Thomas Bernhard

Extinction

The telegram

I feel death ever pinching me by the throat, or pulling me by the back.

Montaigne

On the twenty-ninth, having returned from Wolfsegg, I met my pupil Gambetti on the Pincio to discuss arrangements for the lessons he was to receive in May, writes Franz-Josef Murau, and impressed once again by his high intelligence, I was so refreshed and exhilarated, so glad to be living in Rome and not in Austria, that instead of walking home along the Via Condotti, as I usually do, I crossed the Flaminia and the Piazza del Popolo and walked the whole length of the Corso before returning to my apartment in the Piazza Minerva, where at about two o’clock I received the telegram informing me that my parents and my brother, Johannes, had died. Parents and Johannes killed in accident. Caecilia, Amalia, it read. Holding the telegram, I kept a clear head, walked calmly to my study window, and looked down on the Piazza Minerva, where there was not a soul in sight. I had given Gambetti five books that I thought would be useful and necessary to him in the next few weeks, telling him to read them slowly and carefully: Jean Paul’s Siebenkäs, Kafka’s The Trial, Thomas Bernhard’s Amras, Musil’s The Portuguese Woman, and Broch’s Esch or Anarchy. I opened the window so that I could breathe more easily and reflected that I had been right to give Gambetti these five books rather than any others, since he would find them increasingly important in the course of our lessons. I also remembered telling him in passing that next time we would discuss Elective Affinities and not The World as Will and Idea. It was a delight to talk to Gambetti again after the dreary and labored conversations I had had with my family at Wolfsegg, all of them confined to day-to-day concerns of a wholly private and primitive kind. German words hang like lead weights on the German language, I had said to Gambetti, and constantly drag the mind down to a level that can only be harmful to it. German thought and German speech soon become paralyzed under the intolerable weight of the language, which suppresses any thought before it can find expression. Under the German language, I said, German thought had developed only with difficulty and never come to full efflorescence, as Romance thought had under the Romance languages — as witness the centuries of effort that the Germans had invested in their thinking. Although I have a higher regard for Spanish than for Italian, no doubt because I am more familiar with it, Gambetti that morning illustrated yet again the lightness, effortlessness, and infinite versatility of Italian, which bears the same relation to German as a child reared in complete freedom, in a happy and prosperous home, bears to one who has been cowed and beaten into low cunning in the poorest of poor families. How much more highly, then, must we rate the achievements of our philosophers and writers? I asked. Every word inexorably drags their thought down, every sentence forces to the ground whatever they venture to think, and thus forces everything to the ground. That’s why their philosophy and their writings are so leaden. Using my hands to simulate a balance, the left representing the German scale and the right the Italian, I quoted a sentence from Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Idea, first in German and then in Italian, and showed Gambetti how the German scale sank and the Italian sprang up. For his amusement, as well as my own, I recited a number of sentences from Schopenhauer, first in German and then in an extempore Italian translation, weighing both versions in my hands and making what was at first intended as an object lesson into a kind of bizarre game, concluding with some sentences from Hegel and an aphorism from Kant. The sad thing is, I told Gambetti, that heavy words and heavy sentences are not always the weightiest. The game soon exhausted me. Standing in front of the Hotel Hassler, I gave Gambetti a brief account of my recent visit to Wolfsegg, which in the end struck me as excessively circumstantial and inconsequential. My aim had been to compare our two families, to contrast the German element in mine with the Italian in his, but in fact all I did was to play off my family against his; this was bound to distort what I wanted to say and to strike Gambetti as disagreeable and confusing rather than instructive and informative. Gambetti is a good listener and has a fine ear, trained by me, for the truth and logic of what he is told. Gambetti is my pupil, but conversely I am Gambetti’s. I learn at least as much from him as he learns from me. We have an ideal relationship: sometimes I am his teacher and he my pupil, but at other times he is my teacher and I his pupil. And there are times when neither of us knows who is the pupil and who the teacher. That is the ideal situation. Officially, of course, I am always Gambetti’s teacher, and for this I am paid by Gambetti, or rather by his well-to-do father. Only two days after returning from the wedding of my sister Caecilia and the wine cork manufacturer from Freiburg, who is now my brother-in-law, I thought, looking down at the deserted Piazza Minerva, I’ll have to repack my suitcase, which I unpacked only yesterday and didn’t even put away but left on the chair by my desk; I’ll have to return to Wolfsegg, which has in recent years become more or less repugnant to me — and this time not for a ridiculous and grotesque occasion but for one that fills me with dread. Instead of discussing Siebenkäs or The PortugueseWoman with Gambetti, I told myself, I’ll be at the mercy of my sisters, who are expecting me. Instead of talking to Gambetti about ElectiveAffinities I’ll have to talk to my sisters about the funeral and the inheritance. Instead of walking up and down the Pincio with Gambetti, I’ll have to visit the registry of deaths and the cemetery and quarrel with my sisters over the funeral arrangements. As I packed the clothes that I had unpacked the night before, I tried to work out what consequences the death of my parents and my brother would have, but I arrived at no conclusion. I was naturally aware, however, of what was now required of me after the deaths of the three people who were closest to me, at least on paper — all my strength, all my willpower. The calm with which I gradually stuffed whatever I needed for my journey into the suitcase, while taking stock of the disruption that this undoubtedly dreadful calamity would cause in my immediate future, did not strike me as at all unnatural until long after I had shut the suitcase. The question of whether I had loved my parents and my brother was one that I at once fended off with the word naturally, but it remained fundamentally unanswered. For ages I had not had what is called a good relationship with either my parents or my brother but had one marked by tension and, in recent years, indifference. The truth is that for a long time I had wanted to know nothing about Wolfsegg or about them, and they, conversely, had wanted to know nothing about me. Hence our mutual relations were more or less confined to the exigencies of existence. Twenty years ago, I thought, your parents not only released you from Wolfsegg, after wanting to chain you there for life, but dismissed you from their feelings. During these twenty years my brother had envied me for having left Wolfsegg, for my megalomaniac self-sufficiency, as he once put it, and hated me for my relentless insistence on freedom. My sisters’ distrust had always exceeded the bounds of what is acceptable among siblings, and when once I turned my back on Wolfsegg, and therefore on them, they too pursued me with their hatred. This is the truth. I picked up the suitcase. It was, as usual, too heavy. I really don’t need it, I thought, as I have everything I need at Wolfsegg. Why cumber myself with a suitcase? Having decided to travel without a suitcase, I proceeded to unpack my clothes and return them, item by item, to the closet. It’s natural to love one’s parents, and it’s equally natural to love one’s brother and sisters, I thought, standing by the window again and looking down on the deserted Piazza Minerva. We therefore fail to notice that from a certain moment onward we hate them, without wanting to, just as naturally as we previously loved them, for all kinds of reasons that we become aware of only years later, often decades later. We can’t determine precisely when we stopped loving them and started hating them, and we don’t try, basically because we are afraid to. Anyone who leaves his family, against their will and as implacably as I left mine, has to reckon with their hatred, and the greater their previous love for him, the greater their hatred when he has done what he swore to do. For decades their hatred caused me suffering, I reflected, but I haven’t suffered from it for years now; I’ve become used to it and it no longer hurts me. And their hatred of me inevitably led me to hate them, but in recent years they haven’t suffered from my hatred either. They despised me, their Roman, just as I despised them, the Wolfseggers. Basically they stopped thinking about me, just as I stopped thinking about them most of the time. They always referred to me as a charlatan, a blatherer, a parasite who battened on them and everyone else. The sole term I could apply to them was blockheads. Their death, which can only have been caused by a road accident, I told myself, in no way alters the facts. There was no danger of my yielding to sentimentality. My hands did not shake as I read the telegram, and my body did not tremble. I’ll tell Gambetti that my parents and my brother have died and that I must postpone our lessons for a few days, I thought. After all, I won’t be staying at Wolfsegg for more than a few days; a week will be enough, even allowing for unforeseen complications. For a moment I considered taking Gambetti with me, fearing the superior force of the Wolfseggers and wishing for an ally with whom I could defend myself against their onslaught, someone of my own kind who would be a partner in a desperate and possibly hopeless situation, but I immediately abandoned the idea, as I wanted to spare Gambetti a confrontation with Wolfsegg. He’d see that everything I’ve told him in recent years is actually quite tame compared with the reality, I thought. At one moment I thought of taking him with me; the next moment I thought better of it. Finally I decided against taking him. I’d spend too much time with him, and this would cause something of a stir that I’d probably find disagreeable, I thought. They wouldn’t understand a person like Gambetti at Wolfsegg, where harmless strangers are invariably greeted with hostility. They’ve always rejected anything unfamiliar, they’ve never welcomed anything or anyone unfamiliar, as I usually do. To take Gambetti to Wolfsegg would mean deliberately exposing him to insult, and he might be deeply hurt. I can hardly cope with Wolfsegg myself, I thought, and to confront Gambetti with Wolfsegg could be a disaster, and he himself would be the chief victim. I could of course have taken Gambetti to Wolfsegg long ago, I thought, but I wisely refrained, although I had often told myself that it might be beneficial not only for me but for him, for if he saw it all for himself, my accounts of Wolfsegg would gain an authenticity that they are otherwise bound to lack. I’ve known Gambetti for fifteen years and not once taken him to Wolfsegg, I thought. Maybe he sees it differently, I told myself. It’s obviously strange to have known someone for fifteen years and been on fairly intimate terms with him without once, in all these fifteen years, inviting him to my home. Why, I wondered, have I never, in all these fifteen years, allowed Gambetti a glimpse of the hand I was dealt at birth? Because I’ve always been afraid to and still am. Because I want to protect myself against his knowing about Wolfsegg and my origins — that’s one reason — and because I want to protect him from such knowledge, the effect of which could be disastrous. In the fifteen years we have known each other I have been reluctant to expose Gambetti to Wolfsegg. It would have been the pleasantest thing in the world to go to Wolfsegg with Gambetti and spend my time there in his company, but I have always rejected the idea. He would of course have been prepared to go with me at any time and always expected to be invited. But he never was. A funeral is not only a sad occasion but an utterly disagreeable one, I told myself, and I certainly won’t invite Gambetti to accompany me on such an occasion. I’ll tell him that my parents have died, I’ll say that they and my brother have been killed in a car crash, though I’ve no confirmation of this, but I won’t say a word about his coming with me. Only two weeks earlier, before going to Wolfsegg for my sister’s wedding, I had treated Gambetti to a highly intemperate description of my parents and told him that my brother was rather a bad character, and irremediably stupid. I had described Wolfsegg as a citadel of brainlessness and spoken of the dreadful prevailing climate, which dominated and ruthlessly destroyed all who were forced to live — or rather to exist — there. But I also told him about the glories of Wolfsegg — about the beauty of the fall, of the winter cold and the silence in the surrounding woods and valleys, which I loved more than anything. Nature there was ruthless, I said, but utterly clear and magnificent. Yet this clear and magnificent nature was not appreciated by those who lived in the midst of it, because they were too brainless. If my family didn’t exist, but only the walls they live in, I told Gambetti, Wolfsegg would be the perfect place for me, as there’s no other so congenial to my spirit. But I can’t abolish my family just because I want to, I said. I can hear myself saying these words, and the terrible meaning they took on now that my parents and my brother were actually dead made me repeat them aloud as I stood at the window, looking down on the Piazza Minerva. But I can’t abolish my family just because I want to. Uttering these words to Gam¬ betti, I had felt the utmost distaste for the people they referred to. I now found myself repeating them aloud in a distinctly theatrical manner. Like an actor who has to rehearse his lines because they are to be spoken before a large audience, I momentarily took the sting out of them. They suddenly ceased to be annihilating. However, these words, But I can’t abolish my family just because I want to, again forced their way to the forefront of my mind and seized possession of me. I tried to stifle them, but they would not be stifled. I no longer enunciated them clearly but gabbled them to myself several times, trying to make them seem ludicrous, but despite my attempts to stifle them and make them seem ludicrous they became all the more menacing and suddenly acquired a greater force than any words I had ever uttered. You can’t drown out these words, I told myself — you’ll have to live with them. This realization brought a sudden calm into my situation. But I can’t abolish my family just because I want to. I spoke the words once more, but this time in the tone I had used to Gambetti. They now meant what they had meant then. Except for the pigeons, there were no living creatures on the Piazza Minerva. Suddenly feeling cold, I shut the window and sat down at my desk. My mail still lay on it, including a letter from Eisenberg, a letter from Spadolini, the archbishop who is my mother’s lover, and a note from Maria. I immediately threw the invitations from various Roman cultural institutes and all the other private invitations into the wastepaper bin, together with a few letters that a cursory inspection revealed as begging or threatening, letters written by people who either wanted money from me or demanded to know what I was trying to achieve by my lifestyle and my way of thinking. They referred to a few newspaper articles I had published recently, which naturally did not suit the writers because they had been directed against all such people — people in Austria, of course, whose hatred pursued me as far as Rome. I have been getting such letters for years. The writers are not madmen, as I had at first believed, but individuals who are legally responsible — fit to plead, so to speak — yet who react to my publications in various newspapers and magazines, not only in Frankfurt and Hamburg but in Milan and Rome, by threatening me with, among other things, prosecution and death. I am always dragging Austria in the dirt, they say, denigrating my own country in the most outrageous fashion and crediting the Austrians with base and despicable Catholic and National Socialist opinions whenever and wherever I can, whereas according to the writers, no such base and despicable opinions exist in Austria. Austria is not base and despicable, they say; it has never been anything but beautiful, and the Austrians are decent people. I always throw these letters away, as I had done that morning. I had kept the letter from Eisenberg, a college friend who is now a rabbi in Vienna, telling me that he had to be in Venice at the end of May and inviting me to meet him there. He intended to take me to the Teatro Fenice — not to see anything like Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale, which we had seen the previous year, but to see Monteverdi’s Tancredi. I’ll naturally accept Eisenberg’s invitation, I thought. I’ll write to him at once, but at once means after I get back from Wolfsegg. It’s always been a delight to walk through Venice with Eisenberg, I thought. It’s a delight just to be with him. Whenever he comes to Italy, if only for a few days in Venice, he lets me know in advance, I thought, and he always invites me to what he calls an artistic treat, which a performance of Tancredi in the Fenice is bound to be, I thought. I had also been sent a copy of the Corriere della Sera containing my short article on Leoš Janáček. I opened the newspaper expectantly, only to find that my article was not printed in a prominent place — which immediately put me in a bad humor. Moreover, a cursory glance revealed a number of unpardonable printing errors — which is the wont thing that can happen to me. I threw the Corriere away and reread the note that Maria had dropped in my letter box. My great poet wrote that she wanted to have dinner with me on Saturday, just with you, she wrote, adding that she had also written some poems—foryou. My great poet has been quite productive recently, I thought. I opened the drawer in which I kept a few photographs of my family. I looked intently at a picture of my parents at Victoria Station in London, boarding the train for Dover. I had taken it myself, without their knowledge. They had visited me in London in 1960, when I was a student there. After spending two weeks in England and traveling as far as Glasgow and Bristol, they went on to Paris, where my sisters were waiting for them. My sisters had traveled to Paris from Cannes, where they had been staying with my uncle Georg. In 1960 was still on tolerable terms with my parents, I thought. I had wanted to study in England, and they had not opposed the idea, as they must have assumed that after studying in England I would return to Vienna and ultimately to Wolfsegg, in order to fulfill their wish that I join my brother in managing the estate. But even at that time I had no intention of returning to Wolfsegg. I had in fact left Wolfsegg for England and London with the sole thought of never returning to Wolfsegg. I hated agriculture, to which my father and brother were passionately devoted. I hated everything connected with Wolfsegg, where the only thing that mattered was the economic well-being of the family. Nothing else mattered. For as long as Wolfsegg was in my family’s hands, no one had time for anything but maximizing the profits from its production units — its farmland, which even today covers twelve thousand acres, and its mines. They thought of nothing but how best to exploit their property. Of course they always pretended to be taken up with activities other than profitmaking, to be interested in culture and the arts, but the reality was depressing and embarrassing. True, they had thousands of books in their libraries at Wolfsegg — the house has five libraries — and the books were dusted three or four times a year with absurd regularity, but they were never read. The family kept the libraries sparkling in order to be able to display them to visitors without feeling ashamed, to show off and boast about their treasures, but they never made any practical or personal use of these treasures. The five libraries at Wolfsegg, four in the main house and one in an adjacent building, were founded by my great-great-great-grandparents, and my parents never added a single volume to the collections. It is said that our libraries, taken together, are as valuable as the world-famous monastery library at Lambach. My father never read a book. Occasionally my mother would leaf through old scientific works, enjoying the finely colored engravings that adorned their pages. My sisters never visited the libraries at all, except to show them to visitors who expressed a wish to see them. The photograph of my parents taken at Victoria Station shows them at an age when they still traveled widely and were not yet afflicted by illness. They were wearing the raincoats they had just bought at Burberrys, and carrying umbrellas on their arms, also from Burberrys. Like typical continentals, they tried to be more English than the English, and the consequent impression was grotesque rather than refined and elegant. I had to laugh every time I saw this photograph, but now my laughter was gone. My mother’s neck was rather too long to be considered beautiful, and at the moment when I took the photo — as she was getting on the train — it was stretched forward an inch or two more than usual, which made the picture doubly ridiculous. My father’s posture was always that of a man who could not hide his bad conscience from the world and was consequently unhappy. When I took the photo he had his hat pulled down lower than usual over his forehead — which made him look more gauche than he really was. I’ve no idea why I’ve kept this particular photo of my parents, I thought, but one day I’ll discover the reason. I put it on the desk and looked in the drawer for the one I had taken of my brother on the shore of the Wolfgangsee. It showed him on his sailboat, which he kept all year round at Sankt Wolfgang, in a shed rented from the Fürstenbergs. The figure in the picture is an embittered man, ruined by living alone with his parents, and the sporty attire only partly conceals the illnesses that have already taken possession of him. He has a forced smile, as they say, and only his brother — only I — could have taken the photo. When I gave him a copy, he tore it up without saying a word. I now placed the photo of my brother beside that of my parents boarding the Dover train and studied them for a long time. You loved these people as long as they loved you, I told myself, and hated them from the moment they hated you. Naturally I never thought I would outlive them. In fact I always imagined that I would be the first to die. The present situation is the one situation I’ve never envisaged, I thought. I had considered every other possible situation time and again, but never this. I had often dreamed of dying and leaving them behind, of leaving them alone without me, of freeing them from me by my own death, but never of being left behind by them. The fact that they were now dead and I was alive was not only utterly unforeseen, but quite sensational. It was this sensational element, this overwhelming sensation, that I found shattering, not the simple fact that they were dead, irrevocably dead. Though my parents had been pathetic in every way, I had always regarded them as demons, and now suddenly, overnight, they had shrunk to the ridiculous, grotesque photo that I had in front of me and was studying with the most shameless intensity. The same was true of the photo of my brother. All your life you feared these people more than any others, I thought, and this fear cast a monstrous blight on your life. All your life you tried repeatedly to escape from them, but you always failed. You went to Vienna to escape from them, to London, to Paris, to Ankara, to Istanbul, and finally to Rome — all to no avail. They had to have a fatal accident and shrink to this ridiculous scrap of paper called a photograph before they could cease to harm you. The persecution mania’s over, I thought. They’re dead. You’re free. Looking at the photograph of my brother on his sailboat at Sankt Wolfgang, I felt sorry for him for the first time. In the photo he now seemed far more comic than when I had first looked at it. I was alarmed by my ruthless honesty. My parents too looked comic in the photo taken at Victoria Station. All three of them, lying on the desk in front of me, not four inches in height, fashionably dressed and in grotesque physical attitudes that betrayed mental attitudes no less grotesque, were even more comic than when I had looked at them before. The photograph reveals only a single grotesque or comic moment, I thought, not the person as he really was more or less all his life. The photograph is a perverse and treacherous falsification. Every photograph — whoever took it, whoever is pictured in it — is a gross violation of human dignity, a monstrous falsification of nature, a base insult to humanity. On the other hand, I found the two photos immensely characteristic of both my parents and my brother. That’s how they really are, I thought — or were. I could have brought many other photographs of my parents and my brother from Wolfsegg and kept them in my desk. The reason why I brought these is that they show my parents and my brother as they really were when I photographed them. I did not feel in the least ashamed of this thought. It was not fortuitous that I had brought these particular photographs to Rome and kept them in my desk instead of destroying them. What I have here are not idealized images of my parents, I told myself, but my parents as they really are — or were, I said, correcting myself again. And my brother as he really was. All three were so timid, so ordinary, so comic. I’d never have put up with falsifications but tolerated only true and genuine likenesses, however grotesque — and possibly repulsive. And it was this photo of my parents that I once showed to Gambetti, a year ago. I even remember where — at the café on the Piazza del Popolo. He looked at it, but made no comment, though I recall that after looking at it he asked, Are your parents very rich? Yes, I said. I also remember that I later felt embarrassed at having shown it to him. You should never have shown him that photo, I told myself at the time. It was stupid. There were — and still are — countless photos that show my parents looking serious, as they say, but they do not correspond to the image I have always had of them. And there are serious photographs of my brother, but they too are misrepresentations. I would never have shown Gambetti any of these misrepresentations. In any case there is hardly anything I detest more than handing photographs around. I do not show people photographs, and I do not let them show me theirs. The fact that I showed Gambetti the one of my parents at Victoria Station was quite exceptional. What made me do it? Gambetti has never shown me any of his photographs. Of course I know his parents, and his brothers and sisters, so there would be no point in his showing me pictures of them; he would never think of it. Basically I detest photographs, and it has never occurred to me to take any, except for the ones taken in London and Sankt Wolfgang, and another that I took in Cannes. I have never owned a camera. I despise people who are forever taking pictures and go around with cameras hanging from their necks, always on the lookout for a subject, snapping anything and everything, however silly. All the time they have nothing in their heads but portraying themselves, in the most distasteful manner, though they are quite oblivious of this. What they capture in their photos is a perversely distorted world that has nothing to do with the real world except this perverse distortion, for which they themselves are responsible. Photography is a vulgar addiction that is gradually taking hold of the whole of humanity, which is not only enamored of such distortion and perversion but completely sold on them, and will in due course, given the proliferation of photography, take the distorted and perverted world of the photograph to be the only real one. Practitioners of photography are guilty of one of the wont crimes it is possible to commit — of turning nature into a grotesque. The people in their photographs are nothing but pathetic dolls, disfigured beyond recognition, staring in alarm into the pitiless lens, brainless and repellent. Photography is a base passion that has taken hold of every continent and every section of the population, a sickness that afflicts the whole of humanity and is no longer curable. The inventor of the photographic art was the inventor of the most inhumane of all arts. To him we owe the ultimate distortion of nature and the human beings who form part of it, the reduction of human beings to perverse caricatures — his and theirs. I have yet to see a photograph that shows a natural person, a true and genuine person, just as I have yet to see one that gives a true and genuine representation of nature. Photography is the greatest disaster of the twentieth century. Nothing has ever sickened me so much as looking at photographs. And yet, I now told myself, the longer I look at the distorted images of my parents and my brother in these pictures — the only ones I ever took of them — the more I see the truth and the reality behind the distortion. This is because I’m not concerned with the photos as such; I don’t see the people portrayed in them as they are shown by the distorting lens of the camera but as I myself see them. My parents at Victoria Station in London is written on the back of one photo. On the other is written: My brother sailing at Sankt Wolfgang. I put my hand in the drawer and took out another photo. It showed Amalia and Caecilia posing in front of Uncle Georg’s villa in Cannes. Uncle Georg, my father’s brother, bought this villa with the money my father made over to him — a one-shot payment, as they say — after my grandparents died. He invested it so shrewdly in several French portfolios that he not only was able to live quite comfortably but could afford a degree of luxury that suited his tastes. He got a better deal than my father, I thought, looking at the photograph of my sisters with their rather mocking expressions. Uncle Georg died four years ago, as suddenly as his brother, after suffering a heart attack in his garden while inspecting his roses, which were his only passion in later life. At thirty-five he was able to leave Wolfsegg and retire to the Riviera with masses of money and loads of books. He loved French literature and the sea, and he devoted himself entirely to these two loves. It often strikes me that I take very much after Uncle Georg, at least more than after my father. I too have always loved literature and books and the sea, and I too left Wolfsegg, at an even earlier age. On the back of the picture are the words: My sisters Amalia and Caecilia at Uncle Georg’s villa. I last went to Cannes in 1978. I visited Uncle Georg at least once a year. A few days spent with him at his villa always did me good. To the horror of the family, he designated his manservant, whom he always called affectionately my good Jean, as his sole heir. On several occasions Uncle Georg came to see me in Rome, a city that we both loved and appreciated more than any other. Gambetti and he got along well with each other and spent many evenings on the Piazza del Popolo or, if it was raining, at the Café Greco, discussing everything imaginable, especially painting. Uncle Georg was a keen collector, and I know that he spent the interest from his investments largely on acquiring pictures and sculptures by contemporary artists. Thanks to his good taste and a quite extraordinary instinct for the value of the works of art he preferred, his passion for collecting soon brought him a second sizable fortune, amounting literally to millions. The unknown artists he patronized became famous soon after he had more or less discovered them and brought them to public notice by buying their works. Uncle Georg had no time for the primitive business sense of my family; he abhorred the yearly exploitation of nature that goes on in the country, and he despised the centuries-old traditions of Wolfsegg — the production of meat, fat, hides, wood, and coal. Most of all he detested hunting, which was a ruling passion with my father and my brother (his brother and his nephew). Of all detestable passions, he had the profoundest detestation for hunting. Whereas his parents and his brother were devotees of hunting, Uncle Georg always refused to join in their sport. Like me he did not eat game, and when the others were out hunting he would shut himself in one of the libraries and divert his mind from their hunting excesses by intensive reading. Whilethey were out killing deer,he would say, I was sitting in the library reading Dostoyevsky, with the shutters firmly closed so as not to hear the shooting. Like me Uncle Georg loved Russian literature, especially Dostoyevsky and Lermontov, about whom he had some perceptive things to say, and he read and reread the revolutionaries Kropotkin and Bakunin, whose memoirs he thought the best in the genre. It was he who introduced me to Russian literature, about which he was very well informed, being as well versed in Russian as he was in French. It was from him that I acquired my love of Russian literature, and later of French literature. Indeed, I owe much of my mental capacity to him. At an early stage Uncle Georg opened my eyes to the rest of the world, so to speak, and made me aware that there was something else beyond Wolfsegg and beyond Austria, something far more splendid, far more tremendous, and that the world consisted not just of one family, but of millions of families, not just of one place, but of millions of places, not just of one people, but of many hundreds and thousands of peoples, each in its own way more attractive and more important than the others. The whole of humanity teems with countless beauties and possibilities, he said. Only an imbecile believes that the world stops where he stops. Uncle Georg not only introduced me to literature and opened it up as an infinite paradise, he also opened my eyes to the world of music and the arts generally. It’s only when we have a proper concept of art that we have a proper concept of nature, he said. It’s only when we can apply the concept of art correctly and enjoy art that we can make proper use of nature and enjoy it too. Most people never acquire even the most rudimentary concept of art, and so they never understand nature. The ideal contemplation of nature presupposes an ideal concept of art, he said. People who claim to see nature without having a concept of art see it only superficially, never in an ideal way, in its infinite splendor. For a thinking person it is possible first to arrive at an ideal concept of art by way of nature, and then to arrive at the ideal contemplation of nature by way of the ideal concept of art. On our visits to Italy, Uncle Georg, unlike my father, did not rush me from one column to another, one monument to another, one church to another, one Michelangelo to another. He never took me to see a work of art. I owe my understanding of art to him precisely because, unlike my parents, he never dragged me from one famous work of art to another. He never pestered me with them but simply pointed out that they existed and told me where they could be found, instead of bashing my head against some column or some Greek or Roman wall, as my parents constantly did. Having been bashed against so-called famous antiquities from early childhood, my head soon became quite insensitive to art of any kind; my parents’ head-bashing brought me no closer to art, but only sickened me with it. It took me years to set my head right after it had been brainlessly bashed against hundreds and thousands of works of art. If I had been under Uncle Georg’s influence as a child, I thought, when my parents were indiscriminately stuffing everything into my head, I would have benefited greatly. But the fact is that I had to be virtually destroyed by my parents before I could be cured by Uncle Georg, by which stage I was over twenty and, it seemed, hopelessly lost. By the time I realized what Uncle Georg meant to my future and my whole development, I was almost beyond treatment. I ultimately owe my salvation not only to my resolve to get away from the destructive ambience of Wolfsegg and halt the damage inflicted on me by my parents but also to Uncle Georg’s perspicacity. The result was that in adulthood, instead of being forced into the kind of life my family led, I was able to lead an entirely different one, like Uncle Georg’s. They hated Uncle Georg as long as he lived, and in the last ten or twenty years they took no trouble to conceal their hatred. In due course they treated him exactly as they treated me, thought of him as they thought of me, and went behind his back as they went behind mine. But he was not beholden to them in any way. One day, having settled his financial affairs, he boarded a train and went to Nice. There he rested for a few weeks, and then, fully refreshed, as he often said, he looked around for a place that would suit him. It had to be by the sea, set in a large garden, with the best air, but with good transport connections. His first picture postcards were sourly received at Wolfsegg. My family had visions of Uncle Georg lolling in the sun or strolling on the beach in linen suits, made to measure by Parisian tailors, of course, and in their dreams, which of course were always nightmares, they saw this good-for-nothingrogue, as they called him, walking into banks at smart Riviera resorts to collect the interest on his ever-growing fortune. They were too stupid to believe that anyone could lead an intellectual existence. Uncle Georg led one, as is attested by some hundred notebooks that he filled with his thoughts and observations. The narrowness of the Central European, who lives to work, as they say, instead of working to live, and without ever pausing to wonder what is meant by work, soon got on Uncle Georg’s nerves, and he drew the unavoidable conclusion. Marking time was not for him. One must let fresh air into one’s mind, he used to say, and that means letting the world into one’s mind, day after day. At Wolfsegg they never let fresh air — or the world — into their minds. Stiff and rigid by nature, they sat stiffly and rigidly on their estate, their life’s mission being to ensure that this immense mass of inherited wealth progressively solidified and under no circumstances dissolved. In the course of time they all took on the rigidity and solidity, the absolute hardness, of this mass and fused with it into a dreadful, sickening unity, without even noticing what was happening. Uncle Georg noticed, however. He wanted nothing to do with this mass of wealth. He waited for the propitious and probably ideal moment when he could detach himself from the Wolfsegg mass. They had, as I know, suggested to him that instead of withdrawing his inheritance from Wolfsegg he should settle for a more or less guaranteed pension. But his perspicacity saved him from doing anything so foolish. When the need arises, people like my parents are never more unscrupulous than in their dealings with members of their own families. They recoil from no baseness, and under the cloak of Christian principle, high-mindedness, and social conscience they are merely rapacious and treat anyone as fair game. Right from the beginning, Uncle Georg failed to fit in with their plans. They were actually afraid of him, because he had seen through them at an early stage. Even as a child he had caught them out in their underhanded dealings, with which he was never afraid to reproach them. He is said to have been the most feared child at Wolfsegg. Clear-sighted from the beginning, he is reputed to have developed an early passion for exposing his family. As a small child he would spy on them and confront them with their unprincipled conduct. No child at Wolfsegg was known to have asked so many questions and demanded so many answers. My parents would always reproach me by saying that I was getting like my uncle Georg, as though he were the most dreadful person in the world. You’re getting like your uncle Georg, they would say, but they achieved nothing by holding up Uncle Georg as a warning example, because right from the start there was no one at Wolfsegg whom I loved more. Your uncle Georg is a monster, they would say. Your uncle Georg is a parasite! Your uncle Georg is a disgrace to us all! Your uncle Georg is a criminal! The list of horrific designations they came up with for Uncle Georg never produced the desired effect on me. Every few years he would come over from Cannes to visit us for a few days, occasionally for a few weeks, and during these visits I was the happiest person in the world. I had a great time whenever Uncle Georg was at Wolfsegg. It suddenly became a different place. It had the air of the big city about it. The libraries were aired, books moved around, and rooms that at other times seemed like cold, dark, silent caverns were filled with music. The rooms at Wolfsegg, usually forbidding, became cozy and homey. Voices that usually spoke in harsh or suppressed tones suddenly sounded quite natural. We were allowed to laugh and to speak in normal conversational tones, not only when instructions were being given to the staff. Why do you always talk French when the servants are present? Uncle Georg asked my parents fiercely — it’s quite ridiculous! It made me happy to hear him say such things. Why don’t you open the windows during this glorious weather? he would ask. Whereas the mealtime conversation normally centered on pigs and cattle, on wagonloads of timber or on whether the warehouse prices were favorable or unfavorable, we suddenly heard words like Tolstoy, Paris, or New York, Napoleon or Alfonso XIII or Meneghini, Callas, Voltaire, Rousseau, Pascal, or Diderot. I can’t see what I’m eating, my uncle would say without the least compunction, whereupon my mother would jump up from the table and open the shutters. You must open the shutters wider, he would say to her, so that I can see my soup. How can you exist in this semidarkness all the time? It’s like living in a museum! Everything looks as though it hasn’t been used for years. What’s the point of having that fine china in the cupboards if you don’t eat off it? And your expensive silver? I admired Uncle Georg. There was never any boredom when he was around. He did not sit stiffly and rigidly at table like the others but constantly turned to one or another of us to ask a question, tender sound advice, or pay a compliment. You must wear more blue, he once told my mother — gray doesn’t suit you. You look as if you were in mourning, and it’s fifteen years since Father died. You, he once told my father, look like one of your own employees. That made me laugh out loud. When the meal was served, a procedure normally attended by complete silence, he would joke with the maids, which was something my mother found hard to endure. It won’t be long, he once said, not in the least inhibited by the presence of the maids, before there’s nobody to serve you. Then you’ll suddenly come alive. There’s a whiff of revolution in the air. I’ve got a hunch that something’s coming that’ll liven everything up again. Hearing such remarks, my father would shake his head and my mother would stare fixedly into my uncle’s face, as though she had no qualms about showing her dislike for him. In Mediterranean countries everything’s quite different, he said, but he did not elaborate. I was seventeen or eighteen at the time and wanted to know in what way things in the Mediterranean countries differed from things in Central Europe; he said he would explain it to me one day when I visited these countries myself. Life in the Mediterranean countries is a hundred times more rewarding than here, he said. I was naturally eager to know why. Central Europeans behave like puppets, not like human beings, he said. They’re all tense, they don’t move naturally, everything about them is stiff and ultimately ridiculous. And unendurable. Like the language they speak, which is the most unendurable language. German is quite unendurable. I was thrilled when he talked about the Mediterranean countries. It’s a shock to come back here, he said. It did not worry him in the least that his remarks spoiled the appetites of his audience. And what atrocious food! he exclaimed. In Germany and Austria, and even in German-speaking Switzerland, it’s not food, it’s just junk! The much vaunted Austrian cuisine is just a joke, an insult to the stomach and the whole of the body. When I’m back in Cannes it takes me weeks to recover from Austrian cooking. And what’s a country with no sea? he exclaimed, without pursuing the idea. After taking a mouthful of wine he would wrinkle up his nose. I could see that he even disapproved of Austrian mineral waters, which are generally well thought of, but he made no comment on them. He must be infinitely bored at Wolfsegg, I thought at the time, for he never had the chance to take part in a lively conversation, which was what he always enjoyed most. Sometimes, at least early on in one of his visits, he would try to initiate one, for instance by throwing the name Goethe into the arena, more or less apropos of nothing, but they did not know what to do with it, let alone with names like Voltaire, Pascal, or Sartre. Being unable to keep up with him, they contented themselves with disliking him, and their dislike intensified from day to day until in the end it turned to overt hatred. They were always intimating that while they worked hard, he had apparently made idleness, and the cultivation of idleness, into the daily content of his life, into a lifelong ideal. You know, he once told me, I come to Wolfsegg not to see the family but to see the house and the landscape, which bring back my childhood. Then, after a pause, he said, And to see you. In his will he left instructions that he was to be buried not at Wolfsegg, as the family expected, but in Cannes. He wished to be buried by the sea. Dressed in somewhat pompous and utterly provincial outfits, my parents rushed to his funeral expecting to inherit an immense fortune, only to be confronted, as I have already indicated, by what my mother called the greatest disappointment of our lives, which was all they had to take home with them. The good Jean, the son of a poor Marseille fisherman, inherited stock to the value of twenty-four million schillings and real estate worth at least twice as much. Uncle Georg left his art collection to the museums in Cannes and Nice. His gravestone, erected by the good Jean, was to bear only his name, followed by the words: who left the barbarians behind him at the right moment. Jean adhered strictly to Uncle Georg’s instructions. When my parents visited the grave a year ago on their way to Spain, they are said to have been so outraged that my mother swore she would never visit it again. She thought the epitaph a monstrous disgrace, and on her return to Wolfsegg she is said to have talked of nothing but the crime that her brother-in-law had perpetrated. I went for long, interesting walks with Uncle Georg in the country around Wolfsegg, as far as Ried in one direction and Gmunden in the other. He always had time for me. Thanks to him I know that there are more things in the world than cows, domestics, and public holidays that have to be strictly observed. I owe it to him that I learned not only how to read and write but how to think and fantasize. It is to his credit that I attach great importance to money, but not the greatest, and that, unlike my parents, I regard people outside Wolfsegg not as a necessary evil but as an endless challenge, a challenge to get to grips with them as the greatest and most exciting monstrosity. Uncle Georg initiated me into the secrets of music and literature and familiarized me with composers and writers, who now became living people, not just plaster figures that had to be dusted three or four times a year. I owe it to him that I began reading the books that seemed to have been locked away in our libraries forever and a day and have never stopped reading them, that I finally learned to philosophize; that I developed not into the sort of person who automatically became a cog in Wolfsegg’s financial and economic mill but into one who could properly be called a free agent. I have him to thank for the fact that I have never made the kind of brainless educational journeys, so called, that my parents went in for, taking me with them in my early years — to Italy and Germany or to Holland and Spain — but have learned the art of travel, one of the greatest pleasures in the world and one that I still enjoy. Thanks to Uncle Georg I have become acquainted not with dead but with living cities; I have visited not dead but living peoples, read not dead but living writers, heard not dead but living music, and seen not dead but living pictures. Instead of sticking the great names of the past on the inner walls of my brain like so many dreary transfer pictures from an equally dreary history, he presented them to me as living actors on a living stage. Every day my parents would show me a totally uninteresting world that progressively paralyzed my mind, a world in which life was basically not worth living, whereas Uncle Georg showed me the same world as one that was invariably interesting. Thus, as quite a small child I already had a choice between two worlds: my parents’, which I always found uninteresting and merely tiresome, and Uncle Georg’s, which seemed packed with tremendous adventures and in which one could never be bored but wished to live forever, hoping that it would never end; the automatic consequence was that I wanted to live in this world perpetually, for all eternity. To put it simply, my parents always took everything as it came, whereas Uncle Georg never took anything as it came. From their birth my parents lived by the laws laid down for them by their predecessors and never dreamed of making themselves new laws to live by, laws of their own, whereas Uncle Georg lived solely by his own laws, which he himself had made. And these self-made laws he was forever overturning. My parents followed a preordained path, and they would never have thought of deviating from it for a moment, but Uncle Georg went his own way. To cite another instance of the difference between them and my uncle: they hated what they called idleness and could not imagine that a thinking person simply did not know what idleness was and could not afford it, that when a thinking person indulged in apparent idleness he was actually in a state of extreme tension and excitement. This was because theirs was true idleness and they did not know what to do with it, for when they were idle there was actually nothing going on, as they were incapable of thinking, let alone of engaging in a rigorous mental process. For the thinking person there is no such thing as idleness. My parents’ idleness was of course genuine idleness, for when they did nothing there was nothing going on in them. By contrast, one might say, the thinking person is at his most active when he is supposedly doing nothing. This is beyond the comprehension of genuinely idle people like my parents and my family in general. Yet on the other hand, my parents did have an inkling of the nature of Uncle Georg’s idleness, and this was why they hated him, for they guessed that his idleness, being quite different from theirs, not only could become dangerous, but always was dangerous. The thinking person who is idle appears as the greatest threat to those for whom idleness means simply doing nothing, who actually do nothing when they are idle. They hate him because, in the nature of things, they cannot despise him. At the age of four Uncle Georg is said to have taken himself off to Haag, a village about five miles away, where he told total strangers that he came from Wolfsegg and did not intend going back. The villagers, understandably at a loss to know what to make of this strange child, brought little Georg back, kicking and screaming, to his parents. Most of the time his parents, and others who were put in charge of him, more or less had to chain him to Wolfsegg like a little dog to stop him from running away. He told me that as a very small child he had resolved to stay at Wolfsegg no longer than was absolutely necessary. But naturally I waited for the moment when I could free myself from Wolfsegg without hardship, he once told me in Cannes, that is to say until I had all the means that were necessary for total freedom. Of course, Wolfsegg itself is a wonderful place, he said, but the family has always soured it for me. Your father, he once said, is a weak character. He’s actually a kind man, but insufferable. And your mother’s a greedy woman who married him only for venal motives. Of course, she was a nobody. She’s said to have been pretty, but there’s no sign of that now. Your father isn’t basically a greedy man. It was your mother who aroused a kind of primitive greed in him. But even before he met your mother I didn’t get along with him. We were complete opposites. Sure, he’s good-natured, he still is, but please don’t be angry when I say he’s a stupid person. Your mother has him completely under her thumb. Yet at school he was better than I was. Everything he did was excellent. He handed in the best work. He was popular, and I wasn’t. He always got better grades than I did. But although we were dressed alike, I always looked smarter than he did. I don’t know why. But I only say this, said Uncle Georg, because basically I’ve always loved your father, who after all is my brother. And the last time he was in Rome Uncle Georg actually told me more than once that he still loved his brother more than anyone else in the world. If only that woman, your mother, hadn’t appeared on the scene! A woman turns up and marries a man, against his will, and then proceeds to drive out his good qualities, his good character, and destroy him, or at least to turn him into a puppet on a string. Your mother made your father her puppet. My God, Uncle Georg exclaimed, how your father could have developed if he’d found himself a different wife! I know no woman more uncultured than your mother, he said. She goes to the opera but doesn’t understand the least thing about music. She looks at a picture but understands nothing about painting. She pretends she reads books but she doesn’t read any. Yet at mealtimes she prattles away nonstop and talks down all around her with her arrant nonsense. All the same she ought to know how money can be made to multiply by itself, not in the perverse, idiotic way that she goes about it and that your father has taken over from her. Uncle Georg was referring to his own gift for making money and continually adding to his fortune. It’s almost unbelievable that your father and I are from the same stable, he often said. I’ve always had lots of ideas, he said, but your father’s never had one. I’ve always traveled because I’ve wanted to and have a passion for travel, but your father’s never felt the slightest need to travel and has only ever done so because it’s the thing to do. He always arranged his journeys in accordance with stupid plans made for him by others, all of them revolting individuals who called themselves art experts. You must go to Rome and visit the Sistine Chapel. You must see the Giorgione in the Accademia, called LaTempesta,they told him, and so he took a train to Venice to see La Tempesta. You must go to Verona and see the grave of Romeo and Juliet, they said, and so he went and saw it. The Acropolis is something you must see, they said, and so he went to Athens and saw the Acropolis. You must see Rembrandt, you must see Vermeer, you must see Strasbourg Minster, Metz Cathedral. He went everywhere and saw everything that his so-called art experts recommended. And what frightful people they were, those advisers of his, dreadful people with petit bourgeois minds and professorships, whose only reason for approaching him was that it gave them a chance to spend a few days free at our lovely Wolfsegg. Those appalling specimens from Vienna whom he was forever inviting — university professors, art historians, etc. — because he took them to be cultured people. Those horrors from Salzburg and Linz who came to Wolfsegg on weekends and polluted the atmosphere with their malodorous presence, so-called philosophers, scholars, and lawyers who did nothing but exploit him. They came in droves and spent the weekends gorging themselves and regaling us over dinner with their pseudoscholarly garbage. And then there were those revolting doctors he sent for from Vöcklabruck or Wels. Who only ruined him — mentally. Your father was persuaded, quite wrongly, that high-sounding academic titles were a guarantee of high mental capacity. He was always wrong. All my life I’ve hated such titles and their holders. I find nothing so repellent. The very word professor makes me feel sick. Such a title is usually proof positive that its holder is an egregious nincompoop. The grander the title, the greater the imbecility of its holder. And then his wife, your mother! Where she comes from they’ve always trampled on the intellect. And in the years she’s been married to your father she’s added many refinements to the art. But your father was never capable of independent thought: he hadn’t the wherewithal. He always admired others whom he took to be thinking people and let them do his thinking for him. He’s always been indolent, of course. And this indolence has left its mark. He’s never developed. I’m sorry, said Uncle Georg, but your father’s a particularly stupid man. And such a man was just what your mother needed. She was always artful. Looked at in this way, your parents were an ideal couple. I can still hear him saying this. We were sitting in the open on the Piazza del Popolo late one afternoon, and Uncle Georg became more talkative than ever before because, contrary to his custom, he had drunk several glasses of white wine that afternoon. It’s because I’ve always loved your father, my brother, and still do, that I allow myself to speak of him like this, said Uncle Georg — you know that. I always hoped your father would marry somebody different from your mother. But after all, he said, suddenly looking at me in consternation, she is your mother. Maybe it was a mistake for you to get to know me. Perhaps you’d have been happier without me — who knows? I said, simply, No. He was staying at the Hotel de la Ville, his favorite hotel, by the Spanish Steps, only a few yards from the Café Greco. He came to Rome at least once a year — when Cannes gets on my nerves, he would say. Once a year Cannes got on his nerves. I don’t care for Paris, he often said, but I always enjoy Rome. Partly because you’re here. In a city you love there’s always a person you love, he said. It’s a pity that Rome has become so noisy. But then all cities have become noisy. Although Uncle Georg did not appear on the photo of my sisters Amalia and Caecilia taken at his villa, it was of him that I thought, with him that I was mainly preoccupied as I looked at the photograph and tried to divert my attention from the telegram from Wolfsegg, the full horror of which I had not yet taken in. My parents dead, dead beyond recall, and my brother, Johannes, dead too. I still could not cope with this fact and its consequences, and I put off trying. Uncle Georg would have been the best support to have at a time like this, but I had no support. I must not think of what lay in store for me. I placed the photographs one above the other on the desk, so that my uncle was on top, though he was not visible on the picture of my sisters taken in Cannes, occupying a position above my parents, and my brother, Johannes, below them. All three dead, at one fell swoop. How, I wondered, did they relate to one another and to me? At the Hotel de la Ville, where of course he occupied the best and most beautiful of all the rooms, my uncle had once told me that he was bound to love his family, though he could not help hating it. This was precisely how he described his relations with the family. His brother, my father, he both loved and despised. My mother he detested as a sister-in-law, while respecting her as the mother of myself and Johannes. They’ll live to a ripe old age, he once said. People like that reach a great age. Their stupidity encloses them for decades like protective armor plating — they don’t drop dead suddenly like us. He was wrong. They have chronic illnesses that prolong their lives instead of shortening them, he said. Such illnesses are irksome but not fatal — they don’t come along all of a sudden and carry you off. Such people aren’t worn down by their interests or driven mad by their passions, because they don’t have any. Their equanimity and ultimately their apathy regulate their day-to-day digestion, so that they can count on reaching their dotage. Basically there’s nothing in the world that attracts them and nothing that repels them. They don’t indulge in anything to the point where it could debilitate them. The moment they realized that I was a disruptive element, said Uncle Georg, they excluded me from the charmed circle, first covertly and then overtly. Basically they would have paid any price, however high, to be rid of me. Quite automatically I had assumed a function at Wolfsegg that they couldn’t accept. I was the one who constantly drew attention to their shortcomings, who spotted every symptom of character weakness and always caught them out in unworthy behavior. How surprised they were, said Uncle Georg, when I pointed out one day that they hadn’t unlocked our libraries for six months and demanded access to them. People were always surprised when I said our libraries, for others could at best have spoken of our library, having only one. But we, having five, had much more to be ashamed of intellectually than those who had only one. One of our great-great-great-grandfathers inaugurated these five libraries that I’ve been so proud of all my life. He certainly wasn’t a madman, a crazy intellectual, as they always said at Wolfsegg. He could afford to set up these libraries — with the greatest understanding of literature — instead of filling the house with drawing rooms, which serve only to promote boredom and brainlessness. One day, said Uncle Georg, I burglarized these dead libraries, as it were, and was never forgiven for it. But when I left Wolfsegg they locked them up again and didn’t set foot in them for years, until word got around that the libraries existed and they were obliged to show them to the curious rather than lose face. At Wolfsegg nothing was ever used, said Uncle Georg, until I suddenly started using everything, sitting on chairs that no one had sat on for decades, opening cupboards that no one had opened for decades, drinking out of glasses that no one had drunk out of for decades. I even walked down passages that no one had walked down for decades. Right from the start I was the inquisitive one, whom they couldn’t help fearing. And I began to leaf through our centuries-old documents, which were stored in big chests in the attics and which they had always known about but never looked at, as if they were afraid of discovering something unpleasant. I was interested in everything, said Uncle Georg, and of course I was especially interested in our family connections, in our history, though not in the way they were, not just in its hundreds and thousands of glorious pages but in the whole of it. I ventured to do what they had never dared to do — to look into the fearful depths of our history — and this angered them. Georg was a name they all came to fear at Wolfsegg, said my uncle. They were afraid that the child I was then might one day control them, instead of their controlling me. My parents, your grandparents, chained me to Wolfsegg and gagged me, he said, which is precisely what they shouldn’t have done. And your parents learned nothing from your grandparents’ mistake; on the contrary, they used even worse methods in dealing with you. But on the other hand, he said, what would have become of you if they hadn’t behaved to you as they did? The question needed no answer: it answered itself. When I look at you, said Uncle Georg, I’m actually looking at myself. You’ve developed exactly as I did. You parted from them, got out of their way, turned your back on them, and escaped from them at the right moment. They never forgave me, and they won’t forgive you. My God, he said, Rome is to you what Cannes is to me. In this way we can deal with Wolfsegg, from a distance. When I think of those dreary evenings with the family, when the most marvelous topics fizzle out as soon as they’re broached. Whatever you say is met with incomprehension. Nothing you mention is taken up. If your father reads a paper, it’s the Upper Austrian Farmers’ Weekly; if he reads a book, it’s the accounts book. And then, because they have to make use of their theater subscription, they go to Linz and see some dire comedy, without feeling in the least ashamed of themselves. And they go to those ridiculous concerts at the Bruckner House, where innumerable wrong notes are played at maximum volume. These people — I mean your parents — haven’t just taken out subscriptions for the theater and concerts: they live their whole lives on a subscription basis. Every day of their lives is like an evening spent at the theater seeing some frightful comedy or at a ridiculous concert where wrong notes predominate, and they’re not ashamed of it. They live their lives because it’s the done thing; not because they want to, not because they have a passion for life, but because their parents took out a subscription for them. And just as they clap in all the wrong places at the theater, so they clap in all the wrong places in their lives, applauding when there’s no occasion for applause, just as they do at concerts, and making the ghastliest grimaces when they should be laughing heartily. And just as the plays they see are of the most dismal quality, so their lives are of the most dismal quality. On the other hand, he said, we should by now be indifferent to what they do and what they’ve made of their lives — it doesn’t concern us. And who’s to say that we’ve taken the right course? We’re not the happiest of people either — always searching for the ideal and failing to find it. The fact is that we’ve all tried to find a way of getting closer to one another and ended up farther apart. The closer we’ve tried to get, the farther apart we’ve become. Our overtures have ended only in bitterness, and we’ve only ever given up because otherwise we’d have been smothered with reproaches. We made the mistake of not resigning ourselves to the fact that Wolfsegg no longer concerns us. It’s their Wolfsegg, not ours. We always tried to force our Wolfsegg on them, instead of leaving them alone with theirs. We’ve always interfered with their Wolfsegg when we’d have done better to leave them in peace. They paid us off, and we ought to have been content with that, once and for all. We no longer have any right to Wolfsegg, he said. I looked carefully at the photograph of my sisters, taken when they were twenty-two and twenty-three. Their mocking faces have taken their revenge on them, I thought. They remained alone; they, didn’t have the strength to break away from Wolfsegg. These mocking faces were their only weapon against their surroundings and their parents, from whom they couldn’t escape, but it was a weapon that scared off all the men they wanted. My sisters were never beautiful, I thought. And they weren’t interesting either. They haven’t developed: they’ve remained the silly country cousins they always were. Twenty years on, their mocking faces, no longer fresh, are lined with bitterness. In fact they’re rather ugly. Caecilia is probably more good-natured than Amalia. The greed they inherited from their mother is compounded by bitterness. At one time they were both musical, and Uncle Georg tried to make musicians of them — a futile attempt that was doomed to failure. They lacked the staying power and had no real interest in music, and so naturally their talent was lost; they were just about good enough to be stand-ins for the church choir. At the age of four or five their mother started dressing them in dirndls, always identical in pattern and cut, in which they were bound to atrophy sooner or later. Both have delicate health, inherited from their mother, but it is the kind of delicate health that augurs a long life. They are always coughing. I have never known them not to cough. At Wolfsegg they cough all over the house, but their coughing is not to be taken seriously; it is not lethal. It is as though coughing were their one passion, the easiest fun that life could afford them. Their musical talent seems to have withdrawn into coughing. Even in company they cough all the time. They have nothing to say but never stop coughing. Each wears a silver chain around her neck, inherited from our grandmother, and if asked what they are, the first word they utter in reply is Catholic. They were both sent on cookery courses at Bad Ischl, where it was hoped they would learn Austrian imperial cooking, but neither learned to cook at Bad Ischl. Their cooking is even worse than Mother’s, whose incompetence always comes to light when the cook is on vacation at Aschach on the Danube. Potato soup is the only dish Mother cooks well. But none of us likes potato soup — except Father, who is passionately fond of it, or so he says. My sisters were always well brought up, as they say, but this does not alter the fact that they have always been the most devious creatures imaginable. If one of them picked up a book, the other would knock it out of her hand. They were always seen together, never alone. There is a year between them, but they behave like twins. If I say that I have always loved them, this does not mean that I have not always hated them in equal measure. When we grew up I naturally hated them more than I loved them. It now occurs to me that hate may be all that is left. They were always disappointed in me. They had only bad things to say about their brother, as I know, especially when others were present and they knew it would have a devastating effect. And what stories they invented in order to disparage me! Stupid people are always the most dangerous, it occurs to me. To say that I always loved them does not mean that I was not continually cursing them. Right from the start their mother chained them to herself and never let them loose. They were not allowed to travel or attend balls, and even at the age of about twenty they still had to ask permission to go to the Thursday market at Lambach. They got only so much pocket money, not enough for them to step out, just enough for a drink and a slice of bread to go with it. Their shoes were mostly made to measure by the shoemaker at Schwanenstadt, who had made our grandparents’ shoes. They were always unfashionable, and in time my sisters developed a rather clownish gait, which remained in later years, when they were able to buy shoes in Vienna. I cannot say which of them is the more intelligent. I cannot say that Caecilia has better taste than Amalia. I cannot say that Amalia knows more than Caecilia. Their voices are so alike that if one of them calls out it is difficult to know which of them it is. Since they were always together and neither felt the need to break loose from the other, they were for a long time unable to find a suitable husband. In fact I do not think either ever thought of marrying until last year, when Caecilia went to visit an old aunt of ours at Titisee in the Black Forest. There she met the wine cork manufacturer. Caecilia married him and thereby incurred the hatred of her sister Amalia. Amalia moved out of the main house into the Gardeners’ House, put in a brief appearance at the wedding breakfast after the church ceremony, and then left, not to be seen again. Knowing her, I guess that she stayed in the Gardeners’ House until she heard of the death of her parents and her brother and then, having a much greater sense of the theatrical than her sister, emerged from the Gardeners’ House and ran screaming to the main building, though of course I have no way of being sure. At the time of the accident Caecilia’s husband was probably still at Wolfsegg, I thought, as he didn’t intend to return to the Black Forest and Freiburg for two more weeks. Caecilia’s marriage was supposedly engineered, as they say, by our aunt in Titisee. It is typical of Caecilia that she should have thought she could stay on at Wolfsegg after the wedding. What it must have cost my mother to persuade her to go to Freiburg with her husband, considering that she had secretly sworn not to let either of her daughters leave Wolfsegg, as she had a lifelong dread of being left alone! Both her daughters were to stay with her at Wolfsegg so that if she should lose one of them she would still not be entirely alone. Mother always planned well ahead and took all eventualities into account, especially where her own future was concerned. She had always reckoned with losing my father, but then I’ll still have my daughters, even if both my sons are no longer at Wolfsegg. This was her plan. And if one daughter leaves home I’ll still have the other. Throughout the wedding festivities she was angry with Caecilia for deserting her and let her feel it, but as she is shrewd — or rather was shrewd — she was careful not to display her anger and sudden hatred for the deserter; on the contrary, she made a point of expressing her delight at what she called this happy union. Now at last she was the happy mother she’d always wanted to be, she said, to the disgust of all who knew the truth. She had herself photographed with her son-in-law all over Wolfsegg — although she had never let herself be photographed by a stranger, so to speak — in all kinds of silly and, it seemed to me, shameless poses. At every moment she would embrace her son-in-law and ask one or another of the bystanders to take a picture of them. Her histrionic skill undoubtedly reached its peak at this wedding. And from the Black Forest! she exclaimed more than once. I’ve always loved Freiburg! And Titisee! Her tastelessness knew no bounds. Secretly she longed for nothing so much as a speedy breakup of Caecilia’s marriage to her awkward husband, who probably has no idea what he has done to deserve it all. She had never been fastidious. It may well be, I think, that our aunt in Titisee fixed up her niece Caecilia with the wine cork manufacturer in order to avenge herself on my mother, for it is abundantly clear that our aunt is to blame for this grotesque marriage. She could never stand my mother, and now she had her triumph. While my mother was putting on that distasteful act of hers during the wedding festivities, she was, I believe, already turning her mind to the question of how to destroy this unwelcome marriage as soon as possible. As she projected the image of the deliriously happy mother to the wedding guests, the mechanism of destruction was already at work in her mind. How sad that Uncle Georg couldn’t have lived to see this day! she exclaimed. My father behaved with a good deal of indifference during these days of celebration, attending to his business and spending most of his time at the Farm or in the woods. He had always disliked such festivities and put up with them only to please his wife and because she forced him to do so. All the time he was calmness itself, as they say. It struck me that he had suddenly become old, weak and quite apathetic. But I cannot say that I felt sorry for him. In childhood I had what seems to me a normal, though not especially good, relationship with my sisters, but when we grew up it was always a bad relationship, and now, with my parents and Johannes dead, I was afraid of having to face them. They’ll cause me the greatest difficulties, I thought. I won’t be able to endure their mocking and by now embittered faces, the way they talk, the way they walk, the way they dress, and the way they constantly hurl unfounded accusations at me. They had always reproached me for having rejected Wolfsegg and dealt my parents a cruel and more or less mortal blow, and now that our parents were dead their reproaches were bound to be even more shameless. They won’t shrink from the basest and most absurd accusation, I thought. It’ll be no good restraining myself and trying to keep out of their way: they’ll be there all the time, blaming me for the whole disaster. And Uncle Georg too, in spite of his having been dead for so long. They won’t miss a single opportunity of saying that I drove my parents crazy, that I drove them insane and wounded them mortally. Even though it has nothing to do with me. During their lifetime I was always to blame for their misfortune; not just our parents’, but theirs too. They had a theory according to which my leaving Wolfsegg and turning my back on Wolfsegg was the reason for their being chained to Wolfsegg and forced to languish there, unable to develop, unable to marry, and so forth. I was to blame for the fact that the whole atmosphere of Wolfsegg had darkened in the last twenty years, from the moment I moved to Rome. For the fact that their father and Johannes became ill and their mother started to surfer stomach and kidney disorders in addition to her lifelong migraines. For the fact that the health of all of them had deteriorated so much. For the fact that nothing had been renovated at Wolfsegg. Even for the fact that no repairs had been done to the roof. I was to blame when it rained in and they had to rush to the attic with their cloths and buckets to mop up the water. Earlier, before I left for Rome, Wolfsegg had always been fun, but not since. There was suddenly no music at Wolfsegg, for instance. Wolfsegg had become silent, Amalia once told me, because of me, because of my big-headedness, which had driven me to Rome, because I had no sense of responsibility, because I lacked all filial affection and had always hated my parents, whereas they had always loved them. My parents, they said, spent all their money on me and in doing so deprived them, because they had a claim on it too. According to Caecilia, my expensive lifestyle had reduced their standard of living and was responsible for the increasingly alarming depreciation of their inheritance, and so forth. They even went so far as to assert that my only reason for going to college and choosing to study at the most expensive universities in Europe was to keep them as short of money as possible. Why does it have to be London and Oxford, they repeatedly asked, when Innsbruck would do just as well? For as long as I can remember they always referred to me as their big-headed brother who squandered their money, though in fact it was my money, or at most my parents’. Because of my urge to show off I always went around dressed in the most expensive clothes, they said, while they were forced to wear the simplest. You’re to blame for our going around in rags, Amalia once told me. At first they blamed everything on Uncle Georg, and then they blamed me. My brother too had the gall to reproach me for the way I lived and informed me that Wolfsegg could not afford to keep me in such style. These were his very words. I could not believe my ears, but I had not misheard him. For the most part my brother and sisters only echoed my parents’ remarks, which they had to listen to all year round. Whenever I was at Wolfsegg they gave free rein to their malevolent idiocies and did not hold back. They repeatedly said that I led a useless and utterly futile life and tried to persuade my parents to discontinue my monthly allowance or at least radically reduce it, constantly urging them to make short work of me and not let themselves be led up the garden path. I happened to hear Caecilia say this one day when she and my mother were having tea in the summerhouse and I happened to turn up earlier than expected. I was continually subjected to their insolence, and for as long as I can remember they were secretly tormented by the thought that I got more than my due and seemed to lead a better and more agreeable life, to which they did not consider me entitled. What is he after all? they would say. Who does he think he is? If I was silent at table it displeased them; if I spoke it displeased them. You never say anything, they would complain, or alternatively, You’re always talking. If I stayed home they said, Why don’t you go out? If I went out they said, Why don’t you stay home? If I wore a light suit I should have been wearing a dark one; if I wore a dark suit I should have been wearing a light one. If I talked to the doctor in the village they would say disapprovingly, He’s always talking to the doctor, about us. If I did not talk to the doctor they would say, He doesn’t even talk to the doctor. If I said I preferred Rome to Paris they at once reacted by saying that I praised Rome only because they hated it. If I said I did not want a dessert they related this to themselves, though when I said it I was not thinking about them at all. Whatever I said, they assumed that it was directed against them. After a while I could no longer stand it at Wolfsegg. If I felt like driving to the lake they would accuse me of everlastingly driving to the lake, which was absurd, for I drove to the lake at most once a year, unlike my brother, who drove there every two or three days, and even more often in summer, but it never occurred to them to criticize him. If I went for a walk in the woods they thought I was crazy, but if my brother went into the woods it was entirely normal. When I once ordered a martini at the local hotel they immediately said, He always orders an expensive martini. If I sent them a picture postcard from somewhere they immediately said, He’s only sent it to offend us. He can afford to travel to Cannes, Lisbon, Madrid, and Dubrovnik, but we can’t. So I soon stopped sending them postcards. But when the postcards stopped coming they said, He doesn’t send us postcards because he’s too cheap. For a whole five or six days they would be angry with me because I had opened the windows in my room during a very cold spell in winter in order not to suffocate. I was accused of squandering their money at a time when it was in short supply and wood was so dear. Without fresh air I cannot exist, let alone engage in any mental activity, but I am never forgiven for ventilating my room in winter. They would rather suffocate than show any consideration for my wish to air my room at Wolfsegg, where they have enough wood to heat the house for a thousand years. The first time I returned to Wolfsegg from Rome, expecting a cordial welcome, I happened to say, in the first few moments, how beautiful Rome was in February, when one could sit in the open air outside a café, quite lightly dressed, and drink coffee. They were immediately angered by the thought of my drinking coffee in Rome in the open air and constantly reproached me for sitting around drinking coffee, while they had to work hard, not just in February but all year round. Can you imagine how hard we have to work at Wolfsegg? they repeatedly asked me. We can’t afford anything, not a thing. You live in luxury while we work our fingers to the bone to keep Wolfsegg going! In the years since I left Wolfsegg my sisters have taken to addressing me in a disagreeably patronizing tone that I simply cannot endure. Do you have to fly when it costs only a third of the price by rail? my mother asked last time, and this piece of nonsense was immediately seconded by my sisters. Just as they used to gang up with my mother against me in their shrill, squeaky voices, they now do the same in their grating middle-aged voices, which set my teeth on edge whenever I have to listen to them. My mother would make some vicious remark, and my sisters would mindlessly echo it. I would never have dared to show Gambetti that dreadful place, and in all these years I have taken care not to invite him. What I have so far told him about Wolfsegg is, I think, perversely anodyne compared with the reality. It would have been quite wrong to allow Gambetti a glimpse of this snake pit. My sisters were not liked in the village. If I kept my ears open I heard only the most unpleasant remarks about them. My mother was not popular either. My father, however, was respected, and people were secretly sorry for him, having to live with such a wife and such daughters. As for my brother, Johannes, they had to work with him on the farm, in the forest, and in the mines. Whether they liked this I do not know. He was not wholly unapproachable, and he was not really as arrogant as he was said to be. True, he did not have an agreeable manner, and most of the time he gave the impression of arrogance, but this was a misleading impression, due to shyness rather than conceit. Unlike my mother and my sisters, but like my father and me, he was always on good terms with the local people and knew how to win them over. But it is fair to say that my sisters were unpopular with everyone. And they never tried to make themselves popular. The fact that even in later life they were always seen together was not just comic but offputting, not just grotesque but actually repellent, and so was their continued habit of dressing alike. Even now they are still their mother’s squeaky-voiced marionettes through and through. If they ever agreed to darn my socks, the stitching was so wide that the socks were unwearable, and the color of the darning wool seldom matched. They thought nothing of darning green socks with red wool and were profoundly hurt when, instead of thanking them, I threw their frightful handiwork in their faces. I found it particularly silly that they always went around in the atrocious local costume. Every year they had dirndls made for them by Mother’s dressmaker. I found these distasteful, and whenever I returned from Rome and they ran to meet me, dressed in their dirndls, I had to take a firm hold on myself lest I said something offensive. When they were little they wore pigtails, but later they put their hair up in buns. The blond buns have meanwhile grayed. I recall that even as small children they never let me sit in the garden and read a book. They would not leave me in peace but incessantly taunted me by calling me a failed genius, an expression borrowed from their mother’s vocabulary. I found it highly offensive, and they would shout it at me until I threw down my book, jumped up, and slunk off to my room. I wish I could think of something pleasant to say about my sisters, but nothing occurs to me. Given time, of course, I could tell a few stories that would show them in a better light, but so few, compared with the dreadful things that went on between us, that they would not be worth recounting. I must say that I am not afraid to record the truth about this pair, who throughout my life have done nothing but torment me and have begrudged me every breath I drew. I would be guilty of gross dishonesty if I forbore to mention the torments and indignities they inflicted on me. They deserve no such forbearance, and neither do I. Once or twice a year I cheer myself up by buying one of those Roman straw hats that are sold in Trastevere for next to nothing and, being lighter than other hats, afford the best protection against the Roman heat, which is at times unbearable. I once turned up at Wolfsegg, which I still thought of as home, wearing one of these cheap straw hats and was taken to task by my mother. Did I have to buy myself such an expensive straw hat, she asked, when there was such a catastrophic economic crisis and the upkeep of Wolfsegg had become almost impossible? This is just one instance of the awfulness of my family, to whom, when I come to think of it, the words shame, sensitivity, and consideration meant virtually nothing. And who never felt the slightest need to improve themselves, having stopped in their tracks decades ago and been content to stay put ever since. I have always been eager to improve myself, to take up and assimilate whatever I could, but they have not made the least effort in this direction. Just as most graduates, like many doctors of my acquaintance, believe that after completing their studies they have done all that is required of them and need no longer try to extend their knowledge, broaden their understanding, or develop their character, having already reached what they consider the high point of their existence, so my family, once they had left high school, made no further effort but stayed where they were for the rest of their lives. It is appalling that anyone should think it unnecessary to broaden his mind and regard any extension of his knowledge, in whatever sphere, as superfluous and any development of his character as a waste of time. My family very soon gave up extending their knowledge and developing their characters. Having left high school at age nineteen, they grossly overrated themselves and were so satisfied with what they had achieved that they stopped working on themselves. Whereas Uncle Georg spent his whole life endeavoring to extend his knowledge, develop his character, and realize his full potential, they had no time for any such endeavor when once they had reached the minimal acceptable level of attainment. At about age nineteen they stopped assimilating anything new, ceased to exert themselves, and shunned any effort at self-improvement. Yet it goes without saying that we should continue to extend our knowledge and strengthen our character as long as we live, and that anyone who fails to do so, who stops working on himself and exploiting his potential to the full, has simply stopped living. They all stopped living at age nineteen, and since then, I am bound to say, they have merely vegetated and become a burden to themselves. Every hundred years the family has produced an extraordinary character like Uncle Georg and then pursued this extraordinary character with hatred and animosity all his life. Looking at these pictures of my family, I am inclined to think that they could have made something of themselves — and perhaps even achieved something great — yet they made nothing of themselves, because they settled for indolence and were content with the daily round, which demanded nothing more of them than the traditional stolidity they were born with. They staked nothing, risked nothing, and chose to take it easy, as they say, when they were still young. They never exploited the potential that they undoubtedly had, that everyone has. And if one of them did exploit this potential, as Uncle Georg did — I do not wish to dwell on my own case — he was punished with incomprehension and disfavor. My sisters stopped in their tracks as soon as they had graduated from high school. They left it with their heads held high, clutching their graduation diplomas, which they regarded as lifelong guarantees of something extraordinary, when all they guaranteed was extraordinary mediocrity. They stopped in their tracks, and now, at about forty, they are still where they were at nineteen. Everything about them is little short of ludicrous, and at their age, of course, not pitiable but pathetic. Father too came to a stop early in life. Having qualified at the forestry school in Wiener Neustadt, he thought he had reached the culmination of his existence and began to ease up. After coming to a halt at twenty-two, he became increasingly rigid, and atrophy set in. And my brother, Johannes, ceased to develop after graduating from the forestry school at Gmunden. Like ninety percent of humanity he believed that, with good final grades on his certificate from the last school he had attended, his life had reached its apogee. This is what most people think. It is enough to drive one up the wall. They collapse in upon themselves, one might say. And anyone who fails to exert himself is bound to be a disagreeable person whom we can view only with distaste. At first he depresses us, then distresses us, and finally infuriates us. No action we take against him is of any avail. Human beings, it seems, exert themselves only for as long as they can look forward to idiotic diplomas that they can boast about in public. Having gained enough of these idiotic diplomas they take it easy. For the most part their sole aim in life is to obtain diplomas and titles, and when they think they have collected enough of them, they lie back and relax, featherbedded by their diplomas and titles, and appear to have no further ambition in life, no interest in an independent existence or indeed anything but these diplomas and titles, under which mankind has for centuries been in danger of suffocating. They do not strive for independence and self-sufficiency or for the natural development of their personalities; they are utterly obsessed by these diplomas and titles and would gladly give their lives for them if they were conferred unconditionally. This is the depressing truth. They set so little store by life itself that they see only these diplomas and titles, which they proceed to hang on their walls. These diplomas and titles hang on the walls of butchers and philosophers, of scullions, attorneys, and judges, all of whom spend their lives staring at them with greedy eyes, eyes made greedy by their constant staring. When they speak of themselves, they do not say, I am this or that person; they say, I am this or that title, this or that diploma. They associate not with this or that person, but with this or that diploma, this or that title. Taking mankind as a whole, then, we may say that most associations take place not between human beings, but between diplomas or titles. To put it baldly, human beings count for nothing: only titles and diplomas count. One does not meet Mr. Huber at the coffeehouse: one meets the doctorate of that name. One has lunch not with Mr. Maier but with the engineering diploma of that name. Human beings, it seems, have not really arrived until they have ceased to be mere human beings and become holders of engineering diplomas; when they are no longer merely Mrs. Müller but the counselor’s wife. And in their offices they engage not Miss So-and-So but her first-class diploma. This addiction to titles and diplomas is of course endemic throughout Europe, but there is no doubt that in Germany, and to an even greater extent in Austria, it has developed a monstrous, grotesque, and quite staggering virulence.

