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espresso diluted with plenty of milk, but I decided to enjoy the comfy situation a bit longer on my own. It was fine like this. As Japi, from Nescio’s The Sponger , said: I was always getting myself worked up. Since cutting short a disastrous work visit to Lugano a year ago, I had asserted ownership of my time. I’d share part of it with Miriam (and with Tonio, if he so desired), but otherwise no one could lay any claim to it. Written enough letters, contributed to enough magazines. I was tired of buffing the regulars’ tables at assorted pubs with my jacket sleeves, not to mention all the language that evaporated out of your mouth, free of charge, and that could just as well have been written down at home.
    And it worked. Every day was a gift. I once remarked to Miriam that ‘most people always came to get something, never to bring it’. It was a burst of pique, no more than that, but once I’d said it I realised it was true. Since then I made certain there was no longer anything to be had. I would continue bringing people things now and again, but all in due course.
    My mind drifted back to the work schedule lying on the long wallpaper table upstairs. It lay next to the copy of the draft typescript I had submitted at the end of April. There was also a plastic folder containing 160 pages of the definitive version. I had written it more or less off the cuff, outside every hundred-day schedule. Thus there was a starting balance, so to speak, to compensate for the less productive days.
    In short, I had my act together. I sank back onto the pillows, almost purring with pleasure. I would ring Miriam in a minute. After the coffee, and perhaps some lazy lovemaking, I would mount the exercise bike for half an hour, then it was just a matter of showering, getting dressed, and going upstairs. There, I would choose exactly the right moment to release the agreeably wound-up spring for the next 100 days.
    4
    And then the bell. One short, one long. Loud and invasive. In the echoing silence that followed, the thumping of the cats as they raced upstairs.
    As always, the strident buzz of the doorbell irritated me (God, Miriam, weren’t we going to have the Brom people install a friendlier bell?), but now it was a sense of unease that made me sit straight up in bed. I turned my head to the right, glanced at my watch on the night table. Ten past nine. It was probably my mother-in-law. Lately she’d taken to showing up on our doorstep, befuddled, delivered by cab. The reason was usually that Miriam didn’t answer the phone or offer any other sign of life.
    Yes, it had to be Wies. Who else? But … if I was so sure it was her, no more than an annoying incident, why did my already upset stomach tighten in anxiety? I slid out of bed, suppler than my back in reality allowed, and went out to the landing to hear what was going on. I went by way of the bathroom. At first it was as though the quiet had returned to the house. Miriam didn’t open the door, and her mother drove back off in the taxi.
    My stomach and my heart did not share the relief being coaxed into my head. This wasn’t the first time I’d stood there, holding my breath, to see if Miriam opened the door. The mailman — wasn’t Miriam home? Should I answer via the intercom?
    Something , perhaps the gust of air that blew up through the stairwell, told me the front door was open. I struggled with all my might to recognise my mother-in-law in the voice that rose up indistinctly from down below, but I knew that it was a man’s voice. The sound of Miriam’s brief and heated (but unintelligible) reaction offered the hope that she — as she often did in this kind of situation — was yelling at her mother. My fear spoke another language.
    Just above me, Tygo and Tasha stuck their furry heads inquisitively through the balusters of the handrail. Downstairs, the glass doors to the hall rattled. A snippet of an unmistakably