In private, he would most likely have been rather glad to own such a photograph. One of his favorite words was “tolerance.” Even in his early days as a committed National Socialist (of the Strasser type, to be sure; i.e., an outspoken opponent of Hitler), he had never gone so far as to demand explicitly that the world be cleansed of my sort. In his heart of hearts, he may have counted me among the things and people against which and whom the Wittewash Company was pursuing its campaign of whiter and whiter washing, more and more thorough detergents. Yet his profound feeling was dominated by the generous forbearance of the royal merchant who, when I married Christa, had said to her, “You’ve danced a bit out of line, dear child. But still, you’ve got an interesting partner.” He couldn’t help letting out a sigh when he saw me.

•

So much goodwill on all sides began to make me feel ill at ease. It bolstered them against the past the way their padded coats bolstered them against the autumnal fog outside. Old Miss Wiebke, Schwab’s wonderful aunt, who had once been engaged to Witte in some lost mythical past, looked at me with loving melancholy, in which nothing recalled that while her adored nephew Johannes was alive she had regarded me as the evil spawn of the lowest cynicism. Had her life’s dream come true and she become a theater director, she would have cast me in the role of Mephisto in a modern-dress staging of Faust, daringly based on 1920s Berlin Expressionism (and she would then have screwed me out of my salary with the clearest of consciences). Now, she seemed ready to view me as foster brother to her protégé, who, because of me, had sometimes treated her even worse than usual. And oddly enough, her indulgence was now sincere. Not just because of her grief, which was no doubt profound. There was also a sense of salvation in her. It was as if her nephew’s death had released her from something that had prevented her from being herself—had released her from a life-lie.

Fräulein Schmidschelm behind her, Schwab’s secretary Schelmie, could relish her own triumph. Now she would be the leading lady at Lücke’s. The field was hers. Earlier, Schwab had dragged his aunt along on his boozing tours (against her will, it turned out), finally landing at Lücke’s, where unspeakably ludicrous scenes of rivalry had taken place between Schelmie and the poor aunt. The latter would wear housekeeper blouses buttoned up to her chin, with a brooch and a corseted waist, as though she were still an actress and had gone out right after the performance (of say, Mrs. Warren’s Profession) without bothering to change, in order to pop into her regular pub and gulp down a jigger of something or other. For all the popularity that the aunt thus attained (and that was far greater than the popularity she had enjoyed in her theatrical days), she must have felt that this role was forced upon her and that Schelmie more authentically played the part the aunt was trying to play in her old-hen love for the nephew, who had left the nest prematurely: the part of a drinking companion and (in the fog of intoxication, in which everything blurred together) occasional bedmate (also dimmed by the subsequent hangover, like the memory of vomiting and similar embarrassments).