Yellow lights were shining in the village cottages, bells were striking.

The Hotel Savoy seemed empty to me. Santschin was no longer there. I had only been twice to his room but it felt as if I had lost a dear good friend. What did I know of Santschin? He was a clown on stage and unhappy at home, a warm, uncouth man who had suffocated in the steam from laundries. For years he had breathed steam from dirty washing – if not in this very Hotel Savoy, then in others. In all the cities of the world there exist smaller or larger Savoys and everywhere on the top floors there are Santschins suffocating in the steam of strangers’ laundry.

The Hotel Savoy was now fully booked. Out of 864 rooms only one was empty, only one person missing, just Wladimir Santschin.

I sat below in the afternoon lounge. The doctor smiled at me, as if to say: do you see how right I was when I prophesied Santschin’s death? He smiled as if he incarnated medical science and was now celebrating his triumph. I drank a vodka and took a look at Ignatz. Was he Death or just an old lift-boy? What was he staring at with his beer-coloured yellow eyes?

Now I could feel mounting in me my hatred of the Hotel Savoy where one would live and another die, where Ignatz took trunks in pawn and girls had to strip naked before factory owners and house agents. Ignatz was like a living precept of this place, Death and a lift-boy.

I shall not, think I to myself, allow myself to be tempted by Stasia to stay on here.

I have cash enough for three days because, thanks to Glanz, I’ve earned some money. After that, I shall be buried like poor Santschin, away out on the far side of the cemetery, in clay soil full of earthworms. Worms are sliding now over Santschin’s coffin and in three days’ time, or eight, or ten, the wood will rot and so will the old black suit of which someone made him a present and which was already shining with wear.

Here stands Ignatz with his beer-coloured yellow eyes, who goes up and down with the lift and who also brought Santschin down for the last time.

That night it cost me considerable effort to go into my room. I hated the cupboard with the chamberpot, I hated the lampshade and the bell push and kicked over a chair so that it made a loud noise. I would happily have torn down Kaleguropulos’ notice which hung scornfully on the door, went to bed afraid and left the lights on all night long.

Santschin came to me in my dreams. As I watch, he stands up in his muddy grave and shaves himself. I hand him a bucket of water, he dips mud into it and smears his face with it as if it were shaving soap. ‘I can manage,’ says he, ‘don’t look at me,’ and I stare shamefacedly at his coffin standing in the corner.

Thereupon Santschin claps his hands and loud applause breaks out, the whole Hotel Savoy is clapping, Kanner and Neuner and Siegmund Fink and Frau Jetti Kupfer.

Before me stands my uncle Phöbus Bohlaug and whispers to me, ‘A lot of good you’ve done! You’re worth no more than your father! You good for nothing!’

XI

I was just on my way out of the hotel when I ran into Alexander Bohlaug. He was wearing a light coloured felt hat. Never in my life have I seen such a lovely felt hat, a poem of a hat in a delicate, pale, indescribable shade, carefully dented in the middle. If I were wearing this hat I should not think of raising it, so I forgive Alexander for not doing so. He just raises his forefinger to the brim, like an officer returning the salute of an army cook.

I admire Alexander’s canary yellow gloves as much as I do his hat: to look at this man is to be convinced that he has come post haste from the most Parisian quarter of Paris.

‘Good morning,’ says Alexander, smiling sleepily, ‘what is Stasia up to, Fraulein Stasia?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know? You are amusing! Yesterday you were walking behind the coffin with the lady, as if you were her cousin.’

‘The business with the donkey is enchanting,’ says Alexander, taking off a glove and fanning the air with it.

I say nothing.

‘Listen, cousin,’ says Alexander, ‘I would like to rent a pied-à-terre in the Hotel Savoy. I don’t feel free at home. Often …’

Oh yes, I understand. Alexander laid his hand on my shoulder and propelled me into the hotel. I disliked this, being superstitious and not liking to go back into an hotel which I have scarcely left.

I have no reason not to go with Alexander and am curious to know what number he will acquire. I reflect that the rooms to the right and left of Stasia are occupied.

Only one room is free, the one Santschin lived in – his wife is already packing, on her way to relations in the country.

For a moment I am delighted that ‘little Alexander’ from Paris will be living in the steam from Santschin’s laundry, even if only for a couple of hours or a couple of nights a week.

‘I will make you a proposal,’ says Alexander, ‘I’ll pay the rent for a private room for you, or pay you the rent for two months or, if you wish to leave our town, I’ll pay your fare to Vienna, Berlin or even Paris, and you turn your room over to me. Is that a fair bargain?’

This way out appealed to me very much but nonetheless my cousin’s offer surprised me. Now I had everything I needed, the journey onward and subsistence money. I no longer had to depend on Phöbus Bohlaug’s goodwill and I was a free man.

All my complications were rapidly resolved. My designs were marvellously fulfilled.