Authors: Thomas Bernhard
boar’s tail, my father shot it. Shot it right off the boar’s tail, I say. The boar takes one leap and disappears into the underbrush. I go after the pheasant, and while I am stooping for it my father fires a second shot. I ask him as I come back with the pheasant why he fired the second shot. Into the air, I say, why into the air? My father doesn’t know why. I’ve never fired a shot pointlessly into the air, my father says. There are fine pheasants and fine boars in Bundau, I say. Huber wants to leave. He steps into the vestibule. Of course, I say, I can use you, though not for the steward’s post. I propose to Huber that he work for me as foreman, though without old-age pension; Krainer needs help. But he doesn’t accept my offer. A queer man. It’s clear that Huber doesn’t want to work, not any more, never again. No, no, he says. He would rather go on listening to his wife’s nagging every day. I think : Huber would be a real help to me. You see, everything is neglected, Doctor. But it’s no use, Huber leaves. I reflect that my want ad has helped him escape from Bundau. Cold Bundau, I think. Huber as steward, I think. Huber and Zehetmayer—grotesque! I’ll settle with Henzig at once, I think. Henzig is the only fellow for the job. Basically Henzig is what I have always been looking for and never found. I realize,” the prince said, “that there is a personality who in no time will become priceless, indispensable to me. The man is first-rate. Of course it takes a whole day,” the prince said, “for the telegram to reach Kobernausserwald. If I send it now, at noon, I thought, it won’t reach Kobernausserwald until tomorrow morning. The postal system, the hopeless, ruined Austrian postal system. I go into the vestibule and dictate the telegram to my elder sister, and she calls old Krainer and he rides down to the post office. I’m not running any risks with Henzig,”
the prince said. “I’ve already settled the financial side with him. He’ll live in the hunting lodge, no, in the Pavilion, no, in the hunting lodge, in the hunting lodge.
Assume duties of position at once if you wish
, I telegraphed. But it occurs to me that Henzig is still under contract to the state and can’t begin work until next week at the earliest. The state forests which ruin everything,” Prince Saurau said, “the state which ruins everything, the unending, everlasting suicide of the state. Doctor, nowadays all states are constantly committing suicide, and not only in Europe. It is my ancient theme, Doctor,” the prince said. “The state that ruins everything, the people who do not know how to run their state and ruin it. The phrase
intellectual catastrophe
occurs to me, Doctor. After Huber has left, I have a sign reading
Steward’s position filled
put up on the big gate, and go into the office. And sure enough, a number of other applicants for the job arrive. I watch them until they leave, some immediately after reading the sign, most after hesitating for quite a while. Much too old. Again and again I wonder that so many applicants should respond to this particular want ad. Remarkable, I think, that the right man was among the first three applicants, isn’t it, Doctor? To talk with people one has just met makes you thoughtful and is very tiring. There is always the question of how much one should make contact with them, whether one should make contact with them at all. Doctor, don’t you think … contacts,” the prince said. “As you always say, Doctor: I
am
insofar as I have contact with people, and so on. But contact always brings out first of all the ironic element in my mind.… Irony, which diminishes the unbearableness.… Brushing against the peripheries of people with weak nerves.… I think: Was I too friendly with
Huber, or was I not friendly enough with Huber? And how was I toward Zehetmayer? Odd that the question of whether I was too friendly or too unfriendly always arises as soon as a person has left me. But I was quite friendly toward Huber, I think. And I was also quite friendly toward Zehetmayer. I certainly was least friendly with Henzig. It was a very short interview, an encounter, a surge of dislike for the man. Henzig, I think, is the ideal steward.”
Even among his sisters and daughters, Prince Saurau went on to say, when he could no longer bear to stay in his room and went down into the lower rooms “hoping for the relief of conversation,” to find them sitting in “the dusk that always reigns in Hochgobernitz,” either chatting or silently “contemplating themselves in preparation for the night”—even among them he more and more heard the noises that he had often told my father about. For months these noises had not left him, he said.
