Evening has come. Everyone else in the house is already in bed.

His son, Hansl, his sister-in-law, Anna. She came here six years ago now, their Anna did. When the first signs of his wife’s sickness were showing, and she wasn’t able to keep the place going anymore. Slowly, bit by bit, Anna took over the running of the household. She looked after Hansl as if he were her own son.

She nursed his wife when she was lying so sick up in the bedroom. His sister-in-law Anna unselfishly nursed her sister, his wife. Washed her in the morning, fed her. Cared for her all day long. Stood by her when it was clear what the end would be. When the sight of his wife’s suffering had become unbearable for him, she moved into their bedroom with his wife instead of him. To be with her at night as well, ease her suffering, give her comfort.

By then he already found it impossible to be close to his wife. Her infirmity scared him away, he couldn’t help her, couldn’t be any support to her. As should have been his duty. “For better and for worse, in sickness and in health.”

He caught himself wishing her suffering would come to an end at long last. He was tired of the sight of her and her martyrdom. He could no longer bear the smell of sickness and death, a sweetish smell surrounding her like a cloak. He couldn’t bear to look at her, so thin and emaciated.

He was out of the house as often as possible. Even on the day of her death he had been out all day. Had stayed out, walking around the place, even when his work was done. He’d wandered through the woods, spent a long time sitting on a rock. He would do anything rather than go back to his house. He didn’t want to feel aware of the narrow confines of life and mortality.

When Anna told him the news, he was relieved. He didn’t mourn, he was glad. A millstone had been lifted from his neck. He could begin to live again. He felt free. Free as a bird.

No one would have understood.

Before the first month of mourning was over, when his relationship with Barbara began, he showed no shame or sense of guilt. After all, he was free. For the first and perhaps the only time in his life he felt free.

At first her interest in him surprised him. He doubted whether her feelings for him were genuine. But the readiness with which she gave herself to him laid the doubts in his mind to rest. Indeed, it made him long for her and her body even more.

Her body, free of the breath of death and infirmity. A body still enfolded in the smell of life, a body full of lust for life. Greedily, without inhibition, he gave way to that urge, to that passion.

Let the rest of the world consider his conduct improper and immoral—in Barbara he had found what had been denied him all his life before, not only in the last years of his marriage.

That marriage had always been more a marriage of convenience than the union of two kindred spirits. An arranged marriage, something usual among farming people. “Love comes with the years. What matters is to keep the farm going.”

After a brief moment of fear when the desire he felt near Barbara frightened him, he indulged his sensuality without inhibitions.

When Barbara finally confessed her pregnancy to him he was happy. Only slowly did doubt grow in him.

Her attitude toward him changed. She refused herself to him more and more often. Her passion for him gave way to increasingly open contempt. If he went to the farm to speak to her, she refused to see him.

But he couldn’t retrace his steps now, he’d changed. Had given himself up to an addiction he had never known before, to a frenzy.

He knew the talk in the village. All the same, he had told everyone that the boy was his child, whether they wanted to hear it or not. His Josef. He had himself entered in the register of births as the father. And he was the child’s father; he clung to that thought like a drowning man clinging to a rope thrown to him.

Josef was his son, and his little boy was dead. Murdered. He couldn’t forget the sight of the child. He saw the dead boy in front of him all the time, whether his eyes were open or closed. The image wouldn’t leave him night or day.