Extinction (39 page)

silly goose
were spoken only to myself, but so loudly that Amalia must have heard. I don’t understand why our parents christened you Amalia and Caecilia, I said. Catholic National Socialist romantics, I thought. I then left the Children’s Villa with Amalia and went over to the Orangery, where my brother-in-law was standing. The personification of idleness, I thought as I saw him. The wine cork manufacturer was
displeased at being caught out as a personification of idleness, especially by me. Now you have to talk to him, I thought, and so I went straight up to him. No Caecilia in sight, and no sign of Amalia either. There he is, I thought, abandoned by everybody and not knowing where he belongs—certainly not here at Wolfsegg. I invited him to accompany me to the house. I feel like something to eat, I said. We’ll be able to find something in the kitchen. I was astonished by the chummy way I said this. It was not intentional, but this was how it came out. The wine cork manufacturer walked beside me. I’ve rescued him from his impossible situation for a while, on my own initiative, I thought. For a moment I even felt sorry for him, but not for long, for after only a few yards he struck me once more as an obtrusive person. How these people behave! I thought. They don’t behave at all—they just do what comes naturally. There was no one in the kitchen. I looked for something to eat and found some delicious things in the well-stocked refrigerator. We may despise certain people, I told myself, sitting opposite the wine cork manufacturer, yet at the same time we may envy them their unconcern, their nonchalance, their lack of self-restraint—for instance in the way they eat. At first they’re hesitant and take only a little, then suddenly, without the least compunction, they wolf down more or less everything we put in front of them. Again I was repelled by the fat, fleshy fingers and the signet ring forced onto the little finger of the right hand. He probably won’t be able to get it off, I thought, if he ever wants to. He had crossed his legs under the table and pushed his belly against it. His cuff links are even bigger than his signet ring, I thought—a matching set. He was waiting for me to say something, as if anxious for me to start a conversation, but I felt no inclination to start a conversation with the wine cork manufacturer. I remembered having told Zacchi that I would be back in Rome in three or four days. But that won’t be possible, I thought. I’ll have to stay on at Wolfsegg for a week, maybe longer. I can now see that a week won’t be long enough, because the tiresome part will come
after
the funeral, I told myself. I’ll have to go to the attorneys’ offices and various other offices, the district commissioner’s, and so on. At present I could see only the tip of the iceberg. It’s odd, I said to my brother-in-law, to see my father and brother lying in state, but not my mother. On the other hand, I said, their faces no longer bear any relation to their real
faces. They’re the faces of strangers who don’t have anything to do with me.
They must be buried as quickly as possible
. He had hardly gotten to know his parents- and brother-in-law, I said, and now they were dead. As I said this, I caught sight of the words
fall victim
in the newspaper lying on top of the pile in front of me, to which a few more copies had been added. The phrase
fall victim
was ludicrous, like everything the papers wrote. I asked my brother-in-law whether he had read the newspaper reports of the accident. I had long since finished eating, but he was still wolfing down big slices of bread and sausage. With a shake of the head he declined even to open the papers. He could not possibly do so in front of me—it would be quite impermissible. I found this unpardonably tasteless. He was looking at the papers lying in front of me, yet at the same time he shook his head, refusing my offer of a chance to inform himself further about the accident and the precise course of events. There have been so many fatal accidents at that particular junction, I said, affecting the style of the newspapers. It can be seen quite clearly and doesn’t look particularly dangerous, yet again and again accidents take place there, most of them fatal, I said. My brother-in-law was meanwhile playing the moralist. As he wolfed down the bread and sausage, he first drew up his legs, then pulled back his arms, which were spread across the table, making sure that his cuff links did not come in contact with the plate of open sandwiches I had prepared for him. Munching his bread and sausage, he seemed to be asking how I could possibly imagine that he would have the effrontery to read these tasteless newspapers with their horror stories in my presence, or for that matter at all, at a time of family grief. He had glanced contemptuously at the front pages, which showed pictures of the victims, yet I could see that his contempt was accompanied by a certain disappointment at being prevented, by my presence, from staring at them unrestrainedly. He was pretending to be incapable of such unworthy conduct, whereas I had been quite capable of it, I thought. As he masticated his bread and sausage he kept eyeing the newspapers, especially when he thought I was not looking. They clearly interested him, and he would certainly have read them with the utmost avidity had he been alone, uninhibited by the presence of someone whom he was bound to think incapable of even contemplating such shameless conduct, let alone engaging in it. Yet all the time I knew that I had engaged in it two hours earlier. Not right now, he said. Coming
from my brother-in-law, these words were as hypocritical as if they had come from me, for at that moment I could have said the same. The round went to me because
