Concrete

by Thomas Bernhard

  Yet to whom am I accountable apart from myself? If only I could succeed, at least in the next few days, in starting my work on Mendelssohn Bartholdy! Have I got the best conditions? I have and I haven’t. On the one hand I’ve got them, on the other I haven’t, I told myself. I should have them if my sister hadn’t come to Peiskam, but I haven’t because she did. We must commit ourselves one hundred per cent to everything we do, my father always said. He said it to everybody — to my mother, to my sisters, to me. If we don’t commit ourselves one hundred per cent we fail even before we’ve begun. But what is one hundred per cent in this case? Haven’t I prepared for this work one hundred per cent? Perhaps I’ve prepared for it two hundred per cent, or even three hundred. That would be calamitous. The idea was of course absurd. Your mistake, my sister had said, is to isolate yourself completely in your house. You don’t go and visit friends any longer, though we have so many. What she said was true. But what does one mean by friends? We know a number of people, perhaps even a lot of people; there are a few whom we’ve known since we were children and who have not yet died or moved away for good. Every year we used to visit them frequently and they used to come to our house. But that doesn’t make them friends, not by a long chalk. My sister is quick to call somebody a friend, even somebody she hardly knows, if it suits her book. Come to think of it, I haven’t any friends at all. Since I grew up I haven’t had a single friend. Friendship — what a leprous word! People use it every day ad nauseam, so that it’s become utterly devalued, at least as much so as the word Love, which has been trampled to death. Your biggest mistake is that you no longer go for walks. You used to leave the house for hours and go for walks through the woods, across the fields and down to the lake. At least you used to get pleasure from your own estates. Now you never leave the house. That’s the worst thing possible for you, she said — she of all people, who never walks if she can help it, as everybody knows, and who never once went for a walk in the three weeks she was here. But of course, I reflect, she hasn’t got the illness I have. I ought to go for walks. But nothing bores me more, there’s nothing I find drearier than walking, nothing is a greater torment to my heart and lungs. I’m not a nature-lover, I never was, and I never let myself be forced into being one. Then your lungs will dilate, she said scornfully, whereupon she finished off a whole glass of sherry — Agustin Blasquez of course, the only one expensive enough for her. For decades she’s got her lovers to bring it for her from Spain — one can’t get it in Vienna, let alone in this god-forsaken place. Not being a Catholic, she said with a laugh, you don’t go to church any longer. So you never get into the fresh air at all. If you go on like this you’ll go to pieces and die. She had recently taken a liking to saying to me over and over again, You’ll die. It went through me every time, although I tell myself, or at least try to tell myself, that I’ve nothing against dying. I’ve often told her too; but she says it’s just a childish way of showing off. Of course it would be sensible to breathe some fresh air, but there is none here now, only loathsome thick stinking air, which in addition is poisoned by the chemicals from the local paper factory. I sometimes wonder whether the air isn’t so poisoned by the paper factory as to prove lethal to me in the long run. Sometimes the fact that I’ve been breathing this poisoned air for decades suddenly gives me pause for thought, as it did on this evening after my sister’s departure. I began to wonder whether my inability to start work, and more generally my illness and imminent death, were not perhaps due to the poisoned air from the paper factory. Someone inherits a property from his parents and then thinks he has to stay put in it until he dies, never realising that he is dying so soon because day and night the local paper factory is poisoning the air he breathes. But I didn’t pursue these speculations and went out into the hall again. At the sight of the corner where we used to keep a dog when we were children, I couldn’t help thinking, If only I kept a dog at least! But since I grew up I’ve always hated dogs. And who would look after the dog, and what should it look like, what kind of dog should it be? I’d have to get somebody in to look after the dog, and I can’t put up with anybody in the house. I can’t put up either with a dog or another person. I’d have had somebody in the house long ago if I could have stood it, but I can’t stand anybody, and naturally I can’t stand a dog. I haven’t gone to the dogs, I told myself, and I won’t. I shall die like a dog, but I won’t go to the dogs. The dog used to sit in this corner just next to the door leading into the yard. We loved the dog, but now I’d be bound to hate such an animal, always lying in wait. The fact of the matter is that I love being alone. I’m not lonely and I don’t suffer from loneliness. I’m happy when I’m alone. I know how fortunate I am to be alone when I observe other people who aren’t alone like me and can’t afford to be, who spend all their lives wishing they were but can’t be. People keep a dog and are ruled by this dog, and even Schopenhauer was ruled in the