a similarly horrible room in an ill-famed hotel in Vienna: Cousin Wolfgang and I have saved up enough from our laughably meager allowance to pay for a cheap streetwalker. The instant we approach her, our nerves flutter: we are still in school and are tormented with the fear of being caught, of not having enough money, of getting into an ugly scene with her pimp, of getting the clap. When we are asked which of us is to go first, Wolfgang takes off: he can’t bring himself to find the lamentable creature desirable: everything disgusts him: the place, the circumstances, the thought of himself in these lower depths. I am no less repulsed, but more resolute. He remains outside the door, waiting for me. But I too fail. I too am incapable of letting natural drives prevail over upbringing: the girl’s Zille face, her limp little breasts and pointed shoulders both move and repel me, the bushy triangle of her colorless pubic hair fills me with horror. I stick out my hand, think I’m touching something like a big boil, and pull back. Since I offer no sign of being ready, she becomes impatient, milking and tugging me, and finally she lets out a string of curses, but I am stubborn, I have to show Wolfgang I am man enough to overcome the sentimental philistine in me. What I now undertake is a symbolic act of protest: my defiant renunciation of the spirit of my formative years in Vienna and their bogus aesthetics as I undergo this test to show I am capable of striding unfazed through such filth, freeing myself of Uncle Helmuth Aunt Hertha Aunt Selma and everything they are and feel, think and represent. I would like to penetrate the girl as if I were boring a knife into Cousin Wolfgang’s heart . . .

Here it’s different: I am free to the point of weightlessness, as if I were on a different star with a weaker force of gravity. The failure of my efforts to get close to Christa has released me from my last tie. Now there is nothing left for me to rebel against. My soul is calm. I can have pure enjoyment; the shining slice of little windows under the Biedermeier gable on the house opposite is beautiful in the reflected golden light from below in the street. The young woman is beautiful. Her soul too is calm. Neither of us feels much pleasure, it is a business transaction. In order to reach orgasm, I have to shut my eyes and imagine following her after seeing her stride through the tattered train station, approaching her and properly seducing her, contrary to her actual intentions, she being overpowered by the eroticism of adventure, swept away, giving in . . . I am grateful to her for this dream.