He was very lonely and he felt strange and homeless in his unaccustomed civilian clothes after being housed for twelve years in his dark-brown artillery uniform. He had his wife to be sure, but what was she to him? For the first time he asked himself why and to what end he had married her. And he was mightily alarmed. He was mightily alarmed because he had never really believed himself capable of alarm. It seemed to him that he had, as it were, been thrown off-course – and yet he had repeatedly and steadfastly kept to the right path! Nevertheless, faithful to soldierly discipline and from fear of fear, he devoted himself to his office and his duties. Never before, in this district, had there been an Inspector so devoted to state and statute, weights and measures.

He suddenly discovered that he did not love his wife. For now that he was alone and lonely – in the town, in the district, in his official position, among men – he desired love and intimacy at home and he saw that neither of these could be found there. Sometimes in the night he sat up in bed and contemplated his wife. In the yellowish gleam of the nightlight, which stood on top of the wardrobe and seemed to intensify the darkness by creating a kind of luminous nocturnal essence in the room, the sleeping Frau Regina seemed to Inspector Eibenschütz like a dried fruit. He sat up in bed and regarded her closely. The longer he looked at her, the lonelier he felt. It was as if the mere sight of her made him lonely. She did not belong to him, to Anselm Eibenschütz, at all as she lay there, with her fine breasts and her peaceful childish face, the boldly arched eyebrows, the attractive half-open mouth and the small faint gleam of teeth between dark-red lips. Desire no longer urged him towards her as it had done in former nights. Did he still love her? Did he still desire her?

He was very lonely, was Inspector Eibenschütz. By day and by night he was lonely.

5

After he had spent four weeks in the Zlotogrod District, the sergeant, Wenzel Slama, suggested that he should join the savings-group of the older government officials. This group numbered bailiffs, legal clerks and even clerks of the courts among its members. They all played tarock and baccarat. Twice a week they gathered in the Café Bristol, the only café in the town of Zlotogrod. All the members of the group met Inspector Eibenschütz with mistrust, not only because he was a stranger and a newcomer but because they supposed him to be a thoroughly honest man who had not yet become a lost soul.