After the move, Mr. Patton learned that his guest’s name was Schmidt, and that he had been a professor at Hamburg University. Professor Schmidt seemed quite normal with no nasty habits or notable negative character traits, although he did have a problem with his eyesight, which was apparently caused by an infection of the optic nerve on the right side, which caused the muscle focusing the right eye to exhibit a multitude of symptoms. If people left things on the stairs he had particular problems in trying to navigate them, and so, by mutual consent, the inhabitants of the house all agreed to keep the hallway and the stairs neat and tidy, and not to leave anything lying about which would necessitate Mr. Schmidt calling for help when he went in or out of the house. Sad to narrate, the old coat stand, which had served for many years, was moved into the cellar and replaced by multiple nails, which were arranged in vertical pairs, a small nail for the hat and a larger nail beneath it for the coat.

Every week the tenants would get together and nominate one person to take care of Mr. Schmidt and make sure that he had clean bedclothes and so on. Mr. Schmidt would only have to give that person the nod, and they would help him to go down into the basement and wash his clothes, then help him with the tumble drier and the iron. Mr. Schmidt protested that he was quite capable of managing by himself, and that he could take his clothes to the municipal launderette for a nominal fee. However, the other tenants argued that the so-called nominal fee was actually a myth, you only had to multiply the fee by fifty-two to see that washing your clothes once a week was really a hefty expense. “Alright, alright”, joked Mr. Schmidt, “in that case, I’ll go naked.” The idea of Mr. Schmidt going out without a stitch on was highly amusing to the other tenants, but Mr. Schmidt said that in Germany nobody particularly objected to nudity in public. He told them the story of some nude swimmers in Munich. After swimming down the river they would ride the metro back to where their clothes were.

This caused a public outcry, Mr. Schmidt said, not because the swimmers were naked but because since they had no clothes on they were clearly not purchasing tickets.