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older. They were going to take a trip to the Maldives that winter, and whenever they talked about it, Miriam looked at him and smiled.
    Customers valued his straightforward manner; when his bonus was added in, he was making a comfortable ninety thousand a year. Driving back from meetings, he listened to jazz in the car, and his world was complete.

    They came at seven in the morning. He’d been supposed to drive to Hannover that day: a new customer, complete equipping of an office, good contract. They handcuffed him and led him out of the house. Still in her pajamas that he liked so much, Miriam stared at the arrest warrant. “Twenty-four counts of child abuse.” She knew the name of the girl from her primary school class. She stood in the kitchen with an officer as two of the policemen led Holbrecht down the narrow path to the police car. They had planted the boxwood hedge the year before; the jacket she’d given him last Christmas hung awkwardly on his shoulders somehow. The policeman said most wives had no idea. It was meant to sound comforting. Then they searched the house.

    It wasn’t a long trial. Holbrecht denied everything. The judge held up the fact that porno films had been found on his computer. Admittedly there were no children in them and the films were legal, but the women were very young: one of them had barely any tits. The judge was sixty-three. He believed the girl. She said Holbrecht had always intercepted her on the way home. He had touched her “down there”—she started to cry as she testified about that. The terrace of his house was where it took place. Another girl confirmedeverything; she’d even seen it all twice herself. The girls described the house and the little garden.
    Miriam didn’t attend the main hearing. Her lawyer sent the divorce papers to the house of detention. Holbrecht signed everything without reading it.
    The court sentenced him to three and a half years. It stated in its opinion that it had no cause to doubt the girl’s testimony. Holbrecht served out his sentence to the last day. The psychologist had wanted him to acknowledge his guilt. He said nothing.

    His shoes were soaked by the rain; water had forced its way in over the rims and seeped into his socks. The bus shelter had a plastic roof, but Holbrecht preferred to stand outdoors. The rain ran down the back of his neck into his coat. Everything he owned fit into the gray suitcase that was standing beside him. Some underwear, a few books, approximately 250 letters to his wife which he had never sent. In the pocket of his pants he had the addresses of his probation officer and a boardinghouse where he could stay to begin with. To tide him over, he had the money he’d earned in prison. Holbrecht was now forty-two years old.
    The next five years passed quietly. He lived on his wages as a sandwich-board man for a tourist restaurant. He stood at the end of the Kurfürstendamm with colorful pictures of the various pizzas on cardboard boxes. He wore a white hat.His trick was to give a little nod to people when he handed them the flyer. Most of them took one.
    He lived in a one-and-a-half-room apartment in Schöneberg. His employer valued him; he was never ill. He didn’t want to live on unemployment benefits and he didn’t want any other job.

    He recognized her at once. She must now be sixteen or seventeen, a carefree young woman in a close-fitting T-shirt. She was with her boyfriend, eating ice cream. She tossed her hair back as she laughed. It was her.
    He turned aside quickly, feeling ill. He pulled off the sandwich board and told the restaurant owner he was sick. He was so pale that no one asked him any questions.
    In the suburban train someone had written “I love you” and someone else had written “pig” in the dirt on the window. Back home he lay down on his bed in his clothes, and spread a wet kitchen towel over his face. He slept for fourteen hours. Then he got up, made coffee, and sat down at the open