Toblach had surfaced in his wife’s head during their first years in Sicking, this childhood notion of hers would spook around in her head for hours and then in her room and finally in the entire lime works, but as time went on it came up less often, Konrad is said to have told Fro. At the so-called Cold Food Market only a year ago Konrad is supposed to have told Wieser that it seemed to him as though Toblach was no longer surfacing, suddenly the idea of Toblach had ceased to matter, his wife had given it up, in giving up Toblach it was as though she had given herself up, he noticed. She had always opposed Sicking, Konrad said to Fro, always opposed the lime works, always pitted herself against him, Konrad, against his work, which meant of course against herself as well. She had brought Toblach into the debate against Sicking from the first moment the question of Sicking arose. In the end her opposition to the lime works, to his work, had become a habit, so that her struggle against his research for his definitive book on the sense of hearing, had become instinctive, as it were. Suddenly Toblach had ceased to exist, Konrad is supposed to have said, and: you must understand that my wife has never had anything apart from Toblach, even now she has nothing in the world apart from Toblach. Sicking was of course a dungeon, Konrad said to Fro, even at first glance it gave the impression of being just that, a workhouse, a penal institution, a prison; an impression disguised for centuries, according to Konrad, concealed behind a veneer of bad taste, he alone had ruthlessly stripped away this cheap mask to let the underlying reality emerge into the light again. This reality was made manifest, to begin with, by the barred windows he had installed in those thick walls immediately after acquiring ownership; functional iron bars, as Konrad put it, I ripped out the ornamental ironwork and installed functional iron bars, he has been quoted as saying, those thick walls and the iron bars sunk into them instantly show that this is a prison. The ornamental wrought iron with which the lime works had been decorated before Konrad’s time, relics of two centuries of poor taste, were removed at Konrad’s orders, he said to Wieser, they all had to go at once, he had torn most of them out of and off the walls with his own hands, he broke them off, knocked them off, broke them down, knocked them down, tore them down, ripped them out, and never replaced a single one of these knocked down and broken up and ripped off squiggles with any new squiggles. The lime works were now totally bare of ornamentation, Konrad is reported to have told Fro, even the paths leading up to the lime works, though in fact there was only a single stony path leading up to the lime works as anyone could see at once, had been loosely paved with coarse gravel. Everything was simplified. He aimed to restore the lime works to their original condition, regardless of what anyone thought. Tall hedges, yes, but no ornamental bushes whatsoever. To Wieser: he, Konrad, had never been a so-called nature freak, after all; he was no nature fanatic, no nature masochist, absolutely no wilderness freak of any kind, in fact; external nature tended to inspire Konrad with horror at his own nature, never with joyful amazement; the so-called sense of wonder in contemplating nature was a mere perversion, he said. Nor did he love mankind, and if not mankind, then certainly not animals, he did not love animals even though he was incessantly, even exclusively preoccupied with nature, you might say, he was nevertheless no friend of nature, quite the contrary, particularly
because of his incessant preoccupation with nature. His wife naturally thought it weird how passionately he hated nature and, as a logical consequence, all the creatures. To Fro: bare walls, functionalism, strategy for self-injury. Catastrophicephaleconomy. To Wieser: firmly locked, firmly bolted doors, closely barred windows, everything locked up, bolted, barred. Do you realize that the lime works doors used to be fastened by simple latches! Konrad is supposed to have cried, imagine, simple latches! Nowadays the doors were all secured by heavy bolts of dressed timber set deep in the walls. Set deep into those thick walls, Konrad is said to have told Wieser, bolts that have to be pushed in or pulled out by force, what with the constant humidity here it was of course always necessary to use a good deal of force. The security factor was the most important one by far. First of all, Konrad had said to his wife according to Wieser, they had to secure themselves against intrusion from the outside world from which they had at last succeeded in escaping, so all the windows had to be barred at once, and all the doors had to be bolted, and that was what in fact they did, right after moving in, Konrad told Wieser, the very day after paying an unheard of, actually an incredibly high purchase price for the lime works, the Konrads moved in and instantly had all the windows barred and all the doors bolted, they had bolts attached even to the inside doors, heavy bolts, and heavy bars on the windows, in fact, the blacksmith at first refused to make bars that heavy, Konrad said, but he finally gave in because Konrad would not yield an inch and also promised to pay quite a lot, and the carpenter made him those heavy wooden bolts, actually the blacksmith who made those heavy bars and the carpenter who made those heavy bolts are said to have shaken their heads over Konrad, but in the end his arguments are said to have convinced both the blacksmith and the carpenter, and now the blacksmith and the carpenter are both proud of their handiwork, the blacksmith is proud of his heavy bars which he shaped with extreme precision in accordance with Konrad’s strict instructions, and the carpenter is proud of the heavy bolts he made just as exactly in accordance with Konrad’s precise instructions. And to stop the curiosity seekers who kept passing the lime works, unwanted and unbidden, as is their way, from eyeing the building, Konrad is said to have told Wieser, Konrad and his wife needed high thickets, as Konrad said to his wife, we need high thickets around the lime works, the tallest-growing shrubs there are, and they had immediately ordered the tallest shrubs from Switzerland brought to Sicking where they were planted by experts. Today the lime works is totally hidden from view, Konrad is supposed to have told Wieser two years ago, completely unnoticeable, unseen, and even if it should be noticed and seen, Wieser remembers Konrad saying, there is absolutely no way to get inside. The thickets have grown so high, my dear Wieser, that no one can get a glimpse of the lime works, there is no way to see the lime works, in fact, unless you are standing right in front of it (Konrad to Wieser), that is, standing a yard or half a yard from the building, which is not to see it, after all, there’s no seeing it that close up. Remember that the lime works is accessible only from the east, it’s a strange fact that the lime works is accessible only from the east, but then again it is not so strange, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, on the one hand it was strange, on the other hand not so strange after all, everything is strange on the one hand and not at all strange on the other hand (Wieser specifically recalls that bit about strange-yet-not-strange); to the north and to the west, the lime works is surrounded by water, ideally one might say, and to the south it is bounded ideally by ramparts of rock. Even access from the east is often barred in winter, because the lime works is no longer a lime works and so the snow plow no longer comes as far as the lime works, obviously no snow plow is going to come this far out to a dead, abandoned lime works, Konrad is said to have told Wieser, no workmen, no lime production, no snow plow, he said; for the sake of an individual good-for-nothing Konrad and his wife, an equally good-for-nothing Konrad, no snow plow comes in, it was economically wasteful to have the snow plow come in just for their sake, consequently the snow plow had not come that far for years, as it suddenly struck Konrad, not since his nephew Hoerhager was no longer at the lime works had the snow plow come any farther than the tavern, for Hoerhager had served in various ways as a town official, a man in public office could count on the snow plow coming all the way to his door, while I, Konrad is supposed to have said, I serve no public function, I serve no function whatsoever, certainly not a public function, he even hated the word
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