As he spoke it seemed to him that his voice was lower than usual, almost a whisper, and he filled with rage against himself.

‘No. I just happened to be passing.’

There was another pause.

The Baroness was not unaware of her new acquaintance’s state, and it gave her a strange, cruel pleasure. Gurdweill racked his brains energetically to find something to talk about: he would ask her if she was a student.

‘Would you like another cup of coffee, Fräulein?’ he was horrified to hear himself saying instead.

To his relief, she refused.

‘Be careful, you idiot!’ he castigated himself. ‘You haven’t got the money to pay for it!’

A wave of inexplicable sadness suddenly flooded him, washing away his awkwardness and embarrassment. He felt as if he had known the Baroness for a long time.

‘You know, Fräulein,’ he said, looking directly into her face, ‘it sometimes happens that you meet someone and you immediately feel that there is already a definite, permanent relationship between you, good or bad, but the kind of relationship that is usually only created by years of living together. In these cases the first part is already over; it has already taken place in secret. Have you ever had that kind of experience? Meeting someone, for instance, and knowing right away that you have to avenge yourself on him for something, or the opposite: feeling that you owe a debt of gratitude to some stranger you have just met for the first time in your life? Strange, isn’t it?’

The Baroness listened in silence. In Gurdweill’s words, not in their content but in their tone, there was a note of suppressed sadness that was unconsciously absorbed by the listener. In his utter seriousness he seemed to be taking a step towards the essential heart of things, and revealing a measure of their mystery.

Gurdweill went on, as if compelled by some hidden force: ‘And sometimes you meet someone for the first time and you feel instinctively that he is the source of the sorrow without which you cannot exist, that it has been flowing from him to you through invisible channels all your life … and you are attached to this man as inseparably as a shadow …’

‘You may be right,’ said the Baroness, her fingers mechanically playing with her books, ‘the truth of such things can never be proved. But with regard to what you said about needing sorrow in order to go on living — I must beg to differ. This is an individual matter. To me it seems, on the contrary, that a man needs a little happiness. That it is happiness, and only happiness, which keeps him alive. I, at least,’ the Baroness smiled, showing strong teeth, ‘live only by and for happiness.’

‘Certainly, certainly,’ Gurdweill eagerly agreed, ‘it’s not the same for everyone, of course.’