Correction: A Novel (27 page)

underlined. When the Eferding woman said that she understood she was putting on an act and this act was instantly recognizable as such, she was all emotion, and since I never wanted to have anything to do with people who exist and act only on an emotional basis, the so-called world of the emotions had always been suspect and always hateful to me, people like the Eferding woman, my mother, constantly pretended to understand but they only have a certain feeling without intelligence, which is repulsive to the other kind, my kind, of person, and even this unintelligent feeling of theirs is a fake, not a reality, this type of female has only a dim perception of emotion, and not even a dim perception of intelligence, so that actually they have neither intelligence nor feeling, and the act they put on of having feeling and intelligence is nothing more than sexual hypocrisy, “sexual hypocrisy” underlined.

Although she tried, in the beginning, to draw me into her emotional world, to push me out of my own world which was in opposition to this emotional world of hers, kept trying to urge me out of my own world into hers, she no longer tried to do that later on, because I gave her no opportunity to try it, but her effort in that direction had lasted a long time, her effort to drive me out of my own world into hers, while my effort to acquaint her with my interests, I don’t say familiarize her, that would have been a totally hopeless undertaking, her tricks with which she worked at alienating me from myself and eventually also from my father were so complicated, so cunning, she kept on trying it with every possible and impossible kind of finesse, she thought she could deceive me with her simple, yet common, blunt, Eferding household intelligence which in any case always lapsed into rudeness, and had nothing to do with real intelligence, she thought she could manipulate me to suit her purposes, suggesting that it would be better, smarter for me to obey her, not my father, I’d see that soon enough andsoforth, but she always had to recognize that her efforts had been in vain, so Roithamer. Her vulgarity, in no way differentiated from the vulgarity of all her gender, became in her later years an open disgust with everything connected with me, so Roithamer. It was never in all her life possible for her to change, she simply lacked the will and the instinct and the taste required, and for me to meet her halfway, “her” underlined, would have meant the sacrifice of everything I am, so Roithamer. While in England I’d always expected to recover in Altensam, so during my first hours in Altensam, situated as it is in such peculiar and basically unfavorable climatic conditions, requiring all by themselves the supreme effort of willpower just to survive, in those first hours and days, which should have served for my recovery and relaxation after the long strain in England, I’d usually offered her virtually no resistance, I always started by sucking in Altensam just as it was, exposing myself to it willingly, but my resistance soon became most adamant, because she’d actually been irritating me without respite, after only two or three days I had to admit to myself that I could not recover and relax in Altensam, that I had merely fallen victim once again to the delusion that I could recover and relax in Altensam even though I had fallen victim to this delusion hundreds and thousands of times before, a delusion in which I lived in England, at Cambridge, that I could safely strain myself there to the utmost in my mental labors, because I’d be able to recover and relax in Altensam from these mental labors, so I kept going back to Altensam, probably only from sheer habit by this time, no longer with the least expectation of being understood, only from habit, not in the certainty that Altensam would fulfill my wish and my need, namely, to recover and relax, quite the contrary, my visits in Altensam, those terrible visits-from-habit, were clearly from the first destined not to bring me recovery and relaxation in Altensam, they could only upset me and make me sick and drive me crazy owing to those conditions basically the fault of my mother, the Eferding woman, so that as soon as I got there I was immediately entangled in all these quarrels and socalled power struggles in Altensam, things I basically wanted to have nothing to do with, actually it was always the Eferding woman, my mother, who’d been the cause of that sense of impending complications, as soon as I’d arrived, which immediately turned into intimations of catastrophe, but very often, though in fact this too emanated from her, I myself was, as for instance in the case of the color job on the farm building, the one who instigated or sparked off such quarrels and catastrophic moods, which always and in every case turned out to be pointless. Although for the first few moments, I must say, we were most considerate toward one another, after the first few moments we were again totally ruthless against each other, it was only a matter of time as to when we would separate, how soon I’d leave Altensam where I’d only just arrived, our mutual consideration had always lasted only through the first few minutes, then our real feelings, nothing but real dislike, even hatred, ran free again. Yet our efforts at restraint during those first few moments were interesting even so, because both of us had made them again and again, and so often, despite our awareness that they were doomed to failure in no time at all, even before I’d had a chance to hang up my coat, to take my bag to my room, even before I’d had a look around Altensam, I hadn’t even got beyond the outer hall, because it was clear to both of us that we stay the same and have stayed the same between times, that we haven’t changed, that she, the Eferding woman, hasn’t changed in Altensam nor I in England, and the mere idea or any conceivable attempt based on such an idea that we must try to change for each other’s sake was nothing but madness, presumption, megalomania, where change was so impossible there was nothing for us to change, because we simply had no way to do it, neither of us was born with the capacity to change ourselves, on the contrary, when we’d tried to change, despite our full awareness that we couldn’t change, and when we’d failed again, as we both