After warming up his lunch and eating it, he settled down in his chair out in the garden to read the newspaper and listen to the birds, waiting peacefully for the evening. Then he caught sight of a grey-haired man in a crumpled coat, walking along the road with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. A young man, at least compared with Gerlof, though he might have been in his seventies; he didn’t look all that well. The man appeared to be lost. First of all he stood by the gate for a little while, smoking his cigarette and looking around, then he opened it and walked in. He stood on the lawn looking around, as if he couldn’t remember where he was or how he had got there. His left arm was dangling straight down from the shoulder; it looked paralysed. Gerlof stayed where he was, without saying anything. He wasn’t particularly keen on having any visitors apart from the home-care service today. However, the man eventually walked up to the lawn in front of the house. He carried on staring around him in a slightly odd way, before suffering a violent coughing fit and stubbing the cigarette out on the grass.
