Evening was closing in. Clear outlines. The sun lingered there between the houses, like a memory that Winter breathed in. He could feel the late autumn air between drags as he stood smoking. Winter was closing in. He looked down on Vasaplatsen, and watched people heading off, gradually leaving the square deserted. Everybody was going home, by bus, streetcar, or car, and leaving him and his family behind, here where they belonged.

Angela hadn’t said anything about buying a house for ages, and he knew she felt as he did, always had. They were city dwellers, and the city was for them. The city of stone, the heart of the city. The heart of stone, he thought, taking another pull on his cigarillo. A beautiful heart of stone. It was easier to live here. In the classy suburbs down toward the sea you became worn out more quickly, past it, over the hill. For God’s sake! He’d turned the corner already. Forty-two. Or forty-three. He couldn’t remember right then, and that was just as well.

He shivered, standing on the balcony in his shirtsleeves, the cigarillo in his hand fading away just like the evening out there. A few young people sauntered past down below, full of self-confidence. He could hear them laughing even at this distance. They were all set for a good time.

He went back in. Elsa saw him coming and presented him with the drawing she’d made. A bird flying in a blue sky. These last few weeks all her drawings had been of blue skies and yellow sands, green fields and then lots of flowers in every color in her crayon box. Nonstop summer. Autumn hadn’t sunk in for Elsa yet. He’d taken her down to the park and helped her to collect fallen leaves, carried them back home, dried them. But she’d put off depicting autumn till the very end. Just as well.

“A bird!” she said.

“What kind of a bird?” he asked.

She seemed to be thinking it over.

“A gull,” she said.