“You’re a sensible woman, you’re someone a man can talk to…” He embarked on a long and involved account of how he could no longer extend his sick leave, because he had been off for twenty-six weeks. He had to go back to work, otherwise they would pack him off back to the army, which had allowed him to go to the factory in the first place because he was a precision toolmaker and those were in short supply. “You see, the thing is,” he concluded his account, “that I have to have a fixed address for the next few days. And so I thought…”

She shook her head emphatically. She was so tired she could drop, and she was longing to be back in her flat, where much more work was waiting for her. But she wasn’t going to let him in, not if she had to stand outside half the night.

Quickly he added, in a tone that immediately struck her as insincere, “Don’t say no, Evie, I haven’t finished yet. I swear I want nothing from you, no money, no food, nothing. Just let me bed down on the sofa. No need for any sheets. I don’t want to be the least trouble to you.”

Again, she shook her head. If only he would stop talking; he really ought to know she didn’t believe a word of it. He had never kept a promise in his life.

She asked, “Why don’t you get one of your girlfriends to put you up? They usually come through for something like this!”

He shook his head. “No, Evie, I’m through with women, I can’t deal with them anymore, I want no more of them. If I think about it, you were always the best of them anyway, you know that. We had some good years back then, you know, when the kids were still small.”

In spite of herself, her face lit up at the recollection of their early married years. They really had been good years, when he was working as a machinist, taking home sixty marks a week, before he turned work shy.

Immediately Enno Kluge saw the chink. “You see, Evie, you see, you still have a bit of a soft spot for me, and that’s why you’ll let me sleep on the sofa. I promise I’ll be quick dealing with the management, I’m not bothered about the wages, I just want to go on sick leave again and stay out of the army. In ten days I’ll have my medical discharge, I promise!”

He paused and looked at her expectantly. This time she didn’t shake her head, but her expression was opaque. He went on, “I don’t want to do it with stomach ulcers this time, because then they don’t give you anything to eat when you’re in hospital. What I’m trying for this time is inflamed gall bladder. They can’t prove you’re lying, all they can do is X-ray you, but you don’t have to have gallstones to have the inflammation. You might, but you don’t have to. That’ll work. I’ll just have to clock in for ten days first.”

Once again she didn’t say a word, and he went on, because it was his belief that you could talk your way into or out of anything and that if you were persistent enough, in the end people would just give in. “I’ve got the address of a doctor on Frankfurter Allee, he writes medical excuses just like that, he just doesn’t want any trouble afterward. He’ll do it for me, I’m sure; in ten days I’ll be back in the hospital and you’ll be rid of me, Evie!”

Tired of all the chat, she spoke at last: “Look, Enno, I don’t care if you stay here till midnight talking, I’m not taking you back. I’m never doing that again; I don’t care what you say or what you do. I’m not going to let you wreck everything again with your laziness and your horses and your hussies.