Elegante Welt, even here at the castle I didn’t live as the others did, four or eight to a room, no, I had my own little room, where I lived alone with my husband, so really I was living here just as I had in the brewery, in our four rooms … Now the sun came out, the rain spilled down on the little town, someone opened a window in the corridor and the fluttering curtains filtered the damp, fragrant air, the frescoes on the walls and ceilings blazed with color, I walked across the polished floor of the corridor, which was bathed in pink and gold sunbeams, and peered carefully and with emotion into the darkened hall, gradually I could make out the eight hospital beds where the old women lay, old women who no longer had the strength to get up, they pushed themselves up on their elbows, but then collapsed and sank back into their pillows, they lay there under a light blanket, which weighed them down like a white tombstone, a monument … But high above them was an enormous fresco that stretched to all four corners of the old ballroom ceiling, a fresco of a group of nude young women, their eyes filled with longing, who gazed toward where their lover might be, a young man who wasn’t visible just yet, but whose arrival they sensed, I looked alternately at the ceiling and the beds, where the old women wiped their mouths, and their eyes looked at me reproachfully, they were clearly envious of me, that I could still walk, that I could take care of myself, they even wished I’d ridicule them, if only with my eyes, so that they could tell me everything they thought about themselves, the retirement home and life in general … But above them were all those naked women, floating and swimming around in pure sensuality, women who were unable and had no reason to conceal what it was they were swimming in, a succulent sea of men’s gazes … And the women in the fresco on the ceiling of the ward for bedridden women, these beauties were encircled by divine cupids, plump, naked children, cherubs, who scattered flowers over the lovers from a cornucopia, oleander blossoms and camellias and flowers that grew in the Mediterranean and that I used to grow in flowerpots on the windowsill … Cupids, angels, flitting across the fresco like sperm, like the beginning of a love from which beautiful children are born … I looked at the fresco and was astounded by the shameless sensuality of those nude young women, and I wished, and perhaps the eight old women lying in their white beds gazing upward wished too, that one day, when the time had come, one of the women on the ceiling would reach out her hands and offer me her fingers to pull myself up on, out of my deathbed and into that womanly heaven, into their midst … just as when my mother lay dying and imagined she heard the thundering of an organ and that Mother Mary leaned down to her from the heavens, brushing against her with her blue robes, and reached out her hand and pulled her upward … And I backed out of the ward for bedridden women, my eyes were burning, and in the corridor I pushed aside the nylon curtains and looked out the third-floor window and across the river, to where the beige brewery rose, the place where I’d been happy, but what is it, what was it, that happiness of mine? Unhappiness was always just around the corner … The assistant brewer and his wife had left the brewery and after that Francin was fired too. He had objected quietly … But I’ve never played the boss, have I? And the chairman of the Council of Workers answered benignly … No, Mr. Francin, you’ve never played the boss, you’ve always been kind and friendly to us, but that only works against you now, because by treating us decently you took the edge off the class struggle, understand? Francin shook his head and said … No, I don’t understand, but I do understand that I’ll have to get used to the situation … And the chairman of the Council of Workers said, relieved … Then I suggest you begin by immediately clearing out the garage, your car is in there, on wooden blocks, you’ll have to move it, along with all those jerry cans and spare parts, otherwise we’ll do it ourselves and dump the whole mess outside the brewery wall … And Francin walked into his office for the last time, emptied the drawers of his American desk, the contents spilled out onto the floor, the workers’ director, laughing, handed him the fallen pencils and pens, the members of the Council of Workers came in to have a look and were delighted when Francin knocked over the ink pots and bottles of gum arabic, no one offered to help, everyone just stood there staring at him, as if they were witnessing a train collision, a car crash, a natural disaster, no one felt sorry for him, no one spoke to him, because they saw and were viewing the scene they had always dreamt of, the scene in which the brewery manager, his head bowed in shame, leaves to make way for the victorious new director, who is accountable only to them, the workers, the Council of Workers … And when Francin had carried away all his writing supplies in a laundry basket, including the three elbow pads he used to keep his shirt clean, no one offered to hold the door open for him, so that Francin, both hands clutching the handles of the wicker basket and his chin pressed against the stack of old calendars that reached to his neck, had to put the basket down on the ground, open the door slightly, hold it open with the tip of his shoe and then lift the basket and open the door the rest of the way with his knee and slip outside … And when he returned to pick up his last few things, he also took the two old potbellied kerosene lamps from the cabinet, the ones with the round wicks, lamps that hummed when they burned and spread such a delicious warmth over your hands as you wrote … Then the workers’ director spoke … Those lamps are no longer yours, they’re listed in the brewery inventory, which we now own lock, stock and barrel … He puffed out his chest and Francin blushed and asked … What if I buy the lamps, those lamps were witness to my golden times, when I was happy … But the workers’ director was firm … The lamps are ours, you’ve already made enough of a fortune with this brewery, you had that villa built, that castle on the river, while the workers were starving … but then again, what do