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 All the villagers seemed to have withdrawn into their houses, not wishing to show themselves at this time, when my parents and my brother were presumably lying in state up at Wolfsegg.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.

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