One morning before it was light, Himmelfarb woke, and got immediately out of bed. The cold and dark should have daunted, but his sleep had been so unusually peaceful, he had embraced an experience of such extraordinary tenderness and warmth, that he remained insulated, as it were. Now, as he blundered about in the dark, although he could remember nothing of any dream, he was convinced it had been decided in his sleep that he should prepare to join a cobbler, a humble Jew of his acquaintance, who, he happened to know, was still living in the Krôtengasse. So, he hurried to shave, cutting himself in several places in the excitement of anticipation, and when he had prayed, and dressed, went about putting into a suitcase the few possessions he felt unable to part with: an ivory thimble which had belonged to his wife, the vain bulk of his now unpublishable manuscript, as well as the ironic, but priceless gifts of his apostate father, the _tallith__ and _tephillin__. Then he paused, but only for a little, in the thin light, before the doorbell sounded. Although he had not rung for a taxi, knowing that none would have accepted to come, he went down with his worldly goods, in answer to what seemed like perfect punctuality. "Ah, you are ready, then!" Konrad Stauffer said. Himmelfarb was really not in the least surprised, in spite of the fact that it had already been decided in his mind, or sleep, that he should move to the house of Laser, a Jewish cobbler in the Krôtengasse. Now there was some wrangling for possession of the suitcase, a rather mechanical mingling of his cold fingers with the warmer ones over the disputed handle. "Please let me!" Stauffer begged. Himmelfarb suddenly gave way. Because it seemed natural to do so. His friend was wearing a half-coat of soft leather, which smelled intoxicating besides. Everything invited to a sinking down. The fashionable car had begun to shine in the still hesitating light. Frau Stauffer was standing there, with an expression of having discovered things she had never seen before, holding an anachronistic muff, which only she could have translated into perfect contemporary terms. All three behaved as though they had parted company yesterday. "He was actually waiting for us!" Stauffer announced, and laughed for one of those amiable remarks which can be made to pass as wit. "You must sit at the back, Himmelfarb," he ordained. "Get in, Ingeborg!" he commanded his wife more sternly. She did so, slamming the door in a way which must always have irritated her husband as much as now. But in settling into her seat, she rubbed against him slightly, and there was established a peace which could, of course, have been that of an unclenching winter morning, if Himmelfarb had not remembered, from the previous meeting, occasional glances and certain lingering contacts of skin, which made it obvious that Stauffers still devoured each other in private. They drove through the white streets. "I expect you have not eaten. We also forgot," Frau Stauffer called back to the passenger. "I have a stomach like an acorn. But we shall put the coffee on as soon as we get there." Houses were thinning. Round faces would extend into long blurs. "We are taking you to Herrenwaldau," Stauffer explained. His voice was very grave as he drove. His clipped neck was taut, but, in spite of the wrinkles, had acquired a beauty of concentration above the leather collar. "We have moved out there," he continued, "because nowadays it is more sympathetic, on the whole, to live amongst trees." Herrenwaldau was an estate which Stauffers owned, about seven or eight miles from the town. Himmelfarb remembered hearing several years before how they had bought what some people considered the state should have acquired as a national monument. The original structure, built towards the end of the seventeenth century by a duchess for the purpose of receiving her lovers more conveniently, was something between a miniature palace and a large manor. It had become most dilapidated with the years, although it was understood the actual owners had renovated part of it to live in. Himmelfarb received everything, whether information on his own future, or glimpses of the rushing landscape, with a sensuous acceptance which he might have questioned, if the motion of the car had not precluded shame. As he was rocked, soft and safe, he noticed the upholstery was the colour of Frau Stauffer's skin. Outside, early light had transformed the normally austere landscape, where sky and earth, mist and water, rested together for the present in layers of innocent blue and grey. The soil would have appeared poor if the frost had not superimposed its glitter on the sand. The Stauffers, who were obviously performing a familiar rite, seemed to have forgotten their passenger-they would mumble together occasionally about cheese or paraffin-although Frau Stauffer did at last grunt loud and uglily: "_Na__!" For they were driving between stone gate-posts, under great naked elms, crowned with old, blacker nests, and hung with the last rags of mist. Nothing could disguise for Himmelfarb the coldness and greyness, the detached, dilapidated elegance of this foreign house, until, in a moment of complete loss, while his hosts were rootling in the car, he looked very close, and saw that the stone was infused with a life of lichen: all purples, and greens, and rusty orange-reds, merging and blurring together. Although it was something he had never noticed before, and it did not immediately mean to him all that it might in time, he was smiling when Frau Stauffer turned to him breathlessly and said, "There is nobody here! Nobody, nobody!" Like a little girl who had achieved real freedom after the theory of it. "Ingeborg means," her husband explained, "we have been without servants since the _Regierung__ became obsessed by manpower." He looked the more grimly amused for having bumped his head in retrieving an oil stove from the car. "But," he added, "there is a farmer who rents some of the land, and who repays in kind, and with a certain amount of grudging labour. They feed the fowls, for instance, when we are away, and steal the eggs while we are here. We must devise a routine for you," he concluded, "against the future. To avoid possibly dangerous encounters." Such possibilities were ignored, however, for the time being. The three conspirators were loaded high with parcels, and clowned their way into the house, which smelled in particular of fungus, as