One More Story: Thirteen Stories in the Time-Honored Mode

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They came during the night of July 20–21, between twelve and twelve thirty. There couldn’t have been many of them, five, six guys maybe. I just heard voices and the racket. They probably hadn’t even noticed light burning in the bungalow. The sleeping area is at the back, and the curtains were drawn. The first sultry night in a good while and the start of our last week of vacation. I was still reading — Stifter, Great-Grandfather’s Satchel.

Constanze had received a telegram from the newspaper in Berlin, telling her to report for work at seven thirty on Tuesday morning. Evidently her secretary had coughed up our address. The series about Fontane’s favorite places was getting bogged down because commissioned articles weren’t coming in on deadline. That’s the problem when you don’t go far away. We’re both on the road all year more or less — I work for the sports section, Constanze for the feuilleton — and neither of us has any desire to spend our vacation sitting around in airports too. We rented the bungalow for the first time last summer — twenty marks a day for twenty by twenty feet — in Prieros, southeast of Berlin, exactly forty-six kilometers from our front door, a corner lot with pine woods all around, perfect when it’s hot.

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