a perfect one not only architecturally but down to the last hygienically sociological detail. The Viennese are in fact the dirtiest people in Europe and it has been scientifically established that a Viennese uses a piece of soap only once a week, just as it has been scientifically established that he changes his underpants only once a week, just as he changes his shirt at most twice a week, and most Viennese change their bedlinen only once a month, Reger said. As for socks or stockings, a Viennese, on average, wears the same pair for twelve consecutive days, Reger said. In view of all this, manufacturers of soap and linen do worse business in Vienna, and of course throughout Austria, than anywhere else in Europe, Reger said. Instead the Viennese consume vast quantities of scent of the cheapest kind, Reger said, and they all reek from afar of violets or carnations or lilies of the valley or boxwood. And it is of course logical, from the external dirt of the Viennese, to draw conclusions about their inner dirt, Reger said, and the Viennese are in fact not much less dirty inside than outside and possibly, Reger said, I am saying possibly, that is not with complete certainty, he corrected himself, the Viennese are actually a lot dirtier inside than they are out. Everything suggests that they are a lot dirtier inside than out. But I do not feel like pursuing the subject, he then said, that would surely be a task for so-called sociologists, to do a study of the subject. Such a study would probably have to describe the dirtiest people in Europe, Reger suggested. You do not know how happy I am that there is this newly-built lavatory at the Ambassador; at the Kunsthistorisches Museum there is still the old one. As I am getting steadily older and not younger, I have lately also had to visit the lavatory at the Kunsthistorisches Museum with increasing frequency, Reger said, and this, under the conditions still prevailing here, is a nerve-racking unpleasant experience for me every day, because the lavatory at the Kunsthistorisches Museum is beneath contempt. Just as the lavatory at the Musikverein is beneath contempt. I even once permitted myself the joke of mentioning in one of my reviews for The Times that the lavatory at the Musikverein, that is in the supreme of all supreme Viennese temples of the Muses, defies description and that for this reason, for this scandalous lavatorial reason, Reger said, it always costs me some selfdenial to go to the Musikverein, and that I very often ask myself at home whether or not I should go to the Musikverein, since at my age and with my kidneys I have to go to the lavatory at least twice during an evening at the Musikverein. But each time I have in fact gone to the Musikverein, because of Mozart and Beethoven, because of Berg and Schoenberg, because of Bartók and Webern, overcoming my lavatory phobia. How exceptional the music played at the Musikverein must have been, Reger said, for me to go there even though I have to visit the Musikverein lavatory at least twice during the evening. Art is merciless, I tell myself each time I enter the Musikverein lavatory, and so I enter it, Reger said. With eyes closed and my nose pinched as far as possible I pass water at the Musikverein lavatory, he said, this is quite a special art of its own which I have mastered with virtuosity for quite a while. Apart from the fact that the Viennese lavatories and the Viennese pissoirs are altogether the dirtiest in the world, with the exception of the so-called developing countries, nothing in them actually works as far as the sanitary equipment is concerned, there is either no water coming out of the taps, or else the water does not drain away, or else it neither runs in nor drains away, often for months on end no one cares whether the lavatories and pissoirs are functioning or not, Reger said. Probably the only way to improve this appalling state of Viennese lavatories would be for the city or the state, or whoever, to enact the strictest lavatory and pissoir laws, such rigorously strict laws that hoteliers and innkeepers and café proprietors would really have to maintain their lavatories and pissoirs. The hoteliers and innkeepers and café proprietors will not by themselves change this state of affairs, they will perpetuate this whole lavatory and pissoir mess into all eternity unless they are compelled by the city or the state to put their lavatories and pissoirs in order. Vienna is the city of music, I once wrote in The Times, but it is also the city of the most nauseating lavatories and pissoirs. London by now is aware of this fact, but Vienna of course is not, because the Viennese do not read The Times, they content themselves with all the most primitive and most ghastly papers printed anywhere in the world for the purpose of stultification, in other words they content themselves with the papers ideally appropriate to the perverse emotional and intellectual state of the Viennese. The Russian group had gone. The settee in the Bordone Room was empty. Reger, as I had seen, had got up after Irrsigler had whispered something in his ear and had walked out, his black hat, which he had kept on all the time, on his head. There were now two minutes to go to half-past eleven. The Russian group was standing in the so-called Veronese Room, the Ukrainian interpreter was now talking about Veronese, but what she was saying about Veronese she had already said about Bordone and Tintoretto, the same trivialities, the same twaddle, in the same cadences in the same disagreeable voice, she was speaking not only the usual feminine Russian which basically always gets on my nerves, but she was moreover speaking in that, to me almost unbearable, piercing falsetto so that all that while I actually suffered an acute pain in my auditory canal. A hearing such as mine is sensitive and it scarcely tolerates especially disagreeable female voices in that certain falsetto pitch. Why Irrsigler had not been seen for some time, when normally, in accordance with regulations, he had to look into the Bordone Room every so often, I could not understand, it certainly seemed very odd to me that he had left the Bordone Room along with Reger and had not returned for such a long time. But as I have an appointment with Reger in just this Bordone Room at half-past eleven and as Reger is the most punctual and most reliable person I know, Reger will return to the Bordone Room at half-past eleven precisely, I reflected, and no sooner had I so reflected than Reger actually returned to the Bordone Room, though not, before finally sitting down again on the Bordone Room settee, without looking around him in all directions; anticipating this I had, as soon as I became aware of him returning to the Bordone Room, withdrawn back to the Sebastiano Room; I therefore once more posted myself in the corner of the Sebastiano Room into which I had been pushed by the uncouth Russian group and from where I was able to observe Reger who had now returned to the Bordone Room, that mistrustful Reger, as I was thinking, who was still looking around in all directions in order to feel quite safe and who, among other things, had suffered all his life from a positively fatal persecution mania, which of course had always been useful to him without being really dangerous to him or to anyone else. Reger was now again seated on the Bordone Room settee, studying the White-Bearded Man by Tintoretto. On the dot of half-past eleven he glanced at his pocket watch, which he had pulled from his jacket with lightning speed, and at the same moment I stepped out from the Sebastiano Room and into the Bordone Room and stopped in front of Reger. Terrible, those Russian groups, Reger said, terrible, I hate those Russian groups, he repeated. He commanded me formally to sit down on the Bordone Room settee, come on, sit down next to me, he said. I am happy with every punctual person, he said. The majority of people are unpunctual, that is terrible. But you have always been punctual,