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to our place for lunch today? Sophie’d be happy to see you. She hasn’t seen you for weeks.”
    But first we stopped at the station café. He needed a short rest.

5 – July: Affair
    Sophie’s way of looking at people. Her head tilted slightly to one side, she listens eagerly – an eager listener. That’s probably how she listened to her boss, Fritschi.
    Generous necklines are her speciality. Not that her pullovers and blouses have low necklines, just wide ones: neck, shoulders, collarbones.
    Any children? Her two sisters, the one in Burgdorf and the other in Brugg, have enough: five children in all. And their mothers have put on weight magnificently.
    Sophie is not likely to put on weight.
    *
    A quiet July. This year she went on holiday on her own. Sent a picture postcard from Elba.
    At the time I didn’t know how Fritschi had managed to engineer it. It didn’t interest me. Apparently Fritschi’s wife knew nothing about it at all. So much the better, I thought. And as for me, I wasn’t interested in broadcasting it to the whole world. Although it could be assumed that everyone would very soon be in the picture. Or would think they were in the picture.
    Three whole weeks without having to go to the dole office. That was holiday enough. I’d hardly have got more out of it if I’d gone abroad. So I stayed at home. I’d been abroad often enough before. Moreover it would have been distressing if something had happened to Father while I was away.
    A quiet July. Occasional drives out to the Brühl district. Late in the afternoon. I could make as many detours as I wanted: there was no one at home waiting for her meal.
    People were on holiday, and I wasn’t doing anything either: that went well together. At long last I didn’t attract anyone’s attention. I could go on a leisurely stroll through the town whenever I felt like it. I was just one of the crowd.
    *
    How long does one glass of beer entitle you to sit at one of the round tables in front of the pub watching the people amble past? The answer is forty minutes. On average. Then the waitress comes and asks you what else you would like to order. Last year I wouldn’t have noticed such things.
    *
    Laid off as from the beginning of January. In mid-February Lätt’s operation on Father’s tumour. A third calamity was inevitable.
    I’d always known that I might lose my job. From the type case to the typesetting machine, from galleys to computers – rationalisation, quite normal.
    It was also foreseeable that some time or other Father might fall sick. Black lung, smokers’ lung, or simply old age. But a skin-related malady? That had never occurred to me.
    And now Sophie away on holiday with another man. The boss and his secretary, the secretary and her boss. The kind of thing that happens to other people in other places, I reasoned, can also happen to me. The third calamity, inevitable.
    *
    A hot July. People jumped into the Aare at the lido and swam down as far as Säli Bridge in the town centre, then sauntered back on the riverside path in their swimming trunks and bikinis.
    I enjoyed being on my own.
    Three whole weeks without having to look even once at the job vacancies columns.
    Sitting on the balcony; in the reddish light behind the balustrade and the half-lowered awning. There was just enough room for one wicker armchair. As a rule it was Sophie who occasionally sat there. However, the noise coming up from the street usually drove you back into the house before long.
    From the balcony I watched the neighbours’ children. The Hubers had put out a paddling pool on the lawn next to their garage; kids scampered around; their squeals echoed between the buildings.
    *
    She was thirty when we married and wouldn’t have minded having a child. Now she’d soon be thirty-eight.
    *
    In the Brühl district there are still extensive stretches of woods; fields in between. Fewer