One day, he says, one day you will marry a young man — and I’ll give you a bunch of roses for the wedding. He sees her smile and shake her head, just as he expected. He was saying it more to himself than to her. He mustn’t forget that one day he will have to hand her on. He mustn’t forget that he knows this better than she does, she who smiles to hear such a thing. But if he wants to survive the crash, then the certain prospect of it must be kept at the forefront of his mind the whole time that he spends with her, be it short or long. This jagged thought must obtrude through all other thoughts of happiness, love, and desire, through all their shared experiences and any memories they may have, and he must endure it, if the crash, as and when it happens, isn’t to destroy him. Is that right, destroy him? The waiter clears away their plates. The pianist strikes up, the shift begins at six, a Mozart medley. His wife, when he was here with her not long ago, claimed the piano player looked like Heiner Müller. And she’s right, the piano player really does look like his fellow writer Heiner Müller. Probably it was the steel-rimmed spectacles. In May, not so long ago, Hans actually wrote his wife a love letter.