The Olive Desks

The computing room of a mathematics institute at a university in the Ruhr at noon in winter, white snow light from a wide window, pale green linoleum, olive-green steel desks with chrome handles, on the left two beige typewriter terminals, paper tape running into a wire basket, at the centre a console desk with a black panel of small cream keys, every key blank and every surface plain and unmarked, behind it a glass wall of open cabinets with light grey instrument boxes and dense rows of red-brown transistor circuit boards, the cabinet tops bare, a side table with a roller shutter, a hand in a knitted wool sleeve pressing one key.