The red moustache twitches: “You don’t recognize me any more, what?”

Tjaden now opens his eyes. “I do though.”

Himmelstoss turns to him: “Tjaden, isn’t it?”

Tjaden lifts his head. “And do you know what you are?”

Himmelstoss is disconcerted. “Since when have we become so familiar? I don’t remember that we ever slept in the gutter together?”

He has no idea what to make of the situation. He didn’t expect this open hostility. But he is on his guard: he has already had some rot dinned into him about getting a shot in the back.

The question about the gutter makes Tjaden so mad that he becomes almost witty: “No, you slept there by yourself.”