The Loser Read online

  I said I would probably spend only one night at the inn, I’d suddenly felt the need to visit Traich one more time and thus spend the night in her inn, did she recall the name Glenn Gould, I asked her, yes, she answered, the world-famous one. He made it past fifty like Wertheimer, I said, the piano virtuoso, the best in the whole world, who was once in Traich twenty-eight years ago, I said, which she probably didn’t recall but she immediately contradicted this by saying she distinctly recalled this American. But this Glenn Gould didn’t kill himself, I said, he had a stroke, fell over dead at the piano, I said, I was conscious of the helplessness with which I said it, but I was less embarrassed before the innkeeper than before myself, I heard myself say fell over dead again as the innkeeper went to the open window to confirm that the stench from the paper factory was fouling the air, as it always did in windy weather, she said. Wertheimer killed himself, I said, this Glenn Gould didn’t, he died a natural death, I’ve never said anything so stilted in my life, I thought. Perhaps Wertheimer killed himself because this Glenn Gould had died. A stroke was a wonderful way to go, said the innkeeper, everybody wants to have a stroke, a fatal one. A sudden end. I’m going to Traich immediately, I said, did the innkeeper know whether someone was in Traich, who was guarding the house now. She didn’t know, but surely the woodsmen were in Traich. In her opinion nothing had changed in Traich since Wertheimer’s death. Wertheimer’s sister, who without doubt had inherited Traich, hadn’t even put in an appearance here, nor had any other heir, as she said. Whether I cared to eat something that evening in her inn, she asked, I said I couldn’t say now what I would want this evening, naturally I would eat one of her sausage and onion salads, I can’t get them anywhere else, I thought, but I didn’t say that, I only thought it. Business was as usual, the workers in the paper factory kept it going, they all came in the evening, hardly ever for lunch, that’s the way it always was. If anybody, it was the beer-truck drivers and woodsmen who came to the restaurant for some liverwurst, she said. But she had enough to do. That she was once married to a paper worker, I thought, whom she lived with for three years until he fell into one of the dreaded paper mills and was ground to death by this paper mill, and that she never married afterward. My husband has been dead for nine years, she said spontaneously, and sat down on the bench by the window. Marriage was out of the question now, she said, it’s better to be alone. But at first you risk everything for it, to get married, to find a husband; she didn’t say, and then I was happy he was gone, which she certainly was thinking, she said the accident didn’t have to happen, Herr Wertheimer was a great help to me in the period after the funeral. The moment she couldn’t stand living with her husband, I thought while watching her, he fell into the paper mill and was gone, left her at least a proper, if not sufficient, pension. My husband was a good person, she said, you knew him of course, although I could barely remember this husband, only that he always wore the same felt overalls from the paper factory, sat at a table in the restaurant with a felt cap from the paper factory on his head, putting away tremendous quantities of smoked meat that his wife placed in front of him. My husband was a good man, she repeated several times, looking out the window and straightening her hair. Being alone also has its advantages, she said. I had surely been at the funeral, she said and instantly wanted to know everything about Wertheimer’s funeral, she already knew it had taken place in Chur, but she wasn’t familiar with the immediate circumstances that had led to Wertheimer’s funeral, and so I sat down on the bed and gave a report. Naturally I could only give her a fragmentary report, I started by saying I’d been in Vienna, occupied with the sale of my apartment, a large apartment I said, much too big for one person and completely unnecessary for someone who has taken up residence in Madrid, that most wonderful of cities, I said. But I didn’t sell the apartment, I said, just as I have no intention of selling Desselbrunn, which she knew. For she once visited Desselbrunn with her husband, many years ago, when the dairy farm burned down, I said, with the economic crisis we have today it would be crazy to sell a piece of realty, I said, purposely repeating the word realty several times, it was crucial for my report. The state is bankrupt, I said, at that she shook her head, the government is sleazy, I said, the socialists who have been in power now for almost thirteen years have exploited their power to the hilt and completely ruined the state. As I spoke the innkeeper nodded her head, alternately looking at me and out the window. They all wanted a socialist government, I said, but now they see that precisely this socialist government has squandered everything, I purposely pronounced the word squandered more clearly than all the others, I wasn’t even ashamed of having used it at all, I repeated the word squandered a few more times with regard to our bankrupt state and our socialist government, adding that our chancellor was a low-down, cunning, shady character who had simply exploited socialism as a vehicle for his perverse power trips, like the whole government by the way, I said, all these politicians are nothing but power-hungry, unscrupulous, vulgar schemers, the state, which they themselves constitute, is everything to them, I said, the people they represent mean just about nothing to them. I am and love this people, but I won’t have anything to do with this state, I said. Never before in its history has our country sunk so low, I said, never before in its history has it been governed by more vulgar and therefore more spineless cretins. But the people are stupid, I said, and are too weak to change such a situation, they are always taken in by untrustworthy, power-hungry people like the ones in government today. Probably nothing about this situation will change in the next elections, I said, for Austrians are creatures of habit and they’ve even grown accustomed to the muck they’ve been wading in for the last ten years. These pitiful people, I said. Austrians especially are always taken in by the word socialism, I said, although everyone knows that the word socialism has lost all meaning. Our socialists aren’t socialists anymore, I said, today’s socialists are the new capitalists, all a sham, I said to the innkeeper, who however didn’t want to listen to my senseless digression, as I suddenly noticed, for she was still thirsting for my funeral report. And so I said I had been surprised in Vienna by a telegram from Zizers, a telegram from the Duttweiler woman, I said, Wertheimer’s sister, reached me in Vienna, I was in the famous Palm House, I said, and found the telegram at the door. To this day I’m not sure how this Frau Duttweiler knew I was in Vienna, I said. A city that has grown ugly, which can’t be compared with the Vienna that used to be. A terrible experience, after years abroad, to come back to this city, to this decadent country, I said. That Wertheimer’s sister telegraphed me at all, that she informed me of her brother’s death at all, came as a surprise, I said. Duttweiler, I said, what an awful name! A rich Swiss family, I said, which Wertheimer’s sister had married into, a chemical plant. But as she herself knew, I said to the innkeeper, Wertheimer always oppressed his sister, wouldn’t leave her alone, at the last, the very last possible moment, she pulled away from him. If the innkeeper were to go to Vienna, I said, she’d be horrified. How this city has changed for the worst, I said. No trace of grandeur, all scum! I said. The best thing is to keep out of everything, withdraw from everything, I said. Not for a second have I regretted going away to Madrid years ago. But if we don’t have the chance to go away and have to stay in such a cretinous country, in such a cretinous city as Vienna, we perish, we don’t hold out for long, I said. In Vienna I had two days to think about Wertheimer, I said, on the train to Chur, during the night before the funeral. How many people had been at Wertheimer’s funeral, she wanted to know. Only the Duttweiler woman, her husband and I, I said. And of course the under-takers, I said. Everything was over in less than twenty minutes. The innkeeper said Wertheimer had always told her that should he die before her, he would leave her a necklace, a valuable one, she said, from his grandmother. But Wertheimer surely wouldn’t have mentioned her in his will, she claimed, and I thought that Wertheimer certainly hadn’t even made a will. If Wertheimer promised the innkeeper a necklace, I said to her, sh