Devoting more and mor of his intellectual capacities “to the higher exaltation and the higher speculation” (Father’s phrase), in his weaknesses, even in that condition which in the course of the past several months had become an excruciating torment, when he locked himself in his room to conduct, alone with himself, his “masochistic discussions” (Father’s phrase), which he continued even during his son’s stay in England and which, probably due to the fact that he was doomed to stay on in Hochgobernitz to the end of his days, he conducted with utter ruthlessness chiefly toward himself, pitching them at such a level, in spite of the extreme irritability from which he suffered, as to require the utmost tension of his mind, an ever-increasing ruthless tension of his mental powers. “Consistently delving into all scientific phenomena”
(Saurau’s phrase), he had heard these “fatal noises” (Father’s phrase) even in the course of last night while he was studying Cardinal Retz’s memoirs, had “been forced to hear them,” though he was no longer able to remember at what point in time these noises had imposed themselves upon him. He now heard them continually, he said, and could no longer fall asleep; he feared these noises more and more. Day and night in the past week these noises had penetrated his consciousness, deranged him, constantly and in the cruelest manner “projected” him into his own death.
The terrible part of it was that to the very degree that he thought he had to withdraw from the world, he was falling prey to it, Prince Saurau said. “We think fantastically and are weary,” he said. In “the drive to exhaust all possibilities” he had cast a pall of gloom over Hochgobernitz, and Hochgobernitz over him. “The analogies are deadly” had by now become one of his recurrent, decisive phrases.
Saurau spoke of his family as “this continual, outrageous truncation of the mind.” They were ruling here in Hochgobernitz in his name. “With the hapless impotence for which they are made they inhale their daily life primarily into their bodies and secondarily into their heads in the form of hundreds and thousands of dismaying intellectual kleptomanias, from the greatest remove.” Meanwhile he, Prince Saurau, in the midst of them, in the midst of their “catastrophic company,” was being plagued by these noises (“rumblings in the earth?” [Father’s phrase]). Feeling his brain (“irruption of water into what has been parched from time immemorial?” [Saurau’s phrase]) painfully as a membrane abused in behalf of all mankind, knowing these noises to have existed always in humanity (“a transformation of what is into something
else that will be” [Saurau’s phrase]), he no longer merely heard these noises, but also saw and felt them in his head. His brain must suffer these noises (“expanding fault lines, an ideal disintegrative process in nature!”). He found himself suddenly and uncontrollably injecting all sorts of phrases into his torment, and almost all of them ended with “for the sake of all mankind.”
He often felt, he said, the vast span of “emotional and geological history coalescing into wholly new substances,” which he regarded as a process in which “everything is destroyed in order ultimately to become.”
“Here, on this spot, I always would discuss everything concerning Hochgobernitz with my steward,” Prince Saurau said, and he called our attention to broad areas in the valley that had been devastated by the flood that recently affected a great part of the countryside below Hochgobernitz. “No more than three weeks ago,” Prince Saurau said, “I was walking up and down here, shocked beyond words by this tremendous flood damage. And while I was watching the slow recession of the water, silent, horrified, in a state of derangement that lasted for two hours, Doctor,” he began to think about the dubious life of his son, who was studying in England. “On this spot,” Prince Saurau said, “I always think about my son. The fact is that my son’s life is completely estranged from mine.” From this spot three weeks ago he had watched the receding high waters and then “without saying a single word against nature,” returned to the castle. Now he said: “My son is in England and I am going under here.”
At his last visit, my father recalls, Prince Saurau, commenting on the flood, kept exclaiming “landslide” and spoke
of “despair assailing his mind.” Again and again he exclaimed “landslide” and kept reckoning “flood damage, flood costs, flood sums.” The whole region was afflicted by a mild but “insidious” smell of decaying cadavers—on both banks of the Ache a great many drowned cattle had been wedged against houses and trees, torn open, bloated, some “dismembered by the power of the water” (my father), and many head of livestock from the Saurau barns in the valley had not yet been cleared away. And because of this smell the prince had kept exclaiming words like
decay, dissolution
, and the word
diluvianism
. Then he had suddenly declared that the noises in his brain were wreaking far greater devastation inside his head than what could be seen on the banks of the Ache down below. “Here in my head,” Saurau had said, “there is actually
inconceivable devastation.”
