He was feeling suffocated and he had smoked so much that he had lost all sense of taste. The cracked pane in front of him had steamed up. It was unusually quiet. Every knock at the door broke the caressing silence of the rain. There was nothing but the sound of unremitting rain drumming on the rusty tin roof, so unceasing that it amounted to silence. Only once in my lifetime do I remember seeing these roofs in the sunset. I remember it well… In the evening after the rain, just after sunset, the ochre of the rooftops glowed with melancholy beauty, in those days when the first grey hairs had started to appear on his temples. In those days he still walked upright, with his head held high, and he could feel the earth under his feet. He had not been old and worn out then, his cheeks had not yet sunk in and the worry lines had yet to furrow their way across his brow. Now that these gentlemen have come… I had better put out my cigarette first, then get up and throw my raincoat over my head.
