Looking troubled as he gazed at him through bloodshot eyes, the landlord said: ‘You never should have done that, Mr. Doll. You’ll turn the whole town against you now! A gentleman doesn’t do that kind of thing — hitting people! Well, maybe it’ll all come right in the end …’

But unfortunately it didn’t all come right. Instead it was the landlord who was right: Doll forfeited all remaining sympathy in the town, and he became what he would forever remain: the most hated man far and wide.

Dr. Wilhelm exploited the situation with devilish cunning; on this occasion, his bilious brain counselled him most wisely. After Doll’s departure he had carried on weeping, and averred in a sobbing voice that he could not live with this dishonour. He would have to take his own life, and on his birthday, of all days …

They gave him wine to drink to calm him down — a great deal of wine — and then they took him home. But the news of his public humiliation soon went round the whole town, and aroused sympathy even in places where he had never attracted any before. His reiterated lament — that it was all so much worse because it had happened on his birthday — was not without effect: days later, he was still getting presents, in the form of food, wine, and schnaps, from people who would never have dreamed of marking the old sponger’s birthday, were it not for this incident.

Meanwhile the war dragged on — another year, another two years. People had more important things to worry about now than Doll and his despicable conduct.

Doll himself had other things to think about, too. This was the year in which his marriage was dissolved. He had many cares and worries, and so it was all the more painful to feel the old hatred, which he thought he had put behind him, welling up within him again at the sight of the vet, still as strong as ever, undiminished by the passage of time, still the same old feelings of humiliation …

And then the young woman turned up in the town again after a long absence. This time, she was dressed in black. Doll learned that she had been a widow for quite some time. When people heard this news, they studied his face with eager curiosity, but failed to detect anything but indifference. And indifference was exactly what Doll felt. If he had felt something more for this woman two years previously, in a moment of passion, all that was long since forgotten, and he no longer remembered …

But life in a small town is lived according to different rules. In a city, people’s paths cross and they never meet again. But here was this outsider, Doll, a man who, despite his money, only aroused suspicion with his high-handed ways. And now there was this young woman, clearly widowed, twenty-three years old, no more, though she was already the mother of a five-year-old child, wearing her widow’s weeds with painted fingernails and dark-red lipstick. The small town knew what to make of such a woman, just as it knew all about Doll!

Faced with a united front against them, excluded from the life of the community, spied upon, suspected, maligned, they were bound to meet and find common cause sooner or later.

‘Hello!’ said Doll nervously. ‘It’s a long time since we last saw each other …’

‘Yes’, she replied. ‘And a lot has happened since then.’

‘Of course!’ he remembered, and looked at the young woman. He thought her even more beautiful in her widow’s weeds. ‘You lost your husband …’

‘Yes’, she said. ‘It’s been very difficult at times. My husband was ill for more than a year, and I nursed him myself throughout. Every time the siren went, I had to get myself and him down to the basement, and him a sick man, the apartment half-gutted by fire …’

‘Difficult times!’ he agreed, and then laughed scornfully at the inquisitive look they got from a passing local, the wife of a naval lieutenant. ‘But this place hasn’t changed — by this evening, we’ll be the talk of the town again.’

‘Yes, I’m sure!’ she agreed. ‘Will you walk with me a little? If they’re going to gossip, let’s give them something to gossip about! Would you like to have lunch with me today? I’ve just got a chicken from a farmer — that way’, she smiled, ‘you won’t need ration coupons.’

‘All right!’ he replied.