end not by his head, but by his dog. This fact is more depressing than any other. Fundamentally it was not Schopenhauer’s head that determined his thought, but Schopenhauer’s dog. It was not the head that hated Schopenhauer’s world, but Schopenhauer’s dog. I don’t have to be demented to assert that Schopenhauer had a dog on his shoulders and not a head. People love animals because they are incapable even of loving themselves. Those with the very basest of souls keep dogs, allowing themselves to be tyrannized and finally ruined by their dogs. They give the dog pride of place in their hypocrisy, which in the end becomes a public menace. They would rather save their dog from the guillotine than Voltaire. The masses are in favour of dogs because in their heart of hearts they are not prepared to incur the strenuous effort of being alone with themselves, an effort which in fact calls for greatness of soul. I don’t belong to the masses, I’ve been against the masses all my life, and I’m not in favour of dogs. What we call our love of animals has already wrought such havoc that if we were to think really hard about it we should be positively frightened to death. It isn’t as absurd as it may at first appear when I say that the world owes its most terrible wars to its rulers’ love of animals. It’s all documented, and one ought to be clear about it for once. These people — politicians, dictators - are ruled by a dog, and as a result they plunge millions of human beings into misery and ruin. They love a dog and foment a world war in which, because of this one dog, millions of people are killed. Just consider for a moment what the world would be like if this so-called love of animals were at least reduced by a few paltry per cent in favour of love of humanity — which of course is also only a phrase. There can be no question of whether or not I should keep a dog. I am mentally opposed to keeping a dog, which I know would have to be given more care and attention than any human being, more than I demand for myself. But humanity sees nothing wrong in the fact that all over the world dogs get more care and attention than human beings, that in fact it gives more care and attention to all these billions of dogs than it gives to itself. I take leave to describe such a world as perverse, grossly inhumane and totally mad. If I’m here, the dog’s here, if I’m there the dog’s there too. If the dog has to go out, I have to go out too, and so on. I won’t tolerate this dog comedy, which we can see enacted every day if we only open our eyes and haven’t become blinded to it by daily familiarity. In this comedy a dog comes on the stage and makes life a misery for some human being, exploiting him and, in the course of several acts, or just one or two, driving out of him all his harmless humanity. It is said that the tallest, most expensive and most precious tombstone ever set up in the history of the world is one to the memory of a dog. No, not in America, as one inevitably assumes, but in London. Once we get it clear, this fact is enough to show how dog-like humanity really is. In this world the real question to ask about a person has long been, not how humane he is, but how dog-like, yet up to now, instead of asking how dog-like a person is — which is what they really ought to ask out of respect for the truth — people have always asked how humane he is. And that I find disgusting. There is no question of my keepin
g a dog. If you kept a dog at least! my sister said just before she left. It wasn’t the first time. She’s been saying it for years just to enrage me. A dog at least! I don’t need one of course — I have my lovers, she said. At one time — just to assert herself, I think — she gave up having lovers and got herself a dog. It was so small that — in my imagination at least — it could have crawled underneath her high-heeled shoes. It was the grotesqueness of it that appealed to her; she had a little velvet waistcoat with a gold hem made for this creature, which didn’t even deserve to be called a dog. People stared at it in amazement at the Sacher, and this she found so distasteful that she gave the animal to her housekeeper, who naturally passed it on to somebody else. My sister is always fascinated by anything out of the ordinary, but then, for good reasons and because of her superior intelligence, she never carries it too far, to the point where it might be open to ridicule. Or a holiday, she said. You ought to go away. If you don’t get away soon, you’ll go to pieces and die. I can already see you in one of the corners of your house, first going off your head and then suffering a complete collapse. Travel! It had once been my greatest enjoyment, my only passion. But now I’m too weak to travel anywhere, I told myself, I couldn’t even think of going away. And if I did, where should I go? Possibly, I thought, the sea will be the saving of me. This idea took root in my mind and I couldn’t escape it. I clapped my hands to my head and said, The sea! I’d found the magic formula. However dead we are, we come alive when we travel. But am I in a fit state to travel, never mind where? All the journeys I had ever made had worked miracles. Our parents had taken us with them on journeys at a very early age, so that by the time we were twelve or thirteen we had already seen a great deal of the world. We had been to Italy and France, we had been to England