The Papers Inside The Cap
He came down the steps at five minutes past two. He was perhaps twenty-six, thin in the way young men had become thin that year, with a cap pulled low and a cloth coat too light for the wind. He had the face of a student who had not slept well in a month, and he carried his hands in his pockets as though he did not quite know what to do with them now that they were not holding anything.
There were two other passengers already in the boat. An old woman with a basket of onions on her lap, and a man in a postman's coat who was crossing off-duty, his satchel empty, on his way to his sister's house at Újezd. Zdenka had known them both for years. The young man paid his ten crowns in a single coin that he took from his trouser pocket, not from a wallet, and she noticed this because a young man who travels without a wallet is a young man who has prepared the coin that morning against the possibility that a search of his pockets should produce as little as possible.
He sat at the bow, where she had indicated with a small movement of her chin. He did not look at her. He looked at the water. The old woman said something about the price of onions and the postman replied that nothing was the price it had been, and Zdenka pushed off from the landing and took the boat out into the current.
The crossing was uneventful in a way that she would remember afterwards as the most uneventful