Down below, in Kleine Stadtgutgasse, a heavy wagon trundled past slowly, creaking mercilessly and shaking the windowpanes like an earthquake. ‘A coal-wagon from Nordbahnhof,’ concluded Gurdweill. Now he would never be able to go back to sleep. The creaking narrowed down to two or three maddeningly monotonous sounds, which went on repeating themselves with an idiotic obstinacy in his drowsy mind, although the wagon was quite far away by now, until it seemed to him that they were coming not from outside but from some corner of his own soul. In a sudden panic he jumped up and sat on the bed. He glanced around the room, which was not large, and his eyes fell on the sofa to his right, where his friend Ulrich was sleeping with his face turned to the wall. At the sight of his sleeping friend he felt suddenly and inexplicably wide awake. And the memory of what he had to do today came crowding into his mind, together with a feeling of oppression. ‘There’s nothing for it: I’ll have to go there whether I like it or not,’ he said to himself in resignation. He still had time to spare and he lay down in bed again, hoping that he might fall asleep for a little while. But as if to spite him his thoughts went on turning of their own accord around the same unpleasant business, and he could not stop them.

The room was filling with the fine, clear morning of an early spring day. Ulrich sat up and said something in a lazy whisper. Gurdweill pretended to be asleep. He did not feel like talking to anybody now. Through his half-closed lids he watched his friend dressing with negligent, mechanical movements that for some reason seemed to him jerky, absurd, and disconnected. ‘Man is a ridiculous creature,’ he concluded, ‘and his absurdity is particularly apparent when he is by himself …’

In the end it became difficult for him to go on lying there. He imagined the city streets bathed in the early-spring sunshine, and he wanted to be outside. Impatiently he waited for Ulrich to go to work. But the latter, as if to spite him, moved around more than usual this morning, going out into the corridor several times, taking a collar out of the wardrobe, putting it back and taking another one instead, and spending about half an hour cleaning his clothes.

It was about eight o’clock when Ulrich left. Gurdweill leaped out of bed and went over to the window. At the sight of the azure-blue April morning invading the little street, he was seized by a fit of high spirits. On a day like this it was good to be alive, to move about, to breathe. For the moment Gurdweill’s worries lost their sting; everything seemed easier. He returned to the bed, where his clothes were laid out on a chair, and quickly began to get dressed.