and Holland, we had seen Poland, Bohemia and Moravia, and by the time we were thirteen had actually spent some time in North America. Later I travelled extensively on my own account, visiting Persia, Egypt, Israel and the Lebanon. I had toured Sicily with my sister and spent weeks in Taormina, in the famous Hotel Timeo below the Greek theatre. I had lived in Palermo for a time, and in Agrigento, not far from the house in which Pirandello lived and worked. I had been to Calabria several times, and of course every time I went to Italy I visited Rome and Naples, and every spring I went with my parents and my sister to Trieste and Abbazia. We had relatives everywhere, though of course we only ever paid them the shortest of visits, for, like me, my parents infinitely preferred staying in hotels. My mother had a passion for hotels equal to my father’s: they felt more at home, just as I did, in the best and finest hotels than they did in our own house. I mustn’t think about all these splendid palaces we stayed in. Not even the war prevented us from travelling and putting up in the best houses, as my father often used to say. Of all these hotels, those I recall with the greatest pleasure are the Setteais in Sintra and of course the Timeo. Not long ago I had asked the specialist if I could contemplate travelling. Naturally, anytime, he had said, but the way he said naturally struck me as sinister. On the other hand, whatever condition we are in, we must always do what we want to do, and if we want to go on a journey, then we must do so and not worry about our condition, even if it’s the worst possible condition, because, if it is, we’re finished anyway, whether we go on the journey or not, and it’s better to die having made the journey we’ve been longing for than to be stifled by our longing. It was eighteen months since I’d been away anywhere. The last time had been to Palma, because I always regarded it as the most perfect place. In November, when the fog so cruelly oppresses and depresses us in Austria, I had run through the streets of Palma with an open-necked shirt and drunk my coffee every day in the shade of the plane trees on the famous Borne. And in Palma I’d been able to make my definitive notes on Reger. True, I later lost them, to this day I don’t know where, thus managing to destroy the fruits of two months’ intellectual effort through a piece of gross carelessness. Quite unforgivable! Just to think that I might now be sitting on the terrace of the Nixe Palace, eating my olives and drinking my glass of water, not just absorbed, but utterly captivated by the sight of the others on the terrace, who would be just as taken up with their own fancies and fantasies as I was with mine! We often fail to realise that if we want to go on existing we need to summon up all our strength in order to wrench ourselves off the spot where we’re stuck. My sister’s right to keep on using the word travel in my presence, wielding it over me like a whip all the time, I tell myself. She doesn’t just use the word casually every moment, but with a definite aim in mind, the preservation of my very existence. Naturally the observer can see through the person he is observing more ruthlessly and realistically than the person observed, I said. There are so many wonderful towns in the world, so many landscapes and coastlines I’ve seen in my life, but for me none has ever been as perfect as Palma. But what if one of my dreaded attacks comes on when I’m in Palma and I’m lying in bed in my hotel room with no proper medical attention and in a state of mortal fear? We have to envisage the most terrible eventualities and make the journey nonetheless, I told myself, yet at the same time I said, I can’t take all my piles of notes with me; they’ll hardly go into two suitcases, and to take more than two suitcases to Palma is madness. I was driven almost to distraction by the thought of having to go to the station, get on the train, go from the train to the airport, board the plane and all the rest with two or even three suitcases. But I didn’t abandon the idea of Palma or the Melia — the Mediterraneo having closed for good years ago. I had taken a firm hold on the idea, and it had taken a firm hold on me. I walked about the house, to and fro, backwards and forwards, upstairs and downstairs, unable to rid myself of the thought of leaving Peiskam behind me; in fact I made not the slightest attempt to rid myself of the thought of Palma, but went on fuelling it, until in the end I got so far as to take my two large suitcases out of the hall chest and place them beside it on the floor as though I really was going to leave. On the other hand, I said to myself, we mustn’t give way at once to a sudden whim. Where would that land us? But the idea was there. I placed the suitcases between the chest and the door and contemplated them from a favourable angle. How long it is since I last took these cases out of the chest! I said to myself. Far too long. In fact the cases were dusty, even though they had been in the chest ever since my last trip, that is my last trip to Palma. I got a duster and wiped them. At once I felt very sick. I hadn’t even finished dusting one case when I was obliged to support myself on the chest, overcome by a sudden fit of breathlessness. And in this condition you’re thinking of flying to Palma — in the midst of all the dreadful difficulties