At that instant he saw it - a full wallet lying among the paper and rubbish which the steps of passers-by kicked aside to the wall. He looked around, but a child with a string in his hand who would want to play games with him was nowhere to be seen. He clumsily pretended that he was tying his shoelaces and slowly approached the skinned black imitation leather, then abruptly reached out for it and picked it up. It seemed best if he held it in his outstretched palm. In that way at least the owner, if he was in the vicinity, would not be able to suspect he was a thief. He stood and waited - nobody turned up; even the passers-by didn't give a fleeting glance at him. When he realized the stupidity of the situation he turned and walked towards his parked car.

He slammed the door and, with a bad conscience, looked at the window of a confectioners where he wanted to buy some sweets for Andrea, then swiftly opened the wallet and immediately closed it again. Maybe someone is observing him and making a fool of him - shooting with a candid camera.

He drove along the street and, after ten minutes of searching, turned into a gap between some brick buildings so narrow that he could almost scrape the paint from the sides of his car. In spite of everything, he did not open the wallet. The sleazy dimness of the small alley frightened him, the bare window apertures, the doorposts covered with cardboard, the long pieces of washing hanging above him which covered the sky. It would be awfully suspicious to be seen in such a neighbourhood.

He squeezed back towards the road without a scratch on the coachwork, and without a truck rushing past bumping against his trunk.

Circles of sweat grew under his armpits on the silk shirt he was wearing.

The wallet was lying on the passenger seat.

Plump - he'd never seen plumper - and inviting!

He had to do something.

Drive out of town? To a small wood along the coast perhaps? He had still never been but he certainly knew the moral character of people who gathered among the pines: Moral perverts who satisfied their animal instincts with cheap whores on the back seats of their cars.

He mustn't let anyone see him in these surroundings. What will they think of him? What will they say behind his back?

The car wash seemed to be an excellent solution. He drove in line and waited. While the jets of cleaning fluid sprayed on the car windows and the enormous brushes surrounded him, he opened the wallet.

He found a couple of low value bank notes. The inviting thickness was created by cuttings from newspaper sports pages - all about the same football club. He briefly looked at them and put them aside because the cult of the body never interested him.

A personal ID was stuck in a separate pocket and next to it a small packet of flexible cardboard. He held it between his fingers, read the captions and wondered what they might be.

The cover read JOY WITHOUT RISK.

He opened it and shook onto his palm a thin transparent rubber sheath - three wrinkled heaps of something which were unbearably well known to him, but he couldn't recall where from.

He straightened one and...

CONDOMS!

He immediately pressed them back into the packet, closed it and hid it in the wallet.

He blushed and unsuccessfully attempted to relieve the blood pressure in his head.

After paying for the car car wash he departed.

He wasted so much time for this nonsense! Andrea was already waiting.

He glanced at the wallet and wondered about the man who carried condoms besides his personal documents wherever he went and whatever he was doing. Unimaginable! That means that this man actually stops in the middle of the sidewalk, utters a few words to a female colleague or acquaintance and doesn't see in her any spiritual co-existence, but just a piece of meat for satisfying his needs.

The hand which opened the box rubbed against his trousers, but the feeling of dirtiness on his fingers would not successfully wash away.

The air in the car seemed suffocating to him. He felt a tinge of bestiality which expanded within the cab.

He parked by the first post office en route, bought an envelope and stamps at a counter and moved to a corner.

He would send it back to the owner. The incredible curiousity about what was in the wallet was not born out of a desire for money, but just to poke his nose into other people's privacy. That was completely clear to him, and because of this he alone felt even more ashamed.

He had to overcome this feeling for a whole minute in order to hold the wallet once again. Carefully, with the tips of two fingers, he opened it and took out the ID to write the owner's name and address on the envelope. With a brief glance he looked at the stranger's face - as he expected - ugly, with crude features around the lips and, of course, with a low forehead. He couldn't push the identity card back. The heap of newspaper cuttings hindered him, so he had to use his third finger too, with which he stretched the sides and pushed the paper aside. The packet of condoms fell on his palm. He shuddered from disgust, almost cried out and pushed them away.

They fell on a shelf between the postal orders and telegram slips.

He heard some steps behind him.

He threw the wallet into the envelope, jumped to the shelf and hid the packet in his fist.

A woman approached and started to fill out a form.

Pressed up against the wall he wondered how to open the wallet and put back the packet of condoms so that the stranger wouldn't see him.

The pen which the woman was using stopped drawing a line on the paper.

"May I borrow your pencil?" she asked, smiling.

He blushed, grunted and groaned.

"Of course... right away... here..."

With his right hand he reached for the pen on the counter and sought to grasp it with his stretched thumb and forefinger.