Only recently I told Gambetti that Austrians and Germans had no respect for human beings but respected only titles and diplomas, believing that a human being began to exist only when he had obtained a diploma or received a title and that until that point he was not a human being at all. Gambetti thought this a gross exaggeration, but in the course of our future lessons I shall prove to him that it is not, that these conditions prevail not only in German-speaking Europe but seemingly throughout Europe, and that in a frighteningly short time they will prevail throughout the world. But of course this addiction to diplomas and titles is not just a twentieth-century phenomenon: mankind has always suffered from it. Centuries ago human beings, having insufficient respect for themselves, decided to boost their self-esteem by presenting themselves in the form of diplomas and titles. Uncle Georg used to say, Whenever I go to Austria and sit in a train, I have the impression that the compartment is occupied solely by professorships and doctorates, not by human beings, that the streets are teeming not with young people or old people but with counselors. My father, having qualified at the forestry school, had his diploma framed and hung it over his desk like an altarpiece. My brother, Johannes, did the same after qualifying at the forestry school in Gmunden. They felt that their graduation from these undoubtedly necessary but quite ludicrous academies was the high point of their lives. And my sisters were always squawking about their high school without even being asked about it. The whole world surfers from this addiction to diplomas and titles, which makes it impossible to lead a natural life. But the extreme state of affairs that so depresses you in Austria and Germany has certainly not been reached in the Latin countries, said Uncle Georg. And I don’t think this Austro-German condition will ever prevail there. The Latin peoples are not so narrow-minded and never have been. Natural life still flourishes there, but here it has almost died out. In Germany and Austria natural life has not been possible for centuries, having been extinguished by the craving for diplomas and titles. In early childhood I had a good relationship with my brother, Johannes. He is — or rather was — only a year older than I. Until we started school and our sisters were born we were good friends. But while we were at school our ways diverged. At the age of six, I think, each of us set off in the direction that was to determine his whole life, and we went in precisely opposite directions. While Johannes took more and more to the fields and the woods, I moved with equal determination away from the fields and the woods, with the result that he became more and more bound up with Wolfsegg as I grew farther and farther away from it. In the end he was not just pervaded but dominated by Wolfsegg and, I believe, sucked in and devoured by it, as I was ultimately by the world outside it. Very soon my brother’s favorite words were grain, pigs, pines, and firs, while mine were Paris, London, Caucasus, Tolstoy, and Ibsen, and his repeated attempts to fire me with enthusiasm for his favorite words, like my attempts to inspire him with an interest in mine, soon became pointless. Emulating Uncle Georg, I spent most of my time in our libraries, while Johannes was usually to be found in the stables. He would wait in the cowshed for a cow to calve, while I was busy in the library decoding a sentence by Novalis; as he waited impatiently for the calf to be born in the cowshed, I waited with equal impatience for Novalis’s idea to be born in my head. On graduating from high school he bought himself a sailboat; I spent my graduation present on a trip to Anatolia with Uncle Georg. When Uncle Georg still lived at Wolfsegg I spent every spare minute with him, but my brother had scarcely any interest in Uncle Georg; he preferred to be with my father, whom he accompanied to the fields, the woods, and the mines, and to various offices in the neighboring towns. From the beginning I regarded Uncle Georg as my teacher, while Johannes saw Father as his. And unlike my brother, I did not hang around my mother. I detested the way he always clung to her skirts. I never clung to my mother’s skirts, and I always drew my head away when she made to kiss me. He was forever demanding to be kissed by her. At night, when he was asleep, I often left our shared bedroom and went to Uncle Georg to hear one of his stories; he invented hundreds of them to please me. My brother never dared to flout the rules at Wolfsegg, but I was always flouting them. I left the house whenever I wanted — he did not. I ran down to the village whenever I wanted, to observe the people who lived there — he did not. I talked to the villagers whenever I wanted — he did not talk to them unless he was given permission. Finally, when I had my own room I arranged it to suit my own taste; he would never have thought of doing such a thing. His school-books were always clean and his writing like copperplate; my school-books were always dirty, my writing careless and all but illegible. My brother was always punctual at mealtimes, but I had a problem with punctuality. I encouraged him to join in adventures, but he never encouraged me. The adventures usually ended with his getting hurt and crying, for he was always the clumsier of the two of us, often falling into a stream or a pond, tripping over a root, or grazing his face or his legs on bushes. Such things never happened to me. When I asked him whether he could see something or other in the distance, he never could because he was shortsighted, whereas I have always had good vision. I had no trouble learning to ride a bicycle, but it was ages before he could balance on one. He was no match for me at running. If we had to swim across a river he usually found it too much and had to give up. The consequence of all this was that at a very early age he came not so much to hate me as to develop a strong sense of inferiority, from which he continued to suffer and which ultimately turned into a more or less unbridled hatred that at times revealed itself quite openly. I could, for instance, run down to the village in three minutes, but it took him five. At school he was the most attentive pupil, and when the teacher called out his name he would jump up at once, whereas I was the most inattentive and usually did not hear my name called out, which naturally led to my being punished. Neither of us had friends during our first year at school, as we were not allowed to bring our classmates home and had to go straight back to Wolfsegg after school. But in later years, when we were allowed to bring friends home, we each had friends who were suited to our temperaments and differed as we did. My brother always slept soundly and was fully rested in the morning, but I suffered from sleeplessness, even as a child. I had the wildest and most exciting dreams — he did not. He took a long time to find a particular location on a map — I did not. I loved maps more than anything. I used to spread them out in front of me and go on long imaginary journeys, visiting the most famous cities and traveling the seas in my dream ships. My brother had quite different interests: he would crouch in the corner of the stable and watch the animals. When the Medrano Circus put up its tent in the village — we were five and six at the time — I went down to watch the circus people whenever I had a chance. I was particularly fond of the trapeze artists. For hours I would sit in a hidden corner, watching in admiration as they rehearsed their exciting acts. My brother had no interest whatever in the circus. In winter I would watch the curlers on the ice until I was half frozen, longing to join in the game. At first I was strictly forbidden to, but I soon found a way around this prohibition and went down to the village on my own hook, as they say. I went down to the village whenever I could; as soon as I could walk I was fascinated by the village and by the new and quite different people I saw there. My brother did not share my interest and could never be persuaded to accompany me. This would have been a transgression, and at an early age he rejected the idea on principle, not daring to transgress. I thought nothing of calling at all the houses in the village, introducing myself and talking to the occupants. I made friends with them and observed how they spent their day, taking an interest in their work and their recreation. The more people I met on my forays into the village, which is more than two and a half miles long, the better it suited me. Above all I got to know the simple people and saw how they lived and worked and celebrated special occasions. Until my fourth or fifth year I had no idea that there were any other people outside Wolfsegg, but I soon discovered that there were hundreds, thousands, and millions of them. I visited the tradesmen and watched them at their work — the turner, the shoemaker, the butcher, the tailor. I visited poor people and was surprised to find how friendly they were to me, for I had always been led to believe they were intolerant — as my parents always described them — narrow-minded, unapproachable, stubborn, deceitful, and treacherous. But I discovered that they were kinder than we were up at Wolfsegg, that they were kind and approachable, unlike us, that they were cheerful, unlike us. And suddenly it seemed to me that it was we, not the village people, who were unapproachable, stubborn, deceitful, and treacherous. My parents had told me that the village was a dangerous place, but I discovered that it was not the least bit dangerous. I thought nothing of going in and out of all the doors and looking through all the windows. My curiosity knew no bounds. My brother never accompanied me on my expeditions. On the contrary, he reported them to my parents. He’s been down to the village again, he would say, and look on shamelessly, not batting an eyelid, as I was punished for my offense. My mother would beat me with a rawhide that she always kept in readiness, and my father would box my ears. I had many whippings, but I cannot remember my brother being whipped or having his ears boxed. I was interested in anything that was different, but my brother was not, I thought, examining the photo of him in his sailboat on the Wolfgangsee. I once told Gambetti that my brother was always an affection seeker, but I never was. I tried to explain what I meant by the term. At mealtimes my brother was always silent and never dared to ask a question; I constantly asked questions and was reprimanded by my parents for asking the most impossible questions. I wanted to know everything—no question must remain unanswered. My brother was a slow eater; I always ate hastily, and still do. I always walked fast, wanting to reach my destination as soon as possible; my brother had a slow, one might almost say a deliberate, gait. As for my handwriting, it was fast and careless and, as I have said, almost illegible, whereas he always wrote in a careful, regular hand. When we went to confession he always spent a long time in the confessional, whereas I was in and out in no time. It did not take me long to list the many sins I felt obliged to confess, while he took at least twice as long over the few he had committed. Until I was about twelve we shared the same room, and I recall that in the morning I always dressed very quickly. Hardly had I woken up than I was washed and dressed. Johannes took at least three times as long. Right from the beginning, in fact, he resembled Father more than Mother, at least when it came to quickness, restlessness, curiosity, and percipience. Naturally my essays were better than his, even at primary school, but this did not mean that I got better marks. On the contrary, my marks were always worse than his, even though my essays were undoubtedly better; this is not surprising, however, as our teachers thought the form of an essay more important than the content. I always chose interesting subjects — what I called exotic subjects — when essays were assigned. Johannes always chose the simplest subjects, which he developed and presented in a simple manner, a manner that was not just simple but tedious and pedestrian, while my essays were always composed in a complicated and interesting manner, as is attested by the exercise books lying around in cardboard boxes in our attics. My brother was less interested in widening his knowledge and improving his mind than in winning the teachers’ approval. This was never my aim, and I was never in the teachers’ good books, as they say. They disliked me because they always found me intractable, but they loved my brother because he was so uncomplicated. And instantly obedient. I was often impatient and recalcitrant, and never at a loss for words. He did whatever he was told and never rebelled, whereas I rebelled almost every day and so incurred the hostility of the teachers. Like my family, they were driven to distraction, as I now realize, by all the questions I asked and were nearly always out of their depth. I distrusted them, and my distrust was reciprocated. Unlike my brother, I had no respect for authority. Very early on, Uncle Georg had told me the truth about teachers: that they were moral cowards who took out on the pupils all the frustrations they could not take out on their wives. When I was very young Uncle Georg impressed on me that among the educated classes teachers were the basest and most dangerous people, on a par with judges, who were the lowest form of human life. Teachers and judges, he said, are the meanest slaves of the state — remember that. He was right, as I have discovered not just hundreds but thousands of times. No teacher and no judge can be trusted as far as you can throw him. Without scruple or compunction they daily destroy many of the existences that are thrown upon their mercy, being motivated by base caprice and a desire to avenge themselves for their miserable, twisted lives — and they are actually paid for doing so. The supposed objectivity of teachers and judges is a piece of shabby mendacity, Uncle Georg said — and he was right. Talking to a teacher, we soon discover that he is a destructive individual with whom no one and nothing is safe, and the same is true when we talk to a judge. My brother always began by trusting people and was hurt when they let him down, as they usually did. I, on the other hand, trusted hardly anybody on first acquaintance and was seldom let down. Having been let down so often, he became embittered at an early age and soon took on the embittered features of his father, whom life had generally let down — or rather he took them over, as one takes over a property — and he soon came to resemble his father in every way. How often have I thought to myself, Your brother walks like your father, sits like your father, stands like your father, eats like your father, and strings his words together like your father, in long, ponderous sentences; in thirty years he has become identical with your father. He adopted all the habits of his father, who was my father too. Like him, he very soon became an indolent person, who feigned activity, though in reality he was inactivity personified. He pretended to be constantly on the go, working nonstop and never allowing himself a moment’s rest — and all for the sake of the family, who wished to see him as he pretended to be. The family took this show seriously, not realizing — or not wanting to admit — that they were watching an actor, not the essentially indolent person behind the act. The truth is that my brother did as little work as my father and merely feigned the unremitting activity that they all admired, the dedication to work that satisfied them and in the end satisfied him too, for suddenly even he could no longer see it as a pretense. Throughout his life my father played the part of the immensely hardworking, even work-crazy, farmer who never let up for a moment because, as a good family man, he could not permit himself to. And the same applied to my brother, who naturally copied my father’s act: both of them soon realized that it was sufficient to play at work without actually doing any. Basically they did nothing all their lives but polish their act, and in this field — not to say this art — they became consummate performers. Most people feign work, especially in Central Europe. They constantly play at working and go on polishing their act right into old age, but the act has as little to do with real work as a play has to do with real life. Yet because human beings would rather see life as a play than as real life — which they regard as far too tedious and laborious, indeed as a gross indignity — they prefer playacting to life and, therefore, to work. Unlike the others, I never attached much importance to my father’s capacity for work, knowing that it was for the most part just playacting. So was my brother’s, who imitated and improved on my father’s act in order to show it off to an admiring public. But it is not just in the higher classes, so called, that work is simulated rather than performed; even among supposedly simple people the simulation of work is widespread. Wherever we look, we see work being simulated and activity feigned by people who are in fact idling, doing nothing at all, and creating nothing but mischief instead of making themselves useful. Most workers today believe that all they have to do is put on their blue overalls and do nothing — certainly nothing useful. Having donned their costume, the ubiquitous blue overalls, they rush around all day in this costume and often even break out in a sweat, though it is a spurious sweat, generated not by work but by the simulation of work. Even ordinary people have realized that such simulated work is more profitable than real work, though certainly not healthier — far from it. Today they merely simulate work instead of actually working, and the result is that suddenly every state is on the verge of ruin, as we can see. The truth is that there are no longer any workers, only actors who put on a show of working. Everything is acted, nothing is done. Watching my father at work, I often told myself, He’s only acting, he’s not working at all, and the same applies to my brother. I don’t blame them for simulating work and hoodwinking the public, as the rest of humanity does, I told myself, but they really shouldn’t say at every turn that they’re working themselves to death, let alone that they’re doing it for the family and even, on occasion, for the country. I can honestly say that Father always took it easy at Wolfsegg, and so did my brother. They did not overtax themselves, and under their regime Wolfsegg became generally run-down. Uncle Georg was right when he said to me once, Your father and brother are pretty smart; they pretend to be the family robots, when in fact they’ve turned Wolfsegg into a cozy rural stage on which they make fools of us all. We don’t take advantage of them — they take advantage of us. And we fall for their hypocrisy. If a farmer wants to pass for honest and hardworking, all he has to do is open the farm gate, turn up the sound of grunting pigs, as one turns up the radio, and broadcast the sound from the world of bad conscience. People are actually foolish enough to fall for such tricks. Every morning millions of people slip on their overalls and are taken seriously as workers, though in fact they’re an army of highly skilled idlers who only make mischief and think of their bellies. But the intellectuals are too stupid to see this, said Uncle Georg. Even the feeblest performance by an idle worker or craftsman suffices to give them a bad conscience, provided that he appears in his theater workshop dressed in his blue costume. The intellectuals have only a minor role to play in this revolting workshop, where work and activity have been in the repertory for over half a century, performed with the most spine-chilling professionalism and panache. I’ve nothing against people not wanting to work, said Uncle Georg, but they ought to come clean and admit that they’re lazy, and so spare us this nauseating charade. Your father and your brother are both superb principals on this particular stage. And your mother directs the show, at any rate at Wolfsegg. My sisters, it occurs to me, have a habit of hopping, a hysterical condition acquired in early childhood, which became one of their most striking characteristics. They hop all day long — they don’t walk. They hop from the kitchen into the hall and back, into the drawing room and back. They really don’t walk — they hop. I always see them hopping, like the children they were thirty years ago. Although they now walk normally, they always seem to me to be hopping. I cannot see them walk without imagining that they are still hopping as hysterically as they did when they were little girls with long pigtails. They are now forty and graying, but I still see them hopping when they are actually walking. When I thought I had finally escaped them they would suddenly turn up, hopping and giggling; they never left me in peace but drove me half demented with their giggling. And all day they would sing songs that I hated and do everything possible to torment me. They were always dancing around me, encircling me and pouncing on me, even in my dreams. It was as though my parents had brought them into the world deliberately to spite me. I often woke from a dream in which they were about to kill me. They left my brother alone; they felt no urge to torment him, their greatest pleasure being to drive me to desperation. Their attitude to me was always malign, and they developed a routine for putting their malignity into effect. For a long time I was utterly at their mercy. They spied on me and informed on me, then gloated over the punishments that were meted out to me. They watched gleefully, unable to restrain their giggles, as my mother struck me over the head with the rawhide or my father boxed my ears. I cannot say which of my sisters was the more devilish, for Amalia would first be egged on by Caecilia, then Caecilia by Amalia. To me the so-called weaker sex was at that time the stronger, the more ruthless, as it took the greatest delight in tormenting me, more or less without compunction. My sisters were endlessly inventive and daily devised ever more subtle and diabolical torments. At an early age my sisters formed a conspiracy against me. They were believed, I was not; their word carried conviction, mine did not. And so I resolved to avenge myself. I locked them in the dark, airless larder, pushed them into the pond, or shoved them from behind so that they would fall full-length in their white Sunday-best dresses and get up dirty and bleeding from top to toe. The prospect of the terrible punishment that would ensue did not deter me from wreaking cruel vengeance, in various ways, for their atrocious behavior. I would lead them into the wood, then run away, leaving them in mortal terror and ignoring their cries. But their cruelty to me came first and was from the beginning much worse than any I inflicted on them. In the photo I can see all this cruelty quite plainly; their story and their character are written in their faces. These cruel children grew up into equally cruel adults. As children they might have been called beautiful, but as adults they are downright ugly. It is hard to say which of them is more like her father and which more like her mother. Of course they both inherit everything from their parents, but in a coarsened form. At table they sit like dolls, talking the same twaddle they have talked for decades. They sit down together and jump up together, and if one of them runs to the bathroom the other goes with her. These women are incapable of being alone, even in the bathroom. In winter they used to spend most of their time sitting on the sofa in their room, knitting sweaters that fitted no one and were always a disaster, the ugliest sweaters I have ever seen. Either the sleeves were unequal in length, the back was too wide, or the waist and the neck were too narrow. The garments were sloppily knitted, with excessively large stitches, because my sisters were of course incapable of concentration. And they chose the most tasteless colors. My brother and I had to try on the half-finished sweaters; they would force us into them, pulling and stretching them in all directions, and finally pronounce them a success, though it was obvious from the start that their knitting was indescribably amateurish. At Christmas their hideous knitwear was placed under the tree, and we had to perform the most incredible contortions to get into it, and then we had to admire it. At Wolfsegg on Christmas Eve the whole family sat around in my sisters’ knitwear like a bunch of cripples. It is as though my sisters, with their craze for knitting, were determined to make us look ridiculous in their knitwear, after spending weeks and months locked in a kind of unnatural intercourse with the wool. For months before Christmas Wolfsegg was dominated by wool. Then on Christmas Eve our sisters dressed us all up in their hideous woolen garments and we had to thank them. I have always detested home-knitted garments, just as I detest home cooking and anything else homemade. Canning jars I find a nightmare, and we had hundreds of them at Wolfsegg, not just in the larders but on the cupboards in the other rooms. At an early age the prospect of having to spend the next few decades consuming all the jam that was stored in these jars, carefully labeled by my mother and sisters, filled me with a permanent loathing for everything jarred, especially jam. The larders also contained hundreds of jars full of preserved chicken thighs, pheasant thighs, and pigeon thighs, which were of a dull yellow color that never failed to nauseate me. Although we ate gradually less and less jam and less and less jarred fruit at Wolfsegg, my mother and sisters jammed and jarred increasing quantities; having been obsessed with jamming and jarring for as long as I could remember, they could no longer be cured of this obsession. And every week they made bread crumbs from the stale bread, so that we had whole galleries of jars full of bread crumbs, which were never used, as we no longer had schnitzels, Viennese cooking having gone out of favor. We went in mostly for Parisian-style cooking, which was to my mother’s taste, and at Wolfsegg her taste prevailed in all things. Looking at Wolfsegg, one could see quite plainly that hers was the predominant taste. As soon as she moved in she got rid of all the things my father liked and replaced them with whatever she liked. My father’s house, I have to say, became my mother’s house, and not to its advantage, as is testified by the countless aberrations in the furnishing of the rooms. And not only the rooms: everything at Wolfsegg, even the gardens, gradually came under my mother’s influence and has consequently been deteriorating for a long time. For centuries the gardens at Wolfsegg had formed a park, cultivated in accordance with certain strictly observed principles, until my mother transformed it radically. At one time, as I know from old prints, the grounds consisted of a great tract of natural landscape, but they have since been converted into a more or less conventional and excruciatingly dreary park that could almost be described as suburban. Everything bears Mother’s imprint, so to speak. I have to say that her big ideas have gradually diminished everything. A woman who comes up from nowhere is not necessarily a disaster for an estate like Wolfsegg, but my mother was. My father was weak and lacked the force of character to call a halt to his wife’s megalomaniac idiocies. Indeed, he approved of everything his wife wanted and considered it the sum of all wisdom, welcoming all her errors of taste and extolling them as something good, outstanding, and even magnificent, with the result that she felt increasingly entitled to regard herself as the savior of Wolfsegg and to act accordingly. Yet all the time she was in fact its greatest despoiler. And she soon turned my sisters into obedient and unquestioning assistants, who propagated and promoted her tasteless ideas whenever they could and in time became her two most dangerous mouthpieces. These mouthpieces were always standing, sitting, or lying in wait. Sisters like these are capable of darkening an inherently happy scene, I once told Gambetti. On an estate like Wolfsegg such a mother and such characterless sisters can turn day into night whenever they choose. And they’ve darkened so many days, even years, at Wolfsegg. They’ve quite simply turned the light out on us all, for no other reason than that they felt like it. When a man like my father marries, I told Gambetti, he turns the light out on himself. He no longer lives as he did previously but gropes around more or less clumsily in the darkness, to the delight of those who created the darkness. Men like my father are at first reluctant to embark upon any liaison, let alone marriage, and they continue to put it off until suddenly, fearing that they will otherwise be lost and become a laughingstock, they run into a trap laid by some scheming woman. The trap immediately snaps shut and proves fatal, I told Gambetti. My father, unlike Uncle Georg, was naturally made for marriage, I said, but not to a woman like my mother. He married a woman who destroyed and betrayed him. Naturally I love my mother, I told Gambetti, but I am not blind to her meanness and destructiveness. Baseness comes into its own, I told Gambetti, and morality becomes a joke. Of course there are counterexamples, where a woman appears on the scene and actually saves everything. But this woman, our mother, was bent on destruction. On the other hand, I told Gambetti, this may just be the way I see it. It may be that the situation is really quite different and that without my mother the disaster that’s befallen Wolfsegg would be even greater. Uncle Georg often described the conditions that my mother introduced at Wolfsegg as his biggest stroke of luck. My calculations worked out, he often said. And I have to admit that my own calculations worked out too. It is probable that my development would have been quite different if Wolfsegg had developed differently and my father had married a different woman. I would not be the man I am if Wolfsegg had been different. On the whole I consider myself lucky, especially as I can live in Rome, I told Gambetti, so I’ve no reason to speak of Wolfsegg as a disaster all the time. Yet perhaps I have a sense of guilt, I said, to which I have to admit, over the rather inconsiderate manner in which I left Wolfsegg in its present state. As we know, we hate those who provide for us, and this is partly why I hate Wolfsegg, I told Gambetti, for Wolfsegg provides for me — whether rightly or wrongly is beside the point. We feel hatred only when we’re in the wrong and because we’re in the wrong. I’ve gotten into the habit of thinking — and saying! — that my mother is revolting, that my sisters are equally revolting, and stupid with it, that my father is a weakling and my brother a pathetic fool, that they’re all idiots. I use this way of thinking as a weapon; this is basically contemptible, but it’s probably the only way to assuage a bad conscience. They could just as well rail at me and pillory me for the same malevolence that I’ve discerned in them all these years. We very soon get used to hating and condemning people without ever asking ourselves whether this hatred and condemnation are in any way justified. All in all, we should have most sympathy with poor people, I told Gambetti, because we know ourselves and know that they, like us, lead a miserable existence, whether they want to or not, and have to come to terms with it. Why are we always more ready to dwell on the faults and foibles of others than on their virtues? I asked. But on examining the photos I was forced to revert to my earlier attitude, because they showed my sisters as the ridiculous women they really were. I no longer doubted that they were ridiculous. But do they deserve to be called repulsive? I asked myself. At this time? I felt ashamed but immediately told myself that we could not get outside our own heads, and so I persisted in the belief that my sisters were both ridiculous and repulsive. A so-called family tragedy, I told myself, doesn’t justify us in fundamentally falsifying the image of the family concerned, in yielding to an access of sentimentality and more or less giving up, out of selfishness. No tragedy, not even the most terrible, can justify us in falsifying our thoughts, falsifying the world, falsifying everything — in siding with hypocrisy, in other words. I have often observed that people who throughout their lives have been judged repulsive and distasteful are spoken of after their death as though they had never been repulsive and distasteful. This has always struck me as tasteless and embarrassing. When someone dies, his death does not make him a different person, a better character: it does not make him a genius if he was an idiot, or a saint if he was a monster. It is in the nature of things that we have to endure such a calamity and suffer all its attendant horrors, in the certain knowledge that the true image of the victims has not changed. It is said that we should not speak ill of the dead — but this is base hypocrisy. After the death of somebody who throughout his life was a dreadful person, a thoroughly low character, how can I suddenly maintain that he was not a dreadful person, not a low character, but a good person? We daily witness such tastelessness when someone has died. But just as we should not be afraid to say, when a good person dies, This good person is dead, so we should not be afraid to say, This base, despicable person is dead — with all his faults, we should say, and with all his wonderful and delightful qualities, if he had such qualities. A person’s death must in no way be allowed to distort our image of him. We should tell ourselves that for us he remains what he was, and let him rest in peace. I won’t return to Wolfsegg for a long time, I had told Gambetti, and now I have to return immediately, I thought. I can’t endure Wolfsegg any longer, I had said. I can’t stand the house, any more than I can stand the people, and I now find the climate unbearable. I hadn’t thought it would become unbearable so soon, I had told him. I can’t stand my parents any longer, or my brother and my sisters, but it’s my sisters who get on my nerves most of all, I said. I’ve been in Rome too long, I’ve been abroad too long, I’ve become a foreigner. I find it unendurable to spend a single hour at Wolfsegg; I can’t imagine that I’ll ever go back for any length of time, I told him. Wolfsegg no longer means anything to me; I loathe everything connected with it; the history of Wolfsegg is a crushing burden that I won’t take up again. And now I have to return to Wolfsegg immediately. And under what circumstances, what awful circumstances! I said to myself. Less than four hours earlier I had told Gambetti I would rather not visit Wolfsegg again. It had become intolerable, I had told him. The whole place is a lie, Gambetti, I had said, dominated by an unendurable artificiality that you can’t imagine. These people are deaf to everything that means so much to me, to nature, to art, to anything of real importance. They don’t read, they don’t listen to music, and all day long they talk only about the most futile and banal things. One can’t have a worthwhile conversation with them — only the most depressing one. Whatever I say, they don’t understand me. If I try to explain something to them, they stare at me with a total lack of interest. They don’t have the slightest taste. If I talk about Rome, which is after all the center of the world, it bores them. And the effect is the same if I talk about Paris, or about literature or painting. I can’t mention a single name that’s important to me without being afraid that they’ve never heard it. Everything there is paralyzing, and somehow it’s cold even in summer, so that I always feel frozen. You don’t realize, Gambetti, that these people have nothing on their minds but the most basic concerns — money, hunting, vegetables, grain, potatoes, wood, coal, nothing else. My mother goes on about her stocks and is always saying that she’s made the most disastrous investments. The word warehouse is always on my father’s lips. My brother thinks the world revolves around his sailboat and his Jaguar. And just imagine: the people who visit them are always the most awful people — stupid, ridiculous, dreary people from those dreadful small towns, people with whom one can’t have the slightest conversation. One can’t broach a single topic without coming to an immediate halt. If possible I won’t go back to Wolfsegg for another year, I had told Gambetti, not even for Christmas. That’s another habit that has become repugnant to me, because it’s at Christmas that the mendacity at Wolfsegg reaches its peak. I won’t go to Wolfsegg for at least a year. If I go at all, it’ll be for my father’s birthday, I said, as we stood in front of the Hotel Hassler. This time too I took flight from Wolfsegg and hurt their feelings, I said, though it’s not really possible to hurt their feelings, as they don’t have any. The insensitivity that prevails there defies description, Gambetti. I now find everything Austrian unendurable, and everything German too. Rome has spoiled me for Wolfsegg, I said. Rome has made Wolfsegg impossible. My taste for Wolfsegg was ruined first by London, then by Oxford, then by Paris, and finally by Rome. I don’t know how I could ever have had a bad conscience when I refused to go to Wolfsegg just because they wanted me to, for they didn’t deserve that I should ever go there again — or fly there, I said — and thereby put myself at a disadvantage. I always put myself in the wrong just by turning up at Wolfsegg. I would turn up and immediately be in the wrong. No sooner had I arrived than I put myself at a disadvantage. Everything there is mean and vulgar, I said, if I exclude the few moments I can describe as endurable. Talking to Gambetti, I had worked myself into a state of immense indignation against Wolfsegg. This angry tirade suddenly struck me as utterly perverse and insupportable, but I could not call a halt to it; I had to give it free rein, as I was so overjoyed at being back in Rome. Never before had I been so elated. Unable to restrain myself, I made Gambetti the hapless victim of my tirade against Wolfsegg, which turned into a tirade against everything Austrian, then everything German, and finally everything Central European. I find that the north has become quite unbearable, Gambetti, I said. The farther north I go, the more unbearable it becomes, and to me Wolfsegg lies in the far north. It’s the ultimate dim Thule. Those endless boring evenings, I said, that tasteless food, those undrinkable wines, those labored conversations, which are so excruciating that I can’t describe them to you — I’m just not up to it, my dear Gambetti. You’ve no idea what it means to me to be back in Rome, to be on the Pincio again, to see the Borghese Gardens, to look down from here on my beloved Rome. My revered Rome. My wonderful Rome! Anyone who’s been in Rome as long as I have has simply blocked off all access to a place like Wolfsegg. He can’t go back — it’s become an impossibility. For days I walk around in the various buildings at Wolfsegg, trying to calm myself, and I can’t. For days I walk up and down in my rooms, hoping I’ll be able to endure it, and of course it becomes less and less endurable. For days I try to find ways of surviving at Wolfsegg without constantly feeling that I’ll go mad, but I find none. Five libraries, I said, and such hostility to the intellect! In the Latin countries even the simplest people have some taste, some culture, I said, but at Wolfsegg no one has even a modicum of taste. The Austrians don’t have the slightest taste, or haven’t had for a long time. Wherever you look, tastelessness reigns supreme. And a total lack of interest in everything — as though the stomach were all-important and the mind quite superfluous, I said. Such a stupid people, I said, and such a magnificent country — an incomparably beautiful country. Natural beauty such as you find nowhere else, and a people that has so little interest in it. Such a wonderful age-old culture, and such a barbarous absence of culture today, a devastating anticulture. To say nothing of the dire political conditions. What ghastly creatures rule Austria today! The lowest of the low are now on top. The basest, most revolting people are in power, busily engaged in destroying everything that means anything. Fanatical destroyers are at work, ruthless exploiters who have donned the mantle of socialism. The government operates a monstrous demolition plant that functions nonstop, destroying everything I hold dear. Our towns and cities have become unrecognizable, I said. Great tracts of our countryside have been despoiled. The most beautiful regions have fallen victim to the greed and power-lust of the new barbarians. Wherever there’s a beautiful tree it’s cut down, wherever there’s a fine old house it’s demolished, wherever a delightful brook runs down a hillside it’s ruined. Everything beautiful is trampled under foot. And all in the name of socialism, with the most appalling hypocrisy one can imagine. Anything even remotely connected with culture is suspect, called into question, and obliterated. The obliterators are at work — the killers. We’re up against obliterators and killers, who go about their murderous business everywhere. The obliterators and killers are killing and obliterating the towns, killing and obliterating the landscape. Sitting on their fat arses in thousands and hundreds of thousands of offices in every corner of the state, they think of nothing but obliteration and killing, of how to kill and obliterate everything between the Neusiedlersee and Lake Constance. Vienna has been almost done to death, and Salzburg — all these fine cities, Gambetti, which you don’t know but which are actually among the most beautiful in the world. The landscape we see as we drive through Austria from Vienna has been almost totally killed and obliterated. One eyesore succeeds another, one monstrosity after another forces itself on our eyes. It’s become a perverse lie to say that Austria is a beautiful country. The truth is that the country was destroyed long ago, deliberately devastated and disfigured as a result of perfidious business deals, so that one is hard put to find a single unspoiled spot. It’s a lie to say that Austria is a beautiful country, because the truth is that the country has been murdered. Was it necessary in this century, I asked Gambetti, for humanity to lay violent hands on this most beautiful of all worlds, to kill and obliterate it? The villages, Gambetti, are unrecognizable when we revisit them after a number of years, and so are the inhabitants. What were these people like just a few years ago, and what are they like now? A chronic lack of character has taken hold of them like a deadly disease — greed, ruthlessness, depravity, mendacity, hypocrisy, baseness. They’ll do anything to achieve their base ends, and they employ the utmost ruthlessness in pursuing them. You enter these villages, delighted at the prospect of seeing them again, but you soon turn your back on them, repelled by so much baseness. You visit these once beautiful towns and cities, but by the time you leave them you’re depressed by the crushing certainty that all these towns and cities are lost — disfigured and destroyed by the new barbarism. In order to find them you have to consult old books and engravings, for they have long since been obliterated by the reality of today. All those splendid houses in Upper Austria, in Salzburg, for instance, as well as in Lower Austria, have lost their faces. Their handsome, centuries-old faces have been disfigured by today’s insane fashions. Everything beautiful has been ripped out, so that now, utterly mutilated, they stare scornfully at the horrified visitor who remembers them as they once were. Nothing but ruined facades, I told Gambetti. It’s as if all these towns and cities had been visited by a hideous plague, a deadly disease unknown in earlier times. What’s more, I told Gambetti, whole sections of the towns have been eviscerated and mutilated. The surface of the earth has been disfigured by architects, egged on and abetted by cynical politicians. At first it seemed as though our towns and our countryside had been ravaged by war, but they have suffered far greater ravages during the perverse peace that followed, thanks to the unscrupulous deals done by our rulers and the activities of their henchmen, the architects, who were given unlimited license. And what havoc the architects have wrought in these decades! The destruction we suffered in the war is mild by comparison, I told Gambetti. And in no country has the work of destruction been carried out with such horrendous efficiency as in Austria. Or so unscrupulously. The nation has been hoodwinked; the country and its cities have been mutilated and virtually obliterated, I said. For decades the utmost tastelessness has been preached and propagated. Among our rulers we have had so many unscrupulous profiteers, so many obliterators of our state, and hence of our country, that it doesn’t bear thinking about; they all held on to their cabinet seats long enough to promote and carry through the destruction and annihilation of our landscape and our cities. But in a country where vulgarity and tastelessness prevail it’s no wonder that the results are so ubiquitously shattering. For while these people were in power, destroying, despoiling,

and more or less obliterating the landscape and the cities, they were simultaneously destroying the nation’s soul, its whole mentality. The souls of my compatriots have been depraved, I said, their characters vulgarized and debased. A malign atmosphere prevails everywhere. Wherever you go you come up against this malign and depraved mentality. You think you’re talking to a decent person — which he might have been once — only to discover that he’s the lowest of the low. There’s been a universal character switch, the effect of which is that anyone who once was decent has been corrupted and reveals his depravity in every way, making no attempt to suppress it, but displaying it quite openly. You go into a village that you remember as friendly and welcoming, but you very soon discover that it has become malign and hostile and that you meet only with sullen suspicion. The whole of Austria has been turned into an unscrupulous commercial concern in which everything is bargained for and everyone is defrauded. You think you’re visiting a beautiful country, but in reality you’re visiting a monstrous business enterprise. You think you’re entering a land of culture, but you’re dismayed by the primitive mentality you encounter everywhere. From the very beginning you find yourself in a brainless atmosphere in which you can hardly breathe, I told Gambetti. It’s as though all the monuments, including those that were set up as recently as the last century, were dismayed too as they surveyed the indescribable chaos created by our present rulers. You can’t imagine how repulsive it’s all become, Gambetti, I said, how charmless. Nothing so repulsive and charmless would be possible in Italy, I said, or in Spain. In no other country have they taken the brainless slogans of progress as seriously as in Austria, I said, and thereby ruined everything. Everything brainless is taken seriously in Austria, I told Gambetti, in deadly earnest — and you know what that means. Until now I always thought socialism was a temporary nervous disorder that was basically harmless, I told Gambetti, but in reality it’s a deadly disease. I mean the socialism that prevails today, which is just a sham, Gambetti, a spurious socialism that relies on shameless pretense. Today we don’t have real socialism anywhere in the world, only the mendacious, simulated variety, as you should know. Today’s socialists are not real socialists but devious dissemblers. This century has succeeded in dragging the honored name of socialism in the dirt to such an extent that you want to throw up. The inventors of true socialism, who actually believed in it and thought they’d established it for all time, would turn in their graves if they could see what their unspeakable successors have made of it. They’d turn in their graves if they could open their eyes again and see everything that’s peddled and purveyed to the peoples of the world under the honored name of socialism. They’d turn in their graves if they could see the dirty tricks that are played in Europe and the rest of the world under the cover of this honored name. They’d turn in their graves if they knew about this gigantic political misappropriation. They’d turn in their graves, turn in their graves, I repeated several times. I won’t go back to this country for a long time, not for a year at least, I had told Gambetti. And now I had to go back at once. In the photograph my brother has a rather depressed posture, almost cowering, I thought, although he makes quite an elegant impression. He’s a countryman, whereas I’m a townsman, a metropolitan, and always have been. He’s instantly recognizable as a countryman, however fashionably he’s dressed. Like his father, who usually wore city clothes but could at once be recognized as a countryman. From time to time, to please my mother, they go — or used to go — to Vienna, taking in an opera (at Easter it would be Parsifal) and having supper at the Sacher. After breakfast the three of them would go for a walk across the Graben and along the Kärntnerstrasse as far as the Ring. If they were feeling generous they would take my aunt Elisabeth with them. They wore city clothes but were immediately recognizable as country folk. They would visit the most famous shops, and my mother would choose the very best dresses, which were at the same time the most tasteless — Milan and Paris designs that she would then wear to the theater in Linz or to concerts in Salzburg, for which they had had subscriptions for years. My brother looks healthier in the picture than he really was. He harbored all his father’s ailments, but they had not yet manifested themselves, as they had in Father’s case; they were biding their time and had not yet broken out. Yet in the photo I could already discern them in his face and his generally pathetic posture. I once said to Gambetti, They all have pathetic physical attitudes, which match their pathetic mental attitudes. Everything about them is pathetic, outwardly and inwardly, and I explained to Gambetti what the word pathetic meant. It has no equivalent in Italian and is not easy to translate. They went to the opera or the theater and were basically terribly bored, but at the end of the performance they always clapped enthusiastically and made no attempt to appear sophisticated, having paid so much money for their tickets. They always paid the standard price, which no Viennese would dream of doing. The Viennese never pay the full price for their tickets but at most pay half price, leaving the full price to foreigners and provincials, who always clap most because they’ve paid so much for their seats. We always had to stand with Mother in front of the famous shops, which were not always the best shops, and gaze at the window displays. She would then go in, head held high, and I never knew her to leave without having made a purchase. After visiting two or three shops we had to walk beside her, loaded with large parcels, and it was only when they became too heavy for us that she would relent and agree to take a rest at the Sacher or the Bristol, where we usually stayed. She would have loved to buy up everything and take it all home to Wolfsegg. What are you going to do with all these things? my father would ask. You won’t wear them. You can’t wear them at Wolfsegg because that would be ridiculous, and in Salzburg nobody will appreciate how expensive they are, or in Linz for that matter, let alone in Wels. They’ll all hang in the closet and go out of fashion, and then you’ll sell them or give them away. But Mother would have none of this. They always returned from Vienna with a dozen parcels, and at least half a dozen more would arrive subsequently, containing items that she had bought surreptitiously, without witnesses. Mother spent a fortune on clothes, but she never wore them, or wore them only two or three times, after which she would throw them away or hand them on. But heaven forbid that my sisters should ever fancy designer dresses like hers! They were not allowed to buy a single dress in Vienna, even when they were forty. Even at forty they had to make do with one or two dresses from the sales in Wels, since our Lambach dressmaker was still the chief purveyor of their wardrobe, which consisted, as I have said, of the revolting dirndls that their mother had made for them twice a year. They were not even allowed to choose the cloth, because Mother did not trust their taste, though she herself had no taste whatever. The dirndls always turned out either too large or too small, or the colors clashed, or the collars were too wide or too narrow, or the sleeves too long or too short. The skirts were always at least eight inches too long, and the aprons never matched the dresses. Mother always dressed her daughters like dolls. She treated them as if they were dolls and never saw them as anything other than dolls. Like so many mothers, she regarded her daughters as dolls from the day each was born, and one could probably say without exaggeration that she gave birth to them not as human beings but as dolls. Even in adulthood she had to have one or more dolls to play with. Her daughters were never more than dolls and thus satisfied her passionate play instinct; as a result she would never let go of them. They always had to react like dolls. Every day she dressed them, fed them, and took them for walks like dolls, and at night she would put them to bed like dolls. Even at forty, it seems, these dolls, my sisters, are still subservient to my mother’s play instinct. And my brother was a puppet all his life — Punch, so to speak. She brought him up as a reserve puppet, in anticipation of the time when her premier puppet, her husband, would no longer be around. To my mother, with her craze for dolls, my sisters were actually talking dolls that could be made to laugh or cry when she wished and dressed and undressed when she wished, while her husband and son were puppets, whose strings she pulled whenever the mood took her. Mother was governed by a quite perverse play instinct. She turned Wolfsegg into a perfectly regimented dolls’ world in which everyone obeyed her orders to the letter. Wolfsegg was her dolls’ house, its surroundings her dolls’ world. Not wanting to be a doll in a dolls’ house, I soon removed myself from this dolls’ house and this dolls’ world, which seem even more oppressive and hideous when viewed from outside, from a distance. Wolfsegg is a dolls’ house, I told Gambetti, and its surroundings nothing more or less than a dolls’ world, ruled by my mother in the most ruthless and inhuman fashion. Gambetti laughed loudly, accusing me of monstrous overstatement and telling me that I was a typical Austrian pessimist with a grotesquely negative outlook. I replied that my overstatements were in fact monstrous understatements and that the Wolfsegg I had described to him was idyllic by comparison with the real Wolfsegg. Gambetti, I said, you can’t imagine Wolfsegg; you’ve never had the opportunity to visit such a hideous dolls’ house. There’s no other such hideous dolls’ landscape in the world. My father, I said, is a puppet of well over seventy, with moribund limbs and a head that’s become dull and hard from being tugged at all its life. My brother is a puppet in its forties that similarly doesn’t resist the constant tugging at its head and has given up defending itself against its unspeakable puppet mother. The Germans have a mother fixation, I said, and so have the Austrians. Mothers are not to be questioned, mothers are sacred, but in fact most of them are perverse puppet mothers who tug at the heads of their families until they’ve tugged them to death. Germany and Austria don’t have mothers like those in the Latin countries, who are natural mothers, not puppet mothers, I said. In Germany and Austria there are only puppet mothers, who spend all their lives relentlessly tugging at their puppet husbands and puppet children until these puppet husbands and puppet children have been tugged to death. In Central Europe there are no longer any natural mothers, only artificial mothers, puppet mothers who bring artificial children into the world. Even in the remotest Alpine valleys you won’t find natural mothers any longer, only artificial mothers. And it’s self-evident that an artificial mother invariably gives birth to an artificial child, which goes on to procreate another. As a result we now have only artificial human beings, not natural human beings. It’s a fallacy to call human beings natural, for none of them is. What we have now is the artificial human being, and we’re alarmed when we come across a natural human being again, because it’s something we’re not prepared for, because for so long we’ve been confronted only with artificial human beings, who’ve been ruling the world for ages, a world that long ago ceased to be a natural world and is now thoroughly artificial, Gambetti, an artificial world. The artificial world produced the artificial human being, and conversely the artificial human being produced the artificial world. Nothing is natural any longer, I said. We start from the premise that everything is natural, but that’s a fallacy. Everything is artificial, everything is artifice. Nature no longer exists. We always start from the contemplation of nature, when for ages we should have been starting from the contemplation of artifice. That’s why everything’s so chaotic. So false. So desperately confused. Where there’s no nature there can be no contemplation of nature, Gambetti — that must be obvious. The photo of my brother getting into his sailboat on the Wolfgangsee shows him posing as a happy person, but in the photo he is the unhappiest person imaginable. In the photo taken in front of Uncle Georg’s villa in Cannes my sisters are frozen in an expression of happiness that makes them look far unhappier than they really are. My father and mother, pictured at Victoria Station in London, look as unhappy as they are, while trying to look happy. I wonder why it is that when people have themselves photographed they always want to look happy, or at any rate less unhappy than they are. Everybody wants to appear happy, never unhappy, to project a falsified image, never a true image of the unhappy person he is. Everyone wants to be portrayed as good-looking and happy, when they are in fact ugly and unhappy. They take refuge in the photograph, they deliberately shrink into the photograph, which produces a totally false image, showing them as happy and good-looking, or at least not as ugly and unhappy as they are. What they demand of the photograph is an ideal image of themselves, and they will agree to anything that produces this ideal image, even the most dreadful distortion. It never strikes them how appallingly they compromise themselves. The good-looking person in a photograph is invariably the ugliest, the happy one invariably the unhappiest. They have photographs taken of themselves and hang them on their walls as representations of a happy and beautiful world, though in reality it is the unhappiest, ugliest, and falsest of all worlds. All their lives they stare at the happy pictures on their walls and are gratified by them, though they ought to be appalled. But because they don’t think, they are shielded from the awful knowledge that they are unhappy, ugly, and false. They even show visitors these pictures in which they think they are portrayed as happy and good-looking people, though the visitors can see at a glance how ugly, unhappy, and stupid their hosts really are. They are not even ashamed to show them to people who actually know them and can therefore recognize them on the photos as mendacious and totally false individuals, totally lost souls. We live in two worlds, I told Gambetti — the real world, which is mean, depressing, and ultimately deadly, and the world of the photograph, which is thoroughly false, though it is regarded by most people as the ideal world. If you deprived people of their photographs, if you ripped them off their walls and destroyed them, once and for all, you’d deprive them of more or less everything. Hence, there’s nothing people cling to so much, nothing they rely on so much, as the photograph. The photograph is their salvation, Gambetti. At this Gambetti laughed and called me a forenoon fantasist. I had never heard the expression before and it made me laugh. Gambetti joined in my laughter, and we both savored the joke. Without the art of exaggeration, I told him, we’d be condemned to an awfully tedious life, a life not worth living. And I’ve developed this art to an incredible pitch, I said. To explain anything properly we have to exaggerate. Only exaggeration can make things clear. Even the risk of being branded as fools ceases to worry us as we get older. In later years there’s nothing better than to be declared a fool. The greatest happiness I know, Gambetti, is that of the aging fool who is free to indulge his foolishness. Given the chance, we should proclaim ourselves fools by age forty at the latest and capitalize on our foolishness. It’s foolishness that makes us happy, I said. I put the photograph of my brother, Johannes, at the top and the one of my parents at Victoria Station at the bottom. The effect was amazing: my brother and my parents related quite differently to my sisters, who were now in the middle. My sisters were always defensive in their attitude to my brother, though not as obviously as in their attitude to me; their defensiveness toward him was more covert. They needed him, but they did not need me. He was their future provider, and so they always had to treat him quite differently from me, from whom they had nothing to fear. To their parents, their immediate providers and protectors, they owed respect and consideration, and therefore subservience. To Johannes too, their indirect provider and protector, they owed respect and consideration, but only when necessary, not all the time. To me they owed neither, because they never saw me as a potential provider and protector. I was easiest to deal with, the one to whom no respect was due. But they still had to consider me — for a quite different reason: they had to protect themselves against me, because I always appeared unpredictable and inscrutable, though they never regarded me as a vital person on whom they were dependent, or would be one day. One day they would be dependent on Johannes, but not on me. Their dependence on their parents automatically called for respect, consideration, subservience, and so forth. Though according me neither respect nor consideration, they were wary of me. The position of my brother’s photo, now at the top, signified that he was the most important member of the family, whereas my parents, now at the bottom, counted for much less. My sisters did not have an easy time with any of them — either with their present providers and protectors, due shortly to step down, or with their brother, due shortly to take over. I was accorded neither respect nor consideration; at first I was feared, but only until I left Wolfsegg more or less forever. I naturally posed no threat to them from Rome, or even from London or Vienna. I no longer counted, as they say. And now, I thought, looking at their two mocking faces, disaster has overtaken them, for now I am the one they depend on — there’s no doubt about that. With my parents and my brother dead, Wolfsegg has passed to me. This is a legal fact. Three weeks earlier I had said to Gambetti, When I get back from Caecilia’s wedding I won’t return to Wolfsegg for a long time. Wolfsegg is over for me. I no longer have any reason to go there; I no longer need Wolfsegg, and the people there don’t need me. What is the wine cork manufacturer like? he asked. I tried to tell him. I also told him what a dreadful place Freiburg was — petit bourgeois, Catholic, unbearable. But maybe this man’s a good match for Caecilia, I said. He could be her salvation. I never expected either of my sisters to marry. They had never shown any inclination, and their parents, especially their mother, did all they could to prevent their marrying. My aunt in Titisee engineered this marriage, I told Gambetti, this utterly ludicrous alliance. Just imagine: a wine cork manufacturer suddenly gains entrée to Wolfsegg! A Catholic petit bourgeois who had to be told by my mother that one didn’t turn up for dinner wearing suspenders! A German from the most German corner of the sticks, I told Gambetti, from the Black Forest, where the foxes say good night and German stolidity reigns supreme. I was not afraid of the wine cork manufacturer, or of my sisters. Yet although I was not afraid of them, it was clear that I would find them trying, desperately trying, in this dreadful situation. Occasionally it had occurred to me, as I once told Gambetti, that Amalia might marry one day, but never Caecilia. And now there they are, wholly reliant on me, with the intensest expectations and misgivings. Perhaps the grave has already been dug, I said to myself; perhaps the black banners are already draped from the windows at Wolfsegg. The last time the black banners were out was when Uncle Georg died. Half an hour after getting word of his death they were all running around in black. I wished Uncle Georg was still alive. He would have made everything much easier for me. The mocking faces of my sisters, captured on the photo, are doubly comic, I thought. The mockery comes from having been dominated by their mother for so many years, I told myself. These mocking faces were their only weapon. Amalia has withdrawn to the Gardeners’ House and now hates Caecilia, and Caecilia probably married the wine cork manufacturer just to spite her mother, who had always forbidden them to make overtures to men. Amalia must hate the one who got away. She at once made common cause with her mother in the hope of destroying Caecilia’s marriage. Knowing her as I do, she’s probably sitting on a stool in the Gardeners’ House, wondering how best to break up her sister’s unexpected and wholly undesirable marriage. Mother and daughter hatched a plot against Caecilia’s marriage. No good will come of this marriage between my sister and a wine cork manufacturer from the Black Forest, I had told Gambetti before leaving for the wedding. Sooner or later it’ll come apart. They’re all against it, and Caecilia is no match for the wine cork manufacturer, stupid though he is. My sister’s triumph, the trick she’s brought off, will one day end in disaster, I told Gambetti. She won’t stick it out in the Black Forest. She suspects this already: that’s why she didn’t want to go to the Black Forest with her husband straight after the wedding. She thinks she can stay on at Wolfsegg without him, but that’s absurd. She’ll have to go with him, like it or not. He’ll force her to. You can’t enter into a marriage just for appearance’ sake and in order to punish your mother, and then refuse to make it a real marriage. This man must feel totally out of place at Wolfsegg, totally miserable, I told Gambetti, and if it’s money he’s after, I think he has completely miscalculated. He has nothing whatever to expect — Mother will see to that. She’s known and feared for her shrewdness in legal matters. If he isn’t a fortune hunter, I said, I wonder what made him marry Caecilia? Caecilia’s anything but attractive, anything but marriageable. And the same goes for Amalia. But of course we often wonder what couples find attractive in each other, what induces them to marry. How is it possible — why these two? we ask ourselves, and we find no answer. We may know somebody as a certain type of person and be convinced that he will under no circumstances marry this or that person whom we know equally well. We find it totally inconceivable, yet these very people do marry, and no one can say that the marriage will be unhappy — though quite often it turns out to be the unhappy marriage that we foresaw and warned against, without being listened to. Perhaps the wine cork manufacturer thinks he’s chosen the right moment, I told Gambetti, but I think he’s made an enormous mistake. You see, my sister Caecilia is as artful as a wagonload of monkeys, and so is Amalia. Stupidity doesn’t preclude cunning. And it’s a well-known fact that the stupidest people are the most dangerous — that is to say, when stupidity is allied with baseness, I told Gambetti, without feeling the least compunction. It occurred to me now that I had only ever told Gambetti disagreeable and distasteful things about my family, because I had always thought it quite natural to reveal my feelings, and in recent years I had had the most disagreeable and distasteful feelings for my family. There had been no occasion to tell him of any other feelings. Disagreeable things. Distasteful things. Absurd things at best. And I had never felt embarrassed about it. You must never dissemble with Gambetti, I always told myself, you mustn’t let him catch you in a lie or any kind of dishonesty. After all, you’re his teacher, and a teacher is expected to be truthful and honest — that goes without saying. Your relationship with Gambetti is one of absolute trust. You must never take refuge in prevarication, let alone lying, even if this makes you appear inconsiderate, even mean. And there is no doubt that I am at times inconsiderate and mean. It is a danger that no thinking person can avoid; he has to reckon with it, resign himself to it, and live with it. He must plead guilty and not try to deny his guilt. Wolfsegg has become absolutely impossible, I told Gambetti. The atmosphere there is stifling — it’s enough to drive you to distraction! On the other hand, Gambetti, if only you could see those magnificent rooms, those vaulted ceilings, those hallways, and the columned courtyard where as a child I used to keep deer in winter! In winter my brother Johannes and I used to keep two deer, one each, in the courtyard. These were deer that had been slightly injured, I explained. We used to feed them, talk to them, and nurse them back to health, and in the spring we set them loose. They wintered there and survived. My brother and I invented names for them, names like Sarabande and Locarnell. When we set them loose in the spring they had naturally become used to us and didn’t want to leave. We would then go through the woods and collect all the dead deer that hadn’t survived the winter and bury them, helped by the foresters. I always got along best with the foresters. They were my best friends, whom I loved more than anyone. I knew all their names, and they used to joke with me; I used to ask them to tell me about themselves, and they did so readily. I was always attracted to simple people, I told Gambetti. I felt good when I was with them, and only when I was with them. I was entirely at one with them. They always talked quietly and never too much. They had a simple, unaffected way of talking. They didn’t pretend, unlike other people, who are always pretending. There’s no doubt, I told Gambetti, that at one time, in my early childhood and for a long time while I was at school, Wolfsegg was paradise. And I knew that it was paradise. But this paradise soon darkened and turned gradually into limbo, and ultimately into hell. I wanted to get out of this hell, I wanted to leave it as quickly as possible. I couldn’t wait to go to boarding school and finally to Vienna, though I had no idea what was to become of me, what I could make of myself, where I ought to start in order to progress in the right direction. I loved the books I had read and those I still had to read, the infinite number of books in which I imagined more or less everything had been written. I can honestly say that even as a child I loved the life of the mind more than anything else, but I had no idea what I should do in order to be able to take part in it, to have a share in the life of the mind, which attracted me so much, and to lead such a life myself. I had no one to advise me until Uncle Georg got to see my grades and gave me the first hint on how I should proceed. In the first place you must free yourself entirely from your family, he said. You must make yourself completely independent, first inwardly and then outwardly. And I followed his advice: I made myself free, first inwardly, then outwardly. And of course you must get away from Wolfsegg, he said. You must ignore the views and opinions of your family at Wolfsegg and leave Wolfsegg despite them; you mustn’t follow their advice, which would be tantamount to chaining yourself to Wolfsegg for life, sacrificing yourself to Wolfsegg. You must do the precise opposite of what they advise; you must never share their views, because their views are contrary to yours and therefore harmful to your development. Their advice is no good, their opinion is no good, he told me. Of course they always say they want what is best for you, as you know, but they’re against you. They’ll do everything to chain you to themselves, and if you don’t let yourself be chained they’ll do everything they can to destroy you. It will require the greatest effort, a supreme effort, to escape from them, to pit your implacability against theirs. You’re capable of asserting yourself against them and making yourself independent, Uncle Georg said, but I must tell you that you’ll pay the very highest price. You must pay this price. I paid a very high price to become independent of Wolfsegg, it seems to me. Uncle Georg was right. I pitted my implacability against theirs, and it proved the stronger, because it was the more uncompromising. What it cost me to escape to Vienna, that useless city, as they called it! What it cost me to go to England and finally to Paris! What it cost me to gain my inner freedom, which was the prerequisite for my outward freedom! I owe my independence to my uncle Georg, I told Gambetti on the Pincio as I handed over Kafka’s Trial, which had excited me even more on a second reading than it had on the first. There are some writers, I told Gambetti, who excite the reader much more the second time he reads them than they did the first time. With me this always happens when I read Kafka. I remember Kafka as a great writer, I told Gambetti, but when I reread him I’m absolutely convinced that I’ve read an even greater writer. Not many writers become more important, more impressive, on a second reading. Most of them, on a second reading, make us feel ashamed of having read them even once. This is an experience we have with hundreds of writers, but not with Kafka, not with the great Russians — Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Lermontov — and not with Proust, Flaubert, and Sartre, whom I rate among the very greatest. It’s not at all a bad method, I think, to reread the writers who impressed us when we first read them, as we then discover that they’re either far greater than we thought, far more significant, or else not worth talking about. In this way we avoid having to carry around an enormous literary ballast in our minds all our lives, a ballast that ultimately makes us sick, mortally sick, I told Gambetti on the Pincio. Uncle Georg taught me more or less everything that’s been important to me in later life. He was my teacher, no one else. It was he who brought me up, no one else. My parents didn’t bring me up, they dragged me up, until the age of eight or nine, and Uncle Georg had to step in and gradually undo the almost total havoc they had wrought. He went to immense pains, I told Gambetti, to turn my totally chaotic mind into one that was acceptable and receptive. My parents believed that they were bringing me up, but they actually destroyed me, just as they destroyed my brother and my sisters. Instead of talking about bringing me up, they should have talked about bringing me down. Thanks to their upbringing, which was purely and simply a process of destruction, as I have said, everything in my mind was mutilated beyond recognition, to borrow a phrase that is normally used in a different context. In their brutal Catholic National Socialist way they had stirred things around in my young mind and created total confusion, so that it took Uncle Georg just as long to raise order out of my mental chaos as it had taken them to create the chaos. Instead of educating us, our parents actually mutilated our minds. Being Catholics first and foremost, I told Gambetti, they ruined our minds with their appalling Catholic methods. The Catholic Church can do unimaginable harm to a child’s mind if the parents are Catholic and adhere more or less automatically to the Catholic religion. To say that we had a Catholic upbringing amounts to saying that we were utterly destroyed, Gambetti. Catholicism is the supreme annihilator of the child’s soul, the supreme inspirer of terror, the supreme destroyer of character. That’s the truth. Untold millions owe it to the Catholic Church that they have been utterly destroyed, that their lives have been ruined, their nature denaturized. The Catholic Church has the destruction of the human personality on its conscience — that’s the truth. For the Catholic Church won’t tolerate any human being other than the Catholic human being. Its unswerving aim is to turn human beings into Catholics, mindless creatures who’ve forgotten how to think for themselves and betrayed independence of thought to the Catholic religion — that’s the truth, I told Gambetti on the Pincio. We country children always delighted in Catholic ritual, which at first seemed like a fairy tale, Gambetti, undoubtedly the most beautiful we knew. And for the grown-ups it was a lifelong spectacle, the only one they knew. But the fairy tale and the spectacle have between them perverted and destroyed all that’s natural in human beings. Using the fairy tale for children and the spectacle for adults, the Catholic Church pursues a single aim, the total seduction of all who fall into its clutches. It uses the fairy tale and the spectacle to bend them to its will, to extinguish them as human beings, to turn them into unthinking Catholics who have no will of their own and whom it insolently calls the faithful. The Catholic faith, like all faiths, is a perversion of nature, a sickness to which millions succumb quite deliberately because it’s their only salvation, the salvation of the weak, who are quite incapable of independent thought and, having no minds of their own, need a higher mind to think for them. Catholics allow the Church to think for them and consequently act for them, because this makes their lives easier and they’re convinced they can’t do otherwise. And the Catholic mind of the Catholic Church has a terrible way of thinking, I told Gambetti, wholly self-serving and inimical to human nature, conducive only to its own ends and its own glory. No other state in Europe calls itself a Catholic state, I told Gambetti, or allows the Catholic mind to do its thinking, and the results are plain to see. In Austria there are only Catholics, no human beings with free and independent minds. In Austria the Catholic mind does all the thinking. Nothing has been changed by the various political turnarounds of recent years: in Austria even the socialists allow the Catholic mind to do their thinking for them, as they haven’t developed a socialist mind. Everywhere we’re confronted by the Catholic spirit, which has admittedly given us hundreds and thousands of Catholic works of art but destroyed the spirit of freedom and independence, the only natural spirit. What use are these works of art, these Catholic churches and palaces, when for centuries we’ve had no minds of our own? I asked Gambetti. Our nation suffers from chronic mental debility, I told Gambetti, which the Church has exploited more than in any other European country, even more than in Germany, where a degree of intellectual freedom and self-sufficiency still survives. In our country the Catholic Church has never had any difficulty in bringing the necessary pressure to bear and forcing the Austrian people, and hence the Austrian state, into total submission. Only in recent decades have there been hints of emancipation from Catholic dominion, from the monstrous pressure of the Church, from the age-old stranglehold of Catholicism. Only recently has it become possible to discern, here and there, the tentative emergence of a kind of thinking and philosophizing that owes nothing to Catholicism, I told Gambetti. Only in recent decades have a few Austrian minds begun to think independently, to use their Austrian heads, not just their Catholic heads. Catholicism is to blame for the fact that for so many centuries Austria had no philosophers, no philosophical thought, no philosophy. It’s fair to say that in the last thousand years all thought has been ruthlessly suppressed by the Catholic Church. And the nation has made life easy for itself under the aegis of the Catholic mind, which has always done its thinking for it, on a proxy basis and in its own way, I told Gambetti. In the last thousand years Catholicism and the Habsburgs have had a devastating effect, a lethal effect, on the nation’s spirit, as all the evidence shows. In these thousand years, one can say, Catholicism extirpated thought and ushered in an efflorescence of music. The mind having been suppressed for centuries, Austria became the land of music. Having become a thoroughly mindless people during the centuries of Catholicism, I told Gambetti, we are now a thoroughly musical people. Having been driven out of our minds by Catholicism, we have allowed music to flourish. True, this has given us Mozart, Haydn, and Schubert, I said, yet I can’t applaud the fact that we have Mozart but have lost our minds, that we have Haydn but have forgotten how to think and given up trying, that we have Schubert but have become more or less brainless. No other country, I told Gambetti, has allowed the Catholic Church to rob it so unscrupulously of the faculty of thought, no other country has allowed itself to be decapitated, as it were, by Catholicism. We have no Montaigne, no Descartes, no Voltaire, I told Gambetti, only monkish and aristocratic poetasters with their Catholic inanities. In recent years, I told Gambetti, we’ve seen the beginnings of a change, but it’ll take centuries, not just decades, to repair the intellectual depredations of Catholicism. If they can be repaired. Our nation has allowed itself to be exploited more than any other by the Catholic Church. For nearly a thousand years! It will be hard put to break free from the Catholic stranglehold, from the talons of the Church. Superficial and amateurish revolutions won’t do any good, I told Gambetti, as we see from the experience of other European countries. We can be saved only by a fundamental and radical revolution, starting with the total destruction and demolition of everything, literally everything. But at present we’re too feeble to mount such a fundamental and radical revolution. We’re not ready for it and daren’t even contemplate it. We Austrians are so enfeebled, so witless, that anything fundamental and radical is impossible. We Austrians have been utterly enfeebled for well over a century. My parents naturally didn’t think of giving me anything but a Catholic upbringing; they couldn’t have imagined any other, I told Gambetti. From time immemorial every generation at Wolfsegg has had a Catholic upbringing. Until Uncle Georg appeared on the scene. He was against Catholicism, and this meant that he was against everything. Uncle Georg prepared the way for me, pointing me first to the idea, then to the way to realize it, the alternative way, I told Gambetti. Just imagine, I said: in our libraries the secular books, as one might call them, were kept under lock and key, unlike the Catholic books. The bookcases containing the secular books had been locked for decades, if not for centuries. Only the Catholic books were accessible, while the secular books were locked up, inaccessible, not to be read. It was as if they’d locked up the free spirit in the bookcases reserved for non-Catholic books, for Voltaire and Montaigne but not for the hundreds and thousands of leather-bound volumes containing the collected inanities of numerous monks and counts. Voltaire, Montaigne, Descartes, and the like were to be sealed up in these bookcases in perpetuity — just imagine! These bookcases had never been opened, until one day Uncle Georg insisted on it. To my family it seemed as if he had opened a canister that had been sealed for centuries and would emit a dire poison as soon as it was opened, a poison from which they instantly fled, believing it to be lethal. They never forgave Uncle Georg for opening this canister and releasing the spiritual poison. They always thought that Uncle Georg had poisoned Wolfsegg by breaking the ancient seal imposed on the spirit and opening the bookcases that had been locked tight for centuries. Wolfsegg suddenly caught a whiff of the free spirit, not just the odor of Catholic imbecility; Descartes and Voltaire were now in the air, not just Catholicism and National Socialism. My family never forgave Uncle Georg. They believed they had confined the evil spirit in these locked bookcases, and Uncle Georg had released it. But it was not long before they reconfined it, when Uncle Georg left Wolfsegg, turning his back on them and settling in Cannes. Just imagine; on the Riviera, the coast inhabited by the devil and equated by my family with hell. The moment Uncle Georg left Wolfsegg with his two suitcases, their most pressing concern was to recapture the evil spirit that polluted Wolfsegg and confine it once more in their bookcases, which this time were not just double-locked but treble-locked. They obdurately refused to let me reopen them, and as I now recall, I was too scared to insist. Even at the age of over twenty I wasn’t allowed to open them. In the end I gave up trying because I dreaded the recurrent quarrels. In Vienna I began to assemble a library of my own, I told Gambetti, which would contain everything that Uncle Georg had identified as essential reading for a so-called intellectual. Before long I had spent almost all my disposable funds on collecting the most important books and assembling my own library of the evil spirit, as it were, and naturally I started with Montaigne and Descartes, Voltaire and Kant. Finally I had assembled what Uncle Georg called the essential nutriment of the mind, and of course the centerpiece was none other than Schopenhauer. I had acquired what I called a portable library of the most important works of the evil spirit, which I could easily take with me wherever I went, so that I need never be without these important works. My first acquisitions were the philosophers I had been denied at Wolfsegg, the deadly poison, in other words, to which I gradually added the works of our most important writers. In all this I followed a plan outlined by Uncle Georg. The first book I bought was Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen. The next, as I clearly recall, was Johann Peter Hebel’s Calendar Stories. It was a long way from these to Kropotkin and Bakunin, I told Gambetti, to Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Lermontov, whom I prize above all other writers. My first task, I now told myself, is to release the evil spirit that my parents condemned to life imprisonment at Wolfsegg. Not only will I never lock the bookcases — I’ll leave them open forever. I’ll throw the keys down the well shaft so that nobody can ever lock them again. My sole reason for going to Wolfsegg will be to open the windows one after another and let in the fresh air. Just imagine, I once said to Gambetti, many of the windows at Wolfsegg haven’t been opened for decades. It’s appalling. Then I’ll come back to Rome and be able to say to Gambetti, Gambetti, I’ve opened all the windows at Wolfsegg and let in the fresh air. I’ll open all the windows and doors, I told myself. As I looked at the photo of my parents at Victoria Station, I told myself that in their foolish Catholic way they had tried to gag me all my life. Just as they wanted to confine the evil spirit in the bookcases, so they wanted to confine me, an equally evil spirit, at Wolfsegg. To confine the contradictor, the recusant. The deserter. I do not remember my parents ever leaving me in peace to pursue my own interests or ever praising me for doing something I enjoyed. I would not have ignored their praise, but it was never forthcoming. When I was a small child, I think, they already regarded me with grave distrust, even in my earliest years, when they had to bend down almost to the ground to see me lying in my cot or taking my first steps. Even then they found everything about me suspicious and disquieting, as though they might have produced a child that would one day outgrow them and call them to account, and then even destroy and annihilate them. In my earliest years they treated me with the suspicion that has dogged me all my life, perhaps even with a subliminal hatred that later came into the open. At first I did not know why it should be directed at me, for what purpose, to what end. Was it directed against some innate depravity or wickedness that I harbored? To my brother, Johannes, they were always well disposed, but to me they were only ever ill disposed. It’s time to spell out the truth, I told myself as I looked at the photo. My father begot me, and my mother gave birth to me, but right from the start she didn’t want me; had it been possible, she’d have gladly stuffed me back into her belly, I told myself. At first we always tell ourselves that our parents naturally love us, but suddenly we realize that, equally naturally, they hate us for some reason — that is to say, if we appear to them as I appeared to mine, as a child that didn’t conform with their notion of what a child should be, a child that had gone wrong. They had not reckoned with my eyes, which probably saw everything I was not meant to see when I first opened them. First I looked at them in disbelief, as they say, then I stared at them, and finally, one day, I saw through them, and they never forgave me, could not forgive me. I had seen through them and formed an honest assessment that could not possibly be to their liking. To put it baldly: by bringing me into the world they had landed themselves with someone who would dissect them and take them apart. I have to say that I was implacably opposed to them from the first moment. Once, on a fine, mild day in the fall, I tried to describe Wolfsegg to Gambetti. We had returned from Rocca di Papa to the Piazza del Popolo, which was virtually our home, and were sitting on the terrace in front of the café. It was well after nine in the evening, and the sun still radiated a pleasant warmth. I’ll try to give you a precise description of Wolfsegg, I said to Gambetti. In Rocca that day I had made what now strike me as some quite inept comments on Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. I always had the utmost difficulty with Nietzsche, and on this occasion I had been unable to say anything apposite about him. Look, Gambetti, I said, I’ve been wrestling with Nietzsche for decades, but I haven’t gotten any further with him. Nietzsche has always fascinated me, but I’ve never understood him properly. To be honest, it’s the same with all the other philosophers, I told Gambetti, with Schopenhauer and Pascal, to name just two. All my life I’ve found them difficult and done no more than begin to understand them. They’ve always been Greek to me, though I’ve always been attracted and excited by them. The more I study these men’s writings, I told Gambetti, the more helpless I become. It’s only in moments of megalomania that I can claim to have understood them, just as it’s only at such moments that I can claim to have understood myself, though to this day I’ve never been able to understand myself. The more I study myself, the farther I get from the truth about myself, the more obscure everything about me becomes, I told Gambetti, and it’s the same with these philosophers. When I think I’ve understood them I’ve actually understood nothing. This is probably true of everything I’ve studied. But now and then, in moments of megalomania, I venture to say that I’ve understood something about these philosophers and their writings. None of these men or their works can be understood, not Pascal, not Descartes, not Kant, not Schopenhauer, not Schleiermacher, to name only those who preoccupy me at present, those I’m working on at the moment. With the greatest ruthlessness toward them and toward myself, I added. With the greatest audacity and the greatest impudence. For when we work on one of these philosophers, Gambetti, it’s impudent and presumptuous to take hold of them and, as it were, tear the philosophical guts out of the living body. It’s always impudent to set about a work of philosophy, but without such impudence we can’t approach it and get anywhere philosophically. We actually have to attack these philosophical writings as roughly and toughly as possible — and the writers themselves, whom we must always think of as enemies, as our most formidable opponents, Gambetti. I have to pit myself against Schopenhauer if I want to understand him, against Kant, against Montaigne, against Descartes, against Schleiermacher — you understand. I have to be against Voltaire if I want to get to grips with him properly and have some prospect of success. But so far I’ve been pretty unsuccessful at getting to grips with the philosophers and their works. Life will soon be over; my existence will be extinguished, I told Gambetti, and I’ll have achieved nothing. Everything will have remained firmly closed to me. In the same way I’ve been pretty unsuccessful up to now at getting to grips with myself. I treat myself as an enemy and go into philosophical action against myself, I told Gambetti. I approach myself with every possible doubt, and I fail. I achieve absolutely nothing. I have to regard the mind as an enemy and go into philosophical action against it if I am actually to enjoy it. But I probably don’t have enough time, just as none of them had enough time. Man’s greatest misfortune is that he never has enough time, and that’s what’s always made knowledge impossible. So all we have ever achieved is an approximation, a near miss. Anything else is nonsense. When we are thinking and don’t stop thinking, which is what we call philosophizing, we come to realize that our thinking has been wrong. Up to now all their thinking was wrong, whoever they were and whatever they wrote, yet they didn’t give up of their own volition, I told Gambetti; they gave up because nature forced them to, through sickness, madness, and finally death. They didn’t want to stop, however great the privations, however grievous the suffering; they carried on against all reason and despite all warnings. Yet they all committed themselves to false conclusions, I told Gambetti — ultimately to nothing, whatever this nothing might be, which, though we know it is nothing and therefore cannot exist, still dooms everything to failure, halts all progress, and finally brings everything to an end. On the Piazza del Popolo that evening I withheld the description of Wolfsegg that I had promised Gambetti on the Flaminia and launched instead into one of my disquisitions, which no one dreads more than I and which I have taken to calling my philosophizing disquisitions, because they have become more frequent in recent years and are as fluent as philosophy proper, as philosophical discourse in general, though all they have in common with philosophy is the motive behind them. Instead of the promised description of Wolfsegg, I delivered myself of a few words about Nietzsche that would have been better left unsaid, something quite nonsensical about Kant, something about Schopenhauer that seemed at first uncommonly apposite but then rather silly, and something about Montaigne that even I did not understand the moment I had said it. For no sooner had I uttered my observation about Montaigne than Gambetti asked me to explain it. I could not do so, as I no longer knew what I had said. We say something that seems quite clear at the time, then a moment later we don’t know what it was, I told Gambetti. I’ve just said something about Montaigne, but now, two or three seconds later, I don’t know what it was. We ought to be able to say something and then record it in our minds, I said, but we can’t. I’ve no idea why I spoke about Montaigne just now, and of course I’ve even less of an idea what I said. We imagine we’ve reached a stage where we’ve become a thinking machine, but we can’t rely on its thinking. This machine works unremittingly against the brain, I said. It generates thoughts, but we don’t know where they come from, why they were conceived, or what they relate to. The fact is that this nonstop thinking machine overtaxes us. The brain is overburdened but has no escape, as it’s inevitably linked up to the machine for the rest of our lives. Until we die. You say Montaigne, Gambetti, but right now I don’t know what that means. Descartes? I don’t know what that means, any more than I know what Schopenhauer means. You might just as well say buttercup: I wouldn’t know what that meant either. I once thought that if I went to Sils Maria and stayed near the Maloja Pass I’d understand Nietzsche better, that if I approached it from below, from Sondrio, I’d have a better understanding of him, maybe even a perfect understanding. But I was wrong. Having visited Sils Maria and approached it from below, from Sondrio, I understand even less about Nietzsche than I did before. I no longer understand him at all. I understand nothing about him. My visit to Sils Maria finished off Nietzsche. And Goethe was ruined for me when I committed the monumental folly of going to Weimar. And so was Kant when I visited Königsberg. There was a time when I was fired with a desire to travel the whole of Europe, seeking out the places where all these philosophers, poets, writers, or whatever had lived, but having done so I understand them far less than before. Take good care, Gambetti, not to visit the places associated with writers, poets, and philosophers, because if you do you won’t understand them at all. After visiting the places where they were born, lived, and died, you won’t be able to think about them. You must at all costs steer clear of the places associated with our great minds, I said. Don’t allow yourself to visit the places associated with Dante, Virgil, and Petrarch, because if you do you’ll destroy everything about them that you now have in your head. Nietzsche, I say, then I tap my head and find that it’s empty, quite empty. Schopenhauer, I say to myself, and tap my head — and again it’s empty. I tap my head and say Kant, only to find a complete void. It’s unutterably depressing, Gambetti. You think about some everyday notion, only to find that your mind’s a blank, that there’s nothing there. You want to grasp some quite ordinary notion, and there’s nothing whatever in your head. For days you go around with a total void in your head. You tap it and find that it’s quite empty. It drives you out of your mind and makes you desperately unhappy, utterly sick of life, my dear Gambetti. Although I’m your teacher, my mind’s a complete blank most of the time. Probably because I’ve overtaxed it, I said. By demanding too much of it. By quite simply overrating it. We overrate our minds and expect too much of them, and then we’re surprised when we tap our heads and find them entirely void, I told Gambetti. They don’t contain even the bare minimum, I said. And from time to time the philosophers who mean something to us — who may even mean a great deal to us, perhaps everything — completely withdraw from our minds, probably because we’ve misused them. They simply decamp and leave our minds vacant, so that instead of having ideas in our minds and doing something with them — sensible or otherwise, philosophical or otherwise — we’re left with an unbearable pain, a pain so terrible that we almost want to cry out. But of course we’re careful not to cry out and so reveal that our minds are quite empty, for that would inevitably be the end of us in a world that’s just waiting to hear us cry out and reveal the emptiness of our minds. Over time we’ve become accustomed to concealing everything, or at least everything we think, everything we venture to think, lest we be done to death, for we know that whoever fails to conceal his thoughts — his real thoughts, which only he is aware of — is done to death, I told Gambetti. The vital thoughts are those we keep secret, I told Gambetti, not those we express or publish, which have very little in common — usually nothing at all — with those we conceal and are always inferior to them. Our concealed thoughts encompass everything, while our published thoughts amount to next to nothing. But if we were to publish our secret thoughts, if we were once to express them, we’d be done for.