This first day after the flood seems to my father to have been a critical one for the prince’s illness, which then evolved “at a furious rate” (Father). “On that day both of us, horrified by the extent of the catastrophe, went down to the Ache,” Father said. Actually, the extent of the flood, as they both observed after the water had receded to its normal level, had indeed been catastrophic. Prince Saurau seemed to find it incomprehensible that the flood should have happened immediately after the steward’s death. “Right now, when I’m completely without help!” he had exclaimed again and again. At first the two of them had been so shocked by the sight that they had not been able to say a word to one another, although they had no doubt greeted the workmen who were busy dragging wood and corpses out of the water. They had tried to walk as far as possible; the prince had begged my father not to cut his visit as short as he customarily
did, because he could not stand being alone. Again and again Prince Saurau had spoken of “damage in the millions,” my father said. And after remaining silent for hours during their inspection tour, the prince talked without a stop once they were back at the castle.
Prince Saurau now said to me: “The more intensively I talked about the flood, the more your father was distracted from the flood. Moreover,” the prince said, “he was distracted by the play that was put on in the pavilion the day before the terrible flood. This play, a different one every year,” Prince Saurau said, “is a tradition at Hochgobernitz. The curious thing is,” Saurau said, “and I am speaking now of an absurdity that is absolutely phenomenal: The moment I began talking about the flood, your father began talking about the play. The more I was preoccupied with the flood, the more preoccupied your father became with the play. I talked about the flood and he talked about the play.”
My father said: “I kept thinking all along that you couldn’t help talking about the flood, but I talked about the play.”
Prince Saurau said: “But I talked about the flood and not about the play, for what else could I possibly have talked about that day, if not the flood! Naturally I could not think of anything but the flood. And your father thought of nothing but the play. As I became more and more preoccupied with the flood, your father became more and more preoccupied with the play, and insofar as I, speaking of the flood, was irritated by your father’s speaking of the play, your father, speaking of the play, was irritated by me because I spoke of nothing but the flood. There was tremendous irritation!” the prince said. “Again and again I heard your father
commenting on the play in the midst of my endless talk about the flood. The incredible, amazing thing was,” the prince said, “that as the time went on I spoke more and more about the flood and nothing else and your father spoke about the play and nothing else. And your father spoke more and more loudly about the play, and I more and more loudly about the flood. Loudly, equally loudly, at the same time, both of us, your father and I went on, he speaking about a tremendous play, I about a tremendous flood. And then,” the prince said, “there came a period in which both of us spoke exclusively about the flood, followed by a period in which we talked of nothing but the play. But while we were both talking about the play, I was thinking only about the flood, and while we were talking about the flood, your father was thinking only of the play; while your father thought of the play, my thoughts were with the flood. If we talked about the flood, I thought that your father wanted to talk about the play; if we talked about the play, I wanted to talk about nothing but the flood.”
“I wanted to compare the play,” my father said, “with a play I once saw in Oxford, and to discuss the qualities of English actors versus the qualities of our actors, as well as the difference between the English language and ours.”
The prince said: “Naturally I was completely obsessed with the flood, but your father was just as naturally
not
obsessed with the play.”
“When we talked about the play,” my father said, “you, Prince, kept exclaiming
What expense!
or
Enormous expense!
while I, whenever we talked about the flood, was constantly using such words as
stage machinery, pantomime, dramatic climax, puppetry.”
“But basically,” the prince said, “no matter what we talked about on that day, we were really talking about nothing but the flood.”
