‘My dear lady,’ said Ulrich with a smile, ‘sitting in cafés is a barrier against the enforced activity that makes our lives miserable … The last stage before the pure nirvana of our Lord Buddha. People like us always have the mistaken feeling that they are wasting time, missing something irretrievable, as if a man had a set amount of things to get done in a set amount of time. The harmful influence of our materialistic generation, a generation of physical labour and advanced technology … But the minute you enter a café, you’re on holiday — the yoke is lifted from your shoulders, snapped in half. Like a workers’ strike, where inactivity is the rule … Look, what I hate most of all is the compulsion to work. Work itself, any work whatsoever, could be enjoyable if only people didn’t make it a moral duty. The first question they ask you, these self-appointed detectives, is always: “What do you do? What’s your profession?” I’d like to reach the stage where I could answer, without any shame or self-deception: “Me? I do nothing, sir! Nothing at all! I live because God gave me the breath of life, right? As for all the rest I’m not under any orders and I haven’t got a clue. I don’t have to do anything! I live — and that’s all I’m obliged to do.” This doesn’t apply, of course, to the poor wretches who have to work for a living. They deserve our pity. I’m only talking about people who are provided with the necessities of life, but nevertheless feel obliged to work — in order to pay not for their food but for the air they breathe, as if they owed some eternal debt for their very right to exist!’

Lotte had stopped listening long ago to Ulrich’s lecture, which did not interest her in the least. All this time she kept her eyes fixed on Gurdweill, who sat looking down at the table as if sunk in thought. In the end she said, ‘Ulrich, you talk just like a leading article in the Neue Freie Presse. You should write it down and send it to them and get paid for it.’

‘Writing is work too, madam!’ retorted Ulrich without reacting to her sarcasm. But in his heart of hearts he was hurt. He took out his cigarette case and offered her a cigarette, as if to show that he had not taken offence.

Gurdweill said, ‘Things are so complicated, and people too, even those who seem the simplest. You can’t measure them all by the same yardstick.’