Extinction (47 page)

kind
of thoughts they’re thinking. I don’t have to pull back the curtains to know what’s going on behind them, I thought. Carefully, in keeping with the occasion, I again lifted one of the sheets, then gently let it fall back over the ice blocks, fully aware that I was behaving atrociously. It’s natural that Spadolini should have taken Caecilia’s arm, I thought. Like a scene in a film. Faces in a film. Film stars’ faces. I stepped back quickly, as though suddenly realizing that I had disturbed a solemn act, and returned to my former position behind the group. The huntsmen were irritated but tried to remain composed in spite of their irritation. The faces of the dead were now like wax, their color a dirty gray. These dirty-gray sunken faces must be
washed in the morning, I thought. I’ll give instructions. I mustn’t forget. Suddenly Spadolini knelt down in front of Mother’s coffin. It was an embarrassing scene. My sisters had no option but to kneel down with him. I naturally remained standing. For two or three minutes, which is a long time in such a situation, Spadolini and my sisters knelt before the coffins. A film scene, I thought again. It occurred to me that before visiting the Orangery Archbishop Spadolini had fortified himself with a hearty supper. First we have supper, then we pay our respects, I thought. How elegantly he rises to his feet, I thought, unlike my sisters, whose movements were awkward as they got up off their knees. Spadolini turned around to me as if to ask what happened next. I led him to the entrance, and he went out. It was completely dark. Your mother was probably so badly injured that it was impossible for her to lie in state like your father and Johannes, he said softly. Then, after we had walked a few yards toward the house, he asked how the accident had happened. My sisters being unable to give a coherent account, I told Spadolini what I had read in the papers, speaking in short sentences, as though reciting the headlines.
After a concert
, I said.
Ah, after a concert
, said Spadolini. Our lives are in the hands of God, he said. And naturally we don’t understand God. We don’t have the strength to understand Him.
May God give you the strength to come to terms with your life
, he said. All he wanted to do now, he said, was retire to his room, until the funeral.
I’ll pray for the dead
, he said,
the dear departed
. My sisters had expected Spadolini to spend the rest of the evening with us and were very surprised when he left them standing. Suddenly obliged to make do with me again, they proposed that we go up to the drawing room for a glass of wine. My brother-in-law was in favor of this, but I wanted to end the day my own way, without seeing any more of the family. I said I was going to my room, and left my sisters and my brother-in-law standing, as Spadolini had done a moment earlier. I went up to my room and locked the door but had no intention of going straight to bed, which would have been foolish, as there was no question of my being able to sleep. What Spadolini said about Mother was superficial, I thought. He described her as he wanted us to see her, from his point of view. This superficial view showed her as he himself wished to see her while he sat with us over supper, not as he had really seen her. He wished to see her as a woman who loved Austria and people
and artists. I found this picture of my mother rather embarrassing, despite Spadolini’s presentation, but my sisters saw it differently. They took all he said seriously, but it was not to be taken seriously, I thought, though he had given a quite good account of the Etna excursion, being careful to describe it in a way that I could not really quarrel with and that would lead anyone who had not been involved, as I had, to regard it as a merely trivial episode. Yet I can still recall the sinister aspect of this episode, I thought as I sat in my chair, not turning the light on but surrendering myself to the darkness. He had described the Etna episode as though it had been trivial and insignificant, with
nothing diabolical
about it, but in fact it was
utterly diabolical
, I thought. What Spadolini had described as a harmless outing from Taormina to Catania and Mount Etna had in fact been anything but harmless. Their descent from the plateau on foot was a
diabolical plot
