Extinction (24 page)

full knowledge of it
, yet it would be quite useless for him to rebel, as my mother can do whatever she likes with him. Even so, she wasn’t prepared to travel openly to
Rome to see Spadolini: she had to use me as the pretext, the crazy megalomaniac son who stayed at the Hassler for months and then defied all the rules of decency by taking a lease on one of the most expensive apartments in the Piazza Minerva for years, possibly for decades, because he wanted to combine breakfast with a view of the Pantheon. And my mother doesn’t know that I’m aware of the true reason for her visiting Rome, I told Gambetti. She puts on a superb act when it comes to dissembling to my father, I told Gambetti; she displays an incomparable mastery worthy of the greatest artists. Having come to Rome just to see Spadolini, I reflected, looking again at the photo of her and my father at Victoria Station, she was bored whenever she was with me, because all the time she was thinking of Spadolini. Their relationship is not of Spadolini’s making, I told Gambetti, but entirely of my mother’s.
You can’t leave the huntsmen alone when the hunting season is on
. These words, spoken to my father, strike me now, so long after her visit to Rome, as even more contemptible than they did at the time. Even the huntsmen, and finally I myself, had to be involved so that she could meet Spadolini in Rome. With nothing else on her mind but meeting Spadolini again, she had the effrontery—the gall, as they say—to send my father dreary picture postcards of the Pantheon or Saint Peter’s every day, with such messages as: We [she and I, that is!] are having a wonderful time in Rome, etc. She had me sign them and so provide her with an alibi, as she thought, proving that she spent every day with me and no one else. Spadolini was the principal figure during her visit to Rome, during all her visits to Rome, Gambetti, not me. Of course I don’t attach any importance to being the principal figure myself. My mother’s mendacity was by then at its most brazen, I told Gambetti, though I immediately felt ashamed of having said this, sensing that I had gone too far, at least by saying it to Gambetti, as I instantly gathered from his reaction. He is so
sensitive
, I thought, that he’s bound to feel that this remark, like other remarks of mine, is out of place, if not positively distasteful. The teacher mustn’t present such a distasteful image to his pupil, I reflected, but the reflection came too late. On the other hand, I thought, I have to be open with Gambetti, who is my pupil after all. Open, yes, but not base, I thought, correcting myself; open, yes, but not vulgar; open, yes, but not common and contemptible. But Gambetti’s known me so long that he
can’t fail to understand me, I thought—he’s known me a long time, and he accepts me. He must have his reasons, I thought. This matter of Spadolini and my mother is a dangerous chapter, I told Gambetti, closing it once more. We had been walking up and down under the house of De Chirico, unable to decide whether to have tea in the teashop on the Spagna or to go and sit in the Greco. Then, as so often happened, a sudden shower forced us to shelter in the Greco, where we continued our conversation. It actually centered on Pavese—not on Spadolini and my mother—of whom I had been reminded by an observation in Pavese’s famous
The Business of Living
, a favorite book of mine on which I had commented to Gambetti that day, comparing Pavese with Heine and explaining the reasons that prompted the comparison. I can no longer remember what it was in Pavese or my beloved Heine that suddenly reminded me of Spadolini and my mother. Spadolini himself has naturally never told me about meeting my mother in Rome. Although I see him often, and enjoy seeing him—I visit him nearly every week at his apartment or his offices—he has never once mentioned their meetings. The churchman has maintained a discreet silence. I am not sure whether he is aware that I know about his meetings with my mother. One day all three of us met and went up to Rocca di Papa, where Spadolini, generous as ever and one of the best hosts I know, invited us to lunch. On this occasion my mother and Spadolini showed themselves to be consummate actors. Nothing that occurred over lunch indicated that they had met the previous evening and spent the night together, or that they had an assignation for that evening too. My position between these two liars and hypocrites was not altogether agreeable, as may be imagined—between a lying mother and a hypocritical ecclesiastic—but I carried it off perfectly, without betraying the slightest hint of suspicion. My mother, who had arranged a rendezvous with him for that evening, took her leave of Spadolini at Rocca di Papa as though it were the last time she would see him. Spadolini went back to Rome by taxi, and so did my mother and I. I found these separate taxi journeys, one behind the other, embarrassingly grotesque. They were so perfectly stage-managed as to make the whole situation quite clear to me. I cannot say who displayed the greater aplomb, Spadolini or my mother, but I may presume that, as in all such situations, she was the smarter of the two. It seemed to me at
