One morning he was sitting on the edge of the bed and he was getting divorced. His wife was standing somewhere in the room talking. Something about her mother and someone else. Home to her mother; found someone else. And at seven in the morning, when you haven’t filled out your body yet and you’re cold and you have to go to work. He picked his nose and didn’t understand how anyone could get so ugly in five years. Maybe she wasn’t ugly. Maybe she just didn’t have any effect on him, the way it usually was with women. They couldn’t get under his skin. She had a red bunion on her right big toe. Why did they always have to go barefoot after they got married? If he could just get her to simmer down a second so he could get away. Here he was in his tight pyjamas, sadly scratching his chin. He thought: A man in my position! She was crying and yelling and raising her hands toward the ceiling, and if she would only put on a pair of shoes, then maybe he could tell her he loved her or something like that. He could call off the divorce. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if they were married or divorced. He had to write a speech for the boss, a toast. The book he was seeking inspiration in, before he fell asleep, was lying on his bed stand. It was called The 1000 Best Jokes in the World. The best joke in the world was his relationship with women. His friends would die laughing when he told them that. He had quite a few friends, and his wife didn’t like any of them. They were big, noisy, happy guys, who didn’t care much about women. Strange. He could never stand being with a girl for more than a couple of hours, but before she left, it was always too late. He had been married four times. He had had three children outside the marriages. The ones he didn’t marry he had kids with. They didn’t mean anything to him. He didn’t want to see any of them. ‘Children,’ she sobbed, ‘if at least we had had children!’ It was a horrifying thought, similar to one’s arms and legs suddenly starting to grow. He much preferred shrinking to expanding. First and foremost, he wasn’t quick-witted. Why did women change so fast? After ten minutes, they always said he was just an overgrown boy. Then shortly afterward he would be swinging back and forth on a swing in the in-laws’ yard. Such an overgrown boy, they all shouted, stuffing him, weak in the knees, into some apartment that had been there ready for him all along. And one morning an unfamiliar half-naked woman would be standing there in bare feet screaming that she wanted a divorce. That was it. His friends would enjoy this. He did too. He was a strange fellow, a tall, pathetic insect, sitting scratching his legs like a grasshopper.