and we find that with all those great minds and with all those old masters we have always only had a mocking relationship. To begin with, he said, he had only lived on bread and water at the Singerstrasse flat, later, on about the eighth or ninth day, he had eaten a little tinned meat, which he had himself heated up in the kitchen, he had soaked some dried prunes and eaten them with noodles over which he had poured boiling water, after which however he had felt sick each time. On the eighth or ninth day eventually he had ordered his housekeeper to return and had sent her across the road to the Hotel Royal to bring him back a meal. He had come to a convenient arrangement with the Hotel Royal, from the end of May onward they have supplied me every day, by way of the housekeeper whom we had always called Stella although her name was Rosa, Reger said, with soup and a main course in aluminium containers specially bought for the purpose. I pay for two helpings, Reger said to me at the Ambassador, I would eat half a helping and the housekeeper a helping and a half, Reger said. I ate the Royal food with certain reluctance, Reger said, but I ate it because I had no choice ce, I ate it because I had to eat it, Reger said, but then I would feel sick just at the sight of the housekeeper who, naturally, sat facing me during the meal, I could never stand the housekeeper, ut then she was my wife's housekeeper, I myself would have never engaged that person, Reger said, that stupid, lying person Reger said, who actually sat facing me, eating one and a half helpings of the Royal food while I only ate half a one. We accept housekeepers because otherwise we would choke in our dirt, Reger said at the Ambassador, but all in all they are always distasteful. We are dependent on housekeepers, that's what it is, Reger said. Besides, she would always bring over from the Royal the dishes she wanted to eat, the ones she had chosen for herself, and not the dishes which I would have liked. She preferred pork, so she always brought over pork, but I only eat beef if I am asked, Reger said, I have always been a beef eater, housekeepers are all pork eaters. After my wife's death, in fact immediately after the funeral, Reger said, the housekeeper drew my attention to the fact that my wife had bequeathed her this and that, Reger said, although I know that my wife never bequeathed anything to the housekeeper, since my wife never thought about dying and never spoke to anybody about things to be bequeathed or to be left, not even to me, let alone to the housekeeper. But the housekeeper came to me immediately after the funeral and told me my wife had left this and that to her, clothes, shoes, pots and pans, materials, and so on. Housekeepers never flinch from any embarrassment, Reger said at the Ambassador. They are utterly shameless in their demands. Everyone everywhere sings the praises of housekeepers, even though people know perfectly well that today's housekeepers do not deserve praise, today's housekeepers are distasteful in their demands and utterly slovenly in their work, but people are hypocrites and say that housekeepers deserve praise because they are dependent on them, Reger said at the Ambassador. My wife never even for an instant thought of leaving the housekeeper anything, even two days before her death my wife did not suspect that she would die, so how could she have promised anything to the housekeeper? Reger asked. She is lying, I thought, when the housekeeper drew my attention to the fact that my wife had promised her various articles, the funeral guests had not even left the cemetery when the housekeeper appeared before me to say that my wife had promised her this and that. Time and again we stand up for people because we cannot believe and do not want to believe that they can be so vile, until, over and over again, we discover that they are far more vile than we would credit. Several times, when I was still standing by the open grave, the housekeeper said the words frying pan, Reger said, imagine it, again and again the words frying pan while I was still standing by the open grave. For weeks the housekeeper kept pestering me with the infamous lie that my wife had promised her a lot. However, as the saying goes, I turned a deaf ear. Not until three months after my wife's death did I tell the housekeeper she should choose some of the clothes, which I had intended for my wife's nieces, and take whatever pots and pans she found useful. You cannot imagine how the housekeeper acted in response to this! Reger said, the person snatched whole armfuls of clothes to herself and stuffed them into large twohundred-pound bags which she had all ready, until nothing more would go into those bags. I stood there, flabbergasted, watching the scene. Like a lunatic the housekeeper ran through the flat, grabbing up whatever she could grab up. In the end she had filled five two-hundred-pound bags and crammed whatever would not go into the two-hundred-pound bags into three large cases. Eventually her daughter also appeared on the scene, and the two jointly lugged down the bags and the cases into the Singerstrasse, where the daughter had parked a borrowed van. When the two had carried all the bags and cases down to the Singerstrasse the housekeeper in addition ranged dozens of casseroles on the floor, without even asking if I minded her taking those casseroles as well. After all, she was letting me keep this casserole or that, she said, while tying up the casseroles with string threaded through the casserole handles in order to carry them down more easily to the Singerstrasse. I stood there, flabbergasted, watching the housekeeper and her daughter as, like lunatics, they dragged these casseroles down out of the flat as well. My wife had never even seen the housekeeper's daughter, Reger said, if she had seen her once at least in the many years the housekeeper was in service with us, she would have been aghast at the sight, Reger said. The more we invest in a person, in a manner of speaking, and the kinder we are to them, the worse they repay us, Reger said at the Ambassador. This experience with the housekeeper and her daughter once again demonstrated to me how abysmally hideous man can be, Reger said. The so-called lower orders, surely this is the truth, are every bit as vile and infamous and every bit as mendacious as the upper classes. This is actually one of the most repulsive characteristics of our age that it is always claimed that the so-called simple and the so-called oppressed people are good and the others bad, that is one of the most repulsive lies I know, Reger said. The so-called housekeeper is no better than the so-called mistress, and anyway things are really the other way round nowadays, as indeed everything nowadays is the other way round, Reger said, surely the housekeeper is the mistress nowadays, not the other way round. The so-called powerless are the powerful today, not the other way round, Reger said at the Ambassador. While he was now gazing at the White-Bearded Man I could still hear what he had said to me at the Ambassador, that everything today was the other way round, over and over again that everything today is the other way round. Iwas still standing by the open grave when the housekeeper buttonholed me, asserting that my wife had bequeathed her the green winter coat she had bought in Badgastein. That beautiful expensive coat, of all things, the idea that my wife would have bequeathed that to the housekeeper, Reger said angrily. These people exploit any situation and shrink from nothing, stupid though they are, these people turn anything, even the most distasteful things, to their advantage. And we fall for these people time and again, because in the distastefulness of everyday matters they are of course superior to us, Reger said. That hypocrisy about the people is another repulsive thing, those pledges to the people which are so typical of, for instance, our politicians. Whenever we have an idealistic notion it always turns out very soon that this notion is nothing but a nonsensical notion, Reger said; we all have to grow old, and there is nothing more repulsive than this currying of favour with the young, this has always profoundly repelled me, when an old person tries to curry favour with the young, my dear Atzbacher, and he said a person today is at everyone's mercy, unprotected, we are dealing today with a totally unprotected person, totally at everyone's mercy, a mere decade ago people still felt more or less protected but today they are exposed to total unprotectedness, Reger said at the Ambassador. They can no longer hide, there is no hiding place left, that is what is so terrible, Reger said, everything has become transparent and thereby unprotected; in other words there is no hope of escape left today, people, no matter where they are, are everywhere hustled and incited and flee and escape and no longer find a refuge to escape to, unless of course they choose death, that is a fact, Reger said, that is the sinister aspect, because the world today is no longer mysterious but only sinister. With this sinister world you have to come to terms, Atzbacher, whether you like it or not,