Suddenly everything would be at an end. Everything would fly apart in an immense explosion. We approach philosophy with extreme caution, I said, and we fail. Then with resolution, and we fail. Even if we approach it head-on and lay ourselves open, we fail. It’s as though we had no right to any share in philosophy, I said. Philosophy is like the air we breathe: we breathe it in, but we can’t retain it for long before breathing it out. All our lives we constantly inhale it and exhale it, but we can never retain it for that vital extra moment that would make all the difference. Ah, Gambetti, I said, we want to set about everything and take hold of everything and appropriate everything, but it’s quite impossible. We spend a lifetime trying to understand ourselves and don’t succeed, so how can we pretend to understand something that isn’t ourselves? Instead of describing Wolfsegg to him, as I had promised, I wore Gambetti down with my diatribe, which I delivered in an intolerably loud voice as we walked the full length of the Flaminia and part of the way back, several times retracing our steps before we finally reached the Piazza del Popolo. All this time I never let him get a word in, though I knew that he would have comments to make. Every now and then he interjected that I was indulging in one of my typical philosophizing disquisitions. I would have done better to let him interrupt me than to go on listening to my own words and getting carried away by them, for I knew that sooner or later they would grate on my nerves and lead me to reproach myself for letting myself go — and, what’s more, in the presence of Gambetti, who was after all entitled to expect more self-discipline from his teacher than I was capable of at the time. When we reached the Piazza del Popolo, which at nine in the evening was as busy as most cities are just before midday, it struck me that I should be more careful and not let myself go in Gambetti’s presence, especially when indulging in one of my philosophical escapades. However, I told Gambetti that we should never feel ashamed if on occasion we more or less lost control because our mind required us to, for the mind was always excited when it had been primed to think. Gambetti could not help laughing at this remark, which amounted to an overdue apology. With his usual discernment, he ordered us only a half bottle of white wine, and I was able to begin my description of Wolfsegg. As usual when I describe Wolfsegg, I began with the view from the village. Wolfsegg lies above the village, I told Gambetti, at a height of more than two thousand four hundred feet. It consists of the main house and various outbuildings — the Gardeners’ House, the Huntsmen’s Lodge, the Home Farm, and the Orangery. And the Children’s Villa, which is also a fine building, built for the children of Wolfsegg probably two hundred years ago, and set somewhat apart, on the east side, where you have an extensive view of the Alps. From Wolfsegg, in fact, you have the most extensive view of the Alps that you’ll find anywhere; you can see the whole of the landscape from the mountains of the Tyrol to those of eastern Lower Austria. That’s not possible from anywhere else in Austria, I told Gambetti. Gambetti was always an attentive listener and never interrupted when I was trying to develop a theme. We are usually interrupted and delayed, or at any rate inhibited, when we begin a story or a description, but not by Gambetti, whose parents, the gentlest and most considerate people, brought him up to be a good listener. Wolfsegg lies about three hundred feet above the village, from which it’s approached by a single road that can at any time be cut off by a drawbridge at a point where there’s a gap in the cliff separating it from the village. Wolfsegg can’t be seen from the village. For centuries a high thick wood has protected it from the view of those who aren’t meant to see it. The road is of gravel, I told Gambetti, and climbs steeply to a nine-foot wall that still hides the main house and the outbuildings. A visitor entering by the open gate first sees the Orangery on the left, with its tall glass windows. Even today it contains orange trees, I told Gambetti, which thrive in it thanks to its favorable location, where it gets the sun all day long. There are lemon trees too, and all sorts of tropical and subtropical plants flourish there, as in the imperial palm house in Vienna. What I loved most as a child were the camelias, I told Gambetti, which were the favorite flowers of my paternal grandmother. The Orangery was where we most enjoyed spending our time as children. I would often spend half the day there, especially with my uncle Georg, who used to tell me where all the plants came from. This was one of my greatest pleasures. It was in the Orangery that I heard my first words of Latin, the names of the many plants that were bred and grown there in a variety of different-sized pots, under the care of the three gardeners who were always employed at Wolfsegg and still are. As you can imagine, Gambetti, this is a great luxury in Central Europe today, I said. My first contact with other people, as they were called, was with the gardeners. I observed them as often as I could and for as long as I could. But even at this early stage I wasn’t content with the gorgeous colors of the plants. I had to know where these gorgeous colors came from, how they originated, and what they were called. The gardeners at Wolfsegg had infinite patience. They radiated calm, and their lives had a regularity and a simplicity that I admired above all else. It was the gardeners I was attracted to most; their movements were of a kind that was absolutely necessary for the tasks they performed, purposeful and reassuring, and their language was utterly simple and clear. As soon as I could walk, the Orangery became my favorite resort, whereas my brother, Johannes, spent most of his time at the Home Farm, with the horses, cows, pigs, and chickens. I preferred plants, he preferred animals. My greatest pleasure came from the plants in the Orangery, his from the animals on the Farm. The best time at the Orangery was winter, when nature was snow-covered, cold, and bare. From the beginning I was allowed to spend my time with the gardeners, watching them and even working with them. My greatest delight was to sit on a little bench in the Orangery next to the azaleas, watching the gardeners. The very word Orangery always fascinated me, I told Gambetti. It was the word I loved best of all. The Orangery was built on the escarpment above the village in such a way that the mild sunlight that fell on it benefited all the plants that grew in it. The old builders were clever, I said, cleverer than those of today. And the amazing thing is that they spent only a short time working on a building, unlike modern builders, who can spend years over a single structure. A stately home that was built to last for centuries would be completed in a few months, with all its fine, even highly sophisticated features. Today they waste years putting up some vulgar, unsightly, and ludicrously unpractical monstrosity, and one wonders why, I said. In those days every single builder had taste and worked for pleasure. This is obvious when you look at old buildings, which are entirely suited to their purpose, unlike any that are built today. Every detail was lovingly fashioned, I said, with the greatest sensitivity and artistry; even minor features were executed with the utmost taste. The Orangery is not only ideally situated, I told Gambetti, but it’s built with exquisite taste; it’s a work of art that can easily stand comparison with the finest creations of its kind in northern Italy and Tuscany. Each master builder was a minor Palladio, I told Gambetti. Modern building is degenerate, not only tasteless but for the most part unpractical and quite inhumane, whereas earlier building styles were artistic and humane. Built onto the left side of the Orangery is a big arch, made of conglomerate, tall enough for all the farm vehicles to pass under. Behind it is the spacious yard of the Home Farm, which consists chiefly of three cowsheds and a generously proportioned stable. Above them are the quarters occupied by the farmhands, who have always earned a good living. The Farm is built in the shape of a horseshoe. The living quarters above the stable and cowsheds could accommodate about a hundred people. They all have big rooms, no smaller than those in the main house, which is a very elegant structure built on an eminence directly opposite the Farm, at a distance of two hundred yards. One has the finest view of it from the Farm, through the arch that I’ve just mentioned.Ithas two upper floors and is exactly a hundred feet high, I told Gambetti. I love the view of the house. The front is more austere than any other I know in Austria, and more elegant. In the middle is the main entrance, twenty-five feet high, painted in such a dark shade of green that it appears black, with no ornamentation except for the brass knob, which is screwed on and never polished, and an iron bell pull to the left. The first-floor windows are set at a height that prevents anyone from looking in. Stepping into the entrance hall is always a shock to me when I come from Rome; its coldness, as well as its fine proportions, its height and its length, always make me catch my breath. It’s about a hundred feet long, up to the courtyard wall, and the only natural light falls from above onto the hundred-fifty-year-old larch-wood floorboards, each of which is about twenty inches wide and now quite gray from generations of use. I don’t know a more beautiful hall, I told Gambetti. It’s imposing by its size and its absolute severity. There’s not the slightest decoration on the walls, no pictures, nothing. The walls are whitewashed and give an impression of uncompromising austerity. It was like this for centuries. Recently, I said, my mother has taken to placing baskets of flowers in the hall; these don’t improve the effect, but they don’t destroy it — they disturb it a little, I told Gambetti, but it’s too grandiose to be destroyed. On first entering the hall, which has always struck me as cold and awesome, one might find it somewhat eerie, and more than one visitor has feared he would freeze to death. Most of them start shivering, because they are quite unused to entering such a large, splendid, and extraordinarily grand hall. No other entrance hall I know is so large or so splendid or so extraordinarily grand, and therefore so forbidding. It’s always seemed forbidding to everyone but me, for I still find its very grandeur and coldness attractive. On entering it, I told Gambetti, you think for a moment that you’re going to die, and you look around for something to hold on to. Your eyes are blinded when you step out of the daylight into the relative gloom of the hall, and for a moment you feel completely exposed. Immediately to the left of the entrance is the servants’ hall. Next to this is the door to the stockroom, followed by the door to the chapel. The chapel is as big as the average village church. It has three altars — a Gothic altar in the middle and two side altars. Even today mass is said there every Sunday morning at six. Either the priest or the chaplain comes up from the village on foot, which is a great effort for the old priest. In the sacristy we still have large cupboards full of vestments, some of which go back three centuries. Wolfsegg has been spared by most of the wars waged in Europe, and the fires that broke out in the last century were all quickly extinguished, as the village boasts one of the most famous and efficient fire brigades in Austria. Not a day goes by without my mother kneeling in the chapel between seven and eight in the evening. We were brought up to visit the chapel every evening. Naturally it was always a great occasion when the archbishop of Salzburg appeared in his ceremonial robes for special events such as christenings, confirmations, weddings, and so forth. The spectacle put on by the Church was at one time supremely important to me, as it was to all my family. That quickly changed. But I still remember how immensely impressive the ceremonies were, Gambetti, with the light streaming through the big window of the chapel during these colorful celebrations. Opposite the chapel is the kitchen, as big as a dressage hall and still not heated, even in winter, with its great ovens, some used no longer for cooking but simply as surfaces for standing things on, and the hundreds, indeed thousands, of dishes, cups, and bowls in the cupboards and on the walls. Eight women and girls used to work here, even when I was thirty, as I can remember my thirtieth-birthday party, and especially the activity in the kitchen. I was almost as fond of the kitchen as of the Orangery, but here I was in a female ambience, which interested me no less than the male ambience of the Orangery. There I was attracted by the fragrance of the flowers, here by the smell of the wonderful puddings and desserts. And the cheerfulness of the cooks, who were all well disposed to me, as I sensed at once, ensured that I too was cheerful. I was never bored in the kitchen. Indeed, during the first half of my childhood the kitchen and the Orangery were my dual points of reference. All in all, I can say that between the flowers in the Orangery and the desserts in the kitchen I had a happy childhood. In the kitchen no one asked me tiresome questions, and I could behave freely, just as I could in the Orangery, or anywhere away from my parents. My constant preoccupation was how to get down to the kitchen or across to the Orangery. Even now I often have dreams in which I see myself as a child running down to the kitchen or across to the Orangery, whatever the season. The child runs down to the kitchen to see people who seem happy and well disposed to him, or across to the Orangery to see others who appear equally happy, escaping those who are strict and seem to him malign, who are impatient with him and constantly demand the impossible. In my dreams I’m always running away from my impatient, demanding parents, out through the hall, past the Orangery and the Farm and into the surrounding woods, I told Gambetti. I lie for hours on the bank of a stream, watching the fish in the water and the insects on the reeds. The days are long and the evenings far too short. Having entered the hall, I told Gambetti, you walk about twenty paces and up a wide wooden staircase leading to the second floor. You turn right into what is called the upper hall. At the east end of this you see the large dining room, the door of which is always open. The dining room is immediately above the lower hall and has a big balcony. As children we were allowed in the dining room only on special occasions, when we were ordered there and had to sit at table, properly dressed, and keep quiet. The cupboards and sideboards in the dining room are full of costly china and cutlery, priceless treasures collected by our family over the centuries. On the walls hang portraits of those who built Wolfsegg and those who preserved and administered it, all of them long since laid to rest in our vault in the churchyard. If this dining room could talk, I told Gambetti, we’d have a full and unfalsified history of humanity, fantastic yet real, splendid yet terrible. This dining table undoubtedly saw history in the making, and not just local history. But dining tables don’t talk, I said. Which is all to the good, for if they did they’d very soon be smashed to pieces by those who have to sit at them. I remember sitting at this table with altogether eight different archbishops and cardinals and at least a dozen archdukes, I told Gambetti, and this naturally made a big impression on me as a child. And with many grand society ladies (I don’t recall their names), who came to visit us from Vienna, Paris, and London. And who all spent the night at Wolfsegg, in rooms that were normally kept locked but were opened up specially for guests, big, stuffy rooms with dark wallpaper and heavy drapes, so heavy that you have to be very strong to be able to draw them in the evening or draw them back in the morning. In these guest rooms, which are all on the north side, I always felt scared. Anyone who stayed in them even briefly was sure to become ill. But guests were always accommodated on the north side, in rooms that were deliberately furnished in this uninviting manner and kept at such a low temperature because guests were not meant to stay longer than was absolutely necessary. Nobody was invited to stay unless there was a particular reason, unless the family wanted something from them, some benefit that couldn’t be obtained in any other way. Guests who had spent the night in these rooms invariably showed signs of having caught a chill, turning up for breakfast with scarves around their necks and, what was most striking, usually coughing. Yet in spite of this they kept coming back, because they found Wolfsegg so fascinating. They couldn’t wait to be invited back. My grandparents used to invite lots of guests, my parents far fewer, as they didn’t have such a craving for company. My father didn’t care for company at all, and my mother at first had too many inhibitions and hang-ups about all these people, who in her opinion came to Wolfsegg only to spy out her social errors and report them wherever such intelligence could harm her. And for the first ten years she didn’t invite my father’s friends; she invited only hers, from whom she had much less to fear, with the result that all these frightful people from the so-called educated middle class descended on us, people who unfailingly make you cringe, Gambetti, especially if they come from Wels and Vocklabruck, from Linz and Salzburg, and fancy they are a cut above the rest of humanity. I always found such guests repugnant. On the other hand, Wolfsegg was very new and strange to my mother, not her scene at all, in fact, and she would very soon have been utterly isolated beside my not exactly exciting father. She’d have been bored to death. Wolfsegg would very soon have crushed her, the wife who came up in the world, as my father used to say jocularly in the early years of their marriage. She’d have simply curled up and died, as they say. So from a certain moment on, a moment that was crucial to her survival, she started dragging her own sort up to Wolfsegg and, as my father put it, throwing it open to the proletariat. She was entitled to come to her own rescue, I told Gambetti, even if we couldn’t stand the means she employed. In the main house alone there are more than forty rooms, though I’ve never done a precise count. We children weren’t allotted rooms of our own until we were twelve, and interestingly enough my brother and I both had rooms on the south side, while my sisters’ rooms were on the north side. They were forever catching colds, and it’s more than likely that they owe their susceptibility to colds to being exiled the north side. The girls were always exiled on the north side, as if to punish them for being girls. But that’s only my surmise, I said. People who grow up on the north side are at a disadvantage later on, I told Gambetti, and remain at a disadvantage all their lives. The north side was unpleasant even in summer, as it never warmed through. The walls at Wolfsegg never warm through, whether they’re north-facing or south-facing. They’re always cold, and it’s dangerous to get too close to them. Even the third-floor windows at Wolfsegg are more than six feet tall, and as children we always had difficulty in opening them. We had to get help if we wanted to let in the fresh air. Our parents had a servants’ bell by their beds, but of course we didn’t. When we were children there were no bathrooms on the third floor, where we not only slept but spent most of the day, since our rooms served as both bedrooms and studies. If we had to answer the call of nature in the night, we used the china chamber pots, as had our grandparents, for whom this was a matter of course. And these, I must tell you, were routinely emptied next morning from one of the windows of the third-floor corridor. In the evening we had to take our washing water up to our rooms in big stoneware jugs, as there was no water supply on the third floor. The dirty water was also thrown from a window. On the ground seventy feet or more below the windows from which we emptied our chamber pots and washbasins, the grass was more luxuriant than anywhere else. The Wolfsegg children soon overcame any fear they had and got used to feeling exposed in this huge, icy building. Visiting children were terribly scared and screamed if they were left alone even for a moment, but we were not in the least scared. I think it was when we were four or five that we were banned from our mother’s room, first to a shared room, of course, but banned all the same. After we had washed she would come in and kiss us good night. Johannes always wanted to be kissed good night, but I didn’t. I hated this good-night kiss but couldn’t evade it. Even now my mother haunts me in my dreams with her good-night kiss, I told Gambetti. She bends over me, and I am completely powerless as she presses her lips firmly to my cheek, as if to punish me. After kissing us good night she would put the light out, but she didn’t leave the room at once. She would stay by the door for a while and wait for us to turn on our sides and fall asleep. Even as a child I had very acute hearing and knew that she was standing listening behind the closed door before going down to the second floor, where she and my father slept. She even distrusted her children; I don’t know why. She suffered from an immense, compulsive distrust that couldn’t be cured or allayed and that now strikes me, I must say, as quite perverse and unnatural. All the rooms at Wolfsegg were whitewashed. In the third-floor rooms the drapes were dark green, almost black; in the second-floor rooms they were dark red and almost black. On the third floor, where we had our rooms, they were made of heavy linen; on the second floor they were of heavy velvet, imported from Italy by my paternal grandmother before the turn of the century. For as far back as I can remember these drapes were never washed, which means that they were never taken down. When we were doing our homework, my brother and I, and later our sisters, were locked in our rooms until we had finished it, and only in the most urgent cases, when we couldn’t get any further with it, were we allowed to call for help. But Mother didn’t help us; she always said we must find the answers to our problems ourselves. This procedure was not meant to be educative: it merely suited her convenience. Father never troubled about our schoolwork. He would simply be angry if we came home with bad marks. If one of us got a five or a six (the lowest mark was still a six when we were at school) he would tell us that we were absolutely unworthy of him. Two sixes inevitably entailed repeating a year, but although we often got one, we never got two. Our rooms on the third floor were heated only in exceptional circumstances, when the temperature fell to ten degrees below freezing, though we always had more wood than we knew what to do with. And even then we had to carry the wood up to our rooms and light the stoves ourselves, as the servants weren’t allowed to carry firewood up to the third floor for us. This was on my father’s orders, because he wanted to bring us up tough. Gambetti did not understand this use of the word tough, and I tried to explain it to him. In fact these attempts to toughen us, to give us what my father called a tough upbringing, didn’t toughen us at all but made us exceptionally susceptible to every possible ailment, though less so than our sisters, who grew up on the north side. Father’s toughening methods only made us unusually sensitive and achieved the opposite of the desired effect, making us far sicklier than those who were spared such treatment, far sicklier than the village children, whose rooms were properly heated, even though their families were poor, while we were rolling in wealth. Wolfsegg, I told Gambetti, was dominated by the most dreadful avarice, and my mother was the most avaricious of them all. I’ve often thought that avarice was her only real passion. Leaving aside the small fortune she spent on clothes, I have to say that she was the cheapest person I’ve ever known. She never treated herself to anything. Only the most basic food could be cooked in the Wolfsegg kitchen, and it had to be home produced, not bought in the village. This was why we always ate so much pork and beef. At Wolfsegg we had blood sausage all the time, and all kinds of porridge, pasta, oatmeal, and puddings. And of course egg dishes galore. Only when some important visitor came did they put on a show; the kitchen would then go into top gear and produce an abundance of matchless delicacies. My mother was always anxious to impress outsiders and preoccupied with what others thought of her, how they assessed her, and she naturally wanted to be well thought of, well assessed. In the kitchen they could cook superbly, I exclaimed to Gambetti, but most of the time they produced boring dishes, which came around again every few days. I often wondered why we employed three gardeners, since we never had decent vegetables or any other reasonable garden produce, though it would have been so easy to serve good, tasty vegetables prepared in various ways, and delicious salads. I happen to be very fond of vegetables and salads. But no, all our vegetables and lettuces were sold: they never appeared on the table but were taken by the gardeners to the markets in Wels or Vöcklabruck, as this brought in a profit. There was no need for my father to suffer from stomach complaints, I said. The cooks and their assistants, as I have said before, were kept busy most of the time canning and pickling, and even making sausages, because the slaughtering was done at Wolfsegg and we ate only home-slaughtered meat. They certainly made the best blood sausage I’ve ever had. A butcher would come up from the village to slaughter the cows, calves, and pigs, which were then neatly dressed in our own butchery next to the Farm. It was a pleasure to see the butcher at work. As small children, of course, we found it repulsive and sickening, but later I came to regard butchery as one of the supreme arts, on a par with that of the surgeon, if not even more admirable. As small children we thought it natural for animals to be slaughtered and dressed, and were soon no longer scared by it. What had at first seemed repulsive came to be seen as entirely necessary. Butchery is a difficult art, and when it is done with consummate skill it deserves our admiration. From an early age country children are accustomed to dealing with life and death, once they’ve gotten over the first shock. It soon ceases to be scary, because it’s not sensational, merely natural. At the Farm we had a curing room in the attic, I told Gambetti. This expression amused him, and I had to repeat it for him several times. In our curing room hundreds of sausages and pieces of smoked meat hung from the ceiling. Around the inner courtyard of the main house, where the greater part of family life takes place, I told Gambetti, there is a colonnade at each floor level. That is where I always clean my shoes. At this remark Gambetti laughed again as he poured some wine into my glass. And in this courtyard, in winter, we used to keep the sick or injured deer that the huntsmen found and brought to Wolfsegg for us. The Huntsmen’s Lodge is in front of the Children’s Villa but in back of the Gardeners’ House, I told Gambetti. A bird’s-eye view of Wolfsegg is like this: high above the village is the house, and in front of it the park, roughly oval in shape, extending to the east for about a hundred sixty or a hundred eighty yards, as far as the boundary wall. Set in the wall is a high stone gateway, through which the farm vehicles pass. Built onto the wall at the right is the Orangery, and opposite this is the right wing of the Home Farm, which is built in the shape of a horseshoe and is altogether two hundred fifty yards long. In back of the Farm, directly to the east, is the Gardeners’ House, in back of this the Huntsmen’s Lodge, and a little farther on the Children’s Villa that I love so much. This was built about two hundred years ago, in the style of the Florentine villas you can still see on the way to Fiesole. Of course it’s less ornate, but it’s quite extraordinary for Austria. Yet you can’t say it’s out of place in the Austrian landscape; on the contrary, it’s more attractive than anything else in the landscape. It may sound odd, but it was built for children. It has a miniature theater, where puppet plays used to be put on. The children wrote the plays, little comedies of the kind that young people can easily think up, with sad endings that on reflection weren’t really all that sad. And naturally in verse. Hundreds of children’s costumes are stored in the villa. Today the building is locked up, and I don’t think anyone has set foot in it for years. Some of the windows have been broken, probably by children from the village, but the roof doesn’t let in the rain, or at least not yet.I’ve always wanted to restore it, I told Gambetti, but my family wouldn’t countenance spending money on anything so stupid. My brother and sisters and I often put on shows there but were then forbidden to because we should do more studying and less playacting. It’s a pity that the Children’s Villa is now dead, I said, as it’s the most beautiful building for miles around. You can’t imagine how charming it is, Gambetti, in a part of the world that is not rich in charming buildings, attractive houses, and architectural gaiety. Perhaps one day I’ll get my way with the family and restore the villa. Then I’ll have the local children put on a comedy for the opening. My greatest delight was to watch the performances given by the local children, all wearing costumes that were centuries old and so colorful, so imaginative, so artistic, so truly poetic. Yet as always, I told Gambetti, whatever is truly poetic is more neglected than anything else. It’s as though no one had any use for the truly poetic. The Children’s Villa, locked up and left to dilapidate, is a rather sad but interesting chapter in the history of Wolfsegg, I said, perhaps the saddest. The huntsmen were never my friends, I told Gambetti. It was only with reluctance that I visited the Huntsmen’s Lodge, though it was my brother’s favorite haunt. Hunting soon became his ruling passion, just as it was my father’s. He goes hunting whenever he can, and several times a year they have hunting parties at Wolfsegg, which I haven’t attended in recent years. Members of the upper crust converge on Wolfsegg from all over Europe, and for days on end one hears many languages spoken, especially Spanish, when our Spanish relatives come over from Bilbao and Cádiz. These hunting parties were inaugurated by my father, who refused to let my mother put a stop to them. They’re now part of the Wolfsegg tradition. On these occasions all the rooms are occupied, even the coldest and most unfriendly. And a lot of Italians come too. The larders are emptied and dozens of jam jars are opened, and there’s even a large variety of salads and compotes. My brother loves the Huntsmen’s Lodge and retires there to work on the Wolfsegg balance sheets. All the bookkeeping is done there. I’ve never had much of a liking for hunting trophies, I told Gambetti. I’ve always been put off by the trophy cult. And I’ve always loathed hunting itself, though I’m convinced that it’s absolutely necessary. Whenever he can, my brother goes to Poland to hunt, even to Russia. To indulge his great passion he’s prepared to put up with the conditions in these Communist countries. Where hunting’s concerned, no price is too high for him. He’s crazy about sailing and crazy about hunting. And he’s only ever seen wearing hunting gear, which has long been the national costume of the Austrian countryside, so to speak. Because it’s so practical, I said. Everybody, of whatever class, goes around in hunting gear, even if he has no connection with hunting. They go around in their green-and-gray outfits, and sometimes it seems as though the whole population of Austria is made up of huntsmen. Even in Vienna they go around in their thousands dressed in hunting gear. Even city dwellers seem to have been smitten with the hunting craze, I said, for how else can you explain why you see people going around everywhere in hunting outfits, even where it seems ridiculous and perverse. The Huntsmen’s Lodge was built at the end of the last century, on the site of an earlier one that was destroyed by fire. A great-grandfather of mine had set up a library in it, I said. Imagine, Gambetti: that would have been the sixth library at Wolfsegg. It had originally been intended simply as a collection of hunting literature, but it was later extended and became a general library. I found the most incredible treasures in it, I said. It was ideal for anybody who wanted to devote himself to the books, to yield himself up to them undisturbed. No one visits the Huntsmen’s Lodge, so no intrusion need be feared. The building is airy and warm, and hanging on the walls are fine examples of verre églomisé, mainly seventeenth century, painted with exquisite artistry. It also has a copy of Schedel’s World Chronicle, colored by my great-grandmother, which lies on a heavy Josephine writing desk from Styria. The desk is covered by a slab of Carrara marble eight inches thick, a great rarity north of the Alps. Uncle Georg used to say that at this desk, with its marble slab, he had the perfect place for putting his ideas down on paper. It was here that he started writing what he called his Anti-autobiography,a two-hundred-page manuscript in which he recorded everything he thought worth recording and on which he went on working for two decades in Cannes. When he died, none of us could find the manuscript, and it was suspected that he’d burned it shortly before his death, as we had evidence from his entourage that he’d made an entry relating to Wolfsegg two weeks earlier. The good Jean himself had seen the entry but could tell us nothing about it except that it was very short and concise. Having known Uncle Georg, I’m sure it was a fairly pungent remark that might have shocked my family greatly. Maybe the good Jean himself spirited the manuscript away, I said, but I can’t exclude the possibility that my mother destroyed it, as she had access to Uncle Georg’s study before anything was moved. The manuscript had always been kept in a desk drawer, but two days after my mother had been in the room this undoubtedly interesting document was missing and nowhere to be found. My mother probably came off worse than anyone in his Anti-autobiography, and I wouldn’t put it past her to have shut herself in his study for a while, as if grieving, and read the manuscript. She may have been outraged by what she read and made short shrift of the damaging document. After all, Uncle Georg had throughout his life blamed her for everything. He always told me, Your mother is the bane of Wolfsegg, and it’s quite probable that he recorded this observation in the Anti-autobiography. The slab of Carrara marble on the Styrian writing desk is always cold, ice cold, I told Gambetti, whatever the temperature outside; even at the height of summer, when everyone’s wilting under the heat, the Carrara marble is ice cold. It was over this ice-cold slab that Uncle Georg noted down his ideas. Altogether the best place to think is over this cold marble slab, he used to say. In my last years at Wolfsegg, having consciously or unconsciously taken my leave of the place forever, as it were, I too sat at this marble slab and wrote down a few things I thought worth recording, I told Gambetti, philosophical ideas that admittedly led to nothing and that I later destroyed, like so much else. We do our best thinking over a cold stone slab, I said, and our best writing. This slab of Carrara marble was unique, absolutely unique. And it was one of the things that now and then made the Huntsmen’s Lodge attractive. Normally I never set foot in the Huntsmen’s Lodge, as I’ve told you, and certainly not during the hunting season. The huntsmen were my brother’s friends, not mine; my friends were the gardeners. I visited the Gardeners’ House frequently, nearly every day, in order to see ordinary people. That was what I craved, and I was happier there than anywhere else. I loved simple people with their simple ways. When I went to see them they treated me just as they treated their plants, with affection. They understood my troubles and anxieties. The huntsmen showed no such understanding. They were always ready with their overbearing remarks and saw fit to regale me, a small child, with their suggestive jokes; they thought to cheer me up by waving their liquor bottles above their heads, though in fact such crude behavior only made me feel sadder and more insecure. The gardeners were quite different: they understood me, without wasting words, and could always help me. Even from a distance the huntsmen would bear down on me in their boastful fashion and address me in their loud, drunken voices, but the gardeners behaved toward me in a way that was sensitive and reassuring. It was the gardeners I sought out when I was unbearably unhappy and distressed, not the huntsmen. There were always two opposing camps at Wolfsegg, the huntsmen and the gardeners. They had tolerated one another for centuries, and that can’t have been easy. It’s interesting that every so often one of the huntsmen would kill himself, naturally with a gun, whereas no gardener ever did. There were many suicides among the huntsmen at Wolfsegg, but none among the gardeners. Every few years a huntsman shoots himself and a replacement has to be found. The huntsmen don’t live long in any case; they soon go gaga and drown themselves in drink. The gardeners at Wolfsegg have always lived to a ripe old age. Quite often a gardener will live to be ninety, but the huntsmen are usually finished at fifty because they’re no longer capable of doing their job. They tremble when taking aim, and even at forty they have problems with their balance. They’re mostly to be found in the village, sitting around in the inns, fat and bloated, their guns beside them with the safety catches off, holding forth with their absurd political opinions and often getting involved in brawls, which naturally end in injury or even death, as always happens in the country. The huntsmen were always hooligans and troublemakers. If they didn’t like the look of somebody they would take the next opportunity of shooting him and claim subsequently in court that they had mistaken the victim for an animal. The history of the Upper Austrian courts is full of such hunting accidents, which usually earn the offender a caution, on the principle that anyone shot by a huntsman has only himself to blame. The huntsmen were always fanatics, I told Gambetti. In fact it can be shown that huntsmen are to a large extent responsible for the world’s ills. All dictators have been passionate huntsmen who would have paid any price and even killed their own people for the sake of hunting, as we have seen. The huntsmen were Fascists, National Socialists, I told Gambetti. In the village it was the huntsmen who ruled the roost during the Nazi period, and it was the huntsmen who blackmailed my father, as it were, into National Socialism. When National Socialism emerged they were the strongmen; my father was the weakling who had to yield to them. So it was that because of the huntsmen Wolfsegg underwent a rapid switch to National Socialism. I must tell you, Gambetti, that my father was blackmailed into becoming a Nazi, and of course egged on by my mother, who was a hysterical National Socialist, a German woman, as she liked to call herself, throughout the whole of the Nazi period. On Hitler’s birthday they always ran up the Nazi flag at Wolfsegg, I said. It was most unedifying. Uncle Georg left Wolfsegg chiefly because he could not and would not put up with National Socialism, which was forcibly taking over. He went to Cannes, then for a time to Marseille, from where he worked against the Germans. That’s what my family found hardest to forgive. In the end my father was a Nazi not just by blackmail but by conviction, and my mother was a fanatical Nazi. It was the most abominable period that Wolfsegg has known, I told Gambetti, a deadly and degrading period that can’t be glossed over or hushed up, because it’s all true. It still makes my blood run cold when I tell you that my father invited all the important Nazis to Wolfsegg, just because my mother demanded it of him. The local storm troopers used to parade in the courtyard and shout Heil Hitler! My father undoubtedly profited from the Nazis. And when they’d gone he got off scot-free. In the postwar period he remained the lord of the manor. He put the Children’s Villa at the disposal of the Nazis for their meetings, quite voluntarily, as I know, without needing any encouragement from my mother. The Hitler Youth practiced its handicrafts in the villa and rehearsed its brainless Nazi songs. Year in, year out, the swastika flag flew outside the Children’s Villa, until, weather-worn and washed out, it was taken down by my mother a few hours before the Americans arrived. While taking it down she cricked her neck, I told Gambetti, and from then on suffered from chronic rheumatism in the neck. Moreover, the many swastika flags at Wolfsegg were used to make aprons for the gardeners and kitchen maids after my mother had personally dyed them dark blue. My father joined the Nazi party at my mother’s instigation, and it has to be added that he was not ashamed to wear his party badge quite openly on all occasions. Some of his jackets still have holes in them where the party badge was worn for years. On Uncle Georg’s last visit to Wolfsegg there was a discussion about world affairs generally but mainly about the balanceof forces between the Russians and the Americans. At the end of it he reminded my father that he had once been a member of the Nazi party, and not just briefly. Whereupon my father leaped up, smashed his soup plate on the table, and stormed out of the room. My mother shouted Swine! at my uncle, then followed her husband out of the room. So Uncle Georg’s last visit to Wolfsegg ended miserably. But his visits nearly always ended in unseemly quarrels about National Socialism. No sooner were the National Socialists gone than my family threw itself into the arms of the Americans and again reaped nothing but benefits from this distasteful association. They were always opportunists, and it’s fair to say that they were low characters, always trimming to the prevailing political wind and ready to resort to any available means to gain whatever advantage they could from any regime. They always supported the powers that be, and as true Austrians they were past masters in the art of opportunism. They never came to grief politically. It’s because of their low character, I’m bound to say, that Wolfsegg has so far been spared: I mean the buildings and the lands belonging to the estate. It’s never been bombed or burned down by enemies. The improbable truth is that during the Nazi period Wolfsegg was a bastion of both National Socialism and Catholicism. The archbishops and the Gauleiters took turns visiting Wolfsegg on weekends, ceding the door handle to one another, as it were. My mother ruled the roost at that time, along with the huntsmen, who are still Nazis to a man, just as my mother, at the bottom of her heart, remains a Nazi to this day, notwithstanding her Catholic hypocrisy. National Socialism was always her ideal, as it was the ideal of nine out often Austrian women, I told Gambetti. So the Huntsmen’s Lodge was always on my mother’s side. Father was never more than her executive organ, to borrow a Nazi phrase — a stupid man, she once said, who understood nothing about anything and had to do what she told him to do. Thinking of the Huntsmen’s Lodge was what set me off on this digression, I told Gambetti. The very words Huntsmen’s Lodge bring the Nazi period back to me. I could tell you other things about the Huntsmen’s Lodge, things that I found quite sinister as a child, for instance about murders that were connected with it and with National Socialism, but I don’t feel like doing so at present, in the present cheerful atmosphere. But one day, I said, I’ll set about recording all the things about Wolfsegg that obsess me and give me no peace. For decades Wolfsegg has given me no peace. It haunts me day and night. And since my family have neither the will nor the ability to describe Wolfsegg as it is and always has been, it’s clearly incumbent on me to do so. At least I’ll try to describe Wolfsegg as I see it, for everyone has to describe things as he sees them, as they appear to him. And if I had to admit to myself that I saw Wolfsegg as a terrible place inhabited by terrible people, I’d be obliged to state it. I’m sure this is roughly what Uncle Georg intended to do in his Anti-autobiography, but since that work no longer exists, it falls to me to take a dispassionate look at Wolfsegg and report what I see. If I don’t do it now, when else should I do it? I ought to do it now, when I’m in a position to do it, when I’m in the right frame of mind and have the detachment that comes from living in Rome, which can only be beneficial to such a project. Here, in my apartment on the Piazza Minerva, where I have quiet and am basically undisturbed, yet at the center of the modern world, I have the ideal circumstances for writing such an account. For years I’ve thought that I must write about the people at Wolfsegg and the conditions they live in, of their misery and baseness, their frailty and lack of character, about everything they’ve shown me of themselves, which, to be truthful, Gambetti, has given me sleepless nights all my life. I’ll try to portray my family as they are, even if the portrait corresponds only to the way I have seen them and still see them. Since nobody has so far written anything about them, except Uncle Georg, whose Anti-autobiography has been destroyed, it’s up to me to do so. Of course the problem is always how to begin such an account, how to hit upon the right opening sentence. The fact is, Gambetti, that I’ve often started work on it, only to be defeated by the first sentence. I’ve given up again and again, clapping my hand to my head and reflecting that it’s probably madness even to think of writing an account of Wolfsegg, because only a madman would do such a thing. I’ve always asked myself what use it will be and come to the conclusion that it can’t be of any use. Yet it’s always been clear to me, and it’s become even clearer to me recently, that it has to be written, that I can’t get out of writing it, and that one day I’ll have to write it, whatever misgivings I may have. My mind demands it of me. And my mind has become implacable, above all toward myself. Absolutely implacable. And you know I’ve precious little time left. If I don’t make a start it’ll be too late. I don’t know, I told Gambetti, but I feel I’m running out of time. And an account like this requires the writer to spend years over it, possibly not just one or two years but several, I said. It’s not enough simply to make a sketch, I said. The only thing I have fixed in my head is the title, Extinction, for the sole purpose of my account will be to extinguish what it describes, to extinguish everything that Wolfsegg means to me, everything that Wolfsegg is, everything, you understand, Gambetti, really and truly everything. When this account is written, everything that Wolfsegg now is must be extinguished. My work will be nothing other than an act of extinction, I told Gambetti. It will extinguish Wolfsegg utterly. I sat with Gambetti on the Piazza del Popolo until almost eleven, I recalled as I contemplated the photos on my desk. We carry Wolfsegg around with us, wanting to extinguish it in order to rescue ourselves, to extinguish it by recording it and destroying it. Yet most of the time we haven’t the strength to perform this work of extinction. But maybe the moment has arrived. I’ve reached the right age, I told Gambetti, the ideal age for such an undertaking. In the semidarkness of my apartment on the Piazza Minerva, with the curtains almost completely drawn so that I can be undisturbed, shielded from the Roman light, I can start work. What’s preventing me from starting right away? I had asked Gambetti, though I had immediately added, We think we can embark on such an undertaking, yet we can’t. Everything’s always against us, against such an undertaking, and so we put it off and never get around to it. In this way many works of the mind that ought to be written never see the light of day but remain just so many drafts that we constantly carry around in our heads, for years, for decades — in our heads. We adduce all sorts of reasons for not getting on with the work. We dredge up every possible excuse, we invoke all kinds of spirits — malign spirits, of course — in order not to have to start when we should. The tragedy of the would-be writer is that he continually resorts to anything that will prevent him from writing. A tragedy, no doubt, but at the same time a comedy — a perfect, perfidious comedy. But it should be possible to compose a valid account of Wolfsegg, even if it’s not faultless, of the Wolfsegg that I’ve already told you so much about, Gambetti, which has always meant so much to me and is probably the most important thing in my life. It’s not enough to make notes about something that’s important to us, perhaps more important than anything else, I said, namely the whole complex of our origins. It’s not enough to have filled so many hundreds and thousands of slips of paper on the subject, a subject that encompasses our whole life. We must produce a substantial account, not to say a long account, of what we emerged from, what we are made of, and what has determined our being for as long as we’ve lived. We may recoil from it for years, we may shrink from such an almost superhuman enterprise, but ultimately we have to set about it and bring it to a conclusion. What’s the point in having this whole Roman atmosphere and my apartment in the Piazza Minerva, unless I’m to achieve this end? But I’ve probably thought about it too often already: too much reflection saps one’s resolve. I’ll call my account Extinction, I told Gambetti, because in it I intend to extinguish everything: everything I record will be extinguished. My whole family and their life and times will be extinguished; Wolfsegg will be extinguished, Gambetti, in the way I choose. Uncle Georg made a record of Wolfsegg, and what he could do in Cannes I can surely do in Rome, with even greater independence and clarity of vision. Rome is the ideal place for a work of extinction such as I have in mind, I told Gambetti. For Rome isn’t the ancient center of a superannuated history: it’s the modern center of the world, I said, as we can see and feel every day and every hour if we’re observant. The center of today’s world isn’t New York or Paris or London, it isn’t Tokyo or Beijing or Moscow, as we read and are told all the time — it’s Rome, once again it’s Rome. I can’t prove it, at least not at this moment and not in so many words, but I can feel it. You won’t believe it, Gambetti, but in the Piazza Minerva I’ve become a new man. I’ve found myself again after having been lost for so many years, in every possible place. For years I didn’t think I could be saved. All I could see was my approaching dissolution. In all these years, Gambetti, I could see myself going to pieces, slowly declining, getting increasingly lost. I saw myself nearing the end, an end that couldn’t be delayed. Everything within me had become quite meaningless. Neither in Paris nor in Lisbon was I able to find what I had sought for so many years, something new to hold on to, a new beginning. But in Rome I found it. And I hadn’t expected anything of Rome. I’d merely thought it would afford me a week’s distraction, nothing more. At best that it would take me out of myself for a few months. Incidentally it was Uncle Georg’s idea that I should leave Lisbon, which I love, and come to Rome. Lisbon may be splendid, he said, but it’s provincial, whereas Rome’s a cosmopolitan city, or what is termed a cosmopolitan city, he said, correcting himself. So I came to Rome, in the hope of retarding my relentless decline, but scarcely expecting to be saved. And then it became clear that Rome was the city for me, the only one, the one I needed, the one that could save me. In Rome I started to make notes again, something I’d been unable to do for years, and to formulate ideas about everything: not just about my approaching dissolution but about everything imaginable, Gambetti. I was suddenly interested in everything, even in politics, which hadn’t interested me for years. In all kinds of artistic matters. And in people, Gambetti, for the fact is that for years I’d had no interest in people; they’d been merely a nuisance and aroused no interest in me. In Rome I went to a theater for the first time in years. And to the opera, which for years I’d shunned like the plague. And I started reading again. For years I’d read nothing but the newspapers, Gambetti, but now I read books, real books, not just the daily press with its unbearable garbage, on which I’d gorged myself daily in order to escape from my deadly boredom. For years, Gambetti, I’d been bored almost to death. Everything was bound to bore me, as I could find no distractions. I avoided everybody and everything, people and things, and in the end even the fresh air, and this led to a physical decline. I actually became sick, and wherever I was, the only people I saw were doctors. My sole company consisted of members of the medical profession, with whom I could talk only about disease; chiefly, of course, about my own indefinable diseases, which they all said were incurable, my own deadly diseases. And what is there more awful than talking to doctors, who are altogether the most uninteresting people in the world, because they’re the most uninterested? Doctors are the most depressing conversationalists imaginable, and at the same time the most disreputable, because they always tell you that you have only a short time to live and that you’re going to have a dreadful, miserable life, a useless and unnatural life, wrapped up in yourself and your diseases, a life not worth prolonging. In Paris or Madrid or Lisbon I would shut myself up in my apartment and go out only to the post office, to make sure that my money was still being remitted from Wolfsegg. It was so depressing that in the end I did nothing in Lisbon and Madrid but commute between the post office and various venal and irresponsible doctors. And it was the same in Naples, where I went for a time, but Naples didn’t suit me, as the climate was unbearable and the city unspeakably provincial. You must forgive me, Gambetti, I said, for calling Naples unspeakably provincial, but I can find no other phrase to describe it. The view of Vesuvius I find devastating, because it’s been seen by so many millions, possibly billions, already. In recent years, before moving to Rome, I’d been completely obsessed with myself and had therefore neglected myself in the grossest and most unpardonable way. I’d let myself go to pieces, chiefly mentally but also physically. I’d become thoroughly degenerate, not only sick but intolerant and distrustful, with the result that I almost suffocated in my ceaseless self-observation and self-contemplation. I’d entirely forgotten that in addition to my own terrible world there was another, which was not entirely terrible. Above all I’d forgotten about intellectual life. I’d forgotten my philosophers and poets, and all my creative artists, Gambetti. I might even say that I’d forgotten my own mind. I clung to my sick body, and by ceaselessly clinging to this sick body I almost ruined myself. Until I came to Rome. Until my friend Zacchi got me the apartment in the Piazza Minerva, for at first I lived at the Hassler, as you know, not at the Hotel de la Ville like Uncle Georg — no, I’d become a megalomaniac and had to live at the Hassler. In the very first moment, I looked across the Spagna toward Rome, took a deep breath, and sensed that I was saved. I won’t leave here, I thought to myself in this first moment. Standing at the open window, I said to myself, I’m here to stay, nothing will make me leave. And it all worked out: I stayed in Rome, I didn’t leave. Although I loved all the other cities I’d lived in, none of them had such an overwhelming, existential effect on me. Although I’d spent long or longish periods in all these other cities, I’d never felt at home in them. They had a place in my heart, to use a foolish familiar phrase, but none of them had ever become my city. I love them all, Lisbon especially, and Warsaw and Krakow and Palma, even Vienna and Paris, and London and Palermo, but I couldn’t bear to live in any of them for long now. I’ve left them all behind, without feeling that I’ve lost something that belongs to me, that belongs to me absolutely. Sometimes I’ve thought I could spend as long in Lisbon as I’ve spent in Rome, but then I always recall Uncle Georg’s telling remark about Lisbon, which seems to me the most splendid city of them all. Indeed, Lisbon is more beautiful than Rome, but it’s provincial. The pleasantest years of my life were spent in Lisbon, but not the best years; these have been spent in Rome. Lisbon has a perfect blend of architecture and nature, such as you find in no other city. It’s a pity you’ve never had a chance to visit Lisbon, Gambetti. The years I spent there were my pleasantest and probably my happiest. But I have to say that Lisbon was not the ideal city for my mind, which is what matters to me most, whereas Rome always has been. Rome is of all cities the most congenial to the mind: it was the ideal city for the ancient mind, and it’s the ideal city for the modern mind — precisely for the modern mind, given the chaotic political conditions that prevail here today. No other city, not even New York, is ideal for the mind, but Rome quite definitely is, beyond all doubt. It’s explosive, and that suits me, Gambetti. It’s explosive, Gambetti, and that’s what I love. At this point it occurred to me that I had already gone quite a long way toward alienating Gambetti from his parents, and I wondered how far I could go, how far it was permissible to go, in alienating him from his parents and their world — that is to say, from their ideas. But this thought at once struck me as absurd. I was annoyed at having even entertained it, for my relationship with Gambetti naturally involves alienating him from his parents and their ideas. By teaching him German and getting him to read Siebenkäs and The Trial I am ostensibly acquainting him with German literature, but in fact I am quite consistently alienating him from his parents and their ideas, I thought, as if I were entitled to alienate him from them and remove him farther and farther from their world, a world that was diametrically opposed to mine. In other words, I thought, I’m now doing to Gambetti what I did to myself ages ago, when I removed myself from Wolfsegg. What was good for me then, I thought, is good for Gambetti now. I’m playing the role of Uncle Georg, who drove me out of Wolfsegg with all his ideas, with his revelations about Wolfsegg and all it meant, which finally made it impossible for me to remain there. Just as Uncle Georg drove me out of Wolfsegg, I’m driving Gambetti out of his parents’ world. But I haven’t deliberately tried to do this: it’s happened automatically, without my being aware of it at first, as a by-product of my teaching, so to speak. Gambetti has heard my views on how the world should be changed, by first radically destroying it, by virtually annihilating it, and then restoring it in a form that I find tolerable, as a completely new world — though I can’t say how this is to be done, only that the world must be annihilated before it’s restored, since it’s impossible to renew it without first annihilating it. Listening to my views, he becomes much more attentive and fascinated than when I hand him a copy of Siebenkäs and tell him to read it and then ask me questions about it. Gambetti’s mind has already absorbed a great deal from mine, I thought. It will soon contain more of my ideas than his own. His parents are uneasy about what they see happening, I thought. And they’re not as pleased to see me as Gambetti makes out. True, they invite me home for dinner, but basically they wish I’d go to hell, because for years they’ve considered me a bad influence on their child, who has meanwhile become an adult and outgrown them. They’re alarmed at having brought a budding philosopher and revolutionary into the world, which is not what they intended, someone who’s out to destroy them instead of evincing a lifelong, unquestioning attachment to them. They now blame me not only for possibly being the seducer of their naturally much loved son but for being his destroyer, and consequently their own, whom they have invited into their house and to whom they pay a great deal of money. For Gambetti’s tuition is not cheap. I charge higher fees than any other tutor, but the Gambettis are rich people, I tell myself, and I don’t have to have a bad conscience about relieving them of so much money, which in any case I don’t need, as I have plenty of my own. But the Gambettis have only an inkling of this, no precise knowledge. Gambetti of course knows about my financial position. He once said to me, If my parents knew how rich you were they wouldn’t pay you anything and wouldn’t allow me to be taught by you. As it is, they think they’re making a generous gesture and see themselves as patrons. For them this is an important element in my tuition arrangements, which they’ve found rather worrying for some time. They take refuge in their role as patrons in order to distract themselves from the idea that by paying you to teach me they might be conniving at something discreditable or destructive. Gambetti himself finds it quite in order for his parents to throw their money out the window, as it were, so that I can alienate him from them and implant in him ideas that will one day shoot up and pose a terrible threat to them and their world. Yet it was never possible for them to see me just as a harmless German teacher from Austria, I thought — it’s so obvious what I am and what I’m about. So I don’t reproach myself for the function I perform, which is to inculcate a knowledge of German literature in their son’s mind, along with my own ideas about changing, and hence annihilating, the world. After all, I didn’t insinuate or force myself into this role, I thought. Gambetti came to me at Zacchi’s instigation, and his parents expressly asked me to be their son’s tutor, telling me that I would be an ideal teacher. I too feel that I am the ideal teacher for Gambetti, and he shares this feeling. What his parents have come to regard as sinister strikes him as necessary and entirely natural. Gambetti has repeatedly told me that my teaching is consistent and logical, and that he regards German literature, which was a fortuitous choice on his part, simply as a pretext for everything else I teach him — meaning my ideas, which he has meanwhile made his own. Little by little we must reject everything, I told Gambetti on the Pincio, little by little we must oppose everything, so that we can play our part in the annihilation we envisage, putting an end to the old and finally destroying it in order to make way for the new. The old must be discarded and destroyed so that the new can emerge, even though we don’t know what the new will be. All we know is that it has to come, Gambetti — there’s no going back. Thinking in this way, we naturally have the old against us, Gambetti, which means that we have everything against us. But this mustn’t deflect us from our goal, which is to replace the old by the new that we long for. Ultimately we have to abandon everything, I told him, discard everything, extinguish everything. Looking down on the Piazza Minerva, I remembered telling Gambetti of a dream I once had, in which I was in a transverse valley of the Grödnertal with my college friend Eisenberg, Maria, and Zacchi. I first had this dream at least four or five years ago, I told him. In it I was still a young man, perhaps twenty. Eisenberg was the same age and Maria not much older. We’d taken rooms in a small inn called The Hermitage. I can still see the inn sign quite clearly. I had often recalled this dream and tried to fathom its meaning, but now I wanted at all costs to distract myself from thinking about the dreadful telegram I still held in my hand, and the dream seemed to provide the most effective distraction. I cannot say what made me recall the dream. Perhaps it was a remark that Gambetti had made two or three hours before I received the telegram, a passing remark containing the word Alps. Gambetti had mentioned that next summer he intended to go to the Alps with his parents, and of course with you, he had added emphatically. He loved the Alps, he said, and we could stay in a narrow valley that he had known since childhood and spend an extremely pleasant and profitable time pursuing our studies, away from the distractions that usually interfere with them. Quite incidentally he had said he would be going to the North Italian Alps with his parents, but above all he wanted to take me too, and if I didn’t mind he would invite me to join them on this Alpine study vacation, as he called it. We had just been talking about Schopenhauer, and about Schopenhauer’s dog, which he had placed above his housekeeper in order to be able to think out and finish writing The World as Will and Idea, and about how the dog and the housekeeper had guided Schopenhauer’s pen, as Gambetti put it. Then, to my surprise and apropos of nothing, Gambetti had suddenly talked of visiting the Alps next summer and taking with him a notebook with squared paper, though he did not explain the significance of the squared paper and I did not press him, but I can distinctly hear him uttering the words to the Alps with my parents and adding and of course with you. This, I fancy, is what reminded me of my strange dream, which comes back to haunt me, I may say, several times a year. I think I first had the dream four or five years ago, at Neumarkt in Styria, in a dark twin-bedded room in an old villa belonging to relatives of my mother, where I was to recuperate, they said, from an unidentifiable feverish illness. I lay with the curtains drawn in this house belonging to my relatives, who have a big furniture factory at Neumarkt. I do not know why I was visiting them, probably for no other reason than to catch cold in Neumarkt, which is one of the wettest and gloomiest places I know. I spent two days and nights at Neumarkt, a really ugly town, lying in bed with drawn curtains and no nourishment. I can no longer even vaguely picture the faces of my relatives. All I know is that I had this dream at their house. We had arrived in the rain in this valley in northern Italy, I told Gambetti — Eisenberg, who was my age, Zacchi, the philosopher, who was also my age, and Maria, my first woman poet, my greatest poet at that time. Maria joined us from Paris, not from Rome, where she already had her present apartment. But in those days the apartment looked different: it contained only hundreds of books, not thousands. And no carpets, Gambetti. But even in those days Maria spent most of her time in bed, where she received her guests. Maria joined us from Paris, dressed in a crazy trouser suit. She looked as though she were going to the opera or had just been to the opera. Black velvet trousers, Gambetti, with big silk bows below the knees, and a scarlet jacket with a turquoise collar. She naturally caused something of a stir when she turned up in that Alpine valley wearing this operatic outfit. Eisenberg went to meet her, and I watched from a distance as she walked toward The Hermitage, moving her arms, her legs, and her head in an operatic fashion, Gambetti, as though she were dancing toward the inn. At first, from a distance, her outfit couldn’t be seen so clearly. Naturally I didn’t think it was Maria. It had never occurred to me that she would come, and certainly not in such an outfit, either from Paris or from Rome. Eisenberg went to meet her, but neither Zacchi nor I did. It was as though Eisenberg knew she would be arriving at that time, while Zacchi and I didn’t. Standing at my window inside the inn, I assumed that Zacchi was in his room, still in bed but not asleep: he usually got up late, unlike Eisenberg and me, who have always been early risers. Eisenberg used to get up even earlier than I did, I told Gambetti, so it was natural that he, not Zacchi or I, should go out to meet Maria. Maria arrived very early, before five in the morning. I had had a sleepless night, as I always do in the Alps, and had spent more or less the whole night looking out of my window for hour after hour, until I had almost collapsed, I told Gambetti, though in fact I didn’t collapse. Then I saw Maria approaching the inn, where we had checked in the evening before in order to discuss Schopenhauer and Maria’s poems. In my dream this was our only reason for going there, and we had chosen what we regarded as an ideal setting, this narrow mountain valley, which is approached by a trail, not by a road, and can therefore be reached only on foot. Maria should have been with us the previous evening, and I can still see myself trying to mollify the landlord by repeatedly telling him he could rest assured that the chief guest, our friend Maria, was definitely coming. The landlord of The Hermitage was afraid that we intended to pay for only three people’s board, for we had booked not only our rooms but. full board, so that we could pursue our plan totally undisturbed, the plan being to compare Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Idea with Maria’s poems. Eisenberg, Zacchi, and I had agreed in Rome that it was a particularly attractive project. It was Eisenberg’s idea, and Zacchihad embraced it with enthusiasm. I had then booked the rooms at The Hermitage, and Maria had agreed to everything, so long as it’s not Heidegger, she said, so long as it’s Schopenhauer. She said she was looking forward to our enterprise but had to spend the night in Paris. She wouldn’t tell me why, though I begged her to. In my dream I told Maria that it was rather odd to go to Paris just for one night. There must be an existential reason, I said, but she wasn’t listening. She put on her coat and left at once, saying as she went out that she would join our party punctually. And in fact I saw her approaching the inn, dressed in her operatic outfit, at the very moment when we were due to start our discussion. Throughout the previous evening I had been preoccupied with Schopenhauer and Maria’s poems, even though I spent all my time standing at the window, comparing the one with the other and trying to establish a philosophical relationship between the two mentalities, between Maria’s poems and Schopenhauer’s philosophy, repeatedly subordinating the one to the other, contrasting them and trying to bring out the philosophical element in Maria’s poems and the poetic element in Schopenhauer’s work. The fact that I didn’t sleep at all that night was a great boon, I told Gambetti. We must be grateful for all the sleepless nights of our lives, Gambetti, as they enable us to progress philosophically. Gambetti listened attentively as I went on with my dream narrative, not letting myself be distracted by the noises on the Pincio. Not even the twittering of the birds, which has always seemed to me the most mind-deadening noise, could interfere with my narration. I had stood all night at my window in The Hermitage, Gambetti, reflecting on Maria and Schopenhauer. The previous evening I had decided to pursue these reflections as long as I could, which was probably why I didn’t sleep. Seeing this grotesque figure, at first completely black and quite unrecognizable as Maria, approaching The Hermitage and advancing out of a snow flurry to a distance of more than forty or fifty yards, I eventually realized that this grotesque apparition, with its marionette-like movements, could only be Maria, and I now knew the reason for her nocturnal visit to Paris: she’d gone there quite simply to see an opera, Gambetti, and of course in this outfit, which I knew from Rome. She’d bought this trouser suit in Rome when we were out shopping together one afternoon, one desperate afternoon, as she always puts it, and by making this purchase we’d turned a desperate afternoon into an enjoyable one. Shopping can sometimes be our salvation, if we brace ourselves and don’t shy away from the greatest luxury, from the most exquisite and expensive goods, the very costliest goods, no matter how grotesque, like this suit of Maria’s. Rather than die of despair it’s better to go into a luxury shop and fit ourselves out in the most grotesque fashion; it’s better to turn ourselves into a luxury creation for a kitsch production of DonGiovanni than to take to our beds and resort to a treble dose of sleeping pills, not knowing whether we’ll ever wake up, even though it’s always been worthwhile to waken. At this moment it was clear to me, as Maria walked toward The Hermitage in her grotesque outfit, that she’d been to Paris to see her favorite opera, Pelléas et Mélisande. Maria thinks nothing of coming straight from the Paris Opera to our Alpine valley in order to keep her promise, I thought as I stood at the window and watched her walk toward The Hermitage while Eisenberg went to meet her, I told Gambetti. Eisenberg hasn’t slept either, I thought as I watched him, so naturally he was the first to see Maria and go out to meet her. That’s typical of Eisenberg, I thought, standing at the window. Maria and Eisenberg always had not only a good understanding but the best understanding: they were intellectual equals. Eisenberg loves the same philosophy as Maria, and they share each other’s ideas about poetry. I’ve learned as much from her as I have from him, I thought. Maria wasn’t carrying anything, I told Gambetti. Emerging from the snow flurry, she looked radiantly happy as she walked toward The Hermitage. How relieved the landlord will be! I said to myself on seeing her. Zacchi had been the only one to doubt that Maria would come. How can she go to Paris in the evening instead of coming with us to the Alps, he had said, and yet be with us first thing in the morning at The Hermitage, where we’ve booked her a room? Zacchi was always the distrustful one, I told Gambetti. We used to call him the doubter. Maria stopped, and Eisenberg went up to her, I had told Gambetti, as I now recalled, standing at my study window and looking down on the Piazza Minerva. Continuing my narration, I told him that I had then heard a dreadful bang, like a thunderclap, and that at the same moment the earth had quaked. But oddly enough, as I learned later, nobody else heard the bang or felt the earth quake. Maria and Eisenberg didn’t hear the bang or feel the quake. As Maria and Eisenberg walked toward the inn, unaware that I was watching them intently from my window, Maria appeared to be walking barefoot, and then I saw that Eisenberg was carrying her shoes; she really was barefoot. Eisenberg was always the most considerate person, I told Gambetti — consideration was second nature to him. I stood awhile longer at the window, looking down and trying to follow as far back as possible the footprints left by Eisenberg and Maria as they walked toward The Hermitage. I counted a hundred twenty. I remember it exactly, I told Gambetti — it’s as though I were dreaming it all now, not four or five years ago. Then there was a break in the sequence. Suddenly I see Maria and Eisenberg in the inn lobby. She pulls off his boots, then puts her shoes on his feet, and he puts his boots on hers. All the time they laugh uproariously, but they stop as soon as I enter the lobby. Then, after a short pause, they burst out laughing again so that the whole of The Hermitage shakes. Maria stretches out her legs and holds them up with Eisenberg’s boots on her feet, the black boots that he always wears, those incredibly soft black boots, Gambetti, while Eisenberg hops to and fro in the lobby, wearing Maria’s shoes, ballet shoes with a slightly silvery sheen. Both of them yell, We’ve swapped shoes! We’ve swapped shoes! until they’re exhausted, and Maria falls on my neck, draws me down onto the seat in the lobby, and kisses me, while Eisenberg stands with his back to the wall and watches as we collapse on the seat. Maria goes on kissing me, but suddenly I jump up. At this moment Eisenberg demands that Maria give him back his boots. She takes them off and throws them at his head. Eisenberg dodges and avoids being hit by them. He bends down to pick them up, while Maria points to her ballet shoes, which Eisenberg is still wearing. It was a grotesque sight, Gambetti: Eisenberg in his black overcoat, reaching almost down to his ankles, and with Maria’s ballet shoes on his feet. Eisenberg says he won’t take off Maria’s shoes himself: we must take them off. Whereupon Maria thumbs her nose at him. But then, seeing that he’s upset about having to take off her shoes himself, she bends down and takes them off for him. He stands barefoot in the lobby, I told Gambetti, and then goes up to Maria, who presses herself against me. He kneels down in front of her and hands her the shoes. They’re your shoes, he says. After giving her the shoes he stands up. Maria kisses him and runs out of the inn, carrying the shoes. Eisenberg and I watch her as she goes out. I hope that child won’t freeze to death, says Eisenberg. It has started snowing again. I next see myself sitting with Eisenberg and Zacchi at a little corner table in The Hermitage, I told Gambetti. Open in front of us are Maria’s poems and Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Idea. The landlord comes in and wants to serve our breakfast. He tells us to clear the table. Move that stuff off the table, he says, then makes to clear it himself. Maria comes in just as the landlord is about to start clearing the table without having been given permission. He tries to whip The World as Will and Idea off the table, but Eisenberg shouts at him, What do you think you’re doing? Maria, standing behind the landlord, doesn’t understand what’s going on, I told Gambetti. Eisenberg jumps up and shouts at the landlord several times, What do you think you’re doing? This makes the landlord really angry. As quick as lightning he tries to whip the open volume of Schopenhauer off the table. But Eisenberg forestalls him; he snatches up the book and clasps it to his chest. I snatched up Maria’s poems and Zacchi rescued our notebooks, which were also on the table. The landlord was so furious that he threatened to kill us. He was a strong man and we were all scared of him. Maria had now sat down next to me and pressed herself against me. She didn’t understand what had happened. In Rome she’d been told that The Hermitage would be an ideal place for our project, that it was run by a friendly and extremely accommodating landlord and was in every way the perfect setting for our project. And now she was faced with a man who was getting fearfully worked up, threatening to kill us, and would clearly shrink from nothing. We had chosen The Hermitage because no other inn seemed suitable for our purpose. Continuing to threaten us, the landlord laid the table, because he was accustomed to laying the table for breakfast under all circumstances, I told Gambetti. He had to lay it because his wife had told him to, and so, while continuing to threaten us, he simultaneously laid the table. And you haven’t even paid yet! he shouted as we clasped our books and papers to our chests in fright, unable to utter a word. You must pay right away! he shouted, and repeated this several times until he’d finished laying the table. We couldn’t say a word, but we knew that the landlord’s wife was lurking behind the kitchen door. Or at least I did, as I could hear her breathing. At the sight of our books and papers the landlord couldn’t contain himself, and even after he’d finished laying the table he went on threatening us. People like you should be locked up, he exclaimed, they should be behind bars, people like you who carry books and papers like that around and wear clothes like that, he said, quite out of breath and pointing first at Maria’s outfit and then at Eisenberg’s long black coat. Finally he pointed at Eisenberg’s beard and said, People with beards like that should be hanged. He worked himself into a terrible state, I told Gambetti, and shouted several times, Riffraff like you should be exterminated. Several times he screamed the word exterminated in our faces. Then he seemed to suffer some sort of seizure. He suddenly put his hand to his chest and supported himself on the table with the other. We took advantage of the landlord’s sudden indisposition to leave the parlor and flee from The Hermitage. We ran down the valley, clutching our Schopenhauer and Maria’s poems, as if we were running for our lives. Maria ran in the middle. There was such a dense snow flurry in the valley that we couldn’t see a thing, but it was a narrow valley and we managed to reach the end. Gambetti, as always, had listened attentively. He did not ask a single question about my dream. Naturally I had told Eisenberg, Zacchi, and Maria about it too. None of them had said anything either. Gambetti speaks of Maria as someone who has everything permanently present in her mind and, because of her intelligence, can hold her own in any company. This is why Maria immediately becomes the focal point of any gathering, without having to say a word. Spadolini too, in his way, is the focal point of any gathering. Maria is inevitably the person on whom everyone has to concentrate, and she knows it, just as Spadolini always knows that he is bound to be the center ofattention in whatever company. If Maria and Spadolini are both present at the same party they inevitably disrupt it; they quite simply break it up. I’ve often seen this happen, I told Gambetti. When they’ve been together at a party it has immediately split up into its constituent parts, as they say, because they’ve disrupted it. Either Spadolini or Maria is the focal point, but they can’t both be. Spadolini at least gives the impression that he doesn’t hate Maria, but she never conceals her contempt for him; on the contrary, she flaunts it whenever she has a chance, I told Gambetti. Spadolini constantly says how much he admires Maria’s poems, thereby hoping to divert attention from his hatred of her and seeing such expressions of admiration and esteem as a means of concealing his hatred, but of course he doesn’t succeed, Gambetti. He always goes a shade too far in his praise for Maria’s poems, which incidentally can’t possibly appeal to him because they are directed against him in every way and must have a positively devastating effect on him, I said. Spadolini publicly praises Maria’s translations of Ungaretti’s poems, but his praise is so fulsome as to reveal the true measure of his hatred. He pays court to her, even though he doesn’t like her and finds everything she says repugnant. Maria, on the other hand, openly criticizes Spadolini and can’t understand why I didn’t sever my links with him long ago, Gambetti. She can’t understand that I’m attached to him and don’t want to give him up. She always describes Spadolini as a depraved character and tells me why, Gambetti. She reproaches me for seeing him relatively often, for meeting this dingy character who repeatedly seduces your mother, as she puts it. In her eyes Spadolini is the most hypocritical person, a born charlatan, a born opportunist when his own interests are involved, not just his ecclesiastical interests but his wholly despicable personal interests. Only last night she told me that my continued association with him showed a lack of character on my part, I told Gambetti on the Pincio. Maria gives a poetry reading at the Austrian Cultural Institute and Spadolini applauds enthusiastically because he thinks it will be to his advantage, not because he’s enjoyed the poems, I told Gambetti. Spadolini introduces Maria to the Peruvian ambassador as the greatest living woman poet, although he can’t stand her. He hates her, and yet he invites her to dinner at least once a month in the Via Veneto, which he loves but she loathes and detests, and although she declines all his invitations he goes on issuing them. He says to me, I’ve invited Maria out again and she’s turned me down. I’ll go on inviting her out and she’ll go on turning me down. In his way Spadolini is what they call a great personality and therefore bound to be rejected by Maria. She can’t tolerate a great personality beside her, but Spadolini is a great social diplomat who has mastered all the subtleties. Maria hasn’t mastered them and demonstrates this openly because she can’t do otherwise. Each of them, I told Gambetti, is the focal point—there aren’t two focal points—Spadolini through his sophistication, Maria through her naturalness, I told Gambetti. Maria’s naturalness derives from her Austrian origins, Spadolini’s sophistication from his Vatican connections, I told Gambetti. Both are equally great, and they hate each other with equal fervor. Both are conscious of their greatness and their hatred, but Spadolini is the stronger of the two and therefore does not always have to retreat, unlike Maria, whose only weapon has always been retreat. Spadolini really comes into his own when things get dangerous, I told Gambetti, but Maria retreats. Both have a penchant not only for sartorial extravagance but for extravagance generally. After all, they both came from the provinces, Gambetti, and could assert themselves only through their extravagance. Everything about Spadolini is extravagant, and so is everything about Maria; his extravagance is extremely sophisticated, hers extremely natural. She once told me that if she were to write a book about the quintessence of charlatanry she wouldn’t hesitate for one moment to make Spadolini the chief figure. She says she’s always dreamed of writing prose, but all her efforts in this direction have failed: either she’s given up at once or, if not, she’s realized that she hasn’t produced a work of art but only what she calls an astonishing performance. Spadolini is the great zealot, Maria the great artist, I told Gambetti. Basically I’m fortunate in having two such people, two great personalities, as friends, no matter how these friendships are viewed from outside, no matter how Spadolini views Maria or she views him. I’ll go on cultivating them and never forfeit them, never, I told Gambetti. Listening to Spadolini telling me about Peru is just like listening to Maria reading me her poems: both experiences are on a par, Gambetti. If we associate only with people of high character we very soon become dull, I told Gambetti. We have to keep company with supposedly bad characters if we are to survive and not succumb to mental atrophy. People of good character, so called, are the ones who end up boring us to death. We must be especially careful to avoid their company, I told Gambetti. Maria and Spadolini have always taught me a great deal, Gambetti. But I’ve never told them this. I got to know Maria through Zacchi, who is an expert at bringing people together — Zacchi the eccentric philosopher, the much traveled man of the world. He was already acquainted with Eisenberg, who introduced me to him. Before going to Vienna, Zacchi spent three years in Rome. Eisenberg broke away from his home in Switzerland in order to go to Vienna, where he became my dearest friend. It now occurred to me that the time I spent in Vienna with Eisenberg after my flight from Wolfsegg — for which I have to thank Uncle Georg — was vital to my subsequent mental development. The direction in which I developed was determined by Eisenberg. I began to study the world and gradually to decode and analyze it. Eisenberg, who was my own age, was the person who had the greatest influence on me intellectually and pointed my ideas in the right direction. Standing by my window and watching the few people strolling across the Piazza Minerva, I recalled that when I was in Vienna with Maria we had spent most of our time with Eisenberg, making excursions to the Kahlenberg, the Kobenzl, and Heiligenstadt. He introduced Maria to Vienna and showed her the beauties of the city, which was crucial to her existence too. We were always happy when we were with Eisenberg and never bored, I thought. Right from the beginning Eisenberg and Maria had a philosophical relationship, which I found quite fascinating and was able to observe without feeling in the least disturbed emotionally. Observing them, I was able for the first time to see how people of an intellectual disposition can be ideally attuned to one another, and it always struck me how rare such mutual understanding was. Maria came from the ridiculous little provincial town in southern Austria where Musil was born — though throughout the rest of his life he had nothing more to do with it — and she exploited this fact with the most tasteless insistence. This town was dangerously close to the border, in an area notable for the vulgar efflorescence of nationalism, National Socialism, and provincial stolidity. With its stolid self-importance, its stifling petit bourgeois atmosphere, its depressing and ineptly planned streets, its dreary topography, and its stale and unrefreshing air, it had all the ridiculous features that typify a town of some fifty thousand souls who know nothing of the world outside, yet fancy they are at its hub. For the same reasons that made me quit Wolfsegg, Maria set off from her equally dreary hometown and went to Vienna. With all her future poems in her head, I reflected, with her little handbag and all the illusions of the rebel, of the fugitive intent on escape, she set off for Vienna, as I had done, in the hope of gaining a foothold, as they say. But it was not easy. After the war all thinking spirits in the provinces expected more of Vienna than it could deliver. At that time the city did not keep its promises, to Maria or to anyone. Initially Vienna proved to be a lifeline, but only for a short time, after which it paralyzed all who sought their salvation there, as it still does. Vienna affords only a brief respite to those of a philosophical or reflective cast of mind who go there for mental stimulation. I discovered this myself, and it has been demonstrated a million times. To go to Vienna is to be saved for only a brief spell. Anyone who takes refuge there must therefore leave as soon as he can, for he will come to grief unless he turns his back as soon as possible on this ruthless and utterly decadent city. Maria soon grasped this, and so did I. Eisenberg is the only one of us who has survived in Vienna to this day, but then Eisenberg is much tougher than either of us and has a far clearer head, I thought, standing at the window. A soul like Maria’s is soon crushed in Vienna, Eisenberg had once said, as I now recalled, looking down on the Piazza Minerva and then across to the Pantheon and the windows of Zacchi’s apartment. Maria got away, first to Germany, then to Paris, and finally to Rome, as her poetic talent dictated, though she made recurrent attempts to settle in Vienna and took up with all kinds of people who she thought could facilitate her return. But whenever she was about to return, everything fell apart and her plans collapsed, sometimes because she offended the very people who had found her somewhere to live. She acquired life tenancies on a number of apartments but gave them up and never moved in. She let herself be enticed to Vienna by lots of frightful people, especially people in the Ministry of Culture, and let herself be taken in by these people with their frankly dirty motives. She refused to believe that all these people who tried to entice her to Vienna could possibly have dirty motives, although I told her time and again that their real interest was not in her but only in their own paltry purposes, that they were using her as a means to do themselves a favor, to promote their own interests by exploiting her by now famous name. I was well acquainted with all these people, I now recalled, but she let herself be taken in by them because she had a sentimental attachment to Vienna — which, contrary to common opinion, is an utterly cold and unsentimental city — but only up to the critical moment when she turned them down and issued a snub from Rome, where she felt happiest. At one moment she would say to me, Basically I want to go back to Vienna, and then, often only a few minutes later, she would say with equal conviction, Basically I don’t want to go back to Vienna. Basically I want to stay in Rome, even die in Rome. Maria often said she wanted to die in Rome, I now recalled. Her good sense compelled her to stay in Rome — to love Vienna but live in Rome. Yet only a few weeks after snubbing all the people who had found apartments and opened all the important doors for her, she would again start talking of going back to Vienna, which was after all her home, she said. I always greeted this with a laugh, because the word home, coming from her lips, sounded as grotesque as it would coming from mine, though I never use the word, which I find too emetic, whereas Maria used it nonstop, saying that home was the most seductive word. She would write again to her Viennese contacts in the various ministries and call at the Austrian Embassy or the Austrian Cultural Institute in the Via Bruno Buozzi, the ostentatious palace near the Flaminia in which Austrian brainlessness, in all its subtle shades, has had its Roman dependency ever since the building was erected. She attends so-called poetry readings by so-called Austrian poets and miscellaneous pseudoscholarly lectures given by miscellaneous Austrian pseudoscholars in the Via Bruno Buozzi. She even goes to lieder recitals, which are regularly given there by once celebrated Austrian singers who no longer have any voice but have a geriatric croak that can only inflict irreparable damage on the Italian ear. Maria wants to be Roman yet at the same time Viennese, I thought, and it is this dangerous mental and emotional condition that generates her superb poems. The dream about The Hermitage, which made a great impression on her, put me in mind of Maria, and I enjoyed thinking of her as I stood at the window, looking down on the Piazza Minerva. What would Rome be to me without her? I thought. How lucky I am that I have only to walk a few yards to refresh myself in her presence! How lucky I am to have Maria! My conversations with her are always more meaningful than any others I have, and altogether the most delightful. It is always stimulating to be with Maria, always exciting, and nearly always a source of happiness, I thought. Maria has the best ideas, and for Gambetti she is always an experience, as he puts it. In her thinking she recoils from nothing, I reflected. Her poems are one hundred percent authentic, which can’t be said of the products of her fellow poets, however celebrated they may be, the rivals who constantly intrigue against her. She is fully present in every line she writes, everything in it being uniquely hers. It was from Spadolini that I first really learned to see and observe, I told Gambetti, and from Maria that I first learned to hear. Both of them trained me to be what I am. I went on to tell Gambetti how Spadolini never disdained to accept money from my mother, even for strictly personal purposes. It enabled him to indulge his vanity, I told Gambetti. She remitted large annual sums to him, doubtless from the Wolfsegg funds. Possibly with the connivance of my father, I said, who would go to any lengths to appease her and thought nothing of making up a threesome for a trip to Italy, as crown witness, so to speak, of this extraordinary relationship, in which he, not Spadolini, played the part of onlooker. My father is just as fascinated by Spadolini as I am and wouldn’t give him up for the world, I told Gambetti. Spadolini is not the kind of man you give up. Once we meet a person like him, we don’t renounce him, whatever mischief he makes. Then it suddenly occurred to me how odd it was that I should be teaching Gambetti German literature, of all things — German, Austrian, and Swiss literature, the literature of German-speaking Europe, to use the usual clumsy formulation — despite the fact that I find this literature impossible to love and have always rated it below Russian, French, and even Italian literature. I wondered whether it was right to teach something I did not love, simply because I thought I was better qualified to speak about it than about another literature. Even in its highest flights, I told Gambetti, German literature is no. match for Russian, French, or Spanish literature, which I love, or Italian literature for that matter. German is essentially an ugly language, which not only grinds all thought into the ground, as I’ve already said, but actually falsifies everything with its ponderousness. It’s quite incapable of expressing a simple truth as such. By its very nature it falsifies everything. It’s a crude language, devoid of musicality, and if it weren’t my mother tongue I wouldn’t speak it, I told Gambetti. How precisely French expresses everything! And even Russian, even English, to say nothing of Italian and Spanish, which are so easy on the ear, while German, in spite of being my mother tongue, always sounds alien and ghastly! To a musical and mathematical person like you or me, Gambetti, the German language is excruciating. It grates on us whenever we hear it, it’s never beautiful, only awkward and lumpy, even when used as a vehicle of high art. The German language is completely antimusical, I told Gambetti, thoroughly common and vulgar, and that’s why our literature seems common and vulgar. German writers have always had only the most primitive instrument to play on, I told Gambetti, and this has made everything a hundred times harder for them. Looking at the family photographs, I reflected that our calculations do not always work out, because an accident can throw everything into disarray. The mocking faces of my sisters on the photo taken in Cannes actually are my sisters: I only ever see them as these mocking faces. Whenever and wherever I see them, and whatever the state of our relations, I see only these mocking faces. These are what come to mind whenever I think of my sisters. It is these mocking faces that I keep in the drawer of my desk in Rome, not the various other faces they have, their sad, proud, disdainful, and downright arrogant faces; no, only these mocking faces. I once told Gambetti that when I spoke of my sisters I was speaking not of my sisters as such but only of their mocking faces, captured by chance in this photograph. If they were dead, I told myself, I’d have nothing left of them but their mocking faces. In my dreams I hear them laugh, and sometimes as I walk through Rome I suddenly hear this curious laughter of theirs, with its confident assurance of longevity, and I at once see their mocking faces, nothing else. They say something, and I think about what they’ve said, and I see their mocking faces. They take after their mother, I tell myself, who has a similarly mocking face that becomes hideously grotesque when duplicated in my sisters. I have often tried to rid myself of their mocking faces, to transform them into faces that don’t mock, but I’ve never succeeded. I have no sisters, I told myself, only their mocking faces. There’s no Caecilia and no Amalia, only two mocking faces, frozen forever in this hideous picture. They wanted to look young and beautiful, to project an image of happiness, I told myself as I studied the picture, but in this photo they’re ugly, and though still very young, they don’t look young: they look quite old and present a profoundly unhappy image to photographic posterity. Had they known that nothing would remain but their mocking faces and this unhappy image, they wouldn’t have let themselves be photographed. But they insisted on it, I told myself. I recall quite clearly that they wanted to be photographed. They posed for the picture and pressed close to each other in a simulation of happiness, spontaneity, and innate naturalness, yet it was all appallingly artificial and unnatural, and the result was a cruel distortion. I remember not wanting to take the picture. I’m not to blame for this cruel photograph, I told myself. They’re to blame for insisting on my taking it and so forcing their mocking faces on me for the term of my natural life, so to speak, though neither they nor I could have known this at the time. Since then I have never been able to escape their mocking faces. Every attempt has failed. At one point it occurred to me to destroy the photo, to tear it up or burn it, but it seemed ludicrous to resort to destroying something so quintessentially ridiculous and trivial, and so I put it back in the drawer with the others. It’s not my sisters who haunt me day and night, I told myself, it’s their mocking faces, which give me no peace and often torment me for days or weeks on end. By using the devilish device of photography, we capture just one of the millions and billions of moments in the lives of two people and then spend a lifetime blaming these two people for this one moment that revealed their mocking faces. But I do have sisters, I told myself, not just their mocking faces, and this absurd thought made me clap my hand to my forehead. I have sisters at Wolfsegg, not just two mocking faces that seem hostile to me in every way. One of these two mocking faces is now married (as I had to say in order to avoid inconsistency) to the wine cork manufacturer from Freiburg, this comic character whose head seems far too small for his heavy build and substantial girth. One of the mocking faces now has a husband, but the other hasn’t, and because of this the one without a husband has withdrawn to the Gardeners’ House, hating its companion piece for having married all of a sudden, overnight as it were. However, I have never succeeded in seeing my sisters’ mocking faces separately, however hard I have tried: I have only ever seen them as a pair. The photo shows two mocking faces, I told myself, but do my sisters really have such mocking faces? Or did they just have them at that one moment in Cannes when the picture was taken? Possibly they had them only for that one moment, I told myself, and never again, yet now I believe they’ve always had them. Photography really is the devil’s art, I told myself: for years, for decades, indeed for a whole lifetime, it forces us to see mocking faces that actually existed only once, for a single moment, when we acted on a sudden impulse and casually took a snapshot. And this sudden impulse then has a devastating lifelong effect that cannot be switched off and sometimes drives us to the verge of despair. I can’t switch off these mocking faces of my sisters any longer, I once told Gambetti, to whom I have often spoken, in a no doubt distasteful manner, about my sisters’ mocking faces, which have always played a large part in my life since I took this fatal photo, as I have often called it. So far I’ve been talking about the mocking faces of my sisters, which I can’t switch off and expel from my mind, I told Gambetti, but we have the same experience with other photos, though its effect may be less drastic, with photos of well-known and famous people whom we regard as important. Just think of the photo of Einstein sticking his tongue out. I can no longer visualize Einstein without his tongue sticking out, Gambetti, I said. I can’t think of Einstein without seeing his tongue, that cunning, malignant tongue, stuck out at the whole world, indeed the whole universe. And I can only see Churchill with his lower lip distrustfully thrust forward. The likelihood is that Einstein only once stuck his tongue out in that cunning, malignant manner, and that Churchill only once thrust his lower lip forward in such an expression of distrust, on the occasion when the particular photo was taken. Yet when I read Churchill’s writings, I told Gambetti, I constantly see him with his lower lip thrust forward, and when I read something by Einstein, I’m completely obsessed with his tongue, stuck out at the whole world, the whole universe. I even fancy that it was not Churchill who wrote his memoirs, but his distrustfully prominent lower lip, not Einstein who made those earth-shaking pronouncements, but his malignantly protruding tongue. I once considered whether I could free myself from the mocking faces of my sisters Amalia and Caecilia by writing a piece about them, but I naturally rejected the idea as one of the absurdest I had ever entertained. I’ll never be able to free myself from my sisters’ mocking faces, I told Gambetti. I’ll have to live with them for the rest of my life. It might of course be incredibly useful to write a piece entitled The Mocking Faces of My Sisters. But what would be the point? I’d have to endure the most extreme boredom in order to write such a piece, Gambetti. I was always prevented from doing so by these mocking faces, which have never given me any peace for as long as I can remember. It would of course be foolish to think I’d be rid of them if I tore the photo up or threw it in the stove or cut it into a thousand fragments. They’d torment me all the more. And my parents in the second photo don’t make a good impression either, only a pathetic, ridiculous, comic impression as they board the Dover train at Victoria Station in London. No luggage, just their Burberry umbrellas on their arms, and my father in his thirties knickerbockers, which he bought before the war in Vienna, at Habig’s elegant store in the Kärntnerstrasse. He went around in them throughout the Nazi period. For as far back as I can remember I’ve seen him wearing these knickerbockers, I told myself. Even when he’s wearing something quite different I still see him in these knickerbockers from Habig’s, constantly saying Heil Hitler. They were probably very expensive, because they never wore out. They’re actually quite smart, I told myself, but not on my father — on him they look ridiculous. He wore these knickerbockers when he received the Gauleiter of Salzburg at the entrance to the farmyard and then led him straight to the stables, believing that this would make the best impression on him, immediately proving that Wolfsegg was a great estate and he a great landowner. And he wore these knickerbockers to receive the archbishops — which was tasteless but in keeping with the Nazi period. There they were, boarding the train in London, my mother stretching out her neck so that her hat perched precariously on her head, probably held by a single hatpin. Why have I only this picture of my parents in my desk and no other, I asked myself, this comic, ridiculous picture that shows my parents as comic, ridiculous people, and not some other, on which they’re not comic and ridiculous? Most of the time they were quite different, not at all comic and ridiculous but severe, forbidding, cold, and calculating. While their Burberry umbrellas hang vertically from their arms, their bodies are inclined, as is normal when boarding a train. The main reason for their looking so comic and ridiculous in this photo is the combination of the inclination of their bodies with their vertical umbrellas. The law of gravity is what makes them comic and ridiculous, though they naturally did not know this when they were photographed. They did not want to be photographed, but they were photographed, by me. I once had hundreds of photos of my parents, but I have destroyed them all or thrown them away. This is the only one I kept and put in my desk, the one in which they appear comic and ridiculous. Why? I asked myself. I probably wanted to have comic and ridiculous parents in the photo I was going to keep, I told myself. I also wanted to have a photo of my brother that showed him not as he really was but as I wanted to see him, in a ridiculous pose on his sailboat on the Wolfgangsee — an undoubtedly good-looking man who was made to look ridiculous, insignificant, and unnatural, not to say foolish and helpless, so that he could not be taken seriously. I only ever wanted this one photo of my brother, in which he looks ridiculous, I told Gambetti. I wanted to have a comic, ridiculous brother, just as I wanted to have comic, ridiculous parents, and no sisters at all, only their mocking faces — that’s the truth, Gambetti. There is a devilish streak in us that manifests itself in such trifles, as we like to call them, in such trivialities as the photographs we collect, which reveal how base and despicable and shameless we are. And for no other reason than that we are weak, for if we are honest we have to admit that we ourselves are far weaker than those we wish to see as weak, far more ridiculous than those we wish to see as ridiculous, comic, and characterless. It is primarily we, not they, who are characterless, ridiculous, comic, and unnatural, Gambetti. By keeping only these photos of my family and no others — and, what’s more, in my desk, so that I can look at them whenever I wish — I am documenting my own baseness, my own shamelessness, my own lack of character. I have only to open the drawer of my desk in order to gloat over my impossible sisters, the ridiculous appearance of my parents, and the pathetic posture of my brother; I have only to take out these photos and look at them in order to fortify myself in an access of weakness and console myself with what I am bound to describe as my own baseness. This shows how low one can sink. We describe others as base and contemptible and adduce every possible argument in support of our case, yet the description applies even more alarmingly to ourselves. Instead of hiding ourselves in the desk drawer as we ought, in the form of some comic and ridiculous photo, we hide our family there, so that when the need arises we can misuse them for our own utterly base ends, I told Gambetti. Naturally, I said, there are people who keep photos showing their relatives in a good light, but I am not one of these: I keep only comic and ridiculous photos, as I am fundamentally a weak person, a thoroughly weak character. Although every photo is a vulgar falsification, there are some that we keep out of respect and affection for the persons they depict, and others that we put in our desks or hang on our walls for unworthy motives, out of hatred for the subjects. Unfortunately I have to own that my motives belong to the second category. At a certain age, I said, when we are about forty, we often manage to present ourselves as we really are, with all our contemptible traits — something we wouldn’t have dreamed of doing earlier. From then on we occasionally allow alarming glimpses of our inner selves. At my age, Gambetti, we have to a large extent drawn back the curtains that for decades were drawn so closely that we almost suffocated behind them. One day they’ll be fully drawn back, I said. How will my sisters react, I wondered, when I confront them as executor and heir? Will they receive me as insolently as ever? I dared not pursue this question and took care not to. The surviving beneficiaries, my sisters and I, I thought. The surviving beneficiaries are the very people whom no one thought of as survivors. They always thought I would soon die, a victim of what they called my breathlessness, somewhere or other, but not at Wolfsegg. It’s possible, even probable, I now thought, that they always expected to receive a telegram informing them that I had died. And my sisters have survived, the two people who didn’t matter at all in any serious sense, because according to my mother they were totally unimportant. But I never expected a telegram telling me that my parents were dead. Lots of people are afraid of receiving such a telegram, but I never was. Millions of people, I had often told Gambetti, live in daily dread of getting a telegram telling them that someone they love and respect has died. I’ve never been afraid of getting such a telegram. Seeing photographs like those on my desk, we think that the people depicted in them at least pose no danger to us, but they may in fact pose the utmost danger. Mortal danger. The people in the photographs, at most four inches high, don’t even contradict us. We attack them and they don’t defend themselves. We can say anything we like to their faces and they don’t move. This drives us to fury, to ever greater fury. We curse the figures in the photographs because they refuse to answer back or respond in any way, when there’s nothing we hope for, nothing we crave, so much as a response. Contending with microscopic dwarfs, as it were, we become demented. We lash out at microscopic dwarfs and drive ourselves utterly crazy. We let ourselves get so carried away that we hurl insults at heads only half an inch in diameter, Gambetti, and so make ourselves quite ridiculous. I look at my parents in the photo of them boarding the Dover train at Victoria Station in London and insult them. What ridiculous creatures you always were! I say, without realizing how ridiculous that makes me — far more ridiculous than my parents could ever be or ever have been, Gambetti. You idiot! I say to my brother, not quite four inches tall. You perverse creatures! I say to my sisters, who measure less than three inches on the terrace at Cannes. To take a photograph of a person is to mock him, Gambetti, and by the same token all who take photographs, even if they do it professionally and achieve the greatest artistry, are nothing but mockers of humanity. Photography is the greatest mockery in the world, the ultimate mockery of the world. But today, I told Gambetti, there are a hundred times more people in photographs than there are in reality — than natural people, in other words. That should give us pause. Am I glad, I said to Gambetti two days ago on returning from Wolfsegg, to be back here, to have escaped from the north and its imbecilities for a while! From the clutches of my family, above all from my mother’s excited moods, my father’s constant carping, and the Austrian weather. For three-quarters of the year we have bad weather, and when we think spring has come it’s months before it’s really there, only to merge at once into summer, and the summers get shorter and shorter. And the fall, which is actually the most beautiful season, causes trouble for all who suffer from gout or rheumatism in Austria, where bad weather predominates, reminding them, with its frequent storms and the icy cold that comes even in October, that their existence is constantly threatened. To say nothing of the winters, which make everything unendurable for anyone over thirty. People here don’t appreciate the unique climate they live in but long for the cool north — the fir trees, the mountain lakes, and the refreshing Alps. You see, Gambetti, some people yearn for the south and others for the north, with the result that they’re all more or less equally discontented. But at present I enjoy this refreshing but warm air, these noisy but carefree people, I said. At Wolfsegg I wore my winter overcoat, but here I go around in an open-necked shirt with my sweater around my shoulders. That’s the difference. People are not weighed down here with pounds of clothing, heavy shoes, heavy jackets, and thick felt hats. They walk around in the lightest of clothes and eat out of doors nearly all year round. Not for a long time! I could still hear myself exclaiming, meaning that I would not be returning to Wolfsegg for a long time. But this telegram now compels me to return in the shortest possible time. Obvious though this was, I sought to delay the inevitable by doing nothing, by simply sitting at my desk and looking at the photographs. I continued to contemplate them and submit them to minute scrutiny. I spread the telegram out beside them, so that I would have its short message announcing the deaths in front of me all the time. I repeatedly spelled out the message until I felt I would go mad. My brother, unlike me, was a calm person: at Wolfsegg I had always been the restless spirit, but he was the soul of calm. My parents always referred to him as the contented one and to me as the malcontent.