e’ll get this necklace. Wertheimer had spent the night in her inn from time to time, she said with a red face, when he was frightened in Traich, as he often was, upon arriving from Vienna he would first go to her inn to spend the night, for he came to Traich from Vienna during the winter surprisingly often and there was no heat in Traich. The people he’d invited to Traich recently wore wild clothing, actors, she said, like circus people. They never drank or ate in her inn, stocked up on all sorts of drinks from the general store. They just used him, the innkeeper said, hung out for weeks in Traich at his expense, made a mess of everything, made noise the whole night until morning. What trash, she said. For weeks they’d been in Traich on their own, without Wertheimer, who showed up only a few days before his trip to Chur. Wertheimer often told the innkeeper that he was going to visit his sister and his brother-in-law in Zizers but kept putting it off. He sent many letters to his sister in Zizers, she should come back to him in Traich, separate from her husband for whom he, Wertheimer, had never had any respect, as the innkeeper said, for this dreadful person, as she said with Wertheimer’s words, but his sister hadn’t answered his letters. We can’t tie a person to us, I said, if a person doesn’t want it we have to leave him alone, I thought. Wertheimer had wanted to tie his sister to him for all eternity, I said, that was a mistake. He drove his sister crazy and in the process went mad himself, I said, for it’s madness to kill yourself. What will happen now to all the money Wertheimer left behind? the innkeeper asked. I didn’t know, I said, his sister had surely inherited it, I thought. Money goes to money, the innkeeper said, then she wanted to know more about the funeral, but I didn’t know what else to report, I had already said everything about Wertheimer’s funeral, more or less everything. Was it a Jewish funeral, the innkeeper wanted to know. I said, no, no Jewish funeral, he was buried the fastest way possible, I said, everything went so fast I almost missed it. The Duttweilers invited me to a meal after the funeral, I said, but I refused, I didn’t want to be with them. But that was a mistake, I said, I should have accepted and had lunch with them, as a result I was suddenly standing there alone and didn’t know what to do, I said. Chur is an ugly city, I said, gloomy like no other. Wertheimer was only buried provisionally in Chur, I suddenly said, they want to bury him permanently in Vienna, in the Döbling cemetery, I said, in the family crypt. The innkeeper stood up and claimed that the mild air outside would warm up my room before evening, I could rest assured. The winter cold is still in these rooms, she said. At the thought of having to spend the night in this room, where I had already spent so many sleepless nights, I actually became afraid of catching cold. I couldn’t have gone anywhere else however, because either it was too far or was even more primitive than here, I thought. Of course I was once much less demanding, I thought, not yet as sensitive as I am today, and I thought that in any event I would ask the innkeeper for two wool blankets before I went to bed. Whether she could make me some hot tea before I went to Traich, I asked the innkeeper, who then went down to the kitchen to make some hot tea. In the meantime I unpacked my bag, opened the wardrobe and hung up the dark gray suit I had taken along to Chur as my funeral suit, so to speak. Everywhere they hang these tacky Raphael angels in their rooms, I thought while looking at the Raphael angel on the wall, which had already become moldy but for that reason was now bearable. I recalled that I’d been wakened around five in the morning by the sound of pigs bumping against the trough, of the innkeeper thoughtlessly and stupidly closing the door. When we know what’s in store for us, I thought, it’s easier to deal with it. I bent down to see myself in the mirror and discovered that the infection on my temple, which I’d been treating for weeks with a Chinese ointment and which had gone away, was now suddenly back, this observation made me anxious. I immediately thought of a nasty disease that my doctor was concealing from me and that, simply to humor me, he was treating with this Chinese ointment, which in truth, as I now had to conclude, was worthless. Such an infection can naturally be the start of a severe, nasty disease, I thought and turned around. That I had gotten out in Attnang-Puchheim and traveled to Wankham in order to get to Traich suddenly struck me as totally senseless. I could have done without this dreadful Wankham, I thought, I didn’t need that, I thought, suddenly to be standing in this cold, musty room, afraid of the night, all of whose horrors I had no trouble imagining. To have stayed in Vienna and not responded to this Duttweiler woman’s telegram and not gone to Chur, I said to myself, would have been better than embarking on this trip to Chur, getting out in Attnang-Puchheim and going to Wankham to see Traich one more time, which is none of my business. Since I hadn’t said a word to the Duttweilers and even at Wertheimer’s open grave didn’t feel the slightest pang of emotion, I thought, I might as well have spared myself the whole agony, not taken the trip upon myself. My behavior disgusted me. On the other hand, what would I have had to discuss with Wertheimer’s sister? I asked myself. With her husband, whom I had nothing to do with and who actually repelled me, even more in my personal encounter with him than in Wertheimer’s descriptions, which of course had put him in a worse than unfavorable light. I make it a point not to speak with people like the Duttweilers, I thought at once upon seeing Duttweiler. But even a man like Duttweiler was able to make Wertheimer’s sister leave her brother and move to Switzerland, I thought, even a man as repulsive as Duttweiler! I looked in the mirror again and observed that the infection was not just on my right temple but had already reached the back of my head. It’s possible the Duttweiler woman will go back to Vienna now, I thought, her brother is dead, the Kohlmarkt apartment has been vacated for her, she no longer needs Switzerland. The Vienna apartment belongs to her, Traich as well. On top of which it’s her furniture in the Kohlmarkt apartment, I thought, which she loved, which her brother, as he himself always said, hated. Now she can live in peace with her Swiss husband in Zizers, I thought, for at any time she can move back to Vienna or Traich. The virtuoso lies in the Chur cemetery near the garbage heap, I thought for a moment. Wertheimer’s parents had been buried according to Jewish rites, I thought, Wertheimer himself had always characterized himself as agnostic. With Wertheimer I had visited the Wertheimer crypt in the Döbling cemetery, right next to the so-called Lieben crypt and the Theodor Herzl grave, it hadn’t irritated him that a beech tree growing out of the crypt had progressively dislodged the immense granite block inscribed with the names of all the Wertheimers in the Wertheimer crypt; his sister had always wanted to make him cut down the beech tree and put the granite block back in place, the fact that the beech tree had shot up out of the crypt and dislodged the granite block didn’t disturb him, on the contrary, every time he visited the crypt he marveled at the beech tree and the increasingly dislodged granite block. Now his sister will have the beech tree removed from the crypt and the granite block set straight and before that she will have Wertheimer transported from Chur to Vienna and buried in the crypt, I thought. Wertheimer was the most passionate cemetery lover I have ever known, even more passionate than me, I thought. With my right index finger I drew a large W on the dusty wardrobe door. Desselbrunn came to my mind at this point, for a moment I caught myself in the sentimental thought of perhaps also going to Desselbrunn, but repressed this thought immediately. I wanted to stick to my principles and said to myself, I’m not going to Desselbrunn, I’m not going to Desselbrunn for the next five or six years. Such a visit to Desselbrunn will surely weaken me for years, I said to myself, I can’t afford a Desselbrunn visit. The countryside outside my window was the dreary, sickening countryside I knew so well from Desselbrunn and which years ago I suddenly couldn’t take anymore. If I hadn’t left Desselbrunn, I said to myself, I would have succumbed, I wouldn’t be here anymore, I would have succumbed before Glenn and before Wertheimer, wasted away, as I have to say, for the countryside around Desselbrunn is a countryside meant for wasting away, like the countryside outside this window in Wankham, which threatens everybody, slowly suffocates everybody, never uplifts, never protects. We’re not asked t
o choose our place of birth, I thought. But we can leave our place of birth if it threatens to suffocate us, go off and away from the place that will kill us if we miss the moment of going off and away. I was lucky and left at the right moment, I said to myself. And in the end left Vienna, because Vienna was threatening to suffocate and choke me. Nevertheless I owe it to my father’s bank account that I’m still alive, still am allowed to exist, as I suddenly said to myself. Not a life-giving region, I said to myself. Not a soothing countryside. Not pleasant people. Lying in wait for me, I thought. Making me anxious. Pulling the wool over my eyes. I’ve never felt safe in this region, I thought. Constantly visited by disease, almost killed finally by insomnia. Sigh of relief when the men from Altmünster came and took away the Steinway, I thought, sudden freedom of movement in Desselbrunn. Didn’t give up art and whatever else the term means by giving the Steinway to the schoolteacher’s child in Altmünster, I thought. To have exposed the Steinway to a schoolteacher’s vulgarity, exposed it to the cretinism of the schoolteacher’s child. If I’d told the schoolteacher what my Steinway was truly worth he would have been shocked, I thought, this way he had no idea of the instrument’s value. Even when I had the Steinway transported from Vienna to Desselbrunn I knew it wouldn’t be in Desselbrunn for long, but naturally I had no idea I would give it away to the schoolteacher’s child, I thought. As long as I had the Steinway I wasn’t independent in my writing, I thought, wasn’t free, as I was from the moment the Steinway was out of the house for good. I had to part with the Steinway in order to write, to be honest I had been writing for fourteen years and actually had only written more or less useless junk because I hadn’t parted with my Steinway. The Steinway was barely out the door and I was writing better, I thought. In the Calle del Prado I was always thinking about the Steinway standing in Vienna (or in Desselbrunn) and thus could write nothing better than these inevitably botched attempts. I’d barely gotten rid of the Steinway and I was writing differently, from the first moment, I thought. But that doesn’t mean of course that I’d given up music with the Steinway, I thought. On the contrary. But it no longer had the same devastating power over me, simply didn’t hurt me anymore, I thought. When we peer into this countryside we are frightened. Under no circumstances do we want to return to this countryside. Everything is perpetually gray and the people are always depressing. Then I would just crawl into my room and be incapable of thinking a single useful thought, I thought. And would gradually become like everybody here, I just need to look at the innkeeper, this person who has been totally destroyed by the all-governing force of nature here, who can’t get out of her petty, vulgar