule they would consider themselves too young and interesting for classical music.

The moving walkway deposited me on the second floor of the hospital, where I took the escalator down to the ground floor and was at once caught up in the densely moving mass of the building’s main artery at the lunch hour. People holding bouquets of flowers tugged at the hands of small children, candy stripers manned their station, and doctors in scrubs, unencumbered, moved with greater purpose than the rest. Here and there one could even spot the sick themselves, dragging their oxygen tanks behind them in their slow and destinationless migration.