Hotel Oasis, the most run-down in the whole of Calamayor, whose guests were mainly German widows in their seventies, eighties and nineties, shunted off there by their children with the ulterior motive of getting rid of them for good on the cheapest possible terms. Full board for twelve weeks in such a hotel, I imagine, costs less than it does to live decently in Germany for half a week. Every Christmas, tens of thousands of German widows find under the Christmas tree a so-called winter holiday voucher for a long-term stay, hundreds of which are offered by the travel agencies in all the most ghastly hotels in Mallorca. They are sent off on their trip to Mallorca, whence their children, the donors of the vouchers, secretly hope they will never return or, if they do, then only as joschi, which in the jargon of the travel agents means roughly freeze-packed corpses. Naturally I am familiar with this aspect of Mallorca and Palma too. Living at the Oasis is the most depressing thing in the world — having breakfast in a dingy, airless, stinking basement called a dining room, furnished with dirty, torn, plastic furniture, into which aged men and women, only half alive, laboriously make their way on crutches, and enjoy the sea view through the impenetrable concrete walls of the tenement block which rises only fifteen to twenty feet away from the window. This is where you’re staying? I asked when we dropped her. I shouldn’t have said it, for my question prompted a violent fit of weeping. Since we simply couldn’t sever our contact with this young woman as she stood weeping, deserted by everything but her cruel misfortune and her despair, the Cañellas girl and I decided to accompany her next morning to the scene — her own expression — of the tragedy. She asked us to, and we couldn’t say no, even though we knew we were getting ourselves even further into an already almost intolerable situation. Naturally I didn’t sleep all night in my hotel room; my meeting with Anna Härdtl had becpme an almost unendurable nightmare. Punctually at eleven o’clock, as arranged, the Cañellas girl and I collected Anna from the Hotel Oasis. If one wanted to describe hotels of this kind, built and run solely on greed, one would have to steel oneself to describing a cesspit for the disposal of human beings, but this is not my intention. We drove, in the Cañellas girl’s car, straight to the Hotel Paris in Santa Ponsa, which of course we didn’t know. We got out and walked up a passage between two concrete walls, which were only seven feet apart and were built, obviously by two different owners, to a height of twelve or thirteen stories. We squeezed our way through, and suddenly found ourselves at a spot where we could see the balcony from which young Härdtl had fallen. That’s the balcony, up there, Anna Härdtl said, pointing upwards. And this is where he was lying, she said. Nothing more was said. We squeezed our way back between the walls and got into the car. We drove back to Palma in silence, first dropping Anna at the Hotel Oasis. We never saw her again. It would have been impossible. And we hadn’t made any further arrangements with her. In any case she was flying back to Munich next day. I can still see her face as she said goodbye. I shall always see it. The Cañellas girl suggested driving out towards Inca for dinner that evening. As I recall, we stayed out until two in the morning and I danced with her — I hadn’t danced for over twenty years. She’s a clever girl and has meanwhile given a Chopin concert in Zaragoza and another in Madrid; she has also been invited to play at the Salzburg Festival. I woke up in my wicker chair on the Borne with these images in my head and looked across to the Cañellas’ house. The lights were on, so they were at home. But I won’t call today, I told myself, not today. Perhaps I won’t call at all. A man in my state! I’ll have to see. Dusk had fallen. I got up, paid the bill, and went back to the hotel, walking slowly, as befits an invalid. On the Molo I spoke to a few fishermen, but only briefly, and then walked on. We see so much sadness if we care to look, I said to myself on the way back to the Melia. We see the sadness and despair of others, and they see ours. She wants to move to Palma, that unhappy young woman, I thought, in order to be as close as possible to her dead husband. But how will she live in Palma? What will she live on? If, as she says, she can’t live in Germany, she certainly won’t be able to live here. Naturally I couldn’t get the thought of the young woman out of my head, and I wondered what could have been the reason for my being confronted with this affair again as soon as I had sat down in the wicker chair on the Borne, what was responsible for this confrontation? I should have been concentrating all my energies on Mendelssohn Bartholdy, but all thought of my work was suddenly driven out by the tragedy of Anna Härdtl. Yet that was over a year and a half ago, I reflected, in fact over two years ago. Perhaps it is only just coming home to me now, whereas Anna Härdtl, the victim of the tragedy, and her son have perhaps long since got over it. Yes, that might well be, I argued. She might well have forgotten it all. In fact I myself had not thought about Anna Härdtl and her misfortune since my last visit to Palma; it had never occurred to me again. Yet now, because I had sat in that wicker chair on the Borne in order to calm myself, in fact in order to rest, it was suddenly there again, gnawing away at my mind and driving me half demented. On the way back to the hotel I had at first intended to ring at the Cañellas’ door, but I managed to stop myself. Then it occurred to me that there had been three or four occasions already when I had been in Palma and intended to start work on Mendelssohn Bartholdy and never succeeded. I’ve never succeeded anywhere — in Sicily, on Lake Garda, in Warsaw, in Lisbon or in Mondsee. In all these places and many others I’d repeatedly tried to start work on Mendelssohn Bartholdy; I’d gone to these places for this purpose only and stayed as long as possible, but always in vain. The thought of this depressed me as I walked back to the hotel. A sudden oppressive stench in the air brought on an attack of breathlessness as I was walking through the little park in front of the yacht club. I had to stop and was even forced to sit down on one of the stone seats in order to calm myself. These attacks of breathlessness always come on suddenly; I never know the immediate cause. When they do I swallow two or three glycerine pills from the small phial I always have on me wherever I go. But it always takes five or ten minutes for them to work. How much worse my condition has become since my last visit, I thought. If the Cañellas see me they’ll have a fright. On the other hand, I thought, people can’t see my real condition, which can hardly get any worse, or so I imagine at least. Take everything slowly, take everything