Correction: A Novel (24 page)

During this period when he let go, when he gave up, and took to devoting himself wholly to nothing but his inclinations, the period after his fortieth year, the effective influence of his second wife, our mother, had naturally been enabled to spread very rapidly, because he was no longer emitting any energies of his own to counteract it, but, as noted, it was all the same to him, “all the same” underlined, he’d made a mistake and he’d also let go, given (himself) up, and from that point on I never saw my father do anything in particular except go out hunting, alone or with friends, often with my brothers, too, but never with me, hunting never even entered into my thoughts, I never understood it at all, while all my father cared about was the forest as forest, not as an economic reality, but just for the game in it, nothing else, till the day he died, and this indifference of his to everything other than his one single interest, hunting, wholly encompassed us, his children. Once he’d realized the aversion he felt for the Eferding woman, his dislike of her that grew from day to day, as he always said, he ended by resigning himself to the presence of this woman in his life as someone unacceptable, whom he couldn’t any longer accept, nor could he get her out of the way, but he could have no relationship with her not conditioned by aversion and hatred. He, our father, was the opposite of that woman in every respect and it had become ever more obvious that theirs was the case of a purely accidental encounter, probably during one of his visits to a friend in Eferding, actually it was only despair over the failure of everything he had hoped for from his first wife, which made him actually, and without a grain of sense, as he put it, take the bait of that Eferding woman, who was an absolute nothing, she was simply old and sloppy, which she simply continued to be at Altensam, only to a greater degree. But to judge the whole case in this biased fashion, putting all the blame on the Eferding woman, is also impossible, “impossible” underlined. The fact is that our father had quite often stopped at the public house in Eferding where our mother came from, to which the butcher shop was attached which is still being run by our mother’s brother today, and one day he stopped there again, and this led to the decline of Altensam, or rather the decline of what was left of Altensam that could still decline, because at that time Altensam was actually already in _ the process of deteriorating, because my father had already given up on everything inwardly, all he still wanted was to make good his decision, once he had taken it, to beget children, regardless with which woman, though deep down he no longer really cared. And from the moment in which he let go of things and finally gave up, Altensam, what was left of it, had been let go and had been basically given up. The appearance of our mother at Altensam was then no more than the outwardly visible sign of his letting-go and giving-up, by the time we children were born this process of letting-go and giving-up had been going on for a long time, and we were already weakened in advance by this very fact alone. Enveloped in this process of letting-go and giving-up, we had naturally been sensitive to this process from the very start of our existence and had then fallen increasingly under its influence, we could never escape from it, we were swept along downward in our father’s tendency to let go and give up. By the time we were born, our father had already turned away from Altensam, turned his back on it, all we ever experienced was this condition, more prevalent from one day to the next, this process of decay hastened on the one hand by my father, who had already turned away from Altensam, and for all sorts of easily understandable reasons such as her different background, lower-middle-class milieu, lower-middle-class mentality in general and throughout, Eferding etcetera, it was also hastened along by my mother in truly despicable fashion. A son in distress, no matter which son, will naturally go to his father for advice, but I never went to my father, no matter how troubled I was, and I never asked my father serious questions, because I knew that none of my questions would receive an answer from him, because he had turned away from us even before we were born, and I also never went to my mother, because I feared my mother. I had no way of reaching my father, although I longed all my life to reach him, because my father was not interested in me, no more than in my siblings, and mother I feared, we feared her, but I feared her more than my siblings did because I was more hated by my mother than my siblings, on the other hand I did have a somewhat better relationship with my father than my siblings did, who leaned toward my mother rather than my father as their parent. Only my sister was loved by my father like no one else, that was evident always and on every occasion, after his death she was the most defenseless creature in the world. She, my sister, was, like myself but perhaps even more demonstrably, her father’s child, akin to him, even more than myself who was akin to father, not to my mother, there was absolutely nothing in me, about me, coming from my mother’s, the Eferding woman’s, side, everything or almost everything came from my father and all this was true in an even higher degree of my sister, while both my brothers take after the Eferding woman in every respect, even though it expresses itself quite differently than with the Eferding woman, my mother, herself. This is also the reason I could never have a closer relationship with my brothers, because I always saw Eferding in them, everything connected with Eferding and the Eferding woman and her origins, while conversely my brothers always saw in me and in my (and their) sister everything connected with my, with our father, they saw more of it in my sister, but they hated me, my sister they always regarded as
