Pauli Birbach especially disliked the Mariahilferstrasse, an endless street. Here and there a century-old peasant house caught up in the tide of the growing city; here and there some rococo palais in a side street visible from a corner; here and there a great department store. But mostly there were little shops, little businesses connected with little lives, the lives of the middle and lower middle classes that crowded its interminability. The true motive power of every one in that street in those post-war years, and in every one of the side streets, no matter what their condition in life, was the desire for food. Indescribable meannesses were practised, crimes even, were committed for a bit of fat, a little sugar or molasses. Those who weren't actually confronted with starvation had that terrible hunger for fats, for sweets, a hunger that touched the brain, that could arouse in the gentlest soul cruel, predatory thoughts. Now and then the rumor would get about that a certain delicatessen shop had cheese or salami. It would be stormed by those who had money to buy, and the entrance encumbered by those who could only see, or others more fortunate, who could get near enough to smell. Those who had reason to get in were few in comparison to the many who remained outside. Indeed the only peace in Vienna was that which reigned inside certain expensive provision shops. Pauli's dislike of the Mariahilfer street was profound and temperamental. He liked things diversified and grandiose. Mariahilfer street was neither. Now it was more than ever depressing in that drab, monotonous struggle for survival. Any one of the indwellers knew how near the potter's field was, the hospital, the asylum. A little sagging of endeavor and they would find themselves in one or another of those undesirable places. Anna had stupidly, tactlessly taken that apartment during the war, when her husband was away, and before the housing problem had come to add the difficulty of shelter to that of nourishment. He had said to himself when he learned of the new address: "Now isn't that just like Anna--the one street I hate in Vienna."