White-Bearded Man and said: forty years after the end of the war conditions in Austria have again reached their darkest moral low, that is what is so depressing. Such a beautiful country and such an utterly brutal and vile and self-destructive society. What is so appalling about it is that one can only be a perplexed spectator of the catastrophe and is unable to do anything about it, Reger said. Reger gazed at the White-Bearded Man and said: every other day I visit my wife's grave and I stand there by her grave for half an hour and I feel nothing. That is the strange thing, that I think of nothing but my wife more or less the whole time and when I stand there by her grave I feel nothing relating to her. I stand there and actually do not feel anything relating to her. Only when I walk away from the grave again do I once more experience the horror of her having left me. I always think I visit her grave in order to be particularly close to her, but when I am standing there by her grave I do not even feel anything relating to her. But I have made it a habit to visit my wife's grave every other day, the grave which one day will also be my own, Reger said. When I recall the ghastly circumstances connected with her funeral I still feel sick today. Time and again the printer printed the In Memoriam sheet, which I had ordered, wrongly, first too boldly, then too faintly, first with too many commas, then with too few, he said, each time I got him to show me the proof everything was wrong, it was enough to drive me to despair. At the peak of my despair I said to the printer that surely I had given him a very precise copy, except that the proofs never followed my copy and that everything was always wrong in the proofs. Whereupon the printer said to me that he knew how such an In Memoriam notice should be printed, not I, he knew how the text should be set, not I, he knew where the commas belonged, not I. But I did not give in and eventually I held in my hands the In Memoriam notice I wanted; but I had to go to the printing shop five times, Reger said, in order to get an In Memoriam notice the way I wanted it. Printers are conceited people who claim to be right even when they have long realized that they are not right. You must not tangle with printers, Reger said, they get bolshie at once and threaten to chuck everything unless you bow to their blinkered ideas. But I have never bowed to printers, Reger said. There was only a single sentence on the In Memoriam, Reger said, only the place and date of my wife's death, yet I had to go to the print shop five times and actually had to argue with the printer. My wife did not really want to have an In Memoriam notice, we had agreed on that, but nevertheless I had an In Memoriam printed, Reger said; however, I never posted off a single In Memoriam because suddenly, just as I was about to post them, it seemed nonsense to me to post the In Memoriam notices. I merely put a single brief sentence into the papers, simply that my wife had died, Reger said. People are terribly extravagant when someone dies, I kept everything as simple as humanly possible, Reger said, although of course I am not sure today that I did the right thing, I have continual doubts in that respect, these doubts have been assailing me every day since my wife's death, not one day without these doubts, that wears you down in the long run, Reger said. As for the estate, there was not the slightest problem, as she had appointed me in her will as, so to speak, her sole heir, just as in turn I appointed her my sole heir in my will. Such a death, no matter how painful, even if one believes it would choke one, also has its ridiculous side. The terrible, after all; is always ridiculous, Reger said. Basically my wife's funeral was not only a simple funeral but also a depressing one, Reger said. We hope for a simple funeral, with as few people as possible, Reger said, and find we have merely arranged a depressing one. We say: no music, we say: no speeches, and we think that will be the simplest and the easiest way for us to survive, and yet it depresses us, profoundly, Reger said. Only seven or eight people, really only the very closest, if possible no relatives and only the very closest, that is what we think, and then what we get is just these very closest only, whom moreover we have told, no flowers, nothing, and then everything turns out very depressing. We walk behind the coffin and everything is depressing. Everything happens very quickly, it hardly takes three-quarters of an hour and it depresses us and we believe that it took an eternity, Reger said. I visit my wife's grave and I feel absolutely nothing. At home to this day I still feel like howling at least once every day, he said, believe it or not, but by my wife's grave I feel nothing at all. I stand there, tearing up blades of grass, making those nervous ridiculous tearing movements which I know are only a pathological gratification of the nerves and look about at the other tasteless graves everywhere, each grave is more tasteless than the next, Reger said. It is in the cemeteries that we see, quite brutally, the extreme tastelessness of humanity. Only grass grows on our grave and there is no name on our grave, Reger said, we agreed on that, my wife and I. No sentence, nothing. The stonemasons disfigure the cemeteries and the so-called sculptors put the crown of kitsch on them everywhere, Reger said. But you do get a marvelous view of Grinzing from my wife's grave, and of the Kahlenberg beyond. And of the Danube below. The grave is situated so high you can look down on Vienna from it. It certainly makes no difference where a person is buried, but if he happens to own a grave for the lifetime of the cemetery, as I and my wife do, then he should let himself be buried in his grave. I would rather be buried anywhere except the Central Cemetery, my wife often said, Reger said, and I myself would not like to be buried in the Central Cemetery either, even though, when all is said and done, it makes no difference where a person is buried. My nephew in Leoben, the only relative I still have, Reger said, knows that I do not wish to be buried in the Central Cemetery butin my own grave, which is my property for the lifetime of the cemetery, Reger said, but of course if I should die more than three hundred kilometres from Vienna, then on the spot; within a three-hundred-kilometre radius of Vienna, otherwise on the spot, I said to my Leoben nephew; he will stand by what I have told him because he is my heir, Reger said. Reger looked at the White-Bearded Man and said: only a year ago, shortly before my wife's death, I was quite fond of spending a couple of hours walking round Vienna, now I do not feel like it any longer. My wife's death has certainly weakened me a lot, I am not the man I was before her death. And besides, Vienna has become so ugly, he said. In winter I think spring will be my salvation, and in spring I think summer will be my salvation, and in summer I think autumn, and in autumn winter, it is always the same, I hope from one season to the next. But that of course is an unfortunate characteristic, this characteristic is congenital in me, I do not say, how nice, it is now winter, winter is just what you need, any more than I say spring is just what you need, or autumn is just what you need, or summer and so on. I keep blaming my misfortunes on the season I