It was Herr Kanner, a manufacturer of aniline, as Glanz explained to me. ‘Tonka,’ said he, making a gesture of admiration with his thumb and forefinger, and reaching for Tonka’s hips with his left hand.

‘Where are the girls hiding?’ shouts Jakob Streimer. ‘What kind of service is this? Here sit Herr Neuner and Anselm Schwadron, and you treat them as if they were … I don’t know who …’ Ignatz came gliding across the room and brought five of the naked girls, placing them at five tables. Frau Kupfer said, ‘We hadn’t reckoned on so many guests.’

Anselm Schwadron and Philipp Neuner, the manufacturers, stood up together, beckoned two girls over and ordered sloe gin cocktails.

A guest came in and was greeted with a great deal of noise, the girls seemed to be forgotten and sat on their little chairs like lost property.

The guest announces, ‘Bloomfield is in Berlin today!’

‘In Berlin,’ they all repeat.

‘When’s he arriving?’ asks Kanner of the aniline factory.

‘Any day now,’ says the newcomer.

‘And my workmen have to go on strike just at this moment,’ says Philipp Neuner, a big German with reddish blond colouring, a bull neck and a round, forceful, childish face.

‘Compromise, Neuner,’ says Kanner.

‘Twenty per cent rise for the married men?’ asks Neuner. ‘Can you afford that?’

‘I give a rise for each child born,’ caps Kanner, ‘and since then a rash of children has broken out among my workmen. I wish all my enemies had such a fertile work force. I always warn these men that they are fooling themselves, but a workman will lose his wits for two per cent on his salary and land me with a swarm of children.’

‘Listen to him, yet!’ says Streimer in a bored voice.

‘A manufacturer doesn’t negotiate! Remember that!’ snarls Philipp Neuner, who once served in the Guards with a one year commission.

‘A duellist,’ says Glanz.

‘More so than a manufacturer,’ says Streimer, ‘but this is not Prussia.’

Ignatz rushes in with a telegram. For two or three seconds he relishes the company’s silent curiosity and then speaks so softly that he can hardly be heard.

‘A telegram from Herr Bloomfield. He is coming on Thursday and is booking room 13!’

‘Thirteen? Bloomfield is superstitious,’ Kanner explains.

‘We only have a 12A and a 14,’ says Ignatz.

‘Paint on a 13,’ says Jakob Streimer.

‘Bullseye! Bravo Streimer!’ cries Neuner, appeased and holding out his hand.

‘I’m just a negotiator,’ said Streimer and put his hand in his pocket.

‘No quarrelling please,’ says Kanner, ‘not with Bloomfield coming.’

I go up to the seventh floor and it suddenly seems to me that Stasia must be there to meet me. Instead Hirsch Fisch comes out of his room holding his chamberpot.

‘Bloomfield is coming! Can you believe it?’

I no longer hear him.

IX

Santschin has suddenly fallen ill.

‘Suddenly,’ everyone says, unaware that Santschin has been for ten years unremittingly on the road to death. To the very day. In the prison camp at Simbirsk a man died suddenly like that, a year ago. A little Jew. He dropped dead one afternoon while he was washing his mess kit. He lay on his stomach, all four limbs extended, and was dead. At the time someone said, ‘Ephraim Krojanker died suddenly.’

‘Number 748 has suddenly fallen ill,’ say the floor waiters. There were no names whatever on the top three storeys of the hotel. Everyone was known by room numbers.

Number 748 is Santschin, Wladimir Santschin. He lies half dressed on the bed, smoking, and he does not want the doctor.

‘It’s a hereditary illness,’ he says, ‘a question of the lungs. Mine might perhaps have stayed sound because I was a hearty fellow when I was born and screamed so loudly that the midwife had to block her ears. But out of anger or because there was nowhere to put anything in that little room she laid me on the window sill. Since then I’ve coughed.’

Santschin lies barefoot on the bed with only his trousers on. I observe that his feet are dirty and that his toes are disfigured by corns and all sorts of distortions. His feet remind one of odd tree roots in a forest. His big toes are knobbly and crooked.

He wants no doctor because his father and his grandfather also died without having a doctor.

Hirsch Fisch arrives, offering a health-giving tea which he hopes to sell at a price which is ‘good value’.

When he sees that no one wants his tea he asks me to step outside, ‘Perhaps you’d like to buy a lottery ticket?’

‘Let me have a look,’ I say.

‘The draw is next Friday. The numbers are certainties.’ They were 5, 8 and 3.

Stasia rushes by breathlessly, she could not even wait for Ignatz with the lift. Her face is flushed and strands of hair fly about it.

‘You must give me money, Herr Fisch,’ she says, ‘Santschin must have the doctor.’

‘Then buy the tea, too,’ says Fisch and gives me a sly glance.

‘I’ll pay the doctor,’ I say, and buy the tea.

‘Just keep calm, Herr Santschin,’ I say in Russian, ‘Stasia has gone to fetch the doctor.’

‘Why does nobody tell me?’ Santschin goes on. With some difficulty I push him back onto the bed. ‘We must open the windows, woman, do you hear me? We must empty the bucket and clear out the ash. The doctor will accuse me of smoking, naturally. All doctors are the same about that.