Concrete

  Now I was following her suggestion and suddenly taking decisive action. I’m actually leaving, I thought. But for me to arrive at this decision, and finally get myself to Palma, it was necessary for her to have left first. I was now pretending to her that it was my idea, my brainwave, my decision, to go to Palma. In doing so I was lying not only to her — which of course was impossible, because she could see through me — but most of all to myself. You’re mad and always will be, I thought. On the day of my departure there were still twelve degrees of frost at eight in the morning. On the previous day Frau Kienesberger had been, and I had discussed all that was necessary with her, telling her above all that she mustn’t let the house get cold. She was to put the heating on three times a week, though not too high, I told her, for there was nothing so dreadful as returning to an old house that was completely cold. I didn’t know when I should be back, I said. I thought I should be back in three months, two months, four months, but I told Frau Kienesberger three or four weeks. I gave her instructions to clean the windows at last when the cold had become less severe, to polish the furniture, do the washing and so on. I particularly asked her to tidy up the yard and to clear away any snow that fell as quickly as possible so that people would think I was at home and not away. For this purpose I had fitted a so-called timeclock to a lamp in the top room on the west side so that it would be on for several hours in the morning and evening. This is always my practice when I go away. I had been lecturing Frau Kienesberger to such an extent that I was suddenly horrified by myself, for although I had actually broken off my dreadful torrent of words I could still hear myself telling her how my shirts were to be ironed and placed one on top of the other, how she was to stack the mail, which the postman always throws in through the open window on the east side, in the small room next to the right of the entrance, how the stairs were to be polished and the carpets beaten, and how she was to remove all the cobwebs behind the curtains and in the folds of the curtains and so on. She was not to tell the neighbours where I had gone, as that was nobody’s business. I told her I should possibly return the next day, and in any case I might return at any time. She was to strip the beds and air the mattresses and put fresh linen on them all and so on. And she must never under any circumstances touch anything on my desk, but I had said that thousands of times and she had always obeyed this instruction. Frau Kienesberger is really the only person I’ve spoken to for years, I tell myself, even though that’s a gross exaggeration which can be immediately disproved, but I feel that she is the only one with whom I have any extensive verbal contact over long periods, indeed very long periods, often months on end. She lives with her husband, a deaf mute (!), in a little one-storey house at the edge of the wood, not far from the village, and she only has a ten-minute walk when she comes to me. She herself has a speech impediment, which ensures that she doesn’t gossip, but she’s not a gossip by nature. She’s been coming to me for fourteen years, and in these fourteen years there has never been any disagreement between us. Everybody knows how important that is. And I often think she’s the one reliable person I have — there’s nobody else. And perhaps she senses this or even knows it. Not that I am continually giving her orders or telling her how to conduct herself: on the contrary I seldom have any particular wishes; most of the time I leave her entirely alone, and if she makes a noise while she’s working, because she can’t help making some noise, I leave the house for hours, or simply withdraw to the huntsman’s lodge. It would be a calamity, I reflect, if Frau Kienesberger failed to turn up one day for whatever reason, and at any moment a reason might suddenly crop up; but she probably knows as well as I do what I am to her and what she is to me, and so we have the most favourable relationship, in which we can both say we benefit equally from each other. She has three children and sometimes tells the story of their lives as she stands in the hall - how they are developing, what illnesses they have, what torments they have to endure at school, what they wore when they went sledging, when they go to sleep and when they wake up, what they get to eat on Tuesday and on Saturday, and how they react to everything. On such occasions 1 can’t help reflecting that mothers observe their children intensely if they are mothers like Frau Kienesberger, and they cosset them neither too much nor too little. She brings her children up by never thinking about their upbringing; she practises to perfection what others have to work out in their passion for theorizing, and where they are bound to fail she never does. By contrast with all my earlier domestic helps, who without exception were nothing but clumsy sluts, she has the gentlest manner. Where is that still to be found, I wonder? Looking out of the window, I am forced to conclude that I must wear my fur coat on the journey, together with warm underclothing and long woollen socks, for nobody catches cold and immediately becomes ill as easily as I do. Since my sarcoidosis developed I can’t afford to catch a cold, although I get a heavy cold three or four times a year, and so my life is always in danger. As a result of the prednisolone my resistance is virtually nil. When once I’ve caught a cold it takes me weeks to throw it off. And so there’s nothing I dread so much as catching cold. Even a slight draught is enough to make me take to my bed for weeks, and so at Peiskam I live most of the time in fear of catching cold. This fear almost verges on madness and is probably one of the reasons why I find it so hard to begin any protracted intellectual work; when so many fears are concentrated in one person, everything about him constantly breaks down. I’ll wear my fur coat and the warmest underclothes and the warmest socks, because I have to get to the station, and in Munich I have to get from the station to the airport, and who knows, I said to myself, what it will be like in Palma? When I had left Palma eighteen months before, in November, there had been driving snow, and I had been frozen through and through. When I got back to Peiskam I spent two months in bed, and the effect of going to Palma to recuperate was cancelled out at a stroke by my catching cold. Instead of coming back to Peiskam refreshed and fortified as I had hoped and expected, I came back looking like