Judith confirms he brought her the cat at nine o’clock on Thursday, and asked her tortuously if she would look after it until Magda, then in Bern, came home. He was going south. Since Konrad had looked very pale, and was unshaven and unkempt, she asked if there was anything she could do for him. He had replied that that was a creditable sentiment and thanked her for it, but he couldn’t agree to anything right now, since he mustn’t miss his train. To her question, whether Magda knew the cat was with her, Judith, he had replied: It’s all written down.
In fact, when Magda came home on Saturday, she had no idea where the cat was, or where Zündel was. And furthermore – the information is given now, though it only came to light much later – Schmocker was lying. His account of the brother-in-law was pure malicious invention, and there was no possibility of a dubious visitor, much less lover, of Magda’s, then or at any other time.
Information is reasonably plentiful about Zündel’s stay in Genoa. However seedy and depressing the various hotels he selected – in accordance with his strange preferences (I myself have been to see them all since, at least once) – he did at least keep exhaustive notes on his thoughts and experiences at this time. The reasons that prompted him to go to Genoa, an inhospitable and rather gloomy working port, are at least partly clear: this is where he was sired thirty-three years previously, and this is also where he hoped to be able to acquire straightforwardly, and hence illegally, a handgun.
The notes of this week bespeak his isolation and a frightening rage at mankind. Interspersed with these are moments that betray an almost pathetic desire for love, a yearning for conciliation and harmony. And finally, almost ground up between the competing expressions of love and hate, is his commitment to a total apathy, without language and without compromise.