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casually:
    â€œListen, you continually come back to the episode with the servant Leo. I do not like it; it seems to be an obstacle in your way. Free yourself, throw Leo overboard; he seems to be becoming a fixed idea.”
    I wanted to reply that one could not write any books without fixed ideas. Instead he startled me with the quite unexpected question: “Was he really called Leo?”
    There was perspiration on my brow.
    â€œYes,” I said, “of course he was called Leo.”
    â€œWas that his Christian name?”
    I stammered.
    â€œNo, his Christian name was—was—I don’t know it any more. I have forgotten it. Leo was his surname. That was what everyone called him.”
    While I was still speaking, Lukas had seized a thick book from his writing-desk and was turning over the leaves. With amazing speed he found and put his finger on a place on an open page in the book. It was a directory, and where his finger lay stood the name Leo.
    â€œLook,” he laughed, “we already have a Leo. Andreas Leo, 69a Seilergraben. It is an unusual name; perhaps this man knows something about your Leo. Go and see him; perhaps he can tell you what you want to know. I can’t say. Forgive me, my time is limited. I am very pleased to have seen you.”
    I reeled with stupefaction and excitement as I closed his door behind me. He was right. I could get nothing more from him.
    On the very same day I went to Seilergraben, looked for the house and inquired about Mr. Andreas Leo. He lived in a room on the third floor. He was sometimes at home on Sundays and in the evenings; during the day he went to work. I inquired about his occupation. He did this, that and the other, they said; he could do manicures, chiropody and massage; he also made ointments and herbal cures. In bad times, when there was little to do, he sometimes also occupied himself by training and trimming dogs. I went away and decided it was better not to visit this man, or, at any rate, not to tell him of my intentions. Nevertheless, I was very curious to see him. I therefore watched the house during the next few days during my frequent walks, and I shall also go there today, for up till now I have not been successful in meeting Andreas Leo face to face.
    Oh, the whole business is driving me to despair, and yet it makes me happy, or rather excited and eager. It gives importance to myself and my life again, and that had been very much lacking.
    It is possible that the practitioners and psychologists who attribute all human action to egoistic desires are right; I cannot indeed see that a man who serves a cause all his life, who neglects his pleasures and well-being, and sacrifices himself for anything at all, really acts in the same way as a man who traffics in slaves or deals in munitions and squanders the proceeds on a life of pleasure. But no doubt I should immediately get the worst of it and be beaten in an argument with such a psychologist, for psychologists are, of course, people who always win. As far as I am concerned, they may be right. Then everything else that I have considered good and fine, and for which I have made sacrifices, has only been my egoistic desires. Indeed, every day I see my egoism more clearly in my plan to write some kind of history of the Journey to the East. At the beginning, it seemed to me that I was undertaking a laborious task in the name of a noble cause, but I see more and more that in the description of my journey I am only aiming at the same thing as Mr. Lukas with his war-book; namely, at saving my life by giving it meaning again.
    If I could only see the way! If I could only make one step forward.
    â€œThrow Leo overboard, free yourself from Leo!” Lukas said to me. I could just as much throw my head or my stomach overboard to get rid of them!
    Dear God, help me a little.

IV
    Now everything seems different again, and I do not yet know whether it has helped me in my problem or not. But I have