She died at the front, where she had signed up as a nurse after being disfigured in a horrible accident. My landlady never speaks about it, and in fact she hardly speaks at all anymore. She leaves me alone in my room, which looks out onto the street. She herself lives in a smaller room which looks out onto the garden. The kitchen is also in back. I can use it when I want, and there is always something hot on the stove. Every morning I find my shoes polished, my shirts washed and ironed, lying over the back of a chair in the corridor outside my door. My landlady never comes into my room, and I see her rarely. We don't keep the same hours. I don't know what she lives on. On her war widow's pension and her garden, I suppose.

"A few months after I moved in I went to the council office to look for any sort of work. The officials sent me from one office to another. They were afraid to make a decision about me, I was an object of suspicion because of my marriage to a foreigner. Finally, it was the Party Secretary, Peter, who took me on as a handyman. I was a caretaker, a window cleaner, a sweeper of dust, dead leaves, and snow. Thanks to Peter I am now entitled to a retirement pension like everyone else. I didn't have to beg, and I can end my days in the town where I was born and where I have spent my whole life.

"I left my first wages on the kitchen table. It was a paltry amount, but to my landlady it was a lot of money, too much, according to her. She left half of it on the table, and we went on like that: I leave my small pension next to her plate every month; she leaves exactly half of it next to mine."

A woman wrapped in a large shawl comes out of the orphanage. She is thin and pale; her huge eyes shine in her bony face. She stops in front of the bench, looks at Lucas, smiles, and says to the old man, "I see you've found yourself a friend."

"Yes, a friend. This is Lucas, Judith. He runs the bookshop in the main square. Judith is in charge of the orphanage."

Lucas gets up. Judith shakes his hand.

"I should buy some books for the children, but I'm overwhelmed with work and my budget is very tight."

Lucas says, "I can send some books around with Mathias. How old are your children?"

"Between five and ten. Who is Mathias?"

The old man says, "Lucas is looking after an orphan."

Lucas says, "Mathias isn't an orphan. His mother has gone away. He's mine now."

Judith smiles. "My children aren't all orphans either. Mostly their fathers are unknown and they have been abandoned by their mothers, who are rape victims or prostitutes."

She sits down next to the old man, rests her head on his shoulder, closes her eyes.

"We'll need the heating soon, Michael. If the weather doesn't change we'll start the stoves on Monday."

The old man holds her close to him.

"Fine, Judith. I'll be there at five o'clock on Monday morning Lucas looks at the woman and the man, holding each other tight, their eyes closed, in the damp cold of an autumn morning, in the complete silence of a forgotten little town. He starts to tiptoe away, but Judith shivers, opens her eyes, gets up.

"Stay, Lucas. The children will be waking up. I have to make their breakfast." She kisses the old man on the forehead.

"Until Monday, Michael. See you, Lucas, and thanks in advance for the books."

She goes back to the house. Lucas sits down again.

"She is very beautiful."

"Very beautiful, yes." The insomniac laughs. "At first, she was suspicious of me. She saw me here every day, sitting on this bench. Maybe she took me for a pervert. One day she came and sat next to me and asked me what I was doing here. I told her everything. It was at the beginning of last winter. She asked me to help her with the heating in the rooms, she couldn't manage it alone, she only has a sixteen-year-old to help in the kitchen. There's no central heating in the building, just stoves in each room, seven of them. If you only knew what joy I felt to be able to go back into our house, our rooms! And also to be able to help Judith. She's had her trials. Her husband disappeared during the war, she herself was deported, she's been to hell and back. I mean that literally. There was a real fire behind those doors, lit by human beings to burn the bodies of other human beings."

Lucas says, "I know what you're talking about. I saw things like that with my own eyes, right here in this town."

"You must have been very young."

"I was no more than a child. But I forgot nothing."

"You will forget. Life is like that. Everything goes in time. Memories blur, pain diminishes. I remember my wife as one remembers a bird or a flower. She was the miracle of life in a world where everything seemed light, easy, and beautiful. At first I came here for her, now I come for Judith, the survivor. This might seem ridiculous to you, Lucas, but I'm in love with Judith. With her strength, her goodness, her kindness toward these children who aren't hers."

Lucas says, "I don't think it's ridiculous."

"At my age?"

"Age is irrelevant. The essential things matter. You love her and she loves you as well."

"She's waiting for her husband to return."

"Many women are waiting for or mourning their husbands who are disappeared or dead. But you just said, 'Pain diminishes, memories blur.' "

The insomniac raises his eyes to Lucas.

"Diminish, blur, I said, not disappear."

That same morning, Lucas picks out some children's books. He puts them in a box and says to Mathias, "Can you take these books to the orphanage next to the park on the way to Grandmother's house? It's a big house with a balcony, there's a fountain in front."

The child says, "I know the one."

"The principal is called Judith. Give her these books from me.

The child goes off with the books, but returns soon after. Lucas asks, "What did you think of Judith and the children?"

"I didn't see Judith and the children. I left the books outside the door."

"You didn't go in?"

"No. Why should I go in? So they can keep me?"

"What? What are you saying, Mathias!"

The child locks himself in his room. Lucas stays in the bookshop until closing time, then makes the evening meal, which he eats alone. He has a shower and is just getting dressed when the child comes quickly out of his room.

"Are you going out, Lucas? Where do you go to every evening?"

Lucas says, "I go to work. You know that."

The child lies on Lucas's bed. "I'll wait for you here. If you worked in the bars you would come home at closing time, at midnight. But you come home much later."

Lucas sits on a chair in front of the child. "Yes, Mathias, you're right. I do come home later. I go and see some friends after the bars close."

"Which friends?"

"You don't know them."

The child says, "I'm alone every night."

"You should be asleep at night."

"I would sleep if I knew you were here, in your room, asleep as well."

Lucas lies down next to the child. He kisses him.

"Did you really think I sent you to the orphanage so that they could keep you? How could you think such a thing?"

"I didn't really think that. But when I arrived at the door, I was afraid. You never know. Yasmine promised she would never leave me. Don't send me there again. I don't like going toward Grandmother's house."

Lucas says, "I understand."

The child says, "Orphans are children who don't have any parents. I don't have any parents."

"You do. You have your mother, Yasmine."

"Yasmine is gone. And what about my father? Where is he?"

"I'm your father."

"But the other one, the real one?"

Lucas is silent for a moment before replying, "He died before you were born, in an accident, like mine."

"Fathers always die in an accident. Will you have an accident too?"