The Assault

The narrator explains that Anton simply lets things happen to him in terms of romance. He has entertained a series of girls on his “worn-out couch” (97) and is fond of explaining the sextants on his bookshelf to these assorted girls.

In 1959, Anton passes his final medical exams, becomes an assistant anesthesiologist, and rents a larger apartment in the neighborhood of the Leidseplein. Every morning, he walks a few blocks to the Wilhelmina Hospital, which had been called the “Western Hospital” during the war. He retains his habit of tossing his hair to the side, and his manner “arouse[s][a] motherly instinct in nurses” (97) who pass by him in the midst of the hustle and bustle outside the hospital. Sometimes, he has to pass by the shed on which “Lazarett” (97) had been written, and to which the dying or dead Schulz had been brought. However, the shed reminds Anton less and less of Schulz.

Anton meets his first wife in London, in 1960, while he is there on Christmas vacation. He drops in on the dealers in antique navigational instruments behind the British Museum and spends most nights going to concerts when he decides to enter Westminster Abbey for the first time.