well as the general smell of age. They showed Himmelfarb what was to be his room. They had only fairly recently discovered it, Konrad Stauffer told. Disguised from outside by a stone parapet, and from inside by panelling which masked its stairway, the small room could have been intended originally for the greatest convenience of the amorous duchess. The present hosts had furnished it in a hurry for their guest, with a truckle-bed, an old hip-bath in one corner, an austere chest, and the oil stove brought that day. Otherwise the small room was empty, which was how the visitor himself would have had it. As he arranged his insignificant possessions, he realized with sad conviction that the empty room was already his, and might remain so indefinitely. In the house proper, he understood, as he caught sight of himself that evening in one of the long, gilt mirrors, he would never belong. But a congenial meal was eaten off the blemished oak table, on which Ingeborg Stauffer laid her face, after the things had been cleared, and the work finished. "At Herrenwaldau," she said, or foresaw, "I shall never be completely happy. I am always anticipating some event which will destroy perfection. For instance, I am afraid of the house's being requisitioned for I don't know what squalid purpose. I can see some Party leader, of the self-important, local variety, sitting with his feet up on the chairs. I can smell the face-powder, spilt on the dressing tables by the mistresses." "My wife is neurotic," interrupted Konrad, whose back was turned to them, as he did accounts, or looked through letters which had arrived in their absence. "Certainly!" Ingeborg agreed, and laughed. She jumped up, and ran and brought little glasses, from which to drink cheap, fiery _Korn__. At times she could shine with happiness. And play Bach, rather badly, on an indifferent harpsichord. "Between Bach and Hitler," Konrad said, "something went wrong with Germany. We must go back to Bach, sidestepping the twin bogs of Wagner and Nietzsche, with an eye for Weimar, and the Hansa towns, listening to the poets." "You must allow me _Tristan__, though," his wife protested, and went and hung over his shoulder. Her head, with the dankish, nondescript, yet elegant hair, grew dark inside the candlelight. "All right. _Tristan__," he agreed. "Anyway, _Tristan__ is everybody's property." Very gently she bit the gristle in the nape of his neck. And he cried out, laughably. Which seemed to remind them it was time to go to bed. They played this game for several days, while Himmelfarb tentatively explored unopened rooms, and a wilderness of garden, in which undipped box and yew would have disguised his movements, if a scent of thyme run wild had not risen from under his feet. Once or twice only a trembling of greenery separated him from some peasants, daughters of the tenant-farmer, it appeared, who had arrived on an errand, faces mottled and suspicious, knees dimpling milkily above worsted stockings. And once his back had only time to disappear as Frau Stauffer received someone of greater importance. That evening his hosts were more silent and thoughtful. When, of his own accord, he took to descending less often from his room, he knew that he was interpreting their wishes. In fact, Ingeborg Stauffer began, as if by agreement, to bring him his meals. And there were the cans of water. Now there was seldom music at night. Silence had thickened in the house below him. Ingeborg explained at last that Konrad had gone to Berlin. For there had been inquiries by local authorities about the uses to which their house was being put, the number of rooms, their visitors, et cetera. So Konrad had gone to arrange. There was almost nothing that could not be arranged, through the sister, who was a Minister's wife, the friend, it was even said, of a personage. Ingeborg gave her information with an embarrassment which she had decided it was necessary to overcome, and left her guest to contemplate the knifeedge of life on which they were all balanced. Himmelfarb could just remember the thin, burning arms of Mausi Stauffer encircling his waist. Once she had almost destroyed him in the eyes of the world, and was now lifting him up, unconsciously, no doubt, a _dea ex machina__ created for the occasion by her brother. The latter returned, satisfied enough, though ironic. "Sometimes I have to tell myself that success, even of the acceptable, the almost honest kind, was never unaccompanied. Inevitably, it trailed a certain shadow of shame. The favoured one became always just that little bit contaminated," said Konrad, who had climbed to the room beneath the roof, carrying an extra lamp and a bottle of _Kognak__. "I wonder whether the pure aren't those who have tried, but not succeeded. Do you think, Himmelfarb, atonement is possible perhaps only where there has been failure?" "In that case many of us are saved who never suspected it!" the few replied. Konrad was already breathing too heavily, and not from his ascent to the hidden attic. "But you are the man of faith," he mumbled. "I am the eternal beetle, who finds daily that he has slipped back several stages behind where he thought himself to be the night before. And continues to claw. I would only like to think I am the beetle of faith, not of habit." "Better any kind of beetle than a nothing!" Konrad Stauffer was, in fact, the slightest of men, which made his respect the more touching to the object of it. Himmelfarb felt the humbler for his friend's consideration, and would have liked in some way to convey his gratitude, but might never have occasion to. Because Stauffer remained at Herrenwaldau for increasingly brief periods. "Berlin again?" Himmelfarb once asked. "Berlin is only one of many directions," the other replied. And continued to come and go. In the intervals, his wife served their guest with a regularity that was unexpected. Her elegance persisted, though by then shabbier in its expression. She had grown thinner, bonier, from withdrawal into a world where she seemed not to wish to be followed. Himmelfarb was even better able to respect such a wish since his own withdrawal into the empty room. There, in his obscure box, he was rarely unemployed, but had not yet arrived at that state of equanimity, of solitariness, of disinterest, from which, it had been suggested by the dyer, he might illuminate the vaster darkness. Sometimes, competing with his struggle to reach out towards, to reflect upon an unconscious w