he
said it and I did not. I was the decent person who could control himself, whereas he had to put on an act by uttering the profoundly hypocritical words
not right now
. As soon as he had uttered them he too was bound to see how hypocritical they were. After all, I thought, the man wasn’t so stupid that he couldn’t see at once what the words really meant and what effect they had on me. He must have known that I saw through them. They slipped out more or less inadvertently and lost any credibility they might have had in their passage from brain to air. Now that my brother-in-law had been unmasked as a hypocrite in a profoundly sad situation, a situation that was literally one
of deadly earnest
, I could go a step further and show my magnanimity by pushing the papers toward him before he had finished all the open sandwiches. I suggested that he read them in order to get an idea of how the press saw the accident. He should take a look at them, I said, leaning back in my chair, as though not wanting to disturb him in his reading. I recalled something that Zacchi had once said about me—that I was infernally skillful at concealing my own beastliness. I was still amused by Zacchi’s remark. He made it at the Ancora Verde in Trastevere, where we had gone with Maria to talk about a planned excursion to Castel Gandolfo and about Sartre’s
The Words
, which we had all three read simultaneously without knowing it. We discussed
The Words
until late in the night, at much greater length than any book we had discussed before. As he chewed the last of the bread and sausage, the wine cork manufacturer began leafing through the newspapers, looking now at an illustrated page, now at an unillustrated one, and stretching out his legs as people do when reading a newspaper. He’s really made himself at home with the accident and its exploiters, I thought. Nothing in his demeanor betrayed the least embarrassment. He was farsighted and could not see well close up. But he avoids wearing glasses, I thought. He held the paper up to the light from the window, far enough away from his eyes to be able to take everything in. He should have had glasses long ago, I thought, the kind of reading glasses I’ve had for years, but people like him are too vain to resort to glasses. I’ll tell Caecilia that her husband should get himself some glasses without delay, and I’ll also tell her that he read all about the accident in the newspapers lying on the kitchen table
in my presence.

I’ll tell her that he read them attentively, with extreme nonchalance and without a trace of embarrassment, savoring every morsel of news as he sat opposite me eating his bread and sausage—three or four slices; I was not sure exactly how many. I’ll say to Caecilia, Your husband even had difficulty with the big pictures taken during the night of horror, but fortunately he was sitting by the kitchen window, where the light fell at just the right angle. Observing my brother-in-law, I began to wonder how I could exploit this scene to his detriment when I reported it to his wife. Warming to my plan, I imagined a thoroughly theatrical scene in which I would go up to my sister and tell her how avidly her husband had read the newspapers. I would tell her that contrary to all her protestations, but in accordance with my suspicions, the wine cork manufacturer was actually a pretty unsavory character. I heard myself telling her, Your husband sat opposite me, reading the newspapers without any compunction, taking no notice of me, although I wanted to discuss something important with him. But he didn’t listen to me. I’m actually capable of such an outrageous perversion of the truth, I thought as I observed my brother-in-law. I knew I was not above such low conduct, having engaged in it hundreds of times before, having made a habit of it and evolved a routine, a regular routine, I thought. My brother-in-law was avidly reading the papers with my express permission, after a decent show of hesitation, though no more than a show. He was actually reading them, whereas I had of course just flicked through them, as they say, when I was alone in the kitchen two hours earlier. He looked at the pictures quite calmly and without embarrassment, whereas I had done so furtively, apprehensive lest I should be caught doing something improper, indeed shameful, and fully aware that I was committing a heinous offense. My brother-in-law, however, could afford to enjoy the newspapers under my indulgent gaze and with my express permission. I could see how much he enjoyed opening one paper after another and reading the reports. Anyone else would have put them down after a while and turned his attention to me, I thought, but my brother-in-law was not like that. He completely ignored me. He regarded the permission I had given him as an unlimited dispensation, preferring to immerse himself in the newspapers and digest his bread and sausage, rather than engage in conversation with me, which was bound to be disagreeable, as
