Correction

by Thomas Bernhard

  Because my remark that Roithamer had probably got the idea of building the Cone from Hoeller’s building his home in the Aurach gorge had brought no reply, whether in agreement or disagreement, for such a long time, from the Hoellers, I felt blocked about saying anything else, yet it was after all impossible to keep sitting in silence at table with the Hoellers, merely eyeing the family room, and anyway I felt that the Hoellers were waiting for me to come up with something, something to say, but I, looking at those death notices on the wall opposite, was not about to come up with another remark for them, it was still possible, I thought, that even after so long a pause Hoeller might have something to say in response to my previous remark or even that Hoeller’s wife, who’d been most attentive toward me, might say something, but what really puzzled me was that the children, who were probably not always so quiet and whom I knew to be not at all tongue-tied, hadn’t a word to say, though they had long since finished eating and drinking and were now sitting there, elbows on the table, poised as if only waiting for their father to give the signal to rise, so they could jump up and run out of the room. The darkness outside was now total, suddenly I heard the roaring of the Aurach again, fatigue couldn’t have been the only reason for Hoeller’s not talking, so I tried again to get a conversation going by making a second remark. Everything’s so very quiet now in Altensam, I said, after the death of our friend Roithamer’s sister and after his own death, nothing but closed blinds, I said, locked gates, everything makes it look like a house of death, the whole valley has been darkened even more under the impact of the two Roithamers’ deaths, wherever you go, that pervasive silence, this speechless wait-and-see attitude of all the people, which simply must be linked with the deaths of the two Roithamers, it was foreseeable, meaning from a certain point in time onward, I said, whereupon they suddenly all listened to me even more attentively than before, and I said that Roithamer’s sister had been doomed, that splendid creature, who simply couldn’t bear the fact of the Cone, that her brother had made his idea come true, to build the Cone for her, meaning for her alone and particularly in the middle of the Kobernausser forest, Roithamer himself had fully realized, when he came back to England after the Cone was finished and presented to his sister, that the perfected Cone could not actually be the greatest, in fact the supreme happiness for her, as he had believed, could have believed, but that it actually meant her death, because there can be no doubt whatsoever that Roithamer’s sister was destroyed by the creation of the perfect Cone, from the moment the Cone was finished, when it was presented to her, as I recapitulated the story for the Hