Extinction (37 page)

to the gardeners. I shall now have to receive these people, I thought; there’s nothing else for it. Today they all live scot-free in agreeable circumstances, in all the country’s beauty spots, and draw enormous state pensions. But today’s society gets what it deserves, I thought. It deserves these perverse conditions, being itself totally perverse. Basically, I thought, these people—the Gauleiters, the SS officers, and the members of the Blood Order—are its people. These are the people my countrymen regard as heroes, not just as yesterday’s heroes, as is frequently maintained, but to an even greater extent as today’s heroes. These National Socialists are the people they look up to and secretly acknowledge as their leaders. I’ll have to shake hands with these secret leaders of my countrymen, I thought. I won’t be able to prevent these secret leaders from taking their places in the front ranks when the cortege moves off. I was sickened by this embarrassing prospect, this
obscenity
that I would have to face. My sisters had gleefully recited to me the names of all who had announced that they would attend the funeral, and the list was headed by the Gauleiters, the SS officers, and the members of the Blood Order. But I must cope with this situation, I told myself severely. Not just for days, but for weeks on end, these Gauleiters, SS officers, and members of the Blood Order used to sit around at Wolfsegg or stroll through the grounds, and for decades my parents supported them. This was why Uncle Georg always found visiting my parents unendurable and why I too had to leave on hearing that such company was expected. National Socialism is the greatest blight on Austria, along with Catholicism, I thought, just as Fascism, combined with Catholicism, was the greatest blight on Italy. But things are different in Italy. The Italians did not let themselves be swallowed up by either Fascism or Catholicism, whereas the Austrians let themselves be swallowed up by both. The bishops (including two archbishops, I thought, for Spadolini is
the
archbishop) will be followed—with measured tread, as they say—by the Gauleiters, the SS officers, and the members of the Blood Order. And these will be followed by the National Socialist Catholic population, I thought. And the music will be played by our National Socialist Catholic band. The National Socialist salvos will be fired, and the National Socialist bells will toll. And if we’re in luck our National Socialist sun will shine throughout the ceremony, and if we’re out of luck we’ll be
drenched by the National Socialist rain. My sisters and Johannes knew nothing about this secret Wolfsegg, even as teenagers. It was mainly my sisters’ stupidity that prevented my parents’ divulging anything. For when we were suddenly allowed back in the Children’s Villa in our middle teens, we naturally wanted to know why we had not been allowed in before, why we had been
forbidden to go near it
. Our parents, as former party members, said nothing. But naturally they could not keep the secret forever, and one day it came out. One of the Gauleiters paid a visit to Wolfsegg, and no sooner had he entered the house than he began to talk, in my presence, of the time he had spent in the Children’s Villa as
the best years of his life
. Standing next to him, I heard about how he and his comrades had lived in the Children’s Villa for nearly four years.
How
they had eaten and
how
they had drunk! He was eternally grateful to my mother, who was highly embarrassed because I was present. The Gauleiter became more and more effusive in his expressions of gratitude and could not be silenced. He went into raptures above all about the fresh air, the fresh eggs that my mother brought him and his friends every day, and the fresh milk from the Wolfsegg cows. The entrance hall resounded to the Gauleiter’s laughter, with which he frequently interrupted his speech of thanks before resuming his triumphal performance. He lives at Alt Aussee on a state pension that is paid monthly and, like all Austrian state pensions, subject to half-yearly increments of four or five percent. The state awarded him this pension thirty years ago, when his crimes had been hushed up and proceedings against him quashed, as they say, without batting an eyelid—as they also say. I thought of Schermaier, a miner from Kropfing, below Wolfsegg, who not only worked in the mines but also, in partnership with his wife, ran a smallholding with three cows. I used to go and see Schermaier whenever I became desperate at Wolfsegg; even today I am closer to him than to anyone else in the vicinity and always visit him when I am over at Wolfsegg. During the war, a neighbor of his informed on him
for listening to the Swiss radio
. The informer, who had been his best friend at school, had him taken to court and sent first to the penitentiary at Garsten and then to a German concentration camp in Holland. His neighbor and former best friend had him driven out of his home for two years to the very prisons and extermination camps that tomorrow’s mourners, the Gauleiters, have on their consciences. Schermaier was denounced, committed to penitentiaries and
