The number 6 tram was very crowded again, but Gurdweill did not notice. He was haunted by a feeling of guilt towards all those tormented creatures he had left behind in their misery. He saw himself as a deserter, and was slightly ashamed of the sense of relief that he had felt the moment he emerged from Franzi’s block, and even more intensely the moment he walked out of the Steinhof gate.

A crude, nasty female voice exclaimed next to him, ‘Don’t push, young man! If you want to travel in comfort, go by car!’

Gurdweill turned his head slightly to the right, in the direction of the voice, while the rest of his body remained stuck like a brick in a wall. But all he could see was the slightly curved surface of a broad, endless back clothed in a black, furry coat.

The voice continued, ‘Yes, you! You in the black hat!’

Someone giggled, and Gurdweill became conscious of the fact that his right elbow was digging into something soft and warm. The vision of a huge, spongy breast attached to some ugly woman popped into his head, and he felt a violent revulsion. With all his strength he tried to draw his elbow in, but his efforts came to nothing apart from a slight jarring of the immense back in front of him.

Soon after this the tram reached the last stop. The passengers began struggling towards the door. Before getting out, Gurdweill turned himself to the right, as a man turns to see the stone against which he has just stumbled, and saw an elderly woman, short and fat, with a faint black moustache and a hairy mole on her chin. It seemed to him that she was the same woman who had been sitting in the visiting room with the other patient. Immediately a vision of the room floated into his mind, with the sick woman chewing dumbly and above her, on the orange wall, a portrait of Kaiser Franz-Josef. He got off and walked to the number 59 stop, to take a tram to the Ring. On no account could he remember if he really had seen the orange wall and the portrait of the Emperor or not, and this uncertainty nagged at him obstinately. For he was curious to know if his imagination had been playing tricks on him and hanging a picture of the Kaiser on a blank wall or, instead, a picture of someone else entirely: for example, that of some famous psychiatrist who trimmed his beard in the same fashion as the Kaiser — two pointed prongs, one on either side of the chin, which was clean shaven in the middle — thereby creating a certain resemblance between them? What a pity that he hadn’t taken a closer look when he was there. But what did it matter to him, in any case? What possible difference did it make?