No-one in the inn even saw the old man before he appeared in the doorway, but the eyes that flicked to him there are staying to stare. He is so far beyond old, it takes very good clothes just to keep him from falling apart. His small grey coat is fine and new. His shirt is clean, his trousers are white, his shoes are black. His shriveled head sits in his stiff collar like the head of a doll. An ivory cane hangs down from within each sleeve, as if his arms are just long white sticks; but inside his cuffs he has hands that grip the canes.

He moves to the bar very slowly, swinging on his canes in such small steps that he seems to be gliding upright. He looks straight ahead but he knows they are staring at him. In a few moments they will look away and be ashamed, but he does not resent their attention because he knows what they see. If he were borne on a litter or propped on a throne he might almost pass for a normal kind of ancient, but his softly creaking unassisted glide is an outrage. Anything as old as that should be under glass.

He is only half way to the bar when the last gaze drops away, but by the time the first glances return he has somehow achieved a perch on the near corner stool. Pretty Greta, a being of a different species, has placed a tiny cut crystal glass in front of him. He looks at his thimbleful of pale blue liquor. The faint scent from its pouring has made everyone in the room think of sailing, without knowing why. He makes no move to drink. It is not clear that he can.

The most ashamed eyes in the room are those of the starving young author. Young he certainly is, from my point of view, but he has just perceived how it comforts him to be so clearly upon Greta’s side of an age divide, and he cannot help blinking. His last ten years have been slower than they were supposed to be. His life has faltered like the plots of his half-finished tales.

I am slow but I do not falter. I am the very old man. Once I was young. I was born just as everyone is, but it is hardly important. As far as the present is concerned, I have always been old. There are scarcely six persons in the world who understand my concerns, and these will not advise me. So I choose my own tasks. Some think I am wicked because my work gives nothing to anyone, but I act for the best as I see it.

I must wait for one week. I can neither afford nor achieve any signs of impatience, but I hate to be bored. I will fill this week by reciting. The young author will have an inspiration, and tell one of my stories. The current one, of course, even though its ending is not yet certain. I have no interest in the past.

I watch in the cloudy mirror behind Greta as his head jerks up and his eyes go wide. The two of us together, our contrast, have spoken to him. He has kept paper and pen on his table every day for ten years, but he seizes them as if it were luck to find them at hand. He has something to write.