The upper surface of the packet poked through the gaps between his fingers.

He quickly emptied his fist in his pocket and handed over the pen.

A throng of tourists poured through the door. They sat down in every available place, scribbled greetings on postcards, jostled, shouted and pushed him to the counter where he sent his mail.

In front of the entrance the sun dazzled through - the first rays after a long, foggy winter.

He touched the tiny bulge produced by the small box above his

right-hand pocket.

Suddenly he realized how the early summer bared women's shoulders and shortened their skirts.

He bought a box of sweets and left for Andrea. In order to get rid of the tension and pressure he felt at the back of his head he put on a cassette while driving - Hindemit Harmonie der Welt, which he could listen to hour after hour so as to be quite unaware of the passing of time, secured by the deep tranquility that this music always filled him with.

On this occasion he couldn't listen to it for longer than two minutes, then he put the cassette away. What was happening to him?

His thoughts ran away to his right pocket. Should he throw the packet through the window? What would passers-by think. It would be better to stop and throw it in a dustbin. He looked around for a suitable bin, as if some were too good for this filth.

He stood in front of Andrea's door and still pondered over how to dispose of the box. He wanted to throw it into the bushes that encircled the ground floor of the house in a Spanish style, but stopped at the thought of the neighbour who could find the packet by chance and look to Andrea's house with a wry smile. It seemed to him that he would dishonour an old girlfriend from his student days.

He rang the doorbell. She opened the door dressed in track suit:

"Hi, Alfred! Come in!"

On the table in the living room a game of chess was already prepared, next to it two glasses of juice.

Usually every Friday after work he would drop in there, with a box of sweets under his arm. They slowly nibbled them and chatted about everything possible while playing chess. Each following Monday some clever guy at work uttered the obligatory:

"Well, how did it go this Friday? Did you screw her?" or something similar.

Alfred bent his head, blushed and kept silent. He never attempted to explain. He knew his colleagues and was confident they would never believe him. He thought about people with condoms in their pockets and shuddered. They called him cool and with broad smiles patted him on the back as if to tell him they knew what it was all about. Beneath our skins we're all the same. But we're not, thought Alfred. His conscience was completely pure until the thought beleaguered him that he was taking advantage of Andrea for the last thread which bound him to this world of baseness as an equal member and not as a complete outsider. After some fundamental reflection he confided to her his dilemma. She comforted him by telling him they should say whatever they want. She wasn't disturbed by the dirtiest rumours. Maybe Alfred is afraid of some slander because of his wife? He certainly wasn't. He was married without knowing the reason why. Probably the status suited the woman who married him. They seldom saw each other. She was moving from a seminar to a conference, from consultations to her days of study and back again. Maybe she was unfaithful to him. He didn't mind - he was never a slave to sex, and if he had to define himself he would say that he is a man of reason. He had a foreboding that his wife was not in full control of her body, but he never asked her about these things because they were never close enough - if one can ever be close enough to someone to ask such questions.

At this moment Andrea was divorced again. He knew everything about her five husbands, although he never met them. She actually spoke most of the time because for his everyday needs he was quite content with words, not sentences.

"You seem strange today? What's the matter?" she asked.

His hand somehow slipped into his pocket by itself.

He quickly denied any problem:

"Nothing."

She didn't press further, although she was observing him far more than usual, before she leaned forward and moved the first figure on the chessboard.

Her hemispherical breasts pierced through the cut in her T-shirt.

He couldn't collect and comprehend the meaning of the sentences which comfortably flowed from his partner.

He realized how quickly he produced the features to accelerate her answers.

Her white breasts appeared to him like small hillocks.

"Why are you in such a hurry today? Put it back, otherwise I'll check-mate you!"

He obeyed her.

Something began to peck in his head.

He would go to the toilet and throw the condoms in the toilet bowl. What if the splash of water wouldn't take them with it? What would Andrej think of him?

He had to get rid of this damnation - this contagious article that embodied bestiality in a stranger's pocket and was now slowly seeping out and poisoning him.

He rubbed his dry mouth with his tongue and emptied the glass of juice in one gulp.

Andrea stood up without a word, took the glass and went to the kitchen to fill it.

He noticed her ass for the first time.

He went to pieces. He couldn't believe how he could think of precisely that - her ass - not her bottom.

Andrea returned with a full glass.

Her thighs rubbed against each other. She was not fat, but put some weight on around her hips and because of her low height she appeared plump.

Red - he had to be completely red. It was not possible to think of such things without blushing.

"What's the matter? she gently asked. "You're quite pale. Do you feel ill?"

"No, everything's fine..."

