[...] My mother goes out to make coffee, and I look at my sleeping father’s back. Suddenly I see that he is aged and tired. There’s nothing definite to point to, it’s just an impression that I get. My father is fifty-five years old, and I’ve never known him as young. My mother was first young, and then youthful, and she’s still standing at that shaky stage. She lies without compunction that she’s a couple of years younger, even to us, who know very well how old she is. She still gets her hair dyed and goes to the steambath once a week; these exertions fill me with a kind of compassion because they’re an expression of a fear in her that I don’t understand. I just observe it. [...]