“I can’t go on,” Christian repeated, shaking his head back and forth with dreadful seriousness and letting his little, round, deep-set eyes wander about the room. He was now thirty-three years old, but he looked much older. His reddish-blond hair was so sparse now that almost all the skin on his skull was visible. The bones protruded above his sunken cheeks, and his naked, fleshless, gaunt nose jutted out between them in one huge hook.

“If it only were just this,” he continued, running his hand along his left side without touching his boy. “It isn’t a pain, it’s an ache, you know, a constant, vague ache. Dr. Drögemüller in Hamburg told me that all the nerves on this side are too short. It’s so strange – sometimes I’m certain it is going to go into spasms or some sort of paralysis, permanent paralysis. You have no idea – I never get a good night’s sleep. I start up in bed, because my heart isn’t beating and that simply terrifies me. And it doesn’t happen just once, but ten times before I finally fall asleep. I don’t know whether you know the feeling. Let me try to describe it precisely. It’s as if…”

“Spare me,” the consul said icily.