Christmas came and went.

New Year's came and went. Rain shower followed rain shower, and the blue-gray days passed in a state of monotonous indifference. Her doctor's certificate ran out, and she had to sign on for unemployment benefits. There was no noticeable difference. Off work from what? Unemployed from what?

Her telephone had been cut off. When she received the warning in October, she had purposely failed to pay the bill, and now the company had taken action. The wheels had turned.

It was pleasant. Not only did she not have to meet people, she avoided having to listen to them as well. Not that there would have been all that many for her to put up with. There was no denying that her circle of acquaintances had shrunk recently. During the first fourteen days after the funeral she spoke to a grand total of two persons. Heinzi and Gergils; she had met both of them by accident in the square, and within thirty seconds they had both tried to cadge something off her. Heroin or a bit of hash, or a bottle of wine, at least-for fuck's sake, surely she had something to give to an old mate? A shower, then, and a quick screw, perhaps?

Only Gergils had gone so far as to suggest that, and for half a minute she had toyed with the idea of letting him have her for half an hour. Just for the pleasure of possibly infecting him as well.

But, of course, it couldn't be guaranteed that he would get it. On the contrary. The chances were small. It wasn't easy to catch it, despite all the stories you heard; even the doctors had stressed that. But on this occasion she had managed to hold herself in check. Besides, there were quite a few people who had survived whose behavior entailed a much higher risk factor than hers.

Risk factor? What a stupid expression. Hadn't she spent the whole of her life taking one damned risk after another? But it was no doubt true what Lennie used to tell her many years ago: if you were born on the edge of a barrel of shit, you had to accept the likelihood of falling into it now and again. That was only to be expected. The trick was clambering out again.

And, of course, eventually you didn't. Didn't clamber out. You just lay down in the shit, and then it was only a matter of time.

But that was old hat now. Thought about and fretted about and left behind. October had changed a lot of things. And her mother's death, of course.

Or rather, her mother's story. The words that came tumbling out of her like a thirty-year-old miscarriage the week before her time was up. Yes, if the news she had been given in October was what made her want to be alone, her mother's story did the rest. Gave her strength and determination. Something had suddenly become easier. Clearer and more definite for the first time in her troubled life. Her willpower and drive had grown, and her drug addiction had ebbed away and died without her needing to exert herself in the least. No more of the heavy stuff. A bit of hash and a bottle of wine now and again, no more, but most important of all-no more of that accursed and desperate contact with all the rest of them perched on the edge of the shit barrel. It had been easier to shake them off than she could ever have suspected, just as easy as the drugs, in fact, and of course each of those developments had assisted the other. Maybe what all the quacks and counselors had been droning on about all those years was actually true: it all came down to your own inner strength. That alone, nothing else.

Courage and resolve, in other words.

And the mission, she added.

The mission? She certainly hadn't been clear about that from the start; it sneaked its way in later on. Difficult to pin it down precisely, and just as difficult to say where it came from. Was it her mother's decision, or her own? Not that it mattered all that much, but it was interesting to think about.

About cause and responsibility things like that. About revenge, and the importance of putting things right. The fact that her mother had ten thousand guilders hidden away came as a surprise and also, of course, a helping hand. It was a nice round figure, and no doubt would come in very useful.

Had done already, in fact. On January 12 she had spent two thousand of it; but it wasn't wasted money. In a drawer of her bedside table she had a list of names and addresses and a fair amount of other information. She had a gun, and she had a furnished room waiting for her in Maardam. What more could she ask for?

More courage? Resolve? A pinch of good luck?

The night before she set off she prayed to a very much unspecified god, asking him to stand by her and grant her those precise things, and when she turned off the bedside light she had a strong feeling that there wasn't very much in this world capable of placing obstacles in her way.

Nothing at all, probably. That night she slept in a fetal position, warm and with a smile on her face, and in the knowledge that she had never felt less vulnerable in all her life.

Finding a room was one of the things that had not taken much effort. She had simply answered an ad in Neuwe Blatt-but when she saw the result, she realized she could hardly have done better.

Mrs. Klausner had been widowed early-at the dawn of the 1980s, in her middle-aged prime-when her husband the major had a sudden and unexpected heart attack. Instead of selling her charming old two-story house in the Deijkstraa district, she had adapted and refurbished it to suit her new circumstances. She retained possession of the ground floor together with the garden, two cats, and four thousand books. The upper floor, comprising the old children's rooms and guest bedrooms, had been transformed into studio apartments: four rooms in all, each with running water and limited cooking facilities. Plus a shared bathroom and shower room in the hall. The staircase was supplied with its own entrance in a gable wall, at a safe distance from Mrs. Klausner's bedroom; and even if she had the occasional butterfly in her stomach when she launched her new enterprise, she soon found she could congratulate herself on an excellent setup. She let rooms only to single women, and never for more than six months at a time. Most of them were students in the latter stages of their courses in the Faculties of Law and Medicine who needed peace and quiet for their studies. Or nurses on short supplementary courses at the nearby Gemejnte Hospital. Two or more of the rooms were often vacant during the summer, but she earned enough during the rest of the year to satisfy her needs. Major Klausner would have had nothing against the reorganization, she knew that, and sometimes when she was waiting in line at the bank to pay in the rents she had received, she thought she could see him nodding approvingly up there, on the final battlefield.

As agreed, the new tenant moved in on Sunday, January 14, the evening before she was due to begin a three-month course for finance managers at the Elizabeth Institute. She paid for six weeks in advance, and after receiving the necessary instructions (explained in a most friendly manner and lasting less than a minute), she took possession of the red room. Mrs. Klausner knew the importance of respecting her tenants' privacy: as long as she was not disturbed in her reading or during the night, and they didn't fly at each other's throats, she found no reason to interfere in whatever they got up to. Everything was based on unspoken mutual respect, and so far-after thirteen years in the business-she had not experienced any serious disappointments or setbacks.

People are good, she used to tell herself. They treat us as we treat them.

There was a mirror hanging over the little sink in the kitchen alcove, and when she had finished unpacking her bags she stood in front of it for a couple of minutes and contemplated her new face.