peculiar,
they suspected her of being basically crazy, though it was nothing but my father’s nature in her, it was Altensam, but because they couldn’t openly hate her, a girl, as they hated me, it was Altensam they hated, unconsciously, as my mother did, she always hated everything unconsciously, anyway everything in her and about her took effect unconsciously, though also in the most calculating way, for people like my mother simply aren’t rational beings, they are instinctual beings, and her feelings tend to be, actually, nothing but falsifications, in no matter what direction they move, they’re unconscious falsifications of nature into something unconsciously
denatured
like themselves. In reality, however, it was a case of my mother at first always trying to win me over, she had soon realized that I, that everything in me, was against her, which is why she left no stone unturned to draw me closer to herself, in every way and by every means, but when she saw, when she understood, that all she did to gain her ends, to bring me over to her side, which in the nature of things simply wasn’t possible, was in vain, a senseless struggle, then she gave her contempt and hatred free rein. I’d not been able to go against my nature and enter into hers, lose myself in hers, as she had probably envisioned. It’s always clear from the first, what a newborn child is made of and where it is tending, it is always a tendency backward, a tendency of return, in my case I was simply cut out of my father’s cloth and it had to be madness to refuse to see this and want to change it. Quite as in my sister’s case, but my mother naturally did not let her feel it in the same harsh manner, not in the case of someone so delicate even from childhood on. Though the child always remained a stranger to her, my mother never treated her roughly, she simply didn’t dare, or she’d have come into quite unimaginable conflict with my father. And so my parents had brought children into the world, quite consciously, I know what their motives were, motives of securing the succession on my father’s side, and motives of securing a lasting establishment and what this meant for her, our mother, namely to get Altensam into her possession, just the same they’d quite consciously committed a crime, that capital crime against nature, to beget and to procreate children out of sheer calculation, “calculation” underlined, children some of whom sided with the father and some of whom sided with the mother, my brothers siding with mother, what I called taking the part of Eferding, so Roithamer, I and my sister with father, what I called taking the part of Altensam, so Roithamer. In this way my parents had seen to it from the start that Altensam had to fall apart into two deadly halves. My father always understood all of this, and the reason why I later let him too go out of my sight and out of my mind and even for a long time let him disappear from my memory was the fact that he, and I suddenly see this again before me as a very definite image, that from the moment we had come into being he basically only turned his back on us and left us behind, that’s how I actually see my father, in his gray loden suit, walking into the woods to hunt or quite simply to escape, always walking away from us, and always walking away from us to make his escape, basically depressed by nothing but a bad conscience over having closed his books and given up his life. For how many years I had tried to win my father over, but he always pushed me away, no answers, nothing but walking away from me, not noticing me. Such years and even decades of rejection and refusal will end in our dropping such a man out of our thoughts from one moment to the next, no matter what we may have felt for him only a minute before, we cease to think of him and it is as if he had never existed, he may turn up in our thoughts now and then, but we immediately turn our minds to something else. Until his fortieth year my father must have been a fairly happy man, from his fortieth year onward, however, he was the opposite, so Roithamer. Attempt at a description of Altensam and everything connected with Altensam, with special attention to the Cone: to be able to concentrate entirely in the evenings, on Tuesdays and Fridays, even beginning with my so-called free afternoons, on my manuscript about Altensam, my room suddenly the ideal place for this work, after having seemed for years to be unsuitable, entirely unsuitable for this purpose, with its view of the stone wall, lately always wet, of the physics institute, a view favorable to my undertaking in any case, a state such as the one that always prevails in Hoeller’s garret, which was always ideal for my purposes, Hoeller’s garret was the only place where it was possible for me to construct the Cone, just as it is now possible for me here, in my room at Cambridge, this room without an actual view, giving only on the damp, wet wall of the institute, to think about my work on the Cone now that the Cone has been finished, now that I’m back here and before I’ve become totally absorbed again in my scientific work, before it claims all of my attention, my chance after my return to devote some time to this work, a writing job,

