The Blue Bed
From the street one could only see rusty iron gates, a ruinous fence with intertwining ornaments of black metal and pointed pillars, which once must have belonged to a grand garden. Behind it thick shrubs grew rank in between high trees that stood so close to each other that branches and twigs interweaved. Only in winter, when all leaves had fallen to the ground, the big gray house in the back of the garden was visible from the street. The trunks of dead trees were lying on the ground and on...