Thomas Bernhard: The Lime Works

Here, where the water is deepest, actually the deepest spot in the lake, he, Konrad, was looking out of the window. But anyone stepping suddenly from behind the surrounding thicket to confront the lime works could not possibly have any conception of its vastness, such as was reserved only for the man who lived inside, inhabited the place head and soul, as he phrased it, and therefore able to sense all of its true extent. Not grasp it, exactly, but get the measure of it, Konrad is supposed to have said. An onlooker would be irritated, a visitor offended; while the onlooker would be both attracted and repelled by the lime works, a visitor was bound to suffer immediately every kind of disappointment. Whoever sees the place will turn around and take to his heels, whoever enters or visits will leave it and take to his heels. How often Konrad had observed a man come out from behind the thicket, look alarmed and turn back, it was always the same reaction, Konrad is supposed to have said; people step out of the thicket and instantly turn back, or else they step inside the lime works and immediately come running out again. They always have a feeling of being watched, approaching a structure like the lime works one always has a feeling of being watched, watched from all sides, soon one feels unnerved, Konrad is supposed to have said; starting out with an exceptional alertness, a high tension of all the senses, there is a gradual ebbing away of strength, everyone entering the environs of the lime works tends to succumb suddenly to deep exhaustion. One could hardly help being struck by the way one look at the lime works would make people turn back, as if suddenly deserted by the courage to knock on the door and enter. If the mere sight of the lime works does not frighten them, Konrad is supposed to have said, then they give a start when they knock at the door, though very few go so far as to knock, knocking makes a terrible noise. Every architectural detail of the lime works is the result of a thousand years of calculations. For instance, stepping through the thicket, at first glance one would assume that inside the lime works one would have very little freedom to move around, very little elbow room, but in fact there was lots of elbow room inside the lime works. But then, every preconception, as well as every preconception of a preconception, was likely to be wrong, humiliatingly so, every time. Anybody who thought at all was bound to know that. The actuality always turned out to be, actually, something else, quite the opposite, always, of the given actuality, in fact. That our very existence is pure self-deception and nothing else cannot be stated unconditionally. In the lime works, Konrad said to Wieser, as in no other building I know of, and I know the largest and the handsomest and in general every possible kind of building, stone or brickwork structures of all kinds, you can walk forward and backward and on and on in every direction as much as you want without having to go the same way twice, you can progress in the most progressive way there. The construction as a whole aimed at total deceptiveness, so that the superficial onlooker would fall into the trap every time. The moment you enter the vestibule, Konrad said to Wieser, you see at once that you have been made a fool of, because the vestibule alone is three times the size of the annex, to take only one example, and of course the upstairs and the downstairs vestibules are the same size; the lime works, designed as a lordly manor, had for Konrad all the advantages of a kind of voluntary self-imprisonment at hard labor. (The vestibule leads through to the courtyard, which is paved with cobblestones, they tell me at Laska’s. Inside the lime works Konrad could walk about for hours without going crazy, he is supposed to have said to Wieser, even though the same kind of pacing the floor he did here, back and forth, this way and that, in buildings as large or even larger, possibly, would drive him crazy in a matter of minutes. His head, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, felt at home in just such a building as the lime works, he believed; his body, too. While his wife, oriented toward Toblach as she was, felt uneasy in such a building as the lime works, found herself constantly depressed by it, Konrad himself breathed freely and existed fully only in such buildings as the lime works that were naturally responsive to the highest claims of absolute originality, what he needed were rooms where you could take at least fifteen or twenty steps forward or backward without running into any obstacles, Konrad said to Wieser, by which I mean, you realize, long steps, the kind of strides I take when concentrating on my work, brain work, while, as you know, most of the rooms you enter, most of the rooms we have to live in, time and time again, to spend the night or simply to exist in, you can barely take eight or nine steps without running your head against a wall; it has always mattered enormously to me to be able to take those fifteen steps back and forth freely, Konrad said to Wieser, the moment he entered a house, he said to Wieser, he tried it out, to see whether he could take those fifteen or twenty steps in one direction. I immediately take my first steps in one direction without regard to anything else, and I count those steps; let’s see now, I ask myself, can I take fifteen