that are inevitably attendant upon such a journey, a journey which would be nothing to a healthy person, but which is far too much for a sick man and could even lead to his death? After a while, however, I dusted the second case, proceeding more cautiously this time, and then I sat down in the iron chair in the hall, my favourite chair. The articles about Mendelssohn Bartholdy can go in one of the cases, I told myself, my clothes and underclothes and so on in the other — the Mendelssohn papers in the larger one, the clothes and underclothes in the smaller one. What’s the point of having such elegant luggage, I said to myself, at least sixty years old and going back to the latter years of my maternal grandmother? She had good taste, as these suitcases of hers testify. The Tuscans have good taste, I told myself, as is borne out time and again. If I go away, I said to myself, sitting in the iron chair, I shall simply be leaving a country whose absolute futility utterly depresses me every single day, whose imbecilities daily threaten to stifle me, and whose idiocies will sooner or later be the end of me, even without my illnesses. Whose political and cultural conditions have of late become so chaotic that they tuqi my stomach when I wake up every morning, even before I am out of bed. Whose indifference to the intellect has long since ceased to cause the likes of me to despair, but if I am to be truthful only to vomit. I shall be going away from a country, I told myself, sitting in my iron chair, in which ever
ything that once gave pleasure to so-called thinking people, or at least made it possible for them to go on existing, has been expelled, expunged and extinguished, in which only the most primitive instinct for survival prevails and the slightest pretension to thought is stifled at birth. In which a corrupt state and a corrupt church join forces to pull at the endless rope which, with the utmost ruthlessness and callousness, they have for centuries wound round the neck of a blind and stupid people, a people imprisoned in its stupidity by its rulers. In which truth is trodden underfoot, and lies are sanctified by all official organs as the only means to any end. I shall be leaving a country, I told myself, sitting in the iron chair, in which truth is not understood or quite simply not accepted, and falsehood is the only legal tender in all transactions. I shall be leaving a country in which the church practises hypocrisy and in which socialism, having come to power, practises exploitation, and in which art says whatever is acceptable to these two. I shall be leaving a country in which a people educated to stupidity allows its ears to be stopped by the church and its mouth by the state, and in which everything I hold sacred has for centuries ended up in the slop pails of the rulers. If I go away, I told myself, sitting in the iron chair, I shall only be going away from a country in which I no longer have any place and in which I have never found happiness. If I go away, I shall be going away from a country in which the towns stink and the inhabitants of the towns have become coarsened. I shall be going away from a country in which the language has become vulgar and the minds of those who speak this vulgar language have for the most part become deranged. I shall be going away from a country, I told myself, sitting in the iron chair, in which the only model of behaviour is set by the so-called wild animals. I shall be going away from a country in which darkest night prevails at noonday, and in which virtually the only people in power are blustering illiterates. If I go away, I told myself, sitting in the iron chair, I shall be leaving the disgusting, depressing and unconscionably filthy public lavatory of Europe. To go away, I told myself, sitting in the iron chair, means leaving behind me a country which for years has done nothing but afflict me with the most damaging depression and has taken every opportunity, no matter where or when, of insidiously and malignantly urinating on my head. But isn’t it madness to think of going to Palma when I’m in such a state, and when my general physical condition doesn’t even permit me to walk two hundred yards out of the door? I asked myself as I sat in the iron chain As I sat there I thought first about Taormina and the Timeo, with Christina and her Fiat, then about Palma and the Melia, with the Cañellas, their three-storey palace and their Mercedes. And suddenly, as I sat in the iron chair, I saw myself running through the narrow streets of Palma. Running through the streets! I cried out, sitting in the iron chair and clapping my hands to my head, when I’m not capable even of walking round the outside of my own house, let alone of running through the streets of Palma. For a sick man like me to entertain such an idea isn’t just bordering on megalomania: such an idea is well beyond the border, it’s sheer madness. And I couldn’t get this madness out of my head. As I sat in the iron chair I couldn’t call a halt to the madness and didn’t even try. On the contrary, I indulged it to such an extent that I couldn’t help shouting out the word mad. The Melia or the Timeo, Christina or the Cañellas, the Fiat or the Mercedes, I speculated, unable to stop myself, as I sat in the iron chair, drawing refreshment from these ridiculous speculations — the Melia with all the hundreds and