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inside of his arm to her mouth, and she
bites his arm because she doesn’t know what else to do with it, and he says: Ah, she
bites harder and he repeats: Ah, and she is seized with the desire to bite into him
all the way to the bone; then he pushes her away, seizes her, and spins her around
so he can open her dress, which is fastened up the back with a long row of hooks,
and then her corset as well, meanwhile she bows her head to remove the pins from her
hair, and this controlled, quiet activity is the preparation for something that
— as has apparently been agreed — will be neither controlled nor quiet.
The room he invited her to is small and furnished, the curtains yellowed, and the
enamel is flaking off the wash basin sitting on a chest of drawers; but she sees
none of this, instead she sees that the officer’s close-fitting trousers display a
noticeable bulge at the crotch, she runs her fingers across this bulge, feeling
astonishment not only that this is allowed, but that she knows it is. A number of
things are different this afternoon than they were with her husband, the officer’s
aroused member bends up rather than down, he licks her breasts, which her husband
never did, and when she is lying on top of him, he slaps her buttocks resoundingly
with his palm. Every single moment this afternoon is too late for her to leave
again. But when the two hours he rented the room for are almost up, he kisses her
cheek and says: Alas, my sweet, it’s time to go. She watches him as he gets up, his
legs are sinewy and long, far longer than those of her husband. He bends over to
sort out their things — his and hers — that are lying in a heap on the
floor, tossing the dress, corset, and stockings onto the bed for her and slipping
into his close-fitting trousers. They no longer display a bulge. He doesn’t know
that she has already borne a child, and she would like to tell him so, but how? She
too gets up and pulls on her stockings, meanwhile he is digging about in his wallet.
Maybe she’ll have another one after all, a child by him, she thinks and smiles. She
slips into her corset, deftly hooking it shut. With or without a wedding —
what does she care about that — now he’s finally found the banknote he wants
to give her — she’d be happy in any case. She pulls the dress on over her
head, it rustles, and only when she has emerged again from the dress does she see
the hand he is holding out to her with the money, his dry, warm hand that was the
start of everything, she sees his hand with the banknote and almost wants to laugh,
asking: What’s the idea? But he doesn’t laugh in return, instead he says, perhaps:
For you. Or possibly something like: Don’t make a fuss. Or: Keep the change. Or: You
certainly earned it, my lovely. He says some sentence of this sort to her, and she
looks at him as if seeing him for the first time.
    He just nods to her and places the money on the chest of drawers, then
spins her around with her back to him, as if she were a child that hasn’t yet
learned to get dressed on its own, he hooks her dress up the back as she stands
there — seemingly immersed now in thoughts of her own — so that she can
show herself on the street without attracting notice. As he leaves, he pulls on his
white leather gloves and says:
    Wait for a few minutes before you go down.
    She neither looks at him nor responds, just stands there in the middle
of the room, staring at the floor, staring as if the floor were opening to reveal an
abyss he was unable to see.
    14
    When her husband — who despite his serious illness had lived
longer than many healthy men — finally died, the old woman accepted her
daughter’s invitation, gave away all her chickens, packed up the Holy Scripture, the
seven-armed candelabra, and her two sets of plates, and went to live with her. She
left behind the semidarkness in which she’d been spending her life, along with a few
pieces of furniture, their feet all scraped and scratched