The sky was completely clear by the beating-balcony. One had to make money, afford to live. One had to have a room, a bed behind the kitchen and save for a bigger one. In the well of the building was a water as clear as a spring's. The table is starting to get old, stands unsteadily on its warped legs.
Hinges give way, lacquered surfaces crack, there's a creaking when someone gives the table a knock.
The evening, too, is old, smells of old leaves, alder thickets, raspberry bushes. It's hard to find in the leaves that are starting to stiffen a flower, no matter how faintly glowing, with a forgotten smell like the summer rooms of dead generations - a smell of old clothes, nutmeg or wood dust behind wallpaper destroyed by damp in roughcast houses. Where I sit I can see a covered path, years growing over, silence growing over. Twilight falls quickly, I turn down the wick, sit for a while and accustom my eye to the night. Old men cling tight to their blocks, out of tiredness and habit, and the moths knock against the lampshade's clumsy old map.