thousands of yachts outside the window, the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Palma — the Timeo with its bougainvillaeas flowering at the window - the Melia and the incredible sea breeze - the ancient bathroom at the Timeo — Christina or the Cañellas — the bougainvillaeas or the sea breeze — the Cathedral or the Greek theatre, I thought, sitting in the iron chair, the Mallorcans or the Sicilians — Etna or Pollensa — Ramon Llull and Ruben Dario or Pirandello. At present, I finally told myself, since I want to start my work on Mendelssohn Bartholdy, I need a cosmopolitan atmosphere — more people, more activity, more excitement, I thought as I sat in the iron chair, not a place with just one street — and on a hill at that, hence requiring exertion — and just one café, but a place with many busy streets - and squares! - and many cafés, and as many people around me as possible, for at present I need nothing so much as to have people around me — not that I want any dealings with them: I don’t even want to speak to them, I thought, sitting in the iron chair, but I must have them around me. And so for all these obvious reasons I decided on Palma and against Taormina, in favour of the Cañellas and against Christina, and generally in favour of a climate which would be positively beneficial to me in my condition, a summery climate such as I might expect in Palma even in February, but not in Taormina, where in February it is still wintery and rains nearly all the time. And in February, I thought, sitting in the iron chair, Etna is seldom to be seen, and even then it’s covered in snow from top to bottom, a constant and harmful reminder of the Alps, and therefore of Austria and home, which could only sicken me again and again. But suddenly this all appeared to me as senseless fantasizing, indulged in by an overwrought invalid sitting in his iron chair; it did little more than make me sadder than I already was, and ended in dejection. Yet there was no longer any way of escaping it, even though I tried to convince myself, still sitting in the iron chair, that perhaps all I needed to do was to go and call on some neighbour or other. So I got up, put on some clothes, and walked to Nie-derkreut, which is close enough even to be reached by one in my pitiful condition. Niederkreut is a four-hundred-year-old pile, damp and unprepossessing, occupied by a former cavalry officer from the First World War, who, like all such people, calls himself a baron — an old eccentric in other words. I went to call on him, not because I found him particularly interesting, but because he was of all people the one who could be reached most quickly and easily from where I lived. He is something of a curiosity. Whenever I visit him I have a cup of tea and listen to his stories about the First World War -about how he was wounded on Monte Cimone, how he spent three months in hospital in Trieste and then got the gold medal for bravery. In fact he always tells the same story, and he tells it to everybody who goes to see him on whatever occasion. The old man has the merit of being able to make excellent tea and also of not having bad breath, even though he is so old — getting on for eighty-five — for there is nothing that makes me dread visiting old men so much as the smell of their breath. The old man hasn’t let himself go, even though, as I say, he’s getting on for eighty-five, and he’s not in the least unappetising. He has a housekeeper who looks after him and whom he calls Muxi — nobody knows what that stands for — and who withdraws to the kitchen when he has visitors. Every half hour or so she puts her head round the door and asks the old man if there is anything he wants. No Muxi, he always says, and when she’s closed the door again he leans forward and says, She’s as stupid as they come! It’s always the same. I have to admit that I went to see the old man at Niederkreut out of sheer desperation, simply to free myself from the absurd idea of going away, of going away to Palma moreover, which was probably altogether the absurdest idea possible in my situation. I was simply exploiting him, to be quite honest, in my dreadful situation. He just happened to be the person I needed to put me off the idea of going to Palma. When I pulled the bell I heard the housekeeper coming to open the door to me. The gentleman is here, she said. I went in. I hope I’m not disturbing you, I said on entering the old man’s room, which the housekeeper had made cosy and warm for him, and as I uttered these words I was annoyed to think that they were precisely the words which are continually being used by my sister and never fail to make me angry because they are the most hypocritical in the language. The old gentleman got up and shook hands with me. Then we both sat down. I was just going to make myself some tea, he said. He was holding a book. It’s my reading time, he said. A silly book, something about Marie-Louise. My sister sent it me, but I must say I find it very dull. What things people write, without caring one jot abo