death. The people who saw me at the time didn’t know me, in the worst sense of the phrase, not in the sense that I looked much better and more normal than when I had left for Palma. The fur coat and the fur cap and the warm English scarf, I said to myself. Twelve degrees of frost! I was alarmed. But if there is the right contrast, I told myself, if it’s twelve degrees above zero in Palma and not twelve degrees below as it is here — perhaps even eighteen or twenty degrees, as is quite possible in Palma at this time of the year, late January — I shall profit from the change all the more. I deliberately said profit from and not enjoy, as would have been normal, in order to keep the extravagance of my desires under some measure of control. If it’s eighteen or twenty degrees in Palma, it will be to my profit, I said, adopting precisely the intonation used by my sister, whose pronunciation of the word profit is quite incomparable. In saying the word I almost reproduced the intonation she uses when speaking of her business deals. Oh, that’ll bring in another tidy profit! she often says, without of course going into the actual amount of the profit, let alone the method by which she makes it. And if it suddenly gets too warm in Palma, I told myself, I’ll carry my fur coat on my arm. It was now out of the question for me to leave simply wearing a greatcoat, as I had at first intended. And so I put the greatcoat back in the wardrobe, having got it out the day before, and took out my fur coat. As I did so I thought, How many fur coats I used to have! But I’ve gradually given them all away, forcibly got rid of them, as I tell myself, because each of them was associated with some town I’d visited. One was bought in Warsaw, another in Cracow, a third in Split, a fourth in Trieste - on each occasion it was when the weather had become unexpectedly cold and I’d thought I should become ill or even freeze to death without a fur coat. I gave a lot of these fur coats to Frau Kienesberger. The only one I’d kept was one that I’d bought twenty-two years ago in Fiume. This one was my favourite. I shook it out and laid it on the chest of drawers. What a long time it is since I wore this coat! I thought. It wasn’t as va
luable as the others I’d given away. It’s heavy, but it’s my favourite. It’s been in the wardrobe for years, and it smells as though it had, I said to myself. We are attached to certain garments and reluctant to part with them, even when they almost fall off us because they’re so threadbare and shabby, just because they bring to mind some journey, some particularly enjoyable journey, some particularly enjoyable experience. In fact I could tell a pleasant story about every one of the garments I still possess; most of them I’ve got rid of — given them away or burnt them. I haven’t kept any which were associated with some sad or dreadful experience; I parted with them as quickly as possible, because I couldn’t bear to open the wardrobe and be reminded of something dreadful, by a scarf, for instance, even if it was an expensive one. For a long time I’ve kept only garments which remind me of enjoyable, or at least of pleasant occasions, but among those I still have are a number which bring back feelings of great happiness, the sight of which, I have to admit, can still make me feel supremely happy years later, even decades later. But I could write a whole book on the subject. If we lose someone we love, we always keep some garment that belonged to them, at least as long as it retains their smell, in fact as long as we live, because we go on believing that the garment brings back their smell, even when this has ceased to be anything but pure imagination. For this reason I still have one of my mother’s coats, though this is a secret I’ve never divulged to anyone, not even to my sister. She would have simply made fun of it. My mother’s coat hangs in a wardrobe which is otherwise empty and which I keep firmly locked. However, never a week goes by but I open the wardrobe and smell the coat. I slipped my fur coat on and found that it fitted me —still fitted me, I had to say after looking at myself in the mirror, for in the last few years, so it seemed to me, I’d gone down to about half my previous weight, if not less. There had been the fresh attack of sarcoidosis, the repeated colds I caught every year, the general chronic debility resulting from them, and then the constant alternation between being bloated by too much prednisolone and losing weight through having to cut down or discontinue the medication. At the moment my weight was reduced, and I was waiting to become bloated again, for I had started taking large doses of prednisolone two weeks earlier. I was now taking eight tablets a day. I realised that this method of survival couldn’t be kept up for much longer. But I suppressed the thought — suppressed it although it was there all the time, suppressed it because it was there all the time. I’ve got used to it. Naturally the fur coat is unfashionable, I thought, standing in front of the mirror, but the very fact that it was unfashionable pleased me. In fact I’ve never worn fashionable clothes; I’ve always detested them and still do. The important thing is that it keeps me warm, I told myself; how it looks is really of no importance. It has to serve its purpose; nothing else matters. No, I’ve never had anything fashionable on my person, just as I’ve never had anything fashionable in my head. People were more inclined to say of me, he’s old-fashioned than he’s fashionable or even he’s modern — such a repulsive word. I’d always cared extremely little for public opinion because I was always obsessed with my own opinion and hence had no time at all for the public’s. I’ve never gone along with it, I don’t go along with it today, and I never shall. I’m interested in what people say, but obviously it mustn’t be taken in any way seriously. As far as I am concerned this is the best way forward. I can already see myself getting off the plane in Palma, with the warm African wind in my face, I said to myself. I shall drape the fur coat round my shoulders, and suddenly my feet will be light and my mind clear, and so on — I shall no longer feel this hopelessness which gnaws away at both mind and body. Of course it’s possible that everything will turn out to be a cruel deception. How often that has happened to me! I’ve gone away for months and returned after two days. The more luggage I’ve taken, the sooner I’ve been back home again. Having taken enough luggage for two months, I’ve been back in two days, and so on. And I’ve made myself look ridiculous, especially in front of Frau Kienesberger - having