Frost: A Novel (19 page)

Before he retired to his room, “not to sleep, but to howl to myself in the silence of horror,” he said: “How everything has crumbled, how everything has dissolved, how all the reference points have shifted, how all fixity has moved, how nothing exists anymore, how nothing exists, you see, how all the religions and all the irreligions and the protracted absurdities
of all forms of worship have turned into nothing, nothing at all, you see, how belief and unbelief no longer exist, how science, modern science, how the stumbling blocks, the millennial courts, have all been thrown out and ushered out and blown out into the air, how all of it is now just so much air … Listen, it’s all air, all concepts are air, all points of reference are air, everything is just air …” And he said: “Frozen air, everything just so much frozen air …”

Fifteenth Day

“Diseased,” said the painter, “everything in the countryside, and most particularly here is diseased. It’s a grave mistake to assume that people in the country are of greater worth: country people, ha! Country people are the underclass of today. The underclass. And the country is degenerate, debased, so much more debased than the city! The last war has been the ruination of country people! Inside and out! Country people are just trash! And tell me now, what was ever so great about country people, about farmers? Were they so incomparable? Soil and inheritance, was that it? No, it was just gossip! Gossip, you hear? Gossip! Country people might be more reserved, but that’s the breathtaking, the disreputable, the heinous thing about country people! That whole simple, pitiless world of thought, where simplicity and low-mindedness get hitched and ruin everything …! Nothing comes from country people! Villages, morons in short sleeves! Country churches, moronic. Listen: I’m talking
about the infestation of the country. The country is repulsive! I’ve never had any regard, not the least regard, for farmers. Perhaps you have a different view. As far as the future is concerned, the rural population is without significance. And the rural population! The country is no source anymore, only a trove of brutality and idiocy, of squalor and megalomania, of perjury and battery, of systematic extinction! Not even a monopoly of quiet anymore! There is, as I see, no crasser mistake than to assume that everything in the country, and in our countryside in particular, is roses, and to imagine it has something to teach us, that there is something philosophical about the way of life there, and that it is any better than in the cities! Well, it’s quite the opposite!

“Out where the world collides with itself, there’s welfare. Here there’s no welfare. Welfare can’t get into this valley. It’s too tight and too squalid and too ugly. The cliffs block its path. In the darkness it would lose its way in no time. Welfare only reaches the edges of the Alps. Whereas here, it’s dark. Here is work and poverty and nothing besides. Here it’s the noose or the river. The unions have plenty to say. The parties have plenty to say. And nothing changes. At forty, these men are washed up. Finished. You can see them a while longer, and then you hear they’ve fallen off a rock. They hang themselves in a storehouse, in power-plant outbuildings, in the cellulose factory washroom. Thinking of them often disturbs the women giving birth, you know. The electricity lines drive them all crazy, and the river roars like a cow with its throat cut.”

•   •   •

In the winter, it was naturally hardest to make any headway with building work, says the engineer. We are sitting down in the public bar, and the painter pretends the engineer’s words are of the greatest interest to him. He has a bad headache, but he doesn’t let on, drinks wine like the rest of us, and sometimes makes a move as though to check that his Pascal is still in his coat pocket.

“When we’re expecting a frost, we can’t do any concreting at all,” says the engineer. “But there are other things we can do: right now we’re sinking a bridge support. That’s not without its dangers.”

