you were the traitor, and so on. I took into account all the reasons for not visiting them; I could find none in favor of doing so after being out of contact for twenty years, yet finally, despite my repugnance, despite the immense hatred I bore them, I made up my mind that I would visit them, and so I slipped on my coat and set out for the Gentzgasse. I’ve come to the Gentzgasse, I told myself, sitting in the wing chair, even though it’s the last thing I wanted to do. Everything was against my coming to the Gentzgasse, everything was against such a ludicrous artistic dinner, yet now I’m here. On the way to the Gentzgasse I keptsaying to myself, I’magainst this visit, I’magainst the Auersbergers, I’magainst all the people who are going to be there, I hate them, I hate all of them. And yet I kept on walking and finally rang the bell of their apartment. Everything was against my making an appearance in the Gentzgasse and yet I’ve made it, I said to myself as I sat in the wing chair. And again it occurred to me that I would have done better to read my Gogol and my Pascal and my Montaigne, or to play Schönberg or Satie, or just to take a walk through the streets of Vienna. And in fact the Auersbergers were even more surprised at my appearing in the Gentzgasse than I was myself, I thought. I could tell this from the way Auersberger’s wife received me, and even more clearly from the way Auersberger himself received me. You shouldn’t have come to the Gentzgasse, I told myself the moment I found myself facing her. It’s an act of insanity, I told myself as I held out my hand to him. He didn’t shake it — whether this was because he was drunk or because he was being abominably rude I can’t say, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. They issued their invitation in the Graben in the belief that I wouldn’t come under any circumstances, I thought, sitting in the wing chair; perhaps they themselves didn’t really know why they invited me to their dinner, immediately referring to it as an artistic dinner—which was a fatal mistake, I thought, as it made them seem ridiculous. But the Auersbergers could have refrained from speaking to me in the Graben, I thought; they could have ignored me, as they had done for decades, just as I had ignored them for decades, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. Joana’s to blame for this invitation, I thought, she’s the cause of my irrational behavior, the dead woman has this distasteful contretemps on her conscience. Yet at the same time I thought how nonsensical such an idea was, but it kept coming back — again and again I had this nonsensical notion that the dead Joana was to blame for that irrationalreaction in the Graben,which finally led to my coming to the Gentzgasse, against my natural inclinations, to take part in this artistic dinner. It was because of Joana’s death that as soon as the Auersbergers saw me in the Graben they canceled the past twenty years, during which we had had absolutely no contact with one another, and issued their invitation, and for the selfsame reason I accepted it. And then of course they added that they had invited the Burgtheateractor,who was enjoying sucha triumph in The Wild Duck,as Auersberger’s wife put it, and I said I would come. Never in the last ten or fifteen years have I accepted an invitation to a dinner at which an actor was to be one of the guests, I thought as I sat in the wing chair, never have I gone anywhere where an actor was going to be present, and then suddenly I’m told that an actor is coming to dinner — an actor from the Burgtheater at that, and what’s more to a dinner party at the Auersbergers’ apartment in the Gentzgasse — and I go along. There was no point now in clapping my hand to my forehead. Actually I’m doing nothing to hide the revulsion I feel for all these people, and for the Auersbergers themselves, I told myself as I sat in the wing chair; on the contrary they can all sense that I loathe and detest them. They can’t just see that I hate them — they can hear it too. Conversely I had the impression that all these people were hostile to me; from what I saw of them and in everything I heard them say, I sensed their aversion, even their hatred. The Auersbergers hated me; they realized that I was the blemish they had wished on their dinner party by being so thoughtless as to invite me; they were dreading the moment when the actor would enter the apartment and they would ask us all to take our places at table and begin the meal. They saw that I was the observer, the repulsive person who had made himself comfortable in the wing chair and was playing his disgusting observation game in the semidarkness of the anteroom, more or less taking the guests apart,as they say. They had always found it offensive that I should seize every opportunity of quite unscrupulously taking them apart, but in mitigation, I told myself as I sat in the wing chair, I could always plead that I took myself apart much more often than anybody else, never sparing myself, always dissecting myself into all my component parts,as they would say, with equal nonchalance, equal viciousness, and equal ruthlessness. In the end there was always much less left of me than there was of them, I told myself. I had one consolation: I was not the only one to curse the fact that I had come to the Gentzgasse, that I had been guilty of such imbecility and weakness of character — the Auersbergers too were cursing themselves for inviting me. But I was there, and nothing could be done about it. Thirty years ago I used to share their apartment with them, going in and out of it as though it were my own home, I thought as I sat in the wing chair observing what was happening in the music room, which was so brightly lit that nothing could escape me, while I remained in the dark all the time, occupying what was without doubt the most favorable position I could possibly occupy in this disagreeable situation. I had known all the guests at this artistic dinner, as I had known the Auersbergers themselves, virtually for decades, except for the young people; among these were two young writers, but they did not interest me: I did not know them and so had no reason whatever to concern myself with them, except to observe them. I did not feel the slightest urge to go over and talk to them, to challenge them to a conversation or an argument. I was probably too tired, for I had been completely exhausted by the strain of the funeral, by what I had gone through in Kilb for Joana’s sake, I thought, above all the dreadful scenes after the funeral, which were so incredible that I shall only gradually be able to take them in; I still did not have the necessary mental clarity to comprehend them, and I thought I would need a thorough sleep before I could even begin. Sitting in the wing chair I was already starting to think that when I got home I would go straight to bed and not get up for the whole of the following day and the following night, perhaps even the next day and the next night too — so exhausted, so worn out did I feel as I sat in the wing chair. We imagine we are twenty and act accordingly, yet in fact we are over fifty and completely exhausted, I thought; we treat ourselves like twenty-year-olds and ruin ourselves, and we treat everybody else as though we were all still twenty, even though we’re fifty and can’t stand the pace any longer; we forget that we have a medical condition, more than one in fact, a number of medical conditions, a number of so-called fatal diseases,but we ignore them for as long as we can and don’t take them seriously, though they’re there all the time and ultimately kill us. We treat ourselves as though we still had the strength we had thirty years ago, whereas in fact we don’t have a fraction of our former strength, not even a fraction, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. Thirty years ago I would think nothing of staying up for two or three nights on end, drinking virtually non-stop, not caring what I drank, and performing like an