Staying at the Lodging House

Winter sets in, and the narrator stays at a lodging-house in Vaterland. He cannot pay, but the landlady gives him bread and butter. He tries to write an allegory about a fire in a bookshop. He struggles to add up a simple bill, realizing his mind is failing. The landlady loses faith in him. A sailor takes his room, and he is forced to sleep in the family's common room. He feels degraded and is mocked by the servant girl.