The painter says: “Isn’t it very cold over the river? It makes me cold to look at it, what can it be like to stand over it all day and give instructions.”—“It’s not cold,” says the engineer, “it’s just important to have a head for heights. If a man doesn’t, he’ll fall head first into the water before he knows where he is.”—“Is the water deep at that point?” says the painter. “Not right there,” says the engineer, “but the current is very powerful. Even if you happen to be a good swimmer, and physically strong as all our people are, you’ll have a job to get out, because it’ll just wash you away, and in a few seconds you’ll be at the old weir, and you’ll meet your death.”—“Ah, right,” says the painter, “there’s the old weir as well. Won’t the old weir be destroyed when the power plant is finished?” “Yes,” says the engineer, “then it’ll be redundant.”—“Of course,” says the painter. “How many people have you got working for you at present?” he says. “Two hundred,” answers the engineer, “but there are never that many at one
time, some will be off for the day, some others will be sick. On average it’s a hundred and eighty.”—“A hundred and eighty!” says the painter, “that’s a lot of men!”—“It’s important to know where to assign them. What the most suitable occupation for each individual is at any given moment. Of course that’s a continual headache. But that’s what I do at night. At night I think about how to arrange things for the next day.”—“Do you write your ideas down?” asks the painter. “No, I never write anything down,” says the engineer, “I keep it in my head. In the morning when I drive down to the site, I issue the instructions I think up overnight. Or sometimes I tell the people who are eating and drinking in the inn to pass them on. That saves me no end of running around on the site. Getting from one work group to the next can be time-consuming. Often the different groups are working a long way from one another. One group might be working on the bridge, another will be loading and unloading on the road, a couple of hundred yards away, and a third will be over by the waterfall.” The painter says: “And where do you eat lunch?”—“In the canteen. Everyone does, except one or two who have time off and go up the mountain to eat at the inn, where the food’s better.”—“But then the canteen’s probably cheaper than here?” says the painter. “Cheaper, but not so good.”—“And what happened at Christmastime, did everyone go home?”—“Only a very few went home. Most of them haven’t got a home. We celebrated Christmas in the canteen. Me as well.”—“And does the contractor pay a Christmas bonus?”—“Yes,” said the engineer. “A generous bonus?” It was fairly sizable, says the engineer, “building firms are not mean when it comes to Christmas money.” In fact, the workmen did fairly well for themselves. A temporary worker on the site could reckon to pick up his three
thousand schillings. “That’s more than a middle school teacher,” says the painter. “Of course, there’s no comparison between the work done by a laborer down there and a middle school teacher.”—“Of course not.” The knacker says: “And some do overtime, and they pick up four thousand and more.”—“True,” says the engineer, “but they’re working themselves into the ground.” It was no secret that they get lung disease, and often collapse and have to spend weeks in the hospital. “The contractor’s not happy to see too much overtime being worked. Because they know they’ll have to offer sick pay for weeks and months.” But for the amount of work they did down there, “they’re not overpaid.” Anyway, they needed the money, because they have to eat properly, and drink as well, so they don’t get depressed after work. “It’s the bachelors who do best for themselves. They’re usually young and strong, and can put a bit aside. After a couple of years, standing in the dirt, they often start their own business or something, the ones that know how.” He himself had once stood in the dirt like that. As a young fellow he had paid his way through college by temping on building sites, just as I had done, well, he had done it too, standing around in puddles and ditches, and worrying about getting through his eight cubic meters of earth per day, or risk getting fired. “I’ve done it all, and I know my way around, and the men know that, and that’s why we’re on such good terms.” There was no other engineer on the site that they got along with as well as with him. They had confidence in him, for instance when it came to representing them with the contractor. “As soon as the first warm days come along,” he says, “then we’ll start to make some headway.”—“I expect you’re pretty well paid yourself,” says the painter. “I’ve heard that construction engineers are among the best paid people in the country.”—“Yes,”
says the engineer, “true enough, but I could have gone to India and made more money. But then I didn’t go to India, though I can’t say I wasn’t tempted.”

