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home; she didn’t want to think about everything she had to do before getting to bed. On the way home, she shopped, using her ration cards. There was a long line at the butcher’s, and so it was almost six when she slowly climbed the steps to her apartment on Friedrichshain.
    On her doorstep stood a little man in a light-colored raincoat and cap. He had a colorless and expressionless face, slightly inflamed eyelids, pale eyes—the sort of face you immediately forget.
    “Is that you, Enno?” she exclaimed, and right away gripped her keys more tightly in her hand. “What are you doing here? I’ve got no money and nothing to eat, and I’m not letting you into the flat either.”
    The little man made a dismissive gesture. “Don’t get upset, Eva. Don’t be cross with me. I just wanted to say hello. Hello, Eva. There you are!”
    “Hello, Enno,” she said, reluctantly, having known her husband for many years. She waited a while, and then laughed briefly and sardonically.”All right, we’ve said hello as you wanted, so why don’t you go? But it seems you’re not going, so what have you really come for?”
    “See here, Evie,” he said. “You’re a sensible woman, you’re someone a man can talk to…” He embarked on a long and involved account of how he could no longer extend his sick leave, because he had been off for twenty-six weeks. He had to go back to work, otherwise they would pack him off back to the army, which had allowed him to go to the factory in the first place because he was a precision toolmaker and those were in short supply. “You see, the thing is,” he concluded his account, “that I have to have a fixed address for the next few days. And so I thought…”
    She shook her head emphatically. She was so tired she could drop, and she was longing to be back in her flat, where much more work was waiting for her. But she wasn’t going to let him in, not if she had to stand outside half the night.
    Quickly he added, in a tone that immediately struck her as insincere, “Don’t say no, Evie, I haven’t finished yet. I swear I want nothing from you, no money, no food, nothing. Just let me bed down on the sofa. No need for any sheets. I don’t want to be the least trouble to you.”
    Again, she shook her head. If only he would stop talking; he really ought to know she didn’t believe a word of it. He had never kept a promise in his life.
    She asked, “Why don’t you get one of your girlfriends to put you up? They usually come through for something like this!”
    He shook his head. “No, Evie, I’m through with women, I can’t deal with them anymore, I want no more of them. If I think about it, you were always the best of them anyway, you know that. We had some good years back then, you know, when the kids were still small.”
    In spite of herself, her face lit up at the recollection of their early married years. They really had been good years, when he was working as a machinist, taking home sixty marks a week, before he turned work shy.
    Immediately Enno Kluge saw the chink. “You see, Evie, you see, you still have a bit of a soft spot for me, and that’s why you’ll let me sleep on the sofa. I promise I’ll be quick dealing with the management, I’m not bothered about the wages, I just want to go on sick leave again and stay out of the army. In ten days I’ll have my medical discharge, I promise!”
    He paused and looked at her expectantly. This time she didn’t shake her head, but her expression was opaque. He went on, “I don’t want to do it with stomach ulcers this time, because then they don’t give you anything to eat when you’re in hospital. What I’m trying for this time is inflamed gall bladder. They can’t prove you’re lying, all they can do is X-ray you, but you don’t have to have gallstones to have the inflammation. You might, but you don’t have to. That’ll work. I’ll just have to clock in for ten days first.”
    Once again she didn’t say a word,