"Barely." For that matter, he could hear directly that I was a stranger. There was something in my accent which told him. It did not need much; he could hear so well. At night, when every one slept, he could hear people in the next room breathing....
"What I was going to say was, 'where do you live?'"
On the spur of the moment a lie stood, ready-made, in my head. I lied involuntarily, without any object, without any arrière pensée, and I answered--
"St. Olav's Place, No. 2."
"Really?" He knew every stone in St. Olav's Place. There was a fountain, some lamp-posts, a few trees; he remembered all of it. "What number do you live in?"
Desirous to put an end to this, I got up. But my notion about the newspaper had driven me to my wit's end; I resolved to clear the thing up, at no matter what cost.
"When you cannot read the paper, why--"
"In No. 2, I think you said," continued the man, without noticing my disturbance. "There was a time I knew every person in No. 2; what is your landlord's name?"
I quickly found a name to get rid of him; invented one on the spur of the moment, and blurted it out to stop my tormentor.
"Happolati!" said I.