told her I’d be away for months when in fact it was only for two days, having told her it would be for six months when it proved to be only for three weeks. On such occasions I felt ashamed of myself and went about Peiskam with my head low, but I was ashamed only in front of Frau Kienesberger, nobody else, because in the meantime I had become supremely indifferent to everyone else. I had no explanation to offer, for the word despair would have been just as ludicrous as the word mad. I couldn’t expect somebody like Frau Kienesberger to take it seriously. It’s hard enough to convince oneself by using such words, let alone a difficult person like Frau Kienesberger, who is anything but simple; people are always talking about simple folk, yet nobody is more difficult, more complicated indeed, than these so-called simple folk. One can’t expect them to take words like despair and mad seriously. So-called simple people are in reality the most complicated people, and I find it increasingly difficult to get on with them. I have of late almost ceased having any dealings with them. It’s beyond my capacity: I can’t expect simple people to take me seriously any longer. In fact I’ve entirely given up all dealings with simple people, who, as I’ve already said, are the most difficult people of all, because such dealings require too great an effort, and I’m not prepared to lie to them in order to gain their understanding. It’s become clear to me also that it’s the simplest people who make the highest demands, and I’ve now reached the stage where I can no longer afford them. I can hardly afford myself any longer. I accuse my sister of going away for several weeks or for months and then perhaps turning up again a few hours later, and yet I’m no different — I intend to be away for ages, and two days later I’m back again. With all the devastating consequences that this entails. We’re both like this: for decades we’ve been accusing each other of being impossible, and yet we can’t give up being impossible, erratic, capricious and vacillating. This is what makes up our existence, my sister’s and mine, and always has; this is what has always got on other people’s nerves and yet has never ceased to fascinate them and make them seek our company — fundamentally because we’re capricious, erratic, vacillating and unreliable. This is what has always attracted others. People seek the society of others who are exciting, disconcerting and volatile, who are never the same from one moment to the next and usually change complexion completely. And all our lives my sister and I have been asking ourselves what it is we really want, without ever being able to find the answer. All our lives we’ve been looking for something, in the end for everything imaginable, and never finding it, always wanting to achieve everything and not succeeding, or else achieving it and losing it the selfsame moment. It’s an age-old inheritance, it seems to me, coming neither from our father nor from our mother, but from generations back. But Frau Kienesberger is not even surprised now if she finds me back home unpacking my bags two days after I’ve gone away for three or four months. She’s no longer surprised by anything to do with me. What a simple person and yet what an infinitely vigilant seismograph! I reflect. But suddenly everything is in favour of Palma and my work: I’ve got to get out, away from Peiskam, in fact until — I hardly dare say it, though I do dare to think it — until I’ve finished, perhaps even perfected, this work of mine. Leaving Peiskam is what I hate most. I walk from one room to another, I go downstairs and back upstairs, I cross the yard, I rattle the different doors and gates, I check the bolts on the windows and everything else that has to be checked when one goes away, and when I’ve checked the windows I no longer know whether the locks on the doors are in order, and when I’ve checked these I no longer know whether the windows are locked. Such an abrupt departure from Peiskam — and for many years all my departures have been abrupt — drives me to distraction and I am glad no one can see me, I’m glad there are no witnesses to my outward and inward disarray. How ideal it would be if I could sit at my desk now and begin my work! I thought, how ideal just to sit down and write the first sentence which would free the way for all the rest, to be able t
o concentrate on this study of Mendelssohn Bartholdy, press on with it and complete it! How ideal, how ideal, how ideal! But the desk has been cleared, and by clearing it I’ve forfeited any chance of beginning work immediately. By making these abrupt travel arrangements and bookings and so on I’ve possibly forfeited everything, possibly not just my work on Mendelssohn Bartholdy, but literally everything, perhaps my very last chance of survival! I held on to the door-post of my study in order to calm myself. I tried to check my pulse, but I couldn’t feel any. I felt as though I’d momentarily lost my hearing, and I pressed my head and my body so hard against the door-post that I could have cried out with pain. In the end, I told myself, though my head was far from clear, when I think I’ve checked everything, especially the plumbing and the electric wiring, I shall drop into my armchair, only to jump up again because I’ve forgotten to turn down the hot water system, which is something I can’t expect Frau Kienesberger to do. And then I shall go and clear out the big dirty linen basket, throwing out all the dirty washing, great heaps of it which have accumulated over many weeks, as may be imagined in view of my condition, which causes me to sweat profusely several times a day. All this washing, moreover, smells foul because of the large quantities of diuretics I have to take in order to lose water and so relieve the strain on my heart. I felt sick as I got all these pieces of dirty linen out of the basket and threw them on the washroom table, even though they were all mine - or perhaps because they were mine. I began to count them all, without realising that this was a sign of madness, and of course it was completely mad, but by the time I realised how mad it was I had become utterly exhausted, and it was as much as I could do to get back upstairs and sit down again in my armchair. It is our misfortune that we always decide in favour of something that turns out to be contrary to our wishes, and when I thought about it more closely, sitting in my armchair, I realised that my sudden decision to quit Peiskam and fly to Palma, where admittedly I had the Cañellas with their palace on the Borne, was all of a sudden directed entirely against myself. I couldn’t understand why