At a small corner table in the Viennese "Glock" cafe at the beginning of the twentieth century, a Jewish immigrant from Russia sat every day. Meet Jacob Mendel. From morning to night, Mendel would dig with ritualistic devotion, like a drunkard drinking glass after glass of his favorite drink, through books, catalogs, lists and notes, and engrave them in his memory. The outside world and its events were foreign to him. Book collectors, researchers and students made a pilgrimage to the corner table in the cafe, and the man who remembered everything found what they were looking for. Time passed. The city of Vienna had changed, a new generation walked its streets, and even continued to sit in the same "Glock" cafe. But Mendel was no longer there. What had become of him? How can the mysteries of his life be unraveled? This is a book about a forgotten hero, whose strength lies in his perfect memory and the ability to completely devote himself to one thing, and it is also a story about remembering the forgotten, about the pounding external reality, and about the twentieth century, whose setting changes faster than its heroes, and they, like the regular customers of the renovated cafe, become strangers to their place and superfluous to their time.