felt in our bones we would after the first few minutes, after the first words of greeting had been exchanged, though even those had already been uttered in that tone which indicated that we were losing again, because we’d already lost at the moment we’d come face to face, our effort to change had simply made matters worse. At first we’d always look at each other as if we’d changed, because we thought the interim might have changed us, but the interim all by itself had never changed us, I remained myself, she remained herself, we made believe that the interim had transformed us into people other than those we were before the interim, I’d persuaded myself that I’d turned from an unbearable (to her) man into a bearable (to her) man, just as she’d persuaded herself that in the interim she’d become bearable (to me), though she’d always previously been unbearable (to me), we’d also imagined that we’d made certain efforts to improve, though we could no longer think what efforts, we’d only, as we remembered it, considered making efforts in our minds, but in reality we’d made no efforts at all, we’d never translated our thoughts about efforts into any real efforts, we never could, because if we could have we’d at least have made an acceptable person out of ourselves (for the other one) in the interim, which was, after all, a most eventful interim for the most part, an interim certainly full of the most enormous changes in Altensam (owing to her) as in England (owing to me), but these changes had occurred only outside of ourselves, not within us, we had remained as and what we were prior to each interim, our characters, as we could clearly determine at our very first contact, had not only not changed, they had, on the contrary, only hardened, which made our pretense of mutual understanding only all the more ridiculous. She didn’t stand a chance of winning me over, any more than I stood a chance of winning her over, because she was always predisposed against all I
was,
and owing to this predisposition her character had kept pathologically hardening in the mold of her own tendencies, whether we wished it or not, it no longer mattered, we were going to be for the rest of our lives against each other, she against me and I against her, I’d be focused entirely on myself, she entirely on herself, concerned with our own interests and totally monopolized by these interests, we’d just play a polite charade with each other for hours, for days, for weeks, until all our differences, all the barriers between us, had come again quite visibly into the open between us, until Altensam, whatever it had become through the Eferding woman, however this mechanism of destruction came into motion again because of our mutual dislike, repudiation, this mutual hatred of ours, moving always not only to disturb us but to destroy us, so Roithamer, where everything repelled me as far as she was concerned and repelled her as far as I was concerned. Nevertheless both of us were always incapable of simply giving up seeing each other ever again, she’d write, inviting me home, to England, and I came from England to Altensam, as if something had changed, each time we’d said good-bye we did it in the expectation of never seeing each other again, of parting forever, because there was simply absolutely nothing uniting us, we had not a scintilla in common, except for disgust and dislike, nothing, yet we were not only unable to stick to our decision never to see one another again, but the intervals between trips from England to Austria, to Altensam, had actually become increasingly shorter in the last few years. And the ordeals to which we subjected each other, once I was back in Altensam, kept getting worse, in fact they were getting to be terrible ordeals because we had reached a high degree of natural ease in the art of tormenting ourselves, our mutual hatred went even deeper than that, and everything indicated the possibility of an even greater deepening of that hatred, our methods became more sophisticated with every one of my visits to Altensam. Still, it’s unimaginable, so Roithamer, with what a degree of mindlessness persons like the Eferding woman seem to be capable of existing, with what emotional callousness, considering that emotion and nothing else is all she has, her entire being set against everything, and takes the most antagonistic action every time. At first it was still possible for me to think that a certain shyness with regard to the life of the mind, to what is regarded as, after all, male intellectuality, had turned, in her, to outright disgust with everything intellectual, so Roithamer, but as time went on, and time had indeed accelerated the process once she indubitably had the upper hand in Altensam, her hatred had grown to the point that she had to hate not only paper covered with my script but every piece of paper, every kind of paper, she regarded paper as a foundation for mental activity, instantly aroused her hatred, it was as though her hatred of paper alone was enough to reduce her to total exhaustion every day, I often thought, pencils, pens, aroused an unimaginable hatred in her, not even to mention books, pamphlets, periodicals, she even hated newspapers, because newspapers were also printed papers which made them supremely dangerous and they were above all, as she thought, aimed at her, she’d hated papers all her life and had turned this hatred of papers, of all the papers in the world, into an actually boundless hatred of everything around her which was connected with these papers, and she’d been driven by this hatred all her life as by a mortal disease, or rather by her own, “her” underlined, mortal disease, on the other hand, as regards myself, I always had the feeling that I was lying in ambush for her, that I was setting her a trap, that I’d often given her cause to remember her hatred as a mortal disease and to show this hatred openly, that I set her so-called paper traps to catch her out in her hatred of paper, so that I could watch her open outburst of hatred, paper hatred, with malicious satisfaction, because there can be no doubt, so Roithamer, that I did take a malicious satisfaction in her hatred and all her extreme carryings-on, because her hatred was so extreme, her ways in general were so extreme, actually I’d let less than a couple of minutes pass before I