I’d made it, but now, in view of all the circumstances it had conjured up, I saw that it simply couldn’t be reversed. I had to go away and at least try to start work in Palma. At least try, I kept on repeating to myself, at least try, at least try! Why did I have the armchair covered with french velvet only a few weeks ago if I’m not going to sit in it and enjoy it? I asked myself. What good will the new desk-lamp or the new blinds be to me now if I go away, possibly to some new hell? I tried to calm myself while making sure that I had packed everything that was necessary, or at any rate everything that was absolutely necessary, in my suitcases and my grandfather’s little travelling bag, which I always take with me when I go away. At the same time, however, I wondered how I could possibly think of calming myself in my present state; it was absurd for me to have such an idea as I sat slumped in the armchair, actually feeling that I should be incapable of getting up again. And somebody like you, somebody who’s already half dead, is about to fly to Palma, I repeated to myself several times, again half aloud, as has become a habit with me, a habit that can no longer be cured, as old people do who have been alone for years and are only waiting to be able to die. I was just such an old person already as I sat there in the armchair, an old man who was already more dead than alive. I must have made a pitiful, indeed pitiable impression on an observer, though there was none — unless I’m going to say that I am an observer of myself, which is stupid, since I am my own observer anyway: I’ve actually been observing myself for years, if not for decades; my life now consists only of self-observation and self-contemplation, which naturally leads to self-condemnation, self-rejection and self-mockery. For years I have lived in this state of self-condemnation, self-abnegation and self-mockery, in which ultimately I always have to take refuge in order to save myself. But all the time I ask myself what I have to save myself from. Is what I constantly wish to save myself from really as bad as all that? No, it isn’t, I told myself, and immediately resumed my self-observation, self-calumniation and self-mockery. All I want to do is to prolong my present state, which leads directly out of the world, I thought, though I dared not actually say it to myself. I’m playing with this state, and I’ll go on playing with it as long as I please. As long as I please, I now said to myself, and I listened, but couldn’t hear anything. The neighbours, I thought, have for years looked upon me as a madman. This role — for that’s what it is in the whole of this more or less unbearable farce — suits me down to the ground. As long as I please, I said to myself again, and this time I suddenly enjoyed hearing myself speak, which was something new, for I’d hated my own voice for years. How can I even for a moment think of calming myself, I thought, when I am so full of agitation? And I tried playing a record. My house has the best acoustics imaginable, and I filled it with the sound of the Haffner Symphony. I sat down and closed my eyes. What would the world be like without music, without Mozart! I said to myself. It’s always music that saves me. I actually calmed myself by repeatedly solving the mathematical puzzle of the Haffner Symphony with my eyes closed, an activity which always affords me the greatest possible pleasure. Mozart is supremely important for my work on Mendelssohn Bartholdy, I reflect, Mozart gives me the key to everything; I must start from Mozart. Have I given Frau Kienesberger the money I owe her? Yes. Have I packed all my medicaments? Yes. Have I packed all the necessary books and articles? Yes. Have I inspected the huntsman’s lodge? Yes. Have I told my sister she needn’t pay for the papering of her room at Peiskam as I originally demanded? Yes. Have I told the gardener how I want the trees pruned in January? Yes. Have I told the specialist that at night I now get pains on the right-hand side of my chest, not just on the left? Yes. Have I told Frau Kienesberger not to open the blinds on the east side? Yes. Have I told her to put the heating on during my absence, but not to overheat everything? Yes. Have I removed the key to the huntsman’s lodge? Yes. Have I paid the bill for the papering? Yes. I asked myself questions and gave myself answers. But the time wouldn’t pass. I got up and went down into the hall and checked my suitcases. I wanted to be sure they were locked firmly enough, and so I inspected the locks. Why am I doing all this to myself? I wondered. I went and sat in the east room on the ground floor and looked at the picture of my uncle, who had once been Ambassador in Moscow, as was evident from the picture. It was painted by Lampi and is of more artistic value than I originally assumed. I love this picture; my uncle reminds me of myself. But he lived longer than I shall, I thought. I was already wearing my travelling shoes. Everything I had on was too much for me, too tight and too heavy. And then there’ll be the fur coat, I thought. Wouldn’t it be better to get down to reading Voltaire as I intended, and my beloved Diderot, rather than go away suddenly, leaving behind everything that is so dear to me? I’m not at all the kind of unfeeling person that some people take me to be because they want to see me like that and because that’s how I very often make myself appear, not daring to show myself as I really am. But what am I really like? Once more I was caught up in speculations about myself. I don’t know why, but suddenly I recalled that twenty-five years ago, when I was just over twenty, I’d been a member of the Socialist Party. What a joke! I wasn’t a member for long. As with everything else, I resigned my membership after a few months. And to think that I once wanted to become a monk! That I once thought of becoming a Catholic priest! And that I once donated eight hundred thousand schillings for the starving in Africa! To think that that’s all true! At the time it all seemed logical and natural enough. But now I’ve completely changed. To think that I once believed I would marry! And have children! I even thought at one time of going into the army, of becoming a general or a field-marshal like one of my ancestors! Absurd. There’s nothing I wouldn’t once have given everything for, I told myself. But all these speculations added up, if not to nothing, then to ludicrously little. Poverty, wealth, the church, the army, parties, welfare institutions — all ludicrous. All I have left in the end is my present
