Correction: A Novel (12 page)

healing
effect on his depression caused by that shock. I must say that he gave me the impression of a broken man, as he sat at the table with me, staring down at it. It is my duty, I thought, to speak to him now, to say something, anything, to take his mind off Roithamer’s suicide and everything involved with that suicide. But what I suddenly came up with was how we, Hoeller, Roithamer and I, used to go to school together, first Roithamer,. coming down from Altensam, picked up Hoeller, then me, and the three of us walked together to our grade school in Stocket, in winter with a piece of firewood tied to our leather satchels, every pupil had to bring a piece of firewood to school every day, the children of affluent or rich parents, like Roithamer of Altensam, a piece of hardwood, the poorer and poorest a piece of pine or softwood each, with these pieces of wood brought to school by every pupil the old tile stoves kept the school warm, I said. I looked down at the table, then up at the door opposite me, alternately at the two death notices and then again at Hoeller, and I was determined to continue with what I was saying even though I instantly felt and therefore knew that I should have stopped this recital, that I must not go on with it, but I couldn’t stop, it all seemed too significant for me to stop now that I had begun to speak at last, besides I was suddenly aware of the impact on Hoeller of what I was saying, he looked as if he already knew where my reminiscence, this story of our childhood, was going to take us, it was too late for me to stop, and so I said, quite calmly outwardly but inwardly in the greatest excitement, that
the most conspicuous thing about the three of us
walking to school together was our taciturnity
, and again I spoke of the firewood we always brought to school in winter, so that the school could be heated with our firewood, the memory of this firewood brought to school by the pupils seemed to me most significant for what I had to say, and I asked several times whether he, Hoeller, also remembered how each of us had always had to bring a piece of firewood to school in the wintertime, and how we always used to make a fire in the old tile stoves of the old grade school with our wood, the rich kids, I reiterated, had to bring hardwood, the poorer ones and the poorest could bring softwood, and did he remember that I and he both had always brought softwood, because it was all we were supposed to bring, while Roithamer, as I recall, had to bring not one but actually two pieces of hardwood. Where this order came from, I couldn’t remember, probably from the principal’s office, but it could have come from the city administration of schools, in any case it was based upon absolutely correct information. You and me one piece of pine or softwood each, I said, Roithamer two pieces of hardwood. And I continued my description of our way to school, going to school together had of course been the basis for our friendship, I said, which had become a friendship for life, even though we had often lived for a long time very far apart, our friendship had never been affected by that, regardless of all the ups and downs of history we had already lived through, for example all through the war; on the contrary, the friendship that bound the three of us had deepened from year to year and was, I actually said this too, because I suddenly felt that I must get it all said after that long and finally tormenting silence, I had to get everything said all at once, it was the most beautiful of friendships. And I let myself go so far as to state that such friendships as ours had been, for the three of us, endured beyond death itself. The minute I made this statement I felt embarrassed by it, and Hoeller noticed how painfully embarrassed I
was
to have come out with such a statement even though it was probably quite a natural thought in itself, and so, to put this embarrassment behind me as quickly as possible, I tried to say a great deal quickly, moving purposefully toward my point, suddenly I’d found a way to make up for that overlong silence between us earlier on. It was as though that unbroken silence at table, in the presence of Hoeller s wife and Hoeller’s children, had been necessary for what I could now say with all the more vehemence and yet vividly as well. Suddenly I no longer had to hold back anything. I said, putting off a little what I’d primarily meant to say, that my finest memory, and probably Hoeller’s as well, and Roithamer’s too, was my memory of our walks to school together, it was on our way to school that we had our most intense experiences, I said, when we think of everything on that way to school over the rocks and through the woods, along the Aurach, past the mine workers’ cottages and on past Stocket, that is, right through the village, where we noticed all sorts of things,
things that would determine our lives
, rich in meanings, already determining the whole shape of our future and in fact already controlling it, since actually everything we are today, everything we see and observe and _ encounter on its way toward us, is influenced by what we saw and observed on our way to school then, if it isn’t altogether made up of it, as I actually asserted to Hoeller, after all our way to school was not simply a way to school, I said, since, to begin with, we were scared on our way to school, it was an extremely dangerous way to school, dangerous because it led only over rocks and through dense woods, along the Aurach which was dangerous all along the way, and most of the time on our way to school we were frightened, too, I identified