ways, I thought. I would have perished in this evil-spirited countryside. But I never should have gone to Desselbrunn, I thought, never should have accepted my inheritance, could have renounced it, now I’ve abandoned it, I thought. Desselbrunn was originally built by one of my great-uncles, who was director of the paper factory, as a manor house with rooms for all his many children. Simply abandoned it, that was my salvation, surely. At first went to Desselbrunn with my parents only in the summer, then went to school for years in Desselbrunn and in Wankham, I thought, then to the gymnasium in Salzburg, then to the Mozarteum, once also for a year to the Vienna Academy, I thought, back to the Mozarteum, then back to Vienna and finally to Desselbrunn with the idea of withdrawing there permanently with my intellectual ambitions, but where I very quickly succumbed to the realization that I’d wound up in a dead end. The piano virtuoso career as an escape, but pushed nonetheless to the most extreme limit, to perfection, I thought. At the height of my ability, as I can say, gave everything up, tossed it out the window, as I have to say, hit myself on the head, gave away the Steinway. When it rains here for six or seven weeks without stopping and the local inhabitants go crazy in this unstoppable rain, I thought, one has to have tremendous discipline not to kill oneself. But half the people here kill themselves sooner or later, don’t die a natural death, as one says. Have nothing but their Catholicism and the Socialist Party, the two most disgusting institutions of our time. In Madrid I leave the house at least once a day to eat, I thought, here I would never have left the house in my increasingly hopeless deterioration process. But I never seriously thought about selling, I toyed with the idea, as in the last two years, sure, but naturally without results. At the same time I never promised anyone responsible for such things not to sell Desselbrunn, I thought. No sale is possible without real estate agents and I shudder at the idea of real estate agents, I thought. We can leave a house like Desselbrunn standing for years without a problem, I thought, let it go to seed, I thought, why not. I won’t go to Desselbrunn under any circumstances, I thought. The innkeeper had made me my tea and I went down to the restaurant. I sat at the table by the window where I used to sit in past years, but it didn’t seem to me that time had stood still. I heard the innkeeper working in the kitchen and I thought she was probably making lunch for her child who came home from school at one or two, warming up some goulash or perhaps some vegetable soup. In theory we understand people, but in practice we can’t put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our own point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn’t possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody. The innkeeper once had a lung disease like mine, I thought, like me she was able to squeeze this lung illness out of her, liquidate it with her will to live. She finished high school by the skin of her teeth, as they say, I thought, and then took over the inn from her uncle, who had been implicated in a murder case that even today hasn’t been entirely cleared up and who was sentenced to twenty years in prison. Together with a neighbor, her uncle is said to have strangled a so-called haber-dashery salesman from Vienna who had stopped for the night, strangled him in the room next to mine to get at the enormous sum of money that the Viennese salesman is said to have had with him. The Dichtel Mill, as the inn is called, has been so to speak notorious since this murder case. At first, that is when the murder case became known, the Dichtel Mill started going downhill and was closed for more than two years. The court turned over ownership of the Dichtel Mill to the niece of the murderer, that is her uncle, the niece took over the Dichtel Mill and reopened it, but naturally since the reopening it was no longer the same Dichtel Mill it was before the murder. No one ever heard anything more about the innkeeper’s uncle, I thought, but he probably was let out after just twelve or thirteen years, like all murderers and criminals sentenced to twenty years, it’s also possible he’s no longer alive, I thought, I wasn’t planning to ask the innkeeper for news about her uncle for I had no desire to hear the murder story, which she had already told me several times and once more at my request, from the beginning. The murder of the Viennese salesman had caused a sensation back then, and during the trial the daily newspapers spoke of nothing else and the Dichtel Mill, long boarded up, was besieged by curious visitors for weeks, although there was nothing particularly worth seeing at the Dichtel Mill. Since the murder case the Dichtel Mill has always been called the murder house, and when people want to say they’re going to the Dichtel Mill they also say they’re going to the murder house, it’s become a local tradition. At the trial the prosecutor presented only circumstantial evidence, I thought, and the murder wasn’t actually traced to the innkeeper’s uncle or his accomplice, whose family was plunged into misfortune, as they say, by the whole murder story. Even the court had trouble believing the so-called path-clearer capable of committing such a murder in concert with the innkeeper’s uncle, who was known everywhere and by everybody as easygoing and modest and a solid citizen through and through and even today is considered easygoing and modest and a solid citizen by those who knew him, but the jurors decided on the maximum sentence, and not just for the innkeeper’s uncle but also for the former path-clearer, who, as I know,
died in the meantime, as his wife always said, of grief at having been the innocent victim of misanthropic jurors. The courts, even after they have destroyed innocent people and their families for life, go back to their everyday business, I thought, the jurors, who always follow the mere whim of a moment in their judgment, but also a boundless hatred for their fellowman, will quickly come to terms with their mistake and themselves even after they have long since recognized that they’ve committed an irreparable crime against innocent people. Half of all convictions, I have heard it said, actually rest on such mistaken verdicts, I thought, and it’s a hundred to one that the so-called Dichtel Mill trial was just like the others, that the jurors reached a mistaken verdict. The so-called Austrian municipal courts are known for the fact that every year dozens of mistaken verdicts are reached by jurors who thus have dozens of innocent people on their conscience, most of whom are serving a life sentence in our correctional institutions without the prospect of ever being rehabilitated, as they say. In fact, I thought, there are more innocent than guilty people in our prisons and correctional institutions because there are so many conscienceless judges and misanthropic jurors who despise their fellowman, who take revenge for their own unhappiness and their own hideousness on those who, because of the horrifying circumstances that have led them into court, are at their mercy. The Austrian criminal system is diabolical, I thought, as we repeatedly are forced to conclude if we read the newspapers carefully, but it becomes even more diabolical when we know that only the tiniest portion of its crimes comes to light and is made public. Personally I’m convinced that the innkeeper’s uncle was not the murderer or rather the murderer’s accomplice that he was branded as thirteen or fourteen years ago, I thought. I also judge the path-clearer to actually be innocent, I still recall the trial reports in detail and at bottom both of them, the innkeeper’s uncle, the so-called Dichtel-keeper, as well as his neighbor the path-clearer, absolutely should have been exonerated, in the end even the prosecutor pleaded for that, the jurors however convicted them both of first-degree homicide and had the Dichtel-keeper and the path-clearer carted off to the Garsten prison, I thought. And if no one has the courage and the strength and the money to reopen such a ghastly case, as they say, a mistaken verdict like that of the Dichtel-keeper and the path-clearer simply stands, such a ghastly miscarriage of justice against two truly innocent people whom one, and that means society, finally wants to have nothing to do with for all time, whether guilty or innocent, it doesn’t matter. The Dichtel Mill trial, as it was always called, came to my mind and kept me occupied the whole time I sat at the window table because I’d discovered the photograph tacked to the wall facing me, a photograph that showed the Dichtel-keeper in his innkeeper coat, smoking a pipe, and I thought that the innkeeper probably nailed the photograph to the wall not only out of gratitude to her uncle who had given her the Dichtel Mill and provided her with her livelihood but also to keep the Dichtel miller or rather the Dichtel-keeper from being completely forgotten. But most of the people who were truly and actively interested in the Dichtel Mill trial have long since died, I thought, and people today can’t understand the photograph. But it’s true that a certain odor of felony still clings to the Dichtel Mill, I thought, which naturally attracts people. We’re not unhappy when people become suspects and are charged with a crime and locked up, I thought, that’s the truth. When crimes come to light, I thought while looking at the photograph opposite me. When she comes back from the kitchen I’ll ask the innkeeper what has become of her uncle, I thought, and I said to myself, I’ll ask her about it, then I said, I won’t ask her about it, I’ll ask her, I won’t ask her, in this way I kept staring at the photograph of the Dichtel-keeper the whole time and thought, I’ll ask the innkeeper all about him, etc. Suddenly a so-called simple person, who of course is never a simple person, is ripped out of his surroundings, actually put in prison at the drop of a hat, I thought, from which he can only emerge, if he emerges at all, as a totally destroyed human being, as legal flotsam and jetsam, as I had to say to myself, for which finally all society is responsible. After the trial was over the newspapers debated