Get all you can out of the old, I always told myself, and indeed I always derived the greatest benefit from following this precept; I have no hesitation in saying that I derived immense profit from it. Old age always attracted my curiosity, I think, whereas youth never did, because I knew it at first hand. The Burgtheater actor, I believe, is a person who constantly suppresses his propensity to philosophy, which has evolved during the course of his life — which means during the course of his own history, our history, everyone’s history. Hence most of the time we have dealings with people who suppress their philosophical propensity until it atrophies and dies. Only occasionally do we have an opportunity to discern this propensity in them, as I discerned it in the actor at this supper party, though I suspect he did not discern it in himself and was probably quite unaware of it. All at once I was fascinated by the way he uttered the words the forest, the virgin forest, the life of a woodcutter, and then repeated them several times. But this does not mean that I should take to him now, were I to meet him again. He remains for me the unattractive and essentially superficial stage character he was from the start. I was revolted by the way he took his leave, kissing the hostess’s hand in his Viennese Burgtheater manner. And when he paid Jeannie Billroth a compliment — a foolish and entirely unnecessary compliment, an insolent compliment in fact — by telling her, as he kissed her hand too, that he liked her intellectual audacity—he actually said, I like your intellectual audacity—he had once more reverted to type and become the distasteful stage character that he had been at the outset. I too had drunk more than was good for me, I think, but not as much as the actor, to say nothing of Auersberger, who did not wake up until the guests had all left. The two young writers, who had talked about nothing but how rebellious they were, though without being able to say what they were rebelling against, were also completely drunk and had difficulty getting to their feet. In the end the Burgtheater actor was the only one who still had the strength and the poise to make a decent exit from the Gentzgasse — and, I may add, with the utmost politeness — for none of the others was in a fit condition to do so. What an excellent pike that was! he finally said to Auersberger’s wife, after which he was the first to leave, walking alone down the stairs in the entrance hall. He’s not even unsure on his feet, I thought, watching him from the door of the apartment as he descended the stairs. It is one of my principles that I like to leave a party alone, and so I waited with Auersberger’s wife at the door of the apartment until all the others had gone down the stairs. Yes, it’s been a sad day, hasn’t it? I said to her after they had all left, referring once more to Joana. Perhaps it was best that she killed herself, I said, it was probably the best time for her to go. I was aware of how embarrassing and distasteful this remark was, a remark that is frequently made when somebody has committed suicide. We want to say something appropriate, I thought at that moment, and then we say something entirely inappropriate, something distasteful and stupid. What would she have had to look forward to? I said, adding yet another embarrassing and distasteful remark to the first. Everyone should act as they think fit, I went on, which again was embarrassing and distasteful. So it was best to say no more. I ran down the stairs as if I were twenty years younger, suddenly taking two, three, or even four steps at a time. In the entrance hall below I told myself that it had been ridiculous to kiss her forehead as I left. Like thirty years ago, I thought, just as ridiculous as it was thirty years ago. I had kissed her on the forehead as I used to do in the fifties, and this fact annoyed me all the way from the Gentzgasse to the city. I haven’t seen her for twenty years, and I have to admit that fundamentally I hate her, yet when I leave I have to go and kiss her forehead! But it was only her forehead you kissed, at least it was only her forehead, I kept on telling myself as I walked through the city, which was still dark, feeling angry with myself. If only I’d left with the others I’d have been spared this embarrassment, I thought, but I didn’t want to leave with the others, above all because I wanted to avoid an encounter with Jeannie, especially in the street, and especially now, for I’d have been sure to have a terrible row with her, I’d have been bound to say too much, to make too many reproaches, to cause her too much offense, I thought. And she’d have done the same, and so it was as well to stay behind and let the others go on ahead. Being alone with Auersberger’s wife was certainly more tolerable than being alone with Jeannie, I thought; to be alone in the street with Jeannie would have been disastrous, I thought, whereas to be alone with Auersberger’s wife at the door of their apartment was at least endurable. But I now reproached myself for having given her a kiss on the forehead, after twenty years, perhaps even twenty-two or twenty-three years, during which I had positively hated her, with the same hatred that I had felt for her husband; and I reproached myself too for having lied to her, saying that her artistic dinner had given me great pleasure, when in fact I had found it nothing short of revolting. To get ourselves out of a tight spot, it seems to me, we are ourselves just as mendacious as those we are always accusing of mendacity, those whom we despise and drag in the dirt for their mendacity; we are not one jot better than the people we constantly find objectionable and insufferable, those repellent people with whom we want to have as few dealings as possible, though; if