Waiting for Sunrise [antikvár]

I. A Young, Almost Conventionally Handsome ManIT IS A CLEAR and dazzling summer's day in Vienna. You are standing in a skewed pentangle of lemony sunshine at the sharp corner of Augustiner Strasse and Augustinerbastei, across from the opera house, indolently watching the world pass by you, waiting for someone or something to catch and hold your attention, to generate a tremor of interest. There's a curious frisson in the city's atmosphere today, almost spring-like, though spring is long gone, but you recognize that slight vernal restlessness in the people going by, that stirring of potential in the air, that possibility of audacity - though what audacities they might be, here in Vienna, who can say? Still, your eyes are open, you are unusually poised, ready for anything - any crumb, any flung coin - that the world might casually toss your way.And then you see - to your right - a young man striding out of the Hofgarten park. He is in his late twenties, almost handsome in a conventional way, but your eye is drawn to him because he is hatless, an anomaly in this busy crowd of Viennese folk, all hatted, men and women. And, as this young, almost conventionally handsome man walks purposefully past you, you note his fme brown, breeze-blown hair, his pale grey suit and his highly polished ox-blood shoes. He's of medium height but broad-shouldered