A right-angle corner of the building opposite points straight at his living room.
There is a crack in the living room wall, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, the point of it downward.
He has filled it three times. Filler, sandpaper, emulsion, done carefully each time. Each time it opens again six months later in exactly the same line, not a millimetre out.
The fourth time, before filling, he photographed it and measured with a tape. Thirty-seven centimetres.
Filled it. Six months later it opened. Forty-one.
Six months after that: forty-six.
He made a table. Nine centimetres a year. He started working out how many years until it reached the floor.
Before he did the arithmetic he pulled up the photographs and looked at them one after another.
It was not growing downward.
Each new length appeared at the top. The point at the bottom had never moved. What was extending was the upper end.
The upper end was at the ceiling now, and going on into the floor above.
He went up and knocked. The woman who opened the door looked at him and said: are you here about the crack as well?
She said hers had been filled three times too. She held up a hand to show the height — from the floor upward, with the point at the bottom.