the question whether the Dichtel-keeper as well as the path-clearer might actually be innocent and wrote editorials to this effect, but two, three days after the trial was over no one talked about the Dichtel Mill trial. From these editorials one could deduce that the two who were branded and sentenced as murderers couldn’t have committed the murder, a third party or several third parties must have committed the murder, but of course the jurors had already reached their verdict and the trial was never reopened, I thought, in my life few things have actually absorbed me with greater intensity than the criminal-justice aspect of our world. When we follow this criminal-justice aspect of our world, and that means of our society, we experience miracles, as they say, on a daily basis. When the innkeeper came out of the kitchen and sat down at my table, more or less exhausted, she had been washing clothes and reeked of kitchen odors, I asked her what had become of her uncle, the Dichtel-keeper, putting the question not in a blunt but in an extremely cautious way. Her uncle had moved in with his brother in Hirschbach, she said, Hirschbach was a small town on the Czech border, she herself had been there only once, but that was years ago, her son was just three years old at the time. She’d been planning to show her son to her uncle in the hope that he, who she assumed was still quite rich, would help her through her difficulty, that is give her money, that’s the only reason she and her son had undertaken such a grueling trip, to Hirschbach on the Czech border, six months after the death of her husband, the father of her son, who despite all adverse circumstances had turned out so well. But her uncle wouldn’t see them, had his brother deny he was there, hadn’t shown himself at all until she finally gave up waiting for him with her son and they took the train back to Wankham, empty-handed. How can a person have such a heart of stone, she said, on the other hand, however, she could understand her uncle. He didn’t want to hear anything about the Dichtel Mill and Wankham, she said. Prisoners, once they’re released, never go back to the place where they were before going to prison, I said. The innkeeper had hoped to get financial help from her uncle or at least from her second uncle, the so-called Hirschbach uncle, but hadn’t received this help from precisely the two persons who were her only relatives and today still are and about whom she knew that they, although still living in the meager circumstances she had noted in Hirschbach, disposed of a rather large fortune. The innkeeper also made an allusion to the amount of her two uncles’ fortune, without mentioning a definite sum, a pitifully small sum, I thought, but one that must have struck her, the innkeeper, as so enormous that she could see in it the key to her salvation, I thought. Old people, even when they no longer need anything, are stingy, the older they get the stingier they get, won’t part with anything, their offspring can starve to death before their eyes and it won’t bother them in the slightest. Then the innkeeper described her Hirschbach trip, how tiring it is to go from Wankham to Hirschbach, she’d had to change trains three times with her sick child and her Hirschbach visit not only didn’t bring her any money but also gave her a throat infection, a nasty throat infection that lasted for months, as she said. After her visit in Hirschbach she thought she would take down the photograph of her uncle, but then she didn’t remove it from the wall because of her customers, who surely would’ve asked why she’d taken the photograph off the wall, she didn’t want to explain the whole story again to everybody, she said. Then they suddenly would’ve wanted to know everything about the trial, she said, she wouldn’t let herself get into that. The fact is she loved her uncle in the photograph before the Hirschbach trip, whereas after her return from Hirschbach she could only hate him. She had the greatest compassion for him, he not the least for her. Finally she started running the Dichtel Mill again as an inn, she said, under the most unfavorable circumstances, she hadn’t let the building get run down, hadn’t sold it either, although she’d had more than a few offers. Her husband didn’t care a
bout the inn business, she explained, she met him at a carnival party in Regau, where she’d gone to buy a few old chairs for her inn that an inn in Regau had thrown out. She saw right away that a good-natured man was sitting there completely alone, without companions. She sat down at his table and took him back to Wankham, where he then stayed. But he never was an innkeeper, she said. Here all married women, she actually used the words married women, have to count on their husbands falling into the paper mill, or at least on their having one of their hands or several fingers ripped off by the paper mill, she said, basically it’s an everyday event when they injure themselves at the paper mills, and the whole area is filled with men like that who’ve been crippled by the paper mills. Ninety percent of the men in this town work in the paper factory, she said. No one here has any other plan for their children than to send them right back to the factory, she said, for generations the same mechanism, I thought. And if the paper factory goes broke, she said, they’ll all be left high and dry. It was only a matter of the shortest time before the paper factory would close, she explained, everything points that way, since the paper factory has been nationalized it would soon have to close, because like all other nationalized companies it was up to its ears in debt. Here everything revolves around the paper factory, and when it closes everything’s over. She herself would be washed up, for ninety percent of her customers worked in the factory, she said, paper workers at least spend their money, she explained, woodsmen on the other hand not at all, and farmers would turn up in her inn once or twice a year, they also had stayed clear of the Dichtel Mill since the days of the trial, wouldn’t come in without asking unpleasant questions, so she said. She had long since stopped worrying about this hopeless future, it didn’t matter what would happen to her, after all her son was twelve now and at fourteen the kids around here can already stand on their own two feet. I’m not the least bit interested in my future, she said. That Herr Wertheimer, as she put it, had always been a welcome guest in her inn. But such refined gentlemen have no idea what it means to live the way she does, to run an inn like the Dichtel Mill. They (the refined gentlemen) always talked about matters she didn’t understand, didn’t have any worries and spent all their time thinking about what they should do with their money and their time. She herself had never had enough money and never enough time and hadn’t even been unhappy once, in contrast to those she called refined gentlemen, who always had enough money and enough time and constantly talked about their unhappiness. She was totally incapable of understanding how Wertheimer could always tell her he was an unhappy person. Often he sat in the restaurant until one in the morning, bemoaning his fate, and she took pity on him, as she said, took him up to her room because he no longer wanted to go back to Traich at night. That people like Herr Wertheimer had every opportunity to be happy and never even once took advantage of this opportunity, she said. Such a noble house and so much unhappiness in one person, she said. Basically Wertheimer’s suicide didn’t come as a surprise to her, but he shouldn’t have done that, hanged himself from a tree in Zizers right in front of his sister’s house, she wouldn’t forgive him for that one. The way she said Herr Wertheimer was moving and sickening at the same time. Once I went to him to ask for money, but he didn’t give me any, she said, I could have used some cash for a new refrigerator. But they zip their pockets shut, those rich people, she said, as soon as you ask for money. And yet Wertheimer had thrown millions out the window for the fun of it. She considered me to be like Wertheimer, well-to-do, in fact rich and inhuman, for she said spontaneously that all well-to-do and rich people are inhuman. But was she human then? I had asked her, to which she gave no answer. She stood up and went over to the beer-truck drivers who had parked their huge truck in front of the inn. I was thinking about what the innkeeper had said and for that reason didn’t get up right away to go to Traich but remained sitting in order to observe the beer-truck drivers and especially the innkeeper, who without a doubt was on more intimate terms with the beer-truck drivers than with any of her other customers. Beer-truck drivers have fascinated me since my earliest childhood, so too that day. I was fascinated by the way they unloaded the beer kegs and rolled them through the lobby, then tapped the first one for the innkeeper and sat down with her at the next table. As a child I had wanted to become a beer-truck driver, admired beer-truck drivers, I thought, couldn’t look often enough at beer-truck drivers. Sitting at the next table and watching the beer-truck drivers I again fell prey to this sentiment from my childhood, but I didn’t dwell on it for long, instead I got up and left the Dichtel Mill for Traich, not without having told the innkeeper that I would be back toward evening or even earlier, depending, and that I was counting on an evening meal. While going out I heard the beer-truck drivers ask the innkeeper who I was and since I have sharper ears than anybody I also heard her whisper my name and add that I was a friend of Wertheimer’s, the fool who’d killed himself in Switzerland. Basically I would have preferred to sit in the restaurant and listen to the beer-truck drivers and the innkeeper instead of going to Traich now, I thought while leaving, would have liked most of all to sit at the same table with the beer-truck drivers and drink a glass of beer with them. Again and again we picture ourselves sitting together with the people we feel drawn to all our lives, precisely these so-called simple people, whom naturally we imagine much differently from the way they truly are, for if we actually sit down with them we see that they aren’t the