the time that Spadolini was merely the medium for her art of dissimulation and took his cue from her, I told Gambetti. I find it quite mortifying, as you can imagine, to have to tell myself that this prince of the Church is just a poor fool in thrall to my mother. Their liaison makes my relationship with Spadolini rather tricky, of course, but I’ll never give it up, even if it comes under even greater strain, because I don’t want to deprive myself of such a person. I enjoy seeing him, and I’m glad he’s in Rome. We don’t know many people who are more interesting and fascinating to meet when we need their company. Spadolini is without doubt one of the few true intellectuals I know in Rome. No one with any sense would willingly forfeit such a contact. No, really, Gambetti, I said, I haven’t the slightest scruple where Spadolini is concerned. I just begrudge my mother such a man: she doesn’t deserve a man like Spadolini. What the two of them call friendship, I said with a laugh, is after all just a dingy and utterly ludicrous affair, I told Gambetti. The photographs don’t disguise or conceal anything but make everything obvious, brutally obvious, I thought, still contemplating the photos. They reveal everything that the people in them wanted to disguise and conceal all their lives. The distortion and mendacity of the photos is actually the truth, I thought. This total defamation is the truth. The fact that the people depicted in them—exposed, as they say—are now dead doesn’t make them any better. When they were in London in 1931, I told myself, my parents were still what they call a young couple. They traveled a lot. They had no children. For years my mother refused to have children, until my father insisted. He demanded an heir from her. Wolfsegg had to have an heir. Having given birth to Johannes, she is said to have sworn not to have another child. But a year later I arrived, the troublesome one, the limb of Satan, the bringer of unhappiness. I was always told that she did not want me and tried to avoid having me. But she
had
to have me, the source of her unhappiness, as she called me to my face on every possible occasion, on countless occasions. But she was not happy with my sisters either, who were born after me. She was never what is commonly called a happy mother, if indeed there is such a thing as a happy mother. The heir was accepted, but I was never really accepted: I was acknowledged as a possible stand-in, but no more. All my life I have had to see myself as a substitute for Johannes and been given to
understand that I am only the reserve heir, conceived for the ultimate emergency, so to speak—one summer evening at the Children’s Villa, I am told. Reluctantly conceived, my mother has often told me. In the heat of battle, as it were, in the middle of August. My mother apparently consulted a specialist in Wels, in the hope of getting rid of me, but he refused to operate, as it would have endangered her life. Abortion was not so simple in those days and always involved a risk to the mother’s life. She accepted her fate, but all her life I was the unwanted child, and she would describe me as such, whatever the occasion, often calling me
the most superfluous child one can imagine
. I sought refuge with my grandparents, my maternal grandparents in Wels and my paternal grandparents at Wolfsegg, but I was always the one who did not belong. This actually made me impossible to bring up, almost ruining the early years of my life and nearly destroying me at the age of seventeen or eighteen. It was only Uncle Georg, I may say, who finally saved me by taking charge of me at a time when I felt abandoned by everyone. They were all fairly indifferent to the reserve heir, always looking to Johannes and not troubling themselves about me. It was always
our Johannes
when things were rosy. I was only ever mentioned when they turned sour. What made matters even worse, as I once told Gambetti, was the advent of National Socialism. My family was highly susceptible to National Socialism, which suited them down to the ground, because in it, one might say, they discovered themselves. Now, in addition to their great God, who in any case was only their
dear God
most of the time, they suddenly had their
great leader
. Although National Socialism had long been a thing of the past by the time I reached the years of discretion, as they say, I still felt its baleful effects. For the National Socialism of my parents did not end with the National Socialist era: in them it was inborn, and they continued to cultivate it. Like their Catholicism, it was the very stuff of their lives, an essential element in their existence; they could not live without it. Hence, although the National Socialist period had long been over, I was given a National Socialist and Catholic upbringing and thus subjected to the Austrian mixed-power regime that has such a dire effect on the growing child. This combination of the Catholic and National Socialist elements, of Catholic and National Socialist educational methods, is the norm in Austria. They are the commonest and most widespread
