This is the truth. I picked up the suitcase. It was, as usual, too heavy. I really don’t need it, I thought, as I have everything I need at Wolfsegg. Why cumber myself with a suitcase? Having decided to travel without a suitcase, I proceeded to unpack my clothes and return them, item by item, to the closet. It’s natural to love one’s parents, and it’s equally natural to love one’s brother and sisters, I thought, standing by the window again and looking down on the deserted Piazza Minerva. We therefore fail to notice that from a certain moment onward we hate them, without wanting to, just as naturally as we previously loved them, for all kinds of reasons that we become aware of only years later, often decades later. We can’t determine precisely when we stopped loving them and started hating them, and we don’t try, basically because we are afraid to. Anyone who leaves his family, against their will and as implacably as I left mine, has to reckon with their hatred, and the greater their previous love for him, the greater their hatred when he has done what he swore to do. For decades their hatred caused me suffering, I reflected, but I haven’t suffered from it for years now; I’ve become used to it and it no longer hurts me. And their hatred of me inevitably led me to hate them, but in recent years they haven’t suffered from my hatred either. They despised me,
their Roman, just as I despised them,
the Wolfseggers. Basically they stopped thinking about me, just as I stopped thinking about them most of the time. They always referred to me as a
charlatan, a
blatherer, a parasite who battened on them and everyone else. The sole term I could apply to them was
blockheads. Their death, which can only have been caused by a road accident, I told myself, in no way alters the facts. There was no danger of my yielding to sentimentality. My hands did not shake as I read the telegram, and my body did not tremble. I’ll tell Gambetti that my parents and my brother have died and that I must postpone our lessons for a few days, I thought. After all, I won’t be staying at Wolfsegg for more than a few days; a week will be enough, even allowing for unforeseen complications. For a moment I considered taking Gambetti with me, fearing the superior force of the Wolfseggers and wishing for an ally with whom I could defend myself against their onslaught,
someone of my own kind who would be a partner in a desperate and possibly hopeless situation, but I immediately abandoned the idea, as I wanted to spare Gambetti a confrontation with Wolfsegg. He’d see that everything I’ve told him in recent years is actually quite tame compared with the reality, I thought. At one moment I thought of taking him with me; the next moment I thought better of it. Finally I decided against taking him. I’d spend too much time with him, and this would cause something of a stir that I’d probably find disagreeable, I thought. They wouldn’t understand a person like Gambetti at Wolfsegg, where harmless strangers are invariably greeted with hostility. They’ve always rejected anything unfamiliar, they’ve never
welcomed anything or anyone unfamiliar, as I usually do. To take Gambetti to Wolfsegg would mean deliberately exposing him to insult, and he might be deeply hurt. I can hardly cope with Wolfsegg myself, I thought, and to confront Gambetti with Wolfsegg could be a disaster, and he himself would be the chief victim. I could of course have taken Gambetti to Wolfsegg long ago, I thought, but I wisely refrained, although I had often told myself that it might be beneficial not only for me but for him, for if he saw it all for himself, my accounts of Wolfsegg would gain an authenticity that they are otherwise bound to lack. I’ve known Gambetti for fifteen years and not once taken him to Wolfsegg, I thought. Maybe he sees it differently, I told myself. It’s obviously strange to have known someone for fifteen years and been on fairly intimate terms with him without once, in all these fifteen years, inviting him to my home. Why, I wondered, have I never, in all these fifteen years, allowed Gambetti a glimpse of
the hand I was dealt at birth? Because I’ve always been afraid to and still am. Because I want to protect myself against his knowing about Wolfsegg and my origins — that’s one reason — and because I want to protect
him from such knowledge, the effect of which could be disastrous. In the fifteen years we have known each other I have been reluctant to expose Gambetti to Wolfsegg. It would have been the pleasantest thing in the world to go to Wolfsegg with Gambetti and spend my time there in his company, but I have always rejected the idea. He would of course have been prepared to go with me at any time and always expected to be invited. But he never was. A funeral is not only a sad occasion but an utterly disagreeable one, I told myself, and I certainly won’t invite Gambetti to accompany me on such an occasion. I’ll tell him that my parents have died, I’ll say that they and my brother have been killed in a car crash, though I’ve no confirmation of this, but I won’t say a word about his coming with me. Only two weeks earlier, before going to Wolfsegg for my sister’s wedding, I had treated Gambetti to a highly intemperate description of my parents and told him that my brother was rather a bad character, and irremediably stupid. I had described Wolfsegg as a citadel of brainlessness and spoken of the dreadful prevailing climate, which dominated and ruthlessly destroyed all who were forced to live — or rather to exist — there. But I also told him about the glories of Wolfsegg — about the beauty of the fall, of the winter cold and the silence in the surrounding woods and valleys, which I loved more than anything. Nature there was ruthless, I said, but utterly clear and magnificent. Yet this clear and magnificent nature was not appreciated by those who lived in the midst of it, because they were too brainless. If my family didn’t exist, but only the walls they live in, I told Gambetti, Wolfsegg would be the perfect place for me, as there’s no other so congenial to my spirit.
But I can’t abolish my family just because I want to, I said. I can hear myself saying these words, and the terrible meaning they took on now that my parents and my brother were actually dead made me repeat them aloud as I stood at the window, looking down on the Piazza Minerva.
But I can’t abolish my family just because I want to. Uttering these words to Gam¬ betti, I had felt the utmost distaste for the people they referred to. I now found myself repeating them aloud in a distinctly theatrical manner. Like an actor who has to rehearse his lines because they are to be spoken before a large audience, I momentarily took the sting out of them. They suddenly ceased to be annihilating. However, these words,
But I can’t abolish my family just because I want to, again forced their way to the forefront of my mind and seized possession of me. I tried to stifle them, but they would not be stifled. I no longer enunciated them clearly but gabbled them to myself several times, trying to make them seem ludicrous, but despite my attempts to stifle them and make them seem ludicrous they became all the more menacing and suddenly acquired a greater force than any words I had ever uttered. You can’t drown out these words, I told myself — you’ll have to live with them. This realization brought a sudden calm into my situation.
But I can’t abolish my family just because I want to. I spoke the words once more, but this time in the tone I had used to Gambetti. They now meant what they had meant then. Except for the pigeons, there were no living creatures on the Piazza Minerva. Suddenly feeling cold, I shut the window and sat down at my desk. My mail still lay on it, including a letter from Eisenberg, a letter from Spadolini, the archbishop who is my mother’s
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