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all. There are some department stores on the way to the apartment, she says.
    The trumpet begins again. The music is faster now and people start dancing. Whatever makes people want to dance makes me want to stand completely still. This is how I appreciate good music. It makes me feel calm. I think Saskia is like this too. Her eyes are calm. She and I are just standing. It’s nice to just stand and listen to music, to a single instrument. In the evenings, at the larger markets, big bands play. They belt out huge polka versions of pop songs, or sentimental old Christmas tunes, and those are a lot of fun too. The crowds stand around contentedly, drinking and listening to the music, and I walk slowly through them, politely making way for anybody crossing my path. The apartment has a terrace, says Saskia, and a big kitchen. I’ll take it, I say. You haven’t even seen it! Doesn’t matter, I say. I think you should see it first. It could be full of mice. I’ll get a cat, I say. It’s expensive, she says. Well, then it probably doesn’t have mice. I thought you said you weren’t in a rush, she says. I have a good feeling, I say. She is weighing the risk of asking me another question, one that is much larger, but she resists. Do you really want to get a coat? she asks eventually. Yes, I say. We return our mugs to the drinks hut and get some money back. There is still dancing in front of the stage. Adults are dancing with their children and grandchildren. There you go, I say. What? she says. Now that’s a picture, I say. Yes, but it’s a pity when Christmas passes, and all we have left is the cold. I don’t know, I say, I think I’d like a long winter. You’ll get one, she says. Don’t worry. We leave the market and the little square in front of the church, and the fountain with the saint of seafarers in it, and we press upward. From time to time, the centre appears above and ahead of us, in the snow and fog and dimness, through spaces between building tops, spires, arches. We are heading for the interior. There is a cathedral there, and a fortress, but from here they are just faint shadows.
    Saskia was born in this city. Both her parents are dead – the mother first and the father a few years after. Her father was not from here, and when she was young she moved away. She came back after the death of her father, and I have the impression she came back in order to get a good job. She says there are two kinds of economists: the kind that own jets and the kind that ride bicycles. She doesn’t seem to think of herself as a person who wants a jet, so I presume this makes her an economist on a bicycle. Except that when she is pushed to defend a position, or when she talks about the assumptions her colleagues make about her because she is a woman, for instance that she will eventually want a child more than she will want a promotion, she reveals an ambition to succeed not just because she can but because other people think she cannot, or would not.
    Somebody here asked me about my politics. I told him I had none. We were sitting in a bar, and he was drinking, and I was not drinking, not really, just a beer, slowly, and he said I was a liar. His name was Fritz. Everything is political, said Fritz. I said nothing, and Fritz, I suppose, realized I had not agreed with him, so he told me what I really felt was disillusionment with politics, and that’s not the same thing as having no politics. He seemed like a nice guy. We hung out for the rest of the night. He said, I don’t smoke, but all night he smoked my cigarettes, and then we went to an automat so I could buy more cigarettes, and he said, Get me a pack too, so I bought him a pack. He put that pack in his pocket and smoked the cigarettes in my pack. He talked almost entirely about himself, and the city, and about politics. He was comically short and had a very funny walk, like something out of the Ministry of Silly Walks, where every step off his right foot was a bounce, as