Through the winter, though it seemed like any Chicago winter, that is a sub-zero-degrees version of Hell, Lew lived as economically as possible, watching his bank account dwindle toward nothing, haunted both sleeping and waking by unusually vivid reveries of Troth, all stricken with a tenderness he had never noticed in their actual life together.
* * * * * * * * * *
"a sub-zero-degrees version of Hell"
This might be a suggestion that Drave is the devil and Lew is in Hell made-up to look like Chicago, which is why he didn't recognize the neighborhood and the hotel he's staying at is so chaotic and the bellhop is a demon. Probably. "Hershel" means "deer" in Yiddish and that starts with "D-E" which rhymes with "D-E" and that stands for "DEMON."
"a tenderness he had never noticed in their actual life together"
Because the Troth haunting Lew was the objectified Troth he put on a pedestal in his imagination. Obviously a made-up phantom of a real person, whose agency relies on the person conjuring up that specter, would be a much better version of the real person. Unless the person with the vivid imagination also suffered from some clinical self-loathing.
More metaphorically, the "Troth" we make up in our own head is always more sympathetic to our own desires and needs. Actual "Troth" isn't beautiful or pretty or swayed by our desires; it simply is. So Lew was haunted by truth of his past but it was a truth through his own distorted lens. That's something we call nostalgia.
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