“Immediately after the play,” the prince said, “I left the pavilion and walked on the inner walls, because despite the play my mind had not been rid of the noises. And I had been hoping particularly that the play would distract me from my noises. But in fact I could not find distraction from the noises on the inner walls either, and I went to the outer walls. For a short time on the outer walls it was possible for me to shake off the noises, and I looked down from the outer wall at the people who had come to the play and were now riding home. Some went down into the gorge,” the prince said. “I can’t imagine what for. To this day I don’t know why some went down into the gorge. Standing behind a large hemlock, I watched the people bidding good-by to my sisters and my daughters. This play,” the prince said to me, “is arranged by the women, of course. I really have nothing to do with the whole business, but the women put on such a play every year. They invite hundreds of people, people wholly uninteresting to me, and the majority of them repulsive. For the women the play, of course, is always a pretext to invite hundreds of people, who actually come, but then again the play is the least of the reasons for their coming,” the prince said. “The women merely use it to bring the people to the castle, and the people who come up to the castle for the play do not come on account of the play, but out of sheer curiosity. If it were up to me,” the prince said, “not a soul would come up here any more, not a soul, not a single person. I grant you,” he said, “such solitariness is a morbid state, of course. But society, and I mean the whole of society, but in particular the social class
that comes to the play, consists of a despicable rabble. But I let the women have their pleasure, and they can invite whomever they like. Since I don’t want to see anyone at Hochgobernitz, the play is a horror to me. Actually,” the prince said, “I stood behind the big hemlock for a few minutes without hearing any noises at all. But in order to warm up, for I had the feeling I was freezing, I walked partway across the courtyard, finally ran a short way, and then, walking slowly, I repeated inaudibly several sentences from the play. My memory has not yet been destroyed, I thought, no, my memory is still intact, since I am able to recite whole sentences from the play, and what is more the most complicated ones. As I walked across the yard, declaiming sentences from the play, I thought that the women and also the young Pole, a relative of ours, had already gone to bed. I actually took pleasure in declaiming whole parts of the play, the longest roles, without a single mistake. Whole sections,” the prince said, “refreshing myself in the rhythm of the sentences. For over an hour I walked back and forth in the courtyard, once on the inner walls, once on the outer walls, without noticing where I was while I walked, and recalled to memory as much as possible of the text of the play. It actually is a good play, it seems to me,” the prince said, “written by one of my cousins, solely for this one performance. I tested my memory in the most ruthless way,” the prince said. “I did not spare myself, and I discovered that my memory is intact. Actually, Doctor, my memory was intact that evening. Suddenly it was absolutely intact. I reconstructed the play,” the prince said. “I was particularly interested in its innermost construction. The theatrical aspects. Suddenly,” the prince said, “I had the feeling that I could go to sleep, that
feeling which has become utterly foreign to me, and I descended from the inner wall where I happened to be and went into the yard and started for my room. At first I did not intend to pass through the library, but then I went through the library anyhow; there was a book that interested me, and I wanted to start on it,” the prince said. “And as I entered the library,” he said, “I found the women. I was astonished that they were still up. The Polish cousin was there too. The whole company was sitting on the floor. It was four o’clock in the morning, I saw. The whole company was oddly motionless, sitting on cushions on the floor. There they sat, dead tired on their cushions, in a kind of sleepless tension, with their whisky. Suddenly,” the prince said, “I had the greatest desire to start a discussion with these people. ‘Isn’t it cold here?’ I said to them. ‘Isn’t it much too cold here?’ And I started at once talking about the antibody in nature. The subject sprang to my mind at once. I was able to develop my thoughts in the early morning chill very well and very rapidly,” the prince said. “I had good listeners; suddenly I felt: You haven’t had such good listeners in a long time, you’ve waited for years for such good listeners. To think that these people can listen so well! And also discuss! I thought. The young Pole discussed splendidly, splendidly,” the prince said. “But all at once, and now notice this, Doctor,” the prince said, “the noises came back. So all this while I have been able to suppress them only once, I thought, suppress them by means of the play. Yes, the play! The noises instantly destroyed my thoughts, changed everything inside my head into a chaos. Deafening. Naturally my listeners knew nothing about that. Naturally not,” the prince said. “They couldn’t look inside my brain, of course. But my listeners