or twenty steps this way and fifteen or twenty steps back again, and I check out the situation only to discover, more often than not, that, as I told you, I cannot even take eight or nine steps in a straight line, whereas here at the lime works, Konrad said, I can easily take my twenty or thirty steps right off, in every room, wherever I want to, without running my head into a wall. In large rooms like these I can breathe again, of course, Konrad said. But his wife found large rooms oppressive. I feel depressed in small rooms, she feels depressed in large rooms. My wife is of course conditioned by the cramped rooms in Toblach, she grew up in those small, cramped Toblach rooms, in the general constrictedness of Toblach, everything in Toblach is uptight, everywhere in Toblach one always has the feeling that one is suffocating, Konrad said, and anyway in small rooms he always feels he is suffocating, the same feeling he has in mountain glens and so he has it in Toblach every time, while his sister, who is accustomed to Toblach, feels crushed by the size of a large room, in a vast landscape she feels crushed by the vastness of the landscape, under an enormous sky she feels crushed by the enormousness of the sky, with a man of stature she feels crushed by the man’s stature. By the same token Konrad always felt he was about to suffocate when he was inside the annex, which is why he so seldom visited Hoeller who lives in the annex, Konrad went to see Hoeller in the annex only as a last resort, after a few minutes inside the annex he felt as if he were running out of oxygen and rapidly suffocating: some people simply preferred small cramped rooms and others preferred big spacious rooms, Konrad is supposed to have said, a conversation of any extent with Hoeller in the annex had gradually come to be impossible, even though Hoeller was a man toward whom Konrad felt the most protective love of which he, Konrad, was capable, but the cramped space in the annex and his own violent reactions to the constricted feeling of the annex the moment he entered it, made it impossible to visit Hoeller in the annex except for the briefest possible time, Konrad is said to have told Wieser. When they moved into the lime works it was immediately obvious that his wife would move into the smallest of the rooms. But even in her room, which actually is the smallest room in the lime works, Konrad was still able, as he said to Wieser, to take easily fifteen steps forward and fifteen steps back. From the first it had been clear that his wife would move straight up to the second floor, they had both decided on this as far back as Mannheim where they were staying just before they moved to the lime works, because the second floor was the most salubrious, a judgment confirmed every time by the expert opinions of every kind of specialist, they never gave a moment’s consideration to putting her on the first floor or on the ground floor or on the third floor, Konrad said. Strange as it seems, people are always saying that the second floor is the best for a person’s health, everybody chooses the second floor if possible, they all prefer it. Myself, I moved straight into my room here on the first floor, Konrad is supposed to have said. From the first they had agreed upon this, here is where I go, into this room on the first floor, and this is where she goes, into this second-floor room. Here in the lime works he had almost all the right conditions, conditions that could not be bettered, for getting on with his work, he said, and at first he did not ask himself what it meant for his wife to be moved suddenly into the lime works, even though he knew what it meant to her, he did not keep thinking about it, one simply can’t keep thinking about a lot of things that one is aware of. That he had a window overlooking the lake where the water was deepest was an additional advantage for his work, even if he could not or would not say what kind of an advantage. It was also advantageous that his wife, too, had a window overlooking the water, though not the deepest part as in his case, because, as he said to Wieser, she must on no account have her window where the water was deepest. At first his wife had wanted a window facing on the courtyard (her usual preference for that enclosed feeling!) or even a window giving onto the rockface, but she had let him talk her into realizing the advantageousness of having a window overlooking the water instead, and in time she did in fact come to spend hours, what was he saying? whole days on end, staring into the water, Konrad said. As for himself, Konrad said, a room facing the courtyard would have been bad for his work; a room looking out at the rockface would have been impossible, out of the question. To move into a room facing the courtyard or the rockface would have been a deliberate invitation to total despair, something he was prone to fall into anyway. When it came to furnishing the house, as Konrad once explained to Fro: though we did our own rooms completely the first day, once and for all, putting in only the most indispensable things, the bare necessities, you understand, we did nothing at all about the rest of the building. Since we moved in during the winter, we had to use the barge, it took two trips by barge across the lake, Konrad said to Fro, two full loads of those hundreds of thousands of household effects we still owned even after all our travels all over the