more clearly than all the others, I wasn’t even ashamed of having used it at all, I repeated the word squandered a few more times with regard to our bankrupt state and our socialist government, adding that our chancellor was a low-down, cunning, shady character who had simply exploited socialism as a vehicle for his perverse power trips, like the whole government by the way, I said, all these politicians are nothing but power-hungry, unscrupulous, vulgar schemers, the state, which they themselves constitute, is everything to them, I said, the people they represent mean just about nothing to them. I am and love this people, but I won’t have anything to do with this state, I said. Never before in its history has our country sunk so low, I said, never before in its history has it been governed by more vulgar and therefore more spineless cretins. But the people are stupid, I said, and are too weak to change such a situation, they are always taken in by untrustworthy, power-hungry people like the ones in government today. Probably nothing about this situation will change in the next elections, I said, for Austrians are creatures of habit and they’ve even grown accustomed to the muck they’ve been wading in for the last ten years. These pitiful people, I said. Austrians especially are always taken in by the word socialism, I said, although everyone knows that the word socialism has lost all meaning. Our socialists aren’t socialists anymore, I said, today’s socialists are the new capitalists, all a sham, I said to the innkeeper, who however didn’t want to listen to my senseless digression, as I suddenly noticed, for she was still thirsting for my funeral report. And so I said I had been surprised in Vienna by a telegram from Zizers, a telegram from the Duttweiler woman, I said, Wertheimer’s sister, reached me in Vienna, I was in the famous Palm House, I said, and found the telegram at the door. To this day I’m not sure how this Frau Duttweiler knew I was in Vienna, I said. A city that has grown ugly, which can’t be compared with the Vienna that used to be. A terrible experience, after years abroad, to come back to this city, to this decadent country, I said. That Wertheimer’s sister telegraphed me at all, that she informed me of her brother’s death at all, came as a surprise, I said. Duttweiler, I said, what an awful name! A rich Swiss family, I said, which Wertheimer’s sister had married into, a chemical plant. But as she herself knew, I said to the innkeeper, Wertheimer always oppressed his sister, wouldn’t leave her alone, at the last, the very last possible moment, she pulled away from him. If the innkeeper were to go to Vienna, I said, she’d be horrified. How this city has changed for the worst, I said. No trace of grandeur, all scum! I said. The best thing is to keep out of everything, withdraw from everything, I said. Not for a second have I regretted going away to Madrid years ago. But if we don’t have the chance to go away and have to stay in such a cretinous country, in such a cretinous city as Vienna, we perish, we don’t hold out for long, I said. In Vienna I had two days to think about Wertheimer, I said, on the train to Chur, during the night before the funeral. How many people had been at Wertheimer’s funeral, she wanted to know. Only the Duttweiler woman, her husband and I, I said. And of course the under-takers, I said. Everything was over in less than twenty minutes. The innkeeper said Wertheimer had always told her that should he die before her, he would leave her a necklace, a valuable one, she said, from his grandmother. But Wertheimer surely wouldn’t have mentioned her in his will, she claimed, and I thought that Wertheimer certainly hadn’t even made a will. If Wertheimer promised the innkeeper a necklace, I said to her, she’ll get this necklace. Wertheimer had spent the night in her inn from time to time, she said with a red face, when he was frightened in Traich, as he often was, upon arriving from Vienna he would first go to her inn to spend the night, for he came to Traich from Vienna during the winter surprisingly often and there was no heat in Traich. The people he’d invited to Traich recently wore wild clothing, actors, she said, like circus people. They never drank or ate in her inn, stocked up on all sorts of drinks from the general store. They just used him, the innkeeper said, hung out for weeks in Traich at his expense, made a mess of everything, made noise the whole night until morning. What trash, she said. For weeks they’d been in Traich on their own, without Wertheimer, who showed up only a few days before his trip to Chur. Wertheimer often told the innkeeper that he was going to visit his sister and his brother-in-law in Zizers but kept putting it off. He sent many letters to his sister in Zizers, she should come back to him in Traich, separate from her husband for whom he, Wertheimer, had never had any respect, as the innkeeper said, for this dreadful person, as she said with Wertheimer’s words, but his sister hadn’t answered his letters. We can’t tie a person to us, I said, if a person doesn’t want it we have to leave him alone, I thought. Wertheimer had wanted to tie his sister to him for all eternity, I said, that was a mistake. He drove his sister crazy and in the process went