our way to school as my way through life
, because our way to school was from beginning to end comparable, with all its peculiarities, occurrences, possibilities and impossibilities, to the course of my own life and probably also the course of Hoeller’s life, since the course of our life was after all also always a dangerous course, on which we are bound to be frightened always, with all its occurrences, peculiarities, possibilities and impossibilities to be faced by us day after day as we go over rocks and through woods, I said, my childhood is always connected for me with this walk to school and nothing in my childhood exists apart from it, there we had all our experiences, the kind we’d have later on again and again, everything that happened later had in some way already happened on this walk of ours to school, this fear that we often feel today we already felt on our walk to school, these thoughts, closely attached to that fear, they keep coming today, though differently, yet always referring back to the thoughts we had on our walk to school, our way to school, just like our way through life, has always been a
Via Dolorosa
to us, a way of suffering, yet it was always also a
way to every possible discovery and to utmost happiness
, indescribable happiness, I said, did he, Hoeller, also remember our way to school so well, did he remember many thousands and hundreds of thousands of details, sensations, perceptions, feelings, intimations of feelings, those earliest important beginnings of thought on our way to school, for it was then we began to think as we still think today, the kind of precise thinking which has since then become the mechanism of our adult intelligence, I could remember those thousands, hundreds of thousands of weather conditions on our walk to school, abrupt shifts in the weather, I felt them suddenly take place, transforming our way to school from one minute to the next and thereby transforming us inside from one minute to the next, and the incessant changing of colors in the woods and in the Aurach as it tumbled headlong from the woods down to the plain, everything on our way to school had always been changes of color and of temperatures and of our moods, that muggy atmosphere in the summertime that sickened us on our way to school so that we came to be horribly sick later in school; or the cold in winter that we could cope with only by attacking it all along the way to school, we had to counterattack the cold,
stomping
all bundled up and scared through the deep, the deepest snow,
running
through the Aurach gorge where the snow was not quite so high, from one clump of ice to the next, and in school we felt as though we had lost our minds through the effort of making our way to school so that we no longer had the strength to keep up with the lessons. Did he, Hoeller, remember the young teacher who always appeared in a black dress buttoned high to the neck, whom we liked to listen to and whom we loved because she behaved considerately toward us, she was always considerate of us and therefore of our conditions and circumstances, when as a rule people and especially teachers are never considerate, I never again had a teacher who was in the least considerate of me, I said, but this teacher was considerate in every way, took everything about us into consideration, all my life long I never forgot this considerateness in the midst of so much ruthlessness, at the mercy of which life or anyway existence, all human existence, finds itself. Our way to school took its course just as our subsequent life did, I said, with all its passages through darkness, back to light, with all its habits and unexpected coincidences, our way through life like our way to school kept being subjected to abrupt changes of weather, kept following the course of a torrential river always to be feared, for as we always lived in fear on our way to school, fear of falling into the raging Aurach among others, so on our way through life we always lived in extreme fear of falling into this river where we lived, always terrified of this river which is invisible but always torrential and always deadly. However, I said to Hoeller, while we were always suitably dressed for our way to school, we weren’t always suitably dressed for our way through life, and I said that, of the three of us, Roithamer had the longest way to go, that he, Hoeller, had the second longest way to go, and I had the shortest way to school, Roithamer had had to clamber down those rock-faces from Altensam all alone on his way to Hoeller, the two of you, I said, Roithamer and you then came to me in Stocket and from Stocket all three of us then went on together to school. So by the time Roithamer met you, I said to Hoeller, he’d already experienced quite a lot, and the two of you had been through quite a lot together by the time you picked me up, all things considered, Roithamer always had the longest way to school, seven kilometers, Hoeller had five kilometers to go, I had three, of course the Altensamers up there could have put some sort of vehicle at Roithamer’s disposal to take him to school, but it was never customary for the Altensamers to put a vehicle at the disposal of their school-age children, and I said that the three other Roithamer children were at boarding school, our Roithamer had not been sent to boarding school, by their deliberate choice Roithamer was the only one not to be sent to boarding school, the others had spent their entire childhood and adolescence in the cities, in the city boarding schools, while Roithamer attended the village school in Stocket, at his own request, as I know
and
