N EXT DAY she was gone. I came at the usual time and rang the bell. I looked through the door, everything looked the way it always did, I could hear the clock ticking.

I sat down on the stairs once again. During our first few months, I had always known what line she was working on, even though I had never repeated my attempt to accompany her or even pick her up afterwards. At some point I had stopped asking, stopped even wondering. It hadn’t even occurred to me until now.

I used the telephone booth at the Wilhelmsplatz to call the streetcar company, was transferred from one person to the next, and finally was told that Hanna Schmitz had not come to work. I went back to Bahnhofstrasse, asked at the carpenter’s shop in the yard for the name of the owner of the building, and got a name and address in Kirchheim. I rode over there.

“Frau Schmitz? She moved out this morning.”

“And her furniture?”

“It’s not her furniture.”

“How long did she live in the apartment?”

“What’s it to you?” The woman who had been talking to me through a window in the door slammed it shut.

In the administration building of the streetcar company, I talked my way through to the personnel department. The man in charge was friendly and concerned.

“She called this morning early enough for us to arrange for a substitute, a............