After a time, he discovered that there were in fact poor areas of the city, that the grandeur could abruptly stop and the cobbled streets become winding and narrow. His Spittelberg lodging was in a house that belonged to a Polish widow. A commercial traveller and two other students were his fellow lodgers and the house had a distinctive smell, as if hundreds of dead mice had been boiled in strong tea then left to rot behind the plaster. The landlady’s daughter, who was said to be a prostitute, lived with her mother on the ground floor. She came and went through a back door that opened onto a courtyard with a low gallery. In the evening, men would walk through from Sigmundsgasse and buy white wine from a stall.

Gerhard, who had studied medicine at his father’s insistence, told Anton that if he chose philosophy he could avoid all contact with the university until his final year, when he would have to present a thesis and sit a single exam. The rest of the time could be spent in the bars and concert halls, riding horses and chasing women. He warned Anton that he might never have such a chance again and it was his responsibility – his duty, almost – to make the most of it. This uncharacteristic advice made Anton wonder if his brother wanted him out of the way, so that he would not emerge later as some sort of rival. Gerhard needn’t have worried, Anton thought: medicine held no appeal for him.

The main problem for Anton was that he had no money. His mother had wanted him to go straight into the family business; his father could see the advantages of the university, but only if he studied medicine or, at a stretch, law. If he insisted on philosophy, then he would have to fund his own studies – by teaching and whatever odd jobs he could find. Chiefly because he wanted some breathing space after the Gymnasium, Anton agreed; but it was a second-rate experience of the capital. The Opera was beyond his means and he found he was allergic to horses. When it came to women, he was deterred not by shortage of cash but by a lack of confidence. His moustache was an embarrassment; the coarse hairs grew round the rim of his nostrils and out of the lip membrane itself. His eyebrows were thick, his hair wiry and his nose rather hooked. He tried to befriend the landlady’s daughter, but she seemed to have sniffed out his poverty. When he suggested an evening together, she laughed. He told himself that women held no interest for him, but it was not easy when the glance of a dark eye that happened to meet his on the street caused him an ache in some space behind the lungs.

After he had graduated with an unremarkable degree, he continued to live in much the same way. His aim was to make a living as a journalist. His first article had been published in the student paper in his second year at the university and he had gone on to write on politics and foreign affairs with a fluency that seemed almost suspicious – as if he somehow didn’t mean it. His output was checked when he graduated. Student magazines were happy to take long articles on anything from German naval policy to where you could find the best strudel, but established papers were less keen. Anton lacked gravity and age. One or two of them allowed him a filler in the social or financial pages, but he was unable to persuade them to send him to Paris or New York.