ut the facts! What are their qualifications for writing anyway? I had no wish to engage in a conversation with the old man on this subject, but as soon as I sat down, in expectation of a cup of tea, I was aware of my travel plans receding. Life’s not all that impossible here, I said to myself, and I looked at the pictures on the wall. That’s my grandfather, who was a Field-marshal and Commander-in-Chief of the whole of the southern Adriatic front, the old man said. But you’ve heard that hundreds of times, he added as the housekeeper brought in the water and disappeared again. Wars are waged very differently today, he said, quite differently. Everything is different today. He lifted the lid of the teapot and stirred the tea. As he did this he said, Everything has turned through a hundred and eighty degrees. This is an expression he uses constantly: no sooner is one with him than he finds an occasion for saying, Everything has turned through a hundred and eighty degrees. There are only thirteen people still alive who received the gold medal for bravery from the Emperor himself. Only thirteen, just imagine! At first he had considered leaving his property to his daughter, who lived in England, he said, but then he realised that this was nonsense. Then he had thought of leaving it to the church. But the church had disappointed him, so then he wanted to leave it to the state welfare service. But the state welfare service also stinks, he now said. There isn’t a single institution I would leave anything to. Or a single person I know either. And so I decided to send for a London telephone directory. What do you think I did that for? He paused, poured a cup of tea for me and one for himself, and said, I opened it at random — at page two hundred and three, as I later discovered — and, with my eyes closed, I put the index finger of my right hand on a certain spot. When I opened my eyes I found that the tip of my finger was resting on the name Sarah Slother. I don’t care who this Sarah Slother is - her address is 128 Knightsbridge. I’m going to leave everything I have to this address, no matter who or what is concealed behind it. My dear friend, that gives me the greatest satisfaction. As a matter of fact, I’ve already settled the legal side of this curious affair. When you come to think about it carefully, we just can’t leave anything to a single person we know, he said. At least I can’t. I was quite fascinated by the old man: I’d never have believed him capable of a thing like this. But what he said was true. The rest of the afternoon and evening was occupied with the usual old men’s gossip, but it was all nothing compared with this revelation of his. But keep quiet about it, he told me; I haven’t told anybody about it. And it isn’t a joke. You’re the only person who I know will keep it to himself. It’s quite a relief to me. Anyhow, he said, you now know what’s coming to this Slother woman. My God, he added, how devious I am! And he quite clearly enjoyed his deviousness. When I went home, not only was I not deflected from my travelling plans but suddenly they no longer seemed absurd. On the contrary, I suddenly felt that I could do myself no better service than to leave as quickly as possible — for Palma of course. I suddenly had the refreshing idea of catapulting myself out of my morgue at the last moment, the very last moment, and I thought to myself, However much I may curse her, my sister’s had the right idea yet again. I was suddenly quite obsessed with my travel plans. Even the old man at Niederkreut had suddenly opened my eyes, which had for so long been closed. Though I had gone to see him to be deflected from my travel plans, he had on the contrary made me half crazy about them. You’ve got to clear out of this place; you mustn’t think of ways of being diverted from your plans by every possible and impossible person in the neighbourhood. You must leave, go away, as soon as possible. My sister, my confounded sister, had once again been on the right scent. But all the same I also had the choice of going to Vienna for a while. I don’t have to stay in my sister’s apartment, I told myself. I can go to the Elisabeth or the Konig von Ungarn. But much as I thought about Vienna, I was still completely dominated by the idea of Palma. What have I got in Vienna? I asked myself, and the very act of recalling the names of all the people I knew in Vienna horrified me — with very few exceptions, and these exceptions could be ruled out either because of illness or because they had died long ago. For years I had had Paul Wittgenstein, the nephew of the philosopher, as my friend, but I’m bound to say that his death, after a long and painful illness, came at exactly the right time, when Vienna had ceased to mean anything to him. He had walked the streets of Vienna for decades, and it no longer had anything to do with him. There was nobody as clever as he was, nobody as poetic and as incorruptible in all things. Now that I’ve lost him there’s nothing more for me to lose in Vienna. I lived in Vienna for twenty years without a break. It was probably the best and most enjoyable time of my life, but it can’t be repeated: by comparison everything today is a pathetic rehash which I should be ashamed to be involved in. Vienna has become a proletarian city through and through, for which no decent person can have anything but scorn and derision and the profoundest contempt. Whatever was once great or simply remarkable about it, compared with the rest of the world, has long been dead. The scene today is dominated by baseness and stupidity and by the charlatanry which makes common cause with them. My Vienna has been totally ruined by tasteless, money-grubbing politicians and become