After a long absence, Dr. Georg Lassmann returned to the narrow confines of his hometown. He had never possessed a great deal there, and now he had only two sisters left in his native city, both married—and, as it seemed, well married. To see them again after twelve years was the reason for his visit. At least that’s what he himself thought. But during the night, unable as he was to sleep in the overcrowded train, it became clear to him that he was really returning for the sake of his childhood and was hoping to rediscover something or other in the old narrow streets—a door, a tower, a fountain, some sort of reason to feel either joy or sorrow, something in which he could recognize himself. For one loses oneself so in life. And in this connection, a number of things occurred to him: the little apartment in the Heinrichgasse with the shiny door handle and the dark-painted tiles, the pampered furniture and his parents, those two worn-out people, standing almost reverently by it, the hurried, hectic weekdays and the Sundays that were like large, vacant rooms, the rare company received with laughter and embarrassment, the out-of-tune piano, the old canary, the hand-me-down armchair in which one was not allowed to sit, a saint’s day, an uncle from Hamburg, a puppet theater, a barrel organ, a children’s party, and someone shouting: “Klara!”

The doctor was on the verge of falling asleep. The train had been standing in a station. Then lights went by, and the listening hammer passed along the ringing wheels. It went: “Klara, Klara.” Klara, the doctor reflected, now completely awake—who was she, actually? And immediately thereafter he sensed a face, a child’s face with straight blond hair. Not that he could have drawn it, but he had the feeling of something still, helpless, devoted, of a pair of narrow children’s shoulders, squeezed even closer together by a little dress that had been washed too many times, and he made up a face to go with it. But he already knew that he should not be making it up. It is there, or rather it was there, back then. So Dr. Lassmann, not without effort, recalled his only playmate, Klara.