The Vivisectors

It made the situation in which she lived even sadder: the truth was that in her city people lived in apartment blocks, five or six storeys high and overflowing with communal feeling. The gardeners lacked the requisite manpower to get things back on track, and it was an open secret that the city administration had given up; only the university had any real power left. She was driving herself crazy imagining the things he must be going through: the loneliness, the isolation, his disappointment, his fears about the future. Why, after all these years, had their animosity finally announced itself?