way we’ve pictured them and that we absolutely don’t belong with them, as we’ve talked ourselves into believing, and we get rejected at their table and in their midst as we logically should get after sitting down at their table and believing we belonged with them or we could sit with them for even the shortest time without being punished, which is the biggest mistake, I thought. All our lives we yearn to be with these people and want to reach out to them and when we realize what we feel for them are rejected by them and indeed in the most brutal fashion. Wertheimer often described how he always failed in his effort to fit in, to be together with so-called simple folk and thus with the so-called people, and he often reported that he went to the Dichtel Mill with the idea of sitting at the table of simple people, only to have to admit after the first such attempt that it was a mistake to think that individuals like him, Wertheimer, or like me could just sit down at the table of simple people. Individuals like us have cut themselves off from the table of simple people at an early age, he said, as I recall, have been born at quite a different table, he said, not at the table of simple people. Individuals like us are naturally drawn to the table of simple people, he said. But we have no business sitting at the table of simple people, as he said, as I recall. To lead a beer-truck driver’s existence, I thought, to load and unload beer kegs day after day and roll them through the lobbies of inns throughout Upper Austria and always sit down with these same decrepit innkeepers and fall into bed dead-tired every day for thirty years, for forty years. I took a deep breath and went as fast as I could to Traich. In the country we’re confronted with all the unresolvable problems of the world for all time and in a much more drastic manner than in the city, where, if we want to, we can completely anonymize ourselves, I thought, the hideousness and awfulness of the country hit us right in the face and we can’t get away from them, and this hideousness and awfulness, if we live in the country, are sure to destroy us in the shortest time, that hasn’t changed, I thought, since I’ve been away. If I go back to Desselbrunn I’ll definitely go to rack and ruin, a return to Desselbrunn is out of the question, not even after five, six years, I said to myself, and the longer I stay away the more necessary it is for me not to go back to Desselbrunn, to stay in Madrid or in another big city, I said to myself, just not in the country and never again in Upper Austria, I thought. It was cold and windy. The absolute madness of going to Traich, of having got out in Attnang-Puchheim, gone to Wankham, came to my mind. In this region Wertheimer had had to go crazy, indeed in the end lose his mind, I thought, and I said to myself that he always was ex
actly the loser that Glenn Gould had always spoken of, Wertheimer was a typical dead-end guy, I said to myself, he was sure to go from one dead end to another dead end, for Traich had always been a dead end, as was later Vienna, naturally Salzburg too, for Salzburg had been nothing but an uninterrupted dead end for him, the Mozarteum nothing but a dead end, just as the Vienna Academy, just as the whole business of studying piano had been a dead end, in general people like him have a choice only between one dead end and another one, I said to myself, without ever being able to extricate themselves from this dead-end mechanism. The loser was a born loser, I thought, he has always been the loser and if we observe the people around us carefully we notice that these people consist almost entirely of losers like him, I said to myself, of dead-end types like Wertheimer, whom Glenn Gould had pegged the moment he saw him as a dead-end type and loser and whom Glenn Gould had also first called the loser in his ruthless but thoroughly open Canadian-American manner, Glenn Gould had said out loud and without any embarrassment what the others also thought but never said out loud, because this ruthless and open, yet healthy American-Canadian manner isn’t their own, I said to myself, they all saw the loser in Wertheimer, though of course hadn’t dared to call him the loser; but perhaps with their lack of imagination they never even dreamed of such a nickname, I thought, which Glenn Gould had coined the moment he saw Wertheimer, sharp-eyed, as I have to say, without having observed him for very long he came up with the loser immediately, unlike me, who came up with the notion of dead-end types only after observing him and living with him for years. We always have to deal with losers and dead-end types like him, I said to myself and lowered my head into the wind. We have the greatest trouble saving ourselves from these losers and these dead-end types, for these losers and these dead-end types risk everything on terrorizing the people around them, killing off their fellow human beings, I said to myself. Despite their weakness and precisely because of their weak constitution they have the capacity to devastate the people around them, I thought. They are more ruthless with the people around them and with their fellow human beings, I said to myself, than we can initially imagine, and when we discover what makes them tick, discover this deep-rooted loser mechanism and dead-end-type mechanism, it’s usually too late to escape, they drag you down with all their might, wherever they can, I said to myself, for them any victim will do, even their own sister, I thought. They get the most profit out of their unhappiness, their loser mechanism, I said to myself on the way to Traich, even though this profit is naturally of no use to them in the final analysis. Wertheimer always set about his life with false assumptions, I said to myself, unlike Glenn who always set about his existence with the right assumptions. Wertheimer even envied Glenn Gould his death, I said to myself, couldn’t even put up with Glenn Gould’s death and killed himself a short while thereafter and in truth the crucial factor for his suicide wasn’t his sister’s departure for Switzerland but the unbearableness of Glenn Gould, as I must say, suffering a fatal stroke at the height of his artistic powers. At first Wertheimer couldn’t bear the fact that Glenn Gould played the piano better than he, that he was suddenly the genius Glenn Gould, I thought, world famous to boot, and then finally that he suffered a fatal stroke at the height of his genius and his world fame, I thought. Against all this Wertheimer had only his own death, death by his own hand, I thought. In an excess of megalomania he got into the train for Chur, I said to myself now, and went to Zizers and hanged himself in front of Frau Duttweiler’s house, shamelessly. What could I possibly have talked about with the Duttweilers? I asked myself and answered myself immediately with a word I actually said out loud: nothing. Should I have told his sister what in truth I thought and still think of Wertheimer, her brother? I thought. It would have been the greatest foolishness, I said to myself. I would have only annoyed the Duttweiler woman with my chatter and it wouldn’t have got me further. But I should have refused the Duttweilers’ invitation to lunch more politely, I thought now, I actually refused their invitation not only impolitely but in an inadmissible tone of voice, brusquely, offended them, which I couldn’t accept now. We behave unjustly, offend people simply to avoid a more difficult moment, an unpleasant confrontation, I thought, for the confrontation with the Duttweilers after Wertheimer’s funeral would have certainly been everything but pleasant, I would have again mentioned things that were better left unmentioned, things concerning Wertheimer, and with all the injustice and exaggeration that have become my fate, in a word with the subjectivity I myself have always detested but from which I have never been immune. And the Duttweilers would have pieced together Wertheimerian connections in their own way, which would have produced an equally false and unjust picture of Wertheimer, I said to myself. We constantly portray and judge people only in false terms, we judge them unjustly and portray them meanly, I said to myself, in every instance, no matter how we portray, no matter how we judge them. Such a lunch in Chur with the Duttweilers would have produced nothing but misunderstandings and in the end brought both sides to despair, I thought. So I was right in refusing their invitation and returning to Austria immediately, I thought, even if I shouldn’t have gotten out in Attnang-Puchheim, I should have returned to Vienna immediately, gone to my apartment, spent the night and left for Madrid, I thought. The sentimental aspect of interrupting my trip in Attnang-Puchheim for this disgusting but necessary night in the inn at Wankham in order to visit Wertheimer’s hunting lodge in Traich was inexcusable. At least I could have asked the Duttweilers who was now living in Traich, for on my way to Traich I didn’t have the slightest idea who could be in Traich now, I couldn’t rely on the innkeeper’s information, she always talks a lot of nonsense, I thought, like all innkeepers, a lot of beside-the-point gibberish. And it’s even possible that Frau Duttweiler herself is already in Traich, I thought, that would be the most natural thing in the world, that is that she left Chur for Traich early, unlike my evening departure, perhaps in the afternoon or even at noon. Who else but his sister should take over Traich now, I thought, who, now that Wertheimer is dead and buried in Chur, has no reason to fear him anymore. Her tormentor is dead, I thought, her destroyer has reached the end of his life, is no longer here, will never again have anything to say about how she leads her life. As always I was exaggerating now too, and to my own mind it was disturbing to suddenly hear myself call Wertheimer the tormentor and destroyer of his sister, I thought, I always behave this way with others, unjustly, indeed criminally. I have always suffered from being unjust, I thought. Herr Duttweiler, who had struck me as so repulsive at our first meeting and perhaps is not at all that repulsive, as I now thought, surely has no interest in Traich, in general hasn’t the slightest interest in Wertheimer interests, I said to myself, it looks as if what Wertheimer left behind in Traich and Vienna didn’t interest him at all, I thought, at most, Duttweiler is interested in the money Wertheimer left behind, not at all in the rest of the Wertheimer property, but the sister must be deeply interested in it for I can’t imagine, I thought, that in marrying Duttweiler she has separated herself so radically and definitively from her brother that her brother’s estate would be a matter of complete indifference to her, quite the contrary, I now suspected that now of all times, liberated by her brother through his so to speak demonstrative suicide, she will suddenly take an interest in all Wertheimer matters with the intensity with which she was previously not interested in them and that perhaps now she is even interested in her brother’s so-called human-science estate. In my mind, as they say, I pictured her now in Traich, sitting over thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of her brother’s notes and studying them. Then I thought again that Wertheimer hadn’t left a single note behind, which would be more characteristic of him than a so-called literary estate, which he personally never held in high regard, as I always heard him say in any case, even though I can’t say he said it seriously, I thought. For very often people who work with products of the intellect say they don’t hold something in high regard and on the contrary
