ciality, in Vienna it was the feeblemindedness of the people, in Munich, the foehn blowing down from the Alps, no matter what it was, the mountains, the sea, the spring, the summer, the coldest of winters, the rainiest of all summers, then again family quarrels, the catastrophic nature of politics, or finally and always his own wife, there was always something that made it impossible for him to write. They had moved to so many places, entirely for the sake of the as yet unwritten book, and they had left so many places, precipitately, for the sake of the unwritten book, they had left Paris post-haste, London post-haste, Mannheim post-haste, Vienna post-haste, not knowing in the morning that by that evening they would have their trunks packed and broken off all their ties to the city in which they had been living for weeks, for months, usually in the belief that it was to be for always, and yet by that evening they would have found a distant city to move to for life, only to go through the same process of settling down for good only to suddenly pack up and leave, Konrad actually said: leave head over heels, Wieser recalls. For instance, Wieser says, Konrad told him that from the moment Hoeller’s nephew, that shady character, a criminal through and through, had moved in with Hoeller at the annex, Konrad had been able to think of nothing else but this nephew for weeks, even though he should have been concentrating one hundred percent on his book, while incessantly pacing the floor in his room and then in his wife’s room, criss-crossing the room in every direction, thinking hard about the book, which he simply had to start writing, but at the same time thinking with the greatest intensity about Hoeller’s nephew, who had appeared so abruptly out of the dark and who struck Konrad as a weird criminal type, fascinated by the question of what this nephew of Hoeller’s meant by living in the annex, what he wanted there, and meanwhile Konrad’s book suffered from neglect, suffered irreparably from the withdrawal of Konrad’s attention. Over and over Konrad asked himself: How old is Hoeller’s nephew, anyway? meanwhile neglecting the work on his book, and: What kind of clothes is he wearing? and: What color is his hair, anyway? and: Isn’t the fellow rather weird? and: He has long legs and a powerful torso and gigantic hands, the largest hands I’ve ever seen, he kept thinking, meanwhile neglecting his book. On one occasion Konrad is supposed to have confided the following thoughts to Wieser: Pacing the floor in my room, I keep thinking that Hoeller’s nephew must be planning to do me in because he thinks that I have money, he doesn’t know that I have no money at all, he naturally believes that I am well off, there is a type of habitual criminal, after all, Konrad thought while pacing the floor, that isn’t sick at all but is simply a malignant character, and one must be on one’s guard against them. Konrad heard the two men laughing together, all the way from the annex, he kept hearing Hoeller and his nephew laughing, and he naturally asked himself: What is the meaning of this laughter? Isn’t there something weird about it? It was possible that the two of them were conspiring against him, Konrad thought, but he promptly shook off any such ideas as absurd and managed to suppress them; for days he was troubled by the thought that he was sabotaging his book by letting his mind dwell on Hoeller’s nephew and Hoeller himself, on their relationship to each other, or, if not sabotaging his book exactly, he was certainly lessening any chance of writing his book. He also knew that it was morbid to brood about not being able to write his book, about never getting it written at all, it was morbid to the point of becoming a disease, Konrad is supposed to have told Wieser. Nevertheless he must have heard aright, because when he was standing outside the annex at one A.M. (!) he heard the two of them, Hoeller and his nephew, laughing again inside the annex, even though it was pitch dark inside, and yet I hear the two of them laughing, how strange, Konrad is supposed to have said. It wasn’t loud laughter, exactly, nor was it suppressed laughter, either, it was just a weird kind of laughter. Thinking that the two of them, Hoeller and his nephew, were laughing in the middle of the night inside the darkness of that annex, Konrad had felt so irritated the rest of the night that he simply could not get back to sleep at all, Konrad is supposed to have said, instead he had to get out of bed and pace the floor, constantly thinking about those two in the annex, occasionally looking out of the window in the direction of the annex to see if the lights were back on, by any chance, but he saw no light, yet the two of them did laugh together, or could he possibly have been mistaken? and as he kept asking himself this question it was growing light outside. Lately I wear myself out brooding over the most absurd notions, all of them pretexts for not writing, for not facing the fact that I am simply unable to write my book, Konrad is supposed to have told Wieser, if only I could write, if I could have written my book, everything would be different, I’d be feeling all relieved inside, meaning that I could be indifference personified, I could let myself be old and indifferent, cool, what could be more desirable? Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser. But the last time he spoke to Wieser, Konrad is supposed to have confided the following to him: At about half past two in the morning he had gone down once more to the annex, absent-mindedly slipping into a jacket too light for the season, bareheaded, in his bedroom slippers, imagine! and stationed himself under the annex windows to eavesdrop. At first he heard nothing and he was freezing, but the excitement of eavesdropping saved him from catching cold, he thought, because a body fully tensed up in an act of supreme attention would not take a chill, and Konrad’s head and body had been tensed to their utmost in the act of eavesdropping, pressing himself to the wall of the annex under the windows; it was not curiosity that drove him back to the annex to eavesdrop, it was fear, real fear, and an enormous, soothing mistrustfulness toward this nephew of Hoeller’s who was suddenly playing so dominant a role in the lime works area, this stranger who had slipped into the annex behind Konrad’s back, probably seeking a refuge from the long arm of the law, Konrad would of course be the first to grant a refuge to any fugitive from the law, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, it went without saying that he would have protected, hidden, rescued from the fangs of the law, any man threatened by the law, his sympathies were entirely on the side of all fugitives from the law, the law pursued chiefly the innocent, the most innocent, Konrad is supposed to have said, the law persecuted the poorest of the poor, anyone who was being hunted down by the police had to be given shelter in every way, and when Konrad said in every way he meant exactly that, he meant by every available means, because he was acquainted with the law’s way with people, he had himself been raped by the law a number of times, he is supposed to have said, the law raped the individual and therefore the individual had to be protected from the law; however, Hoeller’s nephew frightened him, and anyway Konrad had a feeling that Hoeller’s nephew was by no means helpless and entitled to protection, but that he was a public menace, not by nature or anything he couldn’t help but out of deliberate viciousness; anyway, to get back to his story, Konrad suddenly heard the two of them laughing again, Hoeller and his nephew were in there laughing, Konrad could hear them even through the double storm windows, they must have been sitting on the corner bench in the kitchen, Konrad is supposed to have told Wieser, sitting there in the pitch dark and apparently talking about something to do with him, Konrad, one thing in particular, always the same thing, and from time to time they would laugh about it; what led Konrad to the conclusion and then to the conviction that they were talking about him was the nature of their conversation, though he admitted that he could not understand a single word they said, despite the fact that he could hear everything, but it did seem to him that he heard them pronouncing the name