he not only felt but knew. He was using the newspapers as a means of avoiding me. The fact is that he constantly avoids me, I thought. He doesn’t seek contact with me, as I believed for a moment when I saw him standing in front of the Orangery, looking futile and stupid, not knowing what to do with himself. I had been quite mistaken, and I was certainly wrong to think that I had a duty to speak to him, that I must take him to the kitchen and place myself at his disposal. Yet I really took him with me because I wanted to needle him, not out of any sense of duty, I thought. I took him to the kitchen only to find out more about him. Getting him something to eat was merely a pretext I used in order to worm this or that bit of information out of him that I could then use against Caecilia and him. The imbecile is at least a producer of imbecilities and a revealer of all kinds of secrets, I had thought. This was my reason for taking him to the kitchen. But now I no longer wished to worm anything out of him. I was content simply to observe him, so that later, at a suitable moment, I could report my observations to Caecilia, or rather, to put it bluntly, falsify my observations for my own ends, to the detriment of them both. I would say to Caecilia, He sat there and kept me waiting the whole time. He was particularly interested in the shots of Mother’s severed head. The pictures of Father thrown back in the car seat next to Johannes, whose head was totally shattered, at least internally, were of great interest to my brother-in-law, your husband, I’ll tell her. How dare such a man immerse himself in this journalistic filth in my presence, I’ll say, especially at such a sad time for us all? I won’t say
tragic
, I’ll say
sad: tragic
is theatrical hyperbole—
sad
has a more human ring. My sister is bound to be horrified to learn that my brother-in-law is such a low character. But is that what I want? I asked myself. It’ll make him a more important figure than he is. On the other hand, I can’t ease up on him if I mean to expel him, to drive him out of Wolfsegg, though clearly I won’t need to make the slightest effort to achieve this. He’ll see to it himself, and my sisters will help in their underhanded way. My brother-in-law’s days are numbered, I thought. There he sat, not devouring the newspapers, as they usually say, but devoured by them. And there I was sitting opposite him and giving him my blessing, for he could do what I had been unable to do: he could read the newspapers without feeling embarrassed and apprehensive, under the aegis of
his suddenly all-powerful brother-in-law. After all, I’m his brother-in-law now, just as he’s mine, I told myself, but I’m the one to be feared, the one who’ll determine the future and decide what’s going to happen to Wolfsegg. That’s the difference between us. The powerful brother-in-law is sitting opposite the powerless one who has no say in anything, I thought. The wine cork manufacturer from Baden was able to enjoy the newspapers to the full, while I had to deny myself this enjoyment. Such people always have it easy, I thought—we never do. They never have to exert themselves—we always do. Given our present situation, I would naturally have refused to peruse the newspapers if someone had suggested it. I would have had to forgo them and leave them untouched. But my brother-in-law, after a moment’s hesitation, acts upon my suggestion and falls upon these newspaper reports.
Dreadful, isn’t it?
was the only thing I said to him as he sat immersed in the newspapers. Twice I uttered the word
dreadful
, a word I often use in relation to such press reports of accidents.
Dreadful
is the right word in such a context, and I use it often, too often, I told myself, far too often, even in contexts where it’s inappropriate. But in the present context it was entirely appropriate. I used it now, but my brother-in-law did not look up. He did not let himself be distracted by it, he did not let it interfere with his appetite for sensation. My father must have been driving too fast, I said. My brother-in-law pretended not to hear. Nobody knows why my father was driving and not Johannes, I said, because Johannes usually took the wheel. For a long time my father had been shortsighted, I said. People over sixty should have their driver’s license revoked, I said. It’s people over sixty who cause all the accidents.
They’re the ones who cause all the disasters on our roads, because their reactions are too slow
. I was embarrassed at having said this, as it sounded like a typical sentence from one of the newspapers that lay on the table. Newspaper editors purvey nothing but dirt, I thought—but the dirt they throw at us is our own dirt. The world that these purveyors of dirt present in the newspapers is essentially the real world, I said. The printed world is the real world. The world of dirt printed by the newspapers is our own world. Whatever is printed is real, and the real is only what we suppose to be real. I could not expect my brother-in-law to understand me. He was probably not listening, for he did not react to what I said but went on looking at a picture showing my
mother’s head, separated from the torso by at least ten inches, on a laboratory slab. Using ambulances to take away the dead is absurd, I said. My brother-in-law did not look up. I remembered describing him to Gambetti before the wedding, when I had seen him only once, as a fat man of less than forty who was getting progressively fatter, so that his clothes were getting progressively tighter, and whose fatness, due to overeating, caused breathing difficulties when he spoke, so that he had to speak in short sentences. His breathing is stertorous, I had said, and when you’re walking with him he keeps stopping and stretching out his hand to point to some object, or if there’s no object for him to point to, he’ll point vaguely in some direction at the
interesting landscape
, hoping in this way to divert attention from his shortness of breath. Everything about him is a function of his obesity, I had told Gambetti. Feeling embarrassed at denigrating my future brother-in-law to such an extent, I had said to Gambetti,
I’m appalled by my meanness
, but then I apologized for using such a distasteful word as
appalled
, for as his teacher I should never have used such a banal expression. I clearly remember telling Gambetti that although we were constantly annoyed by others when they talked in clichés, we succumbed to the same lamentable habit ourselves.
