S HE WASN’T at home. The front door of the building stood ajar, so I went up the stairs, rang the bell, and waited. Then I rang again. Inside the apartment the doors were open, as I could see through the glass of the front door, and I could also make out the mirror, the wardrobe, and the clock in the hall. I could hear it ticking.

I sat down on the stairs and waited. I wasn’t relieved, the way you can sometimes be when you feel funny about a certain decision and afraid of the consequences and then relieved that you’ve managed to carry out the former without incurring the latter. Nor was I disappointed. I was determined to see her and to wait until she came.

The clock in the hall struck the quarter hour, then the half hour, then the hour. I tried to follow its soft ticking and to count the nine hundred seconds between one stroke and the next, but I kept losing track. The yard buzzed with the sound of the carpenter’s saws, the building echoed with voices or music from one of the apartments, and a door opened and closed. Then I heard slow, heavy, regular footsteps coming up the stairs. I hoped that whoever he was, he lived on the second floor. If he saw me—how would I explain what I was doing there? But the footsteps didn’t stop at the second floor. They kept coming. I stood up.

It was Frau Schmitz. In one hand she was carrying a coal scuttle, in the other a box of briquets. She was wearing a uniform jacket and skirt, and I realized that she was a streetcar conductor. She didn’t notice me until she reached the landing—she didn’t look annoyed, or surprised, or mocking—none of the things I had feared. She looked tired. When she put down the coke and was hunting in her jacket pocket for the key, coins fell out onto the floor. I picked them up and gave them to her.

“There are two more scuttles down in the cellar. Will you fill them and bring them up? The door’s open.”

I ran down the stairs. The door to the cellar was open, the light was on, and at the bottom of the long cellar stairs I found a bunker made of boards with the door on the latch and a loose padlock hanging from the open bolt. It was a large space, and the coke was piled all the way up to the ceiling hatch through which it had been poured from the street into the cellar. On one side of the door was a neat stack of briquets; on the other side were the coal scuttles.

I don’t know what I did wrong. At home I also fetched the coke from the cellar and never had any problems. But then the coke at home wasn’t piled so high. Filling the first scuttle went fine. As I picked up the second scuttle by the handles and tried to shovel the coke up off the floor, the mountain began to move. From the top little pieces started bouncing down while the larger ones followed more sedately; further down it all began to slide and there was a general rolling and shifting on the floor. Black dust rose in clouds. I stood there, frightened, as the lumps came down and hit me and soon I was up to my ankles in coke.

I got my feet out of the coke, filled the second scuttle, looked for a broom, and when I found it I swept the lumps that had rolled out into the main part of the cellar back into the bunker, latched the door, and carried the two scuttles upstairs.

She had taken off her jacket, loosened her tie and undone the top button, and was sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of milk. She saw me, began to choke with laughter, and then let it out in full-throated peals. She pointed at me and slapped her other hand on the table. “Look at you, kid, just look at you!” Then I caught sight of my black face in the mirror over the sink, and laughed too.

“You can’t go home like that. I’ll run you a bath and beat the dust out of your clothes.” She went to the tub and turned on the faucet. The water ran steaming into the tub. “Take your clothes off carefully, I don’t need black dust all over the kitchen.”

I hesitated, took off my sweater and shirt, and hesitated again. The water was rising quickly and the tub was almost full.

“Do you want to take a bath in your shoes and pants? I won’t look, kid.” But when I had turned off the faucet and taken off my underpants, she looked me over calmly. I turned red, climbed into the tub, and submerged myself. When I came up again she was out on the balcony with my clothes. I heard her beating the shoes against each other and shaking out my pants and sweater. She called down something about coal dust and sawdust, someone called back up to her, and she laughed. Back in the kitchen, she put my things on the chair. Glancing quickly at me, she said, “Take the shampoo and wash your hair. I’ll bring a towel in a minute,” then took something out of the wardrobe, and left the kitchen.

I washed myself. The water in the tub was dirty and I ran in some fresh so that I could wash my head and face clean under the flow. Then I lay there, listening to the boiler roar, and feeling the cool air on my face as it came through the half-open kitchen door, and the warm water on my body. I was comfortable. It was an exciting kind of comfort and I got hard.

I didn’t look up when she came into the kitchen, until she was standing by the tub. She was holding a big towel in her outstretched arms. “Come!” I turned my back as I stood up and climbed out of the tub. From behind, she wrapped me in the towel from head to foot and rubbed me dry. Then she let the towel fall to the floor. I didn’t dare move. She came so close to me that I could feel her breasts against my back and her stomach against my behind. She was naked too. She put her arms around me, one hand on my chest and the other on my erection.

“That’s why you’re here!”

“I . . .” I didn’t know what to say. Not yes, but not no either. I turned around. I couldn’t see much of her, we were standing too close. But I was overwhelmed by the presence of her naked body. “You’re so beautiful!”

“Come on, kid, what are you talking about!” She laughed and wrapped her arms around my neck. I put my arms around her too.

I was afraid: of touching, of kissing, afraid I wouldn’t please her or satisfy her. But when we had held each other for a while, when I had smelled her smell and felt her warmth and her strength, everything fell into place. I explored her body with my hands and mouth, our mouths met, and then she was on top of me, looking into my eyes until I came and closed my eyes tight and tried to control myself and then screamed so loud that she had to cover my mouth with her hand to smother the sound.