I smile when I find a child crying or the mother’s death, which was hideous and is unspeakable, or the other bloody delights, dear things.  I smile when the eyes of my friend suddenly come to life in the silky shadows, that they shine as though out of a haze, and they reveal their most inner secrets.  No one has said it to me, and you will call me a fool... but I know that his death has always been in the eyes, the way for someone else it is in the lungs or in the spinal cord...

His eyes were miserable and lost and painfully hopeless, so that people laughed when he looked at them.  He was ashamed of his eyes, as if they betrayed sinful adventures, and he hid them under yellowed lids.  But he felt how he was stared at when he entered someplace where he was not expected.  Or he sat down where his presence needed no explanation.  He watched in an exaggerated manner, like a petitioner.  Coughed and held his hand in front of his mouth, drew his cheeks in and pushed one of them outward with his tongue.  Was embarrassed.  Unhappy.  Would have preferred to have been alone... in the dark.

Children bent their heads when his gaze caught their eyes.  And turned red.  And grinned shyly and silently.  Women giggled, and looked innocuous, and slapped each other on the thigh or on the bare shoulders and kissed their ravaged men.  In the night they lay awake and their thoughts were white hot.  But the young girls avoided him.

Konrad Krause

Not once during the night do I have rest here.  Often a hand or a word tears me from sleep.  Because everything is dark, I often do not know in the morning who was with me.

I must get up early, to clean the clothes and polish the boots.  My legs are heavy, and my eyes are still very weary.  But the young masters are hard when I neglect something, and cruel.  But at night they are friendly and caress me as though I were a grand lady.

Only old Mr. Konrad Krause is good during the day as well.  When he wants something, he speaks without humiliating me; and something in the sound of his voice makes me happy.  He does not permit anything nasty to be said about me in his presence.  I like him very much.

Recently I had a laugh over him.  I was awoken by noise coming from the corridor outside my room.  It was a conversation.  I detected two voices:  I missed much of what one said, for it whispered; what I caught was young and rough.  One I caught without trying; clear as if it were a body.  I felt that it was too fat and had wrinkles.

From the rough voice I heard:  “Do you also want to go to her, father?”

From the fat voice I heard, “Go first, my son—­”

When Mr. Heinz came into the room, he made a frightened sound, because I was laughing so much.  And then he had to sneeze...

But I will soon forget this.  I can no longer even remember when the old Mr. Konrad Krause said he liked me.  That was still nicer.