Suddenly I thought of the bustle of the capital, where between twelve and half past one everyone who is anyone walks along the Graben or shows themselves on the Kärntner Strasse, as in a display window several hundred meters long, from the point of view of the businessman, from the point of view of the manager’s wife, from the point of view of the attorney’s wife, and from several hundred other points of view, as for instance the chartered accountant’s wife or the woman with the fruit stand, who’s come up from the Naschmarkt, to be there as well. And I think how I fit into the scene with my books and papers under my arm, how I pick up snatches of conversation, a greeting or a goodbye, or even just swearwords or complaints. There I am, suddenly in the fresh air, which seems to have come down into these streets from the outlying hills, and I don’t know what to do with myself this lunchtime. My friends are all gone, headed home, eating lunch with their girlfriends or their brothers or their aunts from the provinces, and I’m all alone. I ponder which is better, to take in the words of the self-important and the curious passersby, or to go and sit in a park, of which there are many in the capital, one more beautiful than the next, and finally I decide on the latter course, and I’ve already turned down the Albrechtsrampe to the green island, where day in, day out the birds sing and the children play tag. That’s where the secretaries sit eating their sandwiches, and the milk women have a break here, and the occasional doctor of
philosophy with no better option sits on some stone step or pedestal to dig into his salt beef, carefully wrapped this morning for him. It smells of jasmine and hard-boiled eggs, and there’s the periodic rustle of dried leaves being pushed by one of the innumerable attendants from one end of the park to the other. A look at my watch tells me I have two hours till the next lecture. I put my books down on the top step of the staircase that leads up to the rather pompous Greek Temple of the Muses, and before long I’m stretched out in the sun, which seems to be almost setting. Before long, October’s finished, and there are no more leaves on the trees and no more humans in the park. Before long, the first snowflakes will fall on my shoulders, and my sandals will be replaced by shoes. But even in winter the Kärntner Strasse is so thronged with people that it feels warm, even when it’s thirty below. And the Graben is lit up at Christmastime, and people bump into each other, and everyone feels glad to be alive. Sometimes you might shiver a little to be standing all alone in the midst of so many people, but then you think of your bed, and you don’t feel sad anymore.

Today as I was sitting in front of the window, I had the idea that I ought to do something about my future. At least the immediate future. About what would happen once my internship in Schwarzach is finished. How will I get ready for my exams? I don’t have the sense that I know enough to even attempt them. And here I’m not even able to do anything to prepare. There’s no time. Because I’m altogether under the painter’s thumb, I have to go where he goes, although that’s not really it: I can’t help going with him wherever he goes.
Even if he didn’t ask me to go with him, I’d still want to go. They are always the same walks. They aren’t really walks at all. Just tramping through the snow, the wind, the forest, the cold. Sometimes I’m on my own. After lunch, when he goes back to his room, to lie on his bed—“Don’t imagine I’m sleeping!”—when he suddenly sends me packing, like he did the day before yesterday. Then he looks at me and taps me with his stick and says: “Now go back to the inn. I want to be on my own.” Then I leave him, but even then I’m still with him, in my thoughts, which are forever circling around him.

I ought to write home, at the very least I ought to tell them where I am, so that, having heard nothing from me in two weeks—I bet they’ve asked in the hospital if they know anything—they know what’s going on. But they would think it was strange if I wrote and told them I was here to observe someone. Observe someone? They wouldn’t understand that, they can’t imagine what it is to observe someone, I’m not sure I know myself what it is. The assistant’s brother? Well, why? Because he’s very ill? Mortally ill? But they don’t even know the name of the illness? Something in the brain? Something in the head? Someone who’s not quite normal? And they expose you to him? On the assistant’s say-so? And with the agreement of the registrar? A recognized surgeon? A danger like that? Such a young person? Who doesn’t really know what he’s about himself? A painter, with confused ideas? Someone who’s perhaps utterly confused? Someone altogether abnormal? But that could have a terrible effect on our son and brother and nephew! Better, then, not to write.
After all, what are two weeks! I’ve often not been in touch for longer than two weeks. Sometimes not for months. They’re used to me turning up and disappearing again and not being in touch. And if they think I’m at the hospital, where they know I’m very well looked after, they won’t assume anything too strange merely if I don’t write to them. My future’s like a stream in a forest, of which there are many precise descriptions, but nothing more; the forest is endless and as dark as only a childish notion of a forest can be, on the edge of gloom, and about to turn into utter gloom. The future is a long way off. And yet it’s at the door. Go through the door? How? How to equip myself as I pass through the door, into the dark, or even down into the dark? I’ll go home, shut myself in my room, and study the skin and the liver and the pancreas and “hearing tests.” I will study coldly, implacably. The window will be closed, maybe it’ll already be snowing outside, I’ll have to turn everything else down, I won’t come down for meals, not even join the others for breakfast; they’ll call, I won’t answer. Then, one evening a walk through the forest and back, along the stream, past the mill, sit on the bench with a wide view over the countryside.