pathetic existence, which no longer has very much to offer. But that’s how it should be. No doctrine holds water any longer; everything that is said and preached is destined to become ludicrous. It doesn’t even call for my scorn any longer. It doesn’t call for anything, anything at all. When we really know the world, we see that it is just a world full of errors. But we are reluctant to part from it, because in spite of everything we’ve remained fairly naive and childlike, I thought. What a good thing that I had my eye-pressure measured. Thirty-eight! We mustn’t pretend to ourselves. We may keel over at any moment. I have more and more dreams in which people fly, in and out of the window* beautiful people, plants I’ve never seen before, with gigantic leaves as big as umbrellas. We take all the necessary precautions, but not for living, for dying. It was a sudden decision on my part to give my nephew nine hundred thousand schillings, a fact which I must now admit, so that he could set up a practice appropriate to today’s conditions, as he put it. What is appropriate to today’s conditions? On the one hand it was stupid to give him what is after all quite a large sum for nothing, but on the other, what are we to do with our money? When my sister gets to hear that I’ve sold the property in Ruhsam I shan’t be around any longer. This thought reassures me. I’ve packed my Voltaire, I thought, and my Dostoyevsky — a wise decision. At one time I got on well with simple people, those whom I have for a long time called the so-called simple people. I used to visit them every day, but my illness has changed all that: I no longer visit them, I avoid them wherever possible, I hide from them. Going away makes one sad, I said in passing. The so-called simple people, the woodcutters for instance, had my trust, and I had theirs. I used to spend half the night with the woodcutters. For decades they were the only people for whom I could feel any sympathy! They never see me now. And in fact, having been spoilt for anything simple, we only impose on such people and take up their time when we are with them; we do them no good, only harm. If I were to see them now I’d only try to destroy their faith in everything they hold dear, the Socialist Party or the Catholic Church for instance, both of which are now, as ever, unscrupulous organisations for the exploitation of humanity. But it is a basic error to say that only the weak-minded are exploited: everybody is exploited. On the other hand this is reassuring. This is how things balance out; perhaps it is the only way things can continue. If only I didn’t have to read the sickening newspapers that are published here, which are not newspapers at all, but simply dirt-sheets edited by greedy upstarts! If only I didn’t have to see what surrounds me here, I said. One delusion succeeded the other, I now realise, as I sat in my armchair waiting to leave. I’m leaving a country that is totally ruined, a repulsive state that fills one with horror every morning. At first it was exploited and then discarded by the so-called conservatives; now it’s the turn of the so-called socialists. An obstinate old idiot who, having become chancellor, is now quite unpredictable, a megalomaniac and a public menace. If someone says the days are numbered he makes himself look ridiculous. Why have I stopped writing to people, why have I given up my correspondence? At one time I used to write letters regularly, even if I didn’t particularly enjoy writing. Quite unconsciously we give up everything, and then it’s gone. Was it my steadily worsening condition that kept my sister in Peiskam for so long and not, as I thought, a sudden onset of boredom with Vienna? If I were to ask her she’d reply with one of her charming lies. Pred-ni-so-lone. I said the word a few times quite slowly to myself, just as I’ve written it down here. Doctors don’t get much below the surface. They always neglect everything, and that’s what they constantly reproach their patients with — negligence. Doctors have no conscience: they simply answer the medical call of nature. But we repeatedly run to them because we can’t believe that this is so. If I carry these suitcases for even the shortest distance it may finish me off, I told myself. We call out the word porter as we used to, but there no longer are any porters. Porters have become extinct. Everybody has to hump their things as best they can. The world has become colder by a few degrees — I don’t wish to calculate by how many — and people are that bit crueller and more inconsiderate. But this is a perfectly normal course of events which we were bound to reckon with and which we could predict, because we’re not stupid. But the sick don’t like allying themselves with the sick, or the old with the old. They run away from one another. To their destruction. Everyone wants to be alive, nobody wants to be dead. Everything else is a lie. In the end they sit in an armchair or in some wing-chair and dream dreams of the past which bear not the slightest relation to reality. There ought to be only happy people — all the necessary conditions are present - but there are only unhappy people. We understand this only late in life. While we are young and without pain we not only believe in eternal life, but have it. Then comes the break, then the breakdown, then the lamentation over it, and the end. It’s always the same. At one time I enjoyed cheating the inland revenue; now I don’t even want to do that, I told myself. Everybody is welcome to see my hand. This is how I feel at the moment. At this moment. The question is really only how we are to survive the winter as painlessly as possible. And the much crueller spring. And summer we’ve always hated. Then autumn takes everything away from us again. Then she displayed the most ravishing bosom the world had ever seen: Zadig. I don’t know why this sentence occurred to me just now and made me laugh. It doesn’t matter either: what matters is that the laughter was entirely unforeseen. About something that needn’t make me feel ashamed. We go through periods of agitation which can sometimes last for weeks and can’t be switched off. Then suddenly they’re gone, and we experience a fairly long period of calm. But we can’t say for certain when the calm began. For years it sufficed for me to go and see the woodcutters and talk to them about their work. Why didn’t it suffice for longer? Two hours’ walk straight there and back again in winter, every day — that was nothing. But all that is impossible today, I thought. The easy methods have all become ineffective — visiting people, reading the newspapers, etc. Even the reading of so-called serious literature no longer has the effect it once had. Suddenly we were