If we got in trouble, it was always my fault, never his. They believed his explanations, not mine. If, for example, I lost money that had been entrusted to me for some reason, they refused to believe I had lost it, despite all my asseverations. They preferred to believe that I had pocketed it and only pretended to have lost it, but if my brother said he had lost some money they believed him. If he told them that he had lost his way in the wood, they instantly believed him, but if I told the same story they refused to believe me. I always had to justify myself at great length and in great detail. On one occasion my brother pushed me into the pond behind the Children’s Villa. Whether intentionally or not, he pushed me in while passing me at the edge of the pond, where the wall is not wide enough for two people to pass. I had the greatest difficulty keeping my head above water and not going under. I actually thought I was going to drown, and I also thought that my brother might have pushed me in on purpose, not inadvertently out of clumsiness. This thought tormented me as I struggled for dear life in the pond. My brother could not help me without risking his own life. He naturally made many attempts, but failed. The pond is deep, and a child is bound to go under and drown if he can’t keep himself on the surface, I told Gambetti. Just as I felt sure I was going to drown I caught hold of a ring fixed to the wall below the surface, which was used for mooring the little boats we had on the pond, and managed to clamber out. When I got home, my parents wanted to know why I was completely soaked. Instead of telling the truth, I lied to protect my brother, saying that I had accidentally fallen into the pond. They at once accused me of having deliberately jumped into the pond in order to get my brother in trouble. When I said no, I had fallen in by accident, they called me a liar and drew my brother close to them as if to protect him, while I was packed off to the kitchen to be dressed in fresh, dry clothes. Throughout this scene my brother remained silent. He did not say a word, he did not tell the truth or even say that I was not to blame for falling into the pond. He watched the whole sorry scene without attempting to explain anything or put me in a better light. He just pressed his head against my mother’s skirt as if for protection, and this made things even worse for me. If I fell and tore my socks, they scolded me for tearing my socks but did not think of comforting me because I had grazed my knee and was bleeding and in pain. Instead they scolded me for hours, and in the evening, when I had forgotten about the mishap, they scolded me again, as if it gave them pleasure to make me cry. They comforted my brother if he hurt himself even slightly, but they never comforted me, even if I hurt myself badly. They repeatedly scolded me because they thought I visited the gardeners too often and for too long; they disapproved of my spending time with the gardeners, who supposedly had a bad influence on me. They wanted me to spend my time with the huntsmen, who were thought to have a good influence; but I hated the huntsmen, as I have said, and always went to see the gardeners, whom I loved. I was scolded whenever it transpired that I had been with the gardeners, and they were scolded too for paying attention to me, because their company was considered very harmful to me, as my mother put it. Whenever my brother visited the huntsmen they would say, It’s nice that you’ve been with the huntsmen — that’s what we like to see. And they always said it in my hearing, when they were sure of hurting me. Once, when I had been with the huntsmen because for some reason I wanted to go and see them — I cannot recall why — they asked me where I had been, and I told them I had been with the huntsmen. They did not believe me and boxed my ears in the presence of my brother, who knew that I had been with the huntsmen, as he had gone with me, but instead of coming to my aid and telling them the truth, he kept quiet. He always kept quiet, even when our mother boxed my ears because I had told what she took to be a lie, when in fact it was the truth. I recall that even when I grew up, my parents never believed me. If someone had been to see me they would ask the name of the visitor, but when I told them, they refused to believe me, saying that they knew very well who had been to see me, and it was not the person I said it was. If I had been to Wels and they asked me where I had been, I would tell them, whereupon they would say that I had not been in Wels: they knew where I had really been — in Vöcklabruck, in Linz, in Styria, but not in Wels. They could never be persuaded of the truth. They never believed anything I told them; they considered me to be not just a normal liar but, as my mother used to say, a born liar. What do you do all the time in the library? they would ask when I emerged from one of our five libraries, all of which were suspect, as I was the only person to use them. You certainly don’t go there to read, they would say, and take me to task. It was no good assuring them that I went to the library only to read. You go to the library to pursue your perverse thoughts, my mother would insist, no matter how often I protested that I went to the library in order to read and for no other purpose, and that I did nothing else there. I repeatedly swore that I went to the library only to read, that I spent my time there reading. She would not be convinced but called me a liar and repeatedly maintained that I had gone to the library to pursue my perverse thoughts. When I asked her what she meant by my perverse thoughts, she refused to answer but called me a troublemaker, as she had so often since my early childhood. She added that I was an impudent liar and walked off. She constantly suspected me of pursuing perverse thoughts. She probably had no idea what she meant by this, but it became a stock reproach, and even in company I was not safe from it. At dinner, in the presence of strangers, usually the kind of guests I found most repugnant — middle-class people from the neighboring small towns whom she had known since childhood and still kept up with — she would say that I was always pursuing my perverse thoughts. I have to say that my mother loved my brother, Johannes, above all because he never felt any need to visit the libraries. Johannes, she would say, doesn’t go to the library to pursue perverse thoughts: he goes to the Huntsmen’s Lodge, where it’s fun. In my view, based on experience, the fun at the Huntsmen’s Lodge was of a fairly basic and vulgar variety, consisting in the endless recital of crude and utterly vulgar jokes that I could never find amusing without feeling dirty. This was the main reason that I abhorred the Huntsmen’s Lodge, whereas my mother always enjoyed the crude, basic, and abysmally primitive jokes that circulated at the Huntsmen’s Lodge. Nothing delighted her more, and she always left the Huntsmen’s Lodge with tears of laughter in her eyes — which on one occasion even my father called perverse. You go to the Gardeners’ House, she used to say to me, where it’s all so boring — that’s typical. She thought nothing of spending half the night with the huntsmen, joining in their brainless songs, pressing up close to them on a bench, and permitting them to make unequivocal verbal passes at her; indeed, as the evening progressed she would not object to their making physical passes or even, I have to say, pinching her bottom. When my brother had finished his homework he was always told he had done well, but when I had finished mine they always found something to criticize, noticing a mistake here, an irregularity there, and constantly upbraiding me for what they called my illegible writing. If my brother came home with a good mark they naturally praised him, but in my case a good mark was acknowledged only by a reluctantly friendly nod. I recall that my brother was given the best bed linen, unlike the worn sheets that I had to sleep on, and first-class pillows, unlike mine, which were patched and mended. My stockings, coats, and jackets had to last longer than his; his clothes were replaced when they became dirty or had unsightly holes in them, but it was no use my asking for new clothes. If I did I was called a wastrel, but they never called my brother a wastrel. I do not think my parents ever treated me fairly, for even in my early childhood they had a feeling that I might be superior to them, though I cannot say exactly what prompted this feeling. Only my grandparents were fair to me. They treated me just as they treated Johannes; for them there was no difference between their grandsons, or at least they made no difference between us. Our happiest times at Wolfsegg were when our grandparents were alive. This was natural, I once told Gambetti, as they showed no favoritism. As soon as they died I became aware that my parents wished to punish me because they thought my grandparents had treated me better than my brother. This was not true, but it was what my parents always imagined, especially my mother. It was as though our parents, after the death of our grandparents, had thought to themselves, Now we must turn our attention to Johannes, who had a raw deal from his grandparents; we must treat him particularly well because he was always put down by his grandparents and had to suffer from the favoritism they showed to his brother. The truth is that my brother was never put down by our grandparents, nor was I ever shown favoritism. Our parents, however, believing that I had been at an advantage and my brother at a disadvantage, decided that from now on I should be made to pay for what they imagined to have been the case, though it bore no relation to the truth. And so, once our grandparents were dead, our parents always treated Johannes with affection and me with aversion, and in due course the favoritism they showed him became unbearable, and its effect was compounded by the aversion they showed to me. They became accustomed, in short, to loving my brother and hating me. It’s absurd, I had told Gambetti on the Pincio, that in a house that boasts five libraries the mind should be held not only in low regard but in positive contempt. I have to suppose that one library was not enough for those who built Wolfsegg and were its first occupants. They had a natural need for thought and intellectual activity and were undoubtedly passionate thinkers, who were devoted to mental endeavor and made thinking their chief preoccupation, as so much of the evidence we have about them shows. They were convinced that the consummation of human existence was to lead a life of thought, a life centered on the mind, Gambetti, not one bounded by everyday concerns and everyday stolidity, as my family believed. What times those were, when understanding was elevated to the plane of thought and to think was the supreme imperative! Today everything that once distinguished Wolfsegg has atrophied, having been consciously belittled by successive generations and actually trodden in the dirt in the past century, above all in recent decades. They provided themselves not just with one library but with five, I told Gambetti — the upper left library, the upper right, the lower left, the lower right, and the one in the Children’s Villa. For centuries all branches of learning were represented in them, all schools of thought, all the arts. On one occasion, Gambetti, I had retired to the upper left library to read Jean Paul’s Siebenkäs, which was incidentally one of Uncle Georg’s favorite books. Poring over it for hours, I gradually forgot everything around me, including the fact that at the time I was supposed to be helping my mother sort her mail. I had forgotten that on alternate Saturdays I had to go to her writing room, as it was called, at six o’clock in the evening to sort her letters. Siebenkäs had made me forget everything, including my mother’s instructions. Every Saturday between six and seven she used to sit in her writing room and have either me or my brother sort the letters that had arrived during the week into the exact order of their receipt. Having sorted them, I had to put them in a certain spot on her desk. While sorting the letters I was able to have a quiet talk with my mother, which was not possible at any other time. She would meanwhile deal with her correspondence and give me a chance to consult her on various matters. Although she never liked it when I asked what she considered importunate questions, I was allowed to do so while sorting the mail, and she was prepared to answer them. This routine of sorting the mail in the writing room during the brief hour before supper gave me my one opportunity to get close to my mother. Sometimes she herself would address a kind, even affectionate, word to me. As I sorted the mail I often felt that I loved my mother, indeed that I loved her dearly. As I looked at her from the side, her face seemed beautiful, though at other times I was put off by its ordinariness. The feeble light cast by the lamp on her desk was flattering and showed her face to advantage, I told Gambetti on the Pincio. When I had sorted the letters and placed them on the desk, she would sometimes look up from her correspondence and place her hand on my head, almost tenderly. Then, as though instantly ashamed of this gesture, she would withdraw her hand and dismiss me. She would take her hand away and promptly return to her correspondence, as though suddenly realizing that I was not Johannes. But I wanted to tell you something else, Gambetti. It was nine o’clock when, having ensconced myself in the upper left library to read Siebenkäs and forgotten all about sorting the mail, I suddenly woke up, as it were, in a state of alarm and put the book aside. I left the library, which, as you know, was more or less off limits, and went down to join the others, who had long since finished supper. For five hours I had been rooted to my seat in the library, reading Siebenkäs, and had forgotten not only about the mail but also about supper. I came downstairs, Gambetti, to find them all sitting in the green drawing room, waiting for me. I was received in silence. After a while, during which my brother waited in gleeful anticipation of what was about to happen, my mother took me to task without so much as looking at me, demanding to know where I had been, why I had not turned up to sort the mail, and how it was that I had put the finishing touch to my customary insolence by not only ignoring the sorting of the mail but also failing to appear for supper. There was no excuse, she said, or at least none that she could imagine, for ignoring my obligation to sort the mail and leaving them to have supper without me. They had all been extremely worried about my whereabouts, she said, thinking of all the dreadful things that could have happened to me. Did I realize what terrible anxiety I’d caused her? You’ve no excuse whatever for not turning up to sort the mail and for missing supper, she said. She had still not deigned to look at me. Then she rounded on me and said, You’re a monster! If I’m not mistaken you’ve been in the library! And what have you been doing there? You’ve been pursuing your perverse thoughts again. My father, my brother, and my sisters waited tensely for the culmination of the accusation, their whole attention fixed on me as I stood terrified in the doorway. I was perhaps nine or ten at the time — I’m not sure exactly. I was trembling all over. My sisters, though still only very small girls, were agog with malevolent excitement, longing to see some sensational punishment meted out to me after my mother’s pitiless scolding. Now, what were you really doing in the library? my mother asked. I was reading Siebenkäs, I replied. Whereupon she jumped up, boxed my ears, and sent me to bed. My real punishment was to be locked in my room without food for three days. I sat down at my table and for three days did nothing but howl, while my sisters incessantly ran to and fro outside the door, gleefully shouting Siebenkäs,Siebenkäs,Siebenkäs.If you ever read Siebenkäs,my dear Gambetti, don’t forget this little story, I said. Does Gambetti still remember this story after all this time, I wondered, now that I’ve actually given him the book to read? All the books I read at Wolfsegg have a subsequent history like this; they are all linked to a subsequent history (or prehistory!)that has affected my whole life, I thought, though not always such a sad one. My mother had no idea what Siebenkäs was, Gambetti, and thought I was kidding her. When she was in Rome five years ago in the fall — you remember — I naturally took her on a tour of the city. But she was bored to death. All she wanted to see were the famous shops, especially those on the Corso and the Via Condotti. She had a long list of these famous shops and planned her walks accordingly, but she had listed them alphabetically, which she soon saw was a mistake, as their alphabetical order bore no relation to their locations. We visited one famous shop after another, especially in the vicinity of the Piazza di Spagna, and never spent less than half an hour at any one of them; in most of them she spent up to an hour, and this drove me almost to distraction. My mother has a quite primitive craze for jewelry, I told Gambetti, and so she rushed from one jeweler to another in search of not just one ring or one necklace that suited her taste but masses of them. I was extremely reluctant to accompany her, as you can imagine, but I had no choice. As you know, I disapprove of people who want to see only famous monuments and churches, but I must say that I have never known anybody with such a shameless and undisguised lack of interest in the countless cultural treasures that Rome has to offer. My mother went to see Saint Peter’s. I took her there, and she was of course thrilled by the Bernini altar, which I detest, but aside from this she saw nothing during her stay in Rome but the interior decor of Roman jewelry shops and fashion houses. On my recommendation she stayed at the Hassler, which was too old-fashioned for her. She found fault with everything there, although the Hassler is undoubtedly the best hotel in Rome and perhaps one of the three or four best in the world. Nothing was good enough for her. In the end she’d made so many purchases that she didn’t know what to do with them, and her room was piled high with parcels. We had five invitations to dinner with relatives, and of course with our friend Zacchi, I told Gambetti, but she accepted only one — not Zacchi’s, as you may imagine, but the Austrian ambassador’s, because she took it to be the grandest, though it was as boring as usual. The company at the embassy dinner consisted of the usual brainless diplomats and their even more brainless wives, who spent two hours reeling off their social inanities. But you must be wondering why I’m telling you all this, Gambetti. I’ll come to the point. On our way from the Hassler to the Austrian Embassy, my mother, quite suddenly and apropos of nothing, reverted to something that had happened years ago, in fact decades ago. What was this Siebenkästhat I had teased her with years ago? For decades she had been obsessed with the Siebenkäsepisode, which Inow realized had affected her as much as it had affected me. We had left the Hassler, Gambetti, on one of those wonderful Roman evenings that make you believe in paradise, and we’d gone only a few yards when she asked me, What is Siebenkäs? Can you tell me? I told her that Siebenkäswas an invention of Jean Paul. However, as she had no idea who Jean Paul was, I had to add that he was a writer and that Siebenkäs was one of his books. Oh, she said, if only I’d known! I thought Siebenkäswas something you’d invented to spite me. I thought you were just playing a nasty trick. I laughed uproariously over this disclosure on the way from the Hassler to the Austrian Embassy, as I had every reason to do, but she remained silent. Then she asked me if it was really true that Jean Paul was a writer and that Siebenkäs was one of his works. She did not believe it at first, having never believed anything I told her. So Siebenkäs is a book by a writer called Jean Paul, my mother said more than once on the way to the Austrian Embassy. During the first part of our walk to the embassy she hardly said another word, but when we were halfway there she suddenly asked, And is Kafka a writer too? Yes, Kafka’s a writer. What a pity, she said. I thought you’d invented them all! What a pity! She could not get over the fact that Jean Paul and Kafka were writers, the authors of Siebenkäs and The Trial, and not inventions of mine designed to trick her. So now, I said to Gambetti, you can see the intellectual state my family is in. That Wolfsegg is in. Five libraries, Gambetti, and not the foggiest notion of our greatest writers, to say nothing of the epoch-making philosophers, whose names my mother has never heard of, at least not consciously. My father knows their names, of course, but even he has no idea what these people thought and wrote. Being a farmer, he has always had a primitive contempt for the intellect: cows and pigs mean everything to him, the intellect more or less nothing. If my father could choose between the company of Kant and that of a prize porker, I told Gambetti, he would instantly plump for the porker. I didn’t introduce you to my mother when she was in Rome, Gambetti, because she wouldn’t have understood you. She would only have found fault with you, for not wearing a necktie, for instance, or for carrying a work of philosophy under your arm instead of an income tax table. Though you actually missed something, I said. We arrived late for the embassy dinner, of course; everyone else had arrived and was waiting for us. These people stand around and run one another down, showing off about their backgrounds and decorations, constantly telling you that they’ve been accredited in China, Japan, Persia, and Peru, stirring the stale old diplomatic broth, repeatedly declaring that they know God and the world and nothing else, and that they are as bored in their city apartments as they are on their country estates. They talk about books as if they were a kind of tasteless crispbread, and they know as much about conducting a symphony orchestra as they do about Spinoza, as much about Heidegger as about Dante, yet to the keen observer they always appear to have seen everything and nothing. All in all, my mother doesn’t cut a bad figure at such receptions, because she keeps up her normal role without seeming out of place and diverts her metropolitan audience with her lighthearted country chatter, in which the futility of her fatuous existence comes into its own. As her escort I am condemned to silence and ultimately to playing the fool for her. When we left the embassy, at about midnight, she again asked me whether I had told her the truth about Jean Paul being a writer and Siebenkäs being one of his books. Having never believed anything I told her, Gambetti, she disbelieved me on this point too. My mother came to Rome only to satisfy her curiosity, I said, because she had to know where and how I lived. Impelled by this curiosity, she got on a train one day and came to Rome to spy out the land, as Uncle Georg would have put it. The Piazza Minerva meant nothing to her, and the Pantheon was just a weird name she’d heard somewhere. All the same, the fact that I had taken one of the finest apartments in Rome and actually occupied the whole of it made a big impression on her. A real palazzo,she exclaimed on seeing the building where I had my fourth-floor apartment. With a view of the Pantheon, I told her, as you’ll see shortly. She couldn’t wait. You really live like a prince, she said, even before she’d seen the apartment, and her tone was almost reproachful. That’s a tremendous doorway! she exclaimed, standing in front of the palazzo and looking up at the marble facade. I’d pictured it all quite differently, she said. I suggested she should go in and walk up to the fourth floor with me. There’s no elevator, I said — that wouldn’t suit you. As she went up the stairs, she turned around every few moments to exclaim, Like a real prince! The fact that the house — I didn’t say palazzo—has no elevator makes the apartment relatively cheap, I told her, but the rent I have to pay is still one of the highest. I couldn’t refrain from saying this as I went up the stairs with her to my apartment, now three steps in front of her, now behind her. There was a certain solemnity about it all, as you can imagine, Gambetti. At last we reached the fourth floor and stood outside the door of my apartment. She was a little put out to see no nameplate on the door. No nameplate, she said, so not even the postman knows you live here. You always loved being anonymous, she said before we entered, to which I replied that it had always seemed more agreeable to preserve my anonymity. She, by contrast, was always anxious to make herself known as somebody special, though she never knew quite what it was about her that was special. Looking at the photograph of my parents boarding the Dover train at Victoria Station in London, I remembered how my mother had entered my apartment on the Piazza Minerva. Once inside, she was both astonished and alarmed. At first it took her breath away and she had difficulty finding words to express her feelings. I, meanwhile, having unlocked the door of the apartment, couldn’t help thinking of something totally absurd, Gambetti. Many years earlier my mother had lost one of her strongbox keys, which was never found. She searched not only her own rooms but all the other rooms, and she had others search them too, but the key was nowhere to be found. Suddenly she suspected me of having taken it for some reason that she couldn’t fathom, though clearly I had done it out of some base motive, as she put it. She accused me, on no grounds whatever, of getting rid of the key as soon as suspicion had fallen on me, out of dire necessity, so to speak, surmising that at the very last moment I had thrown her strongbox key down the well shaft outside her window in order to avoid being unmasked as a common thief. The well shaft had dried out long before. And just imagine, Gambetti, my mother gave orders for it to be searched, and she looked on as one of the gardeners was lowered down the shaft: by a workmate to retrieve the key that I, the limb of Satan, was supposed to have thrown into it as a last resort. Naturally the gardener didn’t find the lost key, which couldn’t have been in the shaft because I hadn’t thrown it there, except in my mother’s lurid imagination. The gardener emerged from the well shaft and repeatedly assured her that the strongbox key wasn’t in the well, that there was nothing in the well but an old half-rotted shoe. The fact that there was no key in the well shaft, but only a half-rotted shoe, so incensed my mother that she swore at the gardener. She swore at me too — in pretty foul language, I must say — and went on swearing until late that evening. For days after the gardener’s unavailing descent into the well shaft she continued to tell me, You took the key, and even if you didn’t throw it down the well shaft, you got rid of it, somewhere or other. Even today I haven’t been cleared of this suspicion. I’m still under a cloud: after all these years my mother is still convinced that I made the strongbox key disappear. Of course I never took it, Gambetti. I can’t imagine why I would have done so, for what purpose. It would never have occurred to me. No sooner had I unlocked the door and let my mother and myself into the apartment than I thought of this typical incident, which says more about our relationship than any other. It’s one of the most revealing incidents, I told Gambetti, perhaps the most revealing. As my mother entered the apartment I was thinking all the time of how she had once had the well shaft searched because she thought I had thrown her strongbox key into it for some nefarious purpose. The process of unlocking the door of my apartment had brought to mind this incident from the remote past, and I went on thinking about it, but I didn’t tell my mother what it was that preoccupied me more than her first visit to my apartment, not even when she became uneasy, upset by my odd behavior, and asked what was on my mind. Nothing, I said. I was careful not to reveal that I was thinking about the affair of the strongbox key in the well shaft and was more preoccupied by this memory than by the fact that she was paying her first visit to my apartment in the Piazza Minerva. To do so might have revived an unpleasant quarrel after so many years, Gambetti. I was afraid of quarreling with my mother, and still am. On this occasion she had left my father alone at Wolfsegg, though I know he would have liked to come to Rome. She had persuaded him that his presence at Wolfsegg was absolutely indispensable. You can’t leave Wolfsegg at a time of such uncertainty—this was her invariable remonstrance, I thought as I contemplated the photograph. You can’t leave the huntsmen when the hunting season is on, she had told him, at the same time assuring him that it wouldn’t be much fun for her in Rome without him, accustomed as she was to traveling with him as her protector, which is what she often called him in playful flattery. Not that she really regarded him as her protector, which he wasn’t and never had been. So she came to Rome by herself to find out what I was up to, or so she told my father and Johannes, but once here she spent most of her time with her friend Spadolini, who was already a senior Vatican official and had attained the rank of archbishop at an early age. She spent every night with Spadolini, and whenever I called the Hassler — at eleven, at twelve, at half past one or at three — I was told that the signora was not in. That’s the truth about my mother and her visit to Rome, for which I was merely the pretext, Gambetti. I was the excuse she gave my father for coming to Rome. She had known Spadolini ever since he was a minor counselor to the papal nuncio in Vienna. I can’t say that I’ve ever disliked Spadolini. On the contrary, he’s a quite fascinating figure and I’ve nothing against my mother’s keeping up her acquaintance, or rather her friendship, with him and cultivating it for decades, but I do object to the secretiveness of their association, which is actually an affair, Gambetti. And I also know that this was not the only time, or even the last, that my mother was in Rome. She’s often flown to Rome to meet Spadolini, alleging an urgent trip to Vienna, just to spend one or two nights with him. Spadolini has often been to Wolfsegg too, where he’s been put to the embarrassment of celebrating mass in our chapel, decked out in all his finery as though he were celebrating at Saint Peter’s. My mother is hooked on ceremonial and loves ecclesiastical pomp more than anything else. I suspect that the only reason she is such a keen Catholic is that she loves Catholic pomp and, above all, Catholic funeral rites, I told Gambetti. She was fascinated by the idea of having an archbishop in the house and, what’s more, one of the highest Vatican officials, and she has yielded to this fascination on every occasion. For a long time my father failed to see through her duplicity, and when he did, it was too late, as the pair had already perfected their plot. But of course Spadolini is an extraordinary personality; otherwise he wouldn’t have risen so high in the hierarchy, I told Gambetti. Aside from this unappetizing affair with my mother, I have the highest regard for him. He’s an extremely intelligent and cultured man. After all, he’s been nuncio in Lima, Copenhagen, and Paris, and in New York and Madrid — that’s not nothing, Gambetti. And all the languages he speaks, and the thousands of books he’s read, and all the things he’s seen and heard! The astonishing thing is that a man like him should have taken up with my mother, such an utterly superficial woman, and remained attached to her. She came to Rome to meet him, using me as the pretext, I told Gambetti. On the surface she had to visit her son, so that under the surface, as it were, she could meet the archbishop, which amounts to a degree of duplicity that’s nothing short of contemptible. Just imagine: she flew to Palermo for two days with Spadolini, then spent another two nights with him at Cefalù. I’ve nothing against that, Gambetti, but I find the duplicity distasteful. I really don’t know anyone more cultured, anyone I value more highly, than Spadolini, except yourself and Zacchi. Such a highly sensitive character, with such a fine mind, yet carrying on such a sordid clandestine affair with my mother for years, for decades. But my mother learned nothing from Spadolini. Maybe what fascinates him about her is her frivolity, her silliness, I told Gambetti. During the day she did the rounds of the Roman shops with me, and at night she met Spadolini in Trastevere, as I happen to know. But not, like us, just to eat fish, drink wine, relax, and enjoy the ambience, Gambetti, not just that. The two of them visited various dives near the so-called dog destruction unit, which you know, and weren’t at all disturbed by the terrified howls of the strays that were brought in to be destroyed. Of course I won’t divulge the source of my information, I told Gambetti, not even to you. Spadolini, this intelligent man and outstanding scholar who has written so many excellent works, this genius in the art of speech and the art of silence, who has always exercised a tremendous fascination over me! When he first came to Wolfsegg it seemed to me that we had never had such a splendid guest. You can’t imagine how thrilled I was, Gambetti, when he first said mass at Wolfsegg, wearing his pentecostal vestments. I came very close to jettisoning all my doubts about the Catholic Church when I first saw him. Such a handsome man, and with such manners, uniquely natural, yet at the same time uniquely artificial. The truth is that I instantly fell in love with Spadolini. But he was always a thorn in my father’s side. He could do nothing against him. My mother decided when Spadolini should visit us and when she should visit Spadolini, her lover, in Vienna, in Paris, or finally in Rome. I’ll go and see Spadolini, she told herself, and then told my father she was going to see me. Possibly she pretended to me that she had only just arrived in Rome when she turned up at the Hassler that afternoon. She may have been in Rome with Spadolini for days — who knows? I wouldn’t put anything past her. Spadolini took her to the opera, Spadolini went with her to Naples, Spadolini hired a taxi to take the two of them to Bari to see a mutual friend, as I happen to know. Spadolini, you know, is a man who fascinates women; all the ambassadors’ wives fall for him, jostling to kiss his hand and look up into his eyes, their knees atremble. And it would of course be wholly unnatural for a man like that to be lost to the secular world, I told Gambetti, but it’s unfortunate that from the hundreds of women who would have succumbed gladly to his matchless charm he should have singled out my mother. I am the lie that makes their liaison possible, Gambetti. My Either, of course, has not just an inkling but full knowledge of it, yet it would be quite useless for him to rebel, as my mother can do whatever she likes with him. Even so, she wasn’t prepared to travel openly to Rome to see Spadolini: she had to use me as the pretext, the crazy megalomaniac son who stayed at the Hassler for months and then defied all the rules of decency by taking a lease on one of the most expensive apartments in the Piazza Minerva for years, possibly for decades, because he wanted to combine breakfast with a view of the Pantheon. And my mother doesn’t know that I’m aware of the true reason for her visiting Rome, I told Gambetti. She puts on a superb act when it comes to dissembling to my father, I told Gambetti; she displays an incomparable mastery worthy of the greatest artists. Having come to Rome just to see Spadolini, I reflected, looking again at the photo of her and my father at Victoria Station, she was bored whenever she was with me, because all the time she was thinking of Spadolini. Their relationship is not of Spadolini’s making, I told Gambetti, but entirely of my mother’s. You can’t leave the huntsmen alone when the hunting season is on. These words, spoken to my father, strike me now, so long after her visit to Rome, as even more contemptible than they did at the time. Even the huntsmen, and finally I myself, had to be involved so that she could meet Spadolini in Rome. With nothing else on her mind but meeting Spadolini again, she had the effrontery — the gall, as they say — to send my father dreary picture postcards of the Pantheon or Saint Peter’s every day, with such messages as: We [she and I, that is!] are having a wonderful time in Rome, etc. She had me sign them and so provide her with an alibi, as she thought, proving that she spent every day with me and no one else. Spadolini was the principal figure during her visit to Rome, during all her visits to Rome, Gambetti, not me. Of course I don’t attach any importance to being the principal figure myself. My mother’s mendacity was by then at its most brazen, I told Gambetti, though I immediately felt ashamed of having said this, sensing that I had gone too far, at least by saying it to Gambetti, as I instantly gathered from his reaction. He is so sensitive, I thought, that he’s bound to feelthat this remark, like other remarks of mine, is out of place, if not positively distasteful. The teacher mustn’t present such a distasteful image to his pupil, I reflected, but the reflection came too late. On the other hand, I thought, I have to be open with Gambetti, who is my pupil after all. Open, yes, but not base, I thought, correcting myself; open, yes, but not vulgar; open, yes, but not common and contemptible. But Gambetti’s known me so long that he can’t fail to understand me, I thought — he’s known me a long time, and he accepts me. He must have his reasons, I thought. This matter of Spadolini and my mother is a dangerous chapter, I told Gambetti, closing it once more. We had been walking up and down under the house of De Chirico, unable to decide whether to have tea in the teashop on the Spagna or to go and sit in the Greco. Then, as so often happened, a sudden shower forced us to shelter in the Greco, where we continued our conversation. It actually centered on Pavese — not on Spadolini and my mother — of whom I had been reminded by an observation in Pavese’s famous The Business of Living, a favorite book of mine on which I had commented to Gambetti that day, comparing Pavese with Heine and explaining the reasons that prompted the comparison. I can no longer remember what it was in Pavese or my beloved Heine that suddenly reminded me of Spadolini and my mother. Spadolini himself has naturally never told me about meeting my mother in Rome. Although I see him often, and enjoy seeing him — I visit him nearly every week at his apartment or his offices — he has never once mentioned their meetings. The churchman has maintained a discreet silence. I am not sure whether he is aware that I know about his meetings with my mother. One day all three of us met and went up to Rocca di Papa, where Spadolini, generous as ever and one of the best hosts I know, invited us to lunch. On this occasion my mother and Spadolini showed themselves to be consummate actors. Nothing that occurred over lunch indicated that they had met the previous evening and spent the night together, or that they had an assignation for that evening too. My position between these two liars and hypocrites was not altogether agreeable, as may be imagined — between a lying mother and a hypocritical ecclesiastic — but I carried it off perfectly, without betraying the slightest hint of suspicion. My mother, who had arranged a rendezvous with him for that evening, took her leave of Spadolini at Rocca di Papa as though it were the last time she would see him. Spadolini went back to Rome by taxi, and so did my mother and I. I found these separate taxi journeys, one behind the other, embarrassingly grotesque. They were so perfectly stage-managed as to make the whole situation quite clear to me. I cannot say who displayed the greater aplomb, Spadolini or my mother, but I may presume that, as in all such situations, she was the smarter of the two. It seemed to me at the time that Spadolini was merely the medium for her art of dissimulation and took his cue from her, I told Gambetti. I find it quite mortifying, as you can imagine, to have to tell myself that this prince of the Church is just a poor fool in thrall to my mother. Their liaison makes my relationship with Spadolini rather tricky, of course, but I’ll never give it up, even if it comes under even greater strain, because I don’t want to deprive myself of such a person. I enjoy seeing him, and I’m glad he’s in Rome. We don’t know many people who are more interesting and fascinating to meet when we need their company. Spadolini is without doubt one of the few true intellectuals I know in Rome. No one with any sense would willingly forfeit such a contact. No, really, Gambetti, I said, I haven’t the slightest scruple where Spadolini is concerned. I just begrudge my mother such a man: she doesn’t deserve a man like Spadolini. What the two of them call friendship, I said with a laugh, is after all just a clingy and utterly ludicrous affair, I told Gambetti. The photographs don’t disguise or conceal anything but make everything obvious, brutally obvious, I thought, still contemplating the photos. They reveal everything that the people in them wanted to disguise and conceal all their lives. The distortion and mendacity of the photos is actually the truth, I thought. This total defamation is the truth. The fact that the people depicted in them — exposed, as they say — are now dead doesn’t make them any better. When they were in London in 1931, I told myself, my parents were still what they call a young couple. They traveled a lot. They had no children. For years my mother refused to have children, until my father insisted. He demanded an heir from her. Wolfsegg had to have an heir. Having given birth to Johannes, she is said to have sworn not to have another child. But a year later I arrived, the troublesome one, the limb of Satan, the bringer of unhappiness. I was always told that she did not want me and tried to avoid having me. But she had to have me, the source of her unhappiness, as she called me to my face on every possible occasion, on countless occasions. But she was not happy with my sisters either, who were born after me. She was never what is commonly called a happy mother, if indeed there is such a thing as a happy mother. The heir was accepted, but I was never really accepted: I was acknowledged as a possible stand-in, but no more. All my life I have had to see myself as a substitute for Johannes and been given to understand that I am only the reserve heir, conceived for the ultimate emergency, so to speak — one summer evening at the Children’s Villa, I am told. Reluctantly conceived, my mother has often told me. In the heat of battle, as it were, in the middle of August. My mother apparently consulted a specialist in Wels, in the hope of getting rid of me, but he refused to operate, as it would have endangered her life. Abortion was not so simple in those days and always involved a risk to the mother’s life. She accepted her fate, but all her life I was the unwanted child, and she would describe me as such, whatever the occasion, often calling me the most superfluous child one can imagine. I sought refuge with my grandparents, my maternal grandparents in Wels and my paternal grandparents at Wolfsegg, but I was always the one who did not belong. This actually made me impossible to bring up, almost ruining the early years of my life and nearly destroying me at the age of seventeen or eighteen. It was only Uncle Georg, I may say, who finally saved me by taking charge of me at a time when I felt abandoned by everyone. They were all fairly indifferent to the reserve heir, always looking to Johannes and not troubling themselves about me. It was always our Johannes when things were rosy. I was only ever mentioned when they turned sour. What made matters even worse, as I once told Gambetti, was the advent of National Socialism. My family was highly susceptible to National Socialism, which suited them down to the ground, because in it, one might say, they discovered themselves. Now, in addition to their great God, who in any case was only their dear God most of the time, they suddenly had their great leader. Although National Socialism had long been a thing of the past by the time I reached the years of discretion, as they say, I still felt its baleful effects. For the National Socialism of my parents did not end with the National Socialist era: in them it was inborn, and they continued to cultivate it. Like their Catholicism, it was the very stuff of their lives, an essential element in their existence; they could not live without it. Hence, although the National Socialist period had long been over, I was given a National Socialist and Catholic upbringing and thus subjected to the Austrian mixed-power regime that has such a dire effect on the growing child. This combination of the Catholic and National Socialist elements, of Catholic and National Socialist educational methods, is the norm in Austria. They are the commonest and most widespread methods, applied everywhere without restraint, and produce atrocious and devastating effects on the whole of this essentially National Socialist and Catholic nation. National Socialist and Catholic educational methods enjoy unrestricted authority in Austria. Anyone who denies this is a liar or an ignoramus. And the laws of the land are nothing other than National Socialist and Catholic laws, which operate as a mechanism that brings devastation and destruction. That’s the truth about Austria. By nature the Austrian is a National Socialist and a Catholic through and through, however hard he tries not to be. In this country and this nation Catholicism and National Socialism have always been in balance — now more National Socialist, now more Catholic — but never just the one or the other. The Austrian mind thinks only in National Socialist and Catholic terms. And this is true also of Austrian philosophers, who use their unappetizing National Socialist Catholic minds no differently from their compatriots. If we take a walk in Vienna, the people we see are all essentially National Socialists and Catholics, who behave at times more as National Socialists, at times more as Catholics, but usually as both simultaneously; this is why we find them so repulsive on closer acquaintance and closer scrutiny, whether we’re prepared to admit it or not, I told Gambetti. Any article we read in the Austrian press is either Catholic or National Socialist, and that, it must be said, is the essence of everything Austrian — doubly mendacious, doubly vulgar, doubly anti-intellectual. If we talk to an Austrian for any length of time, Gambetti, we soon have the impression that we’re talking to a Catholic, not to a free and independent human being, or else we have the impression that we’re talking to a National Socialist — but in the end we have the impression that we’re talking to an out-and-out Catholic National Socialist, and we are very soon revolted. The Catholic National Socialist spirit — if I am to besmirch the word spirit by using it in this context, because I can’t do otherwise — has always reigned supreme at Wolfsegg and always will. My brother is imbued with the same spirit, and so are my sisters, but with them it naturally takes the form of pertness and insolence. My brother, like my father, has spent more or less all his life cultivating the Catholic National Socialist spirit, which is in fact a negation of the spirit, a peculiarly Austrian form of mindlessness, as I’ve said before. I withdrew from its ambience, Gambetti, but I’ll have to contend with it all my life, because it’s inborn. Inborn spirits either can’t be exorcised at all or can be exorcised only for a time, at tremendous cost, and never permanently. The whole of my existence has been a struggle to throw off the disease of Austrian mindlessness, I told Gambetti, which constantly reinfects me. No sooner do I notice the symptoms of this archetypal Austrian condition than I summon up all my strength to fight it off. In 1931, I thought, looking at the picture taken at Victoria Station in 1960, my parents were newly married. My mother had scored her triumph and was riding high, as it were. My father, of course, had not yet realized his ambition of begetting an heir. Men like my father do not want a child, they want an heir, and they marry late in life, for this one compulsive purpose. In their desire for an heir they rush into marriage with a virtual stranger, about whom they know hardly anything. By the time an heir is born they are fairly debilitated and can already be described as old. The mother promises to give her husband an heir and then proceeds to rob him of more or less everything. The new father, for his part, feels that he has done his duty to himself. Once the heir is born he loses interest in his wife. Most of the time he punishes her by ignoring her, or, if the mood takes him and she gives him cause, he reproaches her for having grossly exploited his generosity and married him only to get her hands on his fortune. In due course they reproach each other with everything, and life becomes hell. Their marriage does not produce mutual respect or the comfort and succor that the one should have of the other. It does not generate sympathy and mutual understanding but gradually degenerates into a shared hell. The spouses accommodate themselves to this hell and end up hating each other, but they soon recognize this hatred as inevitable and use it to quite good effect as a means to enliven the remainder of their lives. As my father turned against my mother and gradually withdrew into himself, she began to look around for a sphere in which she could give expression to her womanly whims and passions, which were far from spent; in other words for a Spadolini, I told myself as I contemplated the photos. By a happy chance, these more or less unhappy circumstances brought her together with an archbishop, who had not only an enviable physique but one of the brightest minds. I am told that when she is happiest with Spadolini she calls him my nuncio. Such a scene must be unbearably touching, I told Gambetti. I was furious, as I always am after speaking about the dubious Spadolini. It’s absurd, I told myself, that I should not only be teaching German literature but have the megalomaniac presumption to teach German philosophy, that I should pretend to a knowledge of German literature and German philosophy, or at least some acquaintance with it, when in fact I am only part of the Wolfsegg riffraff, the very thought of which makes me cringe. Having come to Rome from the provincial hell of Wolfsegg, I presume to talk to everyone about Schopenhauer and Goethe. Quite perverse, I told myself. When I take Wolfsegg and my family apart, when I dissect, annihilate, and extinguish them, I am actually taking myself apart, dissecting, annihilating, and extinguishing myself. I have to admit that this idea of self-dissection and self-extinction appeals to me, I told Gambetti. I’ll spend my life dissecting and extinguishing myself, Gambetti, and if I’m not mistaken I’ll succeed in this self-dissection and self-extinction. I actually do nothing but dissect and extinguish myself. When I wake up in the morning the first thing I think of is setting about my work of dissection and extinction with a will. Our parents led us only to the brink of the abyss but did not show it to us; they never let us look into it but pulled us back at the critical moment. They always sought to lead us just to the brink, without showing us what it was that was ruining us. Billions of parents do the same, I told Gambetti. I switched the photos around and placed the one of my brother on his sailboat above the one of my parents and below the one of my sisters. They had gone to Cannes to wheedle money out of Uncle Georg for a trip they planned to America, my parents having refused to give them a penny as they thought such a trip unnecessary. While in Cannes they tried every possible trick to relieve Uncle Georg of the money they needed, but after two weeks they gave up. He did not give them a penny, believing that any money he gave them for a trip to America was money down the drain. From then on they hated Uncle Georg even more fervently than before, though he had been very generous to them in Nice, taking them out to the most expensive bars and restaurants and buying them lots of clothes, bracelets, necklaces, and so forth. Uncle Georg had seen through them. And in any case it was not their idea to go to Cannes to see Uncle Georg and wheedle money out of him for their American trip, but my mother’s, as I happen to know. She dispatched her daughters to Cannes on this squalid mission, but to no avail. I have to tell myself that the motive force behind everything bad has always been my mother, I told Gambetti. Anything bad that happened at Wolfsegg could be traced back to her—she was the source. On the other hand, I told Gambetti, it would be quite wrong to blame her, because she could do nothing about it, absurd though this may sound. Just as she was always the source of all evil, she always attracted it. It could be said that everyone who came in contact with her suddenly became a bad person, I told Gambetti. She even turned Spadolini into a bad person, just as she had turned me and my brother into bad people. And of course she did the same with my father, who was not originally a bad person — simple, yes, I have to admit, but not bad. A person like my mother can take a family that has never been bad and turn it into a bad family; she can take a house that has never been bad and turn it into a bad house, Gambetti. But it would be quite wrong to blame her for all the bad things she’s done. We do this only because we have no alternative, because it’s too difficult to think differently, too complicated, and therefore impossible, and so we simplify the matter and say, Our mother is a bad person, and all our lives we stick to this judgment. This woman made us all bad, I told Gambetti. Although the pictures I had in front of me were undoubtedly touching, this did not prevent me, even now that the people in them were dead, from accusing them and proceeding against them in the most ruthless manner. I even conceived the idea that my parents, with their usual meanness, had deliberately abandoned me. But no sooner had the idea occurred to me than I rejected it as utterly stupid. Mothers are responsible for everything, I had told Gambetti as we were walking on the Corso a few days before my departure for Wolfsegg. By that time I was totally obsessed with Wolfsegg, with what awaited me there as a consequence of my sister’s marriage to the wine cork manufacturer, and with everything about Wolfsegg that produces a sensation of strangulation even before I have left Rome. Mothers are responsible for everything but never called to account when they should be, because for thousands of years the world has held mothers in such high esteem that it cannot be eradicated. Why, I asked Gambetti, why? Mothers whelp and bring children into the world, and from then on they hold the world responsible for what has occurred and for everything that subsequently happens to their children, whereas they ought to take the responsibility themselves. The truth is, Gambetti, that mothers shirk all responsibility for the children they bring into the world. What I’m saying is true of many mothers, indeed of most mothers. But I’m quite alone in saying it! We can think such thoughts, but we mustn’t express them, Gambetti; we must keep them to ourselves and mustn’t publish them. We must choke down such thoughts in a world that would react to them with revulsion. Were I to publish a piece entitled Mothers, it would result merely in my being pronounced a liar or a fool or both. The world wouldn’t tolerate such views, because it’s accustomed to falsehood and hypocrisy, not to facts. The truth is that in this world facts are ignored, while fantastic ideals are proclaimed as facts, because that’s politically more expedient and acceptable than the opposite, Gambetti. When I received the telegram I was not shattered, as they say. It naturally caused me to review the consequences that would flow from the news, but my head was still as clear as it had been when I first read the telegram. Even after a second and third reading my hands did not tremble and my body did not shake, and hours later my hands were still not trembling, my body still not shaking. Quite calmly I surveyed my apartment, which in recent years I had furnished in accordance with my taste and temperament. I had accustomed myself to its size and adapted it perfectly to my needs. For this apartment, I thought, you are indebted to Zacchi, who lives opposite in his own palazzo. This apartment is the central point of your world and will remain so. You won’t give it up, you’ll do everything possible to avoid ever having to give it up. Nothing will drive you from Rome and back to Wolfsegg. I stood up and walked over to the window. The Piazza Minerva was quieter than it had ever been before. Just two or three walkers, no more, which was unusual at five o’clock in the afternoon. I had drawn the blinds, so that the apartment was almost completely dark. This is how I like it: in this darkened apartment I have my best thoughts. At one moment I thought to myself, I’ll go to Wolfsegg this evening, by the night train. Then I thought, I won’t go till tomorrow morning. First I thought, I’ll go at once, by train; then, I’ll go tomorrow morning, on the first plane. I paced calmly up and down, debating how I would travel to Wolfsegg. I imagined my sisters already expecting me and decided to keep them guessing about the time of my arrival. I’ll go down and telephone, I thought, and went to the door, but having reached the door I walked back to the window, then back again to the door. Dozens of times, possibly hundreds of times, I walked to the door and back — how many times I do not know, but more than just a few, more than just dozens. I sat down again at my desk, as I usually do at this time, but not to work, not to make notes, not to prepare my lessons — which are mainly for Gambetti — but to take another look at the photographs, which still lay there. I felt no need to get in touch with anyone — I wanted to be absolutely alone. I felt no need to communicate — I had to be alone with the knowledge of my parents’ death. Whom should I inform about it, and how? I thought of this and that person, considered this and that name, recalled this and that telephone number, but repeatedly rejected the idea of telling anyone of the news. Perhaps Gambetti, I thought, perhaps Zacchi, perhaps Maria, who lives near the Via Condotti and with whom I was due to have dinner that evening. For as long as I have been in Rome I have had regular meetings with Maria, the only woman with whom I have maintained any real contact and whom I have felt the need to see every week. You’re going to see your clever friend, I always tell myself, your imaginative friend, the great writer. For I have never doubted for a moment that everything Maria writes is great, greater than anything written by any other woman writer. I must call her and tell her why I have to cancel our date, why I have to go back to Wolfsegg, which I have always described to her as deadly and pestilential. Maria knows of no other Wolfsegg than the deadly, pestilential Wolfsegg, like Gambetti, Zacchi, and all the other people I meet in Rome. None of them has ever heard me describe Wolfsegg as anything other than a deadly, pestilential place, a provincial hell. I must call Maria, Gambetti, and Zacchi, I thought, then sat down again at my desk. Don’t take anything with you to Wolfsegg, I thought. Keep calm. Call your sisters. Tell them when you’ll be arriving. But first I must know when I’m leaving, I thought, and I don’t know yet. It was impossible to make up my mind; I could not reach a decision. If there’s a rail strike I’ll fly, I told myself. If there’s an airline strike I’ll go by rail. But if I go by rail I’ll have to leave tonight; if I go by plane I’ll have to leave at five in the morning. After returning from Wolfsegg I had thought of the place with such revulsion that I swore not to return for a long time. Now I had to go back immediately. I remembered our attorney in Wels, my father’s attorney, who has an office in Franz-Josef Square, which I have found revolting whenever I have set foot in it. I suddenly saw the attorney’s wife — equally revolting. I saw our doctor in Wels — revolting. His wife — revolting. I saw Wels itself, then all the neighboring small towns, which all appeared to me in a revolting light. Vöcklabruck — revolting. Gmunden — revolting. These awful people in their hideous winter overcoats, I thought, their tasteless hats, their clodhopping shoes. I saw the marketplace in Wels and thought, How dreadful, how repulsive! I saw the town square of Gmunden and thought, How repulsive! Talking to the people in these revolting towns makes the whole world seem revolting. But if we live there we have to mix with these revolting people all the time, I thought. We can’t escape them — they’re the norm. I can’t stand the way they speak, any more than I can stand the way they dress. I can’t stand the way they think, the way they show off about what they’ve done and intend to do. I dislike everything they say and do. I simply can’t bear their Catholic National Socialist way of life, I can’t bear their accent — not just what they say but how they say it. When I observe them, I can’t summon up the feelings they deserve — only quite unjust feelings that they don’t deserve, I told myself. Maybe I have an allergy to Wolfsegg, and this is what makes me unjust to them. Maybe this allergy determines my mental attitude and makes me grossly unjust to these people and everything connected with them. The simple fact is that I loathe them, I’m sickened by them. What good are the beautiful streets in these small towns, I asked myself, if they’re filled with such revolting people? What good are the beautiful squares if such ugly people stand around in them? For ages I haven’t been able to feel any sympathy with them. I despise and detest them, yet at the same time I know I’m being monstrously unjust. But I can’t and won’t make friends with these people, I won’t pander to them and try to ingratiate myself. I can’t go back to them and their like. I can’t go back to their ridiculous shops and visit their smelly offices. I can’t revisit their icy and meretriciously ornate churches. These doctors ruined me, these lawyers cheated me, these priests lied to me. All these people failed me and humiliated me in the most appalling fashion when I trusted them. I can’t go near them any longer, I thought. They’ve become intolerable, and nothing can make them tolerable again. All these people hate what I love, despise what I respect, and like what I dislike. The very air they breathe makes me sick. Everywhere else I have friends, I told myself, but in the place that should be my home I have never had any, except among the simple people, the farmworkers and miners. Everywhere else I have been happy, at least for a time; in many places I have been utterly happy, contented and thankful, but never here, where I should have been. They don’t understand you, they don’t understand anything, I told myself. They don’t know how to live. They live to work, they don’t work to live. They’re base and common, but at the same time they have big ideas. They have an unnatural way of saying Good morning and an equally unnatural way of saying Good evening and Good night. The thought of your family makes you sick. The thought of the others makes you equally sick. Naturally anyone who thinks like this really is sick, I told myself, and I at once realized what a dangerous mood I was in. Stay calm, I told myself, keep a cool head, stay calm, quite calm. But I could not escape from this dangerous mood. I could hear them saying, He suffers from persecution mania — that’s what they always say — from a form of megalomania that’s different from ours, from his form of megalomania. When they see me they feel sick. He says Good morning, and they find it unnatural, just as when he says Good evening or Good night, I told myself. The way he dresses they find equally repellent — his clothes, his hats, his shoes — what he says, what he thinks, what he does or doesn’t do. They despise him as he despises them, they hate him as he hates them. Whose contempt, whose hatred, is the more justified? I can’t say, I told myself. I got up and went to the window, unable to go on sitting at the desk, and looked down on the Piazza Minerva. Zacchi has closed all his shutters, I told myself. He’s probably away, probably with his sister in Palermo. He often goes to see her. She has a kidney complaint and is in a hospital specializing in renal therapy, situated in one of the most beautiful regions of Sicily, below Monte Pellegrino. If all the shutters are closed he must have gone to Palermo to see his sister. All the same, I’ll try to tell him about my parents’ death. Late this evening — maybe he’ll be back by then. I went through the whole apartment, where I keep all the doors open, as wide open as possible, so that I can go back and forth unimpeded. In this way I can often avoid having to go out in the street for a break. It’s enough to walk back and forth a few times in my apartment. I removed myself from Wolfsegg, I told myself, walking through the apartment in one direction. Gradually I calmed down. I quite consciously removed myself from Wolfsegg and my family. I deliberately broke with Wolfsegg. I always offended my parents. I did everything to displease them, and I’ve always done everything to displease and offend my sisters. I was not fastidious about the way I offended them. I often ran them down and made fun of them when there was nothing about them to run down or make fun of, I told myself, and my head became clear again. I often leveled the basest accusations at my father when there was nothing to accuse him of. I lied to my mother and often made her look ridiculous in front of others, running her down in my arrogant way and hitting her where it hurt, I was now forced to tell myself. By now I really had calmed down, and my head was clear again. I quite deliberately parted from my family and willfully forfeited any rights I had in relation to them. I turned to walk in the opposite direction. I haven’t had the apartment painted for years because I can no longer bear to have workmen in, I told myself, looking at the cracks in the ceiling. I had to move into a Renaissance palazzo so that I could finally be alone, cut off from everybody, I told myself, for the truth is that I’ve cut myself off from everybody, not just from my family at Wolfsegg. The company I keep is reduced to a very small circle — Gambetti, Zacchi, Maria — and soon even this reduced circle will no longer exist, I told myself, and started to walk in the opposite direction. Come to think of it, I’m suddenly entirely alone, without a single human being, I told myself. I had my hands folded behind my back, a habit inherited from my paternal grandfather. If Uncle Georg knew how isolated I’ve suddenly become! I long to be alone, but when I am alone I’m desperately unhappy. I can’t endure being alone, yet I constantly talk about it. I may preach solitude, but I hate it profoundly, because nothing makes for greater unhappiness, as I know and am now starting to feel. I preach solitude to Gambetti, for instance, yet I am well aware that solitude is the worst of all punishments. In my role as his personal philosopher, I say to him, Gambetti, the highest condition is solitude, yet I know very well that solitude is the most fearful punishment of all. Only a madman propagates solitude, and total solitude ultimately means total madness, I thought as I turned to walk in the opposite direction. The apartment is so big that I have no cause to feel oppressed or restricted in my thinking. It affords my thoughts a freedom that they otherwise have only in large city squares. I took this into consideration when I rented the apartment, in a fit of megalomania, for indeed it was pure megalomania that made me take this big apartment in the Piazza Minerva, at immense cost, a cost that I could never have revealed to my family. I mentioned a certain sum to them because they wanted to know how much I paid for the apartment, but it was a fictitious sum, less than half the true cost. Had they known the true cost they would have said I was crazy. It’sone of the most reasonable apartments in Rome, I told them, and never said another word about its cost. But from time to time I feel that even this apartment is a prison, I told myself, when I sometimes pace up and down like a prisoner in his cell. I often call it my thinking cell, but only to myself, not to others, lest they should suspect insanity, for they would undoubtedly think that only a madman could describe an apartment as a thinking cell. I sat down at the desk and contemplated the photographs that I had been looking at — or rather studying — all afternoon. Placing them side by side, I told myself that the people depicted in them could not be judged like this, as figures in a photograph. I now put them one on top of the other, so that the picture of my parents about to board the Dover train at Victoria Station covered the other two. I had hoped for a different effect, but the impression they made was still as comic and ridiculous as before. Putting the photographs back in the desk, I decided to call my friends and take the early morning flight from Rome, to fly home. My fingers did not tremble, my body did not shake. My head was completely clear. I knew what the telegram meant.

