Summary

After three months without hearing from Austerlitz, the narrator received a postcard with his London address, inviting him to come visit. The narrator traveled to his sparsely furnished Alderney Street home. That night, he and Austerlitz sat together drinking tea and talking by the fire.

After Gerald’s death, Austerlitz fell into a depression. Suddenly everything was meaningless to him, even reading and writing. His studies felt purposeless and writing seemed futile. He despaired constantly and experienced life as if “through a veil” (127). Suffering from insomnia, he took long nighttime walks through London. Whenever he got to Liverpool Street Station, he felt “a kind of heartache” he believed was inspired by “the vortex of past time” and the station’s history (129). The Bedlam asylum once stood where the station was and countless people were buried beneath.

Then one night, while sitting in the...