afraid of gossip, particularly the gossip which is indulged in non-stop by the so-called celebrated journalists of the cultural papers, who are all the more repellent for being well-known. For years, for decades, we let ourselves be smothered by this repellent gossip. Admittedly I was never in the position of having to pawn my trousers in order to send a telegram, as Dostoyevsky was, and perhaps this was an advantage after all. I might call myself relatively independent. But shackled and imprisoned like everybody else. Impelled by disgust rather than possessed by curiosity. We always spoke of clarity of mind, but never had it. I don’t know where I got this sentence from, perhaps from myself, but I’ve read it somewhere. Perhaps it will turn up among my notes sometime. We say notes to avoid embarrassment, although we secretly believe that these sentences which we blushingly call notes are really more than that. But we believe the same of everything to do with ourselves. This is how we swing ourselves over the abyss, not knowing how deep it is. And in fact the depth does not matter if everybody falls to his death, which we know to be the case. At one time, as far back as I can remember, I used to ask other people questions — the first person was quite certainly my mother — until I finally drove my parents to the verge of madness with my questions. Then suddenly I only asked myself questions, but only when I was sure of being ready with an answer to my question. Everyone is a virtuoso on his own instrument, but together they add up to an intolerable caco-phany. The word cacophony was incidentally a favourite of my maternal grandfather’s. And the phrase he hated more than any other was thought process. Another of his favourite words was character. During these reflections it suddenly struck me for the first time how extraordinarily comfortable my armchair is. Three weeks ago it was a piece of junk, but now that it has been re-upholstered it is quite luxurious. But what good is that to me if I am going away? I was putting up a tremendous inward resistance to going away. But I really couldn’t cancel
my plans. And then again I didn’t want to yield to my momentary feeling of attachment to Peiskam, beside which all else seemed tiresome, burdensome, futile. A pair of black shoes and a pair of brown, I told myself, and another pair for really bad weather. For running along the Molo, which was what I always enjoyed doing. But naturally there would be no question of my running. You’ll walk down to the Molo, very slowly, and take stock and see how far you get. After such a radical change of climate the first few days are the most dangerous. People arrive at nine in the morning, take a shower and rush out for a game of tennis; then they collapse and die, and by two o’clock in the afternoon they end up in the cemetery, as I know from the most dreadful firsthand experience. The dead are disposed of immediately in the south. Take everything slowly — get up slowly, have breakfast slowly, go into town slowly, but on the first day it’s better not to go straight into town — just down to the Molo. I drew a deep breath and sat up as straight as I could, then sank back exhausted in the armchair. However old we are, we go on expecting things to change, I told myself, we’re always waiting for a decisive change, because our minds are anything but clear. All the decisive changes took place many years ago, but at the time we didn’t recognize them as decisive. Those who were once our friends are either dead or have had unhappy lives, going mad before they died, or else they are still alive somewhere and no longer concern me. They’ve all got stuck in their outlook and become old; they’ve all basically given up, though some of them, to my certain knowledge, are still flailing about here and there. When we meet them they talk as though no time at all had elapsed in the last few decades — in other words they talk into the void. There was a time when I actually cultivated my friendships, as the saying goes. But at some point in the past all that suddenly ceased, and apart from the odd bit of information gleaned from newspapers — usually something silly or tasteless — I hear nothing about this or that person whom I once thought I couldn’t be without. Most of them have founded a family, as they say, made a living and built themselves a house; they’ve tried to secure themselves on all sides and in the course of time they’ve become uninteresting. I no longer see them, or if I do we’ve nothing to say to each other. One of them boasts non-stop about being an artist, another about being a scientist, a third about being a successful salesman. It makes me feel sick just to see them, long before they’ve opened their mouths, which utter only banalities and second-hand ideas, never anything original. It’s quite incredible that this house was once full of people whom I had invited and who spent the whole night drinking and eating and laughing. To think that I once not only loved parties, but actually gave them and was capable of enjoying them! But that was all so long ago that very few traces are left. This house is crying out for society, my sister exclaimed only recently. You’ve turned it into a morgue. I just don’t understand how you could have turned out the way you have. Although this was said theatrically it was meant seriously and affected me profoundly. Today all these people would simply get on my nerves. And I was actually the one who entertained all these people for years and even tried to put them right, but in vain. In the end they regard you as a fool. I don’t know which came first — my illness or my sudden distaste for society. I don’t know whether the distaste was there first and gave rise to the illness, or whether the illness was there first and gave rise to the distaste for this particular society, for social gatherings of this kind and for society in general. I don’t know. Did I drive them away, all these people, or did they withdraw from me? I don’t know. Did I cease having dealings with them or they with me? I don’t know. I once conceived the idea of writing about all these people, but then I gave it up: it was too silly. There comes a time when we actually think about these people, and then suddenly we hate them, and so we get rid of them, or they get rid of us; because we see them clearly all at once, we have to withdraw from their company or they from ours. For years I believed that I couldn’t be alone, that I needed all these people, but in fact I don’t: I’ve got on perfectly well without them. They only come to unburden themselves and to unload all their misery on to me, together with all