It was very difficult to go to a house this night. I did not want to
approach any of them. I turned back to the house of the peering woman.
She had looked hen-like and anxious. She would be glad of a visitor to
help her pay her rent.
It was a clean, pleasant wooden house, made to keep out the cold. That
seemed its one function: to defend the inmates from the cold. It was
furnished like a hut, just tables and chairs and bare wooden walls. One
felt very close and secure in the room, as in a hut, shut away from the
outer world.
The hen-like woman came.
'Can I have a bed,' I said, 'for the night?'
'_Abendessen, ja!_' she replied. 'Will you have soup and boiled beef and
vegetables?'
I said I would, so I sat down to wait, in the utter silence. I could
scarcely hear the ice-stream, the silence seemed frozen, the house
empty. The woman seemed to be flitting aimlessly, scurriedly, in reflex
against the silence. One could almost touch the stillness as one could
touch the walls, or the stove, or the table with white American
oil-cloth.
Suddenly she appeared again.
'What will you drink?'
She watched my face anxiously, and her voice was pathetic, slightly
pleading in its quickness.
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