Caught myself trying to move as I imagine he moves: lightly, elegantly, gracefully, without affectation. Fell deep into alcohol at the shame of it (and also haunted by dreams: my murder!). Ran into Schelmie and my aunt in the pub. Their intimacy (at my expense) is very suspicious. Was unintentionally quite rude; embarrassed to think how I played the big boss toward Schelmie, the lowly employee. Even more shame. Back home, an auto-da-fé: destroyed everything I’d written in the last week. Lost all idea of what it could be good for.

GISELA

She is a living testament to the truism that a woman is never humiliated by what she does, but only by what happens to her. She never talks about where she comes from but she doesn’t keep it a secret either. She thinks it’s insignificant and not worth mentioning whether she comes from a middle-class, lower-middle-class, or completely unclassifiable family. Her existence begins with the decision to become a whore. She didn’t fall into this profession by accident. She chose it as her best chance to survive—and not just survive, but do so without being exposed to what could have happened to her (at the very least, to be seized, forced to submit to a man or several men: the inescapable fate of a poor, solitary, and very beautiful girl). The times were hard. We are already beginning to forget that back then it was possible to starve to death unnoticed. Only two years: the day that separated the two worlds was only one of them ago.