The Wrong Door

The address on the letter was Marktstrasse 14, and Ilka was there at twenty past nine, which was early. The building had two doors, one on the street and one in the yard, and the letter said nothing about which of them she should use.

She chose the door on the street because it was open. A man behind a desk asked her who she wanted to see. She gave the name from the letter. He looked at his screen for a long time and then said that nobody of that name worked in this building.

Ilka showed him the letter. He read it twice and told her that the company had moved into the back building in the spring, and that the post still came here because nobody had told anybody. He said this without any surprise, as if he explained it every week.

It was now twenty to ten. She walked through the yard, found the second door and rang. A woman came down, said that her name was Wenzel and that she had been waiting, and asked whether Ilka had had trouble finding the place.

Ilka said no. She was not sure why she said it, and she thought about it again on the way home. The company had written the wrong address on its own letter, and she had just said that everything was fine.