The car is running poorly, and the chauffeur without ideas as to why. Why is there so much traffic at midday? He remarks on torrential rains in the south. Flooding in Bavaria. Hans, Hans, Hans. Only what’s entirely lost demands to be endlessly named: the mania to call upon the lost thing until it returns.

A day and night devoted to mourning, and pointless calls around to our old acquaintances. Those I am able to reach are baffled by my questions. Sandri keeps his distance. With the new day, Frau Reger sits me up in bed and spoons potato soup into me. After taking away my tray, she returns to open the curtains and dump a pile of telephone messages onto the comforter.

More sleep.

A dismal few weeks of work. Mayer and Herlth ask discreet questions about my health. A month of shooting and already we’re behind. Herlth and Röhrig keep wailing: more money! Fierce ongoing battles with Pommer, which fall to me to settle. My duties include, apparently, pedagogy and demagogy.

Yesterday a general meeting was called; I had to be driven back in for it. Pommer claimed he should stay out of it, and said I should speak for him.

Everyone was complaining as if the Apocalypse had arrived. The stipends were pitiful and unfair; the price of meat had gone up. What was I supposed to say? I sat there looking blank. The electricians delivered a declaration that they stood united behind the carpenters. And where did the carpenters stand? What did that mean? Had everyone lost their minds? Freund shushed me, and dealt with emissaries from both groups.

In terms of the inflation, the general situation is indeed catastrophic. That an undertaking like this is possible is a miracle. Emergency legislation and upbeat pieces on “What Every Citizen Can Do” fill the newspapers. A bitter winter is predicted. Or, rather, assured. A year ago it was even more dire. Then, the cashier at my pharmacy gave me change of two and a half million in five-thousand-mark notes, five packets as thick as two fists. How to get rid of them? A nice white shirt in a shopwindow, too expensive. A book? Ten million for a slim volume of Rilke. Instead, a café, the waiter willing to accept such small bills.

Germany was a house with the roof torn off, with the room-by-room disaster exposed for all to see. That night in a club, I watched a young American throw coins in his currency on the floor and call out that only naked women were allowed to pick them up. The eyes of the men in that room! But they did nothing. And two women, middle-aged, silently stripped off their clothes and got down on their knees.