Asger nodded encouragingly to her as she sat down on the piano bench with her back to the piano. He sat in the rocking chair by the window. That old woman was his mother; she had nursed him once. She had actually been young, though this was impossible to imagine. He had blue eyes, there was always a smile quivering around the corners of his mouth, and she loved him. He wasn’t at all like that sad, old woman, not at all. He had crawled on this furniture when he was a child. He saw the things here in a totally different way than she did. Naturally. On the wall between the windows hung a painting of him as a child. She pointed at it.

‘You were such a cute boy.’

‘I look like my father,’ he said, glancing at the flower-encircled portrait over the desk. ‘Don’t you think?’

She got up and went to examine the man’s bright, friendly eyes, which put her in a good mood again, because it was quite true that he resembled his father. She walked over to Asger and ran her fingers through his thick brown hair. It was hard for her to keep away from him for very long.

‘Is your mother always so – so sad?’ she asked carefully.

He thought about it. Then he said, by way of explanation:

‘She’s from another era. You have to realize she could almost be my grandmother. My oldest brother is nearly fifty.’

He laughed and nodded toward his father’s portrait:

‘There was life in the old man,’ he said.

She laughed too, and looked at her watch. The sun was out. Right outside. It seemed as if its rays reached the windows with the best of intentions, but then had to give up, slide down the wall in vain, and return to space. But maybe the sun came through in the mornings.

The child of an old man, it occurred to her, as she remembered a phrase from some poem: born of tired loins. Her own thought shocked her so much she was compelled to go and kneel in front of him, put his head in her hands, and observe his beautiful mouth and his tired eyes with the distant look in them, and his slim hands which could never be still, so were constantly fumbling with a pipe or cigarettes or searching for tobacco or change in all his pockets. He was so forgetful, a bit hesitant in his manner, like a person who never has all his senses in the same place where he actually is.

He didn’t kiss her. He glanced nervously at the door.

‘Watch out,’ he said quickly. ‘Here she comes.’

He jumped up and took the tray from his mother. It was so big and heavy, it was a wonder she had gotten that far with it.