‘You must pardon me,’ she said, ‘if I didn’t behave properly when you came to see me. I expect I was overexcited. Imagine — a place like that! If you only knew how people suffered there. It’s awful: the nurses behave like tyrants, and complaining to the doctors doesn’t get you anywhere. They don’t believe you. They seem to think that a person who’s mentally ill is no better than a wild animal. And you’re afraid to complain too. The nurses bully the patients; they hit them whenever they feel like it. I think they actually enjoy it. You can’t get any justice there. It’s worse than the Inquisition! And the patients themselves — oh, it makes your hair stand on end! It’s something you can never forget as long as you live! Even now I often wake up in horror in the middle of the night, and it takes me a long time before I realise that I’m not there anymore and calm down a little. The really insane don’t feel it so much, but anyone who has periods of lucidity can go mad there! One day I’ll tell you about it in detail. You’re a writer, Herr Gurdweill, and someone should tell the world the truth about what goes on inside that place.’

She fell silent.

His head lowered, his back to the window, Gurdweill sat and listened to Franzi. The visit to Steinhof rose up before him in vivid detail and he relived all its fears and torments. Unintentionally he stole a glance at her legs and saw that her stockings were now smooth and tight, and her feet were shod in new, brown shoes. ‘She’s learned to put on her stockings properly again.’ The absurd thought crossed his mind, and he was furious with himself for thinking anything so stupid.

‘You know,’ she went on, ‘even now, although I’ve been home for two months, whenever I touch on the subject I feel a hidden fear that the nurses will somehow find out and take revenge on me … Even though I immediately tell myself that it’s ridiculous, that they’ve got no power over me anymore and they can’t harm me — in the depths of my heart I’m still afraid. I can’t get rid of the terror they instilled in me.’

‘The fear is understandable,’ said Gurdweill in a whisper, as if talking to himself, ‘but it will grow weaker in time, until in the end it disappears. Try not to think about it too much, to distract your mind with other things, and you’ll gradually forget about it.’

Franzi’s mother brought in the coffee. ‘If you want to go, you’d better drink up!’