He paced up and down the compartment several times, making a point of reading all the policies and regulations. Then he sat back in his seat, but immediately got up again and stepped into the corridor with the idea of walking through the train. He observed the people coming in the other direction with indifference, except when he encountered a man he thought looked Jewish, and involuntarily wrinkled his forehead. As he made his way down the aisle in a third-class car he ran into another person with similarly suspect features.

There are too many Jews on the train, Silbermann thought. And that puts every one of us in danger. As it is I have all of you to thank for this: if you didn’t exist I could live in peace. But because you do, I’m forced to share your misfortune! I’m no different from anybody else, but maybe you truly are different and I don’t belong in your group. I’m not one of you. Indeed, if it weren’t for you, they wouldn’t be persecuting me. I could remain a normal citizen. But because you exist, I will be annihilated along with you. And yet we really have nothing to do with one another!

He considered such thoughts undignified but couldn’t help thinking them. If people are constantly saying: You’re a good man, but your family is completely worthless. Or: You’re nothing at all like your cousins, they really are a nasty lot—then it’s easy to get infected with the general opinion.

And that was exactly what was happening to Otto Silbermann, who in his normal state was not one of those tragicomic figures known as Jewish anti-Semites. But at the moment he was so worked up he wasn’t thinking clearly, and he viewed the sheer existence of his coreligionists as an insult.

You have all gotten me into this mess, he thought angrily, and glared at a man standing by the window whose appearance had led Silbermann to believe he was a fellow Jew. The man noticed and testily returned the scowl, then strode right up to Silbermann.

“Do you have some score to settle with me?” he fumed.

Silbermann was surprised and said nothing.

“So why are you staring at me like that?” asked the man, who struck Silbermann as a low-level clerk.

Silbermann didn’t answer.

“Hey”—the man tapped his shoulder—“I’m talking to you!”

“I refuse to be spoken to like that,” said Silbermann sharply.

“Listen, if we weren’t stuck here on a train…” the other man answered, giving Silbermann a threatening glance.

“Then what?” Silbermann asked coolly.

“Then you would see!”

A third person, evidently a friend of the offended party, mixed in. “Are you picking another fight, Max?” he asked, shaking his head.

“That’s none of your business.”

The other man put his hand on Max’s shoulder. “Just leave it be,” he said.