have to live in, that ismy misfortune. I am not one of those people who enjoy the present, that's what it is, I am one of those unfortunate ones who enjoy the past, that is the truth, those who always feel the present to be just an insult, that Is the truth, Reger said, I feel the present to be an insult and an imposition, that is my misfortune. But of course it is not quite like that, Reger said, because time and again I am able to see the present as it is and, naturally, it is not always unhappy, or causing unhappiness, I know that, just as the past, if one thinks back to it, does not always ake one happy, I know that. One great misfortune, of course, is the fact that I have no doctor in whom I have any confidence, I have had so many doctors in my life, but ultimately I had no confidence in any of those doctors, all of them ultimately let me down, Reger said. I feel utterly vulnerable and I feel that I might collapse at any moment. When I say, strike me down,I really believe that I might be struck down by a stroke, eve though I have said those words a thousand times, Reger said, i even gets on my own nerves now, every other moment I say, strike me down but I have not been struck down, Reger said. In your presence, too, I have often said strike me down but I ha e not been struck down, I do not say so just from habit but because I really feel that I might be struck down. As for my body nothing is functioning properly any longer, Reger said. If only I had a good doctor, but I do not have a good doctor. Of course I have four general practitioners and two specialist physicians in the Singerstrasse, but none of these doctors is any good. My eyes are so bad I soon will not be able to see anything any more, but I have no good eye man. And of course I avoid seeing a doctor because I am afraid the doctor might confirm what I suspect, that I am mortally ill. Ihave been mortally ill for years, I always said so to my wife, Reger said, and I assumed as a matter of certainty that I would die first, not she, but then it was she who, because of all those frightful circumstances, died before me after all; I have had a great fear of doctors all my life. A good doctor is the best thing we can have, Reger said, but hardly anyone has a good doctor, we are forever dealing with medical bunglers and charlatans, he said, and if, exceptionally, we believe we find a good doctor, hé is either too old or too young, he either knows something about the latest medicine and lacks experience or else he has experience and does not know anything about the latest medicine, that's how it is, Reger said. A person urgently needs a body healer and a soul healer and he does not find either, all his life he searches for a good body healer and a good soul healer and he finds neither, that is the truth. Do you know what the doctors at the Merciful Brethren said to me when I confronted them with the fact that they were responsible for my wife's death and therefore should have her on their conscience? They said, her clock had run down, they said this banal sentence to me and not just the one who bungled the operation on my wife said this sentence to me, all the doctors at the Merciful Brethren Hospital said this banal sentence, her clock had run down, her clock had run down, her clock had run down, they kept saying, as though this sentence were their standard sentence, Reger said. If we have a doctor in whom we can have confidence and under whose care we feel safe, Reger said, then we have the most important thing in old age, but we do not have such a doctor. I do not even look for such a doctor any longer because it is a matter of supreme indifference to me when I die, any time would suit me, but like most people I want to have as quick and as painless a death as possible. My wife only suffered for a few days, Reger said, suffered for a few days then for a few days in a coma, he said. The people asked for a shroud but I had her wrapped simply in a clean sheet, Reger said. The man at the municipal office who handled the procedure of the funeral did his job quite superbly. It is a good idea to do everything connected with the funeral ourselves, then we do not have the time to sit at home and wait until we choke with despair. For eight days I chased about Vienna in connection with the funeral, one way and another, from one authority to another, and once again experienced the state in its entire bureaucratic brutality, Reger said. The authorities we have to seek out in Vienna in the event of a death are situated a long way away from one another and we need at least a whole week before we have completed all the business necessary for a funeral. Always and everywhere I said that I wanted only the simplest funeral for my wife, which they failed to understand, because everybody else, as I well know, always wants an extravagant one. The effort it cost me to insist on the simplest funeral in the end, Reger said. Only the man at the Währing municipal office understood me, he was the only one who understood that when I said a simple funeral I did not, as all the others believed, mean a cheap funeral but a simple one, they all thought I wanted a cheap one when l said a simple one, only the man at the Währing municipal office instantly understood me when I said a simple one, meaning a simple one and not a cheap one. Youwould not believe how stupid the people whom you have to deal with at the authorities can be, Reger said. I did not think I would live to see this winter, let alone survive it, he now said. The fact is that I just existed throughout the past year with a total lack of interest in anything, apart from my concert engagements, and apart from my little works of art for The Times nothing in fact interested me any more after my wife's death; not a single person, that is the truth, including yourself, Reger said, for months I was not interested even in you. I read virtually nothing and did not leave the house except to go to concerts, but for this past year none of those concerts was worth going to and, naturally, my little works of art for The Times were accordingly. Sometimes I ask myself why I keep reporting for The Times from Vienna, seeing that in this confused Vienna things have gone into an alarming decline also in the musical sphere, because nothing out of the ordinary is being offered here in Vienna either at the Konzerthaus or at the Musikverein, Viennese concerts have long lost their unique quality, the same works which you hear in Vienna you could have heard much earlier in Hamburg or in Zurich or in Dinkelsbühl, Reger said. My eagerness to write is at its peak, but what Viennese concerts have to offer is worth less and less. I have long ceased to be the concert fanatic I once was, he said, a music fanatic yes, but a concert fanatic no longer, it is also getting more and more troublesome for me to go to the Musikverein or to the Konzerthaus, neither is easily accessible to me on foot and I do not take taxis and there is no tram there from the Singerstrasse. And the Konzerthaus audiences, just as the Musikverein audiences, have lately become very common and provincial, I have to say they are dulled and for years have no longer been knowledgeable, which is regrettable. The days when that singer of singers George London sang Don Giovanni at the Opera or the butcher's daughter Lipp the Queen of the Night are gone for good, as are the days when a sixty-year-old Menuhin conducted at the Konzerthaus and a fifty-year-old Karajan at the Musikverein. We now only hear the mediocre ones, the worthless ones. The idols, the top artists, the most ideal and the most competent performers have grown old and incompetent, Reger said. The present generation, curiously enough, no longer makes the highest demands on music, those which were made on music a mere fifteen or twenty years ago. The reason is that listening to music has become