Even today I shudder when I think back to another one where I once lived; everything was so impeccable there you wanted to cry. But it wasn’t like that at the boardinghouse I am talking about. When I first stepped into the office and asked for the man of the house, his mother replied: “Oh, he can’t make it now; it’s his corns, you know!” I’d like to call him Mr. Nevermore. His mother, Mrs. Nevermore, was a matron of mighty proportions whose flesh had slipped back a bit over the years, so that her corset traced an uneven ring in the air around her. Over her corset a blouse was spanned; somehow she reminded me of an overturned, abandoned umbrella, the kind you sometimes find in vacant lots. Her hair, as far as I could tell, was never combed between Easter and October, that is, outside the tourist season. During the season it seemed to be white. Another one of her idiosyncrasies involved a skirt with an unusually long slit that stayed open from top to bottom when it was hot. Perhaps it was cooler like that, or perhaps it was a special feature of the house. For even Laura, the chambermaid, who served at the table, put on a clean blouse which, for this express purpose, closed at the back; but during the time I spent in Rome only the bottom two of all the hooks were ever done, so that above this Laura’s camisole and also her lovely back were presented on a chalice.

Still they were outstanding hosts, the Nevermores; their old-fashioned, luxurious rooms were well-kept, and whatever they cooked had a special touch. During meals Mr. Nevermore himself stood by as the head waiter beside the serving table and supervised the staff, which consisted, however, only of Laura. Once I heard him complain to her: “Mr. Meier fetched a spoon and the salt for himself!” Frightened, Laura whispered: “Did he say anything?” And with the quiet reserve of a royal steward, Mr. Nevermore replied: “Mr. Meier never says anything!” To such pinnacles of his profession could he raise himself. He was, so far as I can remember, tall, lean, and bald, with a watery look in his eyes and a prickly stubble on his cheeks that slowly shifted upwards and downwards when he bent over toward a guest with a bowl to discreetly point out something particularly delicious. They simply had their own ways, the Nevermores.

And I jotted down all these little details because even then I had the feeling that there will never be the likes of such an establishment again. I certainly don’t mean to imply that there was something particularly rare or precious about the place; it merely had something to do with a coincidence of time, a phenomenon difficult to describe. If twenty clocks are hanging on one wall and you suddenly look at them, every pendulum is in a different place; they all tell the same time and yet don’t, and the real time flows somewhere in between. This can have an uncanny effect. All of us who at the time boarded at the Pension Nevermore had our own particular reasons for being there; we all had something more to do in Rome than just spending time, and since the summer heat only permitted us to carry out a tiny portion of our task each day, we met each other again and again at our home away from home. There was, for instance, the little old Swiss gentleman; he was here to represent the interests of a Protestant sect, not much larger than himself, a group that wanted to build a Protestant chapel in papal Rome, of all places. Despite the burning sun, he always wore a black suit; on the second vest button lower down hung a black medallion in which a golden cross was set. His beard really sat to the right and left of him; it sprouted so thinly from his chin that you only noticed it from a distance. In the proximity of his cheeks, this beard completely lost itself, just like on his upper lip, which was naturally beardless. The hair on this old gentleman’s head was blond-gray and unbelievably soft; and his complexion might well have been rosy, but since it was white, it was as white as freshly fallen snow, in which a pair of gold-rimmed glasses are lying. Once when we were all chatting in the parlor, this old gentleman said to Mme.