the dirt that goes with it. We invite them thinking they’ll bring us something, something pleasant or refreshing of course, but all they do is deprive us of whatever we have. They come into our houses and force us into some corner where we can’t escape and suck us dry in the most ruthless fashion, until there’s nothing left inside us but the disgust they inspire; then they leave us standing, alone once more with all our private horrors. By bringing them into our house we are quite simply bringing in our tormentors, yet we have no choice but to let in, again and again, the very people who strip us of all our clothes and jeer at us when we stand naked in front of them. No one who thinks this way should be surprised if he gradually becomes isolated in the course of time and finds himself one day entirely alone, with everything that this ultimately and inevitably implies. Throughout our lives we repeatedly rule off the account, although we know that we are in no position to do so. When we suffer from this disease we are struck by the fact that everybody makes too much noise — and doesn’t notice it! People brutalise everything. They get up noisily, go about noisily all day, and go to bed noisily. And they constantly talk far too noisily. They are so taken up with themselves that they don’t notice the distress they constantly cause to others, to those who are sick. Everything they do, everything they say causes distress to people like us. And in this way they force anyone who is sick more and more into the background until he’s no longer noticed. And the sick person withdraws into his background. But every life, every existence, belongs to one person and one person only, and no one else has the right to force this life and this existence to one side, to force it out of the way, to force it out of existence. We’ll go by ourselves, as we have the right to do. That’s part of the natural course. At the one moment when I had the chance, namely when both my parents had died, I failed to see that I ought to turn my back on Peiskam as my sister had done; I really ought to have sold it and thus come to my own rescue, but I hadn’t the strength. Years of depression followed my parents’ death and made it impossible for me to take any initiative. I couldn’t even begin to study. I actually started on several courses of study simultaneously, but failed at them all, as I might have foreseen. I talked myself into studying mathematics, then philosophy, but it wasn’t long before I conceived a distaste for mathematics and philosophy, at least for the mathematics taught at the university, as well as for the philosophy that is taught there but in fact can’t be taught at all. Then suddenly I developed an enthusiasm, a true enthusiasm, for music and surrendered myself to it heart and soul. I got up from my armchair and looked at the clock; then I sat down again. I was incapable of doing anything before my departure, and so I at once relapsed into my fantasies. I found the universities repellent. I enrolled at a number of them. This had been the obvious thing for my father to do, but I attended them all only for the briefest spell. I went to Vienna, Innsbruck and finally Graz, a place I’ve loathed all my life, fully intending to begin and to complete a course of study there, but I failed right from the start. The reason was, on the one hand, that the stale intellectual mush that had been served up in universities for centuries at once turned my stomach and sickened my mind, and, on the other, that I found all the towns unendurable — Innsbruck, Graz and — in the end — even Vienna. All these towns, which of course I knew already, though not thoroughly, induced in me the most crushing depression, and in fact they are all, especially Graz, repulsive little provincial towns. Each one regards itself as the navel of the world and thinks it has taken a lease on the intellect. True, but it’s only the absolutely primitive intellect of the petty bourgeoisie; in these towns I became acquainted with the total insipidity of allot-ment-holders who taught philosophy and professed literature, with nothing else, and the stench of crass pedestrianism pervading these Austrian cesspits spoilt my appetite from the very beginning for anything but the briefest possible stay. And I didn’t want to stay in Vienna
either for longer than was absolutely necessary. But to be truthful I owe it to Vienna that I learned about music, and in the most perfect way possible, I must add. Much as I despise and condemn the city, and repellent though I find it most of the time, I nevertheless owe to it my access to our composers, to Beethoven, to Mozart, even to Wagner, and naturally to Schubert, whom I admittedly find it difficult to link with the others, and above all I naturally owe the music of modern and recent times to Vienna, which my father always referred to as the most outrageous of cities -Schönberg, Berg, Webern and so on. And my years in Vienna - nearly twenty in all, during which I became thoroughly attuned to city life — finally spoilt me for Peiskam. During these years I lived at first with my sister, then by myself, at first in the inner city, where I occupied a whole house in the Hasenauerstrasse belonging to my uncle who lived in Dobling. These years in Vienna made Peiskam impossible for me. I was never a nature-lover, which one has to be to live at Peiskam. But in the end illhealth forced me out of the concert-halls and back to Peiskam. Because of my lungs I had to part from Vienna, which meant parting from everything that had any value for me at the time. I’ve never got over this parting. But if I’d stayed in Vienna I should have lived only for a very short time longer. Peiskam had been standing empty for almost twenty years since the death of our parents; it had been given over to nature. No one believed anybody could ever move in again. But one day I moved back. I threw open all the windows, letting in fresh air for the first time in years, and in time I made it habitable. But it’s remained an alien place to me, if I’m to be honest, right to the present day, I reflected. I’d had to give up Vienna and all it meant to me — which was literally everything — at the very moment when I believed I was inseparably linked with the city for ever, a city which admittedly I already hated and which I knew I’d always hated, but which I also loved like no other. Today I envy my sister only one thing: that she can live in Vienna. That’s what constantly rouses me to anger against Vienna - envy. It’s envy that prompts me to be so monstrously unjust and even contemptible in my behaviour towards my sister — envy because she can live in