Even the girl in blue was golden like the sun. I was so bemused by all this gold that at first I failed to notice the guest who awaited me. It took me a few seconds—or were they minutes?—to become aware of him. There he sat, lean, dark and silent, upon the only chair in the anteroom, and made no movement as I came in. And although his hair and his moustache were so dark and his skin so brown, he seemed to be the center of that room, gilded by the morning light, to be himself a part of the sun, a part of some distant and southern sun, moreover. At first sight he reminded me of my late father. He, too, had been lean and dark, brown and bony, a true child of the sun, not like us who are fair and are only the sun’s stepchildren. I speak Slovene, for my father taught it me. I greeted my cousin Trotta in Slovene, which did not seem to surprise him. He took it for granted. He remained seated, but held out his hand and smiled. Beneath the blue-black moustache gleamed big strong teeth. He called me at once by the familiar ‘thou’, and I felt that this was no cousin, but a brother. He had obtained my address from the notary. ‘Your father’, he began, ‘has willed me two thousand gulden and I have come to fetch them. I have called on you to thank you, since I go home tomorrow. I still have a sister to marry off and with a dowry of five hundred gulden she will catch the wealthiest peasant in Sipolje.’

‘What about the rest?’ I asked.

‘That I shall hold on to,’ he said cheerfully. He smiled, and I had the feeling that the sun shone more warmly than ever into our anteroom.

‘What do you plan to do with the money?’ I asked.

‘I shall expand my business,’ he replied and, as if it were now the moment to introduce himself, he rose self-confidently from his chair and, with touching good humour, said, ‘My name is Joseph Branco.’ It then occurred to me for the first time that I was standing before my guest in my nightshirt and slippers. I asked him to wait and went to my room to dress.

[III]

I SUPPOSE IT was about seven in the morning as we came into the Café Magerl. The first bakers’ lads were arriving, white as snow and smelling of crisp kaiser rolls, poppyseed loaves and salty breadsticks.The new, fresh-roasted coffee, spicy and virginal, smelt like morning all over again. My cousin Joseph Branco sat beside me, dark and meridional, lively, healthy, wide awake. I was ashamed of my pallid fairness and the dissipated weariness which came from too late a night. I was also mildly embarrassed. What should I say to him? He increased my embarrassment by saying, ‘I never drink coffee in the morning. I should like some soup.’ Of course! In Sipolje the peasants ate potato soup in the morning.

So I ordered soup. It took rather a long time, and in the meantime I felt rather guilty as I dipped my croissant in my coffee.The soup came eventually, a steaming bowlful of it. My cousin Joseph Branco seemed to pay no attention to the spoon. He lifted the steaming bowl to his lips with brown, hairy hands. While he gulped down his soup he seemed to have forgotten me, too. Concentrating completely on the bowl, which he held aloft with small, powerful fingers, he looked like a man whose appetite was indeed a noble impulse and who only disregarded his spoon because it seemed more aristocratic to swallow straight from the bowl.