in accordance with his father’s wish. This fact was crucial for Roithamer’s life, I said. Then, later on, I said to Hoeller, the others returned from the cities and stayed in Altensam, where they are still today, while Roithamer left home just when they returned, and this departure at the right moment was decisive for Roithamer’s whole development, he even attended preparatory school in this area, in Gmunden, the county seat, but never went to a boarding school, nor was he forcibly sent to a boarding school, Roithamer’s wishes with regard to his so-called schooling were all granted by his parents, and especially by his father, he was not required to enter a boarding school, in contrast to his siblings, all of whom, including his sister, were eager from the first to go to boarding school, they had left Altensam prematurely, I said to Hoeller, only to return, to return, that is, as complete failures, while Roithamer, our friend, left Altensam only at the right moment, the moment of their return, that is, and then went directly to England, which had always fascinated him, and where he gradually, but with the greatest assurance, became the man we knew, I am not classifying Roithamer at this point, because no classification would hold one hundred percent for him in any case, but my remark about Roithamer’s personality certainly showed that I hold him in the highest esteem, as Hoeller’s reaction proved. In England Roithamer became the man we admired, I said, the man whom, as his friends, we still admire today, as a scientist, I said, and as a personality, I had managed at the last possible moment to switch from the word “man” which I already had in mind to the less embarrassing word

“personality.” It was amazing, every time, how many people go to England early in life, and very often at exactly the right moment, for a chance to develop, and almost all of those who went to England made something of themselves, they became distinguished personalities, at this point I used the expression
distinguished personalities
deliberately, to convince Hoeller, just as Roithamer himself in England became a really distinguished personality,
a
so-called distinguished personality
, because every personality is distinguished, I said, but what the world means by a distinguished personality is something else, which is why I now speak of a so-called distinguished personality. Because he went to England at the right moment, in the right, the ideal circumstances, I said. Had the idea of building the Cone not surfaced, he would still be in England today, but his life had to turn out as it has, in fact, turned out, the idea of the Cone brought his life to a new high-point, the highest possible in fact, I now said, the six years he spent on the Cone were undoubtedly the high-point of Roithamer’s life, certainly the perfecting of the Cone was. At the moment he had finished, perfected, the Cone, he had to put a period to his own life, with the Cone perfected, Roithamer’s existence had come to .1 close, that’s what he felt and that’s why he put an end to his life, with the perfecting of the Cone two lives had lost their justification, they had to cease, I said to Hoeller and looked again at the two death notices on the opposite wall to the ‘left and right of the door, the life of Roithamer himself and that of his sister, which he had uncompromisingly bound up with his own life. The time had possibly come now, I thought, to say what I had actually wanted to say before, but had put off saying because it had, seemed premature, reverting to our walks to school I tried to test Hoeller’s memory, I imagined that Hoeller’s memory was as good and as clear as my own, but after all Hoeller is an entirely different kind of man and no two people are the same in any respect, on that assumption I began to remind him of details along our common path to school, beginning with certain characteristic, striking rock formations jutting out into the road, then the less striking, less characteristic ones, then I recalled the odors at certain points along the way, plant odors, earth odors, our path was characterized by constant changes in earth odors and rock odors and plant odors, certain birds’ nests, bird swarms, bird species, I kept testing Hoeller’s memory in general using objects such as, for example, had been tossed into the Aurach and left lying there by all sorts of passersby, old bicycle parts, cans, boxes, mill wheels, all of which I remembered vividly, I questioned him about remarks I had made frequently and others I’d made less frequently on the way to school, about all sorts of things, about remarks made by Roithamer, too, about encounters along the way, for example in the Aurach gorge where formerly, during our grade school days, the gypsies often made camp, we were afraid of them because we had been told that gypsies kidnapped children, the more the better, about reflections in the air, on the grass, and most of all on the riverbank, about peculiarities in the bark of the trees, about certain oddities in the behavior of the animals particularly along this stretch of our way to school along the Aurach, did he remember how I, together with him and Roithamer, had once discovered twelve frozen deer among the trees and pulled them together in a heap, how we suddenly, yielding to an impulse when halfway between my home and our school, decided to cut school and went instead to the abandoned mill standing where today there is nothing but an overgrown hole in the ground, like a bomb-crater, and anyway, did he remember certain things along the way that had to do with the war and how we lived in fear all that time, and I found that Hoeller remembered everything or almost everything that I still remembered.