Raking the reeds seemed to calm him. When the young man lay with the couple on the jetty the next morning, he was placed between them. The young man lay on his back while they lay facing him, until they turned away. Not a single word more than usual was spoken. There was only the creaking of the chairs, nothing else until evening. Then the young man left.

The more absorbed I became with my neighbours and the more my life merged into theirs, the fewer visitors I had. If one of my friends asked about them, I found it hard to remain calm and respond appropriately. I was too preoccupied with them and afraid to expose them to the curiosity of others.

I distanced myself from the few friends who hadn’t already given up on me. I never went out any more. If a friend’s visit couldn’t be avoided, it was agony for me not to talk about my neighbours and follow a different conversation.

I began inventing stories about them to make their idleness more bearable, personal histories that might explain what had brought them to their current state, lying there before me on that jetty. The stories became more inventive as my own life grew increasingly monotonous. Eventually I had to admit that for a long time I had been lying there with them on the jetty, and that my pretended busyness and feigned familiarity with these people was simply an attempt to escape my own life.

My attitude clearly had to change. But I didn’t know how to get away from these two. I simply didn’t exist for them, and that is how they hooked me. They refused contact, yet they willingly exposed themselves to me. I had caught the scent of their lives, which obviously had reached some sort of premature end. I had fed on them, devoured them, and now I wanted more. I couldn’t resist absorbing their most fleeting emotions as my own, and so I carried them inside me and I lived out their disquiet, which was also my disquiet.