Martha nodded. ‘The denial of the sex instinct is even more harmful to women than to men. So Freud says. I don’t see why it should be, but …’

Finding a distant cloud beyond the lake to focus on, Anton said, ‘And so, you see in my own life I was facing this turmoil. On the one side, all the writers in the Café Griensteidl insisting that being a whore was a natural thing for a woman – as natural as motherhood, according to Weininger. And on the other side, in my actual life, not wanting to sleep with line girls because I didn’t want to use them like that, not even knowing their names … Or to catch a disease, as your von Ehrenfels said. And then …’ He seemed to run out of impetus.

Martha looked interrogatively. ‘Then what?’ she said at last.

‘Something happened that made me feel less … superfluous. That gave me a stake in society. A foothold in the world. You must remember, I thought of myself as ugly, too. My nose, my skin, my—’

‘Really? I wouldn’t say—’

‘Of course you wouldn’t. You’re polite. And in any case, that was a long time ago. My elder brother Gerhard tells me I’ve “grown into my face”, whatever that means. And so …’

‘Tell me what happened.’

Anton breathed in. ‘I met a woman who solved all these problems.’

‘How very fortunate.’

‘You mustn’t laugh.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Well, it did come out a bit wrong … You’re forgiven. I’ll keep the story of Delphine for another day.’

‘As you like. Do you feel quite well? You seem to have a cough. I’ve noticed it often.’

‘Don’t worry, it’s not an infection. It’s from the war. I have slight damage in one lung. I’ll tell you about that one day, too.’

‘We have a lot to look forward to.’

‘I feel obliged to entertain you. Or at least not to bore you.’

‘Please don’t feel obliged, Herr Heideck. I’m here to listen to whatever seems important to you.’

‘How much more time do we have?’

‘A few minutes yet. So you called your book Adam’s Lot. Shouldn’t it have been Eve’s Lot?’

‘I did consider that, but in the end I thought it seemed ungallant. And I thought a man’s name could stand for mankind – homo not vir, as our Latin teachers used to say.’

‘I see.’

‘And I gave it a subtitle. Travels with a Broken Heart. And I hoped that could work for both sexes.’

‘It sold well, didn’t it?’

‘Not as well as people think. Though more than Dr Freud.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Everyone sold more than Freud. His Interpretation of Dreams took eight years to sell six hundred copies.’

‘How do you know?’

‘My publisher had previously worked at Franz Deuticke, Freud’s publishers. He kept in touch. Publishers like to gossip.’

‘So how come he’s so well known?’

‘Also a story for another day.’

‘All right. Why did yours fare so much better?’