mad himself, I said, for it’s madness to kill yourself. What will happen now to all the money Wertheimer left behind? the innkeeper asked. I didn’t know, I said, his sister had surely inherited it, I thought. Money goes to money, the innkeeper said, then she wanted to know more about the funeral, but I didn’t know what else to report, I had already said everything about Wertheimer’s funeral, more or less everything. Was it a Jewish funeral, the innkeeper wanted to know. I said, no, no Jewish funeral, he was buried the fastest way possible, I said, everything went so fast I almost missed it. The Duttweilers invited me to a meal after the funeral, I said, but I refused, I didn’t want to be with them. But that was a mistake, I said, I should have accepted and had lunch with them, as a result I was suddenly standing there alone and didn’t know what to do, I said. Chur is an ugly city, I said, gloomy like no other. Wertheimer was only buried provisionally in Chur, I suddenly said, they want to bury him permanently in Vienna, in the Döbling cemetery, I said, in the family crypt. The innkeeper stood up and claimed that the mild air outside would warm up my room before evening, I could rest assured. The winter cold is still in these rooms, she said. At the thought of having to spend the night in this room, where I had already spent so many sleepless nights, I actually became afraid of catching cold. I couldn’t have gone anywhere else however, because either it was too far or was even more primitive than here, I thought. Of course I was once much less demanding, I thought, not yet as sensitive as I am today, and I thought that in any event I would ask the innkeeper for two wool blankets before I went to bed. Whether she could make me some hot tea before I went to Traich, I asked the innkeeper, who then went down to the kitchen to make some hot tea. In the meantime I unpacked my bag, opened the wardrobe and hung up the dark gray suit I had taken along to Chur as my funeral suit, so to speak. Everywhere they hang these tacky Raphael angels in their rooms, I thought while looking at the Raphael angel on the wall, which had already become moldy but for that reason was now bearable. I recalled that I’d been wakened around five in the morning by the sound of pigs bumping against the trough, of the innkeeper thoughtlessly and stupidly closing the door. When we know what’s in store for us, I thought, it’s easier to deal with it. I bent down to see myself in the mirror and discovered that the infection on my temple, which I’d been treating for weeks with a Chinese ointment and which had gone away, was now suddenly back, this observation made me anxious. I immediately thought of a nasty disease that my doctor was concealing from me and that, simply to humor me, he was treating with this Chinese ointment, which in truth, as I now had to conclude, was worthless. Such an infection can naturally be the start of a severe, nasty disease, I thought and turned around. That I had gotten out in Attnang-Puchheim and traveled to Wankham in order to get to Traich suddenly struck me as totally senseless. I could have done without this dreadful Wankham, I thought, I didn’t need that, I thought, suddenly to be standing in this cold, musty room, afraid of the night, all of whose horrors I had no trouble imagining. To have stayed in Vienna and not responded to this Duttweiler woman’s telegram and not gone to Chur, I said to myself, would have been better than embarking on this trip to Chur, getting out in Attnang-Puchheim and going to Wankham to see Traich one more time, which is none of my business. Since I hadn’t said a word to the Duttweilers and even at Wertheimer’s open grave didn’t feel the slightest pang of emotion, I thought, I might as well have spared myself the whole agony, not taken the trip upon myself. My behavior disgusted me. On the other hand, what would I have had to discuss with Wertheimer’s sister? I asked myself. With her husband, whom I had nothing to do with and who actually repelled me, even more in my personal encounter with him than in Wertheimer’s descriptions, which of course had put him in a worse than unfavorable light. I make it a point not to speak with people like the Duttweilers, I thought at once upon seeing Duttweiler. But even a man like Duttweiler was able to make Wertheimer’s sister leave her brother and move to Switzerland, I thought, even a man as repulsive as Duttweiler! I looked in the mirror again and observed that the infection was not just on my right temple but had already reached the back of my head. It’s possible the Duttweiler woman will go back to Vienna now, I thought, her brother is dead, the Kohlmarkt apartment has been vacated for her, she no longer needs Switzerland. The Vienna apartment belongs to her, Traich as well. On top of which it’s her furniture in the Kohlmarkt apartment, I thought, which she loved, which her brother, as he himself always said, hated. Now she can live in peace with her Swiss husband in Zizers, I thought, for at any time she can move back to Vienna or Traich. The virtuoso lies in the Chur cemetery near the garbage heap, I thought for a moment. Wertheimer’s parents had been buried according to Jewish rites, I thought, Wertheimer himself had always characterized himself as