“Of course not,” he says.

I ask him when Siegmund’s coming. He’s not sure.

So there you are: of course the engineers don’t deliberately drive their locomotives into each other head-on; but why eke do they do it? I’ll tell you why. That monstrous network of tracks, switches, and signals that covers the whole globe drains our conscience of all its power. Because if we had the strength to check ourselves just once more, to go over everything we had to do once more, we would do what was necessary every time and avoid the disaster. The disaster is that we halt before the next-to-last step!

Of course we can’t expect Walter to realize this at once. I think that I’m capable of achieving this immense power of conscience, and I had to shut my eyes so Walter wouldn’t see the lightning flash in them.

For all these reasons I regard it as my duty to get to know Moosbrugger.

You know my brother Siegmund is a doctor. He’ll help me.

I was waiting for him.

Last Sunday he came.

When he’s introduced to someone he says: “But I’m neither…nor musical.” That’s his sort of joke. Just because his name is Siegmund he doesn’t want to be thought to be either a Jew or musical. He was conceived in a Wagnerian ecstasy. You can’t get him to give a sensible answer to anything. All the time I was talking to him he only muttered some nonsense or other. He threw a rock at a bird, he bored holes in the snow with his stick. He wanted to shovel out a path too; he often comes to work in our garden, because, as he says, he doesn’t like staying home with his wife and children. Funny that you’ve never met him. “You two have the Fleurs du mal and a vegetable garden!” he says. I pulled his ears and punched him in the ribs, but it did no good whatsoever.

Then we went indoors to Walter, who of course was sitting at the piano, and Siegmund had his jacket under his arm and his hands were all dirty.

“Siegmund,” I said to him in front of Walter, “when do you understand a piece of music?”

He grinned and answered: “Absolutely never.”

“When you play it inside yourself,’ I said. “When do you understand another human being? When you feel with him. Feel with him.” That’s a great mystery, Ulrich! You have to be like him: not by putting yourself into him but by taking him out into yourself! We redeem outward: that’s the strong way! We fall in with people’s actions, but we fill them out and rise above them.

Sorry to be writing so much about this. But the trains collide because our conscience doesn’t take that final step. Worlds don’t materialize unless we pull them. More of this another time. The man of genius is duty bound to attack! He has the mysterious power required. But Siegmund, the coward, looked at his watch and mentioned supper, because he had to go home. You know, Siegmund always tries to find the balance between the blasé attitude of the seasoned physician who has no very high opinion of the ability of his profession, and the blasé attitude of the contemporary person who has transcended the intellectual and already rediscovered the hygiene of the simple life and gardening. But Walter shouted: “Oh, for God’s sake, why are you two talking such nonsense? What do you want with this Moosbrugger anyway?” And that was a help.

Because then Siegmund said: “He’s neither insane nor a criminal, that’s true. But what if Clarisse has a notion that she can do something for him? I’m a doctor, and I have to let the hospital chaplain imagine the same sort of thing! Redeem him, she says! Well, why not let her at least see him?”

He brushed off his trousers, adopted an air of serenity, and washed his hands; we worked it all out over supper.

Now we’ve already been to see Dr. Friedenthal; he’s the deputy medical officer Siegmund knows. Siegmund said straight out that he’d take the responsibility for bringing me in under some sort of false pretenses, as a writer who would like to see the man.

But that was a mistake, because when it was put to him so openly, Dr. Friedenthal could only refuse. “Even if you were Selma Lagerlof I’d be delighted to see you, of course, as I am in any case, but here we recognize only a scientific interest.”

It was rather fun to be called a writer.