, I thought, hatched jointly by my mother and Spadolini. They took advantage of the snowstorm. They took advantage of the crevices in the ice. They reckoned with the drifting snow and deliberately ventured into the snowstorm, leaving me up there alone, not knowing what was happening, as they calculated. The pair of them were anything but harmless, I thought. With them calculation was an abiding principle. Over supper Spadolini had portrayed Mother as a harmless person who loved and respected him, but Mother was not like that, I thought. She was not a harmless person who would make a harmless excursion to Mount Etna with Spadolini. She was cunning, and her cunning was at least a match for his, far more than a match. Mother was always
sly
, I thought This ugly word seemed to fit her perfectly, and I did not recoil from it. The two of them were
always sly
. Spadolini described Mother as though she were a superficial woman with only good qualities, a woman who knew no evil, was on her guard against evil and would not allow it near her. But Mother was not at all like that—she was the
epitome of evil
, I thought. I did not shrink from pursuing this idea as I sat in my chair. Mother was
evil personified
, I thought. Spadolini must have seen this; he’s too intelligent not to have seen it, too well schooled intellectually, I told myself, borrowing one of his phrases. He had spoken as though Mother had been what they call a woman of the world, which she never was: she was a typical provincial, an upstart, I thought, and totally anticultural. This last term seemed more
apposite than any other, for she naturally never loved Mahler or admired any composer. Music was just a means that she used to show off her latest tasteless clothes to the set she respected, though there was nothing about it to respect, I thought. It’s the most repulsive set there is, I thought, which has no time for any form of art and despises anything to do with art. Spadolini said Mother had imbued him with a love of Florence, but in fact it was only with reluctance that she went to this old city, only with reluctance that she visited its fine churches, only with reluctance that she attended concerts and exhibitions. And she never read a good book—which says a lot, I told myself. What Spadolini dished up was a completely bogus picture of Mother, I told myself. How distasteful his remarks suddenly seemed! Utterly hypocritical and mendacious, wholly tailored to the occasion, which he kept calling
a sad occasion
as he sat at the table, though without feeling any real sadness, for this was beyond his capacity. Mother suddenly became—this was not how he really saw her but how he chose to describe her—a woman of taste, full of the joy of living, a person who loved life, as he put it, interested in everything, a good mother, a born educator. And a born homemaker to boot, I thought. More than once he referred to her as
the soul of Wolfsegg
. As a profound observer of nature and a generous hostess. Spadolini spoke of someone who had turned Wolfsegg into a paradise for all of us, someone notable for her goodness and vivacity, whom we
could not help loving
, who was loved by all around her, because to love her was the most natural thing in the world.
Your mother was goodness itself
, he told us. She held the family together. He actually said, Your mother was
a dear soul
, and I am still wondering where he picked up that emetic phrase. In Spadolini’s speech one falsehood interlocked with the next, I thought. But Spadolini’s not really mendacious, I thought, just
utterly calculating
. The way he said
a dear soul
was quite inimitable. Nobody I know could have said it with such natural tenderness and nobility. Only Archbishop Spadolini, I thought as I sat in my chair and drank in the darkness. I took pleasure in going through Spadolini’s studied performance word for word, examining his vocal inflections, his verbal artistry. I can learn a lot from Spadolini, I thought, always something new. The way he pronounced the name
Caecilia
on greeting her, and the name
Amalia
, and the term
brother-in-law
, which came out with such unbelievably studied
awkwardness, I thought. The way he turned around outside the Orangery, looked across at the house, and said,
This magnificent building, this extraordinary work of art
. The way he said to Amalia,
Your mother told me many things about you, and always good things
. And to Caecilia,
Your mother always praised you
. And to me,
Your mother set all her hopes on you
. He also spoke of Johannes, saying that he was a God-fearing man and the handsomest he had ever known,
the purest character, the most restrained conversation partner. The selfless, reassuring brother
. He had grown very fond of Johannes, as he had of my father; he had loved them both, right from the beginning. I once took Johannes on a tour of the Vatican palaces, he said, and presented him to the Holy Father.