started to criticize her, or at least looked her over critically, in other words, the moment I turned up in Altensam, and I always turned up abruptly, I’d already set her a trap, and when she fell into my trap, I criticized her for falling into my trap, I always lay in ambush to catch her in one or another of her repulsively feminine ways and then took her to task, not even two minutes went by after I’d arrived at Altensam before I’d picked on some trifle to criticize her for, because basically I disliked everything about her, or rather, because everything about her was nothing but repugnant to me, no matter what she basically did or didn’t do, whatever it was, I found it repugnant, no matter what she wore, for instance, I found it repugnant, whatever she said, whatever she thought, it was never anything but repugnant, that’s the truth, so Roithamer, to keep such facts to myself wouldn’t make sense, so I won’t keep these facts to myself, because these are facts that certainly characterize the Eferding woman and me, “certainly the Eferding woman and me” underlined. So I naturally always wondered how it could be possible for two people, who were in addition mother and son, not mother’s son but father’s son, leaving this out of account, however, how is it possible that these two people, who keep on tormenting each other constantly, with a truly unexampled ruthlessness, who feel compelled to torment each other to the very edge of madness, who do it every time and always do it again, and who keep hating each other more deeply and more ruthlessly, nevertheless go on seeing each other again and again? But the chances are that it was precisely these possibilities of mutual tormentings, this mutual hatred, this mutual readiness to be tormented, that kept drawing me again and again from England to Altensam, so Roithamer. Probably, so Roithamer, because I needed everything my mother, the Eferding woman, had in these last years turned into a horrible Altensam. And I did after all leave Altensam again at once each time, and took refuge, as I had every chance to do, in Hoeller’s garret, which began by being a books-refuge, a socalled books-and-papers refuge, for I had squirreled away in Hoeller’s garret every conceivable book and paper I could lay hands on and that could be of use to me, as well as all the books and papers I could do without, and I’d torn the pages I most valued out of these essential books and papers and tacked them on the walls of Hoeller’s garret, pages of Pascal, for instance, again and again, much of Montaigne, very many pages of Pushkin and Schopenhauer, of Novalis and Dostoyevsky, I’d tacked almost all the pages of Valéry’s
M.
Teste
on the walls before I’d covered the walls of Hoeller’s garret with my plans and sketches for building the Cone; to gain perspective I’ve always pasted or tacked all the papers important to me on my walls, even as a child I’d covered the walls of my room in Altensam with other people’s most important (to me) ideas, pasted or tacked on, so I’d first covered the walls of Hoeller’s garret with the most important sayings of Pascal and Novalis and Montaigne, before I’d tacked them up and pasted them up with my sketches and anyway all kinds of ideas for building the Cone, and so I always could immediately clear out of Altensam and move into Hoeller’s garret and find refuge in Hoeller’s garret in those thoughts on the walls of Hoeller’s garret, the fact that it is possible for me to go to Hoeller’s garret where I always found everything I needed for my thoughts and reflections, all those thoughts of other men and through them, also all my own thoughts, every time, made it possible for me to leave Altensam without going to pieces, so Roithamer, the minute I’d arrived in Altensam I thought of nothing else but getting away from Altensam, because being with the Eferding woman was unbearable to me from the first moment, and so I went to Hoeller’s garret, quite often taking the detour over Stocket into Hoeller’s garret, so Roithamer. Little by little I had stowed away all the books and papers I’d had in Altensam up in Hoeller’s garret, where they’d really be safe, for they were no longer safe in Altensam, all these exceptionally useful books and papers, not to say that they were probably indispensable to my life, I lived in constant fear that mother, the Eferding woman, would one day use all these books of mine as firewood, that she would stage a great bonfire of all my papers before all eyes, that is, before the eyes of my father and my brothers and my sister, one day, this was what I’d always feared, after all, but she had never done it, though my fear was justified, or else she hadn’t got around to it before I’d moved all my books and papers to safety in Hoeller’s garret, there, in Hoeller’s garret, I always thought in England, those books and papers are safe, now I needn’t worry from one minute to the next that they might be destroyed by my mother, the Eferding woman, Hoeller’s garret is where all these books and papers of mine belong, not in Altensam, where the atmosphere is antagonistic to them. And so the thought that I’d carried these books and papers of mine, not many but all the most important of them, to safety in Hoeller’s garret from my room in Altensam, while I was in England or wherever I was far away from Altensam, was always a good, reassuring thought. That my mother is capable of burning or otherwise destroying my books and papers, which I’d read and studied and worked through afresh again and again, that she is capable of suddenly destroying them, or of simply withholding them from me, specifically during my absence in England or elsewhere, has always been clear to me. While my mother and I had always tried, so Roithamer, during the first few minutes of my arrival in Altensam, to get along with each other, and had done all we could, even though it went against the grain, to make it work, we soon ended up doing it all only as. proof that we simply could not get along with each other, and so we had a chaotic situation, a situation no one could be expected to stand, we simply made existence a torment for each other, perhaps this had simply become a habit because by now we’d been together against our will too often, so the habit of mutual torture came to play the largest role in our encounters, but it was always, as I thought,