function , there was nothing he hated more bitterly than the word
functionary , a word it nauseated him even to hear, because nowadays everybody was a functionary, all of them were functionaries now, they all functioned, there are no human beings left, Wieser, nothing but functionaries, that’s why I can’t stand the expression
functionary , the word
functionary makes me retch, but my nephew Hoerhager was a functionary by nature, a town functionary, and to a functionary, especially a town functionary, the snow plow comes, it will always come to a functionary! Konrad is supposed to have exclaimed to Wieser, while for an old fool like me and a crippled old fool of a woman like my wife the snow plow will not come, even though it would be so easy for the snow plow to make a turn at the lime works, but it simply does not come as far as the lime works anymore. A winter harassment! Konrad is supposed to have shouted, over and over: A winter harassment! Wieser says that for over an hour Konrad kept calling it a farce that the public snow plow comes only as far as the tavern but no longer as far as the lime works. In Sicking everything was a farce, whatever you looked at in Sicking was a farce, no matter what you looked at, from whatever point of view, you were looking at a farce. However, it was also to the Konrads’ advantage that the snow plow no longer went on past the tavern to the lime works, Konrad insisted: not a soul comes stomping through that deep snow all the way to us. To be so cut off from everything and isolated naturally meant that they enjoyed absolute quiet. Wieser thinks that the absolute quiet at the lime works in winter was precisely what had so enthralled Konrad at first about the lime works. The thought haunted him, the thought that in winter there was absolute quiet at the lime works gave Konrad no peace for years on end. He nearly drove himself crazy brooding about it. To the lime works! he kept thinking, to the lime works! only the lime works! again and again, even while his wife was thinking of nothing but: Toblach, back to Toblach! but his wife was obedient to a fault. The rock spur even shielded them from the sawmill noises on the other side of it, Konrad is supposed to have said over and over, but if he was to be frank about it, Konrad conceded, sawmill noises bothered him not at all, they never had bothered him, no more than his own breathing bothered him, because like his own breathing they had always been there; he had never thought: there, that’s a noise from the sawmill, I can’t hear myself think because of it! because he had always lived and done his thinking next door to sawmills, no matter where he had lived it had somehow always been in the vicinity of one or even several sawmills, his family, all his people, even all their relatives, had always owned at least one sawmill. As to the tavern, Wieser reports Konrad saying, it stood far enough from the lime works so that Konrad never heard anything from there. Just as the rock spur keeps the sawmill noises out, no sounds come from the tavern either, even at its noisiest, here at the lime works he heard none of it. Sometimes you could hear an avalanche, Konrad is supposed to have said, or a rock slide, ice, water, birds, the sound of wild animals, wind, all that, yes. Because one heard hardly any sounds at the lime works, one’s hearing tended to grow remarkably acute here, especially with as hypersensitive an ear as he had. This gave him a natural advantage in the research, for his book dealing, not quite coincidentally, with the sense of hearing, after all it would bear the title
The Sense of Hearing . That the Konrads lived where they did (Konrad to Wieser) was of course the result of a calculated move for the benefit of his work on
Hearing . All of it, everything having to do with the lime works, my dear Wieser, is calculated, Konrad is supposed to have said. It’s all been carefully thought through beforehand, though much of it may seem to be pure chance, even pure nonsense, nevertheless it was all thought out well ahead of time. Sensitivity in a state of immunity to surprise was sensitivity perfected, deadly in fact, Konrad is supposed to have said. Fro reports Konrad saying to him as follows: when he, Konrad, was in his room working on his book, he could hear his wife breathing upstairs in her room, believe it or not, it was a fact. Of course his wife’s breathing in her room, one flight up from his, was not normally audible in his room; he had tested it out time and again; nevertheless
he did in fact hear his wife breathing in her room while he was in his room. But of course he, Konrad, was chronically in a state of the greatest possible attentiveness. He could even hear human voices across the lake, even though it was normally impossible to hear human voices across the lake from the lime works. Those people on the opposite shore would be heard by him, Konrad, not when they broke into a loud laugh or anything like that, all they had to do was talk normally to each other, Konrad is supposed to have said to Fro. How often I hear a sound, an actual sound, and the person I have been talking with will not have heard it, though I did. I hear people talking across the lake, and I get up and walk to the window where I can hear them even better although I can’t see them, he said, but my test cases hear and see nothing, Konrad is said to have told Fro, the problem of living with other people had always consisted in the fact that he was always hearing and seeing things while the others heard and saw nothing, and it was impossible to train them, no matter who they were, in hearing and seeing. A person either hears and sees, or else a person hears, or a person sees, or else he doesn’t hear or see and you cannot teach a person to hear and to see, but a person who hears and sees can perfect his hearing and his seeing, above all perfect his hearing, because it is more important for a person to hear than to see. But as for my wife, Konrad is supposed to have said, his efforts to perfect her hearing and seeing had failed midway: suddenly, as long as ten or fifteen years ago, he had been forced to realize that it was pointless to continue to teach her to hear and to see any better, he soon gave up trying, it was in a woman’s nature to give up a disciplined mental effort, a mental effort of the will, midway, in fact she would do it every time at the moment of highest concentration and also always at the moment when success seemed assured. The Urbanchich method he had been using, especially since they moved into the lime works, in the ruthless training of his wife, he was now keeping up for his own purposes only, he had dropped it from her program altogether. As regards my hearing of conversations between all sorts of people on the opposite shore, Konrad is supposed to have said to Fro, I could often hear words, even difficult words, and sometimes the most complicated sentences, too, with truly exciting clarity, inside the lime works. Suddenly he said: my test cases, my wife for instance, Hoeller for instance, Wieser for instance, have never yet heard what I was hearing with the utmost clarity from the opposite shore, while I hear everything too clearly, Konrad is supposed to have said, though the others never hear a thing, and in fact you yourself never hear anything from the opposite shore, Konrad said. It was a triumph, after all, to hear absolutely everything, in consequence of his rigorous training in the course of decades of study, but at the same time it was terrible. Still, there was nothing like perfect, or nearly perfect hearing, for the greatest possible clarification. To revert to the subject of the lime works, Konrad is supposed to have said to Fro that everyone seeing it for the first time was instantly dumbfounded by it. Every decade saw a new addition, a superstructure tacked on, some part of it torn down, and think of the vast number of subcellars, I always say to the public works inspector, Konrad said to Fro.
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