world during all those decades, Fro; it was incredible how much furniture and household stuff we still had when we moved into the lime works, despite two world wars and all those catastrophic unheavals! it was fantastic, Fro, considering that we never lifted a finger to hold on to all these furnishings and household goods, quite the contrary, neither my wife nor I ever gave a moment’s thought to the stuff, and of course all these hundreds upon thousands of furnishings and household goods represent only a fraction of what we used to have, because my wife, after all, brought a great deal of property into the marriage and I also contributed a good deal, and what with a few deaths in the family, war casualties you know, we acquired quite a bit more, though we lost much of it in the cities, we never lost anything in the country, most of it was stored in the country. Imagine, two huge barges loaded to the limit with furniture and household effects! Luckily the lake was not frozen over, though it freezes over every winter, in January it is usually frozen hard, but the year we moved into the lime works the lake had not frozen over. No one would dare to cross the frozen lake by car or truck ever again, not after that wedding party, several Konrads among them, Konrad is supposed to have said, broke through the crust about twenty years ago. For centuries people drove over that frozen lake with impunity, and then suddenly that wedding party had to break through; since that date no one would risk it. Three huge barge loads of household stuff, Konrad said to Fro, and you know how much one of these barges will hold. The chances are that barge is no longer fit for use, these days, Konrad said, not a soul has given it any attention in years, such a barge had to be oiled and painted every year at least, but nobody has ever oiled or painted that barge. Eaten up with rust and rot as it is, the barge was doubtless quite unfit for use by now, and Konrad is supposed to have said: the way everything around the lime works is eaten up with rust and rot, when you think how much there is, lying around the lime works and eaten up with rust and rot. As I was saying, he said to Fro, for years nothing at all was done to make the lime works habitable, and when we got here we gave less than an hour to fixing up our two rooms. Of course he and his wife, Konrad said, were the most unassuming people in the world. He had gotten by all his life using only the most indispensable articles of furniture, always the same ones. Nevertheless they had somehow, despite their tendency to concentrate only on what was absolutely necessary, managed to have two full barge loads of movables to bring to the lime works. Mrs. Konrad is alleged to have said repeatedly that she could never have found enough room for all those furnishings and effects in Toblach. In Toblach not even half of the stuff would have got inside, she said. There was absolutely nothing, Konrad said to Fro, that she couldn’t somehow connect with Toblach, just to drag in Toblach somehow. The problem in moving, Konrad said to Fro, was primarily to begin with the pieces intended for the first or the second or the third floor and to avoid dragging pieces meant for the third floor to the second floor, as had happened again and again, for example, or dragging first floor pieces to the second floor or third floor pieces to the first, and so forth. By the time they had finished, almost every piece of furniture etc. was standing in the wrong place, so that the end result, as he expressed himself, was one of hopeless confusion. As you know, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, I sold quite a lot of the furnishings and stuff right after we moved in, and by now I have converted most of these wooden absurdities into cash. And to Fro, a year ago: my wife hasn’t the faintest idea that I have sold nearly all the furniture and household things; but that’s another subject. Behind her back I sold nearly all the furniture and fixtures, Konrad is supposed to have said (his own words) almost all the rooms in the lime works are completely empty now because I had to convert everything to cash these last few years, considering especially the high cost of litigation. The lawyers swallowed up most of it! He had naturally had to hire a number of hands, what with Hoeller being bedridden at the time they moved in, he was down with pleurisy, and as everyone knew it was hard even in Sicking, even if one was ready to pay dear for it, to find men for such unskilled occasional work as moving furniture, Konrad had in fact lent a hand himself, while his wife, exhausted by the hardships of moving, slumped in her invalid chair that was the first thing to be set up in its permanent place in her room; Konrad helped move the furniture and fixtures into the lime works side by side with the hired help, he is supposed to have told Fro, though of course as long as one had hired help one was obliged to get as much work as possible out of them, so he had ordered the men to work hard and quickly, not with the excruciating languor that had become customary among working men ever since they had become accustomed to being coddled and spoiled in the course of recent history, he asked them to work as quickly as he did, and the men obeyed instantly, says Fro, they suddenly began to move the furnishings and household goods with remarkable speed, and even with extraordinary skill; with