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from which,” the old boy’s wife added, “blood is being spilt over the shift rota.”
    The point was that the old boy’s wife always worked the morning shift.
    The bistro, on the other hand, stayed open until late at night (during which late-night hours the bistro was frequented by an army of customers who, by the late evening hours, were transformed into exceptionally generous, open-handed beings).
    In accordance with the worthy, fair-play rule of equal opportunity, which was also enshrined in law as a labour right, the bistro’s employees shared alike the clientele for the lunch menu in the mornings and afternoons (pap-eaters in the jargon), as tight-fisted as their time was rushed, and the late-night clientele who, by the late evening hours, were transformed into exceptionally generous, open-handed beings.
    Nevertheless, the old boy’s wife, at her own request, as confirmed by signature, only ever worked in the mornings (so that the old boy would also be able to work in the twenty-eight square metres during the mornings) (and also because she could not abide the late-night clientele who, by the late evening hours, were transformed into exceptionally generous, open-handed beings but at the same time mostly drank themselves stupid or to the point of causing a nuisance).
    Thus the late-night shift hours (as well as the by no means inconsiderable benefits that went with them) to which the old boy’s wife would have been entitled on the worthy, fair-play rule of equal opportunity, which was also enshrined in law as a labour right, were almost automatically assigned to a certain colleague called Mrs. Boda; however, most likely as a result of long habitude and also, perhaps, the greater inclination that human nature shows toward what, no doubt, is—if we may put it this way—a more instinctive attitude to legal practice than the worthy rules offair play (even when also enshrined in law as a labour right), this certain colleague called Mrs. Boda (whose first name was Ilona) had already long regarded the benefits that had been assigned to her not as assigned benefits but entitlements.
    One must take all that into account in imagining the effect produced by the announcement made by the old boy’s wife that very day that from now on she too wanted to work in the evenings.
    “Why?” the old boy asked.
    “Because as things are I hardly earn anything, and now you are not going to earn anything because you have to write a book.”
    “That’s true,” said the old boy.
    That evening the old boy declared, “I’m off for a walk.”
    “Don’t be too long,” said his wife.
    “All right. I need to think a bit.”
    “There was something else I meant to tell you.”
    “What was that?” The old boy paused.
    “It’s slipped my mind for the moment.”
    “Next time write it down so you won’t forget.”
    “It would be nice if we could go away somewhere.”
    “Yes, that would be nice,” the old boy said, nodding.
    On returning from his walk (his contemplative walk, as he called it), the old boy asked:
    “Did anyone call?”
    “Who would have called?”
    “True,” the old boy conceded.
    “That tin-eared, clap-ridden, belly-dancing bitch of a whore …” the old boy intoned, unhurriedly and syllable by syllable, while carefully shaping the softened wad between his fingers as he crammed it into his ear, thereby placing himself beyond reach of Oglütz, the Slough of Deceit—the entire world in effect.
    … Yes, if I had been consistent I might never havefinished my novel. But now I had finished it none the less, and it was inconsistent of me to be surprised that it stood ready. But that was how it was. I’m not suggesting I was unaware that, if I were to write a novel, then sooner or later a novel would come out of that, since over long years I had striven for nothing else than that. So as far as being aware is concerned, it’s not a question of my being unaware; it’s just that I forgot to prepare myself for