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battle formation.
    “It depends whether she is about to win or lose.”
    “But Nico? I thought your perfume would help a lady win.”
    “Well, then you’d have to be playing, Coba, not me,” Nico sighed. He knocked over the white queen along with her foot soldiers. Crash!
    “I know a pianist”—she kept on chatting, undisturbed—“who’s stuck at a table like you. But he’s playing a piano.”
    “At a table?”
    “He drew a keyboard on the tabletop so that he wouldn’t get totally out of practice. Beethoven was deaf too, after all.”
    “How long has he been stuck there so far?” Marie asked timidly.
    “We’re trying to find him a third table now—oak, if we can. He’s already played through two others.”
    “So you’re better off with your chess then,” Marie said with a friendly nod to him.
    “Yes,” he agreed, a bit passively, “it’s true, I have it better . . .”
    Such visits helped, or visits like the ones from Leo, the photographer, who also brought along hair clippers. He came regularly, every three weeks.
    “I only do one kind of cut,” he said, eagerly rubbing his hands together. “I hope you like it. And if the esteemed client wishes to continue to make use of my services after the war . . .”
    He was a teacher of natural science and geography at the lyceum. Nico sat like a patient sheep on the chair and let everything take its course. These visits made him happy. He was cheerful and joined in with everything.Then he couldn’t anymore. Even with clippers, after all, sometimes a clump of hair or dust got in and brought the smooth workings of the blades to a halt. “So here I sit, happy because my hair is getting cut,” he thought to himself, “happy, while . . .”
    The others noticed. But Leo kept cutting.
    Wim and Marie sat in the room during the haircut. They themselves barely escaped the clutches of the hardworking clippers.
    At the end, Leo gave an extra show and cut his own hair. But only the right side.
    “He hasn’t learned the left side yet,” Nico teased, and he looked at his own haircut in the mirror for the third time. After the procedure he always felt a bit sad, and lonelier.
    “The left side is for the next customer!” Leo said, brushing off his shirt.

V.
    There were problems too. Obviously, whenever people live together there are problems, like little bombs with long fuses planted in the gray hours and mostly exploding at moments when you think everything is going perfectly. Boom! There’s a bang, you’re surprised, startled, and a little annoyed; the problems are a burden because they come as a surprise and because you have to make an extra effort. People who say that they can see a problem “coming” are like people who say they have a sixth sense.
    One problem was the cleaning lady. She came every Tuesday and Friday, the same as she had for the past two years, to clean and scrub the rooms downstairs and the rooms upstairs, alternating, and the kitchen and the stairs, and to darn stockings and mend clothes when she had any time left over. She knew every nook and cranny of the house and was used to moving freely through it, working without any special instructions from Marie.And now, all of a sudden, the upstairs rooms, especially Nico’s, were supposed to be “taboo” for her . . .
    “To fire her suddenly,” Marie said to Wim one evening when they were alone, “would really stand out. I’ll cut back slowly.”
    “I’ll just stay in my room,” Nico decided. That’s what he always did anyway, except for the days when he was so thoroughly bored that just for a change of scene he went faithfully, every hour and a half, like clockwork, to the bathroom on the upstairs floor. “This afternoon too will pass.”
    “Stay in your room as much as you can,” Wim had said at the beginning. “During the day someone or another still comes by to visit. Marie will call you when the coast is clear.”
    When the doorbell rang, he held his breath for