Suddenly they all stood up at once, as if at some inaudible signal, whispered a brief prayer, which slipped through their ranks like a soft forest murmur, crossed themselves, and sat down again. Then the two people seated at the end of each table stood up and walked to the end of the room, where a big hatch, unnoticed by Gurdweill before, was set in the wall, and after a few minutes returned bearing big trays with twelve slices of black bread and twelve grey metal bowls containing a brown liquid: a soup made of flour and caraway seeds. The bread was devoured hungrily by three hundred mouths, and the soup was gulped directly from the bowls for lack of spoons. Overcoming his revulsion Gurdweill drank the tepid, tasteless soup; he did not want to set himself apart from the others, or to appear to think himself above them. He gulped it down like a medicine, closing his nostrils from the inside so as not to smell the unpleasant odour, which reminded him of the slightly steamy smell of the Russian Baths in Landstrasse.

The meal over and the dishes returned to the kitchen, a voice cried, ‘To the dormitories!’ and once more they stood in line in the passage next to the kitchen, facing a heavy iron door, like the door of a prison. The newcomers were given green cards, with the numbers of their dormitory and bed, which were valid for five days. Gurdweill’s dormitory was on the third floor, and his bed was number 212. The big dormitory hall, dully lit by a single naked bulb, held fifty to sixty iron beds, standing side by side with only a narrow aisle between them. There were no mattresses on the beds. The sleeping surface consisted of a rather pliable wire mesh, and at the head of each bed lay three neatly folded dark-brown blankets.

Gurdweill was lucky — his bed was in the corner, next to the wall. He examined the blankets as thoroughly as the weak light permitted, and found them sufficiently clean. His neighbour, a squat, bald man of about fifty, took a needle and thread from his pocket, removed his trousers, and sat down on his bed to mend them. He said to Gurdweill (here their powers of speech returned, as if a magic spell had suddenly been lifted):

‘You have to hand it to them, they keep the place clean here. This is the best shelter in Vienna, you can believe me, but only five nights a month. They watch you like eagles, but you can still trick them sometimes. A few groschen can buy you a card for a couple of nights. There are lots of people ready to sell, believe me. Maybe you’ve got a bit of black thread for me, Herr neighbour? I’ve only got white, and it doesn’t match my trousers.’

Gurdweill had no thread.