“writing job” underlined, in retreat, “retreat” underlined, to clarify everything that has happened these last six years, since I did need six years to construct and to build the Cone, for one thing the time factor, a short time relative to myself, my origins, relative to Altensam, but basically much too long a time which very often and repeatedly drove me to the edge of madness. The idea and the realization of the idea, the achievement of the realization of the idea of the Cone as the tackling and the realization and the achievement of an aim that has totally dominated me these last years, the problem of making my intention, which has always been described as only a crazy and totally hopeless scheme, clearly understandable not only to myself but to everyone else who was involved with the realization and completion of the Cone. Taking under consideration the fact that I was on the one hand committed to England, to Cambridge, while on the other hand my energies were after all totally committed to my intention to build the Cone in the Kobernausser forest, I was duty-bound to this scene of the site of the Cone, the problem of being always here, in Cambridge, or in the Kobernausser forest, at the right moment, of not neglecting the one for the other, the lowest limit of my responsibility. Actually I should have spent years in Cambridge so as not to neglect Cambridge, while at the same time staying in the Kobernausser forest, meaning in Hoeller’s garret, specifically, so as not to neglect the building of the Cone, now that the Cone is finished and now that I haven’t lost Cambridge, I can see that it was possible for me to muster the necessary energy to build the Cone without neglecting Cambridge, that is, neither my teaching nor my own research, because it was possible for me to do the one under the stimulus of the other, not to neglect Cambridge by means of energies generated by my work on the Cone, not to neglect the Cone by means of energies generated at Cambridge, and to do both always in the highest state of concentration upon each objective as required. The assurance I acquired in the course of changing my scene of operations, staying now in Cambridge for a time, then again in Hoeller’s garret, in England on the one hand, in Austria on the other, always shifting from one to the other at the proper moment, without being aware of this fact, always doing the right thing as a gift, a form of talent, without consciousness, the change of locale, leaving Cambridge for the Kobernausser forest and vice versa, but also moving from one to the other in thought without any transition, for how often I was in Cambridge (in my thoughts) while being in reality in the Kobernausser forest, and how often, conversely, in the Kobernausser forest (in my thoughts) though in reality I was in Cambridge.

That I told myself from time to time, even though I was in Cambridge just now, I’m in the Kobernausser forest now of necessity, conversely, of necessity now in Cambridge, although in reality I’d been in the Kobernausser forest. I could always switch my head from one place to the other, instantly, even as a child I could switch instantly from one thing to another. And the very fact that I could be most effective especially in Cambridge for the Kobernausser forest, most effective in the Kobernausser forest for Cambridge, the fact that my intensity is greater for the one when I’m in the other place, and vice versa, and I could exercise this ability because I had complete control of this mechanism from earliest childhood on, so Roithamer.

To build the Cone without teaching and studying in Cambridge, studying as I teach, studying by teaching, and conversely, to have intensified my achievement in Cambridge as I did without the actual building of the Cone is unimaginable. We very often make headway rapidly and with the greatest assurance in some (most strenuous) work or occupation or passion andsoforth, so Roithamer, because we’ve started or become involved or planned another, similar work or occupation or passion and never abandoned it, so Roithamer. The one work or occupation or passion which very often takes us to the very edge of despair, often solely because we are in fact involved in another such strenuous effort simultaneously. I alone could have conceived such an idea, the idea of building such a cone, planning it and actually building it, everybody said so and they’re right. The need to understand what led to this idea, most likely everything led to this idea.