carefully, I told myself. Carefully, that was the word the specialist had stressed most of all. But I’m not giving up, I thought. Certainly not now. At first the air is wonderfully fresh and spicy and I am completely revived; then from one moment to the next it changes and has me cringing like a dog. I’m used to that. But of all the climatic conditions I know, those in Palma are the best. And the island is still the most beautiful in Europe. Even the hundreds of millions of Germans and Swedes and Dutch who come here and throw their weight about so abominably haven’t managed to destroy it. It’s more beautiful now than it’s ever been. And where in the world is there any place or any region that doesn’t have its unpleasant side? It’s a good thing I’ve left Peiskam and made a fresh start in Palma. It’s a new beginning, I thought, and I got up from the stone seat and walked on. The palm trees, which I remembered as being so tall, were now much taller, about sixty feet, and they all had a slight bend just under a quarter of the way from the top. How splendid was the sight of the gleaming lights on the cruise ships in the great harbour! I saw the sign Hotel Victoria. I’d stayed there too on one occasion, but in recent years the whole repulsive pack of so-called new rich had fallen upon it and made it unendurable. No, not the Victoria again, I told myself. Now, about fifteen minutes after my attack of breathlessness, I was suddenly walking light-footedly along the Molo and indulging in my old habit of counting the masts of the sailing boats and yachts that were anchored there in their thousands. Most of them belonged to English people wanting to sell. On almost every other boat there was a For Sale notice. England has abdicated at last, I said to myself. This remark amused me, though it might easily have made me sadder than I already was. When I reached my hotel I didn’t go straight to my room, but sat in the lobby for a while. If we see a complete stranger, I told myself, from a good vantage point in the lobby, we immediately want to know what he is and where he comes from. I can indulge this curiosity of mine best in hotel lobbies, and when I stay in an hotel it always becomes my favourite pastime. Perhaps that one’s an engineer? Or more precisely a builder of power stations? Perhaps this one’s a doctor, a consultant physician or a surgeon? Is that one an important merchant? And the other a bankrupt? Or a prince perhaps? At any rate he looks seedy. I can spend hours sitting in the hotel lobby and speculating about this or that person, and in the end about all who enter the lobby. When I’m tired I go to my room. On this evening I was completely exhausted simply by my walk to the Borne and back and above all by the tragedy of Anna Härdtl, who was on my mind all the time. At one time I had taken a glass of whisky to my room. This time it was a glass of mineral water. I thought I should sleep, but I didn’t. It was a good thing I’d put my fur coat round my shoulders, I thought. Otherwise I’d have been sure to catch cold sitting on the Borne. When we have sentences in our heads we still can’t be certain of being able to get them down on paper, I thought. The sentences frighten us; first the idea frightens us, then the sentence, then the thought that we may no longer have the idea in our heads when we want to write it down. Very often we write down a sentence too early, then another too late; what we have to do is to write it down at the proper time, otherwise it’s lost. My work of Mendelssohn Bartholdy is of course a literary work, I told myself, not a musical one, yet at the same time it’s a musical work through and through. We allow ourselves to be captivated by a subject, and we remain captivated for years, even for decades, and it can happen that we let ourselves be crushed by it. This is because we have not gone to work on it early enough, or because we have gone to work on it too early. Time destroys everything we do, whatever it is. I arranged the articles and books I needed for my work on the desk, which had been specially provided by the hotel, in such a way that I could rely on the correctness of their arrangement. Perhaps the only reason why I was again and again unable to begin my work was that the books and articles were never properly arranged on my desk, I told myself. Before taking my room I had given everybody what I thought was a very generous tip; and I had the impression that they too thought it was very generous. They’ve always done everything for me and are as obliging as ever. I’ve been coming to Palma for thirty years, and for over ten years I’ve stayed at the Melia. The staff know the Austrian guest well. Each time I’ve arrived I’ve told them I’m going to write a study of my favourite composer, but I haven’t written it to this day. When I move into my room, room 734, there’s always a stack of paper on the desk. When I leave the stack of paper has gone: I’ve filled it all with writing, but gradually thrown it all away. Perhaps I’ll be lucky this year! I said to myself. I stepped out on to the balcony, but was dazzled by the glare from the floodlit cathedral, and so I withdrew to my room for the night and drew the curtains. As I have said, I thought I should be able to sleep, but of course I couldn’t. When she had flown to Palma from Munich on the first occasion after her husband’s death, she had been alarmed to discover on her return that her shop in Trudering had been robbed of all but a few worthless items. The insurance she had taken out during her husband’s lifetime did not pay out because she had not complied with the security requirements, Anna Härdtl had told us. Thereupon she was sued by an American firm from which she had acquired most of the appliances she stocked. It’s a case involving a tremendous amount of money, she had said. But a person like her just can’t be helped, I thought as I lay in bed, having been unable to get to sleep for three hours. There are actually millions of such luckless creatures who can’t be rescued from their misfortune. As long as they live they fall from one misfortune into another, and nothing can be done about it. Anna Härdtl is just such a person. I got up and moved the book by Moscheles, which had been on the right-hand side of the desk on top of the one by Schubring, to the left-hand side, placing it under the book by Nadson. Then I lay down again. I thought of Peiskam, which was probably completely snowed up and frozen solid. How could I have believed I should be able to spend even a few weeks of this winter in Peiskam. I really am quite pigheaded, I thought. I’ve completely exhausted Peiskam and everything connected with it, I thought. Don’t forget Jobann Gustav Droysen, I thought. 1874, completion of the Violin Concerto in E minor, I thought. I got up and made a note of this, and went straight back to bed. First performance of Elijah in Birmingham on 26 August 1846 occurred to me.