There’s a sudden emptiness here
, he said, then immediately added that
new people would take charge of Wolfsegg
and do everything for the best. Meanwhile, I thought, his jacket has probably been pressed as he wanted it pressed, and his trousers too. My sisters are doubtless pressing his clothes while he’s in Father’s room praying for everything connected with Wolfsegg, I thought. He used to go to the chapel to pray, I thought, but today he’s afraid of being disturbed by the other guests. Grief is a beautiful virtue, he said, as I now recall. The Almighty closes one door in order to open another. His words suddenly sickened me. I had heard them all before, but I had never found them so patently sickening. After he had finished eating and recounted the Etna anecdote, I recalled, he said that when Mother had last visited him at his office she had been
tearful and disconsolate. She came to see me in Rome, tearful and disconsolate
, in search of help. He still did not know the cause of her despondency and wondered whether we did. It had something to do with your father, he said. Something that was troubling him, connected with Wolfsegg. Mother was always
greatly concerned about Wolfsegg
, he said,
and especially about her children
, about us. There was no one with whom he had had better conversations, he said, as she was such a good listener. The truth was the exact opposite, I thought. Mother could never listen, she always interrupted; she would not let anyone say anything but broke up every conversation as soon as it started. She could not stand conversations and never allowed one to develop, I thought. She had no scruples about hogging the scene and disrupting whatever conversation was going on. And the remarks she made in order to disrupt a conversation were so stupid. It was one of her
intolerable traits that she detested any conversation, especially an intellectual conversation, pitched at a
higher level
, so to speak. She could not endure it and would break it up with her foolish remarks. She was our conversation-stopper, I thought, and from this we all suffered. Spadolini described Mother in the shameful manner that survivors commonly adopt in order to put themselves in a favorable light, I thought. According to Spadolini, Mother had
listened to Mahler like an angel
, but the truth is that concerts bored her stiff, whatever was being played; only the most superficial music could make her face light up, I thought. Only the most superficial book could hold her attention, and then only for a few pages, for there was nothing she hated so much as reading. With Mother everything was pretense, I thought; she would seize upon everything quite ruthlessly in order to falsify and degrade it. And she had not the slightest respect for any product of the mind: that was why she hated Uncle Georg, why she hated me, why she hated everything intellectual, I thought. Spadolini went far too far, I thought, when he called Mother an artistic person, with an interest in all things intellectual, and then added, in his fulsome way, that this was rare in a woman. The truth is that Mother had no intellectual interests and was not even remotely artistic. Even my father, to whom it was basically a matter of indifference whether or not his wife had intellectual interests, whether or not she was an artistic person, often referred to her as a
simpleton
, and he, her lifelong companion, must have known her better than anyone. Spadolini went so far in his apotheosis as to say that she had a
vein of philosophy
, though his Italianate intonation lent even this piece of mendacity a certain charm. When I heard him utter the phrase, I had thought it particularly charming, without thinking what he meant by it. The manner always overlaid the matter, I thought. It was inevitable that he should also call Mother a pious woman, a faithful daughter of the Church and a good Christian. In Rome Mother had bought him a silk nightshirt—in the Via Condotti, of course—which he wore only
on real feast days
. She chose it herself, and she chose the best and most beautiful. Your mother used to mother me, he said—these were his very words. Sometimes she felt terribly alone, he said, abandoned by everyone. At Wolfsegg, among you, said Spadolini, quite alone, truly lonely. It is of course true that she was a lonely woman, as he said, but what he did not know was that she
sought refuge from loneliness, more than from anything else, in a world that she hated because it bored her. Curiously, my thoughts now shifted from Spadolini to Goethe, the German patrician whom his countrymen have adapted and adopted as their very own literary prince, as I had observed to Gambetti when we last met. Goethe, the honest burgher, the collector of insects and aphorisms, with his philosophical mishmash. (Gambetti did not know the meaning of
mishmash
and I had to explain it to him.) Goethe, the petit bourgeois of philosophy, the man on the make, of whom Maria once observed that he did not turn the world on its head but buried his own in German parochialism. Goethe, the classifier of stones, the stargazer, the philosophical thumbsucker of the Germans, who ladled their spiritual jam into household canning jars, to be consumed at any time and for any purpose. Goethe, who assembled commonplaces for the Germans, to be published by the house of Cotta and rubbed into their ears by schoolmasters until they were completely blocked. Goethe, who betrayed the German mind more or less for centuries, paring it down to the German average with what I had described to Gambetti, at our last meeting, as Goethean assiduity. Goethe is the philosophical pied piper, the German for all seasons, I told him. The Germans take their Goethe like medicine, believing in its efficacy, its health-giving properties. Goethe is nothing other than Germany’s foremost intellectual quack, I told Gambetti, her first intellectual homeopath. The Germans swallow their Goethe, as it were, and are healthy. The whole German nation ingests its Goethe and feels better. But Goethe is a charlatan, I told Gambetti; Goethe’s writings and philosophy are the acme of German charlatanry. Be careful, Gambetti, I said, beware of Goethe. He gives everyone indigestion, except the Germans. They believe in Goethe and revere him as one of the wonders of the world. Yet all the time this wonder of the world is a philosophical truck farmer. (Gambetti did not know what a truck farmer was and laughed loudly when I told him.) Goethe’s work as a whole is a philosophical truck farm. Goethe never reached the heights in any sphere, I said. He never rose above the mediocre in anything he attempted. He isn’t the greatest lyric poet, he isn’t the greatest prose writer, and to compare his plays with Shakespeare’s is like comparing a stunted dachshund from the Frankfurt suburbs with a tall Pyrenean mountain dog. Take