philosophical relationship, which I found quite fascinating and was able to observe without feeling in the least disturbed emotionally. Observing them, I was able for the first time to see how people of an intellectual disposition can be ideally attuned to one another, and it always struck me how rare such mutual understanding was. Maria came from the ridiculous little provincial town in southern Austria where Musil was born — though throughout the rest of his life he had nothing more to do with it — and she exploited this fact with the most tasteless insistence. This town was dangerously close to the border, in an area notable for the vulgar efflorescence of nationalism, National Socialism, and provincial stolidity. With its stolid self-importance, its stifling petit bourgeois atmosphere, its depressing and ineptly planned streets, its dreary topography, and its stale and unrefreshing air, it had all the ridiculous features that typify a town of some fifty thousand souls who know nothing of the world outside, yet fancy they are at its hub. For the same reasons that made me quit Wolfsegg, Maria set off from her equally dreary hometown and went to Vienna. With all her future poems in her head, I reflected, with her little handbag and all the illusions of the rebel, of the fugitive intent on escape, she set off for Vienna, as I had done, in the hope of gaining a foothold, as they say. But it was not easy. After the war all thinking spirits in the provinces expected more of Vienna than it could deliver. At that time the city did not keep its promises, to Maria or to anyone. Initially Vienna proved to be a lifeline, but only for a short time, after which it paralyzed all who sought their salvation there, as it still does. Vienna affords only a brief respite to those of a philosophical or reflective cast of mind who go there for mental stimulation. I discovered this myself, and it has been demonstrated a million times. To go to Vienna is to be saved for only a brief spell. Anyone who takes refuge there must therefore leave as soon as he can, for he will come to grief unless he turns his back as soon as possible on this ruthless and utterly decadent city. Maria soon grasped this, and so did I. Eisenberg is the only one of us who has survived in Vienna to this day, but then Eisenberg is much tougher than either of us and has a far clearer head, I thought, standing at the window. A soul like Maria’s is soon crushed in Vienna, Eisenberg had once said, as I now recalled, looking down on the Piazza Minerva and then across to the Pantheon and the windows of Zacchi’s apartment. Maria got away, first to Germany, then to Paris, and finally to Rome, as her poetic talent dictated, though she made recurrent attempts to settle in Vienna and took up with all kinds of people who she thought could facilitate her return. But whenever she was about to return, everything fell apart and her plans collapsed, sometimes because she offended the very people who had found her somewhere to live. She acquired life tenancies on a number of apartments but gave them up and never moved in. She let herself be enticed to Vienna by lots of frightful people, especially people in the Ministry of Culture, and let herself be taken in by these people with their frankly dirty motives. She refused to believe that all these people who tried to entice her to Vienna could possibly have dirty motives, although I told her time and again that their real interest was not in her but only in their own paltry purposes, that they were using her as a means to do themselves a favor, to promote their own interests by exploiting her by now famous name. I was well acquainted with all these people, I now recalled, but she let herself be taken in by them because she had a sentimental attachment to Vienna — which, contrary to common opinion, is an utterly cold and unsentimental city — but only up to the critical moment when she turned them down and issued a snub from Rome, where she felt happiest. At one moment she would say to me, Basically I want to go back to Vienna, and then, often only a few minutes later, she would say with equal conviction, Basically I don’t want to go back to Vienna. Basically I want to stay in Rome, even die in Rome. Maria often said she wanted to die in Rome, I now recalled. Her good sense compelled her to stay in Rome — to love Vienna but live in Rome. Yet only a few weeks after snubbing all the people who had found apartments and opened all the important doors for her, she would again start talking of going back to Vienna, which was after all her home, she said. I always greeted this with a laugh, because the word home, coming from her lips, sounded as grotesque as it would coming from mine, though I never use the word, which I find too emetic, whereas Maria used it nonstop, saying that home was the most seductive word. She would write again to her Viennese contacts in the various ministries and call at the Austrian Embassy or the Austrian Cultural Institute in the Via Bruno Buozzi, the ostentatious palace near the Flaminia in which Austrian brainlessness, in all its subtle shades, has had its Roman dependency ever since the building was erected. She attends so-called poetry readings by so-called Austrian poets and miscellaneous pseudoscholarly lectures given by miscellaneous Austrian pseudoscholars in the Via Bruno Buozzi. She even goes to lieder recitals, which are regularly given there by once celebrated Austrian singers who no longer have any voice but have a geriatric croak that can only inflict irreparable damage on the Italian ear. Maria wants to be Roman yet at the same time Viennese, I thought, and it is this dangerous mental and emotional condition that generates her superb poems. The dream about The Hermitage, which made a great impression on her, put me in mind of Maria, and I enjoyed thinking of her as I stood at the window, looking down on the Piazza Minerva. What would Rome be to me without her? I thought. How lucky I am that I have only to walk a few yards to refresh myself in her presence! How lucky I am to have Maria! My conversations with her are always more meaningful than any others I have, and altogether the most delightful. It is always stimulating to be with Maria, always exciting, and nearly always a source of happiness, I thought. Maria has the best ideas, and for Gambetti she is always