The will

My arrival at Wolfsegg was unobtrusive and unannounced, and for this they never forgave me. I did not drive straight up to see them but got out of the taxi in the village. I asked the driver to drop me at a point where I was sure of being unobserved, near the school, at the entrance to the village where the main road branches off toward the mines. I was thus able to walk right across the village square without meeting anyone. All the villagers seemed to have withdrawn into their houses, not wishing to show themselves at this time, when my parents and my brother were presumably lying in state up at Wolfsegg. It was as though the whole village were in mourning, I thought, for I had forgotten that it was always deserted at midday, even on normal weekdays. Under no circumstances did I want to drive up to the house. Naturally the driver knew who I was. I had gotten off the train at Attnang-Puchheim and walked across the platforms to the taxi. At the station I had the impression that people recognized me, but I avoided their gaze by walking faster than usual, going straight to the taxi and telling the driver to take me to Wolfsegg as quickly as possible. Yet during the drive I did not think about Wolfsegg, where I was going, but about Rome, which I had left that morning. It’s only with reluctance that you’re driving along the road to Wolfsegg, only with reluctance that you’re here, I thought, as the taxi took me through some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, away from the Alpine foothills and toward the Hausruck, which I have always felt to be the most delightful and restful country, and would perhaps have acknowledged as the most beautiful, had I ever been able to dissociate it from Wolfsegg and my family. We were driving through my favorite landscape, through the dense woods near Kien and Stocket, toward Ottnang. You’ve always loved the local people, I told myself during the drive — simple people, the simplest people, farmworkers, miners, craftsmen, farmers’ families, quite unlike your relatives up at Wolfsegg, who always treated you abominably, even as a child. And during the drive I asked myself why I had always loved the people who lived down here and not the ones who lived up there, why I had always respected the people who lived in this low-lying area and despised, indeed detested, those who lived on the heights. All your life you’ve felt happy among the people down here but miserable among your own kind, the people up there, always at home with the people on the low ground but never with your own people on the high ground. I saw how beautiful the landscape was and remembered how fond I was of its inhabitants. You were especially fond of the miners, of the way they treated you and the way they treated one another. After all, you grew up with them, I told myself, you went to school with them and shared several years of your life with them. Having been preoccupied during the journey with thoughts of the countryside and its inhabitants, I realized only when I got out of the taxi that I had not spoken a word to the driver, who knew me by sight, though I did not know what he was called and did not ask. I usually ask all the local people their names — a habit I acquired from Uncle Georg, who had a great knowledge and love of people. No one was so good at getting along with people, especially simple, unsophisticated people. He taught me how to do the same, how to talk to them and strike the right balance between them and me. Uncle Georg loved simple people; it was with them that he got along best, and I can say the same of myself. There was not a soul in the village square. Even the cats, which usually lay around in the noonday heat, had disappeared. I would be able, I thought, to walk up to Wolfsegg unimpeded and actually unobserved. The inn curtains were drawn, the baker’s window empty, the butcher’s shade lowered. Everything seemed to bear witness to our family tragedy. From Rome I had managed to call Zacchi in Palermo and tell him that I was not going to find it easy to go back to Wolfsegg only three days after returning from there. I had said this in a quite unseemly tone, it now occurred to me, which I ought never to have used with a person like Zacchi, who is as close a friend as Maria or Gambetti. As I crossed the square, I regretted having called Zacchi at all, for throughout our conversation he seemed to show scant understanding of my situation, whereas Maria understood everything, even the strange remarks I made, which she no doubt instantly recognized as typical of me. And to Gambetti too I said more than I should have, inveighing against my family without being able to retract what I said and launching into one of my uncontrolled tirades, which I myself hate more than anybody but cannot help indulging in when something demands to be said. I’m going back to hell, I told Gambetti, at five tomorrow morning. Terrible, I added, without reflecting, without considering for a moment that such remarks were quite uncalled for and fundamentally contemptible, or at least improper. It was monstrous to speak of my family like this at a time when I might be expected to show a modicum of respect. But I can’t deny my nature, I have to show myself as I am, as these parents of mine made me, I thought as I crossed the square. If people see me they’ll say to themselves, He was always odd, and now, before going up to Wolfsegg to see his family, he first has to walk across the village square. Such an ill-bred, disloyal, unlovable person! Yet it struck me at once that the village people would not judge me as my family judged me; this was how my family always thought of me, in the same outrageous way as I thought of them. Unlike my family up there, who despise me, these people respect me; unlike my family up there, who more or less hate me, these people love me. The village people have always loved me, and I’ve always loved them, especially the miners. Most of the villagers are miners and worked in our lignite mines; some still do, but fewer than before. The village people were always my one consolation, I told myself as I crossed the square. I could say things to them that I could never say to my family; as a child I could cry my heart out to them and meet with understanding. Down here in the village everything is natural and humane, I thought as I walked on, while up at Wolfsegg everything is artificial and inhumane. I wondered why this should be, what was the cause. But the time it took to cross the square was too short to allow me to pursue this question, which now gave way to another. How will I find my sisters? What state will they be in? I wondered, taking in at one glance the whole sweep of the landscape stretching for well over a hundred miles from east to west, a prospect that can be enjoyed only from here, from no other point in Austria. From the precise spot where I always stopped, because it afforded the best view, I suddenly saw the whole panorama on this cloudless day and drew a deep breath. Why, I asked myself, do we permit such magnificent scenery to be disfigured and destroyed by people who seem intent only on despoiling it? I’ve arrived at the right moment, I thought, and walked on. It was as if the whole village were dead, for I could still not hear a sound. There were none of the noises that could usually be heard from the windows, reminding one of the activities of the people living behind them, and I connected this fact with our own misfortune. They all share our misfortune, I thought. I did not slacken my pace as I walked up the avenue, which would have been natural, but walked even faster, suddenly seized with a shameless curiosity that made me break into a run. I stopped in front of the big gateway by the Home Farm and peered between the enormous branches of the chestnut trees into the park and across to the Orangery, for it was there that from time immemorial the dead of Wolfsegg had always lain in state. And indeed the Orangery was open; in front of it the gardeners walked to and fro, carrying wreaths and bouquets. I decided not to go directly to the Orangery, as I was not yet ready to see my dead parents and my dead brother, but used the interim to observe more closely what was happening in front of it. This was still possible, as no one had spotted me. I was again struck by the calm demeanor of the gardeners and their characteristic way of moving as they silently carried the wreaths across from the Home Farm to the Orangery. They also brought buckets of water across from the stable. A huntsman appeared and seemed about to enter the Orangery, but then he turned back and disappeared in the direction of the Farm. I stood pressed against the wall in order to get a better view. We must observe people when they don’t know they’re being observed, I thought. The gardeners continued to cross from the Farm to the Orangery, carrying wreaths and bouquets, buckets of water and wooden planks. Large wooden tubs containing cypresses and palms had been placed in front of the Orangery, as well as one of the agaves that had been carefully cultivated by the gardeners. How painstakingly such tropical plants are cultivated and cosseted here in the north, I thought, as I pressed myself against the wall, feeling somewhat guilty, yet at the same time relishing my role as observer. I could observe the gardeners undisturbed, expecting at any moment to catch sight of one of my sisters or some other relative and feeling no urgent need to see my parents and my brother lying in state, which was what the slightest decency would doubtless have required. Perhaps I was afraid of a sudden confrontation with my dead parents and my dead brother. I was less afraid of their dead faces than I had been of their living faces, but I feared them nevertheless and chose to remain pressed up against the wall for a little while longer before entering the park. The theatricality of the proceedings in front of the Orangery was suddenly borne in upon me. It was like watching a stage on which the gardeners were performing their parts with wreaths and bouquets. But the main character’s missing, I thought; the real play can’t begin until I make my entrance as the principal actor, so to speak, who has come hotfoot from Rome to take part in this tragedy. What I see from the gateway, I thought, are only the preliminaries to the drama, which will be opened by me and nobody else. The whole scene, together with the invisible one taking place offstage in the main building, now seemed like a dressing room, in which the actors don their costumes, apply their makeup, and run through their lines, just as I was doing. For I felt like the principal actor preparing himself for his entrance, reviewing all the possibilities, not to say subtleties, recapitulating what he had to do and say, going through his lines again and mentally rehearsing his movements, while nonchalantly watching the others engaged in their own supposedly secret preparations. I was surprised at my nonchalance as I stood by the gateway reviewing my role in the drama, which suddenly seemed to be no longer new but to have been rehearsed hundreds, if not thousands, of times already. I know this drama inside out, I thought. I had no qualms about the lines I had to speak — they would come automatically. The steps I had to take and my manual movements were all so perfectly rehearsed that I had no need to give any thought to how I should perform them to the best effect. I’ve come from Rome to play the chief role in this tragedy, I thought, forgoing none of the shameless enjoyment this thought afforded me. I’ll give a good performance, I thought. It did not occur to me that I was a thoroughly contemptible character who was quite unaware of the baseness of his present behavior. This play, this tragedy, is centuries old, I thought, and everything enacted in it will be more or less automatic. The main actor will be surprised to find how well it all goes off, how well the rest of the cast have learned and practiced their lines, for I had no doubt that my sisters and all the others who were probably waiting for me were likewise running through their parts and had no wish to make fools of themselves in front of the audience of mourners by fluffing their lines or stumbling onstage. I was convinced that they had set their hearts on giving a highly professional, not an amateurish performance, for we know that the art of the funeral, above all in country districts, is the highest form of histrionics imaginable and that at funerals even the simplest people display a mastery far superior to anything found in our theaters, where amateurism usually prevails. My sisters will be walking up and down, rehearsing this funeral not just as a drama, I thought, but as a gala performance. And the wine cork manufacturer from Freiburg, also a member of the cast, is going through his part too, though it can’t be more than a bit part. They’re walking up and down, waiting for me to arrive and rehearsing this tragedy, which has suddenly been inserted into the Wolfsegg theater schedule. The funeral will be tomorrow, I thought; it’s always three days after the death. The curtain has not yet gone up. The costumes are not yet quite right, I thought, and the lines don’t yet come trippingly off the tongue. And what is more beautiful than a drama in which all the costumes are black, in which black is the dominant color? And in which all the extras from the village appear in black? We haven’t had this drama at Wolfsegg for ages, not since my paternal grandfather tripped over the root of a fir tree behind the Children’s Villa and died instantly at the age of eighty-nine. My family has always been on standby for a funeral; they’ve always had all the props and costumes ready, but it’s taken a long time for the occasion to present itself. All they’ve had to do is dust everything off. In fact the black banners had already been hung on the house, as I saw. The gardeners are carrying out my sisters’ instructions, I thought, more likely Caecilia’s than Amalia’s. At the same time I wondered what role they had assigned to the wine cork manufacturer from Freiburg, what lines they had allotted him, what words he would have to deliver when the drama began. I had met him once, at my sister’s wedding a few days earlier, and doubted whether he would be permitted to deliver any lines of his own. Wolfsegg suddenly has had to be transformed from a wedding set into a funeral set, I thought. As I stood by the wall I was still amazed that my journey from Rome via Vienna had gone so smoothly and that everything had run on schedule. Neither the railroad workers nor the airline staff had struck, and the connections had been perfect. My sisters can’t have finished clearing away the wedding decorations, I thought, and now they’re having to put up funeral decorations everywhere in exact accordance with the time-honored plan. They’re familiar with this plan, I thought, as my mother used to go through it with them in every detail at least twice or three times a year — for fun, she said, and because you never quite know. Weddings and births too are celebrated according to a preordained plan. My sisters know, for instance, that a funeral requires not just one but two laurel branches from the Orangery to be placed behind the lamps on the left and right of the entrance hall and two cypresses to be placed on the balcony, one on the far left and one on the far right; these must be of equal height, but not tall enough to reach up to the dining-room windows. Wolfsegg has precise plans for every kind of solemnity, and all these plans are kept in the top right-hand drawer of my mother’s writing desk. My father did not have to force her to comply with these strict procedures, as she quickly developed a passion for them. And she always had a passion for funerals, though she certainly did not envisage her own, or at least she never envisaged its taking place so soon, I told myself. It occurred to me as I stood by the wall that she would have taken charge of her own funeral if this had been possible. I imagined my sisters carrying out my mother’s wishes regarding her funeral. The word eagerness came to mind. To anyone else but me it would have been natural to have the taxi drive up the avenue to the main entrance. Having recognized me, the taxi driver was somewhat surprised that I got out where I did, between the two inns, and no one would understand why I walked through the village and across the square, I thought. But I wanted to walk up to Wolfsegg, and the deserted village square suited my purpose ideally. I not only felt I was unobserved, I was unobserved. And after all I had no luggage, which in itself was unusual, given that I had come from Rome. Moreover, having no luggage, I could walk with my hands in my trouser pockets. I entered the avenue with my hands in my pockets, thus evincing a monstrous insolence that not even the village people would have understood. At the age of forty-eight I arrive from Rome for the funeral of my parents and my brother and walk up to the house with my hands in my pockets, I thought, pressing myself against the wall to avoid being seen by the gardeners as they crossed from the Farm to the Orangery with their wreaths. A lying in state is always a great spectacle, I thought, a work of art that takes shape little by little under many hands that are adept at creating such a work of art. Repressing all thoughts of my parents and my brother lying in state in the Orangery, I reflected not on the tragedy itself but on the work of art that accompanied it, on the splendor attendant upon a lying in state, not on the terror. Since I had always been a keen watcher and an even keener observer, having made watching and observing one of my chief virtues, it was natural that I should stand by the wall, watching and observing. The gardeners afforded a perfect opportunity. I had always enjoyed watching and observing them, and during these moments, which I deliberately spun out into hundreds and thousands, I was able, from my present vantage point, to enjoy this experience once again. Such observation is of course a forbidden art, but we cannot forgo it once we have acquired the taste. Another huntsman arrived from the Farm, carrying a long candlestick, which he handed to a gardener who emerged from the Orangery, presumably in order to receive it. These candlesticks, about ten feet in height, are placed at each end of the catafalque in order to throw the most favorable light on the body lying in state. Four in all are placed by the catafalque. I recalled that they had all been given a fresh coat of gold paint many years earlier. This had intrigued me at the time, for I fancied that they were being painted and polished for a particular funeral and that it was already known whose it was to be. I was mistaken, for decades had elapsed since the last funeral, my paternal grandfather’s. When there has been no funeral in a family for a long time it is commonly supposed that several will take place in rapid succession. This has been proved correct at Wolfsegg, I thought, which means that there will now be a lull. Misfortunes seldom come alone, they say; hence funerals seldom come alone. They come in threes, one after another, just as misfortunes proverbially come in threes. Yet this time, I thought, one misfortune has brought three sudden deaths but led to only one funeral— one times three, three times one. I now heard, wafting up from the village through the trees and shrubs on the hillside, the strains of a familiar piece by Haydn played by a wind band. They’re probably rehearsing the music for tomorrow’s funeral in the Music House, I thought, the Music House being an old building next to the school. After a few bars the music stopped and there was total silence. Then the band struck up again, starting from the beginning, went on a few bars longer than before, and stopped again. As usual during rehearsal, they started several times, played a few bars, each time a few more than before, then stopped. Always the same piece by Haydn. As a child I loved to listen to the villagers’ music making, especially the wind band, and I still do. I rate it as highly as so-called serious music, in many cases more highly, knowing that so-called serious music would be inconceivable without popular music, especially the music played at country weddings and funerals. What would weddings and funerals be without such music? I wondered. Village musicians usually have a perfect ear for what they are playing, and when they are good they are nearly always a match for professional musicians. They also have the advantage of being amateurs, of playing for love, not professional ambition, which as we know can amount to a professional disease. How differently they played at my sister’s wedding, I thought — briskly and cheerfully! Their music is now slow and melancholy, though also by Haydn. Haydn is the composer I revere most, along with Mozart, and whose music I most enjoy, next to Mozart’s. Perhaps Haydn should be rated much higher, as he has always been overshadowed in the history of music by the universally loved Mozart. I love both, but Haydn is the greater of the two, I thought. This music by Haydn was in tune with the noontide atmosphere, with the shimmering air and the movements of the gardeners, carefully carrying their wreaths and bouquets from the Farm to the Orangery, unflustered and unfaltering. I was reminded of the many afternoons in my childhood when the sound of the band, playing the same piece, probably in the same scoring, had wafted up to my room from the village. But whereas they normally play only simple pieces, I thought, they’re now playing something complicated, something quite demanding, as they say. For Wolfsegg it had to be something fairly complicated, a more demanding kind of music for a better class of people, for those now lying in state in the Orangery were their betters. It must have been a shock for the village people when they learned of the deaths. For as far back as anyone can remember, I thought, Wolfsegg has never known such a calamity, and at that moment I was sorry that I could not be down in the village and hear what the local people were saying, what they were thinking and feeling. I was sorry that I could not visit their houses and share their undoubtedly genuine grief. My father had their respect, if not their affection, I thought, though he enjoyed the affection of some. My brother enjoyed nearly everyone’s affection. My mother was respected but not loved. All in all, they must have been greatly affected by the tragedy, I thought. But what do they really think? This was a question I could not answer. For centuries the village has depended on us, I thought, and even today the villagers owe their livelihood to us, especially the miners, the brickworkers, and the farmworkers. Directly or indirectly everybody in the village depended on Wolfsegg, around which it clustered, as if for protection, some three hundred feet below. In a village like this, in a region like this, a single moment can change everything. And in a family like mine, I thought. For a long time, I told myself, still standing by the wall, I’ve acted in a quite unpardonable manner, or at least in one that contravenes all normal standards of decency, by delaying my entrance. But I was probably too much of a coward to go straight into the park, let alone to walk across to the Orangery, if only to the entrance, too much of a coward even to approach the entrance, let alone to go in and see my parents and my brother lying in state. I would have found it quite impossible; I would not have had the strength. I was capable of standing by the wall and looking through the gateway toward the Orangery, but certainly not of signaling my arrival right away. I lack the nonchalance that would have enabled me to walk directly and unhesitatingly into such a dreadful scene. But who would have the strength to do that? I asked myself, watching the gardeners pushing a handcart with a number of planks across from the Farm and unloading them in front of the Orangery. I know their names, I thought, watching them intently as they unloaded the planks, and not only their names but their families and where they come from. I went to school with one of them; we were in the same class. He was better than I was at everything, especially arithmetic; he also had a neater hand, though that’s not saying much. One of them lives on the outskirts of the village, on the boundary between Wolfsegg and Ottnang. His father worked for the council as a gravedigger, I recalled. He was a respected figure, and the children loved him, though one wouldn’t expect them to love a gravedigger. Country children have a natural attitude to death and are not afraid of it, whereas town children are afraid of anything connected with death. The second was destined for the priesthood and sent by the parish to the monastery at Kremsmünster, where he was a complete failure, though at school he had been an excellent pupil and was regarded as the most gifted. So he came back to Wolfsegg and served an apprenticeship with a carpenter. But after a time he tired of carpentry and applied to us for a job as gardener. Having served his apprenticeship as a gardener with us, he is now a qualified carpenter and a qualified gardener. My mother often spoke of this stroke of luck. It was a clever move on her part to have him train as a gardener at her expense, with full board, as it saved her the expense of employing another man as a carpenter. My mother thought of everything, especially such practical matters and practical advantages. The third comes from a miner’s family. He too went to the village school with me and immediately became an apprentice gardener, but not at Wolfsegg. He served his apprenticeship at Vöcklabruck, where an aunt took him under her wing and supported him until he had completed his training. The three of them and I used to play together as children, I thought. We used to run into the woods and over the hills together. Their houses probably haven’t changed to this day, I thought, unlike most of the houses, which I imagine have been modernized and to some extent disfigured by their owners. None of them was keen on modern furniture. They attached importance to quality, and so their houses are likely to have remained almost unchanged. Each has three children, about as old as I was then, I thought, and hence all the problems that children bring, which I don’t have. It would have been a simple matter for anyone else to go up to the gardeners, shake hands with them, and stand and talk to them for a while, but I could not, although I wanted to. I’ve traveled half the world, I told myself as I watched the gardeners, I have the world more or less in my pocket, I can conduct myself with the utmost naturalness, not to say the utmost sophistication and assurance, anywhere in the world and in all strata of society, as they say. Yet I could not go up to the gardeners, shake hands with them, and talk to them briefly. I should have gone straight up to them, I thought, as soon as I arrived at the gate and saw them in front of the Orangery. Yet instead of resolutely going across and speaking to them, which would have been the obvious thing to do, I shied away from them and pressed myself against the wall, more or less out of shame and timidity, lest they should see me. It would have been far better to start off by greeting the gardeners, I told myself. But I missed the chance, I let it slip by. With the huntsmen it would have been a different matter, I thought, but how could I behave like this with the gardeners, for whom I have the highest respect and both liking and affection? On the other hand, this dillydallying by the wall was typical of me, I told myself. I’m not the sort of person who can walk straight into any scene and make an unrehearsed entrance. It’s in my nature to hold back and withdraw to a suitable observation post. What suits me best is the indirect approach. Once a year the gardeners’ families are invited to tea at the Children’s Villa. This is an age-old tradition. The gardeners come up to Wolfsegg with their families to be entertained at the Children’s Villa, in my time by my mother and father. It was always a great event. At the end, when dusk had fallen, the gardeners’ children were given presents. I cannot recall that Johannes and I were ever included in this touching presentation ceremony. On such occasions my mother was in her element. As she solemnly distributed the presents, everyone felt that it came from the heart and that for once she was not acting. Maybe the gardeners’ lifestyle had a beneficent effect on her, I thought, for when she was with them at these tea parties she was a quite different person and showed none of the traits that normally made her so unappealing. With the huntsmen I found her unappealing, but not with the gardeners. The gardeners at Wolfsegg always had a salutary influence. It was not for nothing that as soon as I could walk I was always going over to see them. Even in Rome I often think of them. Lying awake in bed, unable to sleep, I often imagine that I am with them, and I am always happy. I now felt as though I had sneaked in, as though the gardeners I was observing were pure beings, while I was an impure being and destined to remain so for the rest of my life. I don’t belong here anymore, I thought, and certainly not among them. Yet all my life my dearest wish was to be one of them. It was an absurd idea, a preposterous idea that only a madman like me could entertain. All my life I have tried to form ties with simple people, but of course I have never succeeded. Now and then I believed I had, and for a long time I clung to this mistaken belief, especially when I was with the gardeners and the miners, to whom I was always attracted, but it was an illusion that invariably ended painfully. The more my family kept me away from so-called simple people and tried to alienate me from them, the more I longed to be with them. For years I was aware of a perverse craving for their company and sought to rid myself of it, knowing it to be senseless, but I did not have the strength to free myself, and I still suffer from it. While our supposed inferiors always strove upward to our level, I always strove downward to theirs. Our inferiors were always unhappy in their station, while I, their better, was unhappy in mine. I suffered from being their better, they from being my inferior. All my life I have wanted to insinuate myself into the company of simple people, who are really anything but simple, I thought as I pressed myself against the wall. I’ve tried many tricks in the hope of taking them in, but they’ve always seen throùgh me and blocked my way, just as my family blocked their way, having seen through them. In my Roman apartment I often imagine myself among them, I thought as I stood pressed against the wall, mixing with them, starting to speak their language, to think their thoughts, to adopt their habits. But I succeed only in dreams, not in reality. What I long for is quite illusory. I am not simple, I have to tell myself at such times, and they are not complicated. I am not like them and they are not like me. It is wrong to say that my family, their supposed betters, are mendacious and that they are not, for they, our inferiors, are just as mendacious in their own way as my family are in theirs. I may say that our inferiors are good people, that they are not greedy and overweening, but the truth is that in their own way they are equally greedy and equally overweening. All the same, I can honestly say that I am happier among simple people than among my own kind, yet I have always shuddered at the thought that I am wrong about them and guilty of betraying my own kind and myself. We always betray ourselves when we favor others and make them out to be better than they really are, I thought. We misuse them by pretending to belong to their kind, yet at the same time we misuse ourselves even more heinously, to their advantage and our own detriment. But we never succeed entirely in remaining ourselves and being with them, or succeed so rarely that it does not count. When we are with them we usually divest ourselves of everything that makes us what we are. Once we become aware of this, we find it discreditable and lose whatever confidence we had when we embarked upon the game. For we are only playing a game when we believe we have to identify with them for whatever reason — because we long to do so, because we can no longer bear to be ourselves and see them as some sort of ideal. This is a lifelong error, which gives rise to lifelong humiliation. Simple people are not as simple as we think, and complicated people are not as complicated as we think. From my vantage point by the wall I now saw the gardeners carrying big black sheets across from the Farm to the Orangery. These are known as catafalque sheets and are stored in a special room for use at lyings in state. I remember witnessing exactly the same scene as a child, with the gardeners (not the present ones, of course) carrying the catafalque sheets across from the Farm to the Orangery. At that time, of course, I did not stand by the wall but stood in front of the Orangery, calmly watching the gardeners from close quarters and not feeling the least shame or compunction, even though it was my beloved grandfather who was lying in state inside. Yet now, forty years on, I have to hide by the wall, for reasons that are not entirely clear but are depressing all the same. Suddenly I felt depressed. As I stood there I no longer had the natural self-confidence I had had as a child, which would have enabled me to go up to the gardeners and shake their hands, to tell them how fond of them I was and how much I had always admired them, to go up to them and be myself. I could not bring myself to do this. I was afraid to. It’ll be a disaster, I thought, if the natural comes up against the artificial, if I, an undoubtedly artificial person, come up against the undoubtedly natural gardeners. But then I told myself that I was only pretending to be artificial when in fact I was perfectly natural, just as I was only pretending that the gardeners were natural, when they were no less artificial and no more natural than I. My hands were cold, although the weather was hot. As a child I could always find the right words, I thought, but now I can’t. At one time I didn’t need to worry about how to communicate with the gardeners or the miners — it came quite naturally. And then I went out into the world, to Paris and London and Rome, I thought, only to end up far more inhibited than I’d ever been. I’ve pursued my studies and acquired a supposedly greater knowledge of people, yet I end up not knowing how to go up to the gardeners, shake hands, and exchange a few words with them. For a moment I felt that in all the years I had spent doing everything possible to free myself from Wolfsegg and make myself independent — not only of Wolfsegg but of everything — I had not in fact freed myself and made myself independent but maimed myself quite alarmingly. I am maimed, I told myself. Whereupon I nevertheless went up to the gardeners and shook hands with them. They were not surprised by my sudden appearance. I addressed them by their names and shook their hands. I told them that I had walked up from the village and watched them from the gateway for a time. They did not understand this, but they attached no importance to what I said and looked uncomprehendingly toward the gateway. They were more reserved than usual, in keeping with the occasion, but it was a quite natural reserve; they spoke only in answer to questions, and when I asked them how they were they remained silent. They expected me to go straight into the Orangery to see the dead, but I did not go in. Looking across to the door of the house, which I saw was wide open, then toward the Farm, where there was no one to be seen, then again across to the door, I asked the gardeners if my sisters were in the house. They said they were. I walked toward the doorway, a big black rectangle over which a black banner hung from the balcony. I recalled that a week earlier the park had been full of happy, colorfully dressed people, celebrating the wedding of the young couple, my sister Caecilia and her wine cork manufacturer, until a sudden storm had put an end to the outdoor festivities, causing the guests either to rush to their cars and set off for home or take refuge in the house, there to spend the whole night eating, drinking, and dancing. A dance band from Ebensee played throughout the night, so that those who retired at midnight could not get to sleep. It was not until five in the morning that the band stopped playing, the last revelers stopped dancing, and silence descended, I recalled as I walked toward the door. Even I had been infected by the general gaiety. I had not been just an observer but had joined in the celebrations. I had even danced twice, once with Amalia and once with Caecilia, but naturally these two dances had been enough for me. I did not dance at all badly; no one who has learned to dance ever forgets how. At least I danced with Caecilia better than the wine cork manufacturer, although fat people don’t dance badly, I told myself, usually better than thin people, and they’re more musical. The numerous young cousins I saw at the wedding soon got on my nerves, I recalled, and I was again struck by the superficiality of today’s twenty-year-olds, by their lack of interest in anything but their insensate craving for amusement. It was impossible to have a proper conversation with these young relatives. I cannot remember having a conversation, or even an amusing exchange of words, with any of them. When they were not dancing they stood around, stolid and humorless, visibly tormented by a deadly boredom that would afflict them all their lives because they had done nothing about it when there was still time. It’s too late, I thought, for any of these young people to escape this deadly lifelong boredom; by now they’re almost completely taken up with their fancies, their jobs, their girls and their women, totally absorbed in their perversely superficial concerns. Talking to them, one finds that they have nothing in their heads but this ghastly superficiality and think only about their trust funds and their cars. When I talk to one of them, I thought, I’m talking not to a human being but to an utterly primitive, unimaginative, single-minded show-off. The people who attended the wedding were primitive show-offs belonging to what passed locally for high society, all attired in their tasteless made-to-measure suits. The scene was dominated by men wearing trousers with ostentatious stripes down the sides, jackets with enormous deerhorn buttons on the lapels, and black felt jackets and neckbands inherited from their elders. Caecilia, moreover, had dressed up her wine cork manufacturer in the kind of leather shorts that not even my paternal grandfather had worn, no doubt secretly hoping to make him even more of a figure of fun, I thought. Knowing her as I do, I was probably not wrong. She had also fitted him out with the jacket that this same grandfather had been wearing when he tripped over the root of the fir tree and was carried home from the woods, to be laid out first at the Farm and then in the Orangery. This jacket, I thought, observing the bridegroom, has already lain in state once, as my sister knows. For some perverse reason she’s quite deliberately fitted out her wine cork manufacturer in a jacket that once lay in state in the Orangery; she’s made him wear a dead man’s clothes on his wedding day. How awful he must have felt, wearing this dead man’s jacket at his wedding! I thought. My sister’s baseness knows no bounds. But quite possibly it was my mother’s idea. That was more likely, for my mother always had the most monstrous ideas and usually acted from base motives. What is more, the poor man was wearing my grandfather’s buckled shoes; I could see that he was scarcely able to walk in them and was obliged to adopt a comic gait in order to keep himself upright. The clothes he was wearing were a hundred and twenty years old, as Caecilia announced to anyone who inquired, trying to make herself interesting and at the same time, consciously or unconsciously, making her husband look ridiculous in front of the assembled guests. Basically she was presenting her husband as a clown, I thought. On the other hand, I thought, they all wore clownish costumes. Aside from a few doctors and attorneys from Wels and Vöcklabruck and a few relatives from Vienna and Munich, they all wore clothes that were at least a hundred years old, and so naturally they all appeared clownish. Weddings like this had always depressed me, and I had soon stopped attending them or accepting invitations to them. But it would have been impossible to stay in Rome and miss my sister’s wedding. Nor would I have dreamed of offending her in this way, and I was surprised to find how well I had borne up at the wedding. And it’s the last wedding I’ll attend, I told myself, as though ruling out the possibility that my other sister, Amalia, would ever marry or that my brother would marry within the next ten years. The wedding guests were so vulgar and stupid, I thought. We are pleased to see someone we have known virtually all our life and shake hands with him, but in no time we find that he has meanwhile become an idiot, I thought. And the young people are even more stupid than their elders, in whose stupidity there is usually at least a modicum of the grotesque. We always imagine, mistakenly, that others will have developed, in one direction or another, as we have. But we are wrong: most of them have stayed put and not developed in any direction, becoming neither better nor worse, but merely old and totally uninteresting. We expect to be surprised to find how somebody we have not seen for ages has developed, but the real surprise is to discover that he has not developed at all, that he is simply twenty years older, that he is no longer slim but has a paunch, and that he wears big tasteless rings on fat fingers that once were attractive. We expect to have much to talk about with this or that old friend, only to find that we have nothing to say to each other. We ask ourselves why, and the only answer that occurs to us is that the weather has changed, that there is a national crisis, that socialism has now shown its true colors, and so forth. Having imagined that our friend of long ago is still our friend, we discover in no time that this was a cruel error. With this woman you can discuss painting, with that woman you can discuss poetry, or so you think, but you are wrong. The one knows as little about painting as the other knows about poetry: all they can talk about is cooking — how potato soup is made in Vienna and in Innsbruck — or what a pair of shoes costs inMerano and a similar pair in Padua. What good conversations you were once able to have with a certain person about mathematics, you think, or with another about architecture, but it turns out that the mathematical interests of the one and the architectural interests of the other got bogged down twenty years ago in the morass of growing up. You can no longer find any purchase, anything to hold on to, and they are put out by this, without knowing why. Suddenly you are just someone who annoys them. It will be a more or less ludicrous wedding, I had thought before leaving Rome for Wolfsegg, and afterward it struck me as far more ludicrous than I had dared to imagine. But the only comment I heard from others was that it was a magnificent wedding, a wedding to end all weddings, as they say. I’ll take care not to express my opinion because theirs is the one that counts, I thought. The wedding service itself, however, was thoroughly entertaining, exquisitely comic. The chapel was of course packed to capacity, and half the congregation had to stand in the hall during the service. Naturally I refused to sit in the front row with my family but stood in the hall with the kitchen maids and gardeners. Having a sharp ear, I was able to hear everything the priest said. As he was slightly drunk, there was something improvised about his conduct of the service, which was therefore not at all boring, as is usual on such occasions, but amused everyone. Only my mother must have been sweating blood, as they say. In his address to the bridal couple the priest interwove fact and fiction and concluded with the general proposition that all life was life in the Lord until the end and nothing else. But at the climax of the ceremony, when he had to ask the bride and groom whether they would take one another to their lawful wedded husband and wife, he forgot the bride’s name and, after a noticeable pause, had to call for help and ask someone to tell him her name. My father rapped it out smartly, provoking instant peals of laughter in the chapel and the hall. He had forgotten the bridegroom’s name too, and my father, by now quite furious, once more had to oblige. This caused even louder peals of laughter than the first instance of priestly amnesia. I was tempted to shout the words wine cork manufacturer over the heads of the congregation but just managed to restrain myself. So this bit of meanness on my part remained a secret, I thought. It is always ridiculous when the bride says I will, but even more ridiculous when the bridegroom says it. This struck me again on the present occasion. How, I wondered, can we take the bride’s I will seriously, when we know it to be a lie, no less a lie than the bridegroom’s— this double I will that has to be uttered and inaugurates decades of martyrdom? The marital vows inaugurate the matrimonial yoke. Nothing else. And there is nothing people long for more than to say I will and thereby surrender themselves to their own annihilation, I thought. It seemed to me as though I had witnessed a little self-contained comedy or farce, and I felt a great desire to applaud when the priest had delivered his last line and disappeared with the altar boys, my little six- and seven-year-old cousins. But again I controlled myself. I was anxious to remain inconspicuous, for if I had caused a stir it would have been quite impossible for me to stay on at Wolfsegg, and I had no wish to draw attention to myself and cause anyone to remark that the troublemaker was at it again. The little centuries-old nuptial drama, I thought, culminates in the words I will, whereby the Catholic Church takes full possession of those who have uttered them. The priest was invited up to the second floor, where he waited for the announcement that the wedding breakfast was served in all the second-floor front rooms. My mother was in charge of everything, as usual on such occasions, and cut the bridal couple down to the size that befitted them, that of two marionettes, one fat and one thin, placed side by side in the middle of the table with their backs to the balcony and the world outside — the fat wine cork manufacturer and my sister Caecilia. Caecilia repeatedly stroked his left hand with her right, not because she felt any need to do so but because she thought it was required of her. After the guests had partaken of the undoubtedly excellent meal and the undoubtedly first-class wine — from Baden, of course — my mother rose and made a short speech that gave inimitable expression to her gift for hypocrisy, saying that she now had the best son-in-law she could imagine and the happiest daughter anyone could imagine. She went over to the wine cork manufacturer, showered him with kisses in front of the whole company, embraced Caecilia, and then asked us all to go down to the park. The weather being fine, a large number of tables had been placed on the lawn, and soon the gardeners and huntsmen were mixing with their so-called betters. Many villagers had come up to join in the celebration and did so without restraint. Again it was the gardeners and the miners that I found most appealing. The wind band had taken up position on a newly constructed platform and worked its way gradually through its whole repertoire, which it repeated every hour. It was said that the sound of revelry could be heard as far away as Atzbach, nearly four miles to the east. My brother was noticeably reserved during the proceedings and soon withdrew, not to be seen again. From an early age he had disliked such festivities, but his reasons were different from mine. Mine had to do with the superficial and ultimately pathetic character of such celebrations, which I could not endure for more than a few hours, but his had to do with his health. On such occasions he would immediately develop a headache. All his life he suffered from headaches, just like my father, whose headaches spoiled his enjoyment of everything. My brother is eminently suited to marriage, I thought, but he still hasn’t married and I can’t think why. He definitely needs an heir; my mother’s always pressing him to marry and constantly quarrels with him on the subject. I kept thinking about this throughout the wedding. Of course he’ll get married one day, I thought, before it’s too late, in haste, to a grocer’s daughter from Wels or Vöcklabruck or a nurse from Salzburg, or an innkeeper’s daughter from Unterrach or Strasswalchen. Men like my brother wait till they’re fifty and time’s running out; then they close their eyes and take the plunge, so placing the crown of life on the old fools they’ve become. Up to this point they let every chance slip by, all the best matches, as they say, failing to capitalize on their so-called adventures or regularize one of their relationships. My brother doubtless thinks that his bed belongs not just to one woman but to several, and even if it doesn’t belong to many, it never belongs to the present occupant, but to the next, who is then expelled from it in her turn, out of fear of lifelong imprisonment, I thought. Silly Caecilia has married, my brother was probably thinking to himself, but I won’t marry until I’m over fifty, whereupon he probably clapped his hand to his forehead and retired with the resultant headache. Like his father, he’s taken to wearing old hats, I thought, old jackets, old trousers, and old shoes. Everything he wears has to be old. Like most men of his class and background, he regards this as the best way to demonstrate that he belongs to this class and this background; he thereby conforms with the taste of the upper crust, of which he has always considered himself part. Having bought himself a hat, he exposes it to the rain, leaving it on a peg on the balcony of the Huntsmen’s Lodge for a few weeks until it is weatherworn, then places it over a pan of boiling water and puts it on when it is still hot, so that it will take on the shape of his head. He immerses his trousers in water for a short time, then hangs them from the window in the wind before wearing them. He does the same with his jackets, and when he buys new shoes he first takes a good walk through the garden mud so that they will not look absolutely new. For nobody wears new shoes, nobody wears new jackets or hats. Everything new is utterly despised and detested, and that is as it should be. And the same applies to new houses, new churches, new roads, new inventions, and of course new people. To everything new, in fact, including of course new ideas. Over the centuries this society has become accustomed to despising and detesting everything new, and in this way it has become old and ceased to renew itself. My poor brother, I often used to say to myself— he’s been completely devoured by what he regards as the one true society that can confer salvation. There’s nothing left of him to remind one of his individual personality. Like his father he leads the same life as millions of other products of this old society, who are all exact replicas of himself. Everything he has on him and around him has to be old and weatherworn, I thought — except his car, which has to be the newest and best, and hence the most expensive. He has made a habit of buying a new car each year. Since my mother travels in it, having no car of her own and not even a driver’s license, she has always insisted on its being the best and most beautiful car available. And this best and most beautiful car, the Jaguar, has been their undoing, I thought. Their car cult has proved fatal. Though normally a quiet man, he was quite uncontrolled when driving, a wielder of power, something he could never be outside the car, thanks to Mother, who saw herself as the only legitimate wielder of power. But in the Jaguar Johannes wielded the power, and she had to submit. He may not have decided on the direction they took, but he decided on the speed, while she sat terrified in the passenger’s seat, unable to do anything about it — which naturally went against the grain, as they say. My father loved the tractor, not the car, which was too light for him, and he never missed a chance to get up on one of our McCormicks, even when he had no reason to. Sitting on a tractor, he was the happiest man in the world. And the most independent. On the tractor he was himself, he said, and sad though this seemed, I believed him. I’ve reached the point where I canbe alone and happyonly on the tractor, he once told me. Johannes, on the other hand, often said that he had to get into the car in order to be able to breathe freely and pursue his thoughts, whatever he meant by that. It depressed me to hear him say this, but I have to accept it as the truth. My brother’s getting more and more like my father, I often thought. Recently he’s become so much like him, I reflected at the wedding, that it won’t be long before he is our father. His gait, his posture, and his voice are getting more and more like my father’s. He’ll soon be an exact replica of my father in posture, gait, and temperament, and hence in mental attitude. The firstborn son is predestined, as it were, to be the father, and he soon will be, I thought — it’s only a matter of time, a very short time. Sometimes when my brother’s speaking, I thought, I have a feeling that it’s my father speaking; sometimes when I hear my brother’s step I have a feeling that it’s my father’s step; sometimes when my brother is thinking I have a feeling that it’s my father thinking. In Johannes my parents got the son they had wished for, I thought. They couldn’t have wished for a better or more suitable son. He got closer and closer to the ideal image they had always had of a son, at the same speed as I moved farther and farther away from it. This was why they came to love him more and more and increasingly despised, detested, and abhorred me, though they dared not acknowledge the truth to themselves, given the many self-protective devices that were built into their minds. The image is almost complete, I thought at Caecilia’s wedding, almost completely identical with the model they adopted as their ideal image, though admittedly only with hindsight, as they say. My brother let himself be brought up to become the ideal image, but I always resisted such an imposition. I had never been interested in embodying an ideal image conceived by my parents. I was unwilling to conform to any model and thus unable to embody any such image. Johannes could be molded and knocked into shape, as they say, but I could not. And they began this molding process very early; when the infant clay was no more than three or four years old they realized that it could be shaped into their ideal image, and so they proceeded to mold Johannes and knock him into shape. They met with no resistance from him, but from me they met with the utmost resistance. Right from the beginning I succeeded in evading the parental sculptors; I at once repulsed them and would not allow them near me. They molded Johannes to their liking and were delighted with the result, not realizing that this entailed his ultimate destruction and annihilation. They ruthlessly transformed his natural head into an ideal head and thus destroyed it in what seems to me the vilest and most shameless fashion, making of him what they were unable to make of me, an ideal blockhead, who in due course would become what they longed for, their own creature, who was entirely complaisant and acquiesced in their intentions right down to the minutest detail. My brother, I thought, is completely in thrall to my parents, above all to my mother, having offered no resistance and found it easier to yield than to defend himself against every parental enormity and indignity. Only behind the wheel of the Jaguar was he allowed to give free, rein to his thoughts. On these nightmare journeys, as my mother called them, he was free, but once out of the car, the poor man had to pay for this freedom a thousand times over, I thought. I’m sure that when he’s fifty there’ll be a proper wedding here. But a dead man can’t marry, I now reflected as I passed through the doorway. The entrance hall was empty. The lamps, as I expected, were decorated with laurel branches, each with two branches in conformity with the funeral plan. Silence reigned, the strange, sweetish silence characteristic of a house in mourning. The hall floor had been washed a few hours earlier, scrubbed by the housemaids on their knees. The oldest housemaid is seventy-four, but she still counts as a maid, and even on her deathbed, having reached a great age, like most of our maids, possibly over eighty, she will still be described as a maid. My mother maintained that the housemaids at Wolfsegg had always been happy, but she also said that they never had it easy. This is still true. They wear gray aprons, by which they can be recognized at a distance, made by our tailoress in the village, their hair is brushed back flat, and they wear no adornments whatever, which according to my mother was as it should be at Wolfsegg. That suits them best, she would say. They usually come to us at fourteen or fifteen and grow old in our service. They have nothing to laugh about, as they say, but — again according to my mother — they are highly regarded by everybody at Wolfsegg. Their numbers have been radically reduced in recent years. At one time there were twelve, including the kitchen maids, the oldest of whom is now over seventy, but now there are only five, all told. Most of them, according to my mother, were bornwith unpleasant voices, or they developed such voices in the course of time, for at Wolfsegg they were never allowed to speak in their natural voices. My mother trained them to speak in an unnatural tone, as quietly and deferentially as possible, she said, with the result that their natural voices were inevitably distorted. Nearly all the housemaids now come from the village, but at one time my mother preferred to take on girls from the Mühlviertel, where labor was cheap, she said, if possible from large peasant families, because such girls were well known for being satisfied with anything (my mother’s phrase), as well as efficient and generally hardworking. Recently, however, the supply from the Mühlviertel has dried up, as the girls there prefer to become factory hands rather than housemaids. To my mother this was evidence of the decline of the Mühlviertel, and not only of the Mühlviertel but of the world in general. The housemaids were naturally staunch Catholics and showed a becoming deference to both ecclesiastical and secular authority. The most favored housemaids always came from the Freistadt district and Aigen-Schlägel, where the borders of Bohemia, Bavaria, and Austria converge and there is no railroad. They were always the most devout girls, my mother said, the most decent girls. She recruited them herself by visiting the convents at Freistadt and Aigen-Schlägel to make known her requirements. The nuns or monks usually let her take two or three young, unspoiled girls back to Wolfsegg, where they were introduced to the job and put to the test. This introductory test involved scrubbing the entrance hall, which was a huge task, given the length and breadth of the hall, and required a superhuman effort. But the girls were so impressed by my mother’s bearing and by the estate itself, the like of which they had never seen in all their lives, that they thought nothing of scrubbing the hall, no matter what torment it cost them. Not all of them passed the test, but if a girl failed to scrub the whole of the hall at the first attempt and my mother imparted the dread news that she could not take her on, she always managed to complete the task at the second attempt. My mother was implacable, above all toward herself, and subjected those around her to at least the same degree of implacability. The housemaids worked themselves to death, as they say, but they were happy to be allowed to work at Wolfsegg, as they put it. My mother paid them next to nothing, but in witness, as it were, of the good treatment they received at Wolfsegg, they reached a great age, as I have said. They worked themselves to death and yet, absurdly, lived to a great age. None died young, or at any rate before the age of sixty. They were all given a fine funeral, as my mother put it, and their families were always grateful for the fact that one of their members was privileged to work at Wolfsegg. This attitude has not changed, I thought, as I entered the empty, freshly scrubbed hall with its broad larchwood floorboards. The spiders’ webs that normally darkened its corners had been removed for the wedding; the windows had been cleaned and the lamps smeared with oil to make them glisten. The gardeners had told me that my sisters were in the house, together with the new master, as they naively called the wine cork manufacturer. The three of them will be up on the second floor, I thought, not guessing that I’m already in the entrance hall and thus roughly underneath them. I did not want to go straight up and join them, however, but waited in the hall for a few minutes, standing at the foot of the stairs that lead to the second floor, in front of a picture of my great-great-great-granduncle Ferdinand, who is reputed to have saved the emperor’s life by throwing himself between him and a Hungarian traitor who was about to lunge at him. This act of heroism cost my great-great-great-granduncle his life, though it is rumored that he was posthumously moved up a grade in the aristocratic hierarchy. The man looks rather like Descartes, I thought. This had never struck me before. He was actually a contemporary of the philosopher, and it was his dress, rather than his face, that accounted for the resemblance. Yet I was suddenly amazed by the resemblance. Why haven’t I noticed it before? I asked myself, looking at the picture with growing curiosity. In this picture my great-great-great-granduncle has the beard and the arched eyebrows that are characteristic of Descartes. The picture is by no means ridiculous, I thought, and I wondered whether this great-great-great-granduncle in oils had also been a philosopher, as his looks suggested. I decided to research the matter in our libraries and find out whether we had any works by him, perhaps some Essays or philosophical writings that had hitherto been unknown to me. I was sure I was not mistaken in seeing a writer and a philosopher depicted on the canvas and surmised that I would be able to locate his works in one of our five libraries. Knowing his name, I had only to initiate a search. I was not in the least surprised that my family had never spoken of the philosopher Ferdinand, for it is typical of them that they never so much as mention intellectuals, or do so only in order to disparage them. I even fancied that I had heard about the philosopher Ferdinand, as I now dubbed him, and might even have read something of his without knowing that the author was identical with the man in the painting at the foot of the stairs. It now occurred to me to scrutinize the other paintings of my ancestors that hung on the staircase. Until now I had inspected them only cursorily, aware that they were my ancestors but not knowing which, as they had never interested me. I had always treated our pictures as the rest of the family did, looking at them from time to time but unable to say what or whom they represented, treating them as little more than darkened patches of color that had for the most part been assigned their present positions on our walls, for whatever reason, centuries earlier. No one ever thought about them, let alone investigated them. Who knows what really hangs on these walls? I thought. It may turn out that we have several philosophers among our ancestors, maybe a whole series of scholars and thinkers. It’s possible that the pictures on our walls really are as priceless as has always been rumored in the family. But what really interested me was not so much the value as the subjects of these pictures, which run into the hundreds. To say nothing of the many paintings lying around in our attics, I thought, largely forgotten and in lamentable condition, thanks to the shameful neglect that Wolfsegg has suffered for centuries. One day I must bring in a restorer from Vienna, I thought, to identify, classify, and value all these pictures. As this idea took hold of me, I thought of someone I knew who was the principal restorer employed by our biggest museum and had recently restored the most valuable Velázquez it possessed. And it possessed very valuable works by Velázquez, as I know, more valuable than any in the Prado. The names Velázquez and Prado suddenly set me wondering whether we might even have a Velázquez at Wolfsegg without knowing it, since for centuries we have had many Spanish relatives. We have always had Spanish guests here, and they still turn up during the hunting season. Wolfsegg has always had close connections with Spain. And with Italy. And of course with Holland, where after all Rembrandt and Vermeer and other great painters lived and worked. I suddenly had this fantastic idea, and I was still absorbed by it as I stood in the chapel, to which I now repaired in order to avoid going upstairs right away to meet my sisters. I’ll take it slowly, without drawing attention to myself, I thought as I entered the chapel, where the wedding decorations had already been removed and replaced by funeral decorations. How quickly they’ve transformed the scene, I thought. All the objects that were usually highly polished and gleaming — the candelabra and bowls, the glasses and chains — had been covered with black sheets, and black sheets also hung over the two windows. Only the sanctuary lamp burned, so that one was not plunged into total darkness on entering the chapel. I recalled the priest’s lapse of memory that had caused such mirth among the wedding guests and heard again the peals of laughter it had provoked. I remembered my own malicious reaction and again heard my father shout out the name Caecilia, reactivating the nuptial scene after it had come to a halt. How long do we go on hearing the voice of someone who was alive a few days ago and has suddenly died? I wondered. For a moment I felt I must kneel down, as is customary on entering the chapel, but before I could do so I realized how theatrical, how utterly artificial and hypocritical, it would be to take my place in a pew and kneel down when I did not feel the slightest need to but merely thought it would be natural for anyone to kneel down after entering the chapel, especially in my situation. But what is my situation, in fact? I asked myself, walking a few steps forward and then stopping. I recalled that as a child I had never found the chapel the haven of peace and repose that others said it was but considered it an eerie and frightening place. Whenever I entered the chapel, even at the age of fifteen or twenty, it had seemed to me a place of terror and damnation, a hall of judgment, a lofty courtroom where sentence was passed on me. I could see the relentless fingers of the judges pointing down at me, and I always left the chapel with my head bowed, as one who had been humiliated and punished. The Catholic Church would have a lot to answer for, I told myself, if I were to reckon up what its teaching did to me as a child, how it ruined and destroyed me. Cold-blooded though it is, I thought, it would be appalled by my indictment. My mother used to send me to the chapel to agonize helplessly over the hundreds of sins I had committed. I always trembled on entering the chapel and left it in a state of shock. The only pleasant memories I have of it are associated with the May Devotions. Although the whole world has meanwhile changed completely, they still go to chapel here as if nothing had happened, I thought. At Wolfsegg they behave as if the world had not changed in the last hundred years, though in reality it has not only changed but been turned on its head, I might say. My family always regarded Wolfsegg as they regarded the pictures on their walls, which have always hung in the same places and must never be changed or taken down. And they took the same view of themselves: they must not change in any way. Anyone who changed or let himself be changed, like Uncle Georg and myself, was ostracized; he was no longer one of them, no longer had anything to do with them. Yet it would be wrong to say that time has stood still at Wolfsegg, for my family belong to the present: they exist in the present age, they are of this age, they embody the age, as is proved by their present existence. Indeed, they are permeated by the age, I thought, to a far greater extent than others. But in their own way. It is wrong to say that my family are relics of a bygone age, for they exist in the present. But in their own way. Contrary to what one might think on observing them for a while, they do not belong to an age that is no longer relevant to our own. They belong to our own age. But in their own way. Everyone who exists in the present has a share in the present, I thought. It is wrong to think that my family have no part to play in the present, for the truth isthat they play a more vital part in it than others: they dominate the age and have a truer understanding of it than others, exercising a considerable influence on the world around them. They are people of a particular kind, their own kind, and it is immaterial whether or not one rejects their kind, whether or not one is repelled by it. To say that my family belongs to a different world is nonsense. That they have a very curious lifestyle and lead an extremely curious existence, that they take no cognizance of the way the world and humanity are changing, is another matter, but they unquestionably belong to the present age. The most foolish proposition of all would be that they belong to another age or another world, for they actually belong much more to this age and this world than millions of others, and they still play a dominant role in it. This is possibly their big trick, I thought — giving the appearance of belonging to a different age and a different world. It may be this trick that enables them to get along not all that badly, as they say, for on the whole they do quite well. They are better off than millions of others, who claim to belong to the present age and the present world — a claim that my family has never made, perhaps because they are endowed with a superior instinct with regard to the conditions that prevail in the present world and the present age. I would say that my family is more in tune with the age than most people I know. I was preoccupied by these thoughts as I stood in the chapel, unable to decide whether to go up and join my sisters. We take it upon ourselves to exclude people like my family from the present world and present society, maintaining that they do not fit in, that they are out of tune with the times, because we feel that we are wrong about them, for it is precisely their lifestyle that is really in tune with the times, and this becomes clearer to me with every day that dawns. To say that I reject their lifestyle does not mean that they do not belong to the present age or are out of tune with it. I might even go so far as to say that it is they who are on the right track, the track that leads, not to destruction and annihilation, but to security and stability, even though we may dislike the manner in which they pursue these goals, I thought. To say that I have nothing to do with these people does not mean that they should be eliminated, as is frequently supposed — an almost universal supposition that is almost universally acted upon. It now occurred to me that while rejecting this supposition, I had meanwhile cast myself in the role of their eliminator and extinguisher and thus sided with the very people whose thinking I now condemned as inept and inadmissible. The majority is not necessarily in tune with the times just because it’s the majority, I thought, though this too is a common belief that is often acted upon, to the detriment of the times. A minority may also be in tune with the times, often more in tune than the majority; even an individual may be more in tune with the times than the majority, indeed more so than everybody else. The majority has always brought misfortune, I thought, and even today we have the majority to thank for most of our ills. The minority and the individual are crushed by the majority because they are more in tune with the times and act accordingly. Ideas that are in tune with the times are always out of tune with them, I thought, for such ideas are always ahead of the times if they are truly in tune with them. Hence whatever is in tune with the times is in reality out of tune with them, I thought. I had once had a long conversation with Zacchi on this subject. If I say I am in tune with the times, this means that my thinking must be ahead of the times, not that I act in accordance with them, for to act in accordance with the times means to be out of tune with them, and so forth. I once spent several days discussing this question with Zacchi, in Orvieto, where he has a house in the hills, a bequest from one of his admirers. The basic truth is that however repugnant the inhabitants of Wolfsegg may appear to the individual or even to the majority, it is they who are really in tune with the times we live in, as we are bound to realize if we consider them carefully and dispassionately, without letting ourselves be fooled by current opinion, which is whipped up by the politics of the day, I thought. There has been political opinion for centuries, and there have been incontrovertible facts that contradict it. And it is an incontrovertible fact, I told myself, that the world is now in a state of chaos, while order reigns at Wolfsegg — I am careful not to say that order still reigns there, but merely that it reigns. While the world in general is unable to emerge from its coma and return to a state of consciousness, the people at Wolfsegg are fully conscious. Even though they reject me, even though I have withdrawn from them in disgust, I do not dispute that they act — or acted, I should say — more consciously than most of the rest of the world. In their own way, I added. At this point it struck me that what I had just been thinking was total nonsense, or at any rate a piece of mental foolery that led nowhere, a mental dead end. In order to pursue the notion that it was the people at Wolfsegg who were in tune with the times and not the rest of the world, I would have needed Zacchi or Gambetti, I thought— either would have done — but alone I was doomed to failure, as so often in my thinking, hoodwinked by a fallacy, by a philosophical impertinence. But we must always reckon with failure, lest we succumb to indolence, I thought. There is nothing outside our heads that must be combated more resolutely than indolence, and we must be equally resolute in combating indolence within our heads and proceed against it with all the ruthlessness at our command. We must allow ourselves to think, we must dare to think, even though we fail. It is in the nature of things that we always fail, because we suddenly find it impossible to order our thoughts, because the process of thinking requires us to consider every thought there is, every possible thought. Fundamentally we have always failed, like all the others, whoever they were, even the greatest minds. At some point, they suddenly failed and their system collapsed, as is proved by their writings, which we admire because they venture farthest into failure. To think is to fail, I thought. But we naturally do not act with the intention of failing, nor do we think with the intention of failing. Nietzsche is a good example of a thinker who pursued his thinking so far into failure that ultimately it can be described only as demented, I had once remarked to Zacchi. In these cold, whitewashed walls I was able to develop, my mother used to say, as I now recalled, standing in the entrance hall and debating whether I should go straight upstairs and see my sisters or first go and see the others, who, as I now saw, were gathered in the kitchen. The kitchen maids and housemaids in the kitchen were conversing in the restrained tones proper to a house in mourning. I lingered outside the kitchen door, trying to make out what they were talking about, but I caught only odd words that I could not string together, though I gathered that they were talking about their families, as the name Mühlviertel kept recurring. Though conscious of the impropriety of loitering outside the kitchen door, I went on standing there, unable to decide whether to put an end to my stage-by-stage approach to my sisters by going upstairs and greeting them or to spin it out by opening the kitchen door and greeting the women and girls inside. There was a sudden burst of laughter in the kitchen, and it occurred to me that if they were suddenly to open the door I would be found eavesdropping. The thought made me shudder. I could not help thinking that my behavior was absolutely indefensible. Whatever I decided to do — whether to open the door and greet the women and girls in the kitchen or to go upstairs and greet my sisters — I had already made myself guilty in my own way, which was naturally both offensive and incomprehensible. The conversation in the kitchen had become clearer, and I followed it attentively as I stood in the hall. It turned on the various funerals they had attended and the accidents that had led to them. An old man of seventy-eight had fallen into the stream; an old woman of sixty-six had hanged herself from a bedroom window; a child had been run over by a horse and cart delivering sacks of coal to his family at our miners’ settlement. They talked of how the bodies had had an unpleasant smell and the wreaths had been very expensive, of how there were more and more morticians, how the bereaved families no longer wore mourning for six months, as they used to, how not even the closest relatives did so any longer, not even the widows. They seemed to be preparing their afternoon coffee in the kitchen. They have coffee around two, I thought, but they don’t put the water on for the family upstairs until about five; that’s when they themselves have supper, whereas the family dines at half past seven. I was pleased to think that the day-to-day customs at Wolfsegg had not changed. In the kitchen there was talk of a train driver who had been attacked and killed, leaving five children to be provided for, of how his widow was looking for a job so that she could support the five children, as the state paid nothing to the dependents of murder victims, even when the murderer was caught, and of how unfair the law was in Austria. They also talked about how the kitchen maids had been pushing a cart with a number of wooden benches from the Children’s Villa to the main house, when the cart overturned. Then one of them made some remark about egg-laying hens, at which they all laughed loudly, then suddenly stopped, as if ashamed of their laughter, realizing that it was unseemly. If I go in and greet them I’ll put myself out of favor, I thought, and so I went upstairs. Even in this atmosphere of mourning I was secretly amused by the fact that I had come from Rome with no luggage or, to be more precise, with only my wallet and a handkerchief. I’ll have all the pictures on the walls and in the attics examined and get a rough idea of their value, I told myself as I passed the painting of my great-great-great-granduncle Ferdinand on my way upstairs. Take it easy, don’t get out of breath, I told myself, stopping on the landing to listen. My sister Amalia was obviously talking to her brother-in-law, who is my brother-in-law too, the wine cork manufacturer from Freiburg, who had supplied the Baden wines. I had hardly spoken to him at the wedding, not because I was too proud but because he chose to avoid me and repeatedly ran away from me, doubtless fearful of the questions I might ask him. I can still see him standing by himself under the oak tree in the park, I thought. This seemed to be my chance to go up and talk to him, to find out more about him than I already knew, which was precious little, as my sister had never been very forthcoming about her fiancé, but when I went up to the oak tree my brother-in-law had vanished. He had been watching me, and seeing that I was about to approach him, he had at once escaped by going across to the Orangery for no obvious reason, as there seemed to be no one there. So I was left standing under the oak tree without my rich brother-in-law. I had not been able to talk to him at the wedding breakfast either, as he averted his gaze whenever I looked his way. He obviously disliked being observed, though it is perfectly natural for the bride’s brother to observe his sister’s husband in order to see how he behaves, what he has to say for himself, how he comports himself, not only outwardly but inwardly, as it were. But the wine cork manufacturer chose to keep out of my way. Not once during my stay at Wolfsegg did I have an opportunity to talk to him, I now recalled, though I was naturally eager to do so. People of his type, especially if they come from Baden, from the wine-growing districts, are adept at making themselves scarce if someone wants to talk to them, I thought at the time; they avoid anyone who wants to question them and are very smart when it comes to taking evasive action. We may describe a person as stupid but at the same time have to admit that he is smart. Fat people are always smarter than others, and basically more mobile. But their mobility is only a physical characteristic, for their minds, if that is the right word, are completely immobile. I had wanted to put my brother-in-law through a number of tests and imagined that this would be easy. I had wanted to question him, to see what made him tick, as they say, but I had grossly overrated my interpersonal skills and failed dismally. But why does my brother-in-law avoid me? I wondered. What is it about me that scares him off? After all, I am the brother of the bride, now his wife, and entitled to inquire about him. It was undoubtedly felt that my sister had acted monstrously in marrying this man, more or less without asking any questions, without really knowing him, for it was clear that she did not know him. All she would say was that our aunt in Titisee had known him and his family very well ever since he was born. But that’s not enough, I thought. And my mother was of the same opinion, having pondered the matter much more profoundly than I, but she could not prevent the wedding, for Caecilia was insistent and stood her ground, as they say, for the first time in her life. This was to commit a crime against her mother, who from the beginning actually described the marriage as nothing short of a crime committed by Caecilia against her, and her alone, though she confided this to no one but us, not wishing to lose face. It had been a foregone conclusion that her two daughters would remain at her beck and call all their lives, at Wolfsegg in other words, and that marriage was ruled out. Until all her plans were frustrated by our aunt in Titisee with this absurd idea of hers, as my mother put it. The wedding was a blow for Amalia too, I thought, for the two sisters were tacitly committed to lifelong mutual loyalty, which meant that neither would marry, as marriage would entail separation. This separation had now occurred in consequence of what seemed to me an utterly bizarre marriage, which my mother maliciously referred to as a union, a word that had always been used pejoratively at Wolfsegg. The wine cork manufacturer, however, spoke only of their union, never of their wedding, because the term was familiar to him, a native of Baden, and he did not find it embarrassing, not being conversant with our local irony. I don’t regard him as a rogue or a fortune hunter, I thought, but as a fool aspiring to supposedly better things, a type that we encounter wherever we go, in every bar and restaurant and in all but the most intimate company. He’s not cunning enough to be a rogue or a fortune hunter, I thought — he’s just an honest social climber. I could of course have forced him to answer my questions, I told myself; it would not have been difficult to confront him, but I had no wish to do so. Maybe I didn’t want to be exposed to his grotesque Baden dialect, I thought. I had visited my aunt in Titisee several times and always been put off by the bonhomie of the Badeners, which I found insincere, like the easy charm of the Viennese, whose malicious stolidity I have always abhorred. I have always been irritated, indeed depressed, by the notion of easy charm or bonhomie, involving as it does a vulgar approach to life and human nature and, if pursued to extremes, a thoroughly base distortion of our view of the world. The wine cork manufacturer, I may say, wormed his way into Wolfsegg, for my sister took him there deliberately to spite my mother, using him as an accessory in the capital crime she was committing against her. A man who’s never heard anything by Max Bruch! my mother once said over dinner when we were talking about the wine cork manufacturer and only about him. My mother had not the foggiest idea of music, yet she of all people felt obliged to ridicule her future son-in-law more than he had been ridiculed already, not just by her but by all of us, by invoking the dubious name of Max Bruch, whose violin concerto never failed to send her into raptures. To my friends in Rome I did not breathe a word about the wine cork manufacturer until the wedding was more or less fixed. I then told a malicious version of the story to Zacchi and Gambetti, and to Maria, who could not contain herself for laughter on hearing my account. Only later did it strike me that my behavior had been contemptible, redounding not so much to the discredit of my new brother-in-law as to my own and amounting in effect to a self-denunciation. Unable to take my brother-in-law seriously, I resorted to the bitter irony that I always have to hand when I cannot bear to be serious. People like the wine cork manufacturer have always roused my ire and brought it to white heat, as they say, because they present a distorted image of humanity, an intolerable caricature that brings out all its ridiculousness, which is not to be confused with helplessness. It is one thing to be confronted by a simple person, quite another to be confronted by a proletarian, the one being tolerable and reassuring, the other intolerable, disturbing, and grotesque, I thought. The proletarian is a creature of industry and did not exist before industrialization. He is a slave to the machine, constantly degraded and vulgarized by the machine, but unable to defend himself against this indignity. The simple person, on the other hand, at least as I see him, has never been enslaved by the machine, has never let it degrade and destroy him, I thought. The petit bourgeois and the proletarian are pitiful but insufferable products of the machine age; we are shocked when confronted with them and forced to contemplate what the machine and the office have made of them. The bulk of humanity has been destroyed and annihilated by the machine and the office, I thought. The wine cork manufacturer has been destroyed and annihilated by his office and the machines in his wine cork factory and has thus become insufferable, I thought as I reached the second floor and paused at the top of the stairs. I do not know what made my sister choose this particular man as a husband. On the other hand, I know that she had found no one else willing to marry her, having failed in her many attempts, as she was bound to with a mother like hers, who forbade her daughters to have any relationships with men. Even at the age of thirty my sisters were still bound by this maternal prohibition and dared not flout it for fear of being disowned and stripped of their rights. My mother often threatened to disinherit them if they disobeyed her orders, and so they complied, fearing nothing so much as being disinherited, for it is fair to say that they felt completely helpless when left to their own devices. Once when Caecilia expressed a desire to go to Salzburg for two days with a friend, whom she injudiciously described as a boyfriend, she was forbidden to leave the house for a week. Amalia fared no better when she proposed similarly dangerous excursions, as my mother called them. How ought I to behave toward the wine cork manufacturer? I asked myself as I stood at the end of the passage, hearing their voices but unable to make out what they were saying, though it clearly related to the funeral. What is my best course? How should I act after making my entrance? Such deliberations usually lead nowhere and merely make things harder, complicating what is actually quite straightforward, though it appears exceedingly tricky and complicated. I knew that everything would work out, as they say, that there was no need to agonize over such supposedly difficult questions as how to conduct myself on returning home and meeting those who were waiting for me, who had witnessed the tragedy or been the first to be hit by it. We know that everything will sort itself out, but we do not trust this knowledge; we therefore ignore it and subject ourselves to the most dreadful mental torment. If my sisters were alone, I thought, there wouldn’t be the slightest difficulty: I’d already be discussing the immediate future with them. But the presence of the wine cork manufacturer prevented me from making a spontaneous entrance. He’s in my way, I thought, inhibiting my natural impulses. Now, after only a week, the wedding turns out to have been a ghastly mistake, I thought. It will drive a wedge between Caecilia and Amalia and cause a fundamental rift, far more than the momentary pique that caused Amalia to move into the Gardeners’ House for a ludicrously short time in order to punish her sister. The wine cork manufacturer is sitting in there with them, discussing what they ought to be discussing with me, I thought, meddling in matters that don’t concern him and possibly taking charge of Wolfsegg in his feebleminded way, airing his petit bourgeois ideas and opinions, which can never amount to intelligent insights. After less than a week he’s already established himself at Wolfsegg and taken over, I thought as I moved to a position from which I could hear almost everything they were saying. I was anxious above all to hear anything they said about me, anything at all, but all I heard was that the mortician had already paid three visits and they could not reach an agreement with him, that eighty wreaths and forty bouquets had already arrived, that they had arranged for substantial obituaries to appear in the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten and other Upper Austrian newspapers, as well as in the Munich and Vienna papers, and that they were thinking of putting one in the Frankfurter Allgemeine too. They’re talking quietly so that they can’t be heard, I thought, but I could hear every word, learning for the first time that from the passage one could hear almost everything that people said in the drawing room, even when they spoke very quietly. I was alarmed to discover this, having always believed that nothing said in the drawing room could be heard outside it. This is an important discovery, I thought; I must watch what I say in the drawing room. They’re sure they can’t be heard, but I can follow every word. All the time the wine cork manufacturer said nothing but yes or no in answer to the simplest questions. My sisters were conducting the discussion, and this partly reassured me. Then suddenly he said that the catafalque should be raised a little, whereupon I began to listen more attentively. The catafalque was too low, he said. The mourners would have the greatest difficulty in seeing the dead, and the only thing to do was to raise the catafalque. After a certain amount of to and fro they all decided to give instructions for the catafalque to be raised. They went on to talk about the gardeners, then about the huntsmen, then about how rooms had been booked for the guests, who would be coming from far and wide, at all the inns in the village, as well as in Ottnang. More than once they mentioned the Gesswagner, which was my favorite eating place whenever I wished to escape from the Wolfsegg cuisine. It had big rooms with old-fashioned beds, and the guests we accommodated there at various times had always found it comfortable. The inn is deservedly famous, as is the butcher’s shop belonging to it. The name Gesswagner instantly brought back memories of the many happy hours I had spent there with the local people — miners, farmers, carpenters, and roadworkers, whom I have to thank for broadening my outlook early in life. Gesswagner is to me a magic word, for at no other inn have I experienced such natural good cheer. It is the focal point of Ottnang, a village known for its lighthearted, cheerful inhabitants, as well as for its band, which is rivaled only by our own. But naturally the name Gesswagner had no such happy associations for the others. Suddenly they were on me. They could not understand why I had not gotten in touch earlier, for they had telegraphed me as soon as they knew of the accident. No phonecall,nothing, said Amalia. I had entered the drawing room. They stood up but could think of nothing to say. I embraced my sisters and shook hands with my brother-in-law. Without another word I accompanied Caecilia down to the Orangery. My first impression was that they respected me as the sole heir. They had no choice, and it occurred to me that I was being received like this because all their hopes were now pinned on me. It occurred to me too that they were now at my mercy, forced to rely on me for help and, above all, to heed what I said. It struck me that they could no longer exist without me and depended on my generosity, knowing that I was the natural heir and that they must rally round me, as the accident had left them helpless. The deserter who had been rejected, detested, and execrated had suddenly become the master, the provider, the deliverer. In this moment of reunion they staked everything on me, fervently hoping that I would forget everything that they and the dead had done to me, in order to save them, as I was more or less obliged to do. This was my undoubted intention, and I gave them to understand it, not in so many words but by my demeanor, which I cannot precisely describe. My brother-in-law was forced into the same position, expecting me to extend to him the protection I extended to my sisters and to consider him in my deliberations regarding the future. But I knew as little as they did about what was to happen, for the fact that Wolfsegg as a whole, with all its internal and external ramifications, now devolved upon me and upon me alone was something I had not considered, either in Rome the previous day, when I had received the fatal telegram, or between then and now, when I had been wholly preoccupied by my immediate return to Wolfsegg and had no time — or allowed myself no time — to think about the problems posed by its future. I had refused to think about them, as I did not wish to burden myself with these problems until my parents and my brother had been buried. Moreover, the news of their death had been far too sudden. As I have said, I was not shattered by the news, terrible though it undoubtedly was, but accepted it with a kind of indifference, which I did not have the strength to abandon and was therefore unwilling to abandon. I had simply taken out the photographs, put them on my desk, and fantasized about them, I may say, more or less to distract myself from the horror of what had happened. I now saw that this was the best thing I could have done. On receiving the telegram I was controlled, not shattered. I kept a hold on myself, as they say, and my head remained clear, but naturally I did not consider the full consequences of the news in detail, as I wanted to protect myself. I had to protect myself; I could not and would not allow myself to be crushed by the fact that my parents and my brother were now dead. Caecilia led the way to the Orangery, and as I followed her I reflected that my sisters and my brother-in-law were now entirely reliant on me, that their attitude to me had completely changed. This was inevitable. Now that my parents and my elder brother were dead, I was suddenly cast in a role they could never have imagined me playing, that of provider and protector. But I’m still the same person, I thought. I haven’t changed, I won’t change, even if they expect me to. Yet if they were not to despair and lose their hold on everything, they had to believe that I would. The fact is that on the way to the Orangery, despite the sadness of the occasion, which affected me too, I decided that my sisters would have to be paid off, as I had no intention of letting them stay on at Wolfsegg or allowing the estate to go on being run as it had been up to now. Ofcourse, I did not know how else it should be run, only that things could not go on as they had for centuries, right up to the present day. As she led me to the Orangery, Caecilia had the demeanor of the bereaved daughter and sister, broken by the sudden death of her parents and her brother, and perhaps she really was broken. Dressed in black, in a tight-fitting woolen dress and with her hair in a bun, she looked very smart. So did Amalia, I thought. She also looked good in black. If only they wouldn’t go around in those dreadful dirndls, I thought; they look so much better in black. When I first saw my brother-in-law standing beside Caecilia, he seemed quite helpless. He was no longer the triumphant though complex-ridden bridegroom of the week before, for the accident and its immediate consequences had made it quite impossible for him to conceal his futility and ineptitude. The couple had faced me in all their depressing insignificance. Instead of supporting Caecilia, as would have been natural, he was supported by her, or so it seemed to me when I entered the drawing room and looked first at Caecilia and her husband, and then at Amalia, who seemed more composed than the others. They had seen to everything, they said. I did not know quite what this meant but assumed it meant that they had made all the necessary arrangements. Before we reached the Orangery Caecilia said that Amalia had sent a telegram to Spadolini at the same time she had sent mine. It was up to me to decide who else should be told of the tragedy in addition to those they had already informed. She had taken it for granted that Spadolini should be notified. It was clear that Caecilia knew precisely what to make of Mother’s relations with Spadolini. My sisters were always in the know, I thought. The wine cork manufacturer is nothing but a nuisance, I thought, but I can’t count him out, as I have the impression that Caecilia will make a point of pushing him forward, as her protector, so to speak. This did not worry me, as I was not afraid of the wine cork manufacturer, even though he was now my brother-in-law. He’ll remain a marginal figure of no consequence, I thought. When I entered the drawing room, Caecilia had placed herself behind him, using him as a protective shield, so to speak, and making it only too obvious that she intended to push him to the fore. This at once struck me as ludicrous, not to say tasteless; I thought it unworthy of her but did not pursue the thought. It was not important, but at the same time I found it irritating, though I was fully aware that some confusion was inevitable in the present circumstances. Given the new situation at Wolfsegg, my sisters were at pains to show me that they had changed, but they only half succeeded, as they had not really changed. They were the same as ever. At first I fancied that they had changed, but this soon proved to be an error when I said I wanted to see my dead parents and my dead brother. Before we reached the Orangery I was still convinced that what my sisters required of me was nothing short of total self-abnegation. Do your best to protect them, I told myself, but be on your guard, or you’ll come off worst. After all, they’ve been trained by your mother and know how to exploit a tragedy like this for their own ends. I loathed myself for being able to entertain such a thought, but I did not do so without reason, and it was vital that I should. My family, including my sisters, had never recoiled from anything if it suited their designs, so why should they act differently now? I asked myself. Yet at the same time it occurred to me how deep-rooted my distrust must be if I could harbor such a thought at this moment, and I loathed myself for it. Distrust has always been the rule among us; we have developed our distrust to a quite abnormal degree, to the point where it is an absolutely invariable habit to distrust everyone and everything. But my distrust was confined to Wolfsegg and my family — elsewhere I distrusted no one. No sooner was I at Wolfsegg than my distrust reemerged; it belonged to Wolfsegg, like all other supposedly bad qualities, which are really just the natural means we employ in order to assert ourselves and avoid being worsted. In Rome I had expected to find my sisters despondent and reacting nervously to everything, but they were utterly calm. Or perhaps I was mistaken, perceiving only their outward calm and failing to discern their inward disquiet and nervousness. In Rome I thought I would find the whole house in a state of agitation, but nobody was agitated, and I wondered how great a misfortune it would take to knock my sisters off balance, to paralyze them. They were not knocked off balance, they were not paralyzed. They not only had retained their composure, as they say, but were fully alert when I entered the drawing room. It did not occur to them to ask me about my journey or the reason for my late arrival, whether I had come by rail or by air, as it was absolutely self-evident that I should arrive at that very moment and no other. They haven’t asked one question, I thought, and they haven’t offered me anything. They expect me to take over, to take charge of everything, to be strong. It did not seem to occur to them that I might be incapable of taking on the task that had suddenly fallen to me. Without a moment’s hesitation they’ve loaded it all on me, I thought, yet at the time they knew more than I did. Possibly they had witnessed the accident; at least they were the first to learn of it. On the way to the Orangery I did not even know how it had happened, and I was inhibited from asking; I did not feel up to questioning them about it. But it can only have been a road accident, I thought. It had not occurred to my sisters to tell me about the nature of the accident; they spared themselves this ordeal in the first few minutes after my arrival, as neither of them wished to be the first to tell me the actual cause of my parents’ and my brother’s death. They behaved as if they were sworn to silence, having reached a prior agreement on this delicate and painful matter. As they said nothing, I spoke first, saying that it had been impossible for me to come earlier. This was a lie, but they obviously believed it. They know about Italian conditions, which are always chaotic where travel is concerned. The unions see to it that there are almost daily strikes and daily chaos throughout Italy. My sisters are well aware of these chaotic conditions, as I have told them about them often enough and they read about them in the newspapers. I therefore had no qualms about saying I had been unable to come earlier, because they were bound to put it down at once to these chaotic conditions and not suspect me of lying. To my family the word Italy has always been synonymous with chaos; Italy is the land of chaos. They have often asked me why I choose to live in Italy of all countries, where these chaotic conditions have prevailed for decades, and I have always replied that it is precisely because of these chaotic conditions that I choose to live in Italy, and in Rome, where they are at their most chaotic, where everything is unpredictable and impossible. I used to tell them that I chose to live in Rome precisely because Italy was the most chaotic country in Europe, probably in the whole world, and because Rome was the center of this chaos. They did not understand, and I never felt inclined to go into further explanations of my interest in Italy. A big city as such is not enough for me, I would tell them: it has to be a chaotic big city, a chaotic world city. But they could make no sense of such notions, or of any other notions of mine. They haven’t even asked me if I’d like a cup of tea or a glass of water, I thought, but then I relented, as I felt sorry for them in their present situation. When someone has come straight from Rome to Wolfsegg, which is after all a strenuous journey, it is usual to ask him whether he is hungry or thirsty, but they did not ask me. They were having coffee when I arrived, but they did not offer me any. I should have poured myself a cup, I thought, but I did not do so, as I wanted to go down to the Orangery as soon as possible to see my dead parents and Johannes. I did not want to put off the ordeal any longer. When we arrived at the Orangery Caecilia was surprised that I did not shake hands with the gardeners or even address them. Not knowing that I had already spoken to them and inquired about their well-being half an hour or more earlier, she found it odd that I should behave like this to the gardeners, who were still bringing large wreaths across from the Farm and stood aside to allow us, the master and mistress, as it were, to enter the Orangery. I went in while Caecilia remained by the door. I was alarmed to find that the bodies were placed at different heights, my father’s higher than my mother’s, and that while my father and brother lay in open coffins, my mother’s was closed. I turned around to Caecilia, as if for an explanation, before approaching the coffins, but the reason dawned on me at once: my mother’s body was not in a fit state to lie in an open coffin. I learned later that her body had been so mutilated in the road accident—beyond recognition, the papers said — that her coffin had to be sealed at once. She had been virtually decapitated, whereas there were no signs of injury on the bodies of my father and Johannes, whose necks had been broken when they were thrown against the windshield. The car had collided with a truck coming from Linz, and an iron bar from the truck had struck my mother’s head, almost severing it. She had been sitting in the middle of the car, as she always did when the three of them were driving together, and the iron bar had pierced the frame and killed her. They had all died painlessly, I was told. Having seen my mother’s closed coffin, I turned around and saw that there were tears in Caecilia’s eyes. Behind her stood the gardeners. I stood for two or three minutes in front of the coffins, then turned and left the Orangery. Standing by the dead, I had caught the unmistakable smell of bodies lying in state and decided to leave the Orangery before I was nauseated by it. I also felt it better not to linger by the bodies, which seemed to have nothing to do with me. I was sickened by the sight but far from moved, as they say. I felt only nausea and disgust. Any links I had were with my living parents and my living brother, I thought, not with these malodorous corpses. I naturally took care not to betray these feelings to my sisters or anyone else. I did not even recognize the faces as those of my father and brother; they were so changed that they seemed to belong to strangers who had nothing to do with them. Let’s go, I said to Caecilia. As we walked back to the house my eye was caught by the black banner hanging shamelessly from the central balcony. I was irritated to note that it was somewhat off center and pointed this out to my sister. I have always disliked sloppiness of this sort. Earlier, when I had just arrived and looked across at the house from the gateway, I had not noticed the irregularity, but now it disturbed me more than anything else. My sister beckoned one of the gardeners over and told him to move the banner to the middle of the balcony. It shouldn’t be too difficult, she said. By way of an excuse she explained to me that everything had had to be done in great haste. The gardener went up and moved the banner, while I gave instructions from below, telling him exactly where the middle of the balcony was and where the banner should hang. As I did so I began to feel nervous and at once tried to conceal this by telling Caecilia how good she looked in her black dress. Black suits you best, I said. It was not meant maliciously, but she instantly assumed that it was. She could not credit me with an honest observation that was not prompted by some ulterior motive; she at once thought it malicious and chose not to respond to my compliment. No, honestly, I said, that black dress suits you perfectly. Ignoring me, she locked up at the pigeons sitting on the windowsills, which this year were so caked with droppings that they looked quite disgusting. The pigeons were a big problem at Wolfsegg; year in, year out, they sat on the buildings in their hundreds and ruined them with their droppings. I have always detested pigeons. Looking up at the pigeons on the windowsills, I told Caecilia that I had a good mind to poison them, as these filthy creatures were ruining the buildings, and moreover there was hardly anything I found as unpleasant as their cooing. Even as a child I had hated the cooing of pigeons. The pigeon problem had been with us for centuries and never been solved; it had been discussed at length and the pigeons had constantly been cursed, but no solution had been found. I’ve always hated pigeons, I told Caecilia, and started to count them. On one windowsill there were thirteen sitting close together in their own filth. The maids ought at least to clean the droppings off the windowsills, I told Caecilia, amazed that they had not been removed before the wedding. Everything else had been cleaned, but not the windowsills. This had not struck me a week earlier. Caecilia did not respond to my remarks about the pigeons. The gardeners had let some tramps spend the night in the Children’s Villa, she said after a long pause, during which I began to wonder whether I had given Gambetti the right books, whether it would not have been a good idea to give him Fontane’s Effi Briest as well. The tramps had lit a fire, she went on, and it had spread in the downstairs room where they spent the night, but the gardeners had put it out. The tramps had disappeared shortly after the outbreak of the fire, no one knew where to, but that was unimportant, as they would not be found anyway. The room that was burned out was the one where we kept the dolls we had as children, said Caecilia. As she said this she looked over the village to the mountains. Our dolls, of all things — it had to be our dolls, I thought, but I could think of nothing to say about the occurrence. I found it rather pleasant that tramps should have spent the night in the Children’s Villa and that it was they who had started the fire, as I did not know there were any tramps still around; I thought they had died out long ago. Naturally the gardeners would let them spend the night in the Children’s Villa. Caecilia probably expected me to inveigh against the gardeners, but to her great surprise I praised them. They’re the most loyal employees we have, I said, the most reliable, the most natural, the ones I’m fondest of. Just because Caecilia expected me to criticize the gardeners I spoke up for them, fully aware that I was saying the first thing that came into my head. I’ll have the Children’s Villa put in order, I said suddenly. This remark came as a shock to her, though it did not immediately strike me as being of any great consequence. She looked up and stared straight into my eyes. By saying this I had pronounced myself master of Wolfsegg, for I had said, in so many words, I’ll have the Children’s Villa put in order. Never before had I said I would have anything put in order at Wolfsegg, for until then I had not been entitled to say such a thing. On the contrary, I had always been shorn of my rights; for decades I had had no rights whatever. The truth is that I had never been accorded even the most marginal rights. The Children’s Villa is a jewel, I said, and must be restored to its original condition, in precise accordance with the old prints. I had the idea of starting work almost at once on restoring the Children’s Villa; I felt a great urge to do so. And the Home Farm must be restored too, I said; it’s completely run-down. It’s not that we’re short of money. Caecilia remained silent and let me go on. This was the method she always used — letting me go on until I had said far more than was good for me, more than it behooved me to say, until I had given too much away and she was able to score the winning point. Again I said too much and gave myself away. And I’ll get my restorer in from Vienna to catalogue and value our pictures, I said. No sooner had I said this than I felt embarrassed and tried to change the subject. I didn’t expect to be back here so soon, I said. I didn’t intend to come back for a long time. Rome is the ideal place for me. I can’t live in any other city, and certainly not in the country. Wolfsegg’s out of the question for me now, I said. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, I thought. The Children’s Villa is my favorite building, I said. Do you remember how we played Confucius, which we invented and wrote ourselves? We didn’t know what or who Confucius was, but the word Confucius inspired us to invent a play. By the way, what happened to all the plays we wrote? I asked Caecilia. She said she did not know. They must be in the attic of the Children’s Villa, I said — that’s where I last saw them. You painted your most beautiful set for Confucius, I said. And Amalia was a wonderful Confucia. The libraries must be opened up, I said. All those books must be aired. We don’t know what treasures we have there, shut off from the air and covered with dust. Wolfsegg must gradually become a living place again, as I imagine it. Caecilia said nothing. For decades our parents have kept everything locked up, I said. I looked across at the gardeners again. Two huntsmen came through the gateway and greeted me from a distance. Only hunting, never anything but hunting, I said, feeling more alone than ever. The pigeons were cooing so much that I looked up at the windows, especially the top-floor windows. Their cooing is always particularly dreadful when it’s going to rain, I said. My pupil Gambetti hates pigeons too, I said. Rome’s full of pigeons, and they ruin everything beautiful, all the architecture. The pigeons should be decimated, I said, and was instantly embarrassed at having used the word decimated. One of the gardeners came across and asked me whether the dosed coffin should be raised any further. Yes, said my sister, although the gardener had addressed his question to me. He went away to raise my mother’s coffin, with the help of a colleague. The gardeners are the best thing about Wolfsegg, I said, but Caecilia pretended not to hear. The accident had taken place on Wednesday evening. In the kitchen there was a pile of newspapers that the maids had brought in. I had gone to the kitchen in search of a cup of so-called house coffee, and the pile of papers on the little table by the window at once caught my eye. At first I resisted the urge, but was unable to stop myself from sitting down and scanning the newspapers. They reported our family tragedy in the usual vulgar fashion, with all the insensitivity and attention to detail that typifies the Austrian press, sensationalizing it with the ruthless cruelty that I had always found alarming in press reports of other people’s tragedies, while admiring the cold-bloodedness of such reports, which were avidly lapped up by readers, myself included. Ever since childhood I have been a keen newspaper reader with an appetite for crude sensationalism, but this time I was naturally sickened by what I read. It seemed that my parents had driven to Styria with Johannes in order to see a dealer and inspect the latest American harvester. Like all the agricultural equipment at Wolfsegg, it had to be a McCormick. My parents spent the afternoon in Styria and were driven around by Johannes to visit friends and do some shopping, Styria being a good place for shopping. Toward evening they had driven to Linz and attended a Bruckner concert, conducted by Eugen Jochum, in the Brucknerhaus by the Danube, one of the ghastliest cultural centers in the world. Immediately after the concert they had driven back in the direction of Wolfsegg, with my father at the wheel. The fatal accident had occurred just beyond Wels,on Federal Highway 1, right at the junction where the road to Gaspoltshofen branches off. Even the newspapers did not know exactly how the accident had happened, but they were not sparing with their abominable pictures. They even printed a large photograph of my mother’s headless body. I gazed at the picture for a long time, though all this time I was naturally afraid that someone might come into the kitchen and catch me at it. I drank some of the house coffee that was standing on the oven, still hot, and opened one newspaper after another. Each of the front pages carried at least one picture of the accident, and the captions had all the crudeness and vulgarity that have always typified the provincial press. They have no reason to worry about standards; it is the total lack of standards that makes them so popular and guarantees their high circulation and immense turnover. I was now experiencing at first hand the quite uninhibited crudeness of these provincial garbage sheets, and the longer I sat reading these provincial garbage sheets and studying the pictures, the more they disgusted me. Each paper felt obliged to outdo the next in vulgarity. Family wiped out, screamed one headline, under which I read: Three concertgoers mutilated beyond recognition. Full report and pictures on center pages. I at once searched for the center pages, shamelessly leafing through the paper to find the illustrated report promised on the front page and simultaneously keeping my eye on the kitchen door, fearful of being caught in the act. I mustn’t immerse myself entirely in these reports of the accident, I told myself, as I may not notice if someone comes into the kitchen and catches me at it. In this way, my hands trembling for the first time, I read virtually everything the newspapers had written about my family, and as I read I had the impression that while it was all written in the most mendacious manner, it was at the same time all true — unutterably vulgar yet at the same time strictly factual. Everything in these press reports was mutilated beyond recognition, as my mother’s body was said to have been, yet it was all absolutely authentic. However mendacious the press may be, I told myself, what it prints is nevertheless true. When the papers lie they’re in fact being truthful, and the more they lie, the more truthful they are. Reading the newspapers, I have always found them mendacious, yet what they print is nothing but the truth. I have never been able to escape this absurdity, and I could not escape it now as I read the reports of my parents’ accident, which must be one of the most dreadful on record in Upper Austria. One of the pictures showed my mother’s head, attached by a sliver of flesh to the torso, which was still in the seat. The caption read: The head almost severed from the body. The accident naturally gave the newspapers a chance to print something about Wolfsegg — unadulterated nonsense, as may be imagined. They described my parents as a happily married couple who had devoted their lives to work and the good of the community. My brother was one of the best sportsmen in the country. My father was described by one paper as a forester well known for his prudent management, by another as the respected economic councillor, and by a third as the respected huntsman, the selfless leader of the Upper Austrian Farmers Union. One paper reproduced the photograph of Johannes on his sailboat at Sankt Wolfgang, with the caption: A picture from happier days. I have no idea how this picture found its way to the editor’s desk. The Linzer Volkszeitung had a red banner headline reading: Two generations wiped out. None of the reports failed to mention that we were a Christian family, that my father was a benefactor of the Church and my mother a good wife and mother. The LinzerVolkszeitung noted: They are survived by one son, who works in Rome as an academic, and his two sisters. I read that the burial was to take place on Saturday morning and that Wolfsegg had lost its master. It could be clearly seen on the pictures that the metal rod had penetrated right through the vehicle, my mother’s head propelling against the rear window and almost severing it. All three passengers, including my mother, had been found in their seats. The car had plowed with full force into the truck, which was thought to have braked suddenly at the Gaspoltshofen turnoff. It was carrying a consignment of metal rods to a firm in Schwanenstadt. The newspapers concluded that the blame lay with the driver of the truck but that he could not be held legally responsible, as a driver who rams another vehicle is always to blame. The local population shares the family’sgrief, I read. I also read that the funeral would be conducted by the archbishop of Salzburg, a family friend. The archbishop of Salzburg and my father had been at school together as boarders at Lambach High School. A whole village mourns, I read. Hearing footsteps in the hall, I got up and put the newspapers back on the table as I had found them, with the cook’s spectacles on top. The kitchen is a big, vaulted room. When we were children it was our favorite place, especially in winter, as it was always warm, even in the coldest weather, when the rest of the house was poorly heated. The kitchen was always the most entertaining place until we were five or six, when I made friends with the gardeners and Johannes opted for the huntsmen. The cook has been with us for decades. She at once treated me as the master, assuming that this dignity had now passed from my father to me. It was intended to pass to my brother, but now the burden had fallen on me. I was not yet aware of its full implications. Would you like a cup of coffee, sir? she asked. I said I had already helped myself to coffee. Would you like to read the papers, sir? she asked, in the same tone of voice. No, I said, at once taking refuge in a lie, though it occurred to me that the cook was bound to know I had been reading her papers, that I had fallen upon them with avidity. No, thank you, I said, unconvincingly. So-called simple people have a fine ear for the wrong tone of voice and the dishonest use of language. She said she had no idea how many guests were expected, which made her calculations difficult. But you probably don’t know either, sir. I said I had no idea and had only just arrived home, from Rome. Yes, from Rome, she said. I’ve forgotten how to talk to simple people, how to conduct any kind of conversation with them, I thought. This depressed me. Since I’ve been in Rome I’ve forgotten how to communicate with simple people, I thought. At one time I would have found it easy to talk to the cook, to ask her a question, listen to her answer, follow it up with another question, and so forth, but I had lost the skill. With the gardeners I was lucky, having been able to hold a brief conversation with them, but with the cook I failed, probably because I was preoccupied all the time by the thought that she knew I had fallen avidly upon the newspapers and that she was bound to think this indecent, that she had caught me out in low conduct. On the other hand, it seemed to me quite natural to be distressed, in such a distressing situation, to be so agitated as to be unable to behave normally and have a simple conversation with the cook. I saw no reason to reproach myself. I did not think my conduct at all surprising, but it was nonetheless humiliating to have been caught out. I felt like a criminal as I stood facing this woman, who had meanwhile noticed that her spectacles were not exactly where she had left them. I may have imagined all this, but I had a strong suspicion that she knew I had been through her papers and lapped up everything about the accident with my usual avidity. But my avidity has abated and is no longer as gross as it was just now, I thought. The cook can see that I am base and contemptible, I thought. She can see it in my demeanor. Knowing this for sure, she is exploiting her knowledge by staring at me in this searching manner. For a so-called simple person, especially a female of the species, this is extraordinary behavior, I thought. She was hiding her hands behind her back, as if tying her apron, but this was only pretense, as she was embarrassed at being caught out in a show of disrespect, in what struck me as a quite unbecoming show of disrespect. By subjecting me to such scrutiny she’s betraying the fact that she herself is base and contemptible, I thought. This was no way to look at the master, I thought. Why should this happen to me? On the other hand, I realized that my own situation was even more embarrassing, for I was the first to be guilty of low conduct: hers was merely a reaction to mine. Her shamelessness was in no way comparable with mine. Her shamelessness is nugatory beside mine, I thought, which is far more basic. I should have forbidden myself to look at the newspapers, I should have ignored them, but then I would have been untrue to my character, which required me to leaf through them. Seeing the cook eyeing the pile of newspapers, I was sure I had been caught out. For a moment I hated the woman. But then I saw that she was afraid of me, and my attitude changed. I no longer felt any real hatred, for although she could undoubtedly read my guilt in my face and believed she had seen through me, it would have been unforgivably stupid to be afraid, even for a moment, of a person like the cook, who after all depended on me and was a stupid person of the most harmless kind. To be honest, I must say that I dislike these broad, rosy peasantish faces larded with stupidity. I have always disliked them, but that is unfair, as there is more good nature in these broad, rosy peasantish faces than in any others. Yet I’ve always been suspicious of this good nature, I thought. And of good nature generally, of the very notion of good nature, which I can’t make anything of and basically find repugnant. The cook knew me as a child, I thought. I can’t pretend to her, so why am I getting worked up about her? She knows me through and through. But of course that isn’t true, I thought: what does this woman know about me, about what I am and who I am? It’s ludicrous to agonize over my relations with the cook. No, no more coffee, I said, ill-temperedly, and left the kitchen. I saw Caecilia coming toward me; behind her was Amalia, and behind Amalia was my brother-in-law, the wine cork manufacturer. You’ll have to get used to your brother-in-law and the word brother-in-law, I told myself. Suddenly all three of them were in front of me, seemingly about to accuse me. I have no idea what put this absurd idea into my head, but it seemed as though I was suddenly confronted by accusers, about to be accused for some reason, possibly for all kinds of reasons. But Caecilia said simply that they were going across to the Home Farm to talk to the huntsmen, who would be carrying the coffins at the funeral. They had to discuss who was to carry which coffin. As only the huntsmen were mentioned, I said that naturally the gardeners too must be involved in carrying the coffins. It irritated me to have to talk constantly about coffins. What struck me as strange about this conversation was that we spoke constantly ofcoffins, though it was normal on such occasions to speak of one coffin. The huntsmen can’t carry all the coffins, I said. The huntsmen and the gardeners will carry the coffins. Two will be carried by the huntsmen and one by the gardeners. The huntsmen will carry Father’s coffin, and of course Mother’s, and the gardeners will carry Johannes. Caecilia and Amalia cut the wine cork manufacturer out of this conversation about who should carry the coffins. He was relegated to the background and had no say in the matter. It’s obvious, I said, that Mother’s coffin should be carried by the huntsmen, and as I said this I remembered her relations with them. And obviously Father should be carried by the huntsmen, as he was their huntsman. (For decades he was the Master of the Upper Austrian Hunt, a title he received during the Nazi period and retained for twenty years afterward.) First the huntsmen, carrying Father and Mother, followed by the gardeners, carrying Johannes — it’s quite simple, I said. My sisters were suddenly clinging to me like leeches. It seemed as though they were loading everything onto me, having already loaded the whole of Wolfsegg onto me. When I looked at them in their black dresses they made the same comic but repulsive impression as they did in their tasteless dirndls. The mocking expressions had gone from their faces, but the embittered look remained. They suddenly had quite unhealthy, grayish-white faces, made all the more depressing by the black dresses they were wearing. When one of them spoke, the other could not wait to join in. They constantly interrupted each other — nothing had changed. Both had their hair combed back in the same way, and they were wearing identical shoes. Amalia had moved back to the main building from the Gardeners’ House and reverted to being Caecilia’s sister, I thought, her fellow conspirator. No longer conspiring against me, it seemed, butfor me, which I found distasteful. I was repelled by the shameless opportunism that they suddenly directed at me now that my parents and my brother were dead. These sisters, who for decades regarded me as a monster and a base deserter, now cling to me and put on their helpless-little-women act, I thought. I mustn’t get carried away by these thoughts and feelings, or I’ll lose control. I’ll stay quite calm. They started filling me in on how the accident had happened, though I had been filled in already by the newspapers. One would interrupt the other and take over from her, and my brother-in-law had no chance to say anything. I let them go on, and as they talked I found that their accounts of the accident were quite different from what I had read in the newspapers. Everyone recounts his tragedy, as it were, as he sees it. The way the papers see it is different from the way my sisters see it, and probably also from the way my brother-in-law sees it. They all give quite different accounts of the same tragedy, each recounting a different tragedy, though it’s actually the same tragedy. Just as we read many different accounts in as many different newspapers, so my sisters give their own differing accounts of the same tragedy, so that in the end there are as many tragedies as there are people recounting them. Everyone recounts the tragedy as he sees it, refracted by his own feelings, always the same tragedy, yet at the same time always a different one, I thought. Caecilia’s account was quite different from Amalia’s. Amalia constantly interrupted Caecilia’s account, and Caecilia constantly interrupted Amalia’s. My brother-in-law said nothing. Amalia always spoke of her mother’s head being severed by an iron rod, but Caecilia spoke of its being pierced by a crosspiece. I said nothing, not wishing to betray the fact that I was already familiar with the press reports, having read them all in the kitchen. Under no circumstances must I reveal this. I was not going to show myself in the worst possible light on the very first day. My sisters thought I knew hardly anything about the accident, and so they talked freely, recounting everything in their voluble and totally undisciplined fashion. The Lambach police had informed them of the tragedy as they were about to go to bed, and so instead of going to bed they had had to go to Lambach to identify the bodies, Amalia said. The car was completely wrecked, and as it was dark at the scene of the accident, the police had held lamps over them and made them stick their heads inside the totally demolished car so that they could properly identify the three bodies. Listening to all this, I did not find it hard to believe that my sisters were even baser characters than I was. Any nervousness they showed while telling their story could not hide their cold-bloodedness. It was a joke, they both said, almost simultaneously, that our parents and Johannes were taken away to Wels by ambulance long after they had died. The police had behaved correctly. The accident naturally caused quite a stir, and a number of farmers came running to the scene. Some of them in hastily buttoned nightshirts, Amalia said. At first they did not mention that my brother-in-law had been present too, though it was he who drove them to the scene of the accident. Although they had at once had to go through every possible formality, they were condemned to complete inactivity until the following morning. Amalia first went to the post office to send the telegram to me. They could of course have telephoned me, but the telegram relieved them of this ordeal. This I find understandable. They had then sent my brother-in-law to the Home Farm to collect the black banners, and it was he who hung the first one, from the balcony. Initially there had been a ghastly silence, said Caecilia. First of all Amalia went across and told the huntsmen of the accident.

