Edith sat at his desk in what he called his ‘workroom’. There was dust on all the papers and on the month-old piles of newspapers, which no one was allowed to touch, even though they couldn’t be of use to him anymore. And as she found a sheet of yellow vellum and pulled out the drawer of pencils and pens, it occurred to her how strange it was that she had never been able to tell anyone what her husband did for a living. Of course she knew he was an assistant professor at a state-run university. Besides that, every Monday morning – up until four months ago – he had sat here writing articles for a magazine whose name she couldn’t remember, articles about something which someone phoned about, unless he had left and taken them with him on the eleven o’clock train. These articles he didn’t write anymore must have brought in some money. And since it couldn’t be entirely cost-free to cultivate an affair with a twenty-something woman, the explanation for the growing pile of unpaid bills was rather obvious.

The sleeping pills started working. She yawned and relaxed her vigilant attitude somewhat. What did she care about all the unpaid bills? Though they did still mean something. He must be in quite a state, her meticulous, conscientious husband, and for a moment she was filled with a strange, impersonal compassion for him. A glimpse of her husband’s – her provider’s – unknown world flickered across her slightly blurry consciousness. Taxes, accounts, dancing school, a child’s coat whose purchase had to be put off till the first. Stains on the wall from dampness which crept higher each year, the loose tiles on the shed roof – all things that had to be taken care of someday, things that chased him from day to day, things he would never get done and could never forget about. He would leave the house to her and the children, the moonlight house which resembled a big chunk of butter, and which could change form, be sliced, scooped out, used up. And now it was suddenly important not to wear things out. They had to be protected, preserved, packed away, as if even a glance could harm them. An old terror erupted inside her at the thought of chair cushions always covered with dark cloth, a living room from which the sunshine was carefully kept out, so the world was in constant twilight. And the expression on her mother’s face, as if the final catastrophe was now imminent, when she came home from school with a tear in her dress, or when a pair of shoes couldn’t be saved by resoling. But that’s not how it would be, or would it? Just in another way that only the children saw?