As I closed my door I thought I saw a shadow in the corridor. I pulled the door open, so that the light from my room shone into the corridor. But no one had been there.

Overhead the pacing had stopped. The girl was probably asleep by now. I lay down on the bed in my clothes, and drew the curtains back. The soft greyness of first light slid gently over the room’s furnishings.

The inescapable onset of morning was announced by a bell ringing and the rough shout of a man’s voice in some unrecognisable language.

A floor waiter came, wearing a green baize apron. His rolled up sleeves revealed his muscular forearms, dark with curly hair as far as his elbows. Evidently maid service was only for the first three floors. The coffee was better than might have been expected, but what was the use of that without a maid in a white cap? This was a disappointment and I wondered whether there were any possibility of moving to the third floor.

IV

Phöbus Bohlaug sits in front of a gleaming copper samovar, eating ham and scrambled egg and drinking tea with milk. ‘My doctor has prescribed eggs for me,’ he says, wiping his moustache with a napkin and proffering his face to be kissed as he sits in the chair. His face smells of shaving soap and eau de Cologne. It is smooth, soft and warm. He wears a wide bath robe and must just have come out of his shower. On a chair lies a newspaper and a heart-shaped piece of his hairy chest is visible since he has not yet put on a shirt.

He makes the point once for all, ‘You look fine.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Since yesterday.’

‘Why have you come today?’

‘I came yesterday, but I heard that you had company, and wearing this suit I didn’t want …’

‘Good Lord – it’s a perfectly good suit! No one is ashamed these days. Millionaires don’t wear better suits than that these days! Even I only have three suits. A suit costs a fortune.’

‘I didn’t know that. I’ve only just come back from prisoner-of-war camp.’

‘Did you get on all right? Everyone says it’s pretty good in prison camp.’

‘It was pretty bad, too, at times, Uncle Phöbus.’

‘I see, and now do you mean to continue your journey?’

‘Yes. I need money.’

‘I need money, too,’ joked Phöbus Bohlaug, ‘we all need money.’

‘Probably you have some.’

‘Have I? How do you know I have? I came back from being on the run and pulled my affairs together again. In Vienna I gave your father money – his illness cost me a pretty penny – and I raised a tombstone to your late mother, a lovely tombstone – even then it cost me around two thousand.’

‘My father died in a hospital for incurables.’

‘But your mother, bless her, died in a nursing home.’

‘What are you shouting for? Don’t excite yourself, Phöbus!’ says Regina. She comes out of the bedroom, holding her corsets in her hand, garters dangling.

‘This is Gabriel.’ Phöbus introduced us.

I kissed Regina’s hand. She sympathised with me about my sufferings during imprisonment, and about the war, the times, the younger generation, and her husband.

‘Little Alexander is here, otherwise we would have asked you to stay with us,’ she said.

Little Alexander appears in blue pyjamas, bows and clicks his bedroom slippers. During the war he had transferred opportunely from the cavalry to the service corps. He is now in Paris, studying ‘export’, as Phöbus has it, and is spending his leave at home.

‘You’re putting up at the Savoy?’ asks Alexander with the assurance of a man of the world. ‘There’s a beautiful girl staying there’ – and he winks in the direction of his father – ‘her name is Stasia and she dances at the Variétés; unapproachable, I can tell you. I wanted to take her to Paris with me’ – he moved nearer to me – ‘but she says she’ll go on her own, when it pleases her. A fine girl.’

I stayed to lunch. Phöbus’ daughter came with her husband. The son-in-law ‘helped in the business’. He was a well set up, good-humoured, reddish blond man with a bull neck, who spooned away bravely at his soup, left a clean plate and never opened his mouth while the conversation rolled over him.

‘I am just thinking,’ said Frau Regina, ‘that your blue suit would fit Gabriel.’

‘I have a blue suit, yet?’ asked Phöbus.

‘Yes,’ said Regina, ‘I’ll fetch it.’

I tried in vain to fend it off. Alexander clapped me on the shoulder, the son-in-law said ‘quite right’ and Regina brought the blue suit. I try it on in Alexander’s room, in front of the big standing mirror.