"It's cold," Dorn muttered. The baron looked at him with a smile.
"It is cold everywhere in Germany," he said quietly. "Men's hearts are cold with hunger and fear. Brains are confused. Stomachs empty. The top has been knocked off. The soldiers in the streets are the sad little remains of a dead Germany. The new Germany lies cold and hungry in a workingman's bed. Life will come out of the masses. And I am always on the side of life. Not so? The old is dead. We drink wine to the new."
The sound of dance music drifted out of a café.
"Shall we stop?" the baron hesitated.
Dorn shook his head.
"Enough cafés. The streets are better. Dark windows."
They walked in silence through the snow, the baron humming a Vienna waltz as the blurred echoes of machine-gun fire rose in the night around them.
... Hours later Dorn lay sleepless in his bed. The smoke of wine was slipping out of his thought.
"I'm alone," he murmured to himself. An emotionless regret came to him.
"There are still years to live." He wrapped himself closer in the silk-covered quilts. "But how? Does it matter? I have loved, and that is over. Rachel is ended. Haven't thought of her for weeks. And now, I am like I was, only older and alone; yet not sad. So people adjust themselves to decay. Senses that could have understood and wept at sorrow die, along with the things whose death causes sorrow. Ergo, there is no sorrow. Wings gone, tears gone, everything gone. Empty again, yet content. I want nothing.... No desires...."