we are honest, we do have dealings with them and are no different from them. We reproach them with all kinds of objectionable and insufferable behavior and are no less insufferable and objectionable ourselves — perhaps we are even more insufferable and objectionable, it occurs to me. I told her I was glad to have renewed my ties with her and her husband, to have visited them again in the Gentzgasse after twenty years, and as I said this I thought what a vile hypocrite I was, recoiling from nothing, not even the basest lie. Standing at the door of the apartment, I told her that I had liked the actor from the Burgtheater, that I had liked Anna Schreker, even that I had liked the two young writers; I said all this as I watched the others going down the stairs, all the time thinking how revolting they were, yet at the same time telling her how much I had liked them all. To think that I am capable of such base hypocrisy, I thought as I was speaking to her — to think that I am capable of quite openly lying to her face, that I am capable of telling her to her face the precise opposite of what I feel, because it makes things momentarily more endurable! I also told her that I was sorry not to have heard her sing one of the Purcellarias that she usedto sing so beautifully, so superbly, so incomparably, and that I was sorry above all that I had been out of touch with her and her husband for twenty years — which was another piece of mendacity, one of my basest and most contemptible lies. I even said that I particularly regretted that Joana could not have been present that evening, and that she would probably have wished us — that is, the Auersbergers and myself — to renew our contacts, now that I was back from London for some time, though not for good. We would keep up our contacts from now on, I said untruthfully, hearing the others leave the building as I still stood at the top of the stairs. Joana had to die, she had to kill herself, so that we could get together again, I told her, after which I briefly embraced her and kissed her on the forehead, then ran down the stairs and out into the street. In every street I walked along I was tormented by the thought that everything I had said to her was a lie, that I had been consciously lying with every word I had spoken. For the truth is that after this artistic dinner I still hated her as much as ever, her and her husband, the Novalis of sound, the successor of Webern who had got stuck in the fifties. Perhaps I hated them now with an even more intense hatred than before — with the Auersberger hatred that I have borne them for twenty years, it now occurs to me — because twenty years ago they went behind my back and slandered me so viciously, seizing every opportunity to denigrate me and run me down to all and sundry after I had left them — simply to save myself from being devoured by them. They always asserted, and still assert, that I turned my back on them, not they on me, just as for twenty years they have asserted that I took advantage of them, that they supported me, that they kept me alive, when the truth is that I kept them alive, that I saved them, that it was I who supported them — not with money, of course, but with all my talents. I ran through the streets as though I were running away from a nightmare, running faster and faster toward the Inner City, not knowing why I was running in that direction, since to get home I would have had to go in the opposite direction, but perhaps I did not want to go home. If only I’d spent this winter in London! I said to myself. It was four in the morning, and I was running in the direction of the Inner City when I should have been going home. I should have stayed in London at all costs, I told myself, and I kept on running in the direction of the Inner City, without knowing why, and I told myself that London had always brought me happiness and Vienna unhappiness, and I went on running, running, running, as though now, in the eighties, I was once more running away from the fifties, running into the eighties, the dangerous, benighted, mindless eighties, and again it struck me that instead of going to this tasteless artistic dinner I ought to have read my Gogol or my Pascal or my Montaigne, and as I ran it seemed to me that I was running away from the Auersberger nightmare, and with ever greater energy I ran away from the Auersberger nightmare and toward the Inner City, and as I ran I reflected that the city through which I was running, dreadful though I had always felt it to be and still felt it to be, was still the best city there was, that Vienna, which I found detestable and had always found detestable, was suddenly once again the best city in the world, my own city, my beloved Vienna, and that these people, whom I had always hated and still hated and would go on hating, were still the best people in the world: I hated them, yet found them somehow touching — I hated Vienna, yet found it somehow touching — I cursed these people, yet could not help loving them — I hated Vienna yet could not help loving it. And now, as I ran through the streets of the Inner City, I thought: This is my city and always will be my city, these are my people and always will be my people, and as I went on running, I thought: I’ve survived this dreadful artistic dinner, just as I’ve survived all the other horrors. I’ll write about this artistic dinner in the Gentzgasse, I thought, without knowing what I would write — simply that I would write something about it. And as I went on running I thought: I’ll write something at once, no matter what — I’ll write about this artistic dinner in the Gentzgasse at once, now. Now, I thought—at once, I told myself over and over again as I ran through the Inner City—at once, I told myself, now — at once,at once, before it’s too late.