unrecognizable. There are still some days when one gets a breath of the old air, but not for long; then once more everything is engulfed by the scum that has taken over the city in recent years. In Vienna today art is nothing but a sickening farce, music a worn-out barrel organ, and literature a nightmare. I won’t speak of philosophy, for even I can’t find words to describe it, and I’m not one of the least imaginative people. For a long time I used to think of Vienna as my city, as my home in fact, but now I am bound to say that I don’t feel at home in a cesspit which has been filled brimful with filth by pseudo-socialists. And I am no longer as interested as I once was in hearing music performed: I prefer reading the scores by myself, though this is a vastly more expensive pleasure. But what is one offered today at these concerts in the Musikverein or the concert hall? The marvellous conductors of the past have turned into crude, sensation-seeking animal tamers, and the orchestras have become feebleminded under these tamers. I’ve seen all the museums, and the Viennese theatre is the shabbiest in the whole of Europe. The Burgtheater today is nothing but a witless, though unwitting parody of the theatre in general, in which anything to do with the intellect is totally lacking — nothing but provincialism and farce. To say nothing of the other theatres, whose daily diet of dilettantism is perfectly in tune with the utterly tedious society of today. And naturally I should find it intolerable to live under the same roof as my sister: that became clear to me when she was in Peiskam just now. She’d make life hell for me and I’d make life hell for her, and before very long one of us would kill the other. We’ve never been able to live together under one roof. However, it’s quite possible that my sister was genuinely concerned about me and my future when she invited me to stay with her in her Vienna apartment — though ultimately I find myself unable to believe this, since I know her. On the other hand, I told myself, I’m not sufficiently curious to go to Vienna just to inspect her new apartment, which probably contains any number of precious objects — and by no means tastelessly arranged either. Quite the contrary — that’s just what would make me white-hot with rage. Look, my little brother, this vase is from Upper Egypt. I can just hear her saying it and then waiting to see what I have to say about it, although she knows what I’m going to say. We’re an intelligent pair, and in four and a half decades we’ve been able to develop our intelligence to a high degree in our different ways, our different directions — I in mine and she in hers — up to today. If I were to go to Vienna, I should only need to take my travelling bag with me, since there would be no question of working in Vienna. Not at my sister’s anyway. And not if I stayed in a hotel either, for Vienna has always been inimical to my work: I’ve never succeeded with any work in Vienna — I’ve started a number of projects there, but I’ve never completed a single one, and this has always resulted in a terrible feeling of shame. Once, twe
nty-five years ago, I managed to complete something on Webern in Vienna, but as soon as I’d completed it I burned it, because it hadn’t turned out properly. Vienna has always had a paralysing effect on me, even though I would never admit it. It paralysed me in every way. The people I met in Vienna paralysed me too, with one or two exceptions. But my dear friend Paul Wittgenstein died — of his madness, I must emphasize — and my painter friend Joanna hanged herself. Anyone who goes to Vienna to stay and fails to recognize the moment when it is time to clear out becomes a senseless victim of a city which takes everything away from everybody and gives absolutely nothing in return. There are cities, for instance London or Madrid, which admittedly take something, though not much, but give almost everything. Vienna takes everything and gives nothing. That’s the difference. The city has a way of sucking dry all who get caught in its trap, and it goes on sucking until they fall down dead. I recognized this at an early stage and kept away from Vienna as far as possible. After the years when I lived almost continuously in Vienna I’ve only ever been back occasionally to visit a few people I was deeply fond of. Only a few people have the strength’to turn their backs on Vienna soon enough, before it is too late; they remain stuck to this dangerous and poisonous city until, finally, they become tired and let themselves be crushed to death by it, as by a glistening snake. And how many geniuses have been crushed to death in this city? They simply can’t be counted. But those who did manage to turn their backs on it at the right moment succeeded in everything they did, or almost everything. This is proved by history, and there is no need to insist on it. If I were to go to Vienna now, I thought, I’d make myself sick with boredom. In no time I’d destroy what little I still have left to me. So Vienna was ruled out. For a brief moment I considered Venice, but I shuddered at the thought of having to spend months sitting in this splendid but thoroughly perverse heap of masonry, even in the most perfect place. Venice is a city to be visited for only a few days, never for longer, like an elegant old lady whom one always goes to see for the last time. My mind was now