They were already puzzled about the whereabouts of the car in which the master and mistress had left for Styria the previous afternoon. Caecilia then informed the gardeners. Caecilia had told Amalia to send a telegram to Spadolini as well as to me, with the message Mother died. Caecilia, Amalia. They were sure that Spadolini would come to the funeral. At first they had thought of having Spadolini himself, Archbishop Spadolini, to celebrate the requiem mass, but then, feeling sure that I would approve, they had decided to ask the archbishop of Salzburg, with good reason, Amalia said. The burial service too would be conducted by the archbishop of Salzburg. Spadolini himself would be sure to stay in the background, they said. They would naturally never be able to forgive themselves for depriving their mother of having the mass celebrated by Spadolini, they said, but I at once saw that this was pure hypocrisy. It was of course right and proper that the archbishop of Salzburg should celebrate the mass and conduct the burial. Privately I thought it self-evident that Spadolini, having been Mother’s lover, should celebrate the mass and conduct the burial, but I kept this to myself. I could not put myself beyond the pale for the rest of my life by suggesting anything so outrageous. So I told my sisters that we should stick to the existing arrangements, that the archbishop of Salzburg should celebrate the mass and conduct the burial. It had already been decided in my absence and could not be altered. I gained a certain advantage by deferring to them and agreeing to what they had arranged. I said that in addition to the archbishop of Salzburg and Spadolini there were certainly at least three other bishops who would come to the funeral — the bishops of Linz, Innsbruck, and Sankt Pölten, with all of whom my father had been on friendly terms. He had gone to school with them and always kept in touch with them, even during the Nazi period, I thought. I told my sisters that these bishops had always had good relations with our parents, even during the Nazi period. I could not resist saying this, and it was well judged, ensuring that my conversation with my sisters did not become unduly sentimental and hence hypocritical. Basically I dreaded this funeral more than any other. All the local funerals I had attended in recent years were as nothing compared with this, and I suddenly realized what was in store for me on Saturday, the day of the funeral. How right I had been to tell Zacchi on the telephone that I had been overwhelmed by a calamity! My sisters meanwhile turned to my brother-in-law and instructed him to go across to the Farm to see whether there were not two more funeral sheets in the attic, as Caecilia maintained, in a big cardboard box marked Sunlicht. I nearly laughed out loud when I heard her say the word Sunlicht in that silly tone of hers. The box is marked Sunlicht, she told her husband, who at once went across to the Farm. I guessed that she wanted to be alone with Amalia and me and that this was her sole reason for dispatching her husband on his errand. She simply wanted to get rid of him. He’s an intruder, I thought, and she may have been thinking the same. She too, his own wife, feels that my brother-in-law is a foreign body related only by marriage, I thought. But the idea did not amuse me as much as it should have done — I found it embarrassing. The wine cork manufacturer has gone across to the Farm just so that Caecilia can talk to Amalia and me undisturbed, I thought. When he was no more than twenty yards away from us Caecilia said that her husband got on her nerves, that he was always clinging to her and never left her alone for a moment. This surprised me, for until then I had had the impression that it was she who clung to him. No, he was the leech, she said. Only a week after the wedding she already regarded her husband as a leech and told us so. I saw that Amalia had difficulty suppressing a laugh. How easily one is affected by laughter, even in a dreadful situation like this! I thought. Indeed, such dreadful situations actually provoke laughter. Anyone caught up in a misfortune like ours quickly takes refuge in laughter, I thought. Amalia said that her brother-in-law had not helped them at all in their desperate plight. He had stood at his window and not done a thing. Several times they had asked him to help, for instance by calling the morticians at Vöcklabruck, whom they had engaged for the funeral, but he had done nothing to make himself useful. He had done nothing but go on about what a shock the accident had been for him, without considering how much more of a shock it had been for his wife and her sister, who unlike him could not lock themselves in their rooms and do virtually nothing. People like him can’t cope with such a misfortune, I said. It just lays them low, and they haven’t the strength to get back on their feet. Unlike us, I said, on whom such a misfortune has a far profounder and more devastating effect. We too are laid low, but we immediately get back on our feet and get over it. I immediately regretted saying this but could not take it back. It was actually I who said that we were able to get over our misfortune, not they. What I meant was that we were able to get to grips with misfortune, even the greatest and most appalling misfortune, while the petit bourgeois was not. Ofcourse I did not use the termpetit bourgeois, but kept it to myself. The petit bourgeois, I thought, is shattered by such a misfortune and makes an exhibition of himself with his sentimentality — we don’t. The petit bourgeois and the proletarian become accident victims themselves, as it were — we don’t. The petit bourgeois and the proletarian, unlike us, never have the strength to cope with such a devastating misfortune, I thought. I told my sisters that such a misfortune was too much for my brother-in-law’s resources, but they did not understand — they did not appreciate what I meant, or the implied contempt. People like my brother-in-law, I said, must be counted out after a devastating misfortune like ours. As I said this the wine cork manufacturer had not yet disappeared into the Farm but was still making his way toward it. People like my brother-in-law, I added, are by nature too indolent to cope with such misfortunes, because they are far too indolent in every way. They don’t take a cold look at the world, as we do when we have to. My brother-in-law isn’t one of us, I said. Amalia just grimaced. Caecilia turned away without a word, probably to see where her husband was, but by now he was inside the Farm. People like the honest wine cork manufacturer have a totally sentimental view of life, I thought to myself — we don’t. We are repelled by their sentimentality. This sentimentality is also a species of baseness, which they constantly employ to put others at a disadvantage. Their sentimentality makes life easy for them, while causing untold misery to others; they constantly parade their sentimentality, which only disgusts the likes of us. I told my sisters that at Wolfsegg my brother-in-law had landed himself on a slippery slope. Amalia found this amusing, but Caecilia did not. Saying nothing, she turned and looked me coldly in the face. This was tantamount to admitting that her absurd marriage had been a mistake. I was not deceived by the look she gave me. After barely a week, I thought, the scene is completely transformed. It couldn’t be worse. Only a madman could have married you, I told Caecilia, though this was not said with the acerbity that she read into it, and I was sorry I had said it. It was meant as a joke, but I saw that it cut her to the quick. Caecilia still hates me, I thought. She’s still the same old Caecilia. And Amalia supported her with her sisterly hatred. I have both of them to contend with, I thought, yet at the same time I was sorry for them, for although I did not know precisely what my sisters would have to go through in the immediate future, I had some idea, and the portents were not good. Caecilia suddenly felt that her husband was a nuisance — the husband whom she had brought to Wolfsegg from Baden to spite her mother, to punish her in the only way she knew how, the husband from Freiburg, the most Catholic of all Catholic strongholds. A week after the wedding she was already taking the wine cork manufacturer apart, so to speak, because the sole reason for her marrying him had evaporated and no longer existed. The reason had been my mother’s attitude to her daughters and their relations with men, and hence to their future. Now that she’s dead, the bottom has fallen out of the marriage, I told myself. The wine cork manufacturer was now redundant, though he was not yet aware of this. Not only Caecilia, I thought, but both sisters have begun to think about how to get rid of the wine cork manufacturer, who has lost his usefulness overnight. They dared not say so, of course, but it was obvious from their attitude to him. He gets on my nerves the whole time, Caecilia said more than once, and Amalia said nothing. The facade could no longer be maintained, for it concealed nothing but a deepening aversion. My brother-in-law had been sent away under a ludicrous pretext, I thought, so that my sisters could talk to me about him in the way they liked best — behind his back. The fact that he already got on Caecilia’s nerves the whole time proved that he had always done so, yet in spite of this she had taken up with him and brought him to Wolfsegg, with the connivance of her aunt in Titisee, who was intent upon one-upping my mother. Our aunt from Titisee, I thought, will turn up from the Black Forest and claim her seat in the front row reserved for the family, knowing that she has triumphed. Even if Caecilia’s marriage could already be considered a failure, this would only add to our aunt’s triumph, for she had achieved what she set out to do: she had delivered a body blow to her sister-in-law by prevailing upon my sister, her niece, to take up with this man and marry him shortly afterward. Her triumph is in no way diminished by the fact that the victim of the conspiracy is now dead, I thought; it’s my sister who now has to foot the bill for her aunt’s machinations. She’s landed with the wine cork manufacturer, and he’s begun to play his part. However pathetic his performance, I thought, it’ll be hard to drop him from the cast. At any rate it’ll be hard for Caecilia. I couldn’t care less, as I can get him out of Wolfsegg whenever I want. That’s for me to decide, and I don’t intend to put up with him at Wolfsegg for long, I told myself. And my sister won’t be at Wolfsegg much longer either. Perhaps she senses what I’m thinking — she may even know for certain, I thought. But that’s not my worry. If you enter into a grotesque marriage, as my sister has done, you have to take the consequences, I thought. The consequences of marrying a wine cork manufacturer are bound to be painful, indeed excruciating, and they’re beginning to show. We utter a warning, but it goes unheeded, I thought; we always say the same thing, but the ears it’s intended for don’t hear it. Caecilia turned a deaf ear when I said to her, Hands off the wine cork manufacturer — quit this perverse scheming against your mother. Our aunt from Titisee has incurred a twofold guilt, I thought, toward my mother and toward Caecilia, toward all of us, actually. She never got over the fact that my mother sent her into exile, as it were, thirty years ago because she could no longer bear to have her living at Wolfsegg along with my father, her brother. She exiled her to a small hunting lodge in the Black Forest that has always belonged to the family. Look what your precious Titisee aunt has done, I said to Caecilia. She understood me. I did not say this in a comforting way but in a tone of reproof that is not easily forgiven. He gets on my nerves, she had said, plainly indicating for the first time that she hated him. She wants him out of the way, I thought, and has sent him over to the Farm, where he’ll probably spend ages searching the attic for a box of funeral sheets that don’t exist, as she knows perfectly well. It was outrageous to send her husband up to the attic, where one sends only servants. He never leaves my side, she had said, which could mean only that she already loathed the wine cork manufacturer. I can’t sleep with the windows shut, she said, and he won’t sleep with them open. I’m forever opening the windows, and he’s forever shutting them, all night long. There was not just disappointment in her voice but real indignation, elemental hatred. I noticed that although the wedding decorations had been taken down, a few items were still hanging here and there, overlooked during the hasty funeral preparations. There were carnations, for instance, behind the lamps at the front door of the Farm, which should have been decorated with laurel to betoken mourning. My sister naturally did not say in so many words that her husband smelled, but she might just as well have done so. My mother need not have agonized over the quickest way to break up the marriage, which she had always described as grotesque, I thought; she could have spared herself the agony. I did not begrudge my dead mother this small triumph; in fact it seemed sad that she could no longer have the satisfaction of knowing that this marriage, which she once said she detested from the bottom of her heart and which had been engineered by our Titisee aunt and Caecilia, though chiefly by the former, was already on the rocks, as they say, only a few days after the wedding. While the wine cork manufacturer searched the attic for the funeral sheets in the box marked Sunlicht, his wife was running him down quite shamelessly, unaware of how contemptible her behavior was. The slender thread linking the wine cork manufacturer to Wolfsegg had snapped, although he could not know this. Caecilia had come over to my side, and Amalia was equally unscrupulous in her calculations. They’re trying to salvage whatever can still be salvaged, I thought. To do this they had to ally themselves with me, knowing that I now held the reins. The master they had never considered had suddenly materialized, and having always treated me with hostility, they had nothing good to expect of me. It was therefore vital that they should give an initial impression ofweakness, I thought, in order to be able to confront me later from a position of strength. I could see that this was the only tactic available to them. I’m not mistaken, I told myself. I needed a bath, or at least a shower, so I left my sisters and went upstairs. On the way one of the kitchen maids came up and handed me my wallet, which she said I had left in the kitchen. I could not imagine how this had happened, but assumed that I must have taken my wallet out of my jacket pocket without thinking and put it on the kitchen table, where the cook had found it under the newspapers. I’ve given myself away, I thought: if my wallet was found under the newspapers, that’s proof positive of my guilt. I put the wallet in my pocket and went up to my room. We fancy we can get away with lying and not be exposed, I thought, but then we’re exposed by our own carelessness. The air and rail journey from Rome had taken its toll, and I began to feel tired. My room looked as if I had only just moved out. I had not tidied it before returning to Rome, and no one had done so since. They said they’d tidy my room and put everything in order as soon as I’d left, I thought, but nothing had been done, as they had not reckoned on my returning so soon, I had caught them out once more in a bit of negligence. On the other hand, I thought, it’s quite pleasant to come into the room and find everything more or less in disorder. Nothing had been tidied; no one seeing my room would have guessed that I had been in Rome for the past week. Everything seemed to indicate that I had left only a few hours ago, or even less. In all the excitement they had even forgotten to make my bed. They’ve certainly no idea that it hasn’t been made, I thought. Normally they’d have made it, but they haven’t, and this raises doubts about what Caecilia always calls their fanatical obsession with tidiness. I undressed, threw my clothes on the floor, then went into the bathroom and took a shower. I wanted to shave but had no shaving cream, and so, naked except for a bath towel, I went across the hall to my father’s room to get his. He doesn’t need his shaving cream anymore, I thought. In my father’s bathroom everything was as he had left it, as though he were about to return at any moment. Nothing had been tidied there either. What are they thinking of? I wondered. To my knowledge they have precious little to do all day, yet they don’t even tidy my father’s bathroom; it’s not worth their while to tidy his bathroom, even when he’s dead. Is there no respect for the dead? I asked myself, but I dismissed the thought as distasteful, though it still seemed strange that, two whole days after my father’s death, they had not even tidied his bathroom. But it’s excusable in view of the mourning, I thought. At first unable to find the shaving cream, I rummaged in the bathroom cupboard until I found it. My father, like me, disliked electric shavers and preferred a wet shave. It’s not fair on the skin to use an electric shaver, I told myself, and returned to my bathroom with the shaving cream. In the hall, between my father’s room and mine, I ran into Amalia, who was startled to see me completely naked. Having discarded the bath towel in my father’s bathroom and forgotten to wrap it around me again, I found myself standing naked in front of Amalia, who took advantage of the semidarkness of the hall to stare at me in what seemed a far from sisterly manner. As she remained stock-still, showing no sign of making herself scarce upon seeing me, I walked up to her and asked her if she had never seen a naked man before. Now you can see what I look like — not bad, eh? I said, and stuck my tongue out at her, whereupon she turned on her heel and ran down to the entrance hall. I had not stuck my tongue out at Amalia in thirty years. Fully refreshed, and quite cheered by this incident, I set about shaving. As I did so I thought how badly my sisters had been reared, how my mother had turned them into a pair of ill-bred grown-ups, and not just physically: they were ill-bred and twisted both physically and mentally. Applying the shaving cream to my face and looking at myself in the mirror, I saw a joker; the joker immediately stuck his tongue out at himself and repeated the action several times, enjoying the joke at his own expense. There is nothing more enjoyable than shaving after a journey, even a short journey like mine, which had all the same been quite strenuous. Standing naked in front of the mirror and sticking my tongue out at myself, I no longer felt like a person with a less than normal life expectancy, as I had until now. I went into the bedroom and dressed. For some time I debated whether or not I should put on a black suit, but in the end I opted for a normal everyday outfit, an old brown-and-green Roman jacket and trousers to match. If my sisters were different, I thought, if they weren’t quite so silly, I might find it possible to live with them at Wolfsegg, but then I considered what it would be like without them. It was clear that they were not going to stay with me at Wolfsegg. Caecilia and Amalia will have to go. That’ll be best for all concerned, I thought. They’ve dug themselves in here for life, but now they’ll have to go — never mind where, just go, I thought, for their own good. The play’s more or less over, I thought. Now that the principal characters are dead, lying in state in the Orangery, the minor figures, my sisters, no longer have any business in the theater. The curtain has come down. But not quite, I thought: the satyr play has begun, the most difficult part of the whole show. When I met Caecilia down in the entrance hall, she asked me at least to put on a black tie. At first I refused, but then I conceded that she was right and went back to my room to put one on. I was now properly dressed. I went to the window and saw the wine cork manufacturer walking from the Farm to the Orangery with a large box. My brother-in-law’s actually found the box marked Sunlicht, containing the funeral sheets, I thought. And I thought it didn’t exist! But all the same my sister behaved atrociously, sending her husband, whom she can no longer stand, up into the attic at the Farm simply and solely so that she could be alone at last, as she put it, with Amalia and me. The wine cork manufacturer has an awkward, unpleasant gait, I thought, and when he’s carrying a weight like that it’s even more unpleasant, as it makes him bowlegged. He’s weighed down by the box, though it’s not all that heavy. He carries it in such a way that he seems to have a box on his shoulders instead of a head, I thought. It was a comic sight. In front of the Orangery one of the gardeners relieved him of the box; after that he just stood there, as if not knowing what to do next, the personification of helplessness. I could have gone over and helped him, but I refrained. Such people cannot be helped but remain comic figures, never knowing what to do. The gardeners who had come across from the Farm spoke to him briefly but then went away, as they had other things to attend to. Again I heard snatches of music floating up from the village; they had made some headway in their rehearsal of the Haydn piece. A ponderous piece, I thought. My brother-in-law walked up to the wall to get a view of the village. I watched him trying to make himself taller by getting a foothold on a ledge protruding from the wall, but he could not manage it and looked around, fearful lest someone had seen how clumsy and ridiculous he was. He could not see me, as I was standing behind the window of my room, and at that time in the afternoon the light conditions made it impossible to see in. At this time of day, I told myself, I can stand at the window and watch whatever is going on outside without being seen. Having failed in his attempt to get higher up the wall, the wine cork manufacturer wiped the dirt off his jacket and shoes and looked around again, in all directions. It struck me that his arms were too short. His suits, though tailor-made, are awkward and tasteless, with a provincial, South German cut, and the fabrics he chooses are of the hideous kind favored by the petit bourgeois who has an ambition to better himself and is wholly taken up with this ambition. This is the brother-in-law that our Titisee aunt has wished on us, I thought. The white-shirted wine buff from Baden. Caecilia’s earlier claim that she was married to the best husband in the world could only provoke derision, but such derision could not be given free rein that afternoon: it had to be confined behind the windowpanes. This man deserves no sympathy, I thought, because he was far from guiltless when he entered upon this relationship, of which my sister’s heartily sick only a week after the wedding, but it’s something that Caecilia will have to come to terms with by herself. I’m not going to get mixed up in it, though that doesn’t mean that I won’t go on observing, I thought, and drawing conclusions from what I observe. It was quite unbearable to contemplate having to spend evening after evening sitting with this man, and with my sisters, who never know what to say to me, just as I never know what to say to them. The shock of the accident will only tide me over the next few days until that comes to pass and I’m exposed to what I dread — having to live with the embittered faces of my sisters and the fatuous face of my brother-in-law, bursting into mindless mirth every moment over the least triviality. On the other hand, I reflected, arrogance is not an appropriate means to use against people around us whom we despise and therefore find unbearable. Yet without arrogance we’d be lost. It’s a weapon that has to be used against a world that would otherwise swallow us whole. If we had no arrogance it would give us no quarter. We have to use our arrogance in self-defense, I told myself, deploying it wherever we’re in danger of being devoured. For let’s not deceive ourselves: the people we call stupid and consider beneath us are the most ruthless of all. They don’t care about our feelings, so long as they can discomfit and finally destroy us. Arrogance is an utterly appropriate weapon to use against a hostile world, a world in which arrogance is feared and respected, even if, like mine, it’s only feigned, I thought. The truth is that we project our arrogance in order to assert ourselves. It is a perfectly logical proposition to say that I am arrogant in order to survive. Before long, of course, we don’t know whether our arrogance is feigned or genuine, but it’s not necessary to ask ourselves this question all the time; to do so would make us crazy and ultimately demented. It’s a matter of indifference to me that my brother-in-law doesn’t know who Max Bruch is, for even if he had known when my mother put him on the spot over dinner, it wouldn’t have made him a better person. She could just as easily have asked me some question that I couldn’t answer. I don’t know all that much; in my own way I’m no better informed than the wine cork manufacturer, I thought, and it’s quite immaterial how cultured a person is. Indeed, anyone whose culture earned my mother’s admiration would have been essentially an awfully mindless creature, what I would call a cultural idiot, but the wine cork manufacturer thinks it important to know who Max Bruch is, who Friedrich Kienzel is, and so forth. Even if he didn’t know who Kant was, this would have no bearing whatever on his character. But the wine cork manufacturer has no character, I thought. I’ve always wondered about the wine cork manufacturer’s lack of character, about the kind of insolence that camouflages itself as helplessness and is quite unscrupulous in its upward mobility. Caecilia was conned, I thought as I watched my brother-in-law standing by the wall. What wouldn’t he be capable of? I wondered. What couldn’t he set his hand to, as they say? But then it occurred to me that if he actually did do something, if he did set his hand to something, he would do it so incompetently as to make himself even more ludicrous. If he were not so lacking in character he would long since have endeared himself to the gardeners, but they’ve been avoiding him — a sure sign something’s wrong with him, I thought, since the gardeners have an incredible instinct where people are concerned. They sense who is to be trusted and who isn’t, and they’ve avoided the wine cork manufacturer from the start, as I saw at the wedding. They positively distrusted him, not just as they would normally distrust any stranger, but quite unequivocally. He must have behaved toward them in a way that made him seem both helpless and characterless. It’s always been instructive to see who is trusted by the gardeners; they’ve never been wrong. Even the way they relieved my brother-in-law of the box he was carrying was indicative of their distrust. It suddenly seemed ridiculous to spend so much time at the window watching my brother-in-law, and so I went down to the entrance hall, though not without stopping in front of the portrait of my great-great-great-granduncle Ferdinand. My Descartes has meanwhile lost some of his philosophical stature, I told myself; with a face like that he can’t have written any Essays. Amalia appeared from the kitchen and said that as it was now late afternoon the first visitors would probably be arriving to express their condolences — a dozen had already turned up that morning — and not just people from the village like the headmaster and the doctor. We should be ready to receive them, she said, preferably in or near the entrance hall. The chapel, or even the kitchen, would be a suitable place to receive them, as she did not want them going up to the second floor. It would be best to exchange just a few words with them, not more, and then send them away. I dreaded the thought of how the very people I really loathe would be coming up to see us one after another — middle-class people from the neighboring towns who would unhesitatingly seize upon the opportunity to visit us, as their right, without being invited, and to drive their cars into the grounds without so much as a by-your-leave. I could already see these inquisitive visitors getting out of their cars one after another and importuning us with their sickening condolences, which we would have to receive graciously. At all events I’ll shake their hands more coldly than any I’ve shaken before, I thought, and so avoid adding any cordiality to our relations with these people. Mentally I was already practicing my handshake and rehearsing the bland words I thought I would have to say to them. But these were not the people I was afraid of. I’ll deal with them cursorily, in a way that won’t cause me the slightest irritation, I thought. The people I was afraid of were the two former Gauleiters who I knew had announced their intention of attending the funeral, and the fairly large contingent of SS officers, whom I had once believed to be long dead or at least to have received their due punishment, but who, as I learned some years back, had gone underground and remained in contact with my family for decades, with my parents and many other relatives. They’ll use this funeral, I thought, to appear publicly again for the first time. But I can’t prevent them from attending the funeral, I thought. They’ll come whether I want them to or not. The former Gauleiters won’t be put off. I know that one of them sent thousands of people to Austrian or German prisons and that his signature consigned thousands of others to Buchenwald, Dachau, and Auschwitz. And I know that the other sent just as many people, mainly Jews, to concentration camps in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. To say nothing of the so-called League of Comrades, which inevitably parades at every funeral and seems to me to be a wholly National Socialist organization, for its mentality is thoroughly National Socialist and its members, wherever one sees them, no longer have the least compunction in brazenly wearing their National Socialist insignia on their chests. I was actually afraid of the Gauleiters, not knowing how I should greet these friends of my father’s — first of all his school friends, or lifelong friends as he called them, and then those he remained in close touch with after the war, knowing them to be informers and murderers. Despite this knowledge he supplied them with a hiding place and food and everything they needed to make ends meet, as he would have put it. For years, it seems, he hid them in the Children’s Villa, though at the time we children had no inkling of this. I later recalled that for years we were not allowed in the Children’s Villa. There was a simple explanation for this: in the postwar years our parents used it to hide their National Socialist friends. They wisely made sure that the villa looked completely uninhabited and let the exterior fall into disrepair, while the wanted men inside — informers, murderers, and members of the Blood Order — lived not at all badly, for my family never had to suffer from a shortage of food; even during and after the war they had everything in abundance, as they say, while the rest of the population, as my mother called them, starved and went without. The Children’s Villa was the Gauleiters’ hiding place, but I fancy that my parents’ many SS friends were also allowed to share in our abundance. I got to know gradually about this period, which had always seemed a weird time to us children when I was thirteen or fourteen, as may be imagined. We were expressly forbidden to enter the Children’s Villa, but when I was about fifteen it was finally thrown open to us, for I remember that at that time we used to put on our plays there. Even today, although I have always loved the building, I find it a rather sinister place because of the way it was desecrated. My parents may have hidden and supported other adherents of their National Socialist faith, not only in the Children’s Villa but in various hunting lodges we owned, even, I suspect, in the one above Weieregg, which is almost inaccessible. My parents always kept quiet about these dark doings, and it was impossible to get anything out of them. As they vouchsafed no information, the only evidence of their close association with these people was the fact that they corresponded with them all regularly until their deaths. While my parents dined with the Americans or toasted General Eisenhower at their champagne breakfasts, the Gauleiters sat just a few hundred yards away, no doubt enjoying equal conviviality and an equal abundance of food and drink. Wolfsegg has always been a perverse place, and my parents pushed this perversity to the limit. The huntsmen were probably privy to this perversest of all its secrets, I think, and never dared betray it to the gardeners. I shall now have to receive these people, I thought; there’s nothing else for it. Today they all live scot-free in agreeable circumstances, in all the country’s beauty spots, and draw enormous state pensions. But today’s society gets what it deserves, I thought. It deserves these perverse conditions, being itself totally perverse. Basically, I thought, these people — the Gauleiters, the SS officers, and the members of the Blood Order — are its people. These are the people my countrymen regard as heroes, not just as yesterday’s heroes, as is frequently maintained, but to an even greater extent as today’s heroes. These National Socialists are the people they look up to and secretly acknowledge as their leaders. I’ll have to shake hands with these secret leaders of my countrymen, I thought. I won’t be able to prevent these secret leaders from taking their places in the front ranks when the cortege moves off. I was sickened by this embarrassing prospect, this obscenity that I would have to face. My sisters had gleefully recited to me the names of all who had announced that they would attend the funeral, and the list was headed by the Gauleiters, the SS officers, and the members of the Blood Order. But I must cope with this situation, I told myself severely. Not just for days, but for weeks on end, these Gauleiters, SS officers, and members of the Blood Order used to sit around at Wolfsegg or stroll through the grounds, and for decades my parents supported them. This was why Uncle Georg always found visiting my parents unendurable and why I too had to leave on hearing that such company was expected. National Socialism is the greatest blight on Austria, along with Catholicism, I thought, just as Fascism, combined with Catholicism, was the greatest blight on Italy. But things are different in Italy. The Italians did not let themselves be swallowed up by either Fascism or Catholicism, whereas the Austrians let themselves be swallowed up by both. The bishops (including two archbishops, I thought, for Spadolini is the archbishop) will be followed — with measured tread, as they say — by the Gauleiters, the SS officers, and the members of the Blood Order. And these will be followed by the National Socialist Catholic population, I thought. And the music will be played by our National Socialist Catholic band. The National Socialist salvos will be fired, and the National Socialist bells will toll. And if we’re in luck our National Socialist sun will shine throughout the ceremony, and if we’re out of luck we’ll be drenched by the National Socialist rain. My sisters and Johannes knew nothing about this secret Wolfsegg, even as teenagers. It was mainly my sisters’ stupidity that prevented my parents’ divulging anything. For when we were suddenly allowed back in the Children’s Villa in our middle teens, we naturally wanted to know why we had not been allowed in before, why we had been forbidden to go near it. Our parents, as former party members, said nothing. But naturally they could not keep the secret forever, and one day it came out. One of the Gauleiters paid a visit to Wolfsegg, and no sooner had he entered the house than he began to talk, in my presence, of the time he had spent in the Children’s Villa as the best years of his life. Standing next to him, I heard about how he and his comrades had lived in the Children’s Villa for nearly four years. How they had eaten and how they had drunk! He was eternally grateful to my mother, who was highly embarrassed because I was present. The Gauleiter became more and more effusive in his expressions of gratitude and could not be silenced. He went into raptures above all about the fresh air, the fresh eggs that my mother brought him and his friends every day, and the fresh milk from the Wolfsegg cows. The entrance hall resounded to the Gauleiter’s laughter, with which he frequently interrupted his speech of thanks before resuming his triumphal performance. He lives at Alt Aussee on a state pension that is paid monthly and, like all Austrian state pensions, subject to half-yearly increments of four or five percent. The state awarded him this pension thirty years ago, when his crimes had been hushed up and proceedings against him quashed, as they say, without batting an eyelid — as they also say. I thought of Schermaier, a miner from Kropfing, below Wolfsegg, who not only worked in the mines but also, in partnership with his wife, ran a smallholding with three cows. I used to go and see Schermaier whenever I became desperate at Wolfsegg; even today I am closer to him than to anyone else in the vicinity and always visit him when I am over at Wolfsegg. During the war, a neighbor of his informed on him for listening to the Swiss radio. The informer, who had been his best friend at school, had him taken to court and sent first to the penitentiary at Garsten and then to a German concentration camp in Holland. His neighbor and former best friend had him driven out of his home for two years to the very prisons and extermination camps that tomorrow’s mourners, the Gauleiters, have on their consciences. Schermaier was denounced, committed to penitentiaries and concentration camps, and virtually ruined for the rest of his life, I thought, and nobody gave him a second thought. He was not compensated for the cruelty he suffered. After the war, the informer who had had him sent to the penitentiaries and concentration camps begged him on bended knees not to take revenge. Schermaier took no revenge and does not speak about the matter to anyone, though when I visit him and his wife for a simple meal she sometimes bursts into tears because she has still not gotten over that period of their lives. Schermaier received no proper compensation; the state fobbed him off in the most disgusting fashion with a derisory lump sum for all he had suffered at the hands of the Nazis, yet on the first of every month the mass murderer at Alt Aussee gets an enormous pension from the same state and is assured of a life of luxury, I thought. The state humiliated Schermaier and will never redeem his humiliation, I thought, yet shortly after the war the same state restored the mass murderer of Alt Aussee to full enjoyment of his civil rights and thereby endorsed all his actions and beliefs. I hate this state, I thought. I can’t do anything other than hate it. I won’t have anything to do with this state, or no more than is absolutely necessary, I thought. This state has so often demonstrated its absolute lack of character that it has forfeited all respect, whether it calls itself socialist, progressive, or democratic. This state is unspeakable, I thought, without character and without shame, yet it has never been ashamed of its characterlessness and its shamelessness but seen fit to flaunt them on every possible occasion. What kind of a state is it, I ask myself, that pays a fat pension to a mass murderer and showers him with honors and commendations, yet no longer troubles about Schermaier? What kind of a state is it that allows the mass murderer to live in luxury and has forgotten about Schermaier? I’ll go and see Schermaier as soon as I can, I thought, and left the house. The band was still rehearsing its Haydn. The gardeners were pulling the Wolfsegg hearse across from the Farm to a position behind the Orangery. The wine cork manufacturer was standing in their way. They asked him to move, and he withdrew into the background. My sisters were in the Orangery, and I debated whether I should go in myself. Schermaier is neither a Catholic nor a National Socialist, I thought. There aren’t many like him, but there are some. And there aren’t many women like his wife, but there are some. I decided to go into the Orangery. My sisters were in front of the coffins, busily adjusting the ribbons on the wreaths so that the printed messages could be read. The Gauleiters had already sent theirs. Had it been possible, I would have opened the lid of my mother’s coffin, but of course it was not possible. Yet the idea kept running through my head that I must look inside the coffin in which my mother lay. The word lay struck me as grotesque. My father’s face was now quite sunken and gray, and yellow patches had formed on it that I had not noticed on my first visit to the Orangery. Johannes had become unrecognizable. His face was that of a stranger, quite repulsive. Under the black sheets the gardeners had stacked large blocks of ice to slow the process of decomposition, which was clearly well advanced, as the season was unfavorable to corpses. They’ve brought the ice from the Grieskirchen brewery, I thought. The coffins must have been expensive, probably the most expensive that were to be had, I thought. But at least they were unadorned. Plain wood, nothing else. They’ve folded my father’s and my brother’s hands because it’s customary, I thought, but I was put off by the sight of their folded hands. They’ve dressed my father in Styrian costume, the kind with broad decorative stripes, I thought, and big deer-horn buttons on the lapels, and they’ve dressed my brother in his favorite hunting outfit, the one he bought in Brussels. I went closer to the coffins, my sisters having moved aside to make way for me. They must have been repelled, or at least irritated, by my self-assurance as I now stood in front of the coffins. I noticed that I was quite motionless. I had imagined I would tremble, but no part of my body moved. I contemplated the dead lying in state as though they had no connection with me, as though they were strangers. They no longer had any facial features; they did not even have faces. They’re decomposing rapidly, I thought. They’ll have to be buried soon, otherwise they’ll pollute the atmosphere. The Orangery was already filled with the sickly-sweet smell of decay that I had found unbearable as a small child when my mother took me to see the dead lying in state. Even as a child I could not stand corpses, but my mother continually confronted me with them, taking me with her to funerals and lyings in state. She never took Johannes, only me, and this is something I cannot explain. I was thus quite used to the sight of the dead lying in state, though it was my mother who forced me to look at them; I would naturally not have chosen to. My sisters stood behind me. I could hear their breathing, but I did not know what they were thinking. They must be thinking I’m the cold-blooded, unfeeling wretch they always took me to be, I thought. They always called me cold and unfeeling. Whether they were right or not is not for me to say. But as I stood before the coffins I was neither cold nor unfeeling, but shattered, I might say, were this not such a common expression, yet I did not move; my body remained motionless. I never wanted my parents to die, I told myself as I stood in front of their bodies; never for a moment did I wish them dead. Standing in front of them, I told myself that although I had always cursed and even despised them, although I had no respect for them, only contempt, and although I had every reason to despise them heartily, as they say, I had never wanted them to die. And in Johannes I had lost a childhood friend, but our childhood lay so far back, well over thirty years back, that I had no reason to shed tears for my dead brother. At that moment I might even have welcomed tears, if only because my sisters were standing behind me, possibly expecting me to weep, to blub, as they say, to break down. But I did not weep, I did not blub, I just stood there motionless. I went up to my mother’s coffin and tried to raise the lid — I do not know what suddenly prompted me to do this — but I could not raise it, as it was screwed down. I stepped back, sensing the embarrassment that this action had caused my sisters. I turned around abruptly, taking them by surprise, and looked into their embittered, horrified faces. Unable to stand in front of the coffins any longer, I went out of the Orangery. I asked one of the gardeners why my mother’s coffin was sealed. He told me that it was already sealed when the morticians had delivered it to Wolfsegg; the two others were not sealed, but my mother’s was. Yes, naturally, I said — of course. They put her mutilated, decapitated body straight into the coffin and immediately sealed it, I thought. So that no one would have the idea of looking at the mutilated body again. But I’ve had the idea, I told myself, though of course I won’t have the coffin reopened. For a moment I had thought of having it reopened and wondered how to give the necessary instructions, but then I forbade myself even to think of having the coffin opened and revealing the mutilated body. That would have been an obscenity. Yet I could not rid myself of the thought of having the coffin reopened — by the gardeners, I thought, when my sisters aren’t present. I could not stop thinking about reopening my mother’s coffinand spent a long time walking up and down outside the Orangery, obsessed by the thought, while my sisters remained inside. I had to stop thinking about it and tried to distract my mind by beckoning one of the gardeners over and asking him whether the blocks of ice under the bodies would last till the following morning. (The funeral was scheduled for ten o’clock; funerals usually took place at eleven o’clock, but when a member of our family died the funeral was always scheduled for ten.) The gardener told me that there was enough ice for another four days. He was surprised that I addressed him by name. People think that when we have been away for a few years we no longer remember their names, but I have a good memory for names, and naturally I knew his, and those of the others. I had hoped that by exchanging a few words with the gardener about the ice blocks I would be able to rid my mind of the monstrous idea of having my mother’s coffin opened, but naturally I did not succeed in so short a time, and so I started up a conversation with the gardener as he weeded the gravel in front of the Orangery. I said I was sure he remembered the time when we were at school together. He said he did. I mentioned the names of some of our classmates, and he remembered them at once. I reminded him of some of the funny things that had happened at school. He could not help laughing, but he stopped when he saw my sisters emerge from the Orangery, unaware that I had been standing in front of it, talking to the gardener. Although my sisters were now standing next to me, I went on talking to the gardener about our school days, determined to distract my mind from the idea of having my mother’s coffin opened, yet becoming more and more obsessed by it. Above all, I thought, we have to check what’s really in the coffin. We have to find out whether it really is Mother we’re burying, whether the coffin contains the whole of her remains and not just some of them. While asking the gardener how heavy the ice blocks were, I was in fact preoccupied with the notion that my mother’s coffin might not contain the whole of her body, but I naturally dared not put this into words, even to myself. My sisters stood to one side, taking no part in the conversation. They never talked to the gardeners about personal matters, as they had no interest in them and the lives they led. They never remembered their names or, I believe, the names of any of our employees. It would never have occurred to them to talk to the gardeners about anything unconnected with their work, and for this reason, if for no other, I went on talking to the gardener. Keeping my eye on my sisters and at the same time ignoring them, I asked him when his father had died. (Ages ago, when I was five or six, his father had made me a recorder out of hazelwood.) Two years ago, he said. But I was not really interested in when his father had died. My question was only a device to distract myself from my obscene thoughts about my mother’s coffin and at the same time to distance myself from my sisters, to punish them for some quite unspecified offense. I went on talking to the gardener, unable to stop thinking of opening my mother’s coffin, ignoring my sisters and prolonging my conversation with the gardener. It was astonishing that he had worked at Wolfsegg for so many years under conditions that were far from easy, I said, knowing that this would get home to my sisters. Conditions at Wolfsegg were always extremely difficult, I said, without being more specific. There was no need to be specific, for my tone of voice conveyed what I meant about the conditions at Wolfsegg, and the gardener at once understood what I meant — that for decades, if not for centuries, the owners had always made life difficult. On the other hand, I told myself, it’s fortunate for us — and by us I meant my family as a whole — that we have good workers like him. My sisters listened attentively, though they had their backs to us, pretending that there was no reason to pay any attention to me and the gardener. Caecilia pressed the toe of one shoe into the ground at the side of the path, as though to trace a letter in the soil. This was a habit she had had as a child. She said something to Amalia that I did not catch, but this was only pretense, as they were both absorbed by what I was saying to the gardener. In this way we were all three playing games, all spying and eavesdropping on one another. It struck me that just as I was exploiting the gardener, simply in order to take my mind off my obscene thoughts about my mother’s coffin, so they were exploiting each other in order to spy on me. I stopped talking to the gardener and joined my sisters, thinking that they would be able to stifle my obscene thoughts, that their almost incessant chatter, which was doubtless a reaction to the terrible situation created by the accident, would provide the distraction I sought. I suggested that we go over to the Children’s Villa. I have no idea what prompted this suggestion. We all three walked over to the Children’s Villa. On the way I remembered how Schermaier had never spoken about the time he spent in the prisons, the penitentiaries, and the concentration camp in Holland, and decided that if he did not speak about it I would one day write about it. In Extinction, the book I’m planning, I’ll write about Schermaier, about the injustice he suffered and the crimes committed against him, I thought. His wife still wept when forced to think of those bitter years that had brought them both such unhappiness, but she too never said why she wept. It’s my duty, I thought, to write about them in my Extinction, to cite them as representatives of so many others who never speak about what they suffered during the Nazi period and permit themselves only to weep now and then — all the victims whom the National Socialists have on their conscience, the National Socialist criminals whose crimes are never mentioned today, having been hushed up for so many years. I’ll say quite simply that our National Socialist society was able, with impunity, to destroy him for the rest of his life, even though it could not annihilate him. On the way to the Children’s Villa I promised myself that in my Extinction I would find a way of drawing attention to him, even if I could not restore to him the rights of which the Nazis had deprived him. My Extinction will provide the best opportunity to do this, I thought, if I ever manage to get it down on paper. Thinking about the Schermaiers made me forget the monstrous idea of having my mother’s coffin opened. When we arrived at the Children’s Villa and my sisters were unlocking the door, I began to talk to them about the Schermaiers, whom they knew well, as I reminded them. I told them that I could not get the Schermaiers out of my mind. I had no hesitation, I said, in describing them as the best people I knew, yet it was on these people that the full horror of National Socialism had been visited. His best friend informed against him, I said, as Caecilia unlocked the door. His best friend was base enough to denounce him and have him sent to a concentration camp. I could not get it out of my mind, I said. In Rome I often lay on my bed, unable to stop thinking of how our nation was guilty of thousands, tens of thousands, of such heinous crimes, yet remained silent about them. The fact that it keeps quiet about these thousands and tens of thousands of crimes is the greatest crime of all, I told my sisters. It’s this silence that’s so sinister, I said. It’s the nation’s silence that’s so terrible, even more terrible than the crimes themselves, I said. And to think that I have to receive these murderers! I’ll refuse to shake hands with them, I said. I can’t exclude them from the funeral, but I won’t shake their hands. If I did, I too would be guilty of a crime. It was in the Children’s Villa, I said, the building I loved best as a child, that our parents hid these common criminals and provided them with a life of luxury at a time of the greatest hardship. And they were never ashamed of it, I said. On the contrary, they boasted of their base behavior, I said. All this time my sisters did not say a word. Our parents made themselves guilty, I said, by harboring and sheltering these loathsome people, who should have been tried and sentenced. And executed, of course. What must people like the Schermaiers think, I said, when they see how these murderers are treated, when they see mass murderers going around scot-free, leading a life of luxury, while they themselves are forgotten and live in the most miserable conditions? This state is like my family, devoted to Nazi criminality. And the Catholic Church, I went on, is no better. The Church only ever seeks its own advantage, keeping quiet when it ought to speak out and taking cover, when things get too dangerous, behind Jesus Christ, whom it has exploited for two thousand years. I’m nauseated by these people, I said, who will follow the coffins tomorrow, heads bowed, with nothing to fear, all of them highly esteemed members of our society. In my own way, I said, I’ll distance myself from all these people whom I’ve always hated. I won’t let them near me. I’m not Father, I’m not Mother, I said. The Children’s Villa was almost completely bare. What’s happened to the beautiful pictures, I wondered, that I saw here only a year ago in the entrance hall, one on each side, and on the walls of the downstairs rooms? I was told that my mother had sold these pictures, painted by early ancestors of ours, to an antique dealer from Wels, for a knockdown price. I always despised my mother’s lack of appreciation for exceptional works of art. My father had no time at all for pictures, unless he was told that they were valuable. This used to impress my mother too; nothing else did. Neither had an eye for art. The walls of the downstairs rooms were now cold and unwelcoming, I thought, though only a year ago they had been so attractive. But the Children’s Villa has in any case been degraded by having accommodated two mass murderers for so long, I thought. That has made it intolerable. On the other hand, I had earlier considered restoring the Children’s Villa, and this now seemed a good idea. I was instantly taken with the idea and said to my sisters, No matter what took place here, the Children’s Villa is the first building I’ll have restored, from top to bottom. It’ll be as it was before its degradation. The Children’s Villa is the most beautiful building at Wolfsegg, I said. And summer is the best time for restoration work. The Wolfsegg money should be spread around, I said. It’s madness to let it molder in banks. My sisters did not understand me. In any case the place must be aired, I told them. I said we should open all the windows. It’s frightfully stuffy in here, I said. As it was a fine, warm day, we opened all the windows one after another, first in the ground-floor rooms and then upstairs. This was done in complete silence; even my sisters did not speak to each other. I recalled that only three or four days earlier I had described the Children’s Villa to Gambetti, and now, as we opened the windows, I had proof of how accurate my description had been. The windows really were as big as I had described them, taller than any others at Wolfsegg except those in the main house, taller than any in the Huntsmen’s Lodge or the Gardeners’ House. And on the ceilings were the plaster moldings that I had tried to describe to Gambetti, representing scenes from German classical plays — Lessing’s Nathan, Schiller’s Robbers, Goethe’s Faust. No one knows whose work they are, but I think they were done by itinerant artists, of whom there were many in the last century. These artists would settle in a place for months or even years on end and create works of art like these in return for a good meal and a pair of shoes. There are big cracks running through the moldings — it’s high time they were repaired, I thought. My sisters had no idea of the subjects represented by the moldings. From Nathan, I said, but I could see that this meant nothing to them. They knew about Faust, of course, but they did not know the scene represented on the ceiling. They had naturally heard about The Robbers at school, as I had, but they had forgotten the play itself; they remembered only the title and the fact that it was something classical. I tried to tell them something about The Robbers but immediately gave up trying to explain anything, realizing that it was pointless. I could now see that I had given Gambetti a fairly exact description of these moldings. He had listened with great attention. The influence of the Roman school on this anonymous art is unmistakable, I had told him. In all such moldings north of the Alps, I said, we at once see the Italian influence. The Italians have always been the best stucco artists. I now remembered everything I had told him about the stucco artists who had decorated the Children’s Villa. I now have proof, I told myself, that when once I’ve seen a picture or a molding I can remember it with absolute precision for years, indeed for decades, and if required I can describe it so accurately that my description corresponds exactly with what I once saw. I need to see and study a picture or a molding only once in order to retain a precise image of it for years, even for decades, as I now see. When I told my sisters that I had just made an interesting discovery — that I was able to remember pictures I had once seen and give an account ofthem years later — they did not understand. In the first place they could not follow my thoughts, and in the second place they did not know Gambetti. They had heard me speak of him in passing now and then, but largely because of their hostility to me they had no time for anything Roman, which I naturally loved, having been fascinated by it before I had ever been to Italy and visited Rome. They did not understand me at all. They’re determined not to understand me, I thought — it’s become a principle with them, a lifetime habit, not to understand me. They’ve never wanted to understand me, and they still don’t want to. The Children’s Villa meant almost everything to me, but to them it meant practically nothing. They were thus fairly indifferent to what I had just said about the Children’s Villa and the Gauleiters, feeling that it was directed only against the family, and our parents in particular. And they found it especially odious that I should accuse our parents just now, when they had been dead scarcely two days. They did not appreciate how painful it was to me to see the Children’s Villa, my favorite building at Wolfsegg, my favorite work of architecture, besmirched once more by the National Socialist Gauleiters. Such thought processes are completely alien to them and impossible to follow. When we had opened all the windows and a welcome draft of fresh air flowed in, I told my sisters that I wanted to leave the windows open so that the fresh air could flow freely into the Children’s Villa for several days. Exhausted by the absurd task I had set them, as it must have seemed to them, they sat side by side on a seat covered with green velvet in the left-hand room of the attic. Once again I saw the mocking faces so familiar from the photo I kept in my desk in Rome. For a moment they showed me these mocking faces in the afternoon light, then they turned and looked out the window, across the village and toward the mountains. Slavishly, they both turned their heads simultaneously in the direction of the mountains. Like two puppets, I thought, they turned to face the distant mountains. I could now order them to do anything and they would obey. I had them entirely in my hands. Yet I felt this to be not a triumph but an intolerable burden. I was saddled with them. You’re in for a surprise with these two, I thought. And what if there’s a storm? Amalia asked. What do you mean, a storm? I said. What if a storm comes up and smashes all the windows? There’ll be no storm, I said, not for days. Seeing my sisters sitting exhausted on the seat, I had a strong urge to lecture them, to say something Roman, something offensive, as it were, that would enable me to endure their presence, as I felt I could endure it no longer. But I abandoned the idea, it won’t do any good, I told myself — it’ll only make matters worse. My attention was fixed mainly on Caecilia, who seemed to have forgotten about her wine cork manufacturer. If only my brother-in-law were not so helpless, I said. Caecilia did not answer, and Amalia pretended not to hear. Beastliness has its limits, I said, meaning that one should not pursue one’s hatred of someone — meaning our mother — to the point of marrying an idiot just to punish the person one hates. I naturally did not say this but kept it to myself. What I did say was: You must give your husband something to occupy him. It’s not fair to leave him entirely alone, in every sense of the word. Since I’ve been here he’s done more or less nothing but hang around the park and get on people’s nerves. Caecilia stood up and went out of the room, down the stairs, through the entrance hall, and into the open. Amalia had also stood up, and we both watched Caecilia walk away from the villa. She’s running away from us, I thought, the silly goose, having messed up her life. The words silly goose were spoken only to myself, but so loudly that Amalia must have heard. I don’t understand why our parents christened you Amalia and Caecilia, I said. Catholic National Socialist romantics, I thought. I then left the Children’s Villa with Amalia and went over to the Orangery, where my brother-in-law was standing. The personification of idleness, I thought as I saw him. The wine cork manufacturer was displeased at being caught out as a personification of idleness, especially by me. Now you have to talk to him, I thought, and so I went straight up to him. No Caecilia in sight, and no sign of Amalia either. There he is, I thought, abandoned by everybody and not knowing where he belongs — certainly not here at Wolfsegg. I invited him to accompany me to the house. I feel like something to eat, I said. We’ll be able to find something in the kitchen. I was astonished by the chummy way I said this. It was not intentional, but this was how it came out. The wine cork manufacturer walked beside me. I’ve rescued him from his impossible situation for a while, on my own initiative, I thought. For a moment I even felt sorry for him, but not for long, for after only a few yards he struck me once more as an obtrusive person. How these people behave! I thought. They don’t behave at all — they just do what comes naturally. There was no one in the kitchen. I looked for something to eat and found some delicious things in the well-stocked refrigerator. We may despise certain people, I told myself, sitting opposite the wine cork manufacturer, yet at the same time we may envy them their unconcern, their nonchalance, their lack of self-restraint — for instance in the way they eat. At first they’re hesitant and take only a little, then suddenly, without the least compunction, they wolf down more or less everything we put in front of them. Again I was repelled by the fat, fleshy fingers and the signet ring forced onto the little finger of the right hand. He probably won’t be able to get it off, I thought, if he ever wants to. He had crossed his legs under the table and pushed his belly against it. His cuff links are even bigger than his signet ring, I thought — a matching set. He was waiting for me to say something, as if anxious for me to start a conversation, but I felt no inclination to start a conversation with the wine cork manufacturer. I remembered having told Zacchi that I would be back in Rome in three or four days. But that won’t be possible, I thought. I’ll have to stay on at Wolfsegg for a week, maybe longer. I can now see that a week won’t be long enough, because the tiresome part will come after the funeral, I told myself. I’ll have to go to the attorneys’ offices and various other offices, the district commissioner’s, and so on. At present I could see only the tip of the iceberg. It’s odd, I said to my brother-in-law, to see my father and brother lying in state, but not my mother. On the other hand, I said, their faces no longer bear any relation to their real faces. They’re the faces of strangers who don’t have anything to do with me. They must be buried as quickly as possible. He had hardly gotten to know his parents-and brother-in-law, I said, and now they were dead. As I said this, I caught sight of the words fall victim in the newspaper lying on top of the pile in front of me, to which a few more copies had been added. The phrase fallvictim was ludicrous, like everything the papers wrote. I asked my brother-in-law whether he had read the newspaper reports of the accident. I had long since finished eating, but he was still wolfing down big slices of bread and sausage. With a shake of the head he declined even to open the papers. He could not possibly do so in front of me — it would be quite impermissible. I found this unpardonably tasteless. He was looking at the papers lying in front of me, yet at the same time he shook his head, refusing my offer of a chance to inform himself further about the accident and the precise course of events. There have been so many fatal accidents at that particular junction, I said, affecting the style of the newspapers. It can be seen quite clearly and doesn’t look particularly dangerous, yet again and again accidents take place there, most of them fatal, I said. My brother-in-law was meanwhile playing the moralist. As he wolfed down the bread and sausage, he first drew up his legs, then pulled back his arms, which were spread across the table, making sure that his cuff links did not come in contact with the plate of open sandwiches I had prepared for him. Munching his bread and sausage, he seemed to be asking how I could possibly imagine that he would have the effrontery to read these tasteless newspapers with their horror stories in my presence, or for that matter at all, at a time of family grief. He had glanced contemptuously at the front pages, which showed pictures of the victims, yet I could see that his contempt was accompanied by a certain disappointment at being prevented, by my presence, from staring at them unrestrainedly. He was pretending to be incapable of such unworthy conduct, whereas I had been quite capable of it, I thought. As he masticated his bread and sausage he kept eyeing the newspapers, especially when he thought I was not looking. They clearly interested him, and he would certainly have read them with the utmost avidity had he been alone, uninhibited by the presence of someone whom he was bound to think incapable of even contemplating such shameless conduct, let alone engaging in it. Yet all the time I knew that I had engaged in it two hours earlier. Not right now, he said. Coming from my brother-in-law, these words were as hypocritical as if they had come from me, for at that moment I could have said the same. The round went to me because he said it and I did not. I was the decent person who could control himself, whereas he had to put on an act by uttering the profoundly hypocritical words not right now. As soon as he had uttered them he too was bound to see how hypocritical they were. After all, I thought, the man wasn’t so stupid that he couldn’t see at once what the words really meant and what effect they had on me. He must have known that I saw through them. They slipped out more or less inadvertently and lost any credibility they might have had in their passage from brain to air. Now that my brother-in-law had been unmasked as a hypocrite in a profoundly sad situation, a situation that was literally one ofdeadly earnest, I could go a step further and show my magnanimity by pushing the papers toward him before he had finished all the open sandwiches. I suggested that he read them in order to get an idea of how the press saw the accident. He should take a look at them, I said, leaning back in my chair, as though not wanting to disturb him in his reading. I recalled something that Zacchi had once said about me — that I was infernally skillful at concealing my own beastliness. I was still amused by Zacchi’s remark. He made it at the Ancora Verde in Trastevere, where we had gone with Maria to talk about a planned excursion to Castel Gandolfo and about Sartre’s The Words, which we had all three read simultaneously without knowing it. We discussed The Words until late in the night, at much greater length than any book we had discussed before. As he chewed the last of the bread and sausage, the wine cork manufacturer began leafing through the newspapers, looking now at an illustrated page, now at an unillustrated one, and stretching out his legs as people do when reading a newspaper. He’s really made himself at home with the accident and its exploiters, I thought. Nothing in his demeanor betrayed the least embarrassment. He was farsighted and could not see well close up. But he avoids wearing glasses, I thought. He held the paper up to the light from the window, far enough away from his eyes to be able to take everything in. He should have had glasses long ago, I thought, the kind of reading glasses I’ve had for years, but people like him are too vain to resort to glasses. I’ll tell Caecilia that her husband should get himself some glasses without delay, and I’ll also tell her that he read all about the accident in the newspapers lying on the kitchen table in my presence. I’ll tell her that he read them attentively, with extreme nonchalance and without a trace of embarrassment, savoring every morsel of news as he sat opposite me eating his bread and sausage — three or four slices; I was not sure exactly how many. I’ll say to Caecilia, Your husband even had difficulty with the big pictures taken during the night of horror, but fortunately he was sitting by the kitchen window, where the light fell at just the right angle. Observing my brother-in-law, I began to wonder how I could exploit this scene to his detriment when I reported it to his wife. Warming to my plan, I imagined a thoroughly theatrical scene in which I would go up to my sister and tell her how avidly her husband had read the newspapers. I would tell her that contrary to all her protestations, but in accordance with my suspicions, the wine cork manufacturer was actually a pretty unsavory character. I heard myself telling her, Your husband sat opposite me, reading the newspapers without any compunction, taking no notice of me, although I wanted to discuss something important with him. But he didn’t listen to me. I’m actually capable of such an outrageous perversion of the truth, I thought as I observed my brother-in-law. I knew I was not above such low conduct, having engaged in it hundreds of times before, having made a habit of it and evolved a routine, a regular routine, I thought. My brother-in-law was avidly reading the papers with my express permission, after a decent show of hesitation, though no more than a show. He was actually reading them, whereas I had of course just flicked through them, as they say, when I was alone in the kitchen two hours earlier. He looked at the pictures quite calmly and without embarrassment, whereas I had done so furtively, apprehensive lest I should be caught doing something improper, indeed shameful, and fully aware that I was committing a heinous offense. My brother-in-law, however, could afford to enjoy the newspapers under my indulgent gaze and with my express permission. I could see how much he enjoyed opening one paper after another and reading the reports. Anyone else would have put them down after a while and turned his attention to me, I thought, but my brother-in-law was not like that. He completely ignored me. He regarded the permission I had given him as an unlimited dispensation, preferring to immerse himself in the newspapers and digest his bread and sausage, rather than engage in conversation with me, which was bound to be disagreeable, as he not only felt but knew. He was using the newspapers as a means of avoiding me. The fact is that he constantly avoids me, I thought. He doesn’t seek contact with me, as I believed for a moment when I saw him standing in front of the Orangery, looking futile and stupid, not knowing what to do with himself. I had been quite mistaken, and I was certainly wrong to think that I had a duty to speak to him, that I must take him to the kitchen and place myself at his disposal. Yet I really took him with me because I wanted to needle him, not out of any sense of duty, I thought. I took him to the kitchen only to find out more about him. Getting him something to eat was merely a pretext I used in order to worm this or that bit of information out of him that I could then use against Caecilia and him. The imbecile is at least a producer of imbecilities and a revealer of all kinds of secrets, I had thought. This was my reason for taking him to the kitchen. But now I no longer wished to worm anything out of him. I was content simply to observe him, so that later, at a suitable moment, I could report my observations to Caecilia, or rather, to put it bluntly, falsify my observations for my own ends, to the detriment of them both. I would say to Caecilia, He sat there and kept me waiting the whole time. He was particularly interested in the shots of Mother’s severed head. The pictures of Father thrown back in the car seat next to Johannes, whose head was totally shattered, at least internally, were of great interest to my brother-in-law, your husband, I’ll tell her. How dare such a man immerse himself in this journalistic filth in my presence, I’ll say, especially at such a sad time for us all? I won’t say tragic, I’ll say sad: tragic is theatrical hyperbole—sadhas a more human ring. My sister is bound to be horrified to learn that my brother-in-law is such a low character. But is that what I want? I asked myself. It’ll make him a more important figure than he is. On the other hand, I can’t ease up on him if I mean to expel him, to drive him out of Wolfsegg, though clearly I won’t need to make the slightest effort to achieve this. He’ll see to it himself, and my sisters will help in their underhanded way. My brother-in-law’s days are numbered, I thought. There he sat, not devouring the newspapers, as they usually say, but devoured by them. And there I was sitting opposite him and giving him my blessing, for he could do what I had been unable to do: he could read the newspapers without feeling embarrassed and apprehensive, under the aegis of his suddenly all-powerful brother-in-law. After all, I’m his brother-in-law now, just as he’s mine, I told myself, but I’m the one to be feared, the one who’ll determine the future and decide what’s going to happen to Wolfsegg. That’s the difference between us. The powerful brother-in-law is sitting opposite the powerless one who has no say in anything, I thought. The wine cork manufacturer from Baden was able to enjoy the newspapers to the full, while I had to deny myself this enjoyment. Such people always have it easy, I thought — we never do. They never have to exert themselves — we always do. Given our present situation, I would naturally have refused to peruse the newspapers if someone had suggested it. I would have had to forgo them and leave them untouched. But my brother-in-law, after a moment’s hesitation, acts upon my suggestion and falls upon these newspaper reports. Dreadful, isn’t it? was the only thing I said to him as he sat immersed in the newspapers. Twice I uttered the word dreadful, aword I often use in relation to such press reports of accidents. Dreadful is the right word in such a context, and I use it often, too often, I told myself, far too often, even in contexts where it’s inappropriate. But in the present context it was entirely appropriate. I used it now, but my brother-in-law did not look up. He did not let himself be distracted by it, he did not let it interfere with his appetite for sensation. My father must have been driving too fast, I said. My brother-in-law pretended not to hear. Nobody knows why my father was driving and not Johannes, I said, because Johannes usually took the wheel. For a long time my father had been shortsighted, I said. People over sixty should have their driver’s license revoked, I said. It’s people over sixty who cause all the accidents. They’re the ones who cause all the disasters on our roads, because their reactions are too slow. I was embarrassed at having said this, as it sounded like a typical sentence from one of the newspapers that lay on the table. Newspaper editors purvey nothing but dirt, I thought — but the dirt they throw at us is our own dirt. The world that these purveyors of dirt present in the newspapers is essentially the real world, I said. The printed world is the real world. The world of dirt printed by the newspapers is our own world. Whatever is printed is real, and the real is only what we suppose to be real. I could not expect my brother-in-law to understand me. He was probably not listening, for he did not react to what I said but went on looking at a picture showing my mother’s head, separated from the torso by at least ten inches, on a laboratory slab. Using ambulances to take away the dead is absurd, I said. My brother-in-law did not look up. I remembered describing him to Gambetti before the wedding, when I had seen him only once, as a fat man of less than forty who was getting progressively fatter, so that his clothes were getting progressively tighter, and whose fatness, due to overeating, caused breathing difficulties when he spoke, so that he had to speak in short sentences. His breathing is stertorous, I had said, and when you’re walking with him he keeps stopping and stretching out his hand to point to some object, or if there’s no object for him to point to, he’ll point vaguely in some direction at the interesting landscape, hoping in this way to divert attention from his shortness of breath. Everything about him is a function of his obesity, I had told Gambetti. Feeling embarrassed at denigrating my future brother-in-law to such an extent, I had said to Gambetti, I’m appalled by my meanness, but then I apologized for using such a distasteful word as appalled, for as his teacher I should never have used such a banal expression. I clearly remember telling Gambetti that although we were constantly annoyed by others when they talked in clichés, we succumbed to the same lamentable habit ourselves. Appalled was a quite inept expression, I told Gambetti. My brother-in-law, I went on, was the type of person who was known in Southwest Germany as a Baden gourmet, an average petit bourgeois who had attained a degree of affluence and liked to flaunt it, to whom it was important to be fat and overweight, to cut an imposing figure. To be thin was seen in that part of the world as a sign of sickness, something menacing that was to be shunned because it was associated with the devil. To these people any form of asceticism was repugnant, whereas the fat man represented the ideal. Fatness was reassuring, and in Southwest Germany, especially Baden, they attached the greatest importance to reassurance, and so, for that matter, did all Germans. Fat men were trusted and worthy of emulation, but thin men were distrusted. Gambetti only laughed at my theory, and I joined in his laughter. Such people are terribly idle, I now thought, sitting opposite my brother-in-law, but their idleness isn’t what I would call creative idleness — it’s the stolid idleness of the pig, I thought, which today is possibly more human than the human being, who has become more and more piglike in the last hundred years. My brother-in-law could not be roused from his idleness. I took advantage of the situation to give free rein to my own thoughts. I won’t be so unmolested for a long time, I thought. It was about half past four, and the people who were coming to express their condolences could not be kept waiting. This time spent in the kitchen with my brother-in-law would probably be my last chance to be more or less alone, I thought, even though I had my brother-in-law sitting opposite me. Dreadful, isn’t it? I said, but he did not react. These people always pretend to be the life and soul of the party, to love wine and conviviality, I had told Gambetti, but they’re actually anything but convivial. They have to have conviviality at any price, and if you refuse to join in they’re ruthless; everything inside them turns to hatred. They use their conviviality to subjugate those around them and make life hell for them if they refuse to come up with the conviviality they crave. At least this is what I always feel, I told Gambetti, when people insist on forcing their conviviality on me. As I observed my brother-in-law I had visions of Rome, until in the end I fancied I was in my study in Rome, even though I was sitting opposite my ponderous brother-in-law in our kitchen at Wolfsegg. My father’s faulty vision ultimately proved fatal, I said. They’ll be delivering the new harvester, I said, but who knows whether we’ll need it? I said this in the tone of the owner of Wolfsegg, as a farmer, so to speak. I repeated these words several times in my mind and was amazed by their farmerly tone. It was like hearing my brother speak, I thought. Uttering these words, I had turned myself into a farmer, which I had no desire to be. They’ll probably all demand that I become a farmer; they probably expect I’m one already, I thought. I was aware of this after uttering these words. That’s naturally what’s in their minds, I thought, but all my life the last thing I’ve ever wanted to be is a farmer. Of course they expect me to give up everything else, to sacrifice it all in order to provide them with the farmer they need, the farmer they must have. They undoubtedly expect me to give up Rome and are already going around full of glee at the prospect. They expect me to give up everything connected with Rome, even to be capable of doing so, I thought, but that’s absurd. Yet the idea took root in my mind that they actually believed it, because they had to believe it. As the heir apparent I was expected to surrender virtually my whole being in order to run Wolfsegg for them. It was out of the question. Gambetti, Zacchi, Maria, even Spadolini, and all the others, I thought — there’s no way I’m going to give up that atmosphere for an inherited nightmare. But all the time there’s a gleeful look in their faces, in my sisters’ faces, I thought, because I’ve now been hit by something they never dreamed of for a moment, by the ultimate absurdity: I am to become a farmer, to run Wolfsegg, to have the whole of Wolfsegg hung around my neck, and they, my sisters, are to be the beneficiaries of this nightmare scenario. My brother-in-law, still immersed in the newspapers, had no idea of what was passing through my mind as he indulged his appetite for sensation. He’d also be a beneficiary of the violence they’re planning to do me, I thought, of the self-surrender they expect — the wine cork manufacturer from Freiburg im Breisgau with his forty-five workers and office staff who probably do nothing but piss on him, as they say. But my sisters don’t really know me, I told myself. They actually believe that I’ll enter into my inheritance in the manner laid down. We’ve always known about the will; it doesn’t even need to be opened in order to be understood. My dear Gambetti, I had said on the telephone, you don’t know what I have coming to me, because you don’t know what Wolfsegg’s like. I could hear these words of mine quite clearly. While my brother-in-law, as I could see, was still enthralled by the newspapers, fascinated by the press reports of the accident, I could hear myself saying to Gambetti, Wolfsegg won’tkillme — I’ll see to that. And it occurred to me that perhaps Gambetti did not understand me. He had thought I was telephoning to decline the invitation to dinner with his parents, when all I wanted was to tell him briefly that my parents and my brother Johannes had died, fallen victim to a road accident, I said, which was a quite unsuitable formulation for a language teacher to use. However, I had never described myself as a language teacher; I simply called myself his teacher, just as I called him my pupil. I’m not a specialist teacher, I now reflected. I merely convey knowledge that is relevant to German literature. I naturally try to do my job well and convey knowledge that is worth more than the fee he pays me, which I only accept pro forma, as it were. I claim my fee as a matter of principle, and it is paid to me as a matter of principle, if for no other reason than to maintain the necessary distance in our teacher-pupil relationship. I could forgo my fee, but that would be extremely foolish, the first step toward destroying this relationship, I thought, observing my brother-in-law even more closely. I could do this quite unimpeded, for he took no notice of me whatever and sat there as though I had long since gotten up and left the kitchen. If I had gotten up and left the kitchen, I thought, he wouldn’t even have noticed. Our terrible misfortune has long since lost its sensational aspect, I told myself, and the living proof of this is sitting opposite me. My brother-in-law comes from a family whose peasant ancestors moved to a small town, prompted by an ambition to better themselves, whatever that means. They staked everything on shaking off first their peasant origins for small-town respectability, then their small-town respectability for something higher, the nature of which I cannot define. My brother-in-law is the end product of this strenuous process, as it were, which is naturally doomed to failure. For such people stake virtually everything on getting away from their real selves, but they never succeed, because they lack the intellectual energy, because they have not discovered the intellect — the intellect around them or the intellect within them — and have therefore not taken even the first step, which is the precondition for taking the second. They suddenly find themselves stranded, like my brother-in-law, no longer knowing what to make of the world around them, or of themselves, and end up getting on everyone’s nerves. Wolfsegg has simply acquired a new comic figure, I told myself as I observed my brother-in-law, but this hasn’t made the comedy any more bearable or any more interesting. This new comic figure is not amusing, only tiresome — not a wag, but a drag. For a moment I wished I had brought Gambetti with me, but Gambetti would certainly not have wished to act as my intellectual shield against all the distasteful conditions at Wolfsegg. He might even have been a liability, I thought. Even as a protective shield he would only have given me trouble, and I’ve enough of that already. At Wolfsegg our relations would have been quite different from those we enjoy in Rome. I would not have been able to devote the same attention to him as I do in Rome. Everything that makes his company such a pleasure would have been impossible. Wolfsegg air is not Roman air, the Wolfsegg atmosphere is certainly not the Roman atmosphere: Wolfsegg, in short, is not Rome. It would have been a grave error to bring Gambetti to Wolfsegg. The proper garment for the funeral, in view of the climate, would undoubtedly be my loden, I thought, but I won’t wear it. I’ll wear one of the Roman coats I have hanging in the closet, if only to distinguish myself from the others. Princes of the Church are always afraid of catching a chill and wear lodens over their vestments when officiating out of doors. And everybody else is bound to be wearing a loden. If I wear one of my Roman coats I’ll be able to distinguish myself from them, I thought, and thereby document the fact that I’m no longer a Wolfsegger but a Roman. I’ll present myself as a Roman, which is what they’ve nicknamed me for years. I’ll make my entrance like a Roman. The coat I had in mind was one that I had bought in Padua the previous year. Tomorrow I must come across as a metropolitan, I thought. I’ll wear Roman shoes and a Roman scarf. In this way I’ll distinguish myself outwardly from the loden-clad masses, whom I’ve always detested. The loden-clad masses will do everything they can to overpower me, I thought, but I’ll know how to defend myself. Tomorrow’s Roman won’t let himself be worsted by the loden-clad masses. I was still sitting in the kitchen with my brother-in-law when I heard the first mourners arrive, not just local people who had come to offer their condolences, as I thought at first, but guests who would be staying the night at Wolfsegg. I stood up, and so did my brother-in-law, who until now had been buried in the newspapers. There was a knock on the door. Only now did it occur to me to wonder where the kitchen maids and the cook were and what had become of my sisters. The first guests had made their way to the end of the entrance hall without being received by anyone and now knocked on the kitchen door, causing me instant embarrassment. I later took my sisters to task, asking them how it was possible that the first guests had not been received at the door and had been able to get to the end of the entrance hall without being greeted. My sisters had undertaken to receive all the guests, not only those who merely came to offer condolences but those who would be staying overnight, and had placed a guest list on one of the hall tables, stating precisely where each of the guests was to spend the night, or in some cases more than one night. Some were to be put up in the village, but close relatives and close friends like Spadolini were to stay in the main house, the Huntsmen’s Lodge, or the Gardeners’ House, where rooms were said to have been prepared for them. Spadolini was to be put up in the main house, I discovered, on looking through the list.