concentration camps, and virtually ruined for the rest of his life, I thought, and nobody gave him a second thought. He was not compensated for the cruelty he suffered. After the war, the informer who had had him sent to the penitentiaries and concentration camps begged him on bended knees not to take revenge. Schermaier took no revenge and does not speak about the matter to anyone, though when I visit him and his wife for a simple meal she sometimes bursts into tears because she has still not gotten over that period of their lives. Schermaier received no proper compensation; the state fobbed him off in the most disgusting fashion with a derisory lump sum for all he had suffered at the hands of the Nazis, yet on the first of every month the mass murderer at Alt Aussee gets an enormous pension from the same state and is assured of a life of luxury, I thought. The state humiliated Schermaier and will never redeem his humiliation, I thought, yet shortly after the war the same state restored the mass murderer of Alt Aussee to full enjoyment of his civil rights and thereby endorsed all his actions and beliefs. I hate this state, I thought. I can’t do anything other than hate it. I won’t have anything to do with this state, or no more than is absolutely necessary, I thought. This state has so often demonstrated its absolute lack of character that it has forfeited all respect, whether it calls itself socialist, progressive, or democratic. This state is unspeakable, I thought, without character and without shame, yet it has never been ashamed of its characterlessness and its shamelessness but seen fit to flaunt them on every possible occasion. What kind of a state is it, I ask myself, that pays a fat pension to a mass murderer and showers him with honors and commendations, yet no longer troubles about Schermaier? What kind of a state is it that allows the mass murderer to live in luxury and has forgotten about Schermaier? I’ll go and see Schermaier as soon as I can, I thought, and left the house. The band was still rehearsing its Haydn. The gardeners were pulling the Wolfsegg hearse across from the Farm to a position behind the Orangery. The wine cork manufacturer was standing in their way. They asked him to move, and he withdrew into the background. My sisters were in the Orangery, and I debated whether I should go in myself. Schermaier is neither a Catholic nor a National Socialist, I thought. There aren’t many like him, but there are some. And there aren’t many women like his wife, but there are some. I decided to go into the Orangery. My sisters were in front of the coffins, busily adjusting
the ribbons on the wreaths so that the printed messages could be read. The Gauleiters had already sent theirs. Had it been possible, I would have opened the lid of my mother’s coffin, but of course it was not possible. Yet the idea kept running through my head that I must look inside the coffin in which my mother lay. The word
lay
struck me as grotesque. My father’s face was now quite sunken and gray, and yellow patches had formed on it that I had not noticed on my first visit to the Orangery. Johannes had become unrecognizable. His face was that of a stranger, quite repulsive. Under the black sheets the gardeners had stacked large blocks of ice to slow the process of decomposition, which was clearly well advanced, as the season was unfavorable to corpses. They’ve brought the ice from the Grieskirchen brewery, I thought. The coffins must have been expensive, probably the most expensive that were to be had, I thought. But at least they were unadorned. Plain wood, nothing else. They’ve folded my father’s and my brother’s hands because it’s customary, I thought, but I was put off by the sight of their folded hands. They’ve dressed my father in Styrian costume, the kind with broad decorative stripes, I thought, and big deerhorn buttons on the lapels, and they’ve dressed my brother in his favorite hunting outfit, the one he bought in Brussels. I went closer to the coffins, my sisters having moved aside to make way for me. They must have been repelled, or at least irritated, by my self-assurance as I now stood in front of the coffins. I noticed that I was quite motionless. I had imagined I would tremble, but no part of my body moved. I contemplated the dead lying in state as though they had no connection with me, as though they were strangers. They no longer had any facial features; they did not even have faces. They’re decomposing rapidly, I thought. They’ll have to be buried soon, otherwise they’ll pollute the atmosphere. The Orangery was already filled with the sickly-sweet smell of decay that I had found unbearable as a small child when my mother took me to see the dead lying in state. Even as a child I could not stand corpses, but my mother continually confronted me with them, taking me with her to funerals and lyings in state. She never took Johannes, only me, and this is something I cannot explain. I was thus quite used to the sight of the dead lying in state, though it was my mother who forced me to look at them; I would naturally not have chosen to. My sisters stood behind me. I could hear