zeal, one might say. Konrad evidently had a knack for getting the men to put their backs into it, Fro thinks. For the first few days he had managed to conceal his normally glaring misanthropy, suppress it enough, anyway, so that the hired men, who had heard of him but never seen him face-to-face before, took him to be a thoroughly well-meaning, kindly gentleman, whom they could look forward to using for their own purposes, such as extracting from him high pay for little work, high pay for sloppy work, etc. etc., in fact their yielding to Konrad’s orders to work fast and efficiently too was pure cunning on their part. Konrad of course realized that he had to put his best foot forward with the men, what with the terrible fix he was in, having those huge barge loads of stuff at the lime works with not a helping hand in sight. It would take months, Konrad is supposed to have said to Fro, to bring some order into all this furniture chaos, but in fact no order has been brought into all this furniture chaos to this very day, he said to Fro, but then, by this time, there is only a fraction of the original number of pieces etc. here in the lime works, everything else has been sold, so there’s not much point in arranging the remnants so late in the day. Especially as I intend to convert even these remnants into cash as soon as possible, Konrad is supposed to have said. To his wife he would say over and over, whenever she asked him, that all the rooms were in order, that everything was in its place in every room of the house, that little by little every single object had found its proper place, without a word to let her know that everything had in fact been sold off by then, that Konrad had never once and not for a moment considered putting the furniture in place, but had thought only and always about selling it as quickly as possible, had in fact managed to sell it off gradually at quite good prices, to antiquarians here and there, one of whom in particular had taken almost everything off his hands at a relatively high price, for sale in America, a trade at which the dealer had occasionally made profits of a thousand, even two thousand, percent, as he admitted to Konrad; who said not a word of all this to the sick woman glued to her invalid chair, to whom he went on reiterating his lies about the furnishings being in perfect order. For decades it was by lies and nothing but lies that Konrad and his wife managed to save themselves from total despair, to go on somehow, to stay in touch and endure each other for just a while longer; without lies the two of them would have become totally estranged and lost in despair, Fro thinks. My God, what do I need in a room besides a table, a chair, a wardrobe, and a bed? Konrad is supposed to have exclaimed to Fro once, when they were coming out of the tavern and saying goodbye under the horse chestnuts, as they so often did after playing rummy for four hours at a time; Konrad used to stretch their game for as long as he could so as to put off going home to his waiting wife. Fro: Konrad was afraid of going home to his wife. The lime works are out of earshot, Konrad is supposed to have said quite frequently to Wieser; anyone crying out inside the lime works was not going to be heard. If someone were to break in with criminal intent there would be no point in screaming, as the screamer would not be heard. The sawmill was out of earshot, the tavern was out of earshot, not a soul lived within earshot of the lime works. The wood cutters were out of earshot. That the Mussner property and the Trattner property had been out of earshot, as the two still unsolved murders of the owners Mussner and Trattner proved, was a matter of catastrophic consequence. Even though Konrad appreciated the total seclusion of the lime works as advantageous for his work, it did on the other hand hold a constant threat, indeed an extraordinary threat, because the types that were suddenly coming out of the woodwork everywhere, strangely enough more than ever in the present era of general affluence, came crawling out of all sorts of holes for the sole purpose of committing crimes, primarily crimes of violence and preferably the meanest, most brutal kind of violent crimes, and those types were known to shy away from nothing, from no conceivable horror they could find to commit. Basically Konrad lived, he said, in constant terror of violent criminals, his whole existence could be said to be a state of pauseless dread, as he literally put it, a dread of encountering violent types, and the lime works were virtually predestined to be the scene of violent crimes, the place was by nature a deliberate provocation to violent crime, in fact all the crimes at the lime works so far were chiefly still unsolved murders committed in the course of robbery, all the crimes (violent crimes) committed here in Sicking and environs were ninety-five percent unsolved cases, the hundreds of them committed at the lime works all unsolved just like the cases of the two landowners Mussner and Trattner, whose properties had also been isolated like the lime works and where it was customarily regarded as a miracle, as it was at the lime works, if by December 31 no violent crime had occurred there, as at the lime works alone eleven murders were known to have been committed in about a hundred years, not counting burglaries, robbery, common theft, the kind of crimes so customary no one kept count. Buildings