Appalled
was a quite inept expression, I told Gambetti. My brother-in-law, I went on, was the type of person who was known in Southwest Germany as a Baden gourmet, an average petit bourgeois who had attained a degree of affluence and liked to flaunt it, to whom it was important to be fat and overweight, to cut an imposing figure. To be thin was seen in that part of the world as a sign of sickness, something menacing that was to be shunned because it was associated with the devil. To these people any form of asceticism was repugnant, whereas the fat man represented the ideal. Fatness was reassuring, and in Southwest Germany, especially Baden, they attached the greatest importance to reassurance, and so, for that matter, did all Germans. Fat men were trusted and worthy of emulation, but thin men were distrusted. Gambetti only laughed at my theory, and I joined in his laughter. Such people are terribly idle, I now thought, sitting opposite my brother-in-law, but their idleness isn’t what I would call creative idleness—it’s the stolid idleness of the pig, I thought, which today is possibly more human than the human being, who has become more and more piglike in the last hundred years. My brother-in-law
could not be roused from his idleness. I took advantage of the situation to give free rein to my own thoughts. I won’t be so unmolested for a long time, I thought. It was about half past four, and the people who were coming to express their condolences could not be kept waiting. This time spent in the kitchen with my brother-in-law would probably be my last chance to be more or less alone, I thought, even though I had my brother-in-law sitting opposite me.
Dreadful
, isn’t it? I said, but he did not react. These people always pretend to be the life and soul of the party, to love wine and conviviality, I had told Gambetti, but they’re actually anything but convivial. They have to have conviviality at any price, and if you refuse to join in they’re ruthless; everything inside them turns to hatred. They use their conviviality to subjugate those around them and make life hell for them if they refuse to come up with the conviviality they crave. At least this is what I always feel, I told Gambetti, when people insist on forcing their conviviality on me. As I observed my brother-in-law I had visions of Rome, until in the end I fancied I was in my study in Rome, even though I was sitting opposite my ponderous brother-in-law in our kitchen at Wolfsegg. My father’s faulty vision ultimately proved fatal, I said. They’ll be delivering the new harvester, I said, but who knows whether we’ll need it? I said this in the tone of the owner of Wolfsegg, as a farmer, so to speak. I repeated these words several times in my mind and was amazed by their farmerly tone. It was like hearing my brother speak, I thought. Uttering these words, I had turned myself into a farmer, which I had no desire to be. They’ll probably all demand that I become a farmer; they probably expect I’m one already, I thought. I was aware of this after uttering these words. That’s naturally what’s in their minds, I thought, but all my life the last thing I’ve ever wanted to be is a farmer. Of course they expect me to give up everything else, to sacrifice it all in order to provide them with the farmer they need, the farmer they must have. They undoubtedly expect me to give up Rome and are already going around full of glee at the prospect. They expect me to give up everything connected with Rome, even to be capable of doing so, I thought, but that’s absurd. Yet the idea took root in my mind that they actually believed it, because they had to believe it. As the heir apparent I was expected to surrender virtually my whole being in order to run Wolfsegg for them. It was out of the
question. Gambetti, Zacchi, Maria, even Spadolini, and all the others, I thought—there’s no way I’m going to give up
that
atmosphere for an
inherited nightmare
. But all the time there’s a gleeful look in their faces, in my sisters’ faces, I thought, because I’ve now been hit by something they never dreamed of for a moment, by the ultimate absurdity: I am to become a farmer, to run Wolfsegg, to have the whole of Wolfsegg hung around my neck, and they, my sisters, are to be the beneficiaries of this nightmare scenario. My brother-in-law, still immersed in the newspapers, had no idea of what was passing through my mind as he indulged his appetite for sensation. He’d also be a beneficiary of the violence they’re planning to do me, I thought, of the self-surrender they expect—the wine cork manufacturer from Freiburg im Breisgau with his forty-five workers and office staff who probably do nothing but piss on him, as they say. But my sisters don’t really know me, I told myself. They actually believe that I’ll enter into my inheritance in the manner laid down. We’ve always known about the will; it doesn’t even need to be opened in order to be understood. My dear Gambetti, I had said on the telephone, you don’t know what I have coming to me, because you don’t know what Wolfsegg’s like. I could hear these words of mine quite clearly. While my brother-in-law, as I could see, was still enthralled by the newspapers, fascinated by the press reports of the accident, I could hear myself saying to Gambetti,
Wolfsegg won’t kill me—I’ll see to that
. And it occurred to me that perhaps Gambetti did not understand me. He had thought I was telephoning to decline the invitation to dinner with his parents, when all I wanted was to tell him briefly that my parents and my brother Johannes had died,
fallen victim to a road accident
, I said, which was a quite unsuitable formulation for a language teacher to use. However, I had never described myself as a language teacher; I simply called myself his teacher, just as I called him my pupil. I’m not a specialist teacher, I now reflected. I merely convey knowledge that is relevant to German literature. I naturally try to do my job well and convey knowledge that is worth more than the fee he pays me, which I only accept