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himself, but his appetite failed him. He would linger for hours in Loom’s kitchen, staring out the window at the Russian, Austrian, and German clouds bathed in a garish glow. He would sit there motionless and silent, till Adela stopped paying any attention to him whatsoever.
    â€œAfter f-f-fire like that, water has to c-c-come,” he would say finally. For experience had taught him that fire and water remain in equilibrium. But what water? Where could water come from, when there was nothing but snow and more snow as far as the eye could see?
    One day, between the soup and the main course, from over the rooftops there came a sound like the roar of ocean waves. People went up to their windows and peered into the sky. From the barracks yard, through binoculars Colonel Ahlberg observed an airplane. The wind was flapping the pilot’s scarf, while his goggles flashed crimson.
    â€œPeople imagine seeing all kinds of things,” murmured the garrison commandant. He summoned a soldier passing with a pail.

    â€œDo you see something?” he asked, handing him the binoculars.
    â€œI see the same thing you do, sir,” reported the soldier.
    Over Factory Street the airplane came under fire from a barrage of snowballs always thrown mercilessly at anything that managed to rise above the ground. A few hit the undercarriage, one struck the goggles. The blinded airman yanked them off angrily and, chasing the horde of boys in caps with earflaps, turned toward the factory warehouses. He dropped two bombs; one destroyed a warehouse at Strobbel’s works, the second a storehouse at Neumann’s factory. From then on, that part of town was littered with white and black shards.
    The colonel emptied the entire cylinder of his revolver but only managed to put holes in the fabric of the fuselage. Describing loops in the sky, the airplane vanished over the rooftops in the last rays of the sun as they broke through a gap in the clouds. It was obvious he would be back, since the mystery of his appearance remained unsolved. Ahlberg ordered a cannon to be hauled to the very top of the town hall tower. Fifteen men, crying “heave ho!”, carried out the command even before supper.
    The artillerymen loaded the cannon as they were ordered to, and waited. The fuse was not lit till the following day, between the soup and the main course. There was a crash. The cannon recoiled, the town hall shook to its foundations, brick dust came crumbling down the chimney flues. Missing its target, the shell
sailed over the rooftops and smashed into the snowy wilderness at the end of Salt Street. It destroyed the underground mine galleries there and left a hole that was as deep as the town hall was high.
    The airplane taunted the colonel. Time and again it appeared out of the blue, only to soar upward at the last minute, before the very noses of the artillerymen. The cannon was hurriedly reloaded and fired again. The aircraft, its undercarriage in shreds, went spinning halfway across the sky, trailing clouds of smoke as black as pitch, and crashed into the brick rotunda of the municipal gasworks. There was an explosion, and gas lighting went out across the entire town.
    â€œThe enemy’s occupied the mine, there are soldiers everywhere, they’re sending civilians back to their homes!” exclaimed Stanisław the butler as he burst into Loom’s study without being summoned.
    â€œDid I ring for you?” Loom asked caustically. He raised his head above the accounts he was poring over by the light of a candle, amid shadows dancing from one corner to another. And he pointed to the door.
    Having fired the cannon twice, Colonel Ahlberg waited calmly for the enemy staff. He could not be accused of giving up the town without firing a single shot. He also found time to inspect his own ranks, which were white with plaster and black from soot. He gave orders for the depot to be opened and
for the men to put on dress uniform. When