like the lime works, in fact, attracted precisely the sort of character whose entire being was oriented toward the committing of none other than violent crimes, basically it was no use at all to build walls, install locks, etc., and the so-called psychological sciences always theorizing in collaboration with the physiognomists always came up with erroneous conclusions. Nothing was more deceptive than the human face, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser. That he himself carried a revolver at all times was generally known, at least since the incident with the woodcutter and game warden Koller, as well as the fact that he had a hidden weapon in readiness at all times in nearly every room of the lime works, a fact publicized in the course of the Koller trial; better to shoot someone occasionally in the shoulder or the leg, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, and get locked up for it, rather than allow oneself to be the victim because of a failure to draw, because one had become intimidated by already having a record of criminal convictions. No period in history had a better right than this period to be designated as a period of violent crime, Konrad is supposed to have said, in no previous period did people have a greater right to expect a violent crime to occur at any moment, and violent crimes not only occurred far more frequently in the country than in the city, but here in the Sicking area, as everyone knew, one had to deal daily and hourly with the most revolting forms of violent crime. The familiar thesis that the typical perpetrator of violent crimes was likely to shy away from no conceivable monstrosity, proved to be the absolute terrible truth in the Sicking area. That even Konrad’s wife had a gun within reach behind her invalid chair, as Konrad told Wieser about a year ago, is confirmed by Fro. Both he and his wife could not exist for a moment in the lime works or even in Sicking without the protection of firearms. Inside the lime works a person had to be armed at all times, had at every moment without exception to reckon with the likelihood of a crime against oneself. Only a fool would live unarmed in such a building as the lime works and in such an area as Sicking. Of course he had never sold a single one of his guns, Konrad said to Wieser, on the contrary, while I tried to sell every saleable thing on the premises, I bought up, as you know, nearly all the weapons in the Ulrich estate, you could never have enough guns when you were living in the lime works even though the place was as securely locked up, bolted, and barred as could be, any criminal determined to commit a violent crime would always find a way to get inside and do it. There was actually no way to prevent a criminal, no precautionary measure imaginable that would keep him from committing his crime, or crimes, once he had made up his mind to commit them. Even if the decision did not always originate in the criminal’s own brain — the crime or crimes of any given criminal hardly ever originated in the criminal’s own brain — the criminal’s whole being nevertheless was predisposed to the crime, or crimes, his whole being aimed at the crime, or crimes, until they have been, or it has been, committed. The nature of the criminal was such as to aim incessantly at the crimes to be committed, and once this was done, the criminal’s nature tended of course to concentrate on a fresh crime, or crimes, and so forth. You can scream, of course, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, but you will not be heard. The setup inevitably attracts criminals, and that means violent criminals. (Wieser remembers these statements of Konrad’s perfectly.) There had also been many accidents at the lime works, accidents which ended lethally for people who lived or worked there, in most cases, because their cries or screams for help had not been heard. Think of the accidental explosion in early ’38, Konrad is supposed to have said, seven dead, twenty-four wounded. Yet he had refused to install a telephone in the lime works, though he knew his wife had set her heart on having one, a telephone would unquestionably be a great help to her, but there was his work to be considered, which made the installation of a phone at the lime works a thing quite out of the question. No telephone! No telephone! Konrad had exclaimed time and again, says Wieser. Naturally, if you need a doctor, a doctor must be called! he is supposed to have said. But the installation of a telephone was bound to be the end of his work, that is, it would be the end, period; he knew what he was saying. Implausible as it may seem to you, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, if I had to choose between my wife and my work, I would of course choose my work. Quite apart from the fact that the installation of a phone would by far exceed my financial means, he said, because I have suddenly awakened to the fact that, contrary to my fixed idea that I was well off, we are suddenly totally impoverished. We are penniless, which is why I sold so many of our things, of course, but my wife must not hear of it, he is supposed to have said, her faith in our inexhaustible funds implying our inexhaustible wealth is all she has left, there is nothing else left for her to cling to, but as long as she can believe that there is plenty of money, something she has been able to believe until just two years ago, he