The first arrivals were relatives of my mother’s whom I hardly knew. I had to introduce myself, as they did not remember me; I had seen them once before, in Munich, where they lived, though I had forgotten the occasion. They were dressed all in black and gazed around the entrance hall rather arrogantly, it seemed to me. They at once asked where the chapel was and whether the dead were lying in state in the chapel. No, I said, in the Orangery. They wanted to go there right away to see the dead. These people weren’t at Caecilia’s wedding, I thought; if they had been I’d have noticed them. I had no intention of escorting them to the Orangery, and my brother-in-law had disappeared into the kitchen as soon as he saw them. I looked around for my sisters, who had unaccountably deserted me, and suggested to the guests that they make their own way to the Orangery. I would have taken them across, I said, but I was urgently needed upstairs. This was an excuse, but these guests had made such a bad impression on me from the moment I set eyes on them that I did not want to devote any more time to them. One after another they had held out their hands to me and I had had to shake them. I tried to hide my distaste for these people, but I may not have succeeded. I do not always succeed, especially when the people concerned are so patently distasteful. I was repelled by their ostentation, by their expensive clothes, which they had clearly bought specially for the funeral and now flaunted, as at a dress rehearsal, with such disgusting arrogance and assurance. I told them how to find the Orangery. There were five of them in all, a couple with three children in their late teens, already utterly spoiled, I thought, superficial, stupid, and insolent. They lacked any reserve and talked in loud voices, as if they owned the place. I do not know whether they had visited us before, but they probably had, as my mother had a penchant for people of this kind, I thought, her own kind. The Orangery is over there, I said, leaving them to find their way. My brother-in-law, having withdrawn to the kitchen, was joking with the kitchen maids, who were busy preparing a buffet that my sisters had ordered that morning. Big trays with every possible kind of open sandwich and big dishes with every possible kind of salad were carried in from all directions. Bowls full of sauces and creams and trays piled high with sandwiches were even brought from the chapel, which is always cool and hence particularly suitable for storing food. For the guests had to be fed. They naturally did not expect a cooked dinner, but at least they were entitled to a cold buffet, and my sisters are experts at cold buffets, even though they cannot cook. Their cold buffets have always found favor. I do not know who is the greater expert, Caecilia or Amalia; both are famous for their cold buffets. I have always been rather indifferent to cold buffets, and to food in general, but one thing I know is that Austrian food is not the world’s best and of course cannot be compared with Roman food. The smell of the cold buffet now filled the entrance hall. While my relatives from Munich made their way to the Orangery, the next arrivals were coming across from the Farm, and the stream of guests continued to flow uninterrupted from about five o’clock until late in the evening. All kinds of people arrived from every part of the country and from abroad, far more than had attended Caecilia’s wedding, and this was only the eve of the funeral. There were well over a hundred, probably a hundred twenty or a hundred thirty. I gave up counting them, and I also stopped attending to individual guests, leaving this task, which I found extremely unpleasant, indeed repugnant, to my sisters, who had taken up their position by the gate in order to receive the guests and had copies of the accommodations list. Only a few were put up in the main house, most being accommodated in the Huntsmen’s Lodge, a few in the Gardeners’ House, and a large number at various inns in the village. Most of them arrived wearing black, which made for a fine austere picture. Spadolini, of all people, did not turn up in black; he was wearing a green-and-gray all-weather coat, which I recognized as one that he had bought in Rome with my mother — in the Via Condotti, of course. But I will return to Spadolini presently. The wine cork manufacturer quickly melted into the background; Caecilia was constantly looking for him and calling out his name, rather too loudly, I felt, given the occasion, and the guests were amused to hear her repeatedly calling his name. As the weather was fine, most of the guests stood outside in the park, enjoying the opportunity to get to know one another, for many of them, as I discovered, had not met before. Others, especially the old and the elderly, stayed in the hall, where they appreciated the proximity of the kitchen and the chapel. Many of the guests, expecting the bodies to be lying in state in the chapel, went straight through the hall to the chapel and were surprised to find no bodies there. It had been so long since the last funeral, my paternal grandfather’s, that few were familiar with the Wolfsegg custom of using the Orangery for lyings in state. Most of them therefore went straight through the hall to the chapel, and only then to the Orangery, where there were now so many wreaths and bouquets in front of the entrance that the gardeners had difficulty finding room for them all. From my window on the second floor, the company conversing quietly in the park presented a beautiful and elegant picture. I had retired to my room to avoid constant exposure to the guests. Finding it unendurable to have to say the same thing over and over again and hear the same replies, I had seized the first opportunity to withdraw to my room, from which I could survey more or less the whole scene. My sisters had meanwhile posted my brother-in-law at the gateway, instructing him to tell the new arrivals where they were to be put up for the night. I have always been more attracted to funerals than to weddings, and I was now enjoying everything much more than I had at the wedding a week earlier, even though, as I looked down at the park, I saw largely the same people. Except that now they were quite different, restrained by the logic of the occasion, as it were. They stood around in groups and chatted, as if at a midsummer night’s celebration, I thought, their black attire disguising their otherwise unbearable tastelessness. It’s a pity, I thought, that the occasion for such a beautiful and elegant picture should be a sad one. Every so often we should give a party like this, I thought, just for the sake of the beautiful and elegant picture it presents, which has such aesthetic appeal. But heaven forbid that we should understand what they’re all saying, I thought. Standing at the window, I imagined all the time that they were asking about me, about the son, that is to say the brother, the heir, the new master, or whatever, who was not to be seen among them and had not put in an appearance, although of course he was known to be present. I had not switched on the light in my room, wishing to remain completely unnoticed and avoid discovery as I gazed down at the company below. Spadolini had not yet arrived. I expected him at any moment, but he arrived much later, causing quite a stir, as may be imagined. The time began to drag, and so I went from my own room to my father’s and sat down at the card table he had always used as a dressing table. His dressing gown still hung on the door. I got up and slipped it on, as I suddenly felt cold. I tied the belt and stood in front of the wall mirror. The tiredness that I had at first ignored when sitting in the kitchen with my brother-in-law had now worn off. Though no longer tired, I did not feel inclined to show myself in public, so I sat in my father’s chair and stretched out my legs. As I did so I noticed that the room had been cleaned since I last saw it. In no time everything had become neat and tidy, and on the table in front of the window stood a vase of flowers, though it was too dark to see what kind of flowers they were. It immediately occurred to me that this was the room that had been prepared for Spadolini. I recalled what I had said to Gambetti on the telephone: that it was not only likely but quite certain that Spadolini would come to the funeral and spend the night in my father’s room. I wasn’t mistaken, I thought. By the bedside were the English slippers that my mother had bought my father in Vienna. He had never worn them because he thought them too decadent. These very soft slippers of black kidskin, which my mother had thought so elegant and which had never been worn, were now waiting for Spadolini. So is the dressing gown I’m wearing, I thought. I got up, took off the dressing gown, and hung it on the door. The hook on the door, I thought, was put there by my father, against my mother’s wishes. She had objected to his disfiguring the door, as she put it, but could not prevent it. My father’s bathroom had been cleaned; there were fresh towels on the rails, and the faucets gleamed. The maids have done a good job, I thought. They’ve done a good job here, I thought, but they’ve done nothing in my room. My room was still just as I had left it a week earlier. I had left in a foul mood, furious with my parents because on my last day at Wolfsegg they had heaped reproaches on me concerning the life I led in Rome. I could still remember their words but did not wish to repeat them to myself. I now discovered the silver toilet set that my mother had brought my father from Paris. She always brought him presents, but this toilet set he had found too womanish. These were the disparaging words he used about the Parisian silver toilet set—It’s too womanish for me. He never used it. It had now been taken out of the drawer and placed on the table for Spadolini. Mother had had my father’s initials engraved on it, I recall, but he dismissed this as a silly affectation. My mother had not succeeded in driving out his basic good taste, I thought. Sitting in the chair, I thought of how I had always admired Spadolini and the extraordinary life he led, which began in a North Italian town near Lake Como. The son of a lawyer, he was destined for the Church from an early age. He was one of five children, all of whom went to college and made something of themselves, as they say, but he was undoubtedly the most gifted. The young priest soon went to Florence and then, at the age of twenty-five, to Rome, where he carved out a career for himself. Admired for his good looks and his conversation, he at once raised the tone of any gathering he attended. At thirty he was adviser to the papal nuncio in Vienna, and at thirty-eight he was entrusted with an important financial office in the Vatican. At forty he became a papal nuncio, first in the Far East and then in South America. He speaks Spanish and Portuguese without an accent, as well as English and French. One can talk to him about any subject, and he never has the least difficulty in responding. It was at a reception at the Belgian Embassy in Vienna that he first met my mother. Spadolini always described her to me as a child of nature, and perhaps that is how he always saw her. Now the child of nature is dead, I thought, the much loved child of nature is lying in state in the Orangery, leaving him all alone. But Spadolini has never been alone, I thought; he has always been among people, all over the world, and this is immediately obvious from his bearing. As soon as he appears on the scene, no matter where or in what company, he dominates it. Everywhere people jostle to be near him. The best entertainment is always to be had at the table where he is placed. Mother used to invite him to Wolfsegg at least twice a year, and not only to Wolfsegg but to various Mediterranean resorts, for periods of several days or several weeks, and as far as I know, Spadolini never declined a single invitation. The prince of the Church would fly first class to wherever Mother was waiting for him, naturally at the best hotels in the most delectable settings. Sometimes my father knew, sometimes he did not, and eventually he ceased to care when and where my mother met Spadolini. At times all three traveled together, to Badgastein or Taormina, for instance, or to Sils Maria in Switzerland, where they checked in at the Waldhaus, the hotel with the finest location. Spadolini would put on his cross-country skis or take a boat out on the lake and elegantly row in the direction of the Maloja Pass, toward the painting, as it were, that made Segantini famous. It must be said that the archbishop, who had three passports — a Vatican passport, an Italian passport, and a diplomatic passport — and used whichever suited his needs, was always happiest in my mother’s company. He often told me this, and I believed him. How simpleminded our Austrian bishops are by comparison, I thought as I sat in the chair, even our cardinal in Vienna! Spadolini could be called a born prince of the Church. One has only to hear how he speaks, to see how he eats, I thought. And how he dresses. He is not one of those churchmen of humble stock who haul themselves naively up the ecclesiastical ladder but, as I have said, a born prince of the Church, and as I sat in the chair, I repeated these words several times, half aloud: a born prince of the Church. His influence in the Vatican is immense, though his relations with the popes have been somewhat distant, too distant, as he himself has said more than once, and this has so far cost him his cardinal’s hat. Spadolini, the man of the world! I thought. It may be, I told myself, that Mother’s death will give me a chance to renew my friendship with him, even to consolidate it and establish a permanent claim to it. My move to Rome was due in no small measure to Spadolini. He introduced me to Zacchi, who found me the apartment in the Piazza Minerva. It was Spadolini who acquainted me with Rome, introduced me into Roman society, and first decoded the city for me, as it were. For at first I had no one in Rome but Spadolini and was entirely reliant on him. Uncle Georg too had a high opinion of Spadolini, although he knew that he consorted with my mother in what Uncle Georg called a somewhat curious fashion. Spadolini often visited Cannes, and he and Uncle Georg once spent several weeks together in Senegal, mounting an exhibition of southern French painters and at the same time conducting what Uncle Georg called philosophical conversations. Spadolini is also an artist, I thought as I sat in the chair, a highly artistic person, even if he doesn’t paint or play an instrument. I often went for walks with him in Rome, where he rescued me from black moods of despair, especially during my early days in Rome, when I did not know what to do with myself and fell prey to brooding, insomnia, and thoughts of suicide — until Spadolini made me rouse myself and engage in intellectual activity. And finally it was Spadolini who put me in contact with Gambetti, whose family he had known for decades. Spadolini often took me for walks on the Pincio for the sole purpose of wrenching me out of my despair through what he called intellectual exercises. He reminded me of my abilities, my intellectual capital, as it were, which I had forgotten. For my intellectual passions had atrophied and almost died. It was Spadolini who revived them, Spadolini and no other. We did intellectual exercises together and had many a good meal in Trastevere, I thought. Good eating on the one hand, good thinking on the other—this is a phrase that Spadolini often used, a principle that he dinned into me. And it was undoubtedly my salvation. He often took the trouble to drive out into the country with me, along the Appian Way and into the infinite, simply and solely to save me, and I must say that Spadolini is the only person who has ever acknowledged me. He tried to explain to my mother what kind of person I was, what cast of mind I had, so to speak, but on this topic she never listened to him. The child of nature let him talk but didn’t listen, I thought, sitting in the chair and contemplating the Parisian toilet set. How could Spadolini be so taken with my mother as to be more or less in love with her, how could he so obviously understand her and understand me, when she did not understand me at all? She never wanted to understand me, I told myself as I sat in the chair. Spadolini understood me, and he understood my mother, I thought, but my mother was always against me, even though Spadolini was for me. Spadolini could not persuade her to take any interest in me. He once said to me, She can’t relate to you; you’re completely alien to her. But considering that my mother was so much influenced by Spadolini, it is incomprehensible that she was not influenced by what he told her about me. She did not hear it because she did not want to hear it. I like you and I like your mother, but your mother doesn’t understand you, Spadolini said. In fact she hates you, but conversely you don’t like your mother either — you hate her. Spadolini has never shied away from stating the facts and telling the truth. This license he can allow himself as a prince of the Church, and he has his own view of the Church too, I thought. The Spadolinis are all independent spirits, I thought. And Spadolini the prince of the Church is no exception. The Spadolinian element, like the monarchic element, can assert itself in its own way within the Catholic Church, I thought. Even today. The smell of my father still lingered in his room. I got up and opened the closet. I counted twelve suits, all made by Knize, his Viennese tailor. As my father’s much smaller — or rather was much smaller — than I am, I won’t be able to wear these suits, I thought, and I wondered whom to give them to. To give them to the gardeners would be stupid, and I won’t give them to the huntsmen or any of my relatives, I thought, shutting the closet. My father always had about thirty pairs of shoes in his shoe cupboard. I opened the cupboard. Size forty-two won’t fit anyone here, I thought, and closed the shoe cupboard. But I’ll keep the better-quality shirts. They’re well cut and will fit me. They’ve cleared one closet for Spadolini, I thought. My father had photographs of his family on his table, one of each of us, on which we all make the same bland, harmless impression. The photographs were reassuring, not alarming, and the only question they raised was how all these likenesses could possibly be so bland. Father used to get up at five o’clock, and at half past five he sat down to work at his desk, running the estate, as he put it. At about half past seven he had breakfast with Mother in what she called the large sitting room, formerly known as the green drawing room. If the weather was fine the balcony windows would be wide open. Over breakfast they would plan the day’s events, and this led to the first quarrels and misunderstandings. In recent years breakfast was usually taken in silence, broken only by the clink of china and cutlery. Father was a man of few words, but Mother was extremely loquacious and loved talking, though in recent years she had ceased to be loquacious and talkative, at any rate with Father. Father was sick, and she expected him to die soon. She had expected it for years and believed she could read it in his face. If he was subjected to any unpleasantness she would say, Leave him alone. He’s a sick man and hasn’t long to live. She became so used to saying this that she even said it in his presence. She repeatedly said, Leave your father alone, he’s a sick man, though she refrained from adding and hasn’t long to live. Yet although she did not say it, the thought was always present. When he was away or working late she would say, Leave your father alone. He’s a sick man and hasn’t long to live. When he was present she said, Leave your father alone, he’s a sick man. Whenever she could she went to meet Spadolini, the illustrious Spadolini, as my father once called him. Not a bad description, I now reflected. Every few weeks her sick, dying, lusterless husband became too much for her and she would take up with her illustrious admirer, but when the illustrious admirer no longer had time for her she would return to the sick, dying, lusterless husband, usually at night, by stealth, so that the servants would not notice, though they always noticed, as I know — servants notice everything. People think servants notice nothing, but they notice everything, even the most trivial things, things one would not expect them to notice. They know everything. We always imagine that the servants are not in the picture, that we have hoodwinked them, pulled the wool over their eyes, when in fact they have noticed everything. The illustrious Spadolini was the perpetual object of Mother’s longing, I thought. In the end Father paid no attention to this longing and no longer asked her where she had been when she came home in the middle of the night, for she would only reply mockingly, With Spadolini. But in the end it was the lusterless farmer, not the illustrious prince of the Church, who was her strength and stay. Mother would sometimes lean on Father and say she was aware of what she had in him and grateful to him for forgiving her everything. Father just let her talk. He had already left the stage on which Spadolini was performed, this ludicrous comedy, as he called it. It had long been a piece for only two players. I have retained my preference for darkened rooms to this day, I thought, but there was also a practical reason for not switching on the light at this time of year; this had to do with the mosquitoes, which are attracted by light and immediately turn every room at Wolfsegg into a hell. After breakfast Father would go across to the Farm and look around, then usually get on a tractor and disappear into the woods. Nobody knows why he went there, probably just to find peace and quiet, away from his wife and family, I thought. In the late morning the tractor would be seen somewhere unattended, while he walked for miles across his land. This was what he loved best. He only ever wanted to be a farmer. He never entertained what are called higher ambitions. When the question of the succession became acute and he needed an heir, he married the small-town girl, the daughter of a vegetable wholesaler who jarred and canned the whole countryside around Wels, as it were, and sold the jars and cans in Vienna. After marrying my mother he still preferred the pigsty to the green drawing room,which she rechristened the large sitting room. His favorite company was to be found mainly at the Farm and the Huntsmen’s Lodge, I thought. But of course this farmer always had the bearing of a gentleman. The first child, Johannes, was the offspring he desired, who would in due course inherit the estate. As I have said, he took cognizance of me as the reserve heir. He could have done without my sisters; they were latecomers and never had a chance with him, and so naturally they were immediately tied to their mother’s apron strings. Both Caecilia and Amalia were what are called beautiful children, who subsequently became uglier and uglier; this is popularly supposed to be the destiny of beautiful children. Unprepossessing. At least in my view. But of all the children, I was always in the most difficult position, I now reflected. I had no place in my parents’ hearts, and in time I gave up trying to force myself into them, as it became clear that there was no room for me. But from the beginning I was closer to my father than to my mother, of whom I was afraid even as a very small child, whereas I trusted my father, first as a child, then as a teenager, and finally as an adult, right to the last. All my life I acknowledged his paternal authority, whatever that is, but I could not help regarding my mother as harmful to me. All my life I felt I was there only to be used as a last resort. They were not wrong, as the accident has shown, I thought, sitting in the chair, but they didn’t reckon with their own deaths. If Johannes had been alone in the car, I told myself, they could have used me as the fallback, and their foresight would have been justified. But they themselves died along with the heir apparent and so did not benefit from the existence of a second heir. I am the second heir, I thought to myself as I sat in the chair, the sole surviving heir. This was how I now saw myself. In my capacity as the second heir I sensed my big chance. But how was I to exploit it? I was glad that Spadolini was coming. Spadolini’s a person I can talk to about everything, I thought. Spadolini has a clear head, clearer than mine, which has been confused by the present calamity. In the next few days, possibly in the next few hours, I’ll be able to talk to Spadolini. He owes it to me to show me the way out that I’m unable to see for myself. I had some ideas about the immediate future but did not know how to weld them in a meaningful plan. Spadolini is the one person I can trust to tell me what I should do, I thought. On the other hand, I don’t know what kind of Spadolini is coming; I don’t know whether it’s a useful or a harmful Spadolini that’s about to arrive at Wolfsegg, for there was no doubt that Spadolini could now be harmful to me, and the possibility scared me. But if that’s the case I must be completely mistaken about him, I thought. It may be, I thought, sitting in the chair, that while he’s been on his way here, Spadolini’s thoughts have been running in the opposite direction, that he’s having his own thoughts about the future of Wolfsegg and how it can get over the present calamity. But do I need Spadolini? I asked myself. Haven’t I a mind of my own? I don’t need Spadolini at all, I told myself. Getting up, I went to the window and looked down at the company in the park; the party of funeral guests had thinned out, as most had gone to find their lodgings. I could see that it was breaking up. Spadolini’s still not here, I thought. He’s making a point of arriving late so that he won’t have to meet all these people, so that he can avoid all the embarrassment, or most of it. In the midst of the guests, who thought nothing of trampling the lawn, stood the wine cork manufacturer, holding a tray. All by himself. Caecilia called out his name, probably from the doorway, and he went across. Here, at this window, Father had often stood for half the night when he was unable to sleep. All his life he suffered from insomnia, which Mother never did. To tire himself he would stand by the window, but even when tired, after standing here for two or three hours, he still could not sleep. And so he took to going out at three o’clock in the morning, especially in March and April, and walking in the woods. I’m a woodsman, he often said. I’d rather be in the woods than anywhere else. I recalled that he had once said, I’d like to die in the woods, but this wish was not to be fulfilled: he died an everyday death, quite the opposite of the one he had hoped for, like millions of others who die on the roads today after a momentary lapse of concentration. Spadolini made me aware of Gambetti’s character; he explained Gambetti to me, as it were, telling me how to approach him and win his trust, for according to Spadolini it was extremely hard to get along with Gambetti. Gambetti had expressed a wish to have an Austrian to instruct him in German literature, not a German. I had arrived in Rome at just the right moment, said Spadolini. I was the ideal person. Gambetti regarded Spadolini as his mentor and concurred with him in everything. Their fathers were lifelong friends, I thought, again sitting in the chair but now with my eyes closed, enjoying the quiet of my father’s room. From the sounds coming in through the open window I gathered that most of the guests had dispersed, leaving only a few in conversation with my sisters. I could not follow the conversation, as I heard only isolated words. I clearly remember hearing the words breeze, angina pectoris, anarchy, disgusting, and wet weather. Their audibility depended on the wind conditions; some were clear and distinct, others indistinct and barely comprehensible, but they were all spoken in restrained tones. From the start Spadolini was destined for a very high position, as he once said. His father had entertained ambitions for his son and sent him to college, so that he could get on rapidly in the Vatican and rise in the hierarchy, whereas his mother is said to have had no interest in this single-minded pursuit of a Vatican career. According to my mother, Spadolini immediately rose in the hierarchy and went on rising — a brilliant career such as had seldom been witnessed, especially in the history of the Church, she said. Gambetti had first assessed me, not I him, Spadolini told me, to see whether I was fit to be his teacher. He had devised a very precise method for assessing me and my teaching abilities. Spadolini quoted Gambetti as saying that I had passed the test to his entire satisfaction, I now recalled as I sat in the chair. We think we are our pupil’s teacher from the beginning, but for months we are actually being assessed by him, I thought. At the very start of our relationship Gambetti asked me many odd questions, unusual questions, it seemed to me at the time, and I did not know why. At first Spadolini, Gambetti, and I often met for dinner near the Piazza Minerva, at an establishment where one is served exclusively by nuns, who naturally made a great fuss over Spadolini, somewhat to his embarrassment. Maria went there once with me, but never again, as she found it so distasteful. On the evening in question numerous clerics were present, and the nuns were so assiduous in their attentions that Maria must have found it unbearable. We had met to discuss her poems, especially her Bohemian poem, which has since become world famous and is certainly one of the finest and most beautiful poems in the German language. I said to her, You’ve now written the finest and most beautiful poem ever written by a woman in our language. It was not just a compliment: I was telling the truth, which has meanwhile been acknowledged by the rest of the world. I have always loved Maria’s poems: they are so Austrian, yet at the same time universal, uniquely imbued with the mood of the world around us, and written by the most intelligent woman poet ever. Maria’s poems are entirely antisentimental, I thought, quite unlike those written by others, which for all their wildness and waywardness are informed by nothing but Austrian sentimentality. Maria’s poems are antisentimental and clear and deserve to be rated as highly as Goethe’s, as those poems by Goethe that I value most. Maria had to go to Rome to be able to write them, I told myself, sitting in the chair and again thinking of Spadolini, whom I have to thank for Gambetti, my dearest and most valued friend in Rome. What would my life in Rome be like without Gambetti, I thought, who confronts me daily with new ideas and new questions, who daily refreshes me by bringing me face-to-face with the real problems of our world? Gambetti, who is forever questioning and never lets up, who never gives me a moment’s peace, who comes to my apartment and questions me all night long, until the cold light of dawn comes up, whom I cannot escape. Gambetti, who wants to know everything, through the medium of German literature, which he uses merely as a device for learning about everything else, Gambetti the anarchist, who under my guidance has become a true anarchist, whom I have possibly trained in anarchism, turning him against his parents, his surroundings, and himself, I thought, yet who is also the driving force behind my own anarchism and set it in motion again in Rome. Gambetti, who throws the CorrieredellaSeraon my desk — and as it were in my face — and questions me about everything. Gambetti, the young man whom Maria loves more than me; Gambetti, the greatest doubter I have ever known, who far outdoes me in his doubting, who has made doubting a principle of life, and who once told me that with his doubting he had started to dismantle the whole world in order to study it properly; Gambetti, who would dearly love to blow the world sky-high but at the same time spends hours walking around Rome in a red sweater, carrying books by Jean Paul and Kleist and Wittgenstein under his arm, while dreaming of dismantling the world and blowing it sky-high. Gambetti, who, on the other hand, dines with his parents at the Hotel de la Ville and does not disturb them in their outdated attitudes, who shops only in the Via Condotti and whose room not merely is tastefully furnished but evinces the most exquisite culture. Gambetti, whom I cling to as much as he clings to me. Gambetti, I thought, sitting in my father’s chair, the quintessence of intellectual curiosity and cold calculation — Gambetti, the youthful bewitcher of all around him. I looked over to the Orangery, now illuminated from within, a picture I had not seen before. There was now only a handful of guests in the park, and I could not recognize them. I had a duty to present myself to them, I thought, to go down and shake hands with them, but I was not up to it and had unloaded this formality on my sisters, who were in any case better qualified to perform it. After all, they’re the daughters and know how to deal with their own kind, whereas I’ve long since forgotten how to deal with their kind, I told myself, gazing in fascination at the Orangery, which was illuminated solely by the feeble candlelight from within. The prelude is drawing to a close, I thought. Spadolini still hasn’t arrived, and the others don’t really matter. I’ve nothing whatever in common with them, I thought; they don’t concern me. All these people are just tiresome. I despise them and they despise me. Suddenly I thought I saw my cousin Alexander enter the park, without his wife, and it occurred to me that my sisters would naturally have sent a telegram to him in Brussels. I had not thought of him until now. It really was Alexander approaching the Orangery. I watched him shake hands with several of the people standing in front of it, in that characteristic way of his that again struck me as so attractive, both elegant and entirely natural. I recalled that Alexander, my dreamer, was exactly my age. We had parted thirty years before, when he left the boarding school and went to Belgium with his parents, but we had never severed our contact. His marriage, which I must admit I at first regarded with misgiving, actually deepened our friendship, which had nothing to do with our being related to each other, a fact that neither of us considered important. I have often visited Brussels. I stayed there during my first journey to London, and since then I have always gone over to Brussels whenever I was staying in Paris. When I stayed with him and his wife they took me out into the country near Brussels to visit their Belgian friends, and also to Ostend. They introduced me to the art of Ensor and Delvaux, and the fine country houses near Brussels. But chiefly I remember spending whole nights with Alexander, sitting with him in his study while he set the world to rights, as they say. During these nocturnal sessions, Alexander the philosopher would paint his philosophical picture in my head, and for weeks afterward I would be obsessed by it. I went for walks with him in Brussels and visited his friends, who all lived in reduced circumstances, virtually destitute, and came from various countries, chiefly Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania — East Europeans who had fled from their national regimes into Alexander’s arms, as it were. His first contact with these political refugees was at an office next to the Gare Luxembourg at Ixelles, where he offered to protect them against arrest and imprisonment, to which they were liable as illegal immigrants. In other words, he set himself the task of helping these political refugees, and was well qualified to perform it. No sooner had they realized that he genuinely wished to help them, prompted solely by his excellent character, than he was snowed under, as they say. They pestered him day and night, but that was what he wanted, I thought, observing him from the window of my father’s room. Although he had just arrived from Brussels, he looked as if he had merely taken a walk behind the Farm or the Children’s Villa. He wore the simplest of clothes, with no trace of pretension or ostentation. The people he associated with often called him a fool, finding him too natural, unable to take their formalities seriously, though he did not hate them, as I did. They called him a fool only because they had bad consciences and did not understand his cast of mind, I thought. Alexander’s cast of mind is admittedly very hard to understand, above most people’s heads, and calls for ruthless intellectual probity. I was never equal to such ruthless intellectual probity, I thought, and was invariably worsted. My visits to Brussels, agreeable though they were, always resulted in spiritual discomfiture. Alexander would hold forth, but I would fail to understand him. For a minute or two I watched Alexander, who would of course be staying in the main house, I assumed, then I ran down to the entrance hall and out into the park to greet him. He had meanwhile entered the Orangery. I had not seen him for years. He never came to Austria, which he found intolerable, for the same political reasons as I did, and I did not go to Belgium because of the climate, though earlier, over two decades, I had regularly spent weeks, even months, in Brussels. During these enjoyable and rewarding visits I stayed on the fifth floor of a house in the Rue de la Croix, on which my cousin had a lease. Up on the fifth floor I wrote something about Pascal, who was then my favorite author, and about some poems by Maria, whom I had not yet met. I also wrote a short essay on Bohuslav Martinu, of whom I was very fond, but immediately threw it away. Alexander introduced me to Brussels society and took me for long walks in the glorious woods near Brussels. It was at that time that he suffered the first attacks of his later chronic disease, which he tried to combat not only with cortisone but with strenuous exercise. The exercise actually overtaxed his strength; twice a week he would go for a two-hour run on the beach at Ostend, and I often ran with him. But jogging on the beach in the salt sea air, though supposedly beneficial, did not have the therapeutic effect he had hoped for, encouraged by one of those Belgian doctors who are well known as the world’s worst. Belgian doctors are notorious as the most stupid in Europe, as I learned later. For twenty years my cousin was kept alive by cortisone and nothing else, he maintained. Before I went to Rome, my cousin Alexander was my philosophy teacher, along with Uncle Georg, though he was my age. Just as I was about to follow him into the Orangery he came out, having stayed inside no more than half a minute. He pressed my hand in his, and we walked up and down outside the Orangery, ignoring the others standing there, who probably knew him, though we paid no attention to them; they did not interest us. Alexander said he had left Brussels immediately and come alone as his wife was ill. He was glad to be able to walk up and down with me in front of the Orangery, as he intended to retire at once to the inn in the village that we had allocated to him, so that he could finish some work he had brought with him, a petition, he said, that I have to send to the Belgian government and the king about my refugees, whom the Belgian government treats like animals. The dreamer asked after my sisters and made a remark about the people standing next to us that amused me but was of course inaudible to them; had they heard it, they would have been deeply hurt, I thought. He did not mention our misfortune or the dead lying in state in the Orangery. Then he left, saying that he could find his own way and would be at the funeral the next day, but he would be returning to Brussels immediately, on the evening train. I did not have the chance to tell him that I had naturally wanted him to stay at the house, so that he could be near us. It was always his way to make an unceremonious exit, but on this occasion he set a new record. He hasn’t changed, I thought, he’s still my beloved dreamer. I now saw that the people who had been standing next to us were two families from Wiener Neustadt, relatives on my mother’s side. I naturally greeted them and even asked if they had had a pleasant journey, addressing them in a tone that seemed far too cordial and immediately displeased me, as they were so unlikable. They stood there as though expecting that I would now devote myself to them, as though they were the only people present whom I had to attend to. I’ll get away from these people as fast as possible, I thought, and apologized, again too profusely, for having to leave them, as there was something I had to attend to urgently. I quite simply abandoned the party from Wiener Neustadt and went over to the Farm, then to the Huntsmen’s Lodge, without knowing what I was looking for. I went into my father’s office, which houses all the documents relating to Wolfsegg, all the estate accounts. This office has always been a nightmare to me, like everything that remotely resembles an office. It had the typical office smell, which after a very short time inevitably makes me feel I shall suffocate if I do not leave immediately. But this time I actually sat down in the office— something I had never done before. I sat down at the desk, on which the previous day’s mail was lying, addressed to my father. Bills, business letters, brochures advertising agricultural machinery. I hate brochures. I hate business mail. I pushed the pile of mail far enough away to be able to place a sheet of paper on the desk. On it I wrote in capital letters ALEXANDER, MY DREAMER, exactly in the middle of the sheet, without knowing why I wrote the word ALEXANDER at all. For no reason, it seemed to me. I was in an extreme state of nerves, as they say. Sitting in the office chair, I suddenly became aware that I was sitting in my office, not my father’s. Suddenly overcome by fatigue, I gazed at the walls of the office and was sickened by them. By the hundreds of three-ring binder files on the shelves, marked only with the word Wolfsegg and, underneath it, the relevant year. I looked at them until I thought I would go mad. Father was a pedant, I thought. I was always repelled by his neat handwriting and the primitive way in which he expressed himself. He taught himself to write a fair hand, and he retained this hand, which is typical of an insufferably pedantic person, I thought. And all his life he tried to turn Johannes into an insufferably pedantic person. He never ceased working on his successor, trying to form him in his own image. He succeeded in forming Johannes in his own image, I told myself. But such formed images are repellent. My father’s fair hand was set down on paper by an atrophied brain, I thought. By the atrophied person my father became. Sometimes he wanted to break out of his atrophy, but he did not succeed: it was too far advanced. Father’s hand was of the type favored by schoolteachers, the neat, workmanlike hand used by small-town schoolteachers, bespeaking an anxious, suppressed character. Father was a suppressed character, I thought, relentlessly suppressed by Wolfsegg and by my mother. Nothing’s left of my father but his school-teacherly hand, I thought. These reflections were prompted by the discovery of an unfinished letter on his desk. It was addressed to a firm that produced artificial fertilizers at Lustenau in Vorarlberg, in response to an offer. But this is how a commercial assistant writes, I thought, not the master of Wolfsegg. I read my father’s unfinished letter several times; it did not get any less primitive. My father was no letter writer, but nobody should write like this, I thought. And the way he’s left the writing materials on the desk is depressing, I thought. This is how a schoolteacher or a commercial assistant leaves his writing materials, not a man of stature. Was my father a man of stature? I asked myself. My fatigue prompted a few more pointless questions about my father. What is stature after all? I asked myself. The sight of the three-ring binder files, going back to the early years of the century, profoundly depressed me. You escaped from this world, I thought, and now you’ve been pitched headlong into it again by a stroke of fate. The words stroke of fate, so emetic and dishonest, were all I needed. I got up and walked to the window. From the window one looked straight across at the wall of the Farm, to which was attached a picture of the Madonna and Child, painted in oils on galvanized metal. The Madonna’s neck is longer than I have seen it in any other painting, and the Christ Child is positively hydrocephalic. The picture had always amused me, and it amused me now. I could not help laughing out loud, not caring whether anyone heard me. Caecilia had appeared in the door. She had come to fetch me for an early supper — just for us, she said — separate from the buffet for the guests. I at once took her to task for putting up Alexander in the village, saying that he, of all people, should have stayed with us at the house. I asked her where she had booked him. If Spadolini stays with us, it’s obvious that Alexander should stay with us too, I told her as we left the Huntsmen’s Lodge. It was grotesque, I said, to have the wine cork manufacturer in the house, but not Alexander. She could not tell me where she had booked Alexander — she really did not know, she said. As we walked across to the house, I continued to reproach her about Alexander. I also said that the people she had put up at the house were the very people I found insufferable, and I listed the names of a few people I had already seen at the house, who would presumably be spending the night there. These revoltingspecimens, I said, from Mother’s sideof the family—you know how they get on my nerves, and yet you put up Alexander in the village! That’s just beastly. I was instantly sorry I had used the word beastly. I didn’t intend to hurt you, I said, but this whole funeral was getting on my nerves. I was close to losing control altogether. I may have laughed out loud over the picture of the Madonna, but it was nervous, hysterical laughter, I said, as if trying to excuse myself for using the word beastly. It had slipped out inadvertently and been quite out of place, as it was not only my nerves that were on edge but my sisters’ too, and when we reached the door, where a number of new arrivals were standing in the entrance hall, I told her that I was sorry I had hurt her, that I had not wanted to hurt her, but that in my present state of extreme tension I could no longer behave as people were bound to expect me to behave. We went into the hall and had to shake hands with the latest guests and utter the by now well-practiced phrases before escaping to the second floor for our early supper. It’s a pity, I said to my sisters, that Alexander isn’t having supper with us; he would certainly have made it much more entertaining. How can we possibly leave him to his own devices at one of the village inns? I asked. But my sisters had acted deliberately. They wished to have supper alone with me and wanted to sound me out. But they could elicit nothing from me. From below came the sound of the guests crowding into the kitchen, where the buffet awaited them, while the three of us ate more or less the same food upstairs. At my request Caecilia had locked the door to the second floor, so that the gargoyles can’t get in, I said. She had obediently gone to the door and locked it. I can’t stand these people, I said, and reverted to the subject of Alexander, though I was actually waiting for Spadolini, who was bound to arrive at any moment. After my last visit to Wolfsegg, I told my sisters, I never wanted to come back. I said never, though I meant not for a long time, but the word never made a greater impression, and so I repeated it several times. My home is in Rome, not here, I told them, and again I said that Alexander should have been put up at the house. Instead of sending all these revolting people from Wiener Neustadt and Wels and Munich down to the village, we’ve sent Alexander. This was a piece of unpardonable meanness—Alexander of all people, I said several times. I began to wonder whether I ought not to go down to the village and fetch him back, but my sisters did not know where he was staying. It’s monstrous that we’re having a decent meal here while exposing Alexander to the garbage they dish up in the village, I said. Especially as I was always treated so well in Brussels, where he entertained and accommodated me so generously. I accused my sisters of having deliberately put Alexander up in the village because they disapproved of my relationship with him and wanted to spite me. This was certainly an exaggeration, and my suspicion was probably unfounded. To send an admirable person like Alexander down to the village, I said, while putting up these utterly bogus, brainless people from Wiener Neustadt and Wels here, cheek by jowl with us, as it were — it just didn’t bear thinking about. As I repeatedly upbraided my sisters for their treatment of Alexander, none of us much enjoyed our intimate supper behind closed doors. My sisters remained silent and let me go on. They knew what they were doing: they watched me putting myself more and more in the wrong, then tried to exploit the situation by asking me several questions about the immediate future and finally inundated me with questions about what was going to happen to Wolfsegg. I did not answer a single one of their questions, because I honestly did not know any of the answers; I knew as little about the future of Wolfsegg as they did. Of course we all knew what was in the will, which was deposited not only in the safe at Wolfsegg but also with our attorney at Wels. There was never any secret about the will, and so there were no problems. On the death of my parents and my brother, Wolfsegg devolved wholly upon me, though of course I was under an obligation to accord my sisters their proper place at Wolfsegg, the share that was due them, or else pay them off, and right from the beginning I was more inclined to pay them off than to share the estate with them. They wanted to hear about my immediate plans for Wolfsegg, but I told them nothing. I left them completely in the dark. The decision is mine, not theirs, I thought. I have to admit that as soon as I heard of my parents’ death I decided on a payoff, not a share-out. I was still holding the telegram in my hand, I recalled, when I decided in favor of paying my sisters off. Hardly had I read the telegram than I went to the window of my Roman apartment, looked down at the Piazza Minerva, then across to the windows of Zacchi’s apartment and the dome of the Pantheon, and said to myself, Of course I’m for paying them off, not for sharing the estate with them. Paying my sisters off was the very first thought that entered my head on receiving the telegram. My sisters wanted to know what was to become of them, but I did not tell them. They did not ask in so many words, but their concern was obvious from their whole demeanor during supper. They did not say a word but let me do all the talking, as I have said. For a long time it did not strike me that my brother-in-law was absent, until I suddenly noticed that a place had been set for him. I asked where he was. Caecilia said he had gone down to the village, probably to one of the inns. In the week since the wedding he had made a habit of going down to the village instead of having supper with the family. That’s typical of people like him, I said: they don’t even honor a simple obligation like having supper with the family if it suits them to go and booze at an inn. Caecilia remained silent, and so did Amalia. It’s intolerable, I said, that this man should do just as he pleases. Why did they not stop him from going down to the village and mixing with the locals, especially on a day like this? They did not reply. He’ll get us a bad name in the village, I said. It’s just not right. It’s outrageous, I said, though I immediately added that I could understand it, as I could not stick it out with such sisters and such a family either — which in any case no longer exists. No longer exists, I repeated, whereupon my sisters looked daggers at me. My brother-in-law sits around in the inns and makes us look ridiculous, I said. I’ll give him a piece of my mind as soon as he gets back. Amalia said that her brother-in-law never got back until after midnight, when the inns closed. Caecilia said nothing. I drew my own conclusions. I could understand my brother-in-law, I said, but to behave like this today was intolerable. I asked whether he had gone down to the village in the evenings to tank up when our parents were still alive. Caecilia said he had. But she had saddled herself with the wine cork manufacturer, I said. This brought me to our aunt from Titisee. I asked whether she had arrived. I was told that she had arrived a long time ago and gone to bed. Naturally she was staying in Mother’s room. Yes, I said, in Mother’s room, naturally. But it’s grotesque, I thought, that our aunt from Titisee should spend the night in Mother’s room, of all places. I had not seen her. I haven’t seen her, I said. An impudent woman, I added. Whereupon my sisters rounded on me and accused me of not bothering about the guests, of loading them on them. It went without saying that I should have received them, all of them, without exception, Caecilia said, and Amalia seconded this. All of them had asked after me as soon as they arrived, even before going to the Orangery to pay their last respects to my parents and my brother. I had avoided all these people, I had lain low in the most craven fashion. They had looked all over for me and had other people look for me, but I had evaded these naturally tiresome proceedings, playing an artful game of hide-and-seek. That had always been my way. So should I have stood at the door all the time, shaking hands with them and repeating the same words over and over again? I asked. That was what they had demanded of me, I said — that I should stand at the door with them, wearing a fittingly solemn mien, and receive the guests as they arrived. I didn’t do you this favor, I told them, because I wasn’t up to it. Even before leaving Rome I decided not to stand at the door. Before I left Rome I knew what this funeral would be like. Dreadful, I said, with every possible attendant horror. But it’ll soon be over, I said, and all the horrors will be over. This is neither the time nor the place for hypocrisy. The whole thing has nothing to do with mourning — it’s all theater, I said. Our parents no longer exist. There’s nothing lying in the Orangery but three bodies consigned to decay, I said, which no longer have anything to do with the human beings they once were. What’s left is pure theater. And I have neither the desire nor the ambition to be gaped at as the principal actor. We naturally all spoke softly, so as not to be overheard, so that no one would understand what we were saying, supposing that someone was eavesdropping, which I thought quite possible. From time to time people knocked on the locked door but then stopped, although they certainly did not know what we were doing inside. Our private supper was after all only a device for being alone and undisturbed, my sisters must have thought, but that was not how it worked out, as the repeated knocking gave us hardly any peace. We were all highly agitated, as may be imagined. My sisters told me that about eighty people had already arrived and would be staying the night. I remarked that most of them would be attending the funeral just so that they could have a break in this beautiful part of the world and for no other reason. It’s the right time of year, I said, and they’ll all get it more or less for free. After all, we’re paying their bills — they’ll all be paid out of the Wolfsegg coffers. I’d gladly pay for all these people to have a break somewhere else, so that I wouldn’t have to see them. But now I have them in the house. I did not say, Now we have them in the house — I said, Now I have them in the house, speaking as the sole proprietor. We mustn’t deceive ourselves, I said—funerals are never anything but theater. No sooner had I said this than I realized that I had gone too far and wished I had held back. I wished I had not said a word, but I had said so many words, so many senseless words, all of which showed me in an impossible light. Hearing me talk, people must think I’m the worst character in the world, I thought, but there are undoubtedly much worse characters. To divert attention from my outbursts of fury, especially against the funeral guests who had been accommodated at the house, I told my sisters that Rome meant everything to me, that I could no longer live anywhere else. Suddenly they woke up and did not understand me. Really, I said, I have only to think of Rome and I can’t wait to be back there — and I’ve been here only a few hours. I find it quite bizarre that this morning I was still in Rome, I said. Then I asked whether Spadolini had called. Yes, I was told, he had called from Rome to say that he would naturally be coming, this evening; he did not know how he would be traveling, but he would be arriving today. So we all waited for the archbishop, Mother’s lover, the illustrious Spadolini. Gambetti always reproaches me with being unable to control myself, I told my sisters, but I’ve always been uncontrolled and unpredictable, and I’ve always relied on people’s making allowances for my lack of control. My lack of control, and the lack of consideration that goes with it. But of course that’s expecting too much. In Rome I’m quite different, I said. There I don’t get so excited, so out of control, and I’m not so unpredictable. Rome calms me down — Wolfsegg works me up. Rome has a soothing effect on the nerves, even though it’s the most exciting city in the world, but at Wolfsegg I’m always agitated, even though it’s so peaceful here. I’m a victim of this paradox, I said. In Rome I express myself quite differently, I talk to everyone quite differently. Gambetti once told me, I said, that whenever I returned from Wolfsegg I talked in a very agitated manner, but only when I’d been to Wolfsegg. On that occasion I had told Gambetti that my family was to blame. He said that my thinking got out of phase with its normal rhythm, what might be called its Roman rhythm. Gambetti had often said that he hardly knew me when I had been to Wolfsegg and could never have made friends with the kind of person I was at such times, since I had an entirely different persona, quite the opposite of what might be called my Roman persona. He could not stand my Wolfsegg persona; he liked only my Roman persona. He said that when I returned from Wolfsegg it took me several days to revert to my Roman persona and become once more the kind of person who was useful to him as a teacher, the kind of person to whom he could be a friend, a pupil, and a conversational partner. He could be none of these when I was in my Wolfsegg mood. Gambetti maintains that Wolfsegg’s bad for me, I told my sisters, that two or three days at Wolfsegg are enough to throw me off balance for several weeks. I’ve never understood what it is that throws me off balance at Wolfsegg. I don’t know whether it’s the landscape, the people, or the air, though the air here is the best I know — the air at Wolfsegg is superb. Is it more to do with the buildings or more to do with the people? I don’t know. It’s Wolfsegg as a whole, I said. It was ridiculous to entertain such thoughts, and not only to entertain them but to express them, given that I had become heir to Wolfsegg overnight and had taken it over, as my sisters were bound to believe. It was not that I was going to take it over — I had already done so, I thought. They were forced to take the question of the succession seriously. They could not imagine that I would not comply — in every detail and with all the consequences that compliance entailed. Despite the fact that they had not heard most of what I had been thinking and therefore did not know the drift of my thoughts, I suddenly said to them, I’m not a farmer, the sort of man who gets on a tractor, as Father did. I’m not a tractor man, and I’ve no wish to haggle with warehouse managers over a bag of artificial fertilizer because it’s only half full and I’ve paid for a full bag. I’mnot Johannes, I said. My parents overlooked the fact that I’m not Johannes. I had intended to elaborate on this last remark, but there was such a persistent knocking at the door that Caecilia went to unlock it. The wine cork manufacturer wanted to be let in. Without saying a word, he went and sat at the table where a place was set for him. You were wrong, I thought, he hasn’t been down to the village to drink. My brother-in-law was in fact sober. His wife put a piece of meat on his plate and poured him a glass of wine. He had been in the Gardeners’ House all the time, he said by way of excuse. Out of sheer exhaustion he had retired to the Gardeners’ House and fallen asleep there. He had been up at three that morning, or so he said, because my sisters wanted him to go to the village and see various craftsmen and shopkeepers in connection with the funeral. And he had suddenly had a headache. It had been pleasantly cool in the Gardeners’ House. Was everything coming along all right? he asked. He immediately started to eat, as if he was famished, though I recalled that he had eaten only two or two and a half hours earlier, when he was in the kitchen with me. Unable to stand the sight of my brother-in-law eating, I got up and went out. If I get away from my brother-in-law and my sisters, I thought, I’ll avoid giving offense, and so I went down to the entrance hall, paying no attention to the people standing around, who at once turned and looked at me. I put on a suffering look, as they say, and went into the chapel, where I sat down in one of the middle pews. The chapel was agreeably cool. It’s quite obvious why it’s used for storing food, I thought. Without thinking, I knelt down, but when I realized what I had done I got up and sat in the pew. Suddenly I sensed the presence of our aunt from Titisee. I turned around. I was not mistaken. She had her constant companion with her, a niece of twelve or thirteen. The old lady was veiled and garbed almost wholly in black, in honor of her dead brother. Sensing that she was observing me malevolently, I got up and left the chapel, but not without kissing her hand, which she stretched out from her black attire. I went through the hall, out into the park, and across to the Orangery, where two of the huntsmen stood guard. The smell of decomposition seemed to have become more pungent. I lifted the black sheets to check the blocks of ice under the coffins. They had obviously been renewed. I allowed myself only a quick glance at the faces of the dead, as I could not bear to look at them for longer. The two huntsmen had assumed a soldierly bearing, as they say, when I entered the Orangery. I found this repugnant. When I came out it seemed even more ludicrous, but there was nothing I could do to alter this whole distasteful ceremonial, which had been meticulously worked out by my sisters, more especially Caecilia, in accordance with the rules. They would not have dreamed of deviating from the funeral plan in the slightest detail. On the other hand, I thought, the ceremonial is in keeping with Wolfsegg, and it would be foolish to destroy it. Everything here is done properly, I thought, even if one finds it displeasing. But the huntsmen on either side of the catafalque were undoubtedly comic figures, like tin soldiers outfitted by a stagestruck costumer. As I stood by the coffins the gardeners were changing the water in the flower buckets. Again I saw clearly how the huntsmen differed from the gardeners: the huntsmen were ridiculous and artificial, the gardeners natural. I was prompted to wonder what it was that made the huntsmen so different from the gardeners, what they stood for, and it gave me great pleasure to pursue this speculation, quite untroubled by the fact that I was in the presence of the dead. There’s no outward clue to what I’m thinking, nothing to indicate that I’m thinking about the difference between the huntsmen and the gardeners, I thought, let alone that I’m thinking about the mentalities of the huntsmen and the gardeners and the relation between the two mentalities. People will suppose that I’m thinking about the funeral, I thought, but as I stood in front of the coffins, right next to the bodies, I was not thinking about the funeral at all. The gardeners are sensitive people, I thought, whereas the huntsmen represent a brutalized world. The fact that we employ both at Wolfsegg is what gives the place its charm. Wolfsegg has great charm for anyone intent upon seeing only the charm. Visitors to Wolfsegg always speak of its special charm. And it’s possible to see Wolfsegg that way, as the most charming country estate imaginable. But I can no longer see it that way. I never could, I thought. I can no longer stand it; I’ve ruined it for myself, I thought as I went out. The park was deserted. The rest of the family’s still having supper, I thought, looking up at the windows over the balcony. There are three of them too, I told myself — my brother-in-law, Caecilia, and Amalia. Maybe they’ve locked themselves in. How can I escape this inner turmoil? I asked myself. My conduct is bound to offend everyone: not just my sisters, not just my brother-in-law, but everyone. Yet I’m not at all the offensive person they’ve always called me, ever since I was a child, I thought. Then I immediately told myself that I was just such an offensive person. I had told Gambetti that I would have to discuss everything very carefully with my sisters and bring my brother-in-law in on our discussions. I’ll approach everything cautiously, I had told him. I had repeatedly told Zacchi and Maria the same — that I must proceed with caution at Wolfsegg. But I’m not proceeding with the least caution, I thought. I’ve shown no consideration for anything or anyone. No wonder they feel I am inconsiderate, even mean, since my behavior has been totally inconsiderate. But it’s been quite simply impossible to behave otherwise, I told myself, it’s been impossible for me to act differently toward them. I can’t cope with this whole situation, and I’m not responsible for it, I didn’t will it. At that moment Spadolini arrived. I took him straight up to see my sisters, and Caecilia showed him to my father’s room, where he said he would like to freshen up. Meanwhile I sat in the upper left library. It had been locked, but I had obtained the keys of all our libraries from Caecilia. I’ll open all five libraries tomorrow morning, I thought, before the funeral proceedings begin. I had seated myself in a chair by the window with a copy of Siebenkäs, but of course I was too agitated to be able to read. And I could not take my mind off Spadolini. The tremendous impression he had once more made on me was more potent than Siebenkäs, and so I put the book down. I had known that Siebenkäs was in this library, together with other books from Jean Paul’s period. At some stage one of our ancestors, no one knew which, had arranged the books in our libraries. They must have been cultured people, I thought, unlike the present lot. But what do we mean by cultured? I asked myself. If we say that someone is cultured and someone else isn’t, we’re talking nonsense, I thought — we say it unthinkingly. Spadolini was carrying only a small black traveling bag, I thought as I sat by the window. I could hear him showering, as the library was next to my father’s room. I imagined him enjoying himself under the shower. I’ve never known Spadolini not to enjoy himself, I thought. I stretched out my legs, turned off the light, and thought about my meeting with Maria, whom I had given a manuscript to look through. Like all my manuscripts, it’s sloppily written, I thought. When I’m back in Rome she’ll go through it with me and take it to pieces, and then I’ll throw it away, like everything else of mine that I’ve given her to read. I’ve thrown away more manuscripts than I’ve kept, I thought, and those that I’ve kept I can’t bear to look at; they depress me because they present my thoughts in a ludicrous form that’s not worth talking about. My manuscripts are worthless, I told myself, but I haven’t given up trying to write things down, to do violence to the intellect, as it were. Maria is ruthlessly honest and treats my manuscripts as they deserve, I thought. Having thrown away a manuscript that she’s examined, I’m invaded by a sense of relief, I thought. I embrace her and we both watch the manuscript go up in flames in her stove. With Maria that’s always a high point and induces a state of elation, I thought. Only Maria is in a position to demonstrate to me that my manuscripts are worthless and deserve to be consigned to the flames. She once accused me of doing violence to philosophy, of sinning against the spirit. She meant it as a joke, but I took it seriously. I haven’t given up, I told myself. I already have something new in mind. Maybe I’ll call it Extinction, I thought. As I write it I’ll try to extinguish everything that comes into my head. Everything I write about in this work will be extinguished, I told myself. I was pleased with the title. It exercised a great fascination over me. I could not remember where I had dreamed it up. I think it was Maria who suggested it to me: she had once called me an expert in extinction. I was her extinction expert, she said: whatever I set down on paper was automatically extinguished. When I get back to Rome I’ll set about writing this new work, but it’ll take me a year, I thought, and I don’t know whether I’ll have the strength to commit myself to it for a whole year, to concentrate on Extinction to the exclusion of everything else. I’ll write my Extinction and discuss everything relating to it with Gambetti, Spadolini, and Zacchi, and of course with Maria, I thought. I’ll discuss everything relevant to Extinction with them, but they won’t know what I have in mind. I felt an immense longing to be back in Rome. What I’d like most would be to go straight back to Rome with Spadolini, I thought. It pained me to have to deny myself this pleasure. Spadolini’s going back to Rome tomorrow and you’re staying on at Wolfsegg — that’s your life sentence, I thought. Having dinner with Maria, I thought, talking to her about her latest poems — that’s what I should be doing now. Listening to her. Confiding in her. Pouring wine for her. I picked up Siebenkäs again, opened it, and switched on the light. I wondered whether I had not been wrong, quite wrong, to give Gambetti this book. I had been right to give him The Trial, but not Siebenkäs. And instead of Esch or Anarchy I should have given him Schopenhauer Revisited. Now he’ll have started on Siebenkäs; he’ll be well into it, trying to master it. I pictured him in his study, where he could get away from his parents and devote himself to what interested him, namely German literature, and be entirely undisturbed — and all the time thinking about dismantling the world and blowing it sky-high. Perhaps I’ll suddenly hear an almighty bang, I thought, indicating that Gambetti really has blown the world sky-high, that he’s put his ideas into effect. So far he’s only dreamed of dismantling the world and blowing it sky-high. But one day, I told myself, people like Gambetti, given the chance, put their fantasies into effect. Gambetti’s not just a born fantasizer, he’s also a born realizer of his fantasies. I’m still waiting for the big bang, I thought, stretching my legs out and listening to Spadolini showering. The floor of the library was covered with thousands of dead flies that had accumulated over the years and never been swept up, because nobody had entered the library. Now that I have the keys I’ll open them all, I thought, but not today — I’m too tired. I’ll do it in the morning, before sunrise. I’ll open all five libraries forever, I thought, whereupon I got up, walked to the window, and looked across at the Orangery. Maria would find this a tremendous sight, I thought, the inspiration for more than one poem. The gardeners were still carrying fresh wreaths and bouquets from the Farm to the Orangery. They won’t finish work this evening, I thought; they’ll have to go on throughout the night. The scene was utterly theatrical. Assuming that Spadolini would need at least another half hour for his toilet, I left the library and went down into the hall. It was half past eight, and there was no longer anyone around. I entered the chapel. Our aunt from Titisee had long since retired to her room. I sat down in the very place where she had sat with her young and — I must say — beautiful companion. The crone and the maiden, I thought, the protectress and the protected, and vice versa. I knelt down, again without thinking, then got up and sat in the pew. I reflected that the princes of the Church were all involved in an evil game, treating the Church as a monstrous universal drama in which they played the main parts. All these princes of the Church thrust themselves into the foreground and put on a grand performance. No matter what they say, they know that it is the biggest, the most mendacious show ever staged. Spadolini is always center stage, close to the main actor, the Pope. But not so close as to be in danger of dying or being toppled with him. He’s outlived three popes, I thought, and he’ll outlive the present one too, who’s known to be terminally ill, and he’ll go on playing his part with his usual panache. Spadolini is completely absorbed in the ecclesiastical drama. I had at first thought I would have time to go across to the Farm and visit the cowsheds, which I did at this time of day, if at all, when the animals had settled for the night, but then it occurred to me that I must not offend Spadolini by leaving him alone. I had also intended to go down to the village and look for Alexander, but I soon gave up that idea too, as I did not want to expose myself to the gaze of the villagers — not today, not this evening. Once, in Brussels, I had introduced Spadolini and Alexander to each other, intending to get the prince of the Church and the dreamer to converse with each other until they reached agreement. But my experiment failed: I had made a bet with myself, as it were, and I lost. At one moment Spadolini got the better of Alexander, and then Alexander got the better of Spadolini; it was a delight to hear them score points off each other, but the contest ended in a draw. Spadolini often said he would like to meet Alexander again, and Alexander would have liked to see Spadolini again. How unfortunate, I thought, that Spadolini, the prince of the Church, is staying with us at the house, while Alexander, the dreamer, has been exiled to the village. I briefly considered taking Spadolini, when he was ready, down to the village to look for Alexander, but I dropped the idea, as I could not expect Spadolini to go looking for Alexander when he had only just arrived and not had a bite to eat. Spadolini would in any case have rejected the idea out of deference to my sisters, who were now sitting in the drawing room waiting for him, His Excellency from Rome. For a moment it seemed perverse to be sitting in the chapel of all places, where I had once sat with Maria after returning from a walk in the woods. I had met her at Wolfsegg on her way from Paris to Rome, having invited her to stay here during my parents’ absence. When they returned, Maria and I were back in Rome, and my sisters told them a pack of stupid lies. Maria was naturally thrilled by Wolfsegg. The best air I’ve ever breathed, she said. I went for two long walks with her across the Hausruck, one of them as far as Haag, from where we returned by train. Johannes picked us up at Lambach. Maria thought Johannes simple but a nice person. We spent the evenings in the village, at the Brandl, where the atmosphere was always relaxing, and once we went to Ottnang, to the Gesswagner. Maria became quite talkative and immediately got into conversation with the landlord and his wife, and with all the other guests. This was unusual for her, as she normally found it difficult to relate to simple people, more so than I did, for I have never found it difficult to make contact, at least not with simple people—proletarians are another matter. It transpired that Maria’s childhood had been similar to that of the landlord’s wife, whom I have always found a goodhearted woman. While she was staying with me Maria said, I like Wolfsegg, but I don’t like your people. I can still hear her saying this. She could not be persuaded to pay a second visit. It’s not my scene, she said. She wrote nothing while she was at Wolfsegg, or for weeks afterward. Wolfsegg’s not a place for poetry, she said. Not a place for her poetry, I reflected as I got up and left the chapel. Spadolini was with my sisters. The cook had been sent to the kitchen to get him some hot soup and roast meat. My brother-in-law sat opposite him, overawed and open-mouthed, never having been in the presence of a genuine archbishop before, a real excellency, and during the whole time after I joined them he remained silent. I sat next to Caecilia and drank a glass of wine, then a second, as I listened to Spadolini, who was a past master at initiating and conducting a conversation. He said he felt as though our parents would join us at any moment. It’s as though your mother were about to enter the room. It was true that nothing had changed since my parents’ death, at least not visibly, though in fact everything within us had changed. And within Spadolini too, of course. He said he had held my father in high esteem. He was a noble character. This was a word that Spadolini, being Italian, could permit himself to use, and he looked around, savoring its effect. He had had a lifelong friendship with my father, a noble friendship, he said. From anyone else’s lips such an expression would have been insupportable, but from Spadolini’s it sounded superb. He had first met my father at a dinner in Vienna, at the Irish ambassador’s residence in the Gentzgasse, just after the war, at a time of extreme hardship, he said. Father had at once struck him as the most unusual of all the guests, a fine character, a man of perfect breeding. He was the person he had most enjoyed talking to, and Father had invited him to Wolfsegg there and then. At the time I was counselor to the nuncio, said Spadolini. Wolfsegg had fascinated him. He had never seen anything like it in his life — buildings of such Austrian elegance and grandeur, at once grandiose and natural, such friendly people and such excellent food. Mother had always treated him as a son, he said. Father and Johannes had visited him in Rome on their way to Palermo, and he had shown them around the city, but all the time he could not help thinking of Wolfsegg and its magnificence. His Italianate pronunciation and turn of phrase amused me and my sisters, not because they seemed ridiculous but because they were so charming. Spadolini has a highly musical manner of speaking, it seems to me. He described Father as a prudent man who was a blessing to his family, who never put on a show, who always acted for the good of his family and was popular wherever he went. Horses were his favorite animals, said Spadolini. Your father was happiest with the animals, in the company of his animals. And hunting, said Spadolini. He had often hunted with Father, though Mother was always scared. Huntsmen are unpredictable, he said. Father was a real prince, a true aristocrat. And a man of great intelligence. Highly educated. The father Spadolini saw was different from the one I saw, from the one my sisters saw. Everyone who describes a person sees him differently, I reflected. So many people describing the same person, each looking at him from a different viewpoint, a different angle of vision, produce as many differing views, I told myself. Spadolini’s view of Father is different from ours. It was certainly an unusual view, I thought, an extraordinary view that undoubtedly made Father seem more admirable than Spadolini really believed him to be, even as he was speaking. Father was wiser than others, he said. He had so many interests, more than almost any other man of his class. Father was the most reassuring person, he said, only to add a moment later that he was the most restless. He was a model of decency. A great gentleman. A philosopher. A modest man. A generous man. A reasonable man, a good man, both controlled and popular. Spadolini spared no encomiastic epithets in describing my father. He had once met him in Cairo, and they had crawled into the Pyramid of Cheops, he said, up and up across the wooden planks until they were exhausted. In Alexandria they had sent us a postcard that never arrived. In Rome he had always taken my father to the Via Veneto because my father loved it. Your father loved Rome, he told us. Your father was such a marvelous man to drink wine with, he said. Your father was a philosophical person, he said, and highly educated politically. Basically I thought that everything Spadolini said about Father as he sat eating his supper in our presence was wrong. Everything he says about Father is quite wrong, I thought. I would have said the exact opposite — that he was neither reasonable nor controlled nor philosophical, nor any of the other things he had just been called. Spadolini had described a father who had never existed, I thought, but whom he now felt he had to invent. Yet although everything Spadolini has said about Father is wrong, I thought, it has an air of authenticity. We often hear the most arrant nonsense spoken about someone, downright lies and falsehoods, but accept it as the unadulterated truth because it is uttered by someone whose words carry conviction. But with me Spadolini’s words carried no conviction. It was quite obvious that his picture of Father was the one he wished to see, not the real picture. Father was not at all like the person that Spadolini had just sketched, I thought. Spadolini’s sketch was an idealization, but not tasteless, I thought, as it was presented with such charm — and with an undertone of grief, which was not inappropriate, as Father had been dead for only two days — as to conceal the underlying tastelessness of the falsification. Spadolini must have been conscious of this, for he was too intelligent not to realize how false his picture of Father really was. Father was certainly decent and reassuring, as Spadolini said, and he was probably also a gentleman, but he was none of the other things Spadolini had credited him with being. Yet it was obvious from my sisters’ faces that they hung on Spadolini’s words as though they represented the pure unvarnished truth. For a long time Spadolini avoided speaking about Mother and dwelled at length on Father. I was obliged to conclude that although Father was not really interesting enough for Spadolini to speak of him at such length, he was a convenient means to divert Spadolini’s mind from Mother, who had been his mistress. Yet Spadolini must have known that as he was speaking of Father we were all waiting to hear what he would say about Mother. He and Father had once gone on a climbing expedition to the Ortler, he said, and Father had saved his life by throwing him a rope down the rock face at the last moment, at the very last moment. It did not seem to trouble him in the least that he was the only one eating while we looked on. Our only concern was that he should enjoy his supper. The kitchen had made a special effort for Spadolini. His supper had not been hastily rustled up but was carefully prepared, as I saw at once. At Sitten in Switzerland, in the Rhône Valley, he said, he and Father had once visited a little church, a Romanesque church, where they had seen a picture of Christ with a strangely distorted face, unnaturally distorted. Father had told Spadolini that this picture impressed him more than any he had ever seen. Father was a great connoisseur of art and a friend of artists. Spadolini seemed to relish the word artists and repeated it more than once, for his own delectation. He was a lover of nature, said Spadolini. And a lover of justice, he added, and he knew where he stood with his religious faith. Your father was a good Catholic, he said, with a glance at my sisters. With this he concluded his characterization of Father and, simultaneously, his supper. Nobody uses a napkin so elegantly to wipe his mouth, I thought. Caecilia poured him some wine. Leaning back, he said he had to be in Rome the following evening, as the Pope had summoned him to his presence, but with this Pope one never knew whether the person he had summoned would be received at the appointed time. The most dreadful conditions prevailed in Rome, he said. The political climate had become much worse, with both the Communists and the Fascists planning to seize power in the near future. But neither the Communists nor the Fascists will succeed, he said. When he went out he never knew whether he would get home alive. The Fascists simply picked people off, whether or not they had anything to do with their cause, just to draw attention to themselves. It was a time of unrest, a dreadful time. On the other hand, it was the most interesting time that Italy had seen. I’m so attached to Rome, he said, that I can’t imagine myself leaving it, though it’s not for me to decide whether or not I stay. I’mat the mercy of the higher powers. I wondered what was the basis of my admiration for Spadolini. He himself supplies the answer, by his very presence, I thought. It’s the way he says things, the way he presents himself as he says them, that compels my admiration, I thought, not what he says. He says everything differently from everyone else, I thought. Then suddenly, without any apparent embarrassment, he began to talk about Mother. He said it was impossible to describe her, and then proceeded to do so. She was always elegant, and it was she who first took him to the Vienna Opera, to see Der Rosenkavalier. It was through her that he had met the most famous women singers who performed at the Vienna Opera, and he still had the most cordial contacts with them. It was she who had acquainted him with Austrian music by taking him to Philharmonic concerts when she was in Vienna. Together with Father they had attended concerts at the Musikverein and elsewhere. In particular he owed it to Mother that he had heard so much Mahler in Vienna. She had drawn his attention to Mahler, whom she was very fond of at the time, and taken him to every possible Mahler concert. She was highly musical, and he had always thought it a pity that she did not play an instrument, as she would probably have been a great pianist. His chief regret at being moved from Vienna and suddenly posted overseas was that it cut him off from music. Mother had gone with him on a boat trip up the Danube to Dürnstein in the Wachau. She had taken him around Salzburg and shown him the Salzkammergut; then shortly after their first meeting she had invited him to Paris, which he had never visited before. At that time, as a mere counselor, he did not have the opportunity for travel that he later enjoyed as nuncio, and so he wasfairly restricted, as he put it. Mother also invited him to Florence, where she was spending several weeks with my father in the fall. It was through her that he first got to know the city properly. He had often been to Florence, but it was Mother who taught him to love the city of the Uffizi. And he owed it to her that he knew Upper Austria so well, those beautiful lakes and mountains, he said, and all those magnificent castles, such as one finds nowhere else. And the glorious landscape of Upper Austria, he said, the most beautiful in Austria. He had always had a deep respect for Mother and could not help loving such an extraordinary person. They had had an incomparable friendship, spanning thirty years. Mother had restored his health, he said. Again and again she had supplied him with the best medicines and visited him in his darkest hours, when he lay at death’s door, in a more or less hopeless condition, having been given up by the doctors. Your mother was the best doctor I ever had. She brought these Upper Austrian herbs to me in Rome, and they cured me. Perhaps I owe my life to these Upper Austrian herbs that your mother brought me. She had spared no effort in visiting him, he said, and traveled to Rome under the most difficult circumstances in order to save him. She saved my life with her herbal remedies, Spadolini exclaimed. My mother’s medicinal herbs from Upper Austria had preserved him for humanity—these were his very words, uttered with a degree of pathos but with a charm that made them not in the least embarrassing. If necessary, he said, I’ll recommend these medicinal herbs from Upper Austria to the Pope. He paused for some minutes, and none of us dared break the silence. My brother-in-law, sitting opposite Spadolini, was utterly speechless, and my sisters respectfully observed this perfectly timed silence. Spadolini went on to say that only the previous week he had arranged to go with Mother to Calabria, but it was not to be. To the Trullis, he said. It had long been her dream to see Calabria, a dream that she had hoped to realize in early summer. But suddenly everything has changed, he said. He then talked of the Etna excursion that he once had made from Taormina with Mother and me. I think it was some five or six years ago that Mother visited me in Rome. For days I walked around Rome with her, trying to find some shoes that she had set her heart on. They had to be blue and made of a particular kind of pigskin, as thin and as soft as glove leather, and after searching for days we finally found the right ones. She bought three pairs. She dragged me to several dinners with acquaintances of hers, not relatives, just to establish an alibi for my father’s benefit, to cover up her continual meetings with Spadolini, which no one really begrudged her and everyone knew about, but which she constantly tried to conceal. She took me with her to these dreadful dinners, but she did not return home with me, because she wanted to spend the night with Spadolini — and she did. I did not begrudge my mother these nocturnal meetings with Spadolini. I felt sorry for her because she was dependent on them, as I was bound to conclude. I know that after these dinners Spadolini would be waiting for her somewhere in Trastevere, where they would repair to an apartment belonging to friends of his and stay together till morning. I was sorry not only for Mother but for Spadolini too. On the other hand, I despised them both. But on the excursion to Etna, at the end of January, they took me with them. In Taormina we naturally stayed at the Timeo. We hired a taxi and drove up to the snowline. From there we went by cable car to the Etna plateau. The main crater was shrouded in fog. There was nothing to be seen. All three of us were the happiest people imaginable. Spadolini now described our Etna excursion. We took the cable car to the top and went into the restaurant, he said. But it was so cold that we wanted to stay there only long enough for a cup of tea. Then your mother and I, he said, addressing me, decided to walk down the mountain on foot, but you refused because you said you were afraid. Do you remember? Yes, I said, I was afraid. You were afraid, said Spadolini, but we weren’t. I took your mother’s hand and we walked down the mountain. You went back by cable car. We saw you in the cable car from below, and you saw us from above, he said. Suddenly there was a snowstorm, so dense that we couldn’t see you anymore. We couldn’t see you, and you couldn’t see us. The cable car was no longer visible to us, and we were no longer visible to you as you stood in the cable car. You said later that it had swayed so much that you were afraid it would be wrenched from its moorings. You said you had looked for us in the snow under the cable car but lost sight of us. The cable car swayed so much that you thought your last hour had come, said Spadolini. We couldn’t see anything either in the snowstorm and crouched in a crevice in the ice. In minutes the snow had drifted so high that we were almost buried. As in the Alps, said Spadolini, as in the Alps. We thought we were going to perish, as people perish in the Alps. We could no longer see a thing, said Spadolini. If we don’t want to freeze to death we must keep going, I thought. I got hold of your mother and went on. But I was soon exhausted, and she got hold of me, and so on, said Spadolini. You had long since arrived at the station in the valley, and the snowstorm hadn’t stopped. You notified the police. But they didn’t go up the mountain because the storm was too fierce. We were in a lava crevice, said Spadolini, and thought we were going to fall down the mountainside. We didn’t move. But your mother kept saying, We must go on. She got hold of me and pushed me forward, farther and farther forward, said Spadolini. Finally we crouched in a lava crevice, convinced that we were going to die. I prayed, said Spadolini, silently, without your mother’s knowing. Quite silently. Then the snowstorm abated, and we were saved. You had warned us, Spadolini said. We shouldn’t have gone down the mountain on foot. Lots of people have perished that way. Etna is a deadly mountain, he said with some pathos. But your mother and I were lucky, he said. I’ll never forget our Etna excursion. Then we went back to Taormina. Exhausted and half frozen, we went to our beds. That evening we turned up in the dining room in full rig, as if nothing had happened. I should have listened to you, but my love for your mother made me quite crazy. Just imagine what would have happened if your mother hadn’t repeatedly gotten hold of me and pushed me, he said, literally pushed me down the mountain! When necessary, your mother was what they call afearless woman. Energetic, said Spadolini, full of verve. And that evening she looked so elegant, wearing a Persian dress, a cream-colored dress, he said — you’re bound to remember it. My God, he said, how good your mother looked in that dress! Perhaps you don’t remember your mother as I do, he said. I have the most wonderful memories of her. I felt terrible when I heard the news, said Spadolini. It was the most terrible news I’d had for a long time. How often your mother saved me from death — that’s the truth — by inviting me to Wolfsegg. Here I had the peace I needed in order to survive, he said. This house and this landscape are dearer to me than any others. The high culture that is to be found everywhere here shields one from despair. When I was nuncio in Peru I constantly thought of Wolfsegg, of you and your mother. Thinking of you here enabled me to survive there. But Peru is a magnificent country, said Spadolini, magnificent, magnificent. The news was the saddest I could possibly have received, he said. He got up and said that he would now go across to the Orangery and see the dead. Before we all left the room, he came up to me and said that the death of my mother was the greatest loss he could have suffered. Don’t lose control, he said. You’re now the master of Wolfsegg. The time had come for Spadolini to visit the Orangery. The other guests had long since retired to their rooms. Noises could still be heard from the kitchen, but silence reigned everywhere else. Caecilia led the way, almost running and opening all the doors. She arrived first at the Orangery. For the last ten or twelve yards she slowed down to a walking pace. She did not go straight in but waited for Spadolini, who was following her. He had lost none of his composure. He was wearing the most elegant shoes I have ever seen. I had noticed them earlier as I walked behind him up to the second floor. It was always a delight to see him buying his shoes, only in the Via Condotti, of course, never on the Corso, where I bought mine. I looked admiringly at them in the fresh grass. They showed up particularly well in the light of the catafalque lamps, which lit up part of the park, while the rest was in darkness. Spadolini wanted me, or Amalia at least, to enter the Orangery first, but we ceded precedence to him. He took Caecilia’s arm and went in. He halted in front of the coffins and pressed Caecilia to his side. My brother-in-law stood behind her, and Amalia stood behind Spadolini, while I stationed myself in the background, behind them all. The huntsmen who were keeping watch stood stock-still, their faces impassive, as at a military lying in state. The scene reminded me of the monument to the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw, which I had once seen with Johannes when we met in Warsaw for a trip to Krakow. He had been hunting near Zakopane, and I had been visiting relatives near Wilamowice. For a few minutes we all stood motionless. Then I conceived a sudden desire to see the faces of my sisters, my brother-in-law, and Spadolini, instead of the dead and by now quite alien faces of my father and my brother. I went up to the coffins and pretended to check the ice blocks, lifting the sheets, looking under them, then dropping them again, though I was interested only in the faces of Spadolini, my sisters, and my brother-in-law. Yet their faces gave no hint of what was going on in their minds. They betrayed nothing. They were quite motionless, like curtains behind which everything lay hidden. I had hoped that these faces would reveal what lay behind them, but everything that would have interested me remained hidden. They’re all so clever and controlled, I thought as I stood in front of them, not knowing whether they had divined my purpose. I could well believe this of Spadolini, and of my sisters. The only one who showed his true face, with no curtain drawn over it, as it were, was my brother-in-law, the wine cork manufacturer. He had not drawn a curtain over his stolidity, of which he was not even aware, I thought. All the others had their facial curtains drawn; my brother-in-law, the wine cork manufacturer, was the only one who did not interest me at all. What the others are thinking behind these facial curtains would certainly be extremely interesting, I told myself. But I know what kind of thoughts they’re thinking. I don’t have to pull back the curtains to know what’s going on behind them, I thought. Carefully, in keeping with the occasion, I again lifted one of the sheets, then gently let it fall back over the ice blocks, fully aware that I was behaving atrociously. It’s natural that Spadolini should have taken Caecilia’s arm, I thought. Like a scene in a film. Faces in a film. Film stars’ faces. I stepped back quickly, as though suddenly realizing that I had disturbed a solemn act, and returned to my former position behind the group. The huntsmen were irritated but tried to remain composed in spite of their irritation. The faces of the dead were now like wax, their color a dirty gray. These dirty-gray sunken faces must be washed in the morning, I thought. I’ll give instructions. I mustn’t forget. Suddenly Spadolini knelt down in front of Mother’s coffin. It was an embarrassing scene. My sisters had no option but to kneel down with him. I naturally remained standing. For two or three minutes, which is a long time in such a situation, Spadolini and my sisters knelt before the coffins. A film scene, I thought again. It occurred to me that before visiting the Orangery Archbishop Spadolini had fortified himself with a hearty supper. First we have supper, then we pay our respects, I thought. How elegantly he rises to his feet, I thought, unlike my sisters, whose movements were awkward as they got up off their knees. Spadolini turned around to me as if to ask what happened next. I led him to the entrance, and he went out. It was completely dark. Your mother was probably so badly injured that it was impossible for her to lie in state like your father and Johannes, he said softly. Then, after we had walked a few yards toward the house, he asked how the accident had happened. My sisters being unable to give a coherent account, I told Spadolini what I had read in the papers, speaking in short sentences, as though reciting the headlines. After a concert, I said. Ah, after a concert, said Spadolini. Our lives are in the hands of God, he said. And naturally we don’t understand God. We don’t have the strength to understand Him. May God give you the strength to come to terms with your life, he said. All he wanted to do now, he said, was retire to his room, until the funeral. I’llprayfor the dead, he said, the dear departed. My sisters had expected Spadolini to spend the rest of the evening with us and were very surprised when he left them standing. Suddenly obliged to make do with me again, they proposed that we go up to the drawing room for a glass of wine. My brother-in-law was in favor of this, but I wanted to end the day my own way, without seeing any more of the family. I said I was going to my room, and left my sisters and my brother-in-law standing, as Spadolini had done a moment earlier. I went up to my room and locked the door but had no intention of going straight to bed, which would have been foolish, as there was no question of my being able to sleep. What Spadolini said about Mother was superficial, I thought. He described her as he wanted us to see her, from his point of view. This superficial view showed her as he himself wished to see her while he sat with us over supper, not as he had really seen her. He wished to see her as a woman who loved Austria and people and artists. I found this picture of my mother rather embarrassing, despite Spadolini’s presentation, but my sisters saw it differently. They took all he said seriously, but it was not to be taken seriously, I thought, though he had given a quite good account of the Etna excursion, being careful to describe it in a way that I could not really quarrel with and that would lead anyone who had not been involved, as I had, to regard it as a merely trivial episode. Yet I can still recall the sinister aspect of this episode, I thought as I sat in my chair, not turning the light on but surrendering myself to the darkness. He had described the Etna episode as though it had been trivial and insignificant, with nothing diabolical about it, but in fact it was utterly diabolical, I thought. What Spadolini had described as a harmless outing from Taormina to Catania and Mount Etna had in fact been anything but harmless. Their descent from the plateau on foot was a diabolical plot, I thought, hatched jointly by my mother and Spadolini. They took advantage of the snowstorm. They took advantage of the crevices in the ice. They reckoned with the drifting snow and deliberately ventured into the snowstorm, leaving me up there alone, not knowing what was happening, as they calculated. The pair of them were anything but harmless, I thought. With them calculation