It was impossible to tell if his words were a response to Ulrich, or the conclusion of some other, private train of thought. No one answered him. Soon afterwards Lotte announced that she had to go home and asked Gurdweill to accompany her. They paid and stood up. Ulrich and Perczik left the café with them and set off in another direction.

It had stopped raining, but the street was shining with a wet, black gleam, as if it had been coated with black lacquer. For a while they walked in silence. The shops were closing and iron shutters were coming down everywhere with a deafening clatter. Gurdweill sensed intuitively that Lotte was sad, and for some reason she seemed to him at that moment very pathetic and in need of help. Pity welled up in him. ‘How unhappy she is, this Lotte,’ he reflected, ‘she, too …’ And he immediately caught himself up on the ‘too’ and tried to explain it away. It was vital to remove himself from this ‘too’ and connect it to everyone else but him. He linked his arm with hers.

‘This afternoon I went to Steinhof,’ he said gently. ‘I was visiting a friend. Over there you feel as if you’re suddenly faced with the absolute nothingness of everything. One little screw comes loose, and instantly the naked core is revealed …’

Lotte said nothing.

They reached the Ring, where cars and packed trams were rushing to and fro. The Parliament Building stood facing them with pompous arrogance, a closed fortress casting the heavy boredom of politics on the passers-by. Policemen patrolled its magnificent façade, guarding the emptiness within. In the distance, beyond the Schottentor, like eyes opening and closing, coloured electric lights went on and off, advertising Schicht soap and Salamandra stoves. A crowd of curiosity-seekers clustered round a huge furniture van that had lost one of its wheels. What did it all amount to? Nothing. When one turned one’s mind in a certain direction, it was all completely meaningless …

Gurdweill and Lotte had to wait a while before crossing the Ring. When they reached the back of the Parliament Building, next to the dark garden on the left, where occasional showers of heavy raindrops fell from the boughs of the trees overhanging the fence, Lotte said:

‘One should put those things out of one’s mind … Healthy people with healthy instincts never think of such things; as far as they’re concerned they don’t exist — and but for them the world would come to a standstill. As for the others, they’re already sick themselves …’

‘Healthy people!’ thought Gurdweill. He did not have the least desire to be one of those healthy people. Besides, they too were sick themselves, sick without knowing it …