The smells of a pipe gone cold and stale human breath hung in the air. The idea of the cold, hostile stove was enough to banish any desire to get out of bed.

Thea’s voice stole faintly into Gurdweill’s slumber, as if it had nothing to do with him. He stirred slightly and went on sleeping. After a moment he was hit by a second, more energetic volley.

‘Well, Rudolfus, are you planning to sleep all day?’

A light flashed on in his brain. The voice was definitely meant for him. His body felt as battered as if he had been mercilessly beaten all night long. He would have given the rest of his life for a few more minutes of sleep. He grunted, ‘In a minute, in a minute, Thea!’

Hoping for a few moments’ grace he went on dozing. But it was a nervous, agitated sleep now, a sleep that had been broken into and saturated with the fear of the inevitable, imminent awakening. Not the private fortress of before, where no stranger could penetrate. He felt as if his blankets had been stripped off him and he was now sleeping absolutely naked, exposed to the eyes of strangers. When the next rousing cry was aimed at him from the bed, he recoiled as if he had been bitten and sat up with a start. His hair stood wildly on end and his pale, crumpled face, with a bright pink mark from the crease in the pillow running like a scar down the left cheek, looked like the face of someone dangerously ill. His bewildered eyes gazed round the room as if he were seeing it for the first time, until he encountered the stare of his wife, who was busy lighting a cigarette, and the memory of the sleepless night and its terrors came back to him in a flash. Gurdweill smiled, happy in the knowledge that it was all over, that it was now the next day, and that everything was the same as usual: the room, the furniture, Thea. He looked at his watch lying on the chair: ten o’clock, not too late.

‘Why are you staring at me like that, rabbit, as if you’d just fallen from the moon? This is Vienna, Kleine Stadtgutgasse, Frau Fischer’s house. It’s the twenty-fifth of December, Christmas, and now hurry up and make some coffee for your wife, Thea, Baroness von Takow by birth, and presently married to yourself, Rudolfus Gurdweill, also called “rabbit”, in a ceremony performed according to the law of Moses of Egypt and the Jewish congregation of Vienna. Understood?’

Gurdweill smiled. She had woken up in a good mood.

‘If you don’t mind,’ he said boldly, ‘throw me a cigarette. I’ll smoke it and get up in a minute. It’s only ten o’clock.’