was an abiding principle. Over supper Spadolini had portrayed Mother as a harmless person who loved and respected him, but Mother was not like that, I thought. She was not a harmless person who would make a harmless excursion to Mount Etna with Spadolini. She was cunning, and her cunning was at least a match for his, far more than a match. Mother was always sly, I thought This ugly word seemed to fit her perfectly, and I did not recoil from it. The two of them were always sly. Spadolini described Mother as though she were a superficial woman with only good qualities, a woman who knew no evil, was on her guard against evil and would not allow it near her. But Mother was not at all like that — she was the epitome of evil, I thought. I did not shrink from pursuing this idea as I sat in my chair. Mother was evil personified, I thought. Spadolini must have seen this; he’s too intelligent not to have seen it, too well schooled intellectually, I told myself, borrowing one of his phrases. He had spoken as though Mother had been what they call a woman of the world, which she never was: she was a typical provincial, an upstart, I thought, and totally anticultural. This last term seemed more apposite than any other, for she naturally never loved Mahler or admired any composer. Music was just a means that she used to show off her latest tasteless clothes to the set she respected, though there was nothing about it to respect, I thought. It’s the most repulsive set there is, I thought, which has no time for any form of art and despises anything to do with art. Spadolini said Mother had imbued him with a love of Florence, but in fact it was only with reluctance that she went to this old city, only with reluctance that she visited its fine churches, only with reluctance that she attended concerts and exhibitions. And she never read a good book — which says a lot, I told myself. What Spadolini dished up was a completely bogus picture of Mother, I told myself. How distasteful his remarks suddenly seemed! Utterly hypocritical and mendacious, wholly tailored to the occasion, which he kept calling a sad occasion as he sat at the table, though without feeling any real sadness, for this was beyond his capacity. Mother suddenly became — this was not how he really saw her but how he chose to describe her — a woman of taste, full of the joy of living, a person who loved life, as he put it, interested in everything, a good mother, a born educator. And a born homemaker to boot, I thought. More than once he referred to her as the soul of Wolfsegg. As a profound observer of nature and a generous hostess; Spadolini spoke of someone who had turned Wolfsegg into a paradise for all of us, someone notable for her goodness and vivacity, whom we could not help loving, who was loved by all around her, because to love her was the most natural thing in the world. Your mother was goodness itself, he told us. She held the family together. He actually said, Your mother was a dear soul, and I am still wondering where he picked up that emetic phrase. In Spadolini’s speech one falsehood interlocked with the next, I thought. But Spadolini’s not really mendacious, I thought, just utterly calculating. The way he said a dear soul was quite inimitable. Nobody I know could have said it with such natural tenderness and nobility. Only Archbishop Spadolini, I thought as I sat in my chair and drank in the darkness. I took pleasure in going through Spadolini’s studied performance word for word, examining his vocal inflections, his verbal artistry. I can learn a lot from Spadolini, I thought, always something new. The way he pronounced the name Caecilia on greeting her, and the name Amalia, and the term brother-in-law, which came out with such unbelievably studied awkwardness, I thought. The way he turned around outside the Orangery, looked across at the house, and said, This magnificent building, this extraordinary work of art. The way he said to Amalia, Your mother told me many things about you, and always good things. And to Caecilia, Your mother always praised you. And to me, Your mother set all her hopes on you. He also spoke of Johannes, saying that he was a God-fearing man and the handsomest he had ever known, the purest character, the most restrained conversationpartner. Theselfless, reassuring brother. He had grown very fond of Johannes, as he had of my father; he had loved them both, right from the beginning. I once took Johannes on a tour of the Vatican palaces, he said, and presented him to the Holy Father. There’s a sudden emptiness here, he said, then immediately added that new people would take charge of Wolfsegg and do everything for the best. Meanwhile, I thought, his jacket has probably been pressed as he wanted it pressed, and his trousers too. My sisters are doubtless pressing his clothes while he’s in Father’s room praying for everything connected with Wolfsegg, I thought. He used to go to the chapel to pray, I thought, but today he’s afraid of being disturbed by the other guests. Grief is a beautiful virtue, he said, as I now recall. The Almighty closes one door in order to open another. His words suddenly sickened me. I had heard them all before, but I had never found them so patently sickening. After he had finished eating and recounted the Etna anecdote, I recalled, he said that when Mother had last visited him at his office she had been tearful and disconsolate. She came to see me in Rome, tearful and disconsolate, in search of help. He still did not know the cause of her despondency and wondered whether we did. It had something to do with your father, he said. Something that was troubling him, connected with Wolfsegg. Mother was always greatly concerned about Wolfsegg, he said, and especially about her children, about us. There was no one with whom he had had better conversations, he said, as she was such a good listener. The truth was the exact opposite, I thought. Mother could never listen, she always interrupted; she would not let anyone say anything but broke up every conversation as soon as it started. She could not stand conversations and never allowed one to develop, I thought. She had no scruples about hogging the scene and disrupting whatever conversation was going on. And the remarks she made in order to disrupt a conversation were so stupid. It was one of her intolerable traits that she detested any conversation, especially an intellectual conversation, pitched at a higher level, so to speak. She could not endure it and would break it up with her foolish remarks. She was our conversation-stopper, I thought, and from this we all suffered. Spadolini described Mother in the shameful manner that survivors commonly adopt in order to put themselves in a favorable light, I thought. According to Spadolini, Mother had listened to Mahler like an angel, but the truth is that concerts bored her stiff, whatever was being played; only the most superficial music could make her face light up, I thought. Only the most superficial book could hold her attention, and then only for a few pages, for there was nothing she hated so much as reading. With Mother everything was pretense, I thought; she would seize upon everything quite ruthlessly in order to falsify and degrade it. And she had not the slightest respect for any product of the mind: that was why she hated Uncle Georg, why she hated me, why she hated everything intellectual, I thought. Spadolini went far too far, I thought, when he called Mother an artistic person, with an interest in all things intellectual, and then added, in his fulsome way, that this was rare in a woman. The truth is that Mother had no intellectual interests and was not even remotely artistic. Even my father, to whom it was basically a matter of indifference whether or not his wife had intellectual interests, whether or not she was an artistic person, often referred to her as a simpleton, and he, her lifelong companion, must have known her better than anyone. Spadolini went so far in his apotheosis as to say that she had a vein of philosophy, though his Italianate intonation lent even this piece of mendacity a certain charm. When I heard him utter the phrase, I had thought it particularly charming, without thinking what he meant by it. The manner always overlaid the matter, I thought. It was inevitable that he should also call Mother a pious woman, a faithful daughter of the Church and a good Christian. In Rome Mother had bought him a silk nightshirt — in the Via Condotti, of course — which he wore only on real feast days. She chose it herself, and she chose the best and most beautiful. Your mother used to mother me, he said — these were his very words. Sometimes she felt terribly alone, he said, abandoned by everyone. At Wolfsegg, among you, said Spadolini, quite alone, truly lonely. It is of course true that she was a lonely woman, as he said, but what he did not know was that she sought refuge from loneliness, more than from anything else, in a world that she hated because it bored her. Curiously, my thoughts now shifted from Spadolini to Goethe, the German patrician whom his countrymen have adapted and adopted as their very own literary prince, as I had observed to Gambetti when we last met. Goethe, the honest burgher, the collector of insects and aphorisms, with his philosophical mishmash. (Gambetti did not know the meaning ofmishmash and I had to explain it to him.) Goethe, the petit bourgeois of philosophy, the man on the make, of whom Maria once observed that he did not turn the world on its head but buried his own in German parochialism. Goethe, the classifier of stones, the stargazer, the philosophical thumbsucker of the Germans, who ladled their spiritual jam into household canning jars, to be consumed at any time and for any purpose. Goethe, who assembled commonplaces for the Germans, to be published by the house of Cotta and rubbed into their ears by schoolmasters until they were completely blocked. Goethe, who betrayed the German mind more or less for centuries, paring it down to the German average with what I had described to Gambetti, at our last meeting, as Goethean assiduity. Goethe is the philosophical pied piper, the German for all seasons, I told him. The Germans take their Goethe like medicine, believing in its efficacy, its health-giving properties. Goethe is nothing other than Germany’s foremost intellectual quack, I told Gambetti, her first intellectual homeopath. The Germans swallow their Goethe, as it were, and are healthy. The whole German nation ingests its Goethe and feels better. But Goethe is a charlatan, I told Gambetti; Goethe’s writings and philosophy are the acme of German charlatanry. Be careful, Gambetti, I said, beware of Goethe. He gives everyone indigestion, except the Germans. They believe in Goethe and revere him as one of the wonders of the world. Yet all the time this wonder of the world is a philosophical truck farmer. (Gambetti did not know what a truck farmer was and laughed loudly when I told him.) Goethe’s work as a whole is a philosophical truck farm. Goethe never reached the heights in any sphere, I said. He never rose above the mediocre in anything he attempted. He isn’t the greatest lyric poet, he isn’t the greatest prose writer, and to compare his plays with Shakespeare’s is like comparing a stunted dachshund from the Frankfurt suburbs with a tall Pyrenean mountain dog. Take Faust, I said — what megalomania! A totally unsuccessful experiment by a megalomaniac whose ambition went to his head and who imagined that this head could encompass the world. Goethe, the Frankfurter with big ideas who moved to Weimar, the megalomaniac patrician in the world of women. Goethe, who turned the Germans’ heads and made fools of them and has had them on his conscience for a hundred fifty years. Goethe is the gravedigger of the German mind, I told Gambetti. Compared with Voltaire, Descartes, or Pascal, for instance, and of course with Shakespeare, Goethe is an alarmingly small figure. The prince of poets — what a ridiculous notion! Yet how utterly German! Hölderlin is the great lyricist, Musil the great prose writer, and Kleist the great dramatist. Goethe fails on all three counts. But now my thoughts returned to what Spadolini had said about my mother’s being a special person. He’s right, I thought, in that every human being is special, including my mother, but that isn’t what he meant. Spadolini, for opportunistic motives, painted a false picture of her over supper, depicting her as unusually good, unusually cultured, and unusually interested in everything — which she was not. Mother was really quite ordinary, not at all unusual. There was nothing unusual about her, unless I were to say that she was unusually inconsiderate and, to my mind, unusually stupid, as well as unusually vain, in a primitive way. And unusually greedy where money was concerned, it now occurred to me, but Spadolini probably did not know this; perhaps he could not know it. When I think of the many apartments she acquired secretly, in every possible town, largely behind my father’s back! Possibly he never knew, or even suspected, how greedy she was, I thought. And I am reminded of her perverse enthusiasm for stocks and bonds. Over supper Spadolini painted an unwarrantably false picture of her, deploying all his artistry and charm in order to present us with a mother quite different from the real one. He idealized Mother much more than Father, though he began, quite deliberately, by painting an unbearably idealized portrait of him too. What he said to me and my sisters, I thought, amounted essentially to an unwarrantable idealization of ourselves. I was able to see through it, since by now I had a good ear for the tune he was playing. It was the calculating Spadolini who sat with us at supper, the calculating Spadolini who went with us to the Orangery, resolved to put on a calculated show of grief, I thought. He idealized Wolfsegg too, for the Wolfsegg he described bore no relation to the real Wolfsegg. In the few hours he’s been here, this man of the church has shown himself immensely adept at calculation and falsification, I thought. Before our very eyes and ears he’s transformed fools into thinkers, malevolent individuals into saints, illiterates into philosophers, low characters into models of virtue, baseness and meanness into inward and outward greatness, monsters into human beings, an appalling country into a paradise, and a stolid populace into a nation deserving of respect. Spadolini had extolled the dead in a quite impermissible manner, I thought, essentially falsifying them and selling us the fake as the genuine article. He had abused our eyes and ears, as it were, by trying to deceive them and enlist us on his side, in order to show himself to the best advantage and get off as lightly as possible. But he miscalculated, I told myself, by overdoing the falsehood and falsification. He underestimated us, he even underestimated my sisters, who after all aren’t so stupid as to let Spadolini dictate to them what their parents and their brother were like. According to him they were wholly admirable, praiseworthy characters, but not even my sisters saw them as such. They weren’t stupid enough to swallow Spadolini’s bait, I thought. Even they must have known that Spadolini was talking twaddle, that everything he said was the opportunistic twaddle that people usually talk in such situations, in the face of death—to use a tasteless cliché—in order to make the dead palatable to the living, when throughout their lives they were distasteful and insufferable. He too subscribes to the principle that a false light must be cast on the dead, I told myself. And the false light that Spadolini cast on those who now lay in state was so glaring as to be positively repellent. Whoever dies has led a real life, I told myself, whatever it was like, and no one is entitled to falsify it by suddenly perverting the nature of the dead just because it serves his purpose, because he wishes to put on an appealing performance. Spadolini wished to put on an appealing performance by describing my mother, my father, and my brother as he did, I thought. And the performance this churchman put on was so appealing that it nauseated me — that’s the truth, I thought. Spadolini probably thought we were stupid enough to fall for it and felt obliged to display this distorted mirror image of the dead. Spadolini painted a picture of people he had never seen. He did not shrink from presenting one lie after another to our ears and eyes, but our ears and eyes have always been sound, I believe, capable of hearing and seeing something quite different from what Spadolini presented to them. Spadolini is a born falsifier, I told myself, a born opportunist — a born prince of the Church. I suddenly understood why Spadolini had had such an incredible career, which took him to the highest office at such vertiginous speed. Maria has the advantage over me, I thought: she has an unerring eye that isn’t taken in by outward show. She never let herself fall for Spadolini’s outward show, least of all for his subtle art of persuasion. Never, I thought. Maria judged Spadolini correctly. She did not admire him as I did but was always repelled by him. I find Spadolini repellent, she often told me, and to you he’s dangerous. He endangers everything he touches, she said. She always called him the dangerous Spadolini. We’ve had this dangerous Spadolini to supper today, I thought. And now we have the dangerous Spadolini staying in the house. We immediately sanctify the dead in order to be safe from them, so that they will leave us in peace — that’s another saying of Maria’s, I thought. It’s not the first time I’ve been wrong about Spadolini, I thought. The repellent Spadolini. I’ve often been in this situation in Rome, first repelled by him and then the next day — or even just an hour later — fascinated by him again. One is constantly repelled by such people and then once more fascinated by them, I thought. Spadolini is the kind of person who both repels and fascinates, and often we’re unsure whether we’re fascinated or repelled, whether we should let ourselves be fascinated or repelled. But we can’t give up such a person, we tell ourselves, and I’ve never been able to give up Spadolini. And when I’m back in Rome I’ll go and see him and let myself be repelled and fascinated again, but more fascinated than repelled. I can’t do without him, I thought. Spadolini’s always been indispensable to me, I thought, but at the same time I remembered that this repellent character was spending the night in my father’s room, no doubt engaged in his habitual calculations. Spadolini’s calculations are always extreme, and he doesn’t spare himself, I thought. Before going to bed he swallows half a dozen tablets and observes himself in the mirror. Perhaps he’s sleeping in the silk nightshirt my mother bought him. Spadolini’s tastelessness is the opposite of my mother’s, but no less tasteless for all that. Over supper he was at pains to avoid mentioning his innumerable secret meetings with my mother, although my sisters and I knew about most of them. All the time, I was struck by how cleverly he would speak of meetings we knew about, passing over and simply ignoring ones we did not know about. In this way he was able to exclude their secret meetings. But he shouldn’t have excluded them, I thought. It was much more embarrassing to exclude them than to speak of them openly. Had he done so, he could have spared himself a good deal of nervous tension, I thought, and talked about everything far more calmly. He wouldn’t have had to be so exceedingly cautious in presenting his sketches, as we possibly knew more about their secret meetings than about the others. But Spadolini was always an exceedingly cautious man, and this is what aroused such admiration in me, and not only in me, I thought. He was more than just a born diplomat. Spadolini talked about the Etna excursion, I thought, which was of course interesting, but less interesting than the one to Syracuse or the one to Trapani, to say nothing of the trip to Malta that he made with Mother behind my back. It would certainly have been more interesting if he’d talked about these trips and excursions, more interesting to me at least, though far more embarrassing for him, I thought. I could not help thinking of all the hotel bills that Mother used to leave around in her room, always made out for two persons, the second being Spadolini, who was naturally kept by her, as they say, on all these trips and excursions. The archbishop traveled at her expense, and she had her triumph. At the same time one could not help finding it highly touching that for thirty years they went on trips and excursions together and that during all these years he never tired of her or she of him. I know that their relationship never weakened but actually intensified as they grew older. This relationship was always beneficial to Father, I thought, as it enabled him to keep her increasingly under control. Father was the wittingly complaisant husband, and he was proud, as I know, of the way he performed this role, though he concealed it even from them. Father never objected to their relationship — or perhaps he did at first, when he must have blamed himself for introducing Mother to Spadolini, presumably knowing what he was like. For thirty years he calmly watched their association develop from a turbulent and shocking liaison into a relationship that he must have judged to be vital to her existence, a stable relationship that was best left undisturbed. At supper Spadolini was reticent about all that was dearest to him in his relationship with Mother and touched only upon incidental aspects of it, throwing us a few crumbs, as it were, but keeping to himself whatever was precious to him. Yet Spadolini could have told all and admitted all, I thought, as we had long been aware of their secret, and his reticence could not fail to rekindle the embarrassment that had been dormant for years. But it didn’t occur to Spadolini that we knew more than he thought we did, that we’d long since arrived at our own conclusions, based on this superior knowledge, I in my own way and my sisters in theirs, and that what was to him a reason for reticence — for locking up the facts, locking them away, keeping them under wraps — was to us a foregone conclusion. To this extent, listening to Spadolini’s reminiscences about Mother was a ludicrous experience. Spadolini will get along quite well without Mother in future, I reflected. In fact he’s already put her behind him and is detained only by the funeral formalities. In Rome he’ll go on telling little stories about her, I thought, using her as a means to obtain further subsidies, to coax money out of me in the name of my dead mother. I was at once appalled by this thought and appalled by myself for thinking it. I would have given anything not to have thought it, but as I reflected on Spadolini’s suppertime conversation I could not suppress it, could not switch it off. It had to be thought, I told myself, like so many other thoughts we’re forced to think, whether we want to or not. There was no question of my being able to sleep, and naturally I did not want to take any sleeping tablets, as I had to be up early. I therefore decided to pass the time reading — a method that had proved effective millions of times before and been a habit with me for decades. Kierkegaard and his Sickness untoDeath came to mind. Thinking that I would find it in the upper right library, the one nearest my room, I went out as quietly as possible to get it. I had read Sickness unto Death once, many years before, at least twenty years before. But on the way to the library it struck me as ridiculous to want to read Sickness unto Death, of all books, to want to read anything by Kierkegaard, of all authors, given the circumstances and the proximity of Spadolini. It was perverse to want to read Kierkegaard’s Sickness unto Death now, I thought, and I turned back before I reached the library, because it seemed altogether senseless to read anything. I could think of no book that might interest me or hold my attention. Perhaps something by Jean Paul, I thought, or Börne — perhaps Kleist, I thought, or Heine. Or perhaps I should go straight for Schopenhauer. But it was not a good idea to read anything — much better to sit quietly in my room and reflect. How long it is since I’ve sat quietly and reflected! I thought. I went back to my room, sat down, stretched my legs out, and closed my eyes. But I was too agitated to sit for long. I had missed my chance, itwas no longer possible, and so I got up and walked back and forth in my room, but even this did not calm me, because I kept wondering how I would get through the night, this most dreadful of all nights, I thought, which will stretch on and on and can’t be shortened. I dread nothing so much as these endless nights that cannot be shortened. However intense my reflections, I won’t be able to shorten the night, I thought. I’m fully in control of myself, I haven’t taken sleeping pills for ages, and I can’t escape the night. Even when I think I shall be unable to sleep and it gets to half past twelve or half past one, I still do not take a pill. In any case there’s no problem, I thought: I mustn’t take one under any circumstances, as I have to be up by four at the latest in order to get ready for the funeral. I opened the window to let in some fresh air, but the air that came in was warm and heavy. Curiously, the air in the room was better than the air outside, and so I shut the window. Spadolini can afford to take a sleeping pill, I thought, rather enviously. He can stay in bed until eight or nine. And my silly sisters always sleep well. They’ve never taken a sleeping pill in their lives. However, since I could not take a pill and did not want to read, being sickened by the thought of literature of any kind — even French or English literature, with which I usually whiled away the night when I could no longer endure German literature — I had to think of something else to do. It was clear that simply sitting in a chair or walking up and down was on the one hand not enough and on the other hand too much. I wondered whether it would not be better to leave my room and go out. I slipped on my jacket and went down into the hall. I looked into the kitchen. The kitchen maids had not cleared away the chaotic remains of the buffet left by the guests. This irritated me, as it indicated negligence not only on the part of the kitchen staff but indirectly on the part of my sisters, their mistresses, or at any rate a degree of sloppiness that could not be allowed to continue. The pile of newspapers still lay on the table. I sat down and picked them up, thinking that I could now read them as nonchalantly as my brother-in-law had done a few hours before. After all, he had demonstrated how to read the newspapers without feeling ashamed or embarrassed, but I had not been able to. He had been quite shamelessly absorbed in the newspapers, but I was now instantly revolted by them, having at first imagined that I would enjoy them. I threw them down and left the kitchen. In the hall the smell of the overnight guests still lingered, especially that of our aunt from Titisee, and it was still present in the chapel, to which I now repaired. It was probably twelve o’clock, but I cannot remember exactly. The chapel had always frightened me, as I have said, because it had seemed like a law court, not just when I was a child but even later, when I was grown up. And now the feeling came back. I could not stay in the chapel and feel safe; I had to leave. I felt far too warm, and so I took off my jacket, hung it over my shoulders, and went across to the Orangery, which was of course still open. The whole park seemed to be filled with the smell of decomposition. I decided to go in. The huntsmen were still there, not having been relieved, and on seeing me they at once sprang to attention. They were surprised by my sudden appearance, because I had approached the Orangery so quietly. These people are perpetual stage figures, I thought on seeing them again. Whoever controls them can get them to do anything. They’ll carry out the most absurd and senseless instructions — that’s the military part of their makeup, I thought. Order them out and they’ll obey, order them in and they’ll obey, send them to their deaths and they’ll obey. To them Father was always the Colonel, I thought, which was his wartime rank, in the Nazi period. But the Colonel didn’t die on thefield of honor, as befitted his calling, I thought, but was killed when his head collided with the windshield of his car at the Lambach turnoff. Again I wanted to know whether the ice blocks had been changed and whether there were enough, but instead of beckoning one of the huntsmen over, which would have been the obvious thing to do, I went over and asked one of them whether the ice blocks had been changed and whether there were enough. He answered with a nod. By addressing the huntsman I had signified my approval of the ceremonial organized by my sedulous sisters in accordance with our time-honored funeral plan. Again unable to control myself, I tried to raise the lid of my mother’s coffin, only to find that it really was firmly screwed down. I was by now inured to any embarrassment I felt at being observed by the two huntsmen as I attempted to raise the lid. We no longer know what we’re doing, I told myself, when our nerves are so tense that we expect them to snap at any moment. I stepped back and, not wanting to show myself up in front of the huntsmen by casually leaving the Orangery, I stood for a while in front of the coffins, but as I stood there I thought of nothing but how repulsive the huntsmen were — the most repulsive people I knew — how I could no longer stand the sight of their uniforms, how I loathed their faces and had always loathed them. I was suddenly afraid of the coming day. But it’ll all go off smoothly, I told myself, echoing the words that Caecilia had used several times in the last few hours. I can rely entirely on my sisters, I told myself, especially Caecilia. She’s not asleep; she’s lying in bed, watching the cortege pass before her mind’s eye and checking it all thoroughly. She won’t miss anything that’s out of place or even seems to be out of place, I thought. Her gift for combination and arrangement — what might be called her stagecraft — is inherited from Mother, I thought. She’ll stage the funeral as Mother would have staged it. And all the time she’ll have the feeling that Mother is watching to see that everything is staged as she would have wished, not otherwise. A funeral is about to be presented, I thought — the funeral of our parents and our brother, production by Caecilia. I could see the playbill announcing the details of the performance — the title, the actors, the producer, and so forth. The huntsmen did not lose control, nor did I. I stood for a while in front of the coffins, imagining tomorrow’s premiere, produced by my sister, and enjoying it. Suddenly I wondered what would happen if Mother’s coffin were opened and I were to compel Spadolini to inspect the contents. With an immense effort I forced myself to drop the thought, and to prevent its reemerging, I went out of the Orangery. The air outside was worse than before, almost unbearably oppressive. It occurred to me that if I went over to the Children’s Villa, this time alone, my frame of mind might improve. I walked across to the Children’s Villa, pausing on the way at the Farm. The animals were lying in their stalls as though dead. I was disgusted by the sight and could not endure the smell. I was not like Johannes, who was attracted by the smell of animals, who actually loved this animal smell. People always say that one can find peace with animals, but I never have; I am always agitated when I am with animals and forced to inhale their smell. I have never acquired what they call a love of animals and feel no affinity to animal lovers. I find animals disturbing. I have always dreamed of being attacked and devoured by animals; my childhood was full of such terrifying animal dreams. Unlike Johannes, I was always scared of animals, and even now I am haunted by dreams of animals attacking and devouring me. Time and again I have tried to find peace in the presence of animals, as others can, but I have never succeeded. Animals always make me uneasy, even the smallest and most insignificant animals. I am scared of any contact with insects, for example, to say nothing of fish, which my brother used to enjoy catching. He would seize them by the tail, bash their heads in, and throw them back in the water. To this day I have visions of the fish he killed, glinting in the sunlight as they float down the stream behind the Children’s Villa. Our servants’ children thought nothing of decapitating chickens on the chopping block. They got immense pleasure from this sport, and so did Johannes. His parents forbade it, but this only increased his enthusiasm for chopping off chickens’ heads. Even as a small child he could chop off the head of a hen with one blow and then watch as the headless bird flew twenty or thirty yards through the air in its death throes. Johannes enjoyed watching the sticking of pigs and the slaughtering of cows in the Wolfsegg slaughterhouse—for our beef broth, Father used to say. I too was enthralled by these activities and sometimes took part in them, but they never gave me the same pleasure as they gave Johannes; on the contrary, they horrified me, I thought. I am not Johannes. In the cowshed I took in at a glance ninety-two head of cattle—the ideal number, my father called it. Here at least the business is still intact, I thought. It occurred to me, because my mother had once impressed the fact on me, that the milk pipe over the cows’ heads had cost three hundred eighty thousand schillings. The milk-producing unit is naturally quite decent, I thought. I then went across to the Children’s Villa. They’ve actually left all the windows open, I thought, not because I said they were to stay open but because they’ve forgotten to shut them. There hasn’t been a storm, I thought, but there was certainly one in the air. You can’t go and look for Alexander now, I told myself. I sat down on the bench in front of the villa. If Alexander had been with us at supper, Spadolini would have been less expansive, I thought. Supper would have passed off quite differently, and Spadolini would have projected a quite different image of himself. Otherwise Alexander would have simply laughed out loud at his remarks and made him look ridiculous. In Alexander’s presence Spadolini would have had to resort to quite different tactics. It now seemed to me that Spadolini was the bad character and Alexander the good one. But to say that Alexander is the good character and Spadolini the bad one is not right either, I thought. Alexander’s goodness conceals much that is bad, such as the ruthless single-mindedness with which he forces his ideas on others and his way of punishing those who resist by refusing to talk to them for days, locking himself in his room and threatening suicide. This good character is a ruthless bully, I thought, who is capable of driving another person to desperation and even, in some circumstances, doing him to death in order to vindicate some undoubtedly ridiculous idea he has conceived. Yet this demonic Alexander is concealed beneath the popular Alexander, always lovable and unfailingly helpful. However lovable a person is, we have merely to consider him for a time — if only in our mind, in which case he can be as far away as we like — and little by little he is transformed from a good person into a bad person. We are not content until we have turned this good and lovable person into someone wicked and worthless, if it serves our turn. We are prepared to misuse him, to misuse anyone, in order to rescue ourselves from some dreadful mood that is tormenting us, some mood we have gotten into without knowing how. Just now, I thought, I have been misusing Alexander in order to rescue myself, probably because Spadolini and the others can no longer serve my purpose; I have simply seized on the good Alexander and gradually transformed him into someone wicked and malign, treating him no differently from all the others who seemed to lend themselves to such misuse. No longer able to make do with reading or pacing up and down or looking out the window, we have to resort to our dearest and closest friends in order to rescue ourselves from some dire mood, I thought. Time and again I have observed that when I am possessed by one of these dire moods, I seize upon all available persons, one after another, and tear them apart, denigrate them, demolish everything about them, and denude them of more or less all their virtues so that I can rescue myself and breathe freely again. When I’ve done with my parents, my sisters, Johannes, and all the others, I thought, because they can no longer serve my purpose, I set about myself with what can be described only as the utmost ruthlessness. At this moment the victim happens to be Alexander, because my sisters and Spadolini and my brother-in-law are no longer adequate. That’s the truth. In order to gain relief we walk on faces, I thought. In the Children’s Villa I looked for my childhood, but naturally I did not find it. I went into all the rooms in search of my childhood, but of course it was not there. What’s the point of restoring the Children’s Villa, I wondered, when there’s no longer anyone around to enjoy it and benefit from it? It would be senseless to restore the Children’s Villa, which is what I had intended to do until this moment, to restore it to what it had once been for us children, I thought. It’s absurd even to think of it: I can’t restore my childhood by restoring the Children’s Villa, I thought. At first I had believed that if I had the Children’s Villa thoroughly restored — or renovated, as my sisters would say — I would be restoring or renovating my childhood. But my childhood is now as dilapidated as the Children’s Villa. Its rooms have been cleared out and plundered and their contents sold off as ruthlessly as those of the Children’s Villa. Unlike the Children’s Villa, however, my childhood was plundered not by my mother but by myself. I was even more ruthless in disposing of my childhood than she was in selling off the contents of the Children’s Villa. I’ve disposed of the finest pieces that furnished my childhood, just as my mother disposed of the finest pieces in the Children’s Villa. There’s no longer any point in opening the windows of my childhood, I thought; this would be as ludicrous as opening the windows of the Children’s Villa. My childhood became worn out and was sold for a song. I exploited it until there was nothing left to exploit. We search everywhere for our childhood, I thought, and find only a gaping void. We go into a house where as children we spent such happy hours, such happy days, and we believe we’re revisiting our childhood, but all we find is a gaping void. Entering the Children’s Villa means nothing more or less than entering this notorious gaping void, just as going into the woods where we used to play as children would mean going into thisgaping void.Wherever I was happy as a child, there now appears to be agaping void.We dispose of our childhood as if it were inexhaustible, I thought, but it isn’t. It’s very soon exhausted, and in the end there’s nothing left but the notorious gaping void. Yet this doesn’t happen just to me, I thought; it happens to everyone. For a moment this thought consoled me: no one was spared the knowledge that revisiting our childhood meant staring into this uniquely sickening void. To this extent it was a good idea to go back to the Children’s Villa, thinking I was going back to my childhood and believing it was possible. It proved to be an error, but the error was wholly beneficial, for it cured me of the belief that in order to reenter my childhood I had only to reenter the Children’s Villa, or the woods or the landscape I had known as a child. I now knew that wherever I went I would find nothing but this gaping void. I won’t expose myself to it again, I thought. In Rome I sometimes think of Wolfsegg and tell myself that I have only to go back there in order to rediscover my childhood. This has always proved to be a gross error, I thought. You’re going to see your parents, I have often told myself, the parents of your childhood, but all I’ve ever found is a gaping void. You can’t revisit your childhood, because it no longer exists, I told myself. The Children’s Villa affords the most brutal evidence that childhood is no longer possible. You have to accept this. All you see when you look back is this gaping void. Not only your childhood, but the whole of your past, is a gaping void. This is why it’s best not to look back. You have to understand that you mustn’t look back, if only for reasons of self-protection, I thought. Whenever you look back into the past, you’re looking into a gaping void. Even yesterday is a gaping void, even the moment that’s just passed. You wanted to go into the Children’s Villa in order to go back into your childhood, which you’ve spent years throwing out the window, believing it to be inexhaustible. And now it’s exhausted — you’ve spent it all quite thoughtlessly. Having used up all your other possibilities, you yielded to base sentimentality and conceived this plan for the Children’s Villa, which has now been revealed in all its horror: the Children’s Villa is a nightmare. When you first thought of restoring it and told your sisters of your plan, you actually thought that by doing so you could restore your childhood. You actually believed that your childhood could be repainted and redecorated, as it were, that it could be refurbished and reroofed like the Children’s Villa, and this in spite of hundreds of failed attempts at restoring your childhood, I thought. For this was by no means the first time you’d had the idea. You’ve often entertained it. You’ve even forced it on others and seen them come to grief when they’ve tried to realize this absurdest of all ideas. You’ve deliberately driven people to embrace it, knowing that it was doomed to failure; you’ve kept quiet about your own experience with this absurdest of all absurd ideas and left them to find out the truth for themselves. That was monstrous. I walked away from the Children’s Villa and went to the office. The Huntsmen’s Lodge was open, presumably so that the huntsmen could go in and out in order to relieve one another during their guard duty. I wouldn’t come to the office every day as Father had done, I thought. I wouldn’t take up residence there in order to deal with the business mail, to talk to the farm manager and other employees in this stifling atmosphere. Unlike my father, I wouldn’t have to treat this office as my natural habitat, I thought. My existence won’t be constricted, like my father’s, by the three-ring binders that finally crushed him. These binders at first constricted his existence, I thought, then one day fell on him and crushed him. That’s not just a vision, I thought, it’s stark reality. The business mail made Father a slave to the business. He subordinated his whole existence to the daily business mail, I thought. My grandparents stuck him in this office, by which in due course he was crushed. But it won’t crush me, I won’t let myself be crushed. The way the office is furnished is enough to crush anybody, I thought. I did not turn the light on, as I did not want to be discovered, though of course the huntsmen knew I was there. I’ll never enter this office as a farmer, I thought. I’m not a farmer, I’ve no interest in farming. One of the binders must contain details of the allowance that’s been paid to me all the years I’ve been away from Wolfsegg, I thought. I got up and looked for the relevant binder, but could not find one bearing my name. All sorts of names were inscribed on the various binders, but not mine. What was this immense sum to which my father always referred, with which my mother constantly reproached me, and which drew malevolent remarks from my sisters? They always maintained that I was kept by Wolfsegg, that I never hesitated to demand more and more from the Wolfsegg funds, that I subjected them to ever greater extortion. There must be a binder in which this immense sum was recorded, I thought, but I could not find it. I took down a number of them and leafed through them, but I could not find the one relating to me — the fatal binder, I thought, recalling that my mother had once said I would drop dead on the spot if I knew how much money they had expended on me. On the wastrel who exploited Wolfsegg for his dubious and disgusting purposes—for his disgusting intellectual purposes, I thought. His lordship goes for walks in Rome while we slave away here, my father would tell everyone when he felt hostile toward me, and in recent years he always felt hostile toward me, when it had become clear that I had no intention of returning to Wolfsegg but was determined to stay in Rome, or at any rate somewhere far away, in some remote territory of the mind, so to speak. He had no compunction in running me down to all and sundry because of my monthly allowance, to which I was in any case fully entitled, I now thought, remembering all the money that they themselves threw out the window for the most ridiculous purposes — my mother’s mania for clothes, my father’s enthusiastic support for various associations, and my brother’s craze for motor-boats and yachts, all of which cost them far more than I did. It was true, I thought, that my sisters cost less than any of us, but they weren’t worth any more: it was a pity to spend even a penny on them. This stuffy office was practically my father’s home, I thought. It was to this desktop that he fled from his family, on his desktop that he wrote all those senseless business letters, like the one still lying on it. Sometimes he would mount a tractor and endure the stench and rattle of the engine in order to get away from his family; at other times he would flee to his office. In the last ghastly years of his life he was totally isolated. Pitiful, I thought. But then he courted such isolation and did nothing to counter it. Father was too weak to counter anything, I thought — it wasn’t his way. He preferred to follow this miserable path leading to total atrophy. Such tremendous natural beauty, I thought, and such a tremendous estate, yet Father led this pathetic office-bound existence! The office was to blame for the expressionless face he had in the end. The office ultimately destroyed him. His twice-yearly cultural trips, so called, no longer brought him any benefit. He set out on them reluctantly, already worn out; when he returned he was still worn out, sickened by yet another failure to escape from himself, and the office was once more his refuge. By imperceptible degrees he was being destroyed, partly by the family, who were bent upon his destruction, and partly by the office, where the accumulation of bureaucratic imbecilities seemed calculated to crush him and his existence. Yet Father took refuge in these bureaucratic imbecilities, I thought, to escape his hysterical wife, my mother, and most of the time he locked himself in. Only the huntsmen had free access, no one else. The family had to make appointments to see him. If they knocked on the door unannounced they were not admitted. His implacable destroyers were forbidden to enter. I won’t let myself be destroyed and annihilated by this office, I thought. It won’t be my refuge. I won’t make the three-ring binders my secret, silent companions, as Father used to do for half a day or a whole day at a time and often, obscenely, for half the night, even the whole night. Father often called his office the captain’s bridge, but that’s not what it’ll be for me, I thought. I felt a sense of personal humiliation on recalling how my father used to call the office the captain’s bridge, for he never wielded a captain’s authority at Wolfsegg. The real authority was wielded by my mother, who let him go on prating about the captain’s bridge because she knew how ludicrous it sounded. No, this won’t be my office, I thought. I won’t let myself be tyrannized by the three-ring binders. Millions are tyrannized by three-ring binders and never escape their tyranny, I thought. For the last century the whole of Europe has let itself be tyrannized by three-ring binders, and the tyranny is increasingly oppressive. Soon the whole of Europe will be not only tyrannized but destroyed by them. I once told Gambetti that it was above all the Germans who had let themselves be tyrannized by three-ring binders. Even their literature is subject to their tyranny, I told him. Every German book written in this century is a product of this tyranny. German literature has been tyrannized and almost destroyed by three-ring binders, I said. And this present-day literature, produced under this tyranny, is naturally the most pathetic there has ever been. No other age has seen such a helpless, pathetic literature, a ludicrous desktop literature dictated by three-ring binders. At least that’s how it seems to me whenever I read a recently written book. All these books are utterly pathetic, I said, written by authors who all their lives have let themselves be totally dominated by three-ring binders. All we have now is a petit bourgeois bureaucratic literature, I told Gambetti. This applies even to the great figures in German literature, I said, even to Thomas Mann, even to Musil, whom I rate highest among all these exponents of bureaucratic literature. Even Musil produced only dreary bureaucratic works. The whole of this literature is middle class through and through, and for the most part lower middle class, I told Gambetti on the Pincio. Even Thomas Mann and Musil, in every line they wrote, let themselves be dominated by three-ring binders. Reading this literature, we see how a bureaucrat writes, a more or less lower-middle-class bureaucrat who draws his inspiration ultimately from the three-ring binder files. The patrician Thomas Mann produced thoroughly lower-middle-class works, I told Gambetti, addressed to lower-middle-class readers who fall upon them with gusto. For at least a hundred years we’ve had nothing but what I would call binder literature, lower-middle-class bureaucratic writing, and the masters of this literature are Musil and Thomas Mann, to say nothing of the others. The one exception is of course Kafka, who actually was abureaucrat, though he didn’t write bureaucratic works, but none of the others could write anything else. Kafka, the bureaucrat, was the only one who produced not bureaucratic literature but great literature. One can’t say this of any of the so-called great German authors of our century, Gambetti, unless one wishes to make common cause with the millions of scribblers who write for the cultural pages of the press and in the past hundred years have turned the newspapers into a cultural soup kitchen, regurgitating their hair-raising misconceptions ad nauseam. In this century the Germans have basically produced literature dominated by three-ring binders, which I have no hesitation in calling binder literature, because I don’t want to risk being compromised at some future date, when this binder literature is recognized for what it is and consigned to the trash can of literary history, which is where it belongs. On the other hand, the literature of the present day is our literature, and we’ll have to live with it, like it or not, because we’re committed to it, I said, not without a touch of pathos. Our literature actually has many imposing peaks, I said, but we mustn’t compare them with the likes of Shakespeare. Gambetti listened attentively, I thought, but without taking me seriously. I thought it a pity that he did not take me seriously on the subject of modern German literature. I concluded my disquisition by saying, as if to console him, But Maria is the exception, meaning that some of Maria’s poems were superior to anything else written in German in her time — that is to say, in our time. He may have understood this as a charming jest prompted by friendship, but it was the truth. I seriously believed that Maria’s poems represented a high point in German literature, not just in our own dingy decades but in the whole of the century, which would probably end without reaching another such high point. As I see it, Gambetti, the Germans and the Austrians are so enfeebled — and will continue so for at least another half century — that neither they nor we will reach another such peak. For I’ve given up believing in miracles, Gambetti. In any case, I added, it’s unlikely that by the end of the century the world will still exist as we now know it, as we have to put up with it day after day. I very much doubt that it will. Everything seems to indicate that it will change so radically as to become unrecognizable. It will be totally changed, totally destroyed. Everything points to this, I said, and then I added, But this vision of mine comes supplied with inbuilt error. Whereupon Gambetti burst into his usual unrestrained laughter. We’re often led to exaggerate, I said later, to such an extent that we take our exaggeration to be the only logical fact, with the result that we don’t perceive the real facts at all, only the monstrous exaggeration. I’ve always found gratification in my fanatical faith in exaggeration, I told Gambetti. On occasion I transform this fanatical faith in exaggeration into an art, when it offers the only way out of my mental misery, my spiritual malaise. I’ve cultivated the art of exaggeration to such a pitch that I can call myself the greatest exponent of the art that I know of. I know of none greater. No one has carried the art of exaggeration to such extremes, I told Gambetti, and if I were suddenly asked to say what I really was, secretly, I’d have to say that I was the greatest artist I knew in the field of exaggeration. Gambetti again burst into his characteristic laughter, which promptly infected me, so that that afternoon on the Pincio we both laughed more than ever before. But of course this too is an exaggeration, I realize as I come to write it down — a typical instance of my art of exaggeration. The art of exaggeration, I told Gambetti, is the art of tiding oneself over existence, of making one’s existence endurable, even possible. The older I get, the more I resort to this art, I told Gambetti. Those who are most successful at tiding themselves over existence have always been the great exaggerators. Whatever they were, whatever they achieved, they owed solely to the art of exaggeration. The painter who doesn’t exaggerate is a poor painter, the musician who doesn’t exaggerate is a poor musician, and the writer who doesn’t exaggerate is a poor writer, I said. With some, of course, the art of exaggeration consists in understating everything, in which case we have to say that they exaggerate understatement, that exaggerated understatement is their particular version of the art of exaggeration, Gambetti. Exaggeration is the secret of great art, I said, and of great philosophy. The art of exaggeration is in fact the secret of all mental endeavor. I now left the Huntsmen’s Lodge without pursuing this undoubtedly absurd idea, which would assuredly have proved correct had I developed it. On my way to the Farm, I went up to the Children’s Villa, reflecting that it was the Children’s Villa that had prompted these absurd speculations. Extinction, I thought, turning away from the Children’s Villa and walking toward the Farm — why not? I’ll need a lot of time — more than a year, maybe two years, maybe even three. Every so often we feel fully competent to create a work of the mind, even one like Extinction, which has to be written down, but then we shy away from it, knowing that we shall probably not be able to stick it out, that we shall make quite good progress at first and then suddenly fail, with the result that all will be lost, and not just the time we have spent — and therefore wasted — in the attempt. We shall have made utter fools of ourselves, maybe not in front of others but in front of ourselves. Not wanting to expose ourselves to such discomfiture, we refuse to make a start, even when we think we are capable of doing so. We procrastinate, as though afraid of being grossly embarrassed, I thought, of grossly embarrassing ourselves. We expect others to perform well, outstandingly well, but we ourselves don’t perform at all; we don’t come up with even the most risible mental product. But that’s how it is, I thought: of everyone else we demand the highest achievements, but we ourselves achieve nothing. Not wishing to lay ourselves open to the awful humiliation of failure, we repeatedly shelve our plan for a written product of the mind and take refuge in any excuse, any subterfuge, that serves our turn. We are suddenly too craven to begin. Yet all the time we have this product of the mind in our heads and want to produce it, come what may. We’ve decided on it, we tell ourselves, and for days, weeks, years, perhaps even for decades, we go around telling ourselves that we have decided on it, yet we never get down to it. What we have in mind is something tremendous, we tell ourselves; sometimes we even tell others, being too vain to keep it to ourselves, but all we are capable of is something utterly risible. I’m going to write something tremendous, I tell myself, yet at the same moment I am afraid of it, and in this moment of fear I have already failed and can no longer begin. We say grandly that what we have in mind is something unique and tremendous. We do not shrink from such an assertion, yet at the same time we lower our heads, take a pill, and go to bed, instead of starting on this unique and tremendous project. That’s how we are, I once told Gambetti. We pretend we’re capable of everything, of the very highest achievement, but can’t even pick up a pen and write down a single word of the unique and tremendous work that we’ve just announced. We all succumb to megalomania, I told Gambetti, in order to avoid having to pay the price for our constant ineffectuality. Extinction, I thought, but to be honest I still had only a vague notion of the form the work should take, though I had thought about it for years. What I have in mind isn’t something unique or tremendous, I told Gambetti, but it’s rather more than a sketch, rather more than an existential sketch. What I have in mind is something worthwhile that I needn’t be ashamed of, I said. I consider myself competent and able to write something that I consider worthwhile because it’s important to me and will give me pleasure. I’m not really a writer, I told Gambetti, only a literary broker dealing in German literature, a kind of literary realtor, as it were, a dealer in literary real estate. It’s true, of course, that anyone who writes so much as a postcard nowadays calls himself a writer, but I don’t, notwithstanding the hundreds of works I’ve tried to write or have actually written. In any case I detest the majority of writers, I said. There are very few that I love, but these few I love dearly. I’ve always shunned writers, especially German writers, and have never shared a table with one. I can’t imagine anything worse than meeting a writer and sharing a table with him. I’m prepared to accept his works, but not their producer. Most of them are bad characters, if not positively repulsive, no matter who they are, and if you meet them they ruin their work for you — they simply extinguish it. People jostle to meet some writer whom they love or admire — or even hate — and this completely ruins his work for them. The best way to liberate yourself from the work of some author that obsesses you for one reason or another — either because you hold it in high esteem or because you detest it — is to meet the author himself. We go and meet the author of a literary work and are instantly rid of it, I told Gambetti. Writers are on the whole the most repulsive people, I told Gambetti. I have to admit that as a young student I actually sought them out, forced my way into their presence, waylaid them, took them by surprise. I even insinuated myself into the company of a number of authors in order to spy on them. But having sought them out, I hated them all without exception and could no longer read their works. All these writers I sought out and spied on, I told Gambetti, now seem to me low, vulgar, stupid individuals who have attained a degree of literary fame but whose company I can do without because they have nothing to offer me but their mediocrity. Everything about them is mediocre, I told Gambetti. Everything about them is redolent of common malice and a base philistinism that battens on megalomania. They are all basically simpleminded, like the books they write and put on the market, I once remarked to Maria. It’s as though for the last hundred years German literature had been misappropriated by provincials. All we have today is provincial literature, I told her, nothing else. I remembered saying this as I walked toward the Farm. Only your writings, I had told her, are great and unique and will endure — we won’t have to be ashamed of them in a hundred years’ time. No, I told Gambetti, I never wanted to be a writer. It never occurred to me, but I always had a desire to write something down, just for myself, and the fact that some of my things have been published here and there is a matter for regret. I’m not really a writer, I said, not at all. Passing the half-open windows of the Farm buildings, I could hear the cows breathing. It occurs to me that we can often recall details, so-called trivialities, if we take the trouble to observe them carefully and pay attention to them, looking first at them and then through them. On the way from the Children’s Villa to the office, for instance, I observed precisely how the clouds behind the villa had taken on the shape of a dragon with a wide-open mouth. Even in memory such a triviality can remain clear, so that we can sometimes picture precisely the movement of the cloud formations even weeks, months, or years later. We do not have the slightest difficulty in calling it to mind, in reliving it, as it were. The same is true of the motions of a face we once saw years ago. We have no difficulty in recalling them. I, for instance, have no difficulty in recalling the faces of my family as they stood in front of the coffins. I can picture them exactly as they appeared to me then, with all their facial movements, for even a supposedly motionless face is in motion, since it is not dead, and even a dead face is not really dead — and so forth. What we witnessed years ago can still be seen and heard precisely, if we can master the mechanism that makes this possible. The same applies to the sense of smell, as we know. Walking along a street in Paris, we may be reminded of something that happened twenty or thirty years ago, or even more. We can visualize the object or event or encounter in question in every detail, even though the original experience lies twenty or thirty years back. I believe I have developed this natural mechanism into an art, which I practice every day and intend to perfect. Hearing the cows breathing, I suddenly felt utterly exhausted. I went up to my room and drew the curtains. It was half past one. Naturally I could not sleep. Lying awake, I could think only of what was to become of everything — of Wolfsegg and everything connected with Wolfsegg. For over two hours the question that preoccupied me was not What’s going to happen to Wolfsegg? but What can I make of Wolfsegg, which has come crashing down on my head with my parents’ death and is threatening to crush me? The immense mass of Wolfsegg has suddenly fallen on my head, I thought. It was insane to tell myself that I could calm myself by lying first on one side and then on the other. I was suddenly conscious of the hopelessness of my situation, and this consciousness gave me no respite. Not a single reasonable thought would come to me. I could not lie on one side even for a minute, as my heart was pounding so fiercely. And so I spent the rest of the night anxiously observing my heart, counting the heartbeats and noting the irregularities that broke up their rhythm at diminishing intervals, until in the end I was in a state of extreme anxiety. I recalled how terrified I had been when my specialist in Rome told me, with brutal insensitivity, that I had only a short time to live. Doctors wish to be confirmed in their prognoses, I thought, and would rather tell you that the end is imminent than predict that it will be delayed for some time, since they are reluctant to compromise themselves and fear nothing so much as the unforeseen death of one of their patients. They spare themselves such embarrassment, as my Roman specialist did, by telling the patient that he has only a minimal life expectancy. However, I have to say that Roman doctors are superior to their Austrian colleagues, whom I can describe only as completely unscrupulous and callous. My Roman specialist having predicted that I had not long to live, I lay awake wondering what I was going to do with Wolfsegg. Of course I did not know the answer, and certainly not now, preoccupied as I was with the speed and irregularity of my heartbeat. We naturally listen to what a doctor tells us, in this case my specialist in Rome, but we give no credence to it. We hear what he has to say but refuse to believe it — we ignore it. It now strikes me that this may well be the best reaction. Naturally we surfer all the time after being told that we have not long to live, but we shield ourselves from this dire prognosis because we want to go on living. We may inveigh against life and affect to despise it, but we still cling to it and want to hang on to it forever. It occurred to me that it had been weeks since I thought about my health, but now, lying in bed unable to sleep, I was worked up about everything. Just now, I thought, having firmly resolved to write Extinction, I must do all I can to protect myself, yet here I am, letting myself get worked up to such an extent that it could prove harmful, even lethal, to me. In Rome I’ve accustomed myself to a rhythm in keeping with my illness, I thought, and this takes into account my duties as Gambetti’s teacher. I’ve adjusted this rhythm precisely to my illness. In Rome I’ve subordinated everything to my illness, but now, at Wolfsegg, I’m letting myself get worked up to a quite unwarrantable degree. Every time I’ve been to Wolfsegg in recent years I’ve become overexcited and put a strain on my heart, I thought. On returning from Wolfsegg I’ve seen my Roman doctor and been told that I’ve overtaxed my heart simply by going to Wolfsegg, indeed by visiting Austria at all. I’ve never spared my heart, I thought, and this accounts for its present state. No heart can put up with a nature like mine, I told myself. My heart has little capacity for resistance, having been abused since childhood. From my earliest childhood I’ve abused my heart, overtaxed it and never given it a moment’s rest. My heart’s never been given the rest it should have had, I thought, and now it’s finished. Instead of sparing my heart by sticking to a proper rhythm, I have to endanger it by coming to Wolfsegg. But only for one day, I told myself. I’ll return to Rome as soon as possible because of my heart condition. I’ll go back to Rome. Rome is my home, not Wolfsegg. I won’t make excessive demands on my heart. This had been my specialist’s advice, and Maria’s too. She’s always said, You demand too much of your heart — you must look after it. I always listen to Maria, I thought, but then take no notice, even though she’s right. Maria, my Roman physician, my great poet, my great doctor, I thought, who knows all there is to know about the art of living. Whenever I’m in a state I run to Maria, I thought. Unable to stay in bed with my heart pounding, I got up and went to the bathroom to freshen up. Then, still in my dressing gown, I took down a monograph on Descartes from the shelf and sat down by the window. Descartes instantly distracted me from all my anxieties. No sooner had I read the first sentences by Descartes — not about Descartes — than I was saved. Reading these sentences, I was immediately distracted — not calmed but distracted. The great philosophers are my saviors, I thought. Whatever I read of them distracts me and saves me. There is apparently no certain knowledge so long as one does not know the author of one’s existence, I read. I was at once distracted and saved. This one sentence enabled me to get through the remaining few hours at the window before I had to get up and go downstairs for the start of the funeral ritual. For some time I watched from my window as my sisters stood in front of the Orangery talking to the huntsmen, the gardeners, and various other people who had a function to perform in the funeral ritual, among them my brother-in-law. But I did not go down and join them. I had the impression that they were expecting me, but I did not go down as I did not want to interrupt my observations, which I could pursue from my window undisturbed. They all seemed very much occupied, and there must have been even more going on inside the Orangery. A vast quantity of wreaths and bouquets had been loaded on two large carts, which were pushed by the gardeners and two stable lads (we still have stable lads at Wolfsegg!) up to the wall by the gateway, leaving room for the hearse to pass. Everything I observed from the window seemed to be proceeding in accordance with the funeral plan that Mother had always spoken of. Nothing I saw seemed to go beyond the plan, let alone contravene it. It looked as though it might rain, but it was not raining and I did not think it would. Everyone was dressed in appropriate funeral attire, though not necessarily in black. A number of people from the village stood in front of the Orangery, and I saw the first members of the wind band taking up their positions. Their instruments sparkled, and the musicians wore uniforms of black and green, my favorite color combination. As I saw from the window, Caecilia was fully in charge of the imposing spectacle that was gradually unfolding. Every so often she whispered instructions to Amalia or to her husband, the wine cork manufacturer, whereupon they went into the Orangery to carry out her instructions, though I could not know what they were. The lights in the Orangery had obviously been extinguished. The time had come to get the funeral under way, to remind people of their cues and take them once more through their roles. The important moments had arrived for the producer — not the high points, I thought, though these would not be long delayed. The musicians formed up in front of the Orangery, as if for a rehearsal, and then dispersed again. The gardeners and the huntsmen wheeled up the two carts with the wreaths and bouquets and brought them to a halt, as if this too were part of the rehearsal, and I watched Caecilia as she checked everything. Amalia and my brother-in-law remained behind her. More and more people arrived from the Farm, the Huntsmen’s Lodge, and the village. None of the notables had appeared, but there was still plenty of time. Finally Caecilia walked across to the house. I took this as a cue to leave my room and go down to meet her. On the way I ran into our aunt from Titisee. I greeted her but quickly escaped and took care to avoid her during the rest of the proceedings. Breakfast had been prepared for me in the kitchen. I ate it hastily, in the company of my brother-in-law. What a dull, stupid man! I thought as I watched him clumsily spreading butter and marmalade on his bread. But people like him can’t help it, I thought; they don’t know any better. Then I desisted from such thoughts, which suddenly seemed to me improper — not unfair but improper — and I despised myself for entertaining them. We shouldn’t watch these people and observe their every action, I told myself, because it only makes us despise ourselves. Caecilia told me I should wear a black tie. I did not argue with her but immediately went back and put one on; it seemed obvious that I should wear a black tie to the funeral, though not a black suit. I was wearing black shoes and a gray suit. I had never owned a black suit or thought of buying one, even in the last two dreadful days. Caecilia said she would be satisfied if I wore a black tie. She said this with no apparent malevolence, even with a degree of understanding. My sister suddenly appeared to treat me with understanding, and it occurred to me that this was because she was now in her element. All kinds of people whom I had not expected to see appeared in the kitchen for breakfast, but I spoke to none of them. Though I was the chief actor on the set, I did not see myself as such. They stared at me, but I avoided their gaze. There were several people I ought to shake hands with, I thought, but I shook hands with nobody. Why should I shake hands with these people, I thought, why should I play the hypocrite? I had no intention of doing so. I had a cup of coffee and a slice of bread, then went out into the hall. My sisters were standing with the mayor, who had just arrived to offer his condolences, as I could see. He went through the familiar routine, and my sisters behaved in the manner expected of them. Quite unlike me. True to my nature, I did not behave as I was expected to behave. My sisters stood in the entrance hall, receiving condolences from all sorts of important people, dignitaries of various kinds. I stood aloof in the dark corner by the door of the chapel, where I would not be recognized. Nobody will recognize me if I stand here, I thought, and nobody did. Otherwise they would all have made a beeline for me, I thought, and not for my sisters — they would quite properly have made a beeline for the son, not for the daughters. As it was, they all made for the daughters and left me in peace. Time and again they inquired after me, but my sisters, fearing that I would take them to task after the funeral, did not reply, although—or because—they knew I was standing by the chapel door. At first I counted the guests, but I soon gave up because there were too many. In the end they came swarming in, and from my secret vantage point I was able to observe them all at my leisure. The crowd suddenly parted as the bishop of Innsbruck arrived. I must go and greet him, I thought — I have no choice. I went over and greeted the bishop. Behind him stood the archbishop of Salzburg. It fell to me to keep the bishops company and escort them to the second floor. Spadolini is so smart that he won’t make his appearance until the last moment, I thought. And so it was. I spent at least half an hour talking to the bishops before Spadolini entered, escorted by Caecilia. The bishops greeted him as if he were much superior to them in rank: they did not stand up to greet him, they jumped up. A sad occasion, said the bishop of Innsbruck, to which Spadolini replied, A terrible tragedy. Then they all sat down. They talked among themselves, and there was no need for me to join in their conversation. They talked about Rome, and the Austrian bishops were impressed by everything Spadolini told them, all of which was new to them; he knew exactly what to say in order to astonish them. Meanwhile the abbot of Kremsmünster appeared. He did not stand on ceremony but silently went and sat with the bishops. He was a fat man with the air of a prosperous innkeeper. For half an hour Spadolini talked about Rome and the Vatican — about everything and nothing, as it were. Then Caecilia asked the bishops to go downstairs. In the hall the bishops, foremost among them the elegant Spadolini, waited for Caecilia to signal that it was time to go across to the Orangery for the start of the funeral proper. Aside from the bishops there was no longer anyone in the hall. The crowd had moved to the Orangery and spread out far beyond the gateway, probably all the way down to the village, I thought, so that one could no longer speak of a cortege, since the row of mourners probably extended as far as the cemetery already. It was laid down that the funeral service should take place in the village church, not in the chapel. The bishops, having talked about Rome, then about Wolfsegg, finally turned to me, whereupon Spadolini told them that he was one of my best friends, my very first friend in Rome, as he put it. He had been a great friend of the family for many years, he said. He had often stayed at Wolfsegg and always loved the place — such a splendid landscape, such a splendid house, such a splendid lifestyle, he said. The bishops could not take their eyes off him. His clothes were probably the most elegant they had ever seen. My role was to pretend to be in shock. This seemed to me the most advantageous, as I hardly needed to say anything but simply had to make sure that I lowered my head whenever I was being observed. This does not mean that the whole thing left me cold, but I felt no more than I had felt at other funerals; I was not shattered by the fact that it was my family that was being borne to the grave, for the spectacle was too grandiose to admit of such feelings. The real shock will come later, I told myself, when it’s all over. The initial shock’s over, but the real shock’s still to come, I thought as I stood in the hall with the bishops. They admired my composure, but it was not, as they thought, the composure of one who had come to terms with a great tragedy. I chose to appear composed — it was part of my act. I felt that I had so far performed my role to perfection, repugnant though I found it. An actor knows when he’s giving a good performance — he doesn’t need to be told, I thought. More than once Spadolini had the effrontery to draw the bishops’ attention to my admirable composure—Spadolini of all people, who must have seen through me, yet repeatedly remarked to them, in a manner that I found somewhat distasteful, how admirably I was conducting myself, in view of the fact that my parents and my brother were being buried. I was simply conducting myself in accordance with my role. Caecilia now asked the bishops to go across to the Orangery. The coffins had been sealed and each had been loaded onto a separate hearse, drawn by two horses. The hearses, devoid of any floral decoration, were of the austere simplicity laid down in the funeral plan. They moved off slowly, followed by the bishops, then by my sisters and me. Behind us were the other relatives, led of course by Alexander. After these, just as I had feared, came the former Gauleiters and other National Socialist grandees, who filled me with the greatest revulsion and, I must say, the greatest fear, sporting their National Socialist decorations on their breasts. Formed up behind them was the League of Comrades, a veterans’ association of a decidedly National Socialist complexion, followed by various other groups. A procession of many hundreds gradually formed but could hardly get into motion, as its length equaled the distance it had to cover. It was only Caecilia’s organizing skill that made it possible for the procession to take shape at all: she had arranged for the crowd to assemble behind the Farm and in front of the Children’s Villa. Naturally the hearses could only make their way slowly down to the village, not leading the cortege but passing it, as no other procedure was practicable. Those lining the route drew back as far as possible on each side of the gravel road leading to the village, in order to make way for the hearses and ourselves. Caecilia’s plan worked — it was a total success. The cortege had taken shape and was on the move. She walked beside me, highly agitated and trembling all over, because she was now walking in the cortege and no longer in charge. She need not have worried: everything went according to plan, despite the hundreds of mourners. An ordinary country funeral is attended by at least a hundred people, but I estimate that the numbers attending ours probably ran into thousands, though I do not know for sure. As arranged, the archbishop of Salzburg celebrated the requiem mass. Watching him read the mass, with the coffins on trestles in front of the altar, I recalled that I had abandoned the Church, as they say, thirty years earlier. I could therefore allow myself to take a detached view of this church ceremony. My family never forgave me for leaving the Church, and this may have been their main reason for condemning me, I thought. The fact that I had left the Church so early and no longer had any links with it made me feel pleasantly detached throughout the mass. You’re a witness of this splendid spectacle, but it doesn’t concern you, I reflected more than once. You smell the incense, but it doesn’t dull your senses. You hear the words, but they have no destructive effect on you. For decades, throughout your childhood and early youth, you feared the Catholic clergy, but now you don’t. You no longer need to fear them. The spectacle is magnificent, I thought, and even if its magnificence grates on your nerves, it isn’t in the least menacing. In any case you’ve already taken leave of your parents and your brother. You took leave of them, briefly but definitively, when you got the telegram. The funeral is only a drama that’s been forced on you, the title of which—Paying the Last Respects—repels you with its mendacity. Every drama is mendacious, I thought, but this is more mendacious than any other. A funeral like this is the most superb drama imaginable, I thought. No dramatist, not even Shakespeare, ever wrote one to match it. Compared with this, the whole of secular drama is a joke, I thought as the archbishop of Salzburg read the requiem mass before this great concourse of people. What a good thing, I thought, that I withdrew from the Catholic Church so early! I was sitting in the front pew, with Caecilia on my left and Amalia on my right, exactly as laid down in the plan. Next to Amalia was Alexander. Spadolini, the abbot of Kremsmünster, and the bishop of Innsbruck sat in an elevated position beside the altar, set apart from the common people. Spadolini’s the chief actor in this whole performance, I thought, not the celebrant, the archbishop of Salzburg. Toward the end of the service the archbishop delivered a short address, in which he spoke of the dear departed friend who had died so tragically, of the devoted mother and the equally devoted son. Archbishops have a style of delivery all their own, I thought: they chant everything. The priests’ seminary is actually the ecclesiastical equivalent of a drama school, I thought. Even the simple souls among them, like the archbishop of Salzburg and the bishop of Innsbruck, don’t just speak, they chant, as if they were trained actors. True, they perform like popular and respected provincial actors, unlike Spadolini, who reveals himself in his every word and his every gesture as a theatrical genius, far excelling all these provincial actors and embodying the ultimate in Catholic histrionics. Spadolini has immersed himself in his silent role, I thought. Sitting with his head bowed, in a row reserved solely for him, he’s aware of his theatrical genius, I thought, his archiepiscopal genius. The fact that he had come from Rome lent his presence an additional aura, a tremendous aura, in our village church. The congregation was amazed by the sight of an archbishop from Rome, much more than by that of the celebrant, the archbishop of Salzburg, who was bound to appear by comparison more simpleminded, more primitive, than he really was. After the mass the village choir, accompanied by the village band, performed the Haydn piece rehearsed the previous day, very quietly and, it seemed to me, flawlessly. During the requiem Spadolini gave the impression of having withdrawn completely into himself. Not once did he permit himself to look up. His hands folded, he was completely immersed in his mourning, as it were, and when Mother was mentioned I had the impression that this mourning was not even simulated, but real. Yet this was a fleeting impression; a moment later he seemed once more to be playing his part to perfection. Seeing him in this attitude, I actually loved him. What I loved in him was Spadolini the great actor, for I know none greater, none with greater audience appeal, as they say. The many journeys he made with Mother and those that the three of us made together suddenly came back to me. Spadolini, who made these journeys such a delight and cast his spell over them all, as they say. Suddenly I saw Spadolini the charmer, the man of the world with whom my mother fell hopelessly in love. Sitting there, I had eyes only for him, not for the archbishop of Salzburg. I pictured him in Rome, visiting the finest shops and the most expensive restaurants, and his bearing on entering these shops and visiting these restaurants. I saw him on the Pincio and in the Borghese Gardens. I saw him at diplomatic receptions and private views, always scintillating, as they say, surrounded by a throng of admirers, the elegant man of the world who could call himself both archbishop and nuncio and boast many hundreds of friends. Spadolini, who not only had all these journeys paid for by my mother, not to mention two trips to America, a vacation in Cairo that he had set his heart on, a trip to Persepolis, and a visit to Tunisia — because he specially wanted to see Carthage — but for whom she bought the greater part of his wardrobe and furnished a whole library. Spadolini, who can pick up a book or drink a glass of wine with matchless elegance, who is mobbed by the ladies of high society no less than by the Communist officials of Rome, and who is cordially received every few weeks by the city’s Communist mayor. Spadolini, who corresponds with people from all walks of life, who knows the Vatican inside out, just as he knows the city of Rome, where he is revered, indeed loved, by everyone. I watched him from the side as one watches a great actor and concentrated on his every movement. His performance is a work of art, I thought — he displays no weakness and does not permit himself the slightest inadvertency. In the theater it’s the silent, not the wordy, roles that are the most demanding, I thought, and Spadolini has undoubtedly taken on the most demanding role in the present drama. What’s more, he’s chosen the ideal costume. It’s impossible to see Spadolini without instantly feeling respect for him, I thought, though not necessarily affection. All who see him fall under his spell, I thought. Gambetti once said that of all the actors he knew, Spadolini was the most extraordinary and the most enthralling. It was a pity, he thought, that he performed only in the Church and not in one of our foremost theaters. No producer could teach this man anything, said Gambetti — he already knows everything, can do everything, is everything. I was reminded of Gambetti’s remark as I observed Spadolini from the side. I felt no embarrassment, I have to say, and paid no heed to my immediate surroundings. I automatically stood up with the rest of the congregation when the ritual required it, and sat down again when they sat down, but all the time I did nothing but marvel at Spadolini’s artistry. I seemed to have fallen under its spell once again, as so often before. It’s as though the greatest actor of the age had come to some unknown and quite insignificant small town to give an arch-Catholic performance of Hamlet, I thought. When the mass was over, the coffins were carried out of the church, first my father’s, then my mother’s, and lastly my brother’s. My knees suddenly trembled as the gardeners bore Johannes’s coffin past me. They shouldered it with great skill, I thought, as if they were accustomed to shouldering a coffin every day. The huntsmen carried my parents’ coffins out of the church, but at my express wish Johannes was carried by the gardeners. Caecilia did not weep. I had the chance to look into Amalia’s eyes, and our brother-in-law the wine cork manufacturer, in his clumsy way, put on a brave face and made the best of a bad job. He was the one figure who was really out of place — this was more obvious than ever. All eyes were fixed on either me or Spadolini. Caecilia naturally insisted on being supported by her husband, not me, as we left the church. Amalia walked with me. Observing her, it struck me that during this period of mourning she had taken to walking with her head lowered. My sisters’ mocking faces first became embittered, I thought, and now they’ve become mournful. Caecilia was naturally more composed than her sister. Amalia looks much younger than she is, I thought, but not at all attractive. That’s why she’s still single, I thought. No man has ever been attracted to her, not even a man like the wine cork manufacturer. Momentarily I felt sorry for her, but then I could not help remembering how clownishly she had always behaved in any company. Amalia will never be happy, or even contented, I thought. Nor will Caecilia, who’s walking arm in arm with her unhappiness, I thought, looking at the wine cork manufacturer’s profile. I could not help thinking that it was the profile of a subaverage individual who had managed to insinuate himself into Wolfsegg. The village band played the Haydn piece again, better than before, I thought, and the cortege moved even more slowly toward the cemetery than it had previously moved toward the church. I have always hated processions and parades, especially accompanied by music. All the world’s disasters have been inaugurated by processions and parades, I thought. I was revolted by the thought that not far behind me were the former Gauleiters of the Upper Danube and the Lower Danube, the very people who had desecrated the Children’s Villa and permanently ruined it for me. Behind them were the veterans of the League of Comrades, some of them on crutches — men who had fought for their abominable Nazi ideals and been awarded the Blood Order for doing so. And behind them — so Caecilia had whispered to me just before the procession moved off — was my student friend Eisenberg, my soul mate, the Viennese rabbi, whom I was determined to speak to as soon as the ceremony was over. A funeral procession like this is grotesque, I thought. Unspeakable. Such an endless funeral procession is not only an imposition on everybody but utterly tasteless, I thought, though I knew that my view was shared by none of the participants. They wouldn’t dream of thinking such a thing. Indeed, had they been privy to my thoughts, they would have concluded that I was utterly tasteless. Maybe I am, I thought. But I felt no shame until I stood by the open grave. I had once said to Gambetti that when we stood by an open grave we had only treachery inside us. The perversity of this ceremony was borne in on me when the archbishop of Salzburg stepped up to the graveside to make a speech. He began by calling my father a brave warrior on the field of honor. He spoke only of my father and never once mentioned my mother, or even Johannes. This was not deliberate, I thought; it could be attributed to forgetfulness and conceit, to male selfishness and arrogance. There were twelve graveside speeches, all delivered by men who pretended to have been my father’s best friends, though this was naturally untrue. The archbishop of Salzburg and the bishop of Innsbruck claimed they had been, the former Gauleiters claimed they had been, two SS officers claimed they had been, and so did the commander of the League of Comrades and the president of the Huntsmen’s Association. For a whole hour they repeatedly spoke of Father as their best friend, and this quite outrageous presumption went unchallenged, as was to be expected at a funeral. The coffins had already been lowered into the grave. Finally Spadolini stepped forward. I thought he was about to speak, but that would have been out of character. He at once stepped back, as if wishing to melt into the background again, but this was a feint, as he had been the central figure throughout the ceremony. He did not compromise himself by uttering a single platitude but rejoined the ranks of the mourners crowded around the grave. I very nearly misjudged Spadolini, I thought. The commander of the League of Comrades said that Father had lived only for the aims of the League. At first I found this assertion contemptible, but a few minutes later I changed my mind, as I had to acknowledge that it was to some extent true. The president of the Huntsmen’s Association also spoke the truth, I had to tell myself, and so did the two former Gauleiters. Father, as a party member, had been one of them, and this was how everyone saw him. I continued to think how embarrassing it was that none of them remembered to say anything about Mother. Still at the graveside, I remarked to Caecilia that none of them thought it worth their while to say a word about Mother. The speeches were made by the menfolk, I thought, and the menfolk took no cognizance of Mother. And Johannes too was a thoroughly unimportant figure in the whole business, having forfeited any claim to importance by dying too soon. Aside from carrying his coffin and laying him to rest, no one had paid him any attention. Father was the great personality they could exploit at the graveside, and they exploited him for all he was worth. Father was still useful to them, but no one else was, I thought. The archbishop of Salzburg and the bishops looked once more into the open grave and then withdrew. Whereupon everyone filed past my sisters and me, as is customary. A hundred twenty-two woodworkers and now only twenty, two dozen gardeners and now only seven, I thought, standing by the open grave. Huge forest damage in the north, right down to Gallspach, I thought. Thirty-two first-class acres lost through landconsolidation—that had angered Father for weeks. On the other hand, I thought of the immense tax evasion devised by our accountant in Wels. This man’s pronunciation of the name Wolfsegg never fails to revolt me, and the way it is pronounced by other people from Wels, Linz, Vöcklabruck, and Ebensee is no less revolting. I’ve always detested the name Wolfsegg, I thought, standing by the open grave, I’ve always abominated everything associated with the name. Ever since I was a child I’ve detested everything to do with Wolfsegg — that’s the truth, I thought. Hypocrites going down from Wolfsegg to the village and the surrounding country, and hypocrites coming up to Wolfsegg from the village and the surrounding country. I was soon repelled by all these people and withdrew into myself, standing by the open grave. It’s all a gigantic deception, I thought, a criminal conspiracy that’s lasted for centuries. At first I feared the Church, and then I hated it, with increasing intensity. After all, the Church still dominates everything in this country and this state, I thought, standing by the open grave. Catholicism still holds the reins in this country and this state, no matter who is in power. Catholics, charlatans, I thought, mendacious curers of souls. We want no more to do with it, we tell ourselves, we’re sickened by it all. In this country and this state nothing escapes the Catholic clergy, even today. Withdraw from it all, I thought — I no longer had any other thought. I must go through with this ceremony and then I’ll withdraw forever, I thought. I could see how they all hated me, and not even covertly. Philosophical interests on the one hand, a total absence of such interests on the other. And devotion to art — even more offensive, I thought. And people are no different in Rome. They’re even more hypocritical there, but vastly more intelligent! There can’t be just a few hundred of them, I thought — there must be millions. There must be millions of hypocrites, not just hundreds — millions of such revolting people, not just hundreds. Take an intellectual bath, as it were, in a city like Rome, then disappear beneath the surface, I thought. The footsteps of people I hate, the voices of people I hate, I thought, standing by the open grave, the utter repulsiveness of these hateful people. This funeral really is the end, I thought. They’ve not only desecrated the Children’s Villa, they’ve desecrated everything. At first I was afraid of life, and then I hated it, I thought, standing by the open grave. And if we imagine that Rome is the solution, that’s also an error. We cling to someone like Gambetti, whom I may already have destroyed, or to somebody like Maria, but even they can’t save us, I thought, standing by the open grave. I recalled how one day, in front of the Hotel Hassler, I had said to Gambetti, You know, Gambetti, if we’re honest we have to admit that the universal process of stultification is now so far advanced that it can’t be reversed. This process of stultification was inaugurated well over a hundred years ago by the invention of photography, and since then the mental condition of the human race has been in permanent decline. This worldwide stultification was set in motion by photographic images and attained its present deadly momentum when the images began to move. Humanity has for decades been staring brainlessly at these deadly photographic images and become more or less paralyzed. Come the millennium, Gambetti, human beings will no longer be capable of thinking, and the process of stultification, inaugurated by the photograph and universalized by motion pictures, will have reached its apogee. It will scarcely be possible to exist in a world dominated by brainlessness, I said, and we’d do well to kill ourselves before this process of stultification has engulfed the whole world. To this extent it’s only logical, Gambetti, that by the millennium those who exist by thinking and through thinking should already have killed themselves. The only advice I can offer to any thinking person is to kill himself before the millennium, Gambetti — that’s my genuine conviction, I had said, as I now recalled, standing by the open grave. All day it had looked like rain, but the rain had held off. I had made up my mind not to shake hands with any of the people who filed past me. Nor did I. Some held out their hands, but I did not shake them. I had deliberately imposed this embarrassment on myself. I recalled that only a few days before this unbearably tasteless funeral I had said to Gambetti, Just to think of Austria, a country that’s disfigured, degenerate, and done for, is enough to make you vomit, to say nothing of the utterly degenerate state, whose vulgarity and baseness are unparalleled not only in Europe but in the rest of the world — a state that has for decades been run by unprincipled, degenerate, brainless governments, and a people that’s been mutilated beyond recognition by these unprincipled, degenerate, brainless governments. First by the vulgar, vicious National Socialist regime, then by the no less vulgar, vicious, and criminal pseudosocialism that succeeded it, I had told Gambetti on the Pincio, as I now recalled, standing by the open grave. The destruction and annihilation of our country has been encompassed by National Socialism and pseudosocialism, aided and abetted by Austrian Catholicism, which has always cast its blight upon Austria. Today Austria is a country governed by unscrupulous profiteers belonging to parties devoid of all conscience. In the last few centuries, Gambetti, Austria has been cheated of everything and had all its sense knocked out of it by Catholicism, National Socialism, and pseudosocialism. In the Austria of today, Gambetti, vulgarity is the watchword, baseness the motive, and mendacity the key. Every morning when we wake up we ought to be utterly ashamed of today’s Austria. Time and again I tell myself that we love Austria but hate the Austrian state, Gambetti. Whether we’re in Rome or anywhere else in the world, Austria no longer concerns us. Wherever you go in Austria today you’re surrounded by lies. Wherever you look, you find only mendacity. Whoever you talk to, you’re talking to a liar, Gambetti, I said, as I now recalled, standing by the open grave. This ridiculous country and this ridiculous state are basically not worth talking about, and to think about them is just a waste of time. But woe betide anyone in this country who isn’t blind, I said, who isn’t deaf, and still has his wits about him! To be an Austrian today is a death sentence, and all Austrians are subject to this death sentence, I had said, as I now recalled, standing by the open grave. Everything Austrian is characterless, I said. Whenever one comes back to Austria, one feels dirty, I thought, standing by the open grave. The men wearing the insignia of the Blood Order, the SS officers supporting themselves on their crutches and their sticks, the National Socialist heroes, did not spare me a glance, as they say. The mourners, except for the archbishops, the bishops, and our closest relatives, were invited to the Brandl and the Gesswagner, where musical entertainment was provided by the band, which Caecilia had instructed to visit both inns. The archbishops, the bishops, and the family mourners were invited to lunch at the house. Most stayed until late afternoon. Spadolini left for Rome in the evening. At first I thought of traveling with him, but this was a stupid idea, as I saw at once. We’ll see each other in Rome in a few days, I told him. He left very quietly. I took Alexander to my room and locked the door, as I wanted to talk to him undisturbed. Alexander was again obsessed by one of hisgreat ideas. He wanted to ask the president of Chile to release all political prisoners in Chile, that crudest of all dictatorships; he was not put out when I told him that his request would meet with no success. He left an hour after Spadolini, to return to Brussels. I stayed locked in my room until after nightfall and left it only when I was sure of not coming upon any of the funeral guests. During this time I thought about what I was going to do with Wolfsegg, which, as had meanwhile been established beyond peradventure, belonged exclusively to me, with all rights and obligations, as legal parlance has it. I already had in mind a plan for the future of Wolfsegg and all its dependencies in Lower Austria, the Burgenland, and Vienna, and I sat up till two in the morning talking the matter over with my sisters, in the absence of my brother-in-law, whom I refused to have in on the discussion. At the end of it I still could not tell them what was to happen to Wolfsegg, although I already knew. Throughout our conversation they had nothing to say but only showed me their mocking, embittered faces. I told them that I did not know what was going to happen to Wolfsegg, that I had not the slightest idea, when in fact I had firmly resolved to make an appointment to meet Eisenberg in Vienna, intending to offer the whole of Wolfsegg, just as it stood, with everything belonging to it, as an unconditional gift to the Jewish community in Vienna. I met Eisenberg, my brother in the spirit, two days after the funeral, and he accepted my gift on behalf of the Jewish community. From Rome, where I now live, where I have written this work entitled Extinction, and where I intend to stay, writes Murau (born Wolfsegg 1934, died Rome 1983), I thanked him for accepting it.

Content

Thomas Bernhard
Extinction

The telegram

The will