Hans Reiter listened to, sitting cross-legged and eating bread and butter, without saying a word or adding any commentary of his own, although the truth is he knew the baron’s nephew, whose name was Hugo Halder, much better than the other servants, who seemed blind to reality and saw only what they wanted to see, which was a young orphan in love and distress and a young orphan girl (although the baron’s daughter had a father and mother, as everyone well knew), headstrong and awaiting a vague, dense redemption. A redemption that smelled of peat smoke, of cabbage soup, of the wind tangled in the
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