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couldn't find it and couldn't remember where I had put it, and while feeling for it on the garden table my hand fell on the book that had lain on it for days or even weeks.
    Perhaps it was because I touched the rain-soaked pages, perhaps it was because of a gust of cold air on my face just at the moment when I turned to go, I don't know what it was, but suddenly I felt about me the breath and fragrance of a long- forgotten day, it lasted only for a moment, but for that moment it was resurrected before my eyes and lived for me again. It was an autumn day in the hills outside the city. The smell of withering potato plants floated up to us from the fields. We were walking up the forest track, the green wall of the hill lay ahead of us, and a distant white mist lay over the tree-tops. It lay over the landscape like a premonition of the frost to come, overhead the blue autumn sky was cool and clear, and rose-hip bushes flamed red on both sides of the track.
    While we walked Dina rested her head on my shoulder, and the wind played its games with the short brown hair over her brow. Once we stopped and she recited verses about the red leaves of autumn and silver mist lying over the hills.
    Then the vision faded as abruptly as it had come. But another memory arose in me. A house high up in the mountains, New Year's Eve, deep snow all round, thick layers of ice on the windows — how good it was that the landlord had put a small iron stove in my room, it crackled and threw up sparks and glowed white-hot. My dog scratched and whined outside the door and wanted to come in. "That's Zamor," I murmured. "Open the door, he won't give me away," Dina murmured, and I freed myself from her lips and arms and opened the door, and for a brief moment a cold draught floated in to us and the clink of glasses and muffled dance music.
    Then that vision vanished too, only the feeling of cold remained and the dance music coming from the kitchen window yonder, and inside me there was wild despair and a stabbing pain — how, in God's name, had it come about that we had drifted apart? Was it possible that what had bound two people so closely to each other could disappear? How was it possible that today we had sat opposite each other like two strangers and had nothing to say to each other? How was it possible that she had slipped so suddenly from my arms and that another man should be holding her in his, and that it was now I who was scratching and whining outside the door?
    And only then did I realise that that other man was dead, and at that moment I understood for the first time what the word dead really meant.
    And I was astounded at the thought that chance had brought it about that I should be here at this day and hour, that I should be on the spot when destiny beckoned. No, it was not chance, it had been foreordained for me, for we are subject to unalterable laws.
    And now after this had happened I had wanted to go, to steal away — I could not understand how I had thought of such a thing. And upstairs Dina was sitting in the dark and waiting.
    "Is that you, Gottfried? You've been away so long ..."
    "I got up to open the door, darling. You wanted me to. Here I am again."
     
     
    The light was still on in the pavilion. I waited behind a chestnut tree.
    The door opened and I heard voices. Felix came out carrying a lantern and walked slowly towards the house.
    Two shadows followed behind him. They were Dina and Dr Gorski.
    She did not see me.
    "Dina," I said softly as she passed very close, nearly touching me with her arm.
    She stopped and gripped Dr Gorski's hand.
    "Dina," I repeated. She dropped Dr Gorski's hand and took a step towards me.
    The lantern glided up the steps and disappeared into the house. For a moment its light enabled me to make out Dina and the shadows of the trees and the bushes and the twining ivy. Then the garden was plunged in darkness again.
    I heard Dina's voice from close in front of me.
    "Are you still here?" she asked. "What