hold it in very high regard indeed, just won’t admit it because they’re ashamed of such inferior work, as they call it, bad-mouth their work so as not to have to be publicly ashamed of it at least, Wertheimer could have been operating with smoke-screen tactics like that when talking about his so-called human sciences, I thought, that would be just like him. In that case I would actually have the opportunity to look into this intellectual work of his, I thought. It suddenly had got so cold that I had to turn up the collar of my coat. Again and again we look for the cause of something and little by little go from one possibility to the other, I thought, that Glenn’s death is the actual cause for Wertheimer’s death, I thought again and again, not that Wertheimer’s sister moved to Zizers to be with Duttweiler. The cause, and we not only say this, always lies much deeper and it lies in the Goldberg Variations that Glenn played in Salzburg during Horowitz’s course, the Well-Tempered Clavier is the cause, I thought, it doesn’t lie in the fact that Wertheimer’s sister cut herself off from her brother at the age of forty-six. Wertheimer’s sister is actually innocent in Wertheimer’s death, I thought, Wertheimer wanted, I thought, to shift the blame for his suicide to his sister, to deflect attention from the fact that nothing but Glenn’s interpretation of the Goldberg Variations as well as his Well-Tempered Clavier was to blame for his suicide, as indeed for his disastrous life. But Wertheimer’s disaster had already started the moment Glenn called Wertheimer the loser, what Wertheimer had always known Glenn said out loud, abruptly and without bias, as I have to say, in his Canadian-American way, Glenn mortally wounded Wertheimer with his loser, I thought, not because Wertheimer heard this concept for the first time but because Wertheimer, without knowing this word loser, had long been familiar with the concept of loser, but Glenn Gould said the word loser out loud in a crucial moment, I thought. We say a word and destroy a person, although the person we’ve destroyed, at the moment we say out loud the word that destroys him, doesn’t take notice of this deadly fact, I thought. A person confronted with such a deadly word and deadly concept still has no idea of the deadly effect of this word and its concept, I thought. Even before Horowitz’s course had begun Glenn said the word loser to Wertheimer, I thought, I could even specify the precise hour in which Glenn said the word loser to Wertheimer. We say a deadly word to a person and at that moment are naturally unaware that we have actually said a deadly word to him, I thought. Twenty-eight years after Glenn said to Wertheimer at the Mozarteum that he was a loser and twelve years after he said it to him in America, Wertheimer killed himself. Suicides are ridiculous, Wertheimer often said, the ones who hang themselves are the most disgusting, he also said, I thought, now of course it’s striking that he often spoke about suicide, and in doing so always more or less made fun of suicide victims, as I have to say, always talked about suicide and suicide victims as if neither one nor the other had anything to do with him, as if one like the other was out of the question for him. I was a suicide type, he often said, I recalled on the way to Traich, I was the one in danger, not he. And he had also thought his sister capable of suicide, probably because he best knew her actual situation, was familiar with the absolute hopelessness of her situation, like no other, because he, as he often said, thought he could see through his creation. But his sister, instead of killing herself, fled to Duttweiler in Switzerland, got herself married to Herr Duttweiler, I thought. Wertheimer finally killed himself in a way he always termed repulsive and disgusting, and of all places in Switzerland, his sister went to Switzerland to marry this wealthy chemical Duttweiler instead of killing herself, he went there however to hang himself from a tree in Zizers, I thought. He wanted to study with Horowitz, I thought, and was destroyed by Glenn Gould. Glenn died at the ideal moment, Wertheimer however didn’t kill himself at the ideal moment, I thought. If I really have another go at my description of Glenn Gould, I thought, I will have to incorporate his description of Wertheimer in it and it’s questionable who will be the focus of this account, Glenn Gould or Wertheimer, I thought. I’ll start with Glenn Gould, with the Goldberg Variations and with the Well-Tempered Clavier, but Wertheimer will play a crucial role in this account as far as I’m concerned, since from my point of view Glenn Gould was always linked to Wertheimer, no matter in what respect, and vice versa Wertheimer with Glenn Gould and perhaps all in all Glenn Gould does play a greater role in Wertheimer’s life than the other way around. The actual starting point has to be Horowitz’s course, I thought, the sculptor’s house in Leopoldskron, the fact that we came together completely by chance twenty-eight years ago was crucial for our lives, I thought. Wertheimer’s Bösendorfer against Glenn Gould’s Steinway, I thought, Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations against Wertheimer’s Art of the Fugue, I thought. Glenn Gould surely doesn’t owe Horowitz his genius, I thought, but Wertheimer is perfectly entitled to blame Horowitz for his downfall and destruction, I thought, for Wertheimer, attracted by the name Horowitz, had gone to Salzburg, without the name Horowitz he would never have gone to Salzburg, at least not in that fateful year. Whereas the Goldberg Variations were composed for the sole purpose of helping an insomniac put up with the insomnia he had suffered from all his life, I thought, they killed Wertheimer. They were originally composed to delight the soul and almost two hundred and fifty years later they have killed a hopeless person, i.e., Wertheimer, I thought on my way to Traich. If Wertheimer hadn’t walked past room thirty-three on the second floor of the Mozarteum twenty-eight years ago, precisely at four in the afternoon, he wouldn’t have hanged himself twenty-eight years later in Zizers bei Chur, I thought. Wertheimer’s fate was to have walked past room thirty-three in the Mozarteum at the precise moment when Glenn Gould was playing the so-called aria in that room. Regarding this event Wertheimer reported to me that he stopped at the door of room thirty-three, listening to Glenn play until the end of the aria. Then I understood what shock is, I thought now. The so-called Wunderkind Glenn Gould had meant nothing to us, Wertheimer and me, and we wouldn’t have given it a second thought if we had known something about him, I thought. Glenn Gould was no Wunderkind, from the very beginning he was a keyboard genius, I thought, even as a child simple mastery wasn’t enough for him. We, Wertheimer and myself, had our so-called isolation houses in the country and were running away from them. Glenn Gould built himself an isolation cage, as he called his studio, in America, close to New York. If he named Wertheimer the loser, I want to call him, Glenn, the refuser, I thought. I have to call the year 1953 the fateful one for Wertheimer, for in 1953 Glenn Gould played the Goldberg Variations in our sculptor’s house for no one else but Wertheimer and me, years before he became world famous overnight, as they say, with these same Goldberg Variations. In 1953 Glenn Gould destroyed Wertheimer, I thought. In 1954 we hadn’t had any news from him, in 1955 he played the Goldberg Variations in the Festspielhaus, Wertheimer and I listened to him from the catwalk together with a group of stagehands who otherwise had never heard a piano concert but were crazy about Glenn’s playing. Glenn, who always broke into a sweat, Glenn, the Canadian-American who without embarrassment called Wertheimer the loser, Glenn, who laughed in the Ganshof the way I never before and never again heard anyone laugh, I thought, comparing him to Wertheimer, who was the exact opposite of Glenn Gould, even though I can’t describe this opposite, but I’ll make an attempt, I thought, when I start again my Essay on Glenn. I’ll lock myself in my apartment in the Calle del Prado and write about Glenn and all by itself the Wertheimer problem will become clear to me, I thought. By writing about Glenn Gould I’ll put my thoughts about Wertheimer in order, I thought on my way to Traich. I was walking much too fast and during my walk had trouble breathing, the old lung illness which has plagued me now for over two decades. By writing about the one (Glenn Gould), I will order my thoughts about the other (Wertheimer), I thought, by listening again and again to the Goldberg Variations (and the Art of the Fugue) of the one (Glenn), in order to write about them, I will know more and more about the art (or the nonart!) of the other (Wertheimer) an
