"Why?"
"He was in despair."
"He'll stay all night," he said to his colleague. "I'm sleepy now.I never get into bed before three o'clock. He should have killed himself last week."
"He's drunk every night."
"Who cut him down?"
"His niece."
"Why did they do it?"
"Fear for his soul."
"He's lonely. I'm not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me."
"Not always. This old man is clean. He drinks without spilling.Even now, drunk. Look at him."
"I don't want to look at him. I wish he would go home. He has no regard for those who must work."
The waiter watched him go down the street, a very oldman walking unsteadily but with dignity.
"You talk like an old man yourself. He can buy a bottle and drinkat home."
"It's not the same."
"I am of those who like to stay late at the cafe," the older waitersaid. "With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night."
"You do not understand. This is a clean and pleasant cafe. It is well lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves."
It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all anothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived init and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y naday pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give usthis nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. He smiled and stood before a bar with a shining steam pressure coffee machine.
‘Il piove,1’the wife said. She liked the hotel-keeper.
‘Si, Si, Signora, brutto tempo2. It is very bad weather.’
He stood behind his desk in the far end of the dim room. The wife liked him. She liked the