He had to get rid of the box - right now. The evil which it emanated was suffocating him. Panic began to overwhelm him.

He unbottoned the top button on his shirt.

Perspiration left his extended forehead along the sides of his scalp and ran towards his eyes.

His partner looked at him with open concern.

He loosened his tie and took off his jacket.

Andrea took it to the coat-rack.

The friction of the thighs produced a muffled sound with the aspiration of muffled whining.

Around her crotch he noticed a hole one finger wide.

While hanging up the coat a jumper slid from the hanger and Andrea leant over to pick it up.

Her breasts oscillated.

She wasn't wearing a bra.

A voice spoke out:

"I don't fancy juice today. Perhaps you've got a beer?" Alfred knew it was his own voice only after Andrea returned from the kitchen with a bottle in her arms and an expression of amazement in her eyes.

They continued playing chess.

He took a sip. Not used to the taste he almost vomited.

She waited for his move.

He put down the glass, took a figure, let it go, took the bottle and drank it to the end.

The game was over.

Andrea leaned back and stared at him. He never behaved that way before. Both were over forty years old and she thought that she knew him thoroughly.

A prickling sensation ran along his thighs.

"I'd like another... please..." he uttered.

The pain in his diaphragm became intolerable.

He felt a straining between his legs.

Andreja bent over for a glass.

If he extended his arm and placed it on her tits - yes, that's the term - what would she say, with his hand there? Would she cry out? ALFRED!!! Would she slap me? Yes. that! She'd certainly do that! What'll happen will happen! Let her slap make me sober!

He stretched his hand in the darkness behind her collar.

Slowly he cupped his fingers around one breast and fondled it.

Andreja actually began to speak.

She said:

"Finally."

He leaped towards her across the table. The backrest overturned and their bodies fell on the floor. In haste they undressed each other.

She bit him on the neck and opened her legs.

Impatiently he threw away a pawn which glued to the moist hair of her crotch and fumbled for his trousers while lying on the carpet he found the pocket and took out the packet of condoms.

He tried to put on a condom. It didn't work. He was too excited.

She wanted to help him, but he pushed her hands away.

There are things that men must do by themselves.

He needed a little break. He tried to remember the most boring thing in the world one could think of for an instant so that his penis would diminish in size slightly and fit the condom.

He recalled the newspaper cuttings in the stranger's wallet.

Football.

That's the one.

He kneaded Andrea's breasts and repeated the content of the newspaper articles which he glanced over. He even recalled some game which he saw on television after an attack of severe boredom.

This and that came in that position. XY dribbled well - a goal. A tactical game along the eleven metre line.

These thoughts helped him immediately.

He found the condom, opened his eyes, searched for his goal and dug into it.

That's why the condoms and articles about football were together! Oh, how many secrets does the world hide in itself!

He moulded her bottom and thrust. He strained with all his might and got to his feet. She clung to him and sat on his lap.

Her weight pulled him forward.

He ran with her legs wrapped around him.

He hit her back against the wall.

She moaned.

They crashed to the floor.

He retreated several steps back.

One more go.

Against the wall.

And on and on.

Andrea howled with pleasure.

Saturday morning didn't leave any clouds in the sky.

He drove with his left hand and attempted to put in the Hindemith cassette with the right. That didn't work, so he threw the cassette over his shoulder.

It ricocheted off the back seat and rolled onto the floor.

Sod it.

He preferred to listen to the radio with Presley singing Good Rockin' Tonight.

He parked in front of the store near his flat, disregarding the lines drawn on the ground.

Before he entered the store he gave a short whistle to a young girl in a miniskirt.

Not wanting any cooked food, he decided to buy two sandwiches, go home and sleep. The sales assistant, some ten years younger than him with artificially curled hair, gave him the bag and asked:

"Anything else?"

"A smile."

He got one and returned it.

"Anything else?"

"Oh, yes." His own audacity surprised him. "But you can't because you're at work."

"I really can't now, but after seven I'm free."

She looked at him purposefully.

Smiling, he left for the counter and from the sunglasses display stand he selected a completely dark pair with metal-coated glass shaped like some drops.

While unlocking the car door he inhaled deeply the warmth of the spring air.

He put on the glasses, unbuttoned the second button on his shirt, smoothed the hair which was poked out and drove off with a sharp screech of the tyres.

He was too late. Ten minutes after seven the shop assistant was not in front of the store. He drove around the building and caught sight of her at a bus stop on the local bus route.

He turned up the radio to full volume and halted alongside her, then slowly lowered the window and leaning forward, mimicked the voice from the speakers:

"Hey baby, take a walk on the wild side."

He opened the door, waited for her to sit down and without asking drove towards the coast to the inviting lights of a chain of hotels.

