In all the years he was employed by the bank, Franz Polzer was never out in the streets during the morning, apart from on sundays. The mornings of working-days, when the shops were open and people in a hurry jostled each other in the streets, were unknown to him. He had never been absent from the bank for a single day.
The streets through which he passed presented the same scene every morning. The blinds of the shops were being raised. Clerks were standing by the doors, waiting for their bosses. Every day he met the same people, schoolboys and schoolgirls, faded scretaries and sullen men hurrying to their offices. He made his way among these people who shared his morning hour, was one of them, hurrying, unnoticing and unnoticed.
Franz Polzer had been told that, given his abilities, he could, with industry and application, rise to a senior position in his profession. Through all the years he had never reflected on the fact that the hopes he pinned on his career had not been fulfilled. He had forgotten them. He forgot them in all the little activities into which, from the very beginning, his time had been divided up.

hermann ungar, the maimed (sawtry, daedalus ltd, 2002)