methods, applied everywhere without restraint, and produce atrocious and devastating effects on the whole of this essentially National Socialist and Catholic nation. National Socialist and Catholic educational methods enjoy unrestricted authority in Austria. Anyone who denies this is a liar or an ignoramus. And the laws of the land are nothing other than National Socialist and Catholic laws, which operate as a mechanism that brings devastation and destruction. That’s the truth about Austria. By nature the Austrian is a National Socialist and a Catholic through and through, however hard he tries not to be. In this country and this nation Catholicism and National Socialism have always been in balance—now more National Socialist, now more Catholic—but never just the one or the other. The Austrian mind thinks only in National Socialist and Catholic terms. And this is true also of Austrian philosophers, who use their unappetizing National Socialist Catholic minds no differently from their compatriots. If we take a walk in Vienna, the people we see are all essentially National Socialists and Catholics, who behave at times more as National Socialists, at times more as Catholics, but usually as both simultaneously; this is why we find them so repulsive on closer acquaintance and closer scrutiny, whether we’re prepared to admit it or not, I told Gambetti. Any article we read in the Austrian press is either Catholic or National Socialist, and that, it must be said, is the essence of everything Austrian—doubly mendacious, doubly vulgar, doubly anti-intellectual. If we talk to an Austrian for any length of time, Gambetti, we soon have the impression that we’re talking to a Catholic, not to a free and independent human being, or else we have the impression that we’re talking to a National Socialist—but in the end we have the impression that we’re talking to an out-and-out Catholic National Socialist, and we are very soon revolted. The Catholic National Socialist spirit—if I am to besmirch the word
spirit
by using it in this context, because I can’t do otherwise—has always reigned supreme at Wolfsegg and always will. My brother is imbued with the same spirit, and so are my sisters, but with them it naturally takes the form of pertness and insolence. My brother, like my father, has spent more or less all his life cultivating the Catholic National Socialist spirit, which is in fact a negation of the spirit, a peculiarly Austrian form of mindlessness, as I’ve said before. I withdrew from its ambience, Gambetti, but I’ll have to contend with it all my
life, because it’s inborn. Inborn spirits either can’t be exorcised at all or can be exorcised only for a time, at tremendous cost, and never permanently. The whole of my existence has been a struggle to throw off the disease of Austrian mindlessness, I told Gambetti, which constantly reinfects me. No sooner do I notice the symptoms of this archetypal Austrian condition than I summon up all my strength to fight it off. In 1931, I thought, looking at the picture taken at Victoria Station in 1960, my parents were newly married. My mother had scored her triumph and was riding high, as it were. My father, of course, had not yet realized his ambition of begetting an heir. Men like my father do not want a child, they want an heir, and they marry late in life, for this one compulsive purpose. In their desire for an heir they rush into marriage with a virtual stranger, about whom they know hardly anything. By the time an heir is born they are fairly debilitated and can already be described as old. The mother promises to give her husband an heir and then proceeds to rob him of more or less everything. The new father, for his part, feels that he has done his duty to himself. Once the heir is born he loses interest in his wife. Most of the time he punishes her by ignoring her, or, if the mood takes him and she gives him cause, he reproaches her for having grossly exploited his generosity and married him only to get her hands on his fortune. In due course they reproach each other with everything, and life becomes hell. Their marriage does not produce mutual respect or the comfort and succor that the one should have of the other. It does not generate sympathy and mutual understanding but gradually degenerates into a shared hell. The spouses accommodate themselves to this hell and end up hating each other, but they soon recognize this hatred as inevitable and use it to quite good effect as a means to enliven the remainder of their lives. As my father turned against my mother and gradually withdrew into himself, she began to look around for a sphere in which she could give expression to her womanly whims and passions, which were far from spent; in other words for a Spadolini, I told myself as I contemplated the photos. By a happy chance, these more or less unhappy circumstances brought her together with an archbishop, who had not only an enviable physique but one of the brightest minds. I am told that when she is happiest with Spadolini she calls him