Surveying the physiognomies present I can’t get out of my head the image of the hostages being shot in Crete: Father and son standing together in front of the firing squad. Two gaunt, noble peasant faces, the son with eyes closed, the father looking almost peevishly straight ahead, a second before the crackle of the salvo: the complete, inward collectedness of their composure, nothing demonstrative, no heroics; just a proud coming to terms with an absurd fate—including a cosmically boundless contempt for fate’s violent henchmen . . .

these bloated pusses by comparison: Herr Senator Meier-Müller or whatever his name is: I can’t stand his face, prefer his ass. I can recall it packed in field-gray trousers, general-staff tucks along the side seams. He staggers around, drunk. The staff is quartered in the remains of a villa. On a tattered sofa lies a little dog the grunts have picked up as a mascot, still a pup, wagging its tail in excitement and greeting everyone who comes near—and the ass approaches and plops down on top of it. The major is too drunk to notice what’s there under his bottom, whimpering, its chest crushed and legs broken . . .

With every glass of the generously available (gastritis-inducing) expense-account champagne, increasingly severe palpitations. Professor Hertzog’s pills obviously have conflicting effects. Keeps me on a short leash in any case; if I ask for more, he blabbers about Thanatos. (As if the wish to be no longer a part of this world belonged merely to the subconscious ur-elements of the psyche and were not urged upon us by every step we take through our environment.) Didn’t even confess to him that I now and then swallow whatever I can get hold of even without his prescriptions. But perhaps not so harmless after all, in combination with his pharmaceuticals.

By the way, on the subject of new German fashions: my kind, artists and intellectuals, still cling loyally to our old duds: baggy corduroys, anoraks, and berets. (In the days of Rinaldo Rinaldini, highwaymen too wore distinctive and easily recognized clothing.) But even the lads from the radio already betray a tendency to rebourgeoisify into manager types. Gone is their buccaneering candor. The currency miracle’s caused shockwaves. The stroke that separated today from a swashbuckling yesterday in the bombed-out landscape cuts through one’s character. The innocuousness of those who had nothing left to lose in the poorhouse generosity of the hunger years spent in cellar holes and Quonset huts belongs to another race of men. I wonder if the trip through purgatory was a process of purification? It’s a long road to travel from former Party member to nihilistic existentialist to arch-democrat and citizen. Can’t get rid of the impression that it happened almost without any—or at least with mostly unconscious—involvement on our part, over our heads, so to speak. Collective fate. The times are pregnant with it. (I’m afraid to encounter myself in the mirror: yesterday, gaunt as a Belgrade hackney nag, but with bright eyes [bright with horror!]; today, drunkard’s eyes like old oysters behind thick lenses, pillowed in the fat of the all too abrupt dietary shift of the miraculous reconstruction. Specifically German in bearing and gesture: a routinized display of droning uprightness: “True blue and always honest!” as a program for worldwide profit. By the way: the post-currency-reform spirit is dropsical: the edema of yesterday’s famine shines through; the pressure mark of a finger takes several minutes to fade.)