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woman’s, to make himself look taller. He wasn’t big either, though he was well built and square-shouldered.
    He was fair-complexioned, like Lotte, with blond hair and blue-gray eyes.
    So why were the girls afraid of him? He wasn’t even nineteen. There were moments when he seemed like a child. Perhaps he was capable of tenderness. For the most part he didn’t bother.
    And what was most surprising, given his age, was his poise. When he was still a baby, hardly able to walk, with a big head and yellow curls, people used to say that he looked like a little man.
    He never seemed to get excited. He never gesticulated. It was rare to see him in a hurry or angry, and rarer still to hear him raise his voice.
    One of the girls, whose bed he had often shared, took his head in her arms and asked him why he was so unhappy.
    She refused to believe him when, pulling away, he answered curtly, “I’m not unhappy. I’ve never been unhappy in my life.”
    Perhaps it was true. He wasn’t unhappy, but he felt no desire to laugh or joke around. He always stayed calm, and maybe that disconcerted people.
    And now, thinking about Holst, he was perfectly calm, without the slightest anxiety. He was barely even interested in Holst.
    Here everyone drank coffee with sugar in it and real cream. They spread butter and jam and honey on their bread. The bread was almost white. The only other place in the neighborhood to find it was at Timo’s.
    What did they eat in the apartment across the hall? What did Gerhardt Holst eat? What did Sissy eat?
    â€œYou’ve hardly had any breakfast,” remarked Lotte, who had gorged herself as usual.
    In the old days, when the others had food, she had often been so hungry that now she was afraid of his not eating enough. She wanted to stuff him like a goose.
    He hadn’t enough energy to get dressed. Besides, at this hour there was nothing to do outside. He sat around. He watched Lotte carefully ironing his trousers and removing some spots with the tip of her painted nails. Then he followed the new girl with his eyes. He watched her set up the little table with the manicure implements she didn’t know how to use.
    On the nape of her neck, which was still thin, with very fine white skin that reminded him of a chicken, there were a few stray hairs she kept twisting in an unconscious gesture.
    Sissy did the same thing when she was going up or down the stairs.
    The new girl called him “Monsieur Frank.” Lotte had told her to. Out of politeness he asked her what her name was.
    â€œMinna.”
    Her skirt was well tailored, the material almost new, and she seemed clean. Had she slept with men before? Probably, or she wouldn’t have come to Lotte’s. But she probably had never done it with anyone for money.
    Later on, when a customer showed up, Frank would climb on the kitchen table. He was sure that after she had taken off her dress she would turn toward the wall. She would finger the straps of her slip for a long time before making up her mind to take it off.
    Sissy was just across the landing. At the top of the stairs, there was a door on the right and another on the left before you came to the corridor where there were still more doors. Some tenants had a whole apartment. Others only had one room. There were three more stories above them. You could hear people going up and down the stairs all the time. The women carried shopping bags and packages, and as time went on they had more and more trouble climbing the stairs. There was one who couldn’t have been more than thirty, and yet she had fainted on the stairs a few months back.
    He had never been in Holst’s apartment. He had seen inside many of the others, since the tenants sometimes left their doors open. Some women did their washing in the halls, although it was forbidden by the landlord.
    Everywhere during the day reigned a painfully raw, almost frozen light, since the windows were high and