their breathing, but I did not know what they were thinking. They must be thinking I’m the cold-blooded, unfeeling wretch they always took me to be, I thought. They always called me
cold and unfeeling
. Whether they were right or not is not for me to say. But as I stood before the coffins I was neither cold nor unfeeling, but
shattered
, I might say, were this not such a common expression, yet I did not move; my body remained motionless. I never wanted my parents to die, I told myself as I stood in front of their bodies; never for a moment did I wish them dead. Standing in front of them, I told myself that although I had always cursed and even despised them, although I had no respect for them, only contempt, and although I had every reason to despise them heartily, as they say, I had never wanted them to die. And in Johannes I had lost a childhood friend, but our childhood lay so far back, well over thirty years back, that I had no reason to shed tears for my dead brother. At that moment I might even have welcomed tears, if only because my sisters were standing behind me, possibly expecting me to weep, to blub, as they say, to break down. But I did not weep, I did not blub, I just stood there motionless. I went up to my mother’s coffin and tried to raise the lid—I do not know what suddenly prompted me to do this—but I could not raise it, as it was screwed down. I stepped back, sensing the embarrassment that this action had caused my sisters. I turned around abruptly, taking them by surprise, and looked into their embittered, horrified faces. Unable to stand in front of the coffins any longer, I went out of the Orangery. I asked one of the gardeners why my mother’s coffin was sealed. He told me that it was already sealed when the morticians had delivered it to Wolfsegg; the two others were not sealed, but my mother’s was. Yes, naturally, I said—of course. They put her mutilated, decapitated body straight into the coffin and immediately sealed it, I thought. So that no one would have the idea of looking at the mutilated body again. But I’ve had the idea, I told myself, though of course I won’t have the coffin reopened. For a moment I had thought of having it reopened and wondered how to give the necessary instructions, but then I forbade myself even to think of having the coffin opened and revealing the mutilated body. That would have been an obscenity. Yet I could not rid myself of the thought of having the coffin reopened—by the gardeners, I thought, when my sisters aren’t present. I could not stop thinking
about reopening my mother’s coffin and spent a long time walking up and down outside the Orangery, obsessed by the thought, while my sisters remained inside. I had to stop thinking about it and tried to distract my mind by beckoning one of the gardeners over and asking him whether the blocks of ice under the bodies would last till the following morning. (The funeral was scheduled for ten o’clock; funerals usually took place at eleven o’clock, but when a member of our family died the funeral was always scheduled for ten.) The gardener told me that there was enough ice for another four days. He was surprised that I addressed him by name. People think that when we have been away for a few years we no longer remember their names, but I have a good memory for names, and naturally I knew his, and those of the others. I had hoped that by exchanging a few words with the gardener about the ice blocks I would be able to rid my mind of the monstrous idea of having my mother’s coffin opened, but naturally I did not succeed in so short a time, and so I started up a conversation with the gardener as he weeded the gravel in front of the Orangery. I said I was sure he remembered the time when we were at school together. He said he did. I mentioned the names of some of our classmates, and he remembered them at once. I reminded him of some of the funny things that had happened at school. He could not help laughing, but he stopped when he saw my sisters emerge from the Orangery, unaware that I had been standing in front of it, talking to the gardener. Although my sisters were now standing next to me, I went on talking to the gardener about our school days, determined to distract my mind from the idea of having my mother’s coffin opened, yet becoming more and more obsessed by it. Above all, I thought, we have to check what’s really in the coffin. We have to find out whether it really is Mother we’re burying, whether the coffin contains the whole of her remains and not just some of them. While asking the gardener how heavy the ice blocks were, I was in fact preoccupied with the notion that my mother’s coffin might not contain the whole of her body, but I naturally dared not put this into words, even to myself. My sisters stood to one side, taking no part in the conversation. They never talked to the gardeners about personal matters, as they had no interest in them and the lives they led. They never remembered their names or, I believe, the names of any of our employees. It would never