At eight o’clock Gurdweill woke and sat up with a start. The knowledge that Lotte was dead pierced him like lightning. In an instant he was wide awake, but at the same time he felt exhausted, as if he had not slept all night. A grey day streamed through the windows. Gurdweill cast a glance at the bed, and the sight of Thea lying open-eyed with her hands clasped behind her head renewed all his furious rage of the day before at this woman lying there so calmly, as if nothing had changed. She called out to him to get breakfast, and jumped out of bed herself and went to wash.

‘Why are you sitting there like a dummy?’ she scolded when he did not move. ‘Go and make the coffee!’

He stood up and went into the kitchen. When he returned with the coffee, Thea was already dressed. He put the coffeepot on the table and went to wash.

‘Well, why don’t you pour it out?’

She sat down at the table and waited for Gurdweill to take out the dishes, spread the butter, pour the coffee, and serve her breakfast. He did all this like a machine, without saying a word or looking at his wife. He himself took a gulp of coffee while standing up, and put his cup down again.

‘Why don’t you drink?’ said Thea, provoked by his silence and his strange behaviour. ‘Sit down and drink your coffee like a human being!’

‘I don’t feel like it. Nobody can force me to. I don’t feel like it.’

‘Idiot!’

She finished eating and went out. Soon afterwards Gurdweill left too, got on a tram, and reached the cemetery a quarter of an hour early. None of his friends had yet arrived in the spacious and slightly chilly hall whose windows overlooked a forest of tombstones. There was another funeral first, and a few people were gathered in a corner. An old woman suddenly let out a shrill, piercing wail, and a young man with mourning bands around his hat and sleeve supported her as if she were ill. She was the only one who cried, and her wail merged into the singing of the cantor and the choir. In his dazed, almost demented state, Gurdweill suddenly wondered what he was doing here, in this vast, strange hall. He leaned one shoulder against the wall and listened to the voice of the cantor, which sounded hoarse and discordant to him and irritated him beyond measure. But he soon stopped singing, and the coffin bearers, in their uniforms and caps like upside-down boats, lifted the coffin and carried it outside, dragging the mourners behind them like a train.