, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. I knew most of them, and nodded to them without getting up. Five or six of them were strangers to me, and two of these appeared to be young writers. I have a gift for behaving in such a way that people leave me alone whenever I wish, and as I sat in the wing chair I showed myself to be a past master in the art of being left alone; people recognized me in the half-light of the anteroom and tried to strike up a conversation, but I at once deterred them simply by remaining seated and pretending not to understand what they said, and then, at precisely the right moment, looking down at the ground instead of into their faces. I behaved as though I were still completely taken up with Joana’s suicide, sitting in the wing chair and affecting an absentminded air whenever there was a risk that one of the guests might take it into his head to keep me company, which was something I was determined to prevent. I was willing to risk being thought unfriendly, even ill-mannered, if not downright offensive; it is quite contrary to my nature to behave badly in company, but I have to confess that on this occasion my behavior was impolite, dismissive and hostile. Some of the guests had already heard about my notorious strangeness and oddity, what somebody once called my dangerous eccentricity; I had even been told that my years in London had produced in me a quite disturbing madness. People hated me and everything I wrote, and ganged up against me in the most vicious fashion whenever they saw me. But ever since my return from London I had been on my guard against them, against all the people I had known previously, but above all against these so-called artistic figures from the fifties, and especially those who had come to this artistic dinner. As soon as they entered the apartment they more or less fell into my trap, behaving as though they were unobserved, while in fact I was observing them intently from my wing chair. They walked over to Auersberger’s wife, who was standing by the door of the music room, and let themselves be embraced. They were all without exception consummate performers who knew how to get the maximum mileage out of the Joana Case.The Auersbergers had always been, at least ostensibly, what are called good hosts;they were uniquely and uninhibitedly liberal in their mania for throwing parties and in their endless zeal for things artistic and cultural, and so they were forever hunting down celebrities. It has to be admitted that, dreadful and distasteful though they were, they had a fair measure of what is called Austrian charm. But the fact that I accepted their invitation wasn’t due to their Austrian charm,I thought as I sat in the wing chair, but to the insolent way they issued it without warning that day in the Graben; and I watched Auersberger sitting at the Steinway, leaning forward because of his shortsightedness and leafing through some music, which I eventually recognized as the Anton von Webern Album I knew so well. He was sorting out the music for a short recital to be given by his wife. Curiously enough, I’ve managed to keep my sight up to now, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, though I’ve reached an age when many people rapidly become farsighted; a lot of people begin to lose their sight in their mid-forties, suddenly finding that they have to hold the newspaper a couple of feet away from them in order to read it. I was still spared any such impairment of vision; I could now see better than ever, I thought, more sharply and ruthlessly than ever, with London eyes, it would seem. The champagne the Auersbergers are serving this evening isn’t absolutely the best in the world, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, but all the same it’s one of the three or four most expensive — no doubt what they deem appropriate to mark the visit of an actor from the Burgtheater. Naturally I had sweated a good deal at Joana’s funeral, and, not wishing to change for this artistic dinner, I had sprayed cologne on my clothes — rather too freely, it now occurred to me. I have always found it unpardonable to turn up stinking of cologne, but this evening the stench was not noticeable: to judge by the atmosphere in the Auersbergers’ apartment, they had all splashed too much scent on their clothes. Every now and then I saw the cook appear from the kitchen and stick her head around the door of the music room to find out whether she could start serving supper, but the actor had still not arrived. Auersberger’s wife was now sitting in one of those slender Empire chairs whose backs consist simply of a lyre carved out of walnut, doing her best to keep the guests happy. Most of them were smoking and, like me, drinking champagne, while at the same time nibbling at the snacks that the hostess had disposed all around the apartment in little dishes made of fine Herend porcelain. There was one next to me, but having always had an equal dislike for Herend porcelain and pre-dinner snacks, I did not eat any. I have never been partial to savory snacks, and certainly not to the Japanese variety that it has recently become fashionable to serve at all Viennese receptions. It really is an impertinence, I said to myself, to make us all wait for the actor, to demean all the guests, including myself, by turning us into a stage set for this man from the Burgtheater. At one point Auersberger remarked that he detested the theater. Whenever he had had more to drink than his wife permitted, he would suddenly reveal his innermost self, and on this occasion he suddenly started inveighing against the actor, who had not even arrived, calling the Burgtheater a pigsty (admittedly not without justification) and the actor himself a megalomaniac cliché-monger, but his wife immediately rebuked him, rolling her eyes and telling him to go back to the piano where he belonged and keep quiet. They haven’t changed, I said to myself, sitting in the wing chair: she’s anxious to preserve the harmony of her artistic dinner, and he’s threatening to destroy it. They’re both committed to the same ends, the same social ends, I thought, but late in the evening he puts on a show of wanting to escape, remembering what he owes himself, so to speak, as an artistic personality. Essentially they’re both completely taken up with society, I thought, without which they couldn’t exist — the higher reaches of society of course, because they’ve never been able to make it to the highest — while on the other hand they’ve never abandoned their artistic pretensions, their links with Webern, Berg, Schönberg and the rest, which they’ve always felt obliged to harp on at every opportunity in their craze for social recognition. Joana wasn’t Auersberger’s best friend, as people often said, but she certainly was the one artistic friend he had, I thought as I sat in the wing chair, and it was through him, as I have said, that I first met her at the studio in the Sebastiansplatz. Joana was a country girl who had been spoiled by her mother, the wife of a railroad worker in Kilb; her parents anticipated her every wish, and if possible fulfilled it. This was certainly one of the reasons for her suicide, it now struck me — this continual pampering which goes on in the families of small country tradesmen, especially in Lower Austria. What a beautiful village Kilb is! I thought. I’ve spent many afternoons and evenings there, and sometimes even stayed the night; the Slukals, Joana’s parents, often could not put me up in their little one-story house, which, though damp, was always cozy, and so on those occasions I would stay at the local inn, which was called the Iron Hand. I would spend hours walking with Joana, discussing the art of dance and the so-called movement studio she ran in Vienna. From her very earliest childhood, when she was still at the elementary school in Kilb, Joana had wanted to become famous either as an actress or as a ballerina — she was never sure which. Finally she decided to call herself a