Vienna and because I know she leads an extremely pleasant and happy life there, and I don’t. I always think that if there is one place in the world where I would like to live, then that place is Vienna — there’s no other. But.I’ve put up a barrier between myself and Vienna, thus making it impossible for me to live there. I no longer deserve Vienna, I thought. And it was in Vienna that I first heard a piece by Mendelssohn Bartholdy, The Travelling Players, in the concert hall of the Musik-verein. Both the work and the performance had an elemental effect on me. At the time I didn’t know why the work impressed me so deeply, but I do now. It was because of its brilliant imperfection. But at one time I even hit upon the idea of attending the mining college in Leoben, not because I had suddenly developed an interest in minerals, but because Leoben, being situated in the Styrian mountains, was well-known still for the purity of its air — which of course is now just as polluted as the air anywhere else. For even before I was twenty I had been seriously advised by doctors to lead a country life and not an urban life, but at that time I’d rather have died immediately in the town, no matter of what, than gone to live in the country. The idea of studying in Leoben only cropped up once. However, I paid a visit to the town to learn a bit more than I knew already about the possibilities of the study of mining, but I was put off by the place as soon as I got off the train. In a place like this you can only die, but not exist for a day longer than necessary, I told myself at the time, and in fact I didn’t need to spend even one day in Leoben, but went back the same day to Vienna, from where I’d set out to look at Leoben. Even as the train was crossing the Semmering I was seized by an oppressive sensation in my head and in my whole body. How can there be people who find it possible to exist in little towns like Leoben, I wondered at the time; and after all there are a few hundred thousand people in our country alone who exist in little places like Leoben without raising any objection. But the idea of starting a course of study in Leoben in the first place was not mine, but my maternal grandfather’s. He had once studied mining himself, admittedly not in Leoben, but in Padua, which is certainly an immense difference. And I’d considered going to England, possibly Oxford or Cambridge, I’d thought, thus at once associating myself with a number of our most brilliant minds, some of the most illustrious of whom had indeed studied in England, that is in Oxford and Cambridge, and gone on to teach there. And since I had no difficulty whatever with the English language, I thought that the way to England was the right way for me. But I hadn’t bargained with the English climate, at least not with the climate in Oxford and Cambridge, which is even more disastrous in its effect on sick people like me and frustrates any effort they make in any direction. I spent only ten days in England, having parted from my parents for at least six months, and even today I can recall the full weight of the despondency I suffered on my return to Peiskam, only ten days after leaving for England. I’d really made myself look ridiculous, but even then my sickness was to blame; it was already building up in me, though it had not yet broken out. After this reverse, which had left me with a somewhat mistaken view of England and London, I gave up all possibilities of studying abroad and concentrated on those which remained open to me at home, but these possibilities — with the alternatives of Vienna on the one hand and Innsbruck on the other — were entirely unacceptable. Since I didn’t fancy myself in the role of a seedy student, a role to which people like me and with my background are often attracted, I decided in favour of what seemed to me the best possibility open to me, that is not to study at all, at any rate not at a place of learning, believing myself to have enough strength and enough character to develop myself intellectually on my own. Moreover I had suddenly realised that the only thing in the world that fascinated me was music, and that apart from music everything else was worthless. This explains my years spent in Vienna. And where music is concerned, from the moment when I discovered it for myself I was the most receptive student. At one time I could have joined the editorial staff of the Presse, thanks to my acquaintance with an editor who was a friend of my father, but I had quite a sound instinct which prevented me from doing anything so perverse. While I lived with my sister on the Stubenring I used to spend my days visiting every possible library and meeting those people who would be useful to me in my studies and hence musically educated. I soon had little difficulty in making contact with such people, who gradually became indispensable for my research. In this way I became acquainted not only with the most important books and articles on musical theory, but also with a number of the authors who had written them, and from all this I derived the greatest possible advantage. At the same time I took an interest in the artistic productions of the Viennese in general, going to concerts or operas nearly every day. I had soon attained such a high degree of musical self-sufficiency that I was able to cut down on my visits first to the opera and then to concerts. The programmes always contained too many repeats of the same works: that has always been a characteristic of Vienna — that it very soon has nothing more to offer to anyone in search of what is new and therefore really interesting. It was also no longer the case in my time, as it had been earlier, that many different orchestras from all over the world could be heard every day. It was always the same orchestras, and good though they were — and are — I always had the impression — and still have — that the same orchestras always play the same things, even though in fact they always played different things — and still do. But of course a person who has opted for music still has his place in Vienna even today. The trouble is that the atmosphere of the city can’t be endured for any length of time, and quite apart from this the doctors had told me early on that for me Vienna had the most harmful climate of all. All in all I spent over twenty years in Vienna, and my only company was music. Suddenly I’d had enough and returned to Peiskam. Naturally this was a step which led me into the impasse to which these notes bear witness. At two o’cl
ock in the afternoon, when the car came to collect me, it was still eleven degrees below zero in Peiskam, but on my arrival in