BOOK ONE: YESTERDAY 35 way about one's own life? A fiftieth birthday would be the ideal day to introduce some sort of order. Gustav was well versed in the biographies of many men of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He knew the decisive experiences in the lives of these men. It was curious how diffi- cult it now seemed to decide what was important and what irrelevant in his own destiny. Yet he had lived through many exciting experiences, influencing his own fate and everyone else's: he had known war and revolution. What had funda- mentally affected hirn? He was shocked to realize how much had left hirn indifferent. This self-examination was making hirn nervous. He ceased his meditations abruptly and smiled. "Please take a postcard, my dear Frischlin," he said. "I want to dictate." He dictated: "Dear Sir: Take note of this for a11 your life: It is upon us to begin the work, It is not upon us to complete it, Yours very sincerely, Gustav Oppermann." "A fine sentence," observed Klaus Frischlin. "Isn't it?" said Gustav. "It's out of the Talmud." "To whom is the card to be addressed?" asked Frischlin. Gustav Oppermann srniled boy- ishly and mischievously. "Take it down," he said, "Ta Dr. Gustav Oppermann, Berlin-Dahlem, Max Reger Strasse, 8." Aside from the dictation of this postcard, the morning re- mained unproductive, Gustav was glad when he found a plausible excuse to stop work. This excuse materialized charrn- ingly in the person of his mistress, Sybil Rauch. Yes, Sybil Rauch drove up in her funny, disreputable little car. She had a

THE OPPERMANNS certain air of importance ab out her, as usual. Gustav came to meet her at the front door. U nembarrassed by the presence of Schlüter, the servant, who had come to open the door for her, she stood on tiptoe and kissed Gustav on the forehead with her cool lips, That was not exaetly a simple matter for under one arm she clutched a large parcel, her birthday present. This present proved to be an old-fashioned clock. Above the dial-face it had a movable eye, a so-called God's Eye, an eye which moved, every second, from right to left, and was never still. Gustav had thought for a long time of installing such a clock in his workroom, a kind of constant reminder, which would incite its rather easy-going owner to regular work, But it had been difficult to find a case which would harmonize with the room. He was pleased that Sybil had discovered the right one. He thanked her boisterously, sincerely, charmingly. At bottom he was a little disappointed. This wandering eye that was to keep hirn under observation, wasn't it a kind of criticism of him when she put a thing like that in his roam? He would not permit this unsympathetic feeling to become adefinite thought. He kept on talking, affectionately, animatedly. But Sybil's gift had again aroused in him, against his will, that subcon- scious feeling which he would never admit to himself, narnely, that Sybil, in spite of the fact that they both bad the best in- tentions of being entirely absorbed in each other, would al- ways remain on the outer fringes of his life. Sybil, rneanwhile, was standing in front of the portrait of old Oppennann. She knew how much Gustav thought of the picture, was glad to see it there at last, and commented in a few apt phrases on how weil it Iooked in the study. She ex- amined it closely, sumrning up, in her characteristic way, the shrewd, kind, happy man of the portrait. "They all go weil together," she said finally, "the pai nt er, the man, and the period, and they all fit nicely in here. I wonder how this Irn-