certainly felt that a wonderful orderliness inside my brain had suddenly become a frightful chaos, a frightful, deafening chaos. The pain at that moment,” the prince said, “when the noises started again and shattered everything inside my brain, was so frightful that I thought I would have to stop my lecture and therefore put an end to the whole discussion. But because, as I’ve said, I had not had such attentive listeners for years, such honest, exacting, and, so it seemed to me, such highly charged listeners, so splendidly equipped for discussion—because of this I would not give in and succeeded in restoring order in my brain. It was half past four in the morning and I spoke partly, because that was requisite, in Polish; above all I had to keep my attention fixed on the Pole. I spoke about the antibody in nature, I spoke on nature and on the antibody in nature, on nature and on the antibody and on the antibody that emerges
from
nature. While working out these ideas I probed the degrees of difficulty in my thinking contrasted with the degrees of difficulty in the thinking of my listeners. Probably because of the play,” the prince said, “this intellectual tension among us, which I had thought no longer possible, had suddenly become possible again. It was like a scientific conference. There developed an intellectual community that was the most concentrated thing imaginable, partly because of the Pole’s presence. At the climax of the discussion I told my listeners what a discussion is, told them that a discussion is something entirely different from what people nowadays think a discussion is. I had the impression that the people assembled in the library were completely transformed, that they were not horrible relatives, but receptive people, capable of thought, capable of trains of thought, capable of developing
trains of thought, able to engage in discussion. I found them fundamentally changed characters,” the prince said. “They were all suddenly different! I had the impression that I was speaking to scientific minds. Pacing back and forth, I spoke to scientists! And all at once I myself no longer had a chaotic mind capable of registering nothing but pain, but a clear, scientific brain. Because my thinking was absolutely clear, when I gave examples of it, commented on it, it was steadily incorporated into my listeners, something I no longer thought possible. That morning,” Prince Saurau said, “we enjoyed exercising our minds, even as we enjoyed the dissolving night around us, the daylight coming from the east, the tremendous mechanism of frogs and crickets retreating into the gorge and the valleys. While dawn broke, we abruptly no longer felt ourselves destroyers of one another’s nerves. We had reformed. In all our faces I observed the tranquility of our feelings and mental states, for all that it contained elements of sexual awakening. That morning I realized that we are not yet entirely shattered. My son’s sisters,” the prince said, “fitted in just as well as my own sisters, subordinated themselves to my thought, which had seemed to all of them,
in tranquility
, a bearable and not an unbearable fantasy, because of the play. Thanks to the sudden clarity of our brains we were all suddenly moved by nature,” the prince said. “How rarely we are capable of tranquility. Suddenly we were all together capable of absorbing the tranquility that always prevails here in Hochgobernitz, and we all felt not the slightest antipathies or weakness. Without any one of them feeling the slightest faltering in their intellectual capacities, they all followed the explanation (as I also was able to observe with growing astonishment) of a monstrosity
within the universal physical and chemical machine, a monstrosity that was steadily taking possession of all of us. But all the while,” the prince said, “there were those agonizing noises in my brain. While I led us with the greatest sureness through our thinking as through our own darkness, because I know it, I was constantly being distracted from life by the frightful noises in my brain. Among my own people I felt that I had long ago become invisible to all of them, and I felt so more and more. Suddenly I no longer existed for them at all, was no longer
there
. I tried to conjure up a mirror image of myself, which cost me the greatest effort, and I made them all look into this mirror image. I imagined,” Prince Saurau said, “that by remaining out on the ramparts and in the yard (after the play) I would once again be able to make a thrust into life there in the library; I seized the opportunity, but in reality I did not succeed. The noises in my head thwart me completely. For a long time I have heard them redoubling every day,” the prince said. “But my torment is a torment beyond your grasp,” he said to my father.