d be able to write it down, I thought, and all at once I longed to be in Madrid and my Calle del Prado, in my Spanish home, as I had never longed to be anywhere else before. Basically my walk to Traich was depressing and, as I thought again and again, will prove futile. Or won’t be completely futile, as I thought at the moment, I thought, and went faster toward Traich. I knew the hunting lodge, my first impression was that nothing had changed, my second that it had to be an ideal structure for a person like Wertheimer but then never was the ideal structure for him, quite the contrary. As my Desselbrunn also never was and still isn’t the ideal structure for me, but the opposite, as I thought, even if everything gave the impression that Desselbrunn was ideal for me (and people like me). We see a structure and believe it is ideal for us (and for people like us) and it’s absolutely not ideal for our purposes and for the purposes of people like us, I thought. Just as we see a person as the ideal one for us, whereas he is everything but ideal for us, I thought. My assumption that Traich was locked up turned out to be false, the garden gate was open, even the front door was open as I saw from afar and I went right through the garden and in the front door. The woodsman Franz (Kohlroser), whom I knew, greeted me. He had just heard about Wertheimer’s suicide that morning, everybody was horrified, he said. Wertheimer’s sister had announced she would be coming in the next few days, he said, the Duttweiler woman. I should come inside, in the meantime he had opened all the windows to air out the house, he said, unfortunately his co-worker had gone to Linz for three days, he was alone in Traich, a stroke of luck that you came, he said. Whether I wanted a drink of water, he asked, he recalled immediately that I’m a water drinker. No, I said, not now, I’d had tea at the inn in Wankham where I planned to spend the night. As always Wertheimer had gone away for two or three days, of course he had said that he was going to Chur to visit his sister, said Franz. He hadn’t noticed anything striking or odd about Wertheimer when the latter left Traich in the chauffeured car, Franz said, he took to Attnang-Puchheim, the car was certainly still parked in the lot in front of the station. Franz calculated that twelve days had passed since his master had left for Switzerland and that, as he first learned from me, the latter had already been dead for eleven days. Hanged, I said to Franz. He, Franz, feared that now, after the death of Wertheimer, of his provider, everything in Traich might change, especially since this Frau Duttweiler was a strange person, he hadn’t said that he now feared the appearance of Frau Duttweiler, but he did suggest he was frightened that, under the influence of her Swiss husband, she would completely change things in Traich, maybe she’ll sell Traich, Franz said, for what should she do with Traich now that she’s married herself off to Switzerland, and to such a wealthy part of Switzerland. For Traich had been completely her brother’s house, had been added on to and remodeled and equipped completely for his needs and in such a way that it actually was contrary to everybody else’s nature, as I thought, in a truly Wertheimerian way it was only for him. Wertheimer’s sister never felt comfortable in Traich and her brother, as Franz said, had never let her develop in Traich, he’d never granted any of her wishes concerning Traich, he, Wertheimer, always quashed her plans to adapt Traich to her taste, incidentally he always tormented the poor woman, as Franz expressed himself. The Duttweiler woman must almost hate Traich, he claimed, for she hadn’t spent a single happy day in Traich, Franz said. He recalled that once, without asking him whether her brother would mind, she’d opened the curtains in his room, at which point he drove her out of his room, furious. If she wanted to invite guests he wouldn’t allow it, said Franz, she also wasn’t permitted to dress the way she wanted, had always had to wear the clothes that he wanted to see on her, even during the coldest weather she was never allowed to put on her Tyrolian hat, for her brother hated Tyrolian hats and hated, as I also know, everything connected with Tyrolian folk costume, as of course he himself never wore anything that even vaguely recalled Tyrolian folk costume, thus here, in this region, he naturally always stood out, for here everybody always wears Tyrolian folk costume, above all clothes that are made from coarse loden wool, which is actually ideally suited for the quite dreadful climatic conditions in the lower Alps, I thought, he found Tyrolian folk costume, like anything that even reminded him of Tyrolian folk costume, deeply repugnant. When his sister once asked him for permission to go to the so-called Bäckerberg to a May Day dance with a woman from the neighborhood, he wouldn’t allow it, said Franz. And of course they had to do without the priest’s company, for Wertheimer hated Catholicism, which his sister, as I also know, had completely fallen prey to in the last years. One of his habits had been to ask his sister, in the middle of the night, to come to his room to play something by Handel on the old harmonium he had standing in his room, Franz actually said Handel. The sister had had to get up at one or two in the morning and put on her dressing gown and go to his room and sit down at the harmonium in the unheated room and play Handel, Franz said, which naturally resulted, he said, in her getting a cold and constantly suffering from colds in Traich. He, Wertheimer, hadn’t taken good care of his sister, Franz said. He would have her play Handel for an hour on the old harmonium, said Franz, and then the next morning at breakfast, which they took together in the kitchen, he would tell her that her harmonium playing had been unbearable. He would have her play him something in order to fall back to sleep, said Franz, for Herr Wertheimer always suffered from his insomnia, and then would tell her the next morning that she had played like a pig. Wertheimer had always had to force his sister to come to Traich, he, Franz, even believed that Wertheimer had hated his sister but hadn’t been able to get along in Traich without her, and I thought that Wertheimer always spoke of solitude without ever actually being able to be alone, he was no solitude type, I thought, and so on his visits to Traich he always took along his sister, whom he loved by the way, although he hated her like no one else in the world, in order to misuse her in his way. When it got cold, as Franz said, he would have his sister heat his room, whereas she wasn’t allowed to heat her room. She always had to take her walks in the direction prescribed by her brother and also only for the duration prescribed by her brother and had to observe precisely the time he had determined for her walks, as Franz said. Mostly she would sit in her room, as Franz said, but she wasn’t allowed to listen to music, her brother couldn’t stand her listening to a record, which she would have liked to do. He, Franz, still distinctly recalled the two Wertheimers’ childhood when the two would arrive eagerly in Traich, fun-loving children who were ready for anything, as Franz said. The hunting lodge had been the favorite playground of the two Wertheimer children. When the Wertheimer family was in England, during the Nazi period, as Franz said, when a Nazi administrator had lodged in Traich, it had been frightfully quiet in Traich, everything went to seed in that period, nothing was repaired, everything left to itself, for the administrator hadn’t taken care of anything, a decrepit Nazi count had lived in Traich but didn’t understand a thing, as Franz said, the Nazi count almost ruined Traich. After the Wertheimers came back from England, at first to Vienna, only much later to Traich, as Franz said, they had kept to themselves, hadn’t wanted any contact with their neighbors. He, Franz, had come back into their service, they had always paid him well and always credited him for having remained faithful to them even during Nazi rule and during their entire England period, as he put it. The fact that he took better care of Traich in the so-called Nazi period than the Nazis would have liked, as Franz put it, not only got him a warning from the Nazi authorities, it also landed him in jail in Wels for two months, since then he hated Wels, wouldn’t go there anymore, even for the local carnival. Herr Wertheimer hadn’t wanted to let his sister go to church, said Franz, but she went to evening mass in secret. The parents of the young Wertheimers hadn’t gotten much enjoyment out of Traich anymore, said Franz, with whom I was standing in the kitchen, they died in an accident much too early. They were on their way to Merano, said Franz. Herr Wertheimer senior didn’t want to go to Merano, but
