Free A Greater Music by Deborah; Suah; Smith Bae

in his apartment and look after his dog Benny. It snowed or rained every couple of days, and the trams went past at seven- or twenty-minute intervals. In the mornings, before the day dissolved the darkness, the sound of Benny padding about woke me from my sleep. Benny waited patiently by the kitchen door while I made coffee and ate bread and honey. But when I’d put on my jacket and boots and attached the lead to Benny’s collar, he would make an agonized sound as if swallowing a sob. He must have been pining for Joachim. On days when it wasn’t snowing I took Benny for a walk as far as the cemetery, where dogs and bicycles were forbidden. While I strolled around among the gravestones, Benny waited at the bicycle stand, seemingly expecting either Joachim or I to appear at any moment. If the front doorbell rang or footsteps could be heard outside, Benny’s ears instantly pricked up. But he would quickly realize that it wasn’t Joachim. Stricken with grief, the dog slept on Joachim’sslippers. He stared constantly at the table on which Joachim had left his book of general physics theory. I held Benny the way Joachim had and spoke to him in a muffled voice, my face buried in the scruff of his neck. My love, my love, my only one, stay. I’ll be right back. Good boy, my love.
    5) When the weather improved a little in the second week of January, I ventured out a couple of times in search of a café, one that had a breakfast menu and was suitably near to Joachim’s apartment. The one I discovered was ten minutes away by tram, so not exactly in the immediate area, but a walk of that length was no inconvenience. I’d actually stumbled upon it quite by chance, while taking Benny for a walk. It wasn’t expensive, and the frothy café au lait was really good. The café was fairly small, and hidden away on a corner at the end of a craftsman’s street rather than being out on the main road where the tram passed by, but plenty of people sought it out. It was impossible to find an empty seat at weekends, but on a weekday afternoon the roomy window seat was almost always free, and I could take my time buttering my bread and drinking my coffee while reading whichever book I’d brought. And dogs were allowed inside, so it was good for Benny too. The café even had a set menu for dogs, but I only bought it for Benny every other time. Joachim hadn’t mentioned anything about the café even though, having lived in this area for several years, there was no way he wouldn’t know about it. On weekday mornings he usually took the tram and subway as far as Danziger Strasse to have breakfast. I wasn’t fond of Danziger Strasse. The street itself was wide but felt chaotic and disorganized. They’d widened the street with the original intention of putting up some fine buildings, but for some reason this plan had been almostimmediately abandoned, and so all that remained were shabby second-hand clothes stores and cluttered tattoo studios, the pavement was narrow and uneven, and the jarring contrast of the road’s incredible width made the place seem as though it was falling apart. It was a place littered with ugly, hastily erected buildings, a vast place, where dust motes from the countryside danced in the bus station. But it was also the location of Joachim’s favorite breakfast café; at weekends they served a buffet, it was cheap, it was tasty, and there were lots of dishes to choose from. The downside was that if you went early in the morning there was no way you’d get a seat. I brought Joachim’s copy of American Psycho to breakfast there one morning, purely for the sake of having something to read, but in the end I couldn’t get on with it. There was nothing in the book to justify my initial interest in it. It was the same with the books on physics and art, and the Harry Potter series. Personally, I really liked the Baedeker travel books; compared with