He opened the door, and he went outside and began walking rapidly along the cold, empty streets without knowing what he was doing. Only one thought pulsed incessantly in his mind — ‘She did that to me!’ — driving him on and on. A clock struck three. ‘It’s already three o’clock and she did that to me!’ The sewage carts parked on the corner of Heinestrasse and Taborstrasse gave off a suffocating stench, but Gurdweill walked past them without even sensing it. He was to be seen in Taborstrasse, in Obere Augartenstrasse, running, waving his hands, perhaps even talking aloud — and in the end he found himself in front of Rembrandtstrasse 18, where Ulrich lived. His feet stopped in front of the house of their own accord, as if seeking a refuge here for their owner. Gurdweill stood and looked at the house, which seemed to him familiar, and it was only after some time that he realised that he was standing in front of his friend’s apartment. He began walking to and fro in front of the door, as if waiting for someone. His footsteps rang rhythmically in the empty street, giving birth to a hollow echo. Nightmarish thoughts pounced on him like wild beasts, thoughts capable of driving a man out of his mind. Everything he had kept buried inside him since meeting this woman, everything he had always known in the depths of his heart and not allowed to cross the threshold of his consciousness now burst into it like a torrential flood sweeping through the shattered wall of a dam. Everything, everything was true! Everything he had always known by signs that did not lie, the hints of his friends, the gossip of strangers — it was all true! And the things he had only guessed — they were true too! From now on there was no hope of denying a single detail. To and fro Gurdweill paced in front of Rembrandtstrasse 18 and talked to himself, almost aloud. ‘With anyone! Without any discrimination! From the first day she met them!’ Before his eyes there appeared a legion of men, some of whom he had glimpsed talking to her or walking with her and others whom he had never seen at all — all of them huge as giants, all of them smiling at him scornfully, pointing at him. And the baby — now it was as plain as day — was not his, but her boss Dr Ostwald’s. Martin was not his son! And she was to blame for his death — she and she alone! She had not treated him as a proper mother would. But for her, the baby would still be alive today! And she had killed Lotte too! She and she alone. Everything dear to him in the world she had killed! Once more Gurdweill drank to the dregs the bestial, gratuitous, humiliating cruelty of their life together. She alone had undermined his soul, ruined his life, turned him into a broken reed. And why? Why had she needed to do it? When he had loved her so much! And after all that, she was lying there now with a strange man — in his room.