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was something she wanted to say, but knew there was no point in asking.
    “Do you remember, Agnes—”
    She turned around.
    “How long have you worked here, Agnes?”
    “Fifty-five years.”
    “That’s a long time,” the professor observed.
    She nodded. He wanted so much to hear her say something, make some kind of judgment, or at least make a comment, about the fifty-five years she had served three generations of Ohlers.
    Agnes Andersson had never, as far as he could recall, let slip any appraisal of either the family or her position. She had always been there, like the so-called Stockholm bureau in the hall, the table service from France, the framed sketch of a bladdernut, signed Linnaeus, the oil painting by Roslin, the swords from the time of Charles XII that hung crossed over the fireplace in the library, the spear from the parts around Lake Tanganyika, and everything else that filled the house.
    It was as if the news about the Nobel Prize, a kind of receipt for his achievement but also an endpoint, made him want to sum up, and Agnes was the only one he could talk with. It was the two of them, no one else, who could confirm each other’s stories.
    He was still holding the glass. She was waiting by the window, fussing with something on the windowsill. He got the impression that she experienced the tension in the room the same way he did. Wasn’t there something unusually tense about her shoulders and the somewhat crooked back, perhaps an expression of a suppressed desire to speak?
    While his story was public property hers was mute, and trying to coax it out of her was pointless, he knew that. That after a whole life of distance they could come together and write a common story was a vain hope.
    I’m looking for affirmation from a domestic servant, he thought indignantly, a woman who can barely read a newspaper, who never in her entire life lifted a finger to improve herself and considered learning as something sickly. I, a von Ohler who has received the Nobel Prize, am fawning on an illiterate fisherman’s daughter from an inbred island. As if I needed her approval!
    He set aside the glass. Agnes turned immediately and gave him a quick glance. Once again he thought he glimpsed that desire in her to say something, before she hurried over, picked up the glass, left the room, and closed the door behind her.
    He stared at the closed door.
    “Ungrateful hag,” he muttered, got up slowly, smiled contentedly when the fit of dizziness did not appear, and went into the bedroom. It was time to get dressed, to meet the first foreign journalists, who were surely already on the scene at University Hospital, where he laid the foundations for his Nobel Prize.
    Agnes had chosen and set out clothes, newly pressed trousers, white shirt, bow tie, and a somewhat worn blazer. A slightly surprising choice—he had expected something more formal, if anything a suit with vest—but realized immediately how well the choice of clothing agreed with the image he wanted to create, and which Agnes immediately and intuitively seized upon.
    In the hall were a pair of newly brushed dark shoes. Agnes helped him tie the laces.
    “I’ve called for a taxi,” she said. “Professor, you can go out and wait. It will be here soon.”
    He lingered at the door, hesitated, heard a car drive up, nodded, and opened the door wide.
    “Thank you, Agnes,” he said, “that’s excellent.”
    “Professor Ahl will meet you at the clinic,” said Agnes, closing the door behind him.
    He felt driven out of his own home, but attempted a smile. In the near future he would be forced to smile a lot.
    He didn’t like smiling. In general he didn’t like it when old people smiled, it looked like a death grin.
    “Mr. Olen!”
    The taxi driver’s enthusiasm was if possible even greater this time. He opened the gate as the professor approached.
    “You again?”
    “Yes, Professor Olen, I asked for it. Stephania calls for me.”
    “So every time there is a fare