Thomas Bernhard - Extinction

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