said, as Konrad himself had been able to believe too, she could be at peace. If we had a telephone, Konrad is supposed to have said, we would be in the same situation as before we moved into the lime works. What did I move into the lime works for, he asked himself, if we are to have a phone here? Of course even the most absurd kind of building had a phone nowadays, there was no place without a phone anywhere, but the lime works did not yet have a phone. There’s a phone at the tavern, there’s a phone at the sawmill, but there will be no phone at the lime works, ever. Sometimes he thought of the original purpose for which the lime works was built, and of his own purpose in living there now, the purpose for which he was misusing it, he said. How bitterly all sorts of people had slaved in the place, for instance. He would think what the lime works had once meant to the entire region, and how long it was since it had ceased to mean anything. Even though it was still referred to as the lime works, when it came up, it would after all be truer to speak of a shut-down or deactivated lime works, when referring to the lime works. People are always referring to all kinds of structures or mental complexes, Konrad is supposed to have said, that have long ceased to be the same structures or mental complexes they once were. For twenty years now the lime works had been shut down, dead. One fine day someone realized, Konrad said, that the lime works had become unprofitable, so they let the workers go and shut down the lime works. The manager had written to Hoerhager in Zurich that the lime works had ceased to make a profit and the manager proposed to Hoerhager that he shut it down, Konrad is supposed to have told Wieser; liquidate the lime works, the manager is supposed to have written to Hoerhager, or rather, to have telegraphed, and Hoerhager immediately liquidated the lime works; Hoerhager, who was a bachelor, is said to have instantly liquidated the works without a moment’s hesitation, upon receiving the manager’s proposal to liquidate, Konrad is supposed to have told Wieser. But the manager was a crook, Konrad said, everything about him was crooked, at least his intentions were. Hoerhager had actually never paid any attention to the lime works, Konrad told Wieser. The manager had been using Hoerhager, managers are by their very nature the exploiters of owners, all the managers in the world are exploiters, they never think of anything else than how to exploit the owners, the principle of exploiting owners has gradually been developed by them to a truly vertiginous science. At the time the lime works were liquidated, Konrad and his wife were living in Augsburg, crammed with all their possessions into a house that, as Konrad told Wieser, was well-suited to Konrad’s carrying on his research. Konrad at this time remembered the lime works, as he had remembered it for decades before and for decades to come, as his first childhood playground, a structure associated in his mind with damp, chill, darkness, getting hurt, currently owned by his peripatetic nephew Hoerhager who was then spending his time mostly in Zurich, caught up in social distractions. Already the lime works had meant to Konrad a place of eclipse, an ideal retreat for working on his book, and already in Augsburg he started to think about buying the lime works from Hoerhager, Konrad reminisced to Wieser, though he did not know, did not even dream that he would actually one day buy the lime works from his nephew, even though that day would not arrive for two decades more. Hoerhager was then at the point of liquidating the lime works at long distance, from Zurich, and in cold blood. Yet despite the fact that the nephew never took the slightest interest in the lime works other than the financial, Hoerhager held off for decades on selling it to Konrad. My nephew probably knew that I was absolutely determined to buy the lime works, that my life, my very existence, depended upon my acquiring the lime works, and so he would not sell to me, Konrad is said to have told Wieser. My wife’s health was growing noticeably worse that time in Augsburg, as I remember, Konrad said, we kept trying every kind of specialist in nearby Munich, which was at the time world famous for its outstanding doctors, particularly its specialists for the various kinds of deformity, for cripples. In Augsburg I used to take long walks along the Lech River, Konrad recalled, it’s a usable sort of city, actually. The lime works manager was rumored to have demanded a horrendous sum of compensation from Hoerhager, Konrad told Wieser, which Hoerhager instantly agreed to pay, just as Hoerhager always instantly agreed to whatever the manager proposed, simply to avoid being bothered, Konrad supposed. The manager offered to discharge the workmen, turn off the power, lock the gates for good. Lime works like this one in Sicking, i.e., of middling size, no longer had a future, the manager wrote to Hoerhager, so he, the manager, would undertake to wind it all up in orderly fashion; as usual, Hoerhager agreed to everything the manager proposed. The manager could have Hoerhager’s power of attorney to do whatever needed to be done, Hoerhager wrote from Zurich to Sicking. I remember his being in Zurich then, Konrad said to Wieser, while we were in Augsburg, he was in Zurich, a city that takes a great interest in the advancement of culture. The lime works were liquidated within