The next day was a Sunday.
I slept late and wakened only when the sun shone on my bed.
I sprang out quickly and threw up the window.
Outside it was fresh and clear.
I set the spirit stove in the window seat and got out the coffee container.
Frau Zalewski, my landlady, had given me permission to make my own coffee in my room.
Hers was too thin—especially if one had been drinking the night before.
I had already been two years in her boarding establish ment.
The locality pleased me.
There was always some thing doing, for the Trades Hall, the Cafe International and the Salvation Army Barracks were all there cheek by jowl.
And immediately fronting the house was an old grave yard, now in disuse.
There were large trees as in a park, arid on still nights.one could think one was in the country.
On the other hand, it was usually late before there was quiet; for next to the graveyard was an amusement park with roundabouts and swing-boats.
To Frau Zalewski the graveyard was a great asset.
When letting a room she would comment on the excellence of the air and the openness of the outlook, and proceed to charge a higher rent in consequence.
"But, sir, think of the situation!" was her invariable formula.
I dressed slowly.
That gave me the feeling of Sunday.
I washed; I strolled about the room, read the paper, brewed the coffee; I stood at the window and saw where the street had been taken up; I listened to the birds singing in the high trees in the graveyard opposite—little silvern pipes of God, they sang to the accompaniment of the melancholy, sweet drone of the barrel-organs at the Fair. I chose among my half-dozen shirts and socks with as much deliberation as if there had been twenty times the number; whistling, I turned out my pockets—small change, a. pocketknife, keys, cigarettes—and there, the slip of paper with the girl's name and the telephone number.
Patricia Hollmann— an unusual Christian name, Patricia.
I put it down on the table.
Was that really only yesterday?
How far off it seemed—forgotten almost in the pearl-grey fumes of alcohol.
That is a remarkable thing about drinking: it brings people together so quickly, but between night and morning it sets an interval again of years.
I stuck the slip of paper under a pile of books.
Should I ring?
Maybe—maybe not.
These things always look different next morning.
I was quite glad, as a matter of fact, to have a little peace.
There had been enough trouble the last few years.
Keep things at arm's length, Koster used to say. If you let anything come too near you want to hold on to it.
And there is nothing a man can hold on to.
At that moment the usual Sunday morning hate started in the room next door.
I looked about for my hat that I must have put away somewhere too carefully the night before, amToverheard what they were saying.
It was Hasse and his wife slanging each other.
For five years the two had been living here in one little room.
They weren't bad folk.
If they had had a three-roomed flat with a kitchen for the wife and a child thrown in, their marriage would probably have gone on quite well.
But a flat costs money and a child in these insecure times—how could it be done!
So there they sat on top of one another, the woman grown hysterical and the man in constant dread of losing his little job. If that happened he would be done for.
He was already forty-five.
No one would take him on again if he once got out of work.
Such is the modern misery—formerly one went under slowly and there was always a chance still of coming up again—but in these days on the farther side of every dismissal yawns the abyss of permanent unemployment.
I tried to steal out quietly, but already there was a knock on the door and Hasse stumbled in.
He dropped into a chair.
He was a mild inoffensive chap with drooping shoulders and a little moustache.
A modest, conscientious clerk.
But they are just the ones who fare worst to-day.
They have probably always fared worst.
Modesty and conscientiousness receive their reward only in novels.