The next day he sat down and talked to his mother. Since Gerhard was now settled at a hospital in Vienna, with a fine salary and every chance of promotion, she said, it would make sense for Anton to come home. He explained that he had no interest in the sausage works or in ever coming back. The obvious solution, surely, was for her to sell her late husband’s interest to his brother, Anton’s uncle, who was the joint owner of the company. They would need an outside valuation, but it wasn’t complicated; the profits were steady and it would provide enough for her to live on.

‘I’ve been asked to go to the United States,’ he said. ‘To report on the opening of the Panama Canal for a magazine. I’m leaving next week on a steamship from Southampton. In England.’

‘Why do you want to go to America?’

‘Every journalist would like to. I’m very lucky to be asked. I’ve been in the cold for more than a year, since I turned down a trip to the Balkans. This is a big chance to get going again. All the great newspapers of the world are sending reporters.’

‘What’s wrong with our country?’

‘Nothing at all. Though I’m fed up with writing about the Treaty of Bucharest. All writers want to visit other places. It’s what first drew me to the idea of newspapers when I was a student. Do you remember when I went to Moscow? And to Paris? They thought I did well. I was mentioned for some state prize. I didn’t win it, of course. But that’s not the point.’

‘Isn’t it time you thought about getting married?’

‘I’m far too young. Who should I marry anyway? And why?’

When he returned to Vienna, he felt that his life was taking shape at last. Delphine had extended her stay with Erich’s family and, with the help of a loan from the bank, Anton took three rooms in a building in the third district. It was a modest area, dominated by gasometers, but he had his own bathroom as well as a small sitting room and no Polish landlady. To his delight, Delphine kept some clothes in a battered Biedermeier chest and helped him to arrange his possessions in a way that made the place seem more habitable. She brought candles and coloured shades for the electric lamps that cast a pleasing glow on the cushions of the sofa and the books on the shelf behind.

Anton saw no suggestion of permanence in these rooms, though he was aware of the happiness they brought him. He valued it and thought he should try to hold on to it, whatever that might mean. How should he keep the days from going by?

And then he had to make his way to Paris, to Calais and across the Channel for a crossing to the New World.

3

Balancing a pad of paper on his knee, Anton wrote: