‘I only meant …’ Gurdweill recovered and tried to correct himself. ‘What I meant was … That’s not what I’m glad about, of course … I didn’t express myself properly. I imagine him tall and skinny, with straight, oiled hair parted in the middle, his shoes always polished until they shine. Patent-leather shoes. And when he looks at anyone he inclines his head slightly to one side, like a chicken, and puts on a very dignified expression — because, of course, he’s really nothing but an ass …’

‘You’ve described him very well — but never patent-leather shoes. Brown ones. And you forgot the gold-knobbed cane … “Dorothea” — he always calls me “Dorothea” because it sounds more dignified and traditional — “Dorothea,” he says, ridiculous and pompous as an old man, “you are the scion of an ancient race. Your ancestors were Crusaders, don’t forget! You must be on your guard against the Jews. The city of Vienna has become Judaised from one end to the other. Blood doesn’t matter anymore. They’re poisoning the air. But for them, we would never have lost the war.” And all the time he himself is running after a little Jewess who’s turned his head completely.’

‘And do you obey him, Baroness?’

‘In what respect?’

‘Preserving the purity of the race?’

To this the Baroness responded with a loud burst of hard, unruly laughter.

‘You know what,’ she said suddenly and irrelevantly, ‘why don’t you just call me Thea? Titles bore me.’

Gurdweill gave her a grateful look. For some reason he suggested having a brandy. A spirit of recklessness entered him: his pale, slender, feminine hands sought some object to hold, to absorb the energy coursing through them, and underneath the table they found one of the Baroness’s unresisting hands. The waiter brought two little glasses of brandy, and Gurdweill emptied his in a single gulp. The Baroness announced that the next day, Saturday, she did not have to go to work because her ‘general’ (which was what she called the lawyer for whom she worked) had gone away for the weekend, and she could stay out a little later tonight.

‘Good, wonderful!’ enthused Gurdweill.

They talked and fell silent and began talking again — talk that was apparently trivial, but that was nevertheless full of a kind of hidden significance — and the time flew by as imperceptibly as an open plain by the side of an express train.

It was already eleven o’clock. Both of them at once suddenly felt the need to leave the café. Gurdweill called the waiter and paid him.

Outside, the Baroness linked her arm in his, and they walked silently down Alserbachstrasse and turned into Sechsschimmelgasse. Suddenly she said, half seriously and half jokingly, ‘You’ll marry me, won’t you, Rudolfus? I fancy you and I don’t mind saying so.’