The relationship between himself and Thea had been set from the first day. Immediately after the wedding Thea had informed him, without beating about the bush, that he had better not harbour any illusions about marriage changing her way of life in the slightest degree. She was free now, as before, to do as she saw fit … And she did as she saw fit. She spent most of her free time, in the evenings after work and on holidays, not with Gurdweill but in places and circumstances unknown to him. Her comings and goings were her own affair. And if at first it seemed rather strange to him, not at all as he had imagined married life to be, in the end he acquiesced, since there was nothing else he could do. As for the jealousy — which at first had tortured him incessantly — he fought a constant battle against it, and even seemed to succeed. That is to say, he did not succeed in actually uprooting it, but in pushing it into a corner of his soul, where it lay in waiting to ambush him whenever the opportunity arose. He would look for excuses for his wife’s behaviour, give her the benefit of the doubt, interpret the plain facts in a special light, more convenient to him and, above all, he tried his best to ignore this nightmarish corner of his soul. But an unrelieved malaise now lay heavily on his being, as if he were bearing within him the seeds of a dangerous, fatal disease. He shrank completely into himself, and walked about enveloped in gloom and in the grip of constant inner tension. There was a kind of invisible barrier separating him from the world. And it was very seldom nowadays that he could forget himself and show a cheerful face in the company of his friends.

Although he tried as best he could to conceal the actual state of affairs between himself and Thea, his friends knew the truth. As outside observers, their perceptions were sharper and more comprehensive. They saw many things of which Gurdweill was ignorant. As time went by, even those friends who had been taken in by Thea at the beginning realised what she was really like, and they pitied him.

Thea finished dressing. She put on her coat and hat, ready to go out. It was nearly one o’clock. She said to her husband, who was still sitting passively on the couch, ‘I’m going home for lunch, rabbit. Would you like to come with me?’

But he understood from her tone that she didn’t want him to. Besides, they hadn’t actually been invited. He said no.

‘Have you got any money?’

‘No. I’ve only got a few groschen. Maybe twenty.’

‘Where on earth has all the money gone?’

‘You know I’m broke,’ he said apologetically. ‘Yesterday I gave you three schillings. And I paid for the butter too — and that’s all there was.’