Georg stood up, embarrassed. “Never mind my friends. A thousand friends cannot replace my father. Do you know what I think? You’re not taking good enough care of yourself. But your age demands it. You know very well that you are indispensable to me at the office, but if the business is going to endanger your health, then tomorrow I’ll shut it down for good. But that won’t do. We have to make changes in your daily routine. From the ground up. You sit here in the dark while the living room is streaming with light. You pick at your breakfast instead of nourishing yourself properly. You sit by a closed window when the air would do you so much good. No, Father! I will fetch the doctor and we will follow his instructions. We’ll switch rooms, you’ll take the front room and I’ll take this one. It won’t be any different for you, we’ll move all your things in there. But all in due time, just lie down in bed for a bit now, you really need to rest. Come, I’ll help you undress, you’ll see, I know how. Or would you rather go straight to the front room and lie down in my bed for now? That would be the most sensible thing.”
Georg stood close to his father, whose head, with its fleecy white hair, had sunk onto his chest.
“Georg,” his father said softly, without moving.
Georg immediately knelt down by his father, he saw the enormous pupils fixing him from the corners of the eyes in his father’s worn face.
“You have no friend in St. Petersburg. You have always been a prankster and you’ve also never spared me from your pranks. How could you possibly have a friend there! I simply can’t believe it.”
“Just think back a bit, Father,” said Georg, lifting his father out of the chair and slipping off the dressing gown as soon as he rather feebly stood there, “it’ll soon be three years since my friend came to visit us. I still remember that you didn’t especially like him. At least twice I pretended to you that he wasn’t here, even though he was sitting in my room. I could understand your aversion to him perfectly well, my friend has his quirks. But then you got along with him quite well later on. At the time I felt very proud that you were listening to him, nodding and asking him questions. If you think about it, you’re bound to remember. He used to tell us the most incredible stories of the Russian Revolution. Like the time he was on a business trip to Kiev, and during a riot he saw a priest on a balcony who had cut a broad bloody cross into his palm and raised it, appealing to the mob. You’ve even repeated this story once or twice.”
Meanwhile Georg had successfully eased his father back into the chair and carefully removed the socks and the long woolen underclothes he wore over his linen underwear. At the sight of these rather soiled undergarments he reproached himself for neglecting his father. It would certainly have been his duty to ensure that his father had clean clothes. So far he had not explicitly discussed his father’s future with his fiancée, for they had both tacitly assumed that he would remain on in the old house by himself. But Georg now resolved, with swift and firm determination, to move his father into his new household with him. It almost seemed, on closer inspection, that the care his father would get there might come too late.
He carried his father to bed in his arms. During the few steps to the bed he noticed, with an awful feeling, that his father was playing with his watch chain as he curled against Georg’s chest. He could not lay him down right away because he clutched the watch chain so fiercely.
But no sooner was he in bed than all seemed well. He covered himself up and then drew the blankets especially high over his shoulders. He looked up at Georg with a not unfriendly gaze.
“You are beginning to remember him, aren’t you?” asked Georg, giving him an encouraging nod.