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    I sit there on the bench and write 1848 dozens of times; I write this number crisscross in all possible shapes and wait for a usable idea to occur to me. A swarm of loose thoughts is fluttering about in my head. The mood of the dying day makes me despondent and sentimental. Fall has arrived and has already begun to put everything into a deep sleep; flies and other insects have suffered their first setback, and up in the trees and down on the ground you can hear the sounds of struggling life, puttering, ceaselessly rustling, laboring not to perish. All crawling things are stirring once more; they stick their yellow heads out of the moss, lift their legs and grope their way with their long feelers, before they suddenly give out, rolling over and turning up their bellies. Every growing thing has received its distinctive mark, a gentle breath of the first frost; the grass stems, stiff and pale, strain upward toward the sun, and the fallen leaves rustle along the ground with a sound like that of wandering silkworms. It’s fall, the very carnival of transience; the roses have an inflamed flush, their blood-red color tinged with a wonderfully hectic hue.
    I felt I was myself a crawling insect doomed to perish, seized by destruction in the midst of a whole world ready to go to sleep. Possessed by strange terrors, I stood up and took several whopping strides down the path. “No!” I shouted, clenching my fists, “this has to end!” And I sat down again, picked up my pencil once more and was ready to attack my article in earnest. It would never do to give up when the unpaid rent was staring me in the face.
    My thoughts gradually began to compose themselves. Taking great care, I wrote slowly a couple of well-considered pages, an introduction to something; it could serve as the beginning to almost anything, whether a travelogue or a political article, depending on what I felt like doing. It was an excellent beginning to many things.
    Then I began to look for a definite question that I could deal with, some person or thing I could tackle, but I didn’t come up with anything. During this fruitless effort my thoughts began to get confused again—I felt my brain literally snap, my head was emptying and emptying, and in the end it sat light and void on my shoulders. I perceived this gaping emptiness in my head with my whole body, I felt hollowed out from top to toe.
    â€œLord, my God and Father!” I cried in agony, and I repeated this cry several times in succession without adding a word.
    The wind fluttered the leaves, a storm was brewing. I sat a while longer, staring forlornly at my papers, then I folded them and put them slowly in my pocket. It was getting chilly and I didn’t have a vest anymore; I buttoned my coat up to the neck and stuck my hands in my pockets. Then I got up and left.
    If only I had succeeded this time, this one time! Twice now my landlady had asked me for payment with her eyes, and I’d had to duck my head and sneak past her with an embarrassed greeting. I couldn’t do that again; the next time I met those eyes I would give notice and explain myself in all honesty. It couldn’t continue like this in the long run anyhow.
    When I got to the exit of the park I again saw the old dwarf I had put to flight in my rage. The mysterious newspaper parcel lay open on the bench beside him, with lots of different kinds of food that he was munching on. I wanted to go and apologize to him right away, ask his forgiveness for my behavior, but his food turned me off. Those aged fingers, looking like ten wrinkled claws, were clutching the greasy sandwiches in their disgusting grip; I felt nauseated and walked by without addressing him. He didn’t recognize me—his eyes, dry as horn, just stared at me, and his face didn’t move a muscle.
    I walked on.
    As was my wont, I stopped at every posted newspaper that I passed to study the notices of job openings, and I was lucky