In spite of the terrible dread with which she was seized, she said she was never in the slightest doubt that the other could only be part of her inmost self.”

“Incredible”, muttered Prokop, lost in thought. Vrieslander also seemed engrossed in his ruminations.

Then there was a knock on the door and, without a word, the old woman who brings me water and anything else I need in the evening came in, put the earthenware jug on the floor and went out. We all looked up, staring round the room as if we had just woken, but for a long time no one spoke. It was as if some new influence had slipped in through the door behind the old woman and we needed time to get used to it.

“Yes!” said Zwakh suddenly, apropros of nothing, “that Rosina with the red hair, she has one of those faces that you can’t get out your mind, that keep on popping up all over the place. That frozen, grinning smile has accompanied me throughout my life; first her grandmother, then her mother! Always the same face, not the slightest change. The same name, Rosina, each was the resurrection of the previous one.”

“Isn’t Rosina the daughter of Wassertrum, the junkdealer?” I asked.

“So people say”, replied Zwakh. “But Aaron Wassertrum has any number of sons and daughters people don’t know about. As for Rosina’s mother, no one knows who her father was either, nor what became of her; she had a child when she was fifteen and no one’s seen her since. As far as I can remember, her disappearance was connected with a murder, of which she was the cause and which took place in this house.

Just like Rosina today, her image used to haunt the minds of all the young men. One of them’s still alive; I see him quite often, but I’ve forgotten his name. The others did not live long. In fact, all I can remember from those days are brief episodes that drift through my memory like faded pictures. For example, there was a simple-minded man who used to go from bar to bar at night, cutting out silhouettes of the customers from black paper for a few kreutzer. And whenever they managed to get him drunk, he would become unutterably sad, and sob and weep as he snipped away at a girl’s pert profile, always the same one, until his stock of paper was all used up. I have long since forgotten the details, but I think it was suggested that, while still not much more than a child, he had fallen so deeply in love with a certain Rosina – presumably the grandmother of the current one – that he had gone out of his mind. Yes, when I count back over the years, it can have been none other than the grandmother of the current Rosina.”

Zwakh stopped talking and leant back in his chair.

In this house, destiny seems to run round and round in circles, always returning to the same point. As this thought came to mind, it was accompanied by a horrible image: a cat with one half of its brain damaged staggering round and round in a circle …

I was suddenly aware of Vrieslander’s high voice saying, “And now for the head”, and he took a round piece of wood from his pocket and began carving it. My eyes grew heavy with tiredness and I pushed my chair back out of the light. The water for the punch was bubbling in the kettle, and Joshua Prokop refilled our glasses. Softly, very softly the sound of the dance music could be heard through the window; sometimes it would fade away and then return, depending on whether the wind dropped it on the way or carried it up to us.

After a while I heard Prokop ask me whether I wasn’t at least going to say cheers, but I gave no answer. I had so completely lost the will-power to make my limbs move, that it did not even occur to me to open my mouth. I thought I was asleep, so rock-like was the calm that had taken possession of me. I had to look across at the glitter of Vrieslander’s shining knife as it restlessly sliced tiny shavings off the wood to convince myself that I was awake.

Far away, I could hear Zwakh’s rumbling voice telling all kinds of strange stories about marionettes and recounting the elaborate fairytales he thought up for his puppet-plays. He came round to talking about Dr. Savioli again and the fine lady, the wife of some aristocrat, who secretly visited Savioli in his hide-out in the studio.

And once again in my mind’s eye I saw the mocking, triumphant expression on Wassertrum’s face.

I wondered whether I shouldn’t tell Zwakh what I had seen, then I decided it was of such trifling importance it wasn’t worth the effort. Anyway, I realised that at the moment my will-power would not be strong enough to enable me to speak.

Suddenly the three of them round the table gave me a sharp look and Prokop said quite loud, “He’s fallen asleep”, so loud, indeed, that it almost sounded as if it were meant as a question. Then they went on talking in subdued voices, and I realised they were talking about me. Vrieslander’s knife went on dancing up and down; it caught the light from the lamp and the reflection burnt into my eyes. Someone said something like “be mad’, and I listened to what they were saying to each other.

“Topics such as the Golem shouldn’t be mentioned when Pernath’s around”, said Prokop reproachfully. “When he told us earlier on about the Book of Ibbur, we just sat still and asked no questions.