she wanted to, he said. They only found the car two weeks after it had fallen over a cliff in Bressanone, he said. The Wertheimers had relatives in Merano, I thought. Wertheimer’s great-grandfather had hired him, Franz, in Traich. Even his father had spent his life working for the Wertheimers. Their employers had always been good to all of them, hadn’t let any debts pile up, and so in return they quite naturally never had any complaints, as Franz put it. He couldn’t imagine what would happen now with Traich. What I thought of Herr Duttweiler, Franz wanted to know, to which I only shook my head. Perhaps, as Franz put it, Wertheimer’s sister will come to Traich to sell Traich. I don’t think so, I said, I absolutely couldn’t imagine that the Duttweiler woman would sell Traich, although I thought it perfectly possible that she was thinking of selling Traich, but I didn’t tell Franz what I was thinking, I said very clearly, no, I don’t think the Duttweiler woman will sell Traich, I really don’t think so. I wanted to calm Franz, who was naturally worried about losing his lifelong employment. It’s of course quite possible that the Duttweiler woman, Wertheimer’s sister, will come to Traich and sell Traich, perhaps as soon as possible, I thought, but I said to Franz I was convinced that Wertheimer’s sister, the sister of my friend, I expressly emphasized, wouldn’t sell Traich, they have so much money, the Duttweilers, I said to Franz, that they don’t need to sell Traich, while I was thinking that precisely because the Duttweilers have so much money they’re perhaps thinking of simply getting rid of Traich as soon as possible, they certainly won’t sell Traich, I said, and was thinking, they may well sell Traich immediately, and I said to Franz, he could be certain that here in Traich nothing would change, while I was thinking that perhaps everything will change in Traich. The Duttweiler woman will come here and take care of everything that has to be taken care of, I said to Franz, will take the estate in hand, I said, and I asked Franz whether Frau Duttweiler was coming to Traich alone or with her husband. He didn’t know, she hadn’t told him that. I drank a glass of water and thought while I was drinking that in Traich I have always drunk the best water of my life. Before Wertheimer went to Switzerland, he invited a crowd of people to Traich for two weeks, it took days for him, Franz, and his co-worker to get everything back in shape, they came from Vienna, said Franz, had never been in Traich before but were quite obviously good friends of his master. I’ve already heard about these people from the innkeeper, I said, that these people traipsed through town, artists, I said, probably musicians, and I wondered whether these people weren’t artists and musicians with whom Wertheimer once went to school, conservatory colleagues as it were from his time at the conservatories in Salzburg and Vienna. In the end we remember all the students we’ve gone to school with and invite them to our homes only to find out that we no longer have the least thing in common with them, I thought. Wertheimer also invited me to his house, I thought at that moment, and with what relentlessness; I thought of his letters and above all the last card he sent to me in Madrid, naturally I now had a guilty conscience, for I realized I was connected with these artist invitations on his part, but he hadn’t mentioned these people, I thought, and I would never have come to Traich to see all these people, I said to myself. What Wertheimer must have gone through that he, who never invited anyone to Traich, suddenly invited dozens of people to Traich, even if they were former conservatory colleagues, whom otherwise he always detested; there was always at least a hint of scorn in his voice when he spoke of his former conservatory colleagues, I thought. What the innkeeper only alluded to and what she of course couldn’t know more about than that they traipsed through town, laughing and finally kicking up a row in their gaudy artist costumes, in their gaudy artist parade, suddenly became clear to me: Wertheimer invited his former conservatory colleagues to Traich and didn’t chase them away immediately but let them run wild against himself for days, even weeks. A fact that had to strike me as totally incomprehensible, since for decades Wertheimer didn’t want to have anything to do with these conservatory colleagues, never wanted to hear anything about them and even in his sleep he wouldn’t have had the idea of inviting them one fine day to Traich, which apparently he now had done, and between this absurd invitation and his suicide there must be a relationship, I thought. Those people ruined a lot of things in Traich, said Franz. Wertheimer had been exuberant with them, which by the way Franz had also noticed, he became a totally different person in their company during those days and weeks. Franz also said that the people had spent more than two weeks in Traich and let Wertheimer provide for them, he actually said provide, just as the innkeeper had said in relation to these people from Vienna. After this whole crowd, which hadn’t kept quiet a single night, got roaring drunk every night, finally went away, Wertheimer got into bed and didn’t get up for two days and nights, said Franz, who in the meantime had cleaned up the dirt from these city people, in general brought the entire house back into a decent human condition, in order to spare Herr Wertheimer the sight of Traich’s devastation when he got up, said Franz. What he, Franz, particularly noticed, that is that Wertheimer had had a piano delivered from Salzburg in order to play it, certainly should have some meaning for me. A day before the people from Vienna arrived he had ordered a piano for himself in Salzburg and had had it brought to Traich and played it, at first only for himself, then, when the whole company was assembled, for this company, Wertheimer played Bach for them, Franz said, Handel and Bach, which he hadn’t done for more than ten years. Wertheimer, said Franz, played Bach on the piano without stopping until finally the company couldn’t take it anymore and left the house. The company was barely back in the house before he would start playing Bach again until they went out. Perhaps he wanted to drive them all crazy with his piano playing, said Franz, for no sooner had they stepped inside than he would start playing Bach and Handel for them, playing until they ran away, outside, and when they came back they had to put up with his piano playing again. It went on this way for over two weeks, said Franz, who soon had to think his master had lost his mind. He thought that the guests wouldn’t put up with it for long, that Wertheimer always played the piano for them without stopping, but even so they had stayed two weeks, more than two weeks, without exception, he, Franz, suspected, since he saw that Wertheimer actually drove his guests crazy with his piano playing, that Wertheimer bribed his guests, gave them money so they would stay in Traich, for without such a bribe, that is without money in return, said Franz, they surely never would have stayed more than two weeks to let themselves be driven crazy by Wertheimer’s piano playing, and I thought that Franz was probably correct in assuming that Wertheimer had given these people money, actually bribed them, even though perhaps not with money but with something else, so that they stayed two weeks, indeed more than two weeks. For he surely wanted them to stay more than two weeks, I thought, otherwise they wouldn’t have stayed more than two weeks, I know Wertheimer too well not to think him capable of that kind of blackmail. Always only Bach and Handel, said Franz, without stopping, until he blacked out. Finally Wertheimer had a king’s meal, as Franz put it, brought up to the large dining room for all these people and told them that they all had to be gone the next morning, he, Franz, had heard with his own ears how Wertheimer said he no longer wanted to see their faces the next morning. He actually had taxis from Attnang-Puchheim ordered for every one of them for the next morning and indeed for four o’clock in the morning and they all drove off in these taxis, leaving the house in a catastrophic state. He, Franz, began cleaning up the mess immediately and without delay, he couldn’t have known, as he said, that his employer would stay in bed for two days and two nights, but that had been a good thing, for Wertheimer had needed the rest and he undoubtedly would have had a stroke, so Franz, if he’d seen what a state those people had left his house in, they shamelessly destroyed some of the furniture, said Franz, overturned chairs and even tables before leaving Traich and shattered a few mirrors and a few glass doors, probably out of arrogance, said Franz, out of anger at having been exploited by Wertheim
er, I thought. A piano actually stood where no piano had stood for a decade, now there’s a piano, as I saw after going up to the second floor with Franz. I was interested in Wertheimer’s notes, I had said to Franz while still downstairs in the kitchen, without hesitating Franz then led me up to the second floor. The piano was an Ehrbar and worth nothing. And it was, as I noticed right away, totally out of tune, an amateur’s instrument through and through, I thought. I wasn’t able to keep myself from sitting down at the piano but then I shut the cover immediately. I was interested in the notes, the slips of paper Wertheimer had written, I said to Franz, whether he could tell me where these notes were. He didn’t know what notes I meant, said Franz, only then reporting the fact that Wertheimer, on the day he had ordered a piano for himself at the Mozarteum, that is one day before that crowd of people came to Traich who more or less devastated Traich, had burned entire stacks of paper in the so-called downstairs stove, that is the stove in the dining room. He, Franz, had helped his master with this task, for the stacks of notes were so large and heavy that Wertheimer hadn’t been able to drag them downstairs alone. He had taken out hundreds and thousands of notes from all his drawers and closets and with his, Franz’s, help had dragged them down to the dining room to burn the notes, solely for the purpose of burning the notes he’d had Franz light the dining room stove at five in the morning that day, said Franz. When the notes were all burned, all that writing, as Franz expressed himself, he, Wertheimer, called up Salzburg and ordered the piano and Franz distinctly recalled that during this telephone call his master kept insisting that they send a completely worthless, a horribly untuned grand piano to Traich. A completely worthless instrument, a horribly untuned instrument, Wertheimer is supposed to have repeated over and over on the phone, said Franz. A few hours later four people delivered the piano to Traich and put it in the former music room, said Franz, and Wertheimer gave the men who had put the piano in the music room a huge tip, if he wasn’t mistaken, and he wasn’t mistaken, he said, two thousand schillings. The deliverymen weren’t out the door, said Franz, before Wertheimer sat down at the piano and began playing. It was awful, said Franz. He, Franz, had thought his master had lost his mind. But he, Franz, hadn’t wanted to believe in Wertheimer’s insanity and hadn’t taken the nonetheless curious behavior of Wertheimer, his master, seriously. If I had any interest in the matter, Franz said to me, he would describe to me the days and weeks that then took place in Traich. I asked Franz to leave me alone in Wertheimer’s room for a while and put on Glenn’s Goldberg Variations, which I had seen lying on Wertheimer’s record player, which was still open.