The thing is that Tutti still has in her possession a suitcase full of my belongings. Perhaps you could get the suitcase out to me tomorrow morning, while Tutti’s asleep or gone out?”

The elderly gent seems to take it for granted that Enno will be spending the night with Tutti.

“No,” says Enno. “I won’t do that. I don’t get involved in business like that. I’m sorry.”

“But I can tell you exactly what’s in the suitcase. It really is my suitcase, you know!”

“Why don’t you ask Tutti yourself, then?”

“Hah! To hear you talk,” says the man, a little offended, “it seems you can’t know her very well. She’s some woman, I thought you knew. Not just hair on her chest, but, my God, hedgehog bristles! She bites and spits like a gorilla—that’s why they call her the Gorilla!”

And while the elderly man is painting this glowing portrait of her, Enno Kluge remembers with a start that Tutti really is like that, and that the last time he left her, he left with her purse and her ration cards. She really does bite and spit like a gorilla when she’s in a temper, and presumably she will vent her temper on Enno the moment she sees him. His whole idea of being able to spend the night with her was a fantasy, a mirage…

And suddenly, from one moment to the next, Enno Kluge decides that from now on his life is going to be different: no more women, no more petty thieving, no more betting. He has forty-six marks in his pocket, enough to tide him over till next payday. Battered as he is, he’s going to give himself tomorrow off, but the day after he’ll start working again properly. They’ll soon see his worth, and not send him away to the Front again. After all he’s been through in the past twenty-four hours, a gorilla tantrum of Tutti’s is the last thing he can risk.

“Yes,” says Enno Kluge pensively to the man. “You’re right: that’s Tutti, all right. And because that’s the way she is, I’ve decided not to go and see her after all. I’m going to spend the night in the little hotel over the way. Good night, sir… I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped…”

And with that he hobbles across the road, and in spite of his battered appearance and lack of luggage, he manages to wheedle a bed out of the impoverished-looking clerk for three marks. In the tiny, stinking hole of a room he crawls into bed, whose sheets have already served many before him. He stretches out and says to himself, I’m going to turn over a new leaf. I’ve been a mean sonofabitch, especially to Eva, but from this minute I’m going to be a changed man. I deserved the beating I got, and now I’m going to be different…

He lies perfectly still in the narrow bed, his hands pressed against his trouser seams, at attention, as it were, staring at the ceiling. He is trembling with cold, with exhaustion, with pain. But he doesn’t feel any of it. He thinks about what a respected and well-liked worker he used to be, and now he’s just a nasty little creep, the sort that people spit in front of in the street. No, his beating has straightened him out: from now on, everything’s going to be different. And as he pictures the difference to himself, he falls asleep.

At this time, all the Persickes are also asleep, Frau Gesch and Frau Kluge are asleep, the Borkhausens are asleep—Emil silently allowed Otti to slip in beside him.

Frau Rosenthal is asleep, frightened and breathing hard. Little Trudel Baumann is asleep. This afternoon, she was able to whisper to one of her coconspirators that she had an urgent message for them, and they’ve all arranged to meet discreetly tomorrow at the Elysium. She is a little worried, because she will have to admit to her gabbiness, but for the moment she is asleep.

Frau Anna Quangel is lying in bed in the dark, and her husband, as always at this time of night, is standing in his workshop directing everyone’s tasks.