When they were sitting across from one another, he cleared his throat as if he were going to say something, and he looked at her, surprised and questioning. Without thinking, in fearful panic, she pushed the water pitcher and it toppled, spilling water all over the tablecloth.

‘What are you doing? Wait a second, let me help you.’ His voice was friendly, a bit curious, and she let him fetch a rag as she sat motionless, watching him dry the spill carefully, while her heart shrank to a little hard lump. He has no idea, she told herself. He doesn’t have any idea what I’m going through. And suddenly she perceived him as a complete stranger, a person she just happened coincidentally to be in the room with, and she was able to feel disconnected from him, from her love for him, her solidarity with him, and she decided again from her profound loneliness to ask who had called – she had already opened her mouth when her eyes met his. His eyes were good-natured, sad, and wise. They were searching penetratingly for something, maybe just a confirmation. Of what? The words stopped at her lips. They would never be spoken.

She smiled sadly and distantly. It’s over, she thought. Not yet, not tomorrow. Maybe he’ll never know it’s over.

‘I’m a little tired today,’ she said apologetically, and they both started eating, while carefully avoiding looking one another in the eye.

His Mother

The old lady was awaiting a visit. But it’s not really accurate to call her a ‘lady’, although she would certainly find the title appropriate. Because the term ‘old lady’ automatically brings to mind a lovable, mild-mannered, white-haired woman, or at least a dignified one. But lovable is not the right description; mild-mannered doesn’t fit either. And she really is too short, bent, and slovenly to be called dignified. If you happened to see her apart from her dreary, stately furniture in these carpeted rooms with which she has merged, and which soon will be located in her son’s bright, new home, looking awkward and being about the only things that miss her, you would simply think: There goes an old woman; or maybe even: There goes a poor old woman, because for years she has never spent money on herself, except for that pot of a hat she bought for three kroner last year at a second-hand shop, and the strange dress she got an elderly seamstress to make out of her husband’s twenty-year-old overcoat for five kroner (she has a knack for finding cheap labor); and in addition to that, a kind of smock that was made from the lining, with sleeves from an old, moth-eaten curtain. – And she hopes she doesn’t have to buy any more clothes in her lifetime; you get nothing for your money these days, and who does she have to dress up for anyway –