He crossed Heinestrasse again and came out at the Praterstern. A number of cars were parked at the kerb, their drivers chatting desultorily with a few prostitutes who had apparently given up hope of finding any more customers for the night. There was a sense of desolation in the air, of a dreary, futile, hopeless poverty, of a profound and permanent misery, which was hidden by day and now crawled out of its holes and exposed itself boldly in all its nakedness, breaking out of the silent houses and the wretched creatures left in the street, welling up from the very paving stones. The other side of life revealed itself, like the shabby lining of a garment that looked well enough on the outside. As he surveyed the deserted Praterstrasse it occurred to Gurdweill, as if for the first time, that it was late at night, and people should be at home asleep. A feeling of pity stirred in him for the wretched creatures — these drivers, for example — who were obliged to be out in the street at such an hour instead of tucked up in a warm bed at home. But this feeling flickered out again immediately in the stupor of his numbing fatigue. Without thinking, he turned into the Hauptallee, in the vague hope of finding a bench to rest on. Somewhere nearby a clock began to strike, perhaps the railway-station clock, and Gurdweill stood still to count the strokes although he had a watch in his pocket. It was five o’clock. ‘Four more hours, four more hours!’ — the thought penetrated the fog in his mind as he passed under the bridge and entered the deserted avenue, dimly lit by very widely spaced streetlamps. Heavily, with the last of his strength, he dragged his feet to the first bench looming out of the darkness and sank onto it.