Horror crawled like a worm down Gurdweill’s spine, and a cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He turned to the two women sitting on the other side of the room, as if to enlist their help, but they had not even noticed that anything was wrong. The patient sat silently eating the dishes arranged on the table in front of her, while the older woman stroked her hair and whispered to her all the time. ‘That woman eats without stopping,’ he thought absent-mindedly. Then he stood up and went over to Franzi Mitteldorfer.

‘Come,’ he stammered, and took her hand, ‘come along … soon the visiting hour will be over, and we still have a lot to talk about.’

He was afraid to look into her face. He kept on seeing the stocking falling sloppily over her brown felt slipper.

Like an obedient child, she let him lead her back to her chair. She appeared to have calmed down a little. She even smiled to herself with a satisfied expression.

Gurdweill said, ‘One of your stockings has fallen down. You had better pull it up.’

‘Oh, my stockings! I was in such a hurry … I didn’t have time to fasten them. And I’ve lost my garters too. You can’t put anything down here for a minute without somebody stealing it.’

She bent down and pulled the stocking over her knee with an impatient movement.

Gurdweill offered her a piece of chocolate, which she rejected. ‘I’ll eat it later. And now tell me, what’s going to become of me? You can see for yourself what it’s like here. Just listen to the screaming and wailing over there! Tell me yourself, how can anyone survive here? The sanest person in the world would go out of his mind if they put him here, I promise you! And no wonder: all you hear all day long, all night long, is screaming and wailing! And what’s going to become of me? I ask you — what? I feel that I’m going insane. If I stay here any longer I’ll go insane in the end. Nobody could stand it. It’s already been ten weeks, ten weeks,’ her face twisted again in the dry-eyed weeping that tore at Gurdweill’s heart, ‘ten weeks, ten weeks!’

Gurdweill felt as if he were about to burst out crying himself. He felt actual, physical pain. It seemed to him that he had never yet experienced so deep and sharp a sorrow and that there was no sorrow in all the world to compare with it. He clenched his teeth and forced back the tears that were choking him.

Franzi repeated with stubborn monotony: ‘Ten weeks, ten weeks!’