a week. All that hardly interested my nephew Hoerhager in Zurich, said Konrad, while I was always interested in anything to do with the lime works, and the liquidation of the lime works aroused my interest in Augsburg all the more, in that a shut-down, abandoned, really dead lime works was more suitable than ever for me and my scientific work, more ideal a place to live and work than ever before. I instantly dispatched a telegram to Zurich: “Buying limeworks” two words just like that, “Buying limeworks,” but Hoerhager, my offer in hand, would not sell, Konrad is said to have told Wieser. So began my decades of struggle for possession of the lime works. The harder I kept after him, Konrad said to Wieser, the less inclined Hoerhager seemed to make a deal, though he could certainly have used my money, especially on the eve of World War II, yet he would not sell to me, but on the other hand he did not sell to anyone else, either, so as not to put an end to my efforts to buy the lime works, he needed for me to go on making those desperate efforts, in which he took a sadistic delight, Konrad is said to have told Wieser. As my offer went up, his resistance stiffened. This went on for two decades. In the end, by this time we had moved to Mannheim, I did buy the lime works for a high price, probably by two hundred or three hundred percent too high a price, and probably, Konrad is said to have told Wieser, when it was already too late. Hoeller was to continue staying in the annex, on a pension, as the lime works manager is supposed to have requested and Hoerhager agreed instantly to the pension for Hoeller and to let him stay on at the annex, an additional charge Konrad took over, Hoeller’s pension and continued occupancy of the annex, along with the lime works, but he didn’t mind, on the contrary, he needed Hoeller. It was necessary to keep someone at the lime works who would be part and parcel of it, the manager wrote to Hoerhager in Zurich, and Konrad is said to have told Wieser that this was correct, a complex like the lime works needed a man like Hoeller. Hoeller had been lime works foreman for thirty years. He would have been incapable of leaving the lime works, besides; the others simply went, most of them took jobs in the brewery, the candle factory, the quarry, and that was that. Workmen simply turn their backs on their place of work, Konrad said to Wieser, their place of work is no more to them than a machine for providing them with money. To Hoeller the lime works was home. Though it must be said that the shut-down, dead state of the lime works depressed Hoeller, Konrad told Wieser, even now. It felt weird to him. Konrad struck him as weird, too, Konrad said, but Konrad for his part regarded Hoeller, quite to the contrary, with increasing warmth as a thoroughly dependable, needed man. Konrad to Fro: he (Konrad) would start by going up to the attic, then down to the third floor, then the second, the first, and finally he would walk through all the rooms on the ground floor, to make sure that there really was not another salable thing in the house except for the Francis Bacon which he had bought in Glasgow. Just looking for something that could be converted into cash, that’s all. But he found nothing. Apparently, he thought, he had sold everything already. He did not know the full extent of his indebtedness, but he knew it was enormous. His debts amounted to more than the value of the lime works. Now he had absolutely nothing left, he thought. He might go up to the attic once more, but there really was nothing at all left in the attic. Old suit cases, beer glasses, preserve jars, hat boxes, crutches. He would search every corner, because he could not believe that there could be absolutely nothing salable left in the attic, not even an old icon, nothing at all. Nothing left in the rooms, nothing on the walls, nothing. Only three years ago all these walls had still been full of things, but there was nothing hanging on them now. You could still see how much there had been, the outlines of the pictures were still visible. Now the lime works walls were bare. It had all been taken down and sold. At a ridiculous price, Konrad is said to have told Fro. But though he realized that everything was gone, that there was nothing left because he had gradually sold even the most unsalable items he’d had, he kept going back through all the rooms again, as if to reassure himself for the hundredth or the thousandth time that there was nothing left in those rooms, not one thing. The empty rooms on the ground floor are the most depressing of all, he said, according to Fro. High-ceilinged empty rooms make a terrible impression on first entering a house. He had only just been through all the rooms again, including the annex, he said, according to Fro, and there was no doubt at all that there was nothing salable left even in the annex. He said he had been considering sneaking something out of his wife’s room to sell, but that would be the hardest thing to do. In his own room there was nothing left except the Francis Bacon, which he would not sell, he would never part with that painting. I might just possibly succeed in smuggling something salable out of my wife’s room without her noticing it, he said. You must remember that I’ve nothing left in the bank, Fro quoted him saying. They had already told him at the bank that he had exhausted his account. But a man had to have Читать дальше