With growing agitation Gurdweill took in his companion’s whispered words — words that opened old wounds he thought had begun to heal. Lately he had deluded himself into believing that these things no longer touched him, that he was armoured against them, and now he saw that it was not so. Suddenly he realised that they were still there inside him, unchanged, liable to emerge from their hiding places at any moment and pounce upon him. Gurdweill felt Johann’s torments as if they were his own. Although he had never set eyes on Mitzi in his life, he saw her vividly in his mind’s eye, putting on her coat, a grey coat, and saying, ‘I’m just running round to my sister’s for a minute.’ His soul burned in an agony of jealousy as he asked himself: where had Mitzi been, and what had she been doing during all that time? He picked up his beer and drank it. And as if to banish the tormenting doubt from his heart, he said to Johann, who was sitting with his head bowed, drumming his fingers on the table:

‘You haven’t got any real grounds for suspicion. Perhaps it was all exactly as she said. The fact that you didn’t see her coming out doesn’t prove anything. She probably came out just when you were looking in the other direction. And precisely because she came out with her sister, you didn’t notice her; you didn’t see her because you didn’t expect to see her with a woman.’

Johann stared at him imploringly. ‘But the uncertainty, the uncertainty! I can’t stand it. I can feel it here,’ he tapped on his chest, ‘here, like a heavy stone. And if I ever find out that she was lying to me — I’m not saying anything! But there’ll be trouble. Something terrible will happen!’

He took a gulp of wine and continued. ‘Last night I didn’t sleep a wink. Was she with her sister or not? And if not, where was she? It nagged at me until I thought I would go mad. But I’ll find out. And then — they’d better look out!’ Three deep, ominous lines appeared between his eyebrows, and the tip of his pointed nose grew sharp and flinty, like some stone-age pick. Who could have imagined that the quiet, kindly Johann, the ‘good lad’ — in his father’s words — would be capable of such savage rage? Gurdweill felt a little frightened of him.

‘Here, have a cigarette,’ he offered in a conciliatory tone.

Gurdweill now wanted to tell him that his fears were probably exaggerated, that in the end his suspicions would turn out to be groundless, etc. But instead he found himself asking: ‘And the man, the one she went to the cinema with — you don’t know who he is?’