set exclusively on Palma, and on the very evening that I got back from Niederkreut, where the old man had told me of his last wish, which continued to fascinate me and to occupy my mind most of the time — on that very evening I began to think about what I should pack in my two cases, which I had meanwhile taken upstairs and left open on the chest of drawers in my bedroom. At first I packed some clothes, underclothes and shoes, bearing in mind my old principle of taking only what was essential. Only two jackets, two pairs of trousers and two pairs of shoes, I said to myself, and I got together the right ones, remembering all the time that they must be summer jackets, summer trousers and summer shoes, for in Palma it is already summer in January — or more or less summery, I said, correcting myself. People always make the mistake of taking too many clothes on a journey, half killing themselves with the weight of their luggage, and then, if they have any sense, always wearing the same things when they get there. Now I’ve been travelling on my own account for over thirty years, I told myself, yet I still always take too much at the last moment. But on this journey, which will possibly — indeed almost certainly — be my last, I thought, I won’t take too much. That at least was my intention. But I was already in two minds when it came to deciding whether to take a pair of dark brown or a pair of black trousers with the dark grey ones. In the end I put a dark grey pair, a dark brown pair and a black pair in the case. However, when it came to jackets I was in no doubt: it had to be just a grey jacket and a brown one. If it turns out that I need a so-called dark jacket in Palma I can buy one, an elegant one so to speak, although I was sure that I should have no occasion to wear a so-called elegant jacket. I shan’t be going anywhere where a so-called elegant jacket is called for. And who knows whether I shall visit the Cañellas at all in my condition? I thought. I know what is socially possible and what is socially impossible in Palma and the surrounding parts of the island. Probably the reason why I love the island is that it is full of people who are old and sick. I shall probably spend most of my time in the hotel writing my work. It was naturally not as easy to pack the second case as it had been to pack the first, for I should have needed one twice the size to get in all the things that seemed to me to be absolutely necessary for my work. In the end I stacked the books and articles about Mendelssohn Bartholdy in front of me on the table by the window in two piles; one was made up of those books and articles and other papers which were absolutely necessary, the other of those which were not absolutely necessary. At least I thought I knew which of these books and articles and other papers would be more necessary for my work than others, and in the end I actually had two equal piles side by side on the table in front of me. I packed the absolutely necessary items in the second case and still had room for some of those which were not absolutely necessary; with these I packed the case so full that it would hardly close. After I had packed my toilet articles in it too, I was able to get three books on Mendelssohn Bartholdy in the case containing my clothes. All this was done on the very next day after my sister had departed and had actually not returned. After packing the suitcases I was utterly exhausted. In the meantime I had had a telephone call from the travel agent, whom I had telephoned a few hours earlier to ask if there was still a seat on the plane. He had told me that everything was fixed. He would be sending my travel documents out to Peiskam after the office closed, he had said. My flight from Munich to Palma was scheduled for the evening of the next day, and so I had reason to hope that the journey would go relatively smoothly. As always, I had decided on the journey on the spur of the moment. I had sent for Frau Kienesberger to come early next morning so that I could discuss with her what had to be done in my absence. After that I wanted to pay a visit to my specialist in Wels. Whatever his opinion is now, I’m leaving anyway, I told myself. Now that I had decided to travel I was not in such a poor state as I had been the day before or even that morning. However, in the evening, just as I was sitting in my armchair, feeling fairly reassured by the sight of my two firmly locked suitcases and with the contours of Palma before my mind’s eye, a call came from the travel agency to say that, as it turned out, I couldn’t leave for another two days. At the moment I didn’t mind. I pretended to be disappointed, but in fact I was glad of the delay. A damper has been put on your murderous impetuosity — that’s a good thing, I thought. But at the same time I thought, I only hope that in the next two days I shan’t go off the plan which I’m now so fervently attached to. I hope I shall stick to it. I know myself too well not to realise how vacillating I can be; in two days everything could have changed completely, everything could have turned through a hundred and eighty degrees, possibly more than once. However, I was certain that Palma was the right choice. Now you can take your time seeing the specialist, going to the bank, and winding up everything here. It was like the end of a nightmare. When I rang up my sister and told her,