They chatted about nothing in particular.

He realized that for years he kept watching in the rear-view mirror the same streets and the cars driving behind him, so he moved until he could see only his face in it.

He didn't appear bad for his age.

Well preserved. The first signs of greying above the ears gave him a certain charm. Instead of the usual combing after getting up he dishevelled his hair and thus covered the protruding baldness.

At dusk his sunglasses gave his soft face a cruel appearance.

He offered her a cigarette.

They both lit up.

He didn't cough as he was training for this throughout day.

In a restaurant he ordered a bottle of wine and crab in sauce. He lit a thin rose-coloured candle. With the shop assistant giggling more and more he danced with her only when they played slow, sentimental coastal melodies and kept on his glasses the whole time.

He pressed her towards him and let her feel the bulge between his legs.

Hey, girl, you know what's coming.

She didn't resist.

He rented a room for one night.

He stood in front of the window, watching the bunch of lights in the distance.

The woman was having a shower.

Slowly and calmly he put on a condom, went to the bathroom and entered her under the shower.

Naked and wet he stepped onto the balcony, rotated the condom full of sperm above his head until it filled the tip, then let go of it and watched its flight down towards the lit promenade far below.

He locked the door behind him, touched his pocket to see if he still had the packet and stepped out into the early Sunday afternoon.

He drove to the coast and purchased a few cans of beer in a store. He slowly sipped while cruising around town with the window lowered and elbow through the window.

He clung alongside a teenager with artificially yellow hair, wearing a mini-skirt and small T-shirt.

He quietly whistled until she turned around.

"What's the matter, dad? Looking for someone?"

"Mummy, little girl!"

Feeling corrupted he grinned through his teeth.

"Go and look in an old-people's home."

"I've already been. By the way, your kids send you their regards."

Her smile softened the features of imbecility on her face.

He stopped the car, opened the door and quietly smoked, not to give a single gesture to invite her in.

When she sat down, he offered her a drink.

They both finished their cans without saying a word.

Leaving the last hotel behind them they both drove through a forest road among the pines and over red soil strewn with pine needles.

"You're a quick one," she said.

"Yeah."

"What's your name?"

"Freddy."

"You know, Freddy, I'm only interested with men with a bulge in their trousers. But not in the middle - on the side - in their pocket."

"You'll get both, girl."

"Alright then."

He stopped the car and looked around himself.

Between the trees the sun reflected off the bodywork of the parked car.

Some of the trees were swaying.

"This is the right place for a small fuck," he said. "Show me what you know."

First she opened his third button.

The twilight of the Sunday evening crept onto the car standing in a car park in the centre of town. Motionless he sat and looked at the empty packet in his palms.

"JOY WITHOUT RISK" - his lips silently followed the letters.

He contracted his fingers, squeezing as much as he could.

When he saw the crumpled lump he couldn't pick out anything other than RISK. He shivered with cold.

He raised the window and put on his coat.

He thought things over for a long time at the entrance to the pharmacy. He took off his glasses and squeezed them into his pocket. Before he entered he made sure by looking along the street that nobody was observing him.

He stepped into line and prepared himself to utter the word condom. Maybe preservatives would have been better? Lubricated sheaths wouldn't be appropriate.

The customers were being served by an old man and young girl. He calculated and prayed that he would be served by the man.

When the girl asked him what he wanted, he bought some vitamin tablets.

In the next pharmacy he bought some aspirins.

In a newsagents stand before the questioning gaze of a plump sales assistant he bought a comb and combed his dishevelled hair.

The cold of the night made him shiver. He even closed the top button of his shirt.

He returned to the first pharmacy and stood by the entrance.

What if he gave a silent message with the word CONDOM written on a piece of paper, which he would show to the shop assistant?

He brushed his forehead with his palm.

What's the matter with me? Am I dreaming? What am I doing? This can't be true?

He exhaled deeply, turned around and walked towards the car.

If he really wanted to he would have already bought them. Everything's fine.

Everything we consist of is primarily recollection.

He took the crumpled packet from his pocket and slowly, gently placed it in a litter bin.

In the next one he placed his glasses.

It seemed to him as if he were at a funeral.

The car was parked across some traffic lines on the road. A good thing there were no police in the vicinity.

He looked under the seats to where the Hindemith cassette was thrown, but couldn't find it in the growing darkness.

I'll look for Harmonie der Welt in the morning.

That's the first thing I'll do. He was yearning to listen to it.

"That's over," he said and stepped out of the car once more, although only for a short breathe of spring evening air.

A woman ploughed along the sidewalk like a bulldozer. He moved sharp right and bent over by himself - not because of any blow.

He didn't find anything other than paper and rubbish.