"Widowed and newly retired, the turn-of-century Austrian civil servant Julius Zihal has left the safe haven of the Tax Office and its orderly, codified administrative practices and now faces a drab and uncertain future alone. This gloomy scene suddenly becomes brighter when he discovers that the lighted windows of the adjacent apartment building offer a nightly display of variously-endowed ladies undressing as they prepare for bed. The expected Jekyll and Hyde contrast between Julius' Biedermeier daytime conduct and his nocturnal activities never quite materializes as the bureaucrat within him dominates the voyeur and the attempts to open a file on Eros, as it were, by carefully noting down and categorizing all the pertinent details of his observations, rather than simply surrendering to their pleasures." "But the attractions of the flesh are not long kept at arm's - or telescope's - length. Eventually, Julius' "observatory" ends up a shambles and the "astronomer" himself suffers a nervous collapse from which he is rescued by his housekeeper and a postmistress of mature and opulent charms - a pair of ladies who know when the indirect approach is out of place."--Jacket.