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Volpert walked from the railway embankment down to the village. He wanted to buy or borrow a few good ropes. The machine parts he was transporting in a sidecar for the line repair had been jiggling and rattling on the route. They would be damaged if not fastened down.
His mechanic Ernst Hänisch was waving to him from the next farmstead. He had already found there what he was looking for.
“Good morning,” Volpert said.
Hänisch stood next to the farmer, a square-built, medium-sized man between the ages of thirty and forty. “Mr. Zillich here will let us use a couple of his ropes. I told him we'd send them back with the next train. He doesn't want anything for them.”
“I can also sell you four brand-new ones,” the farmer said. “They're out in my field cart.”
He spoke slowly and deliberately like everyone did in these parts, as if words cost money and he hesitated to part with each one. His eyes were small, dark, and vigilant, his nostrils as round and attentive as an extra pair of eyes. His nose was short and turned up, his mouth small. In fact all his facial features were small, they took up very little space on his large head. Even his ears were small. The flaps of his ears were strangely flipped over, to the front instead of the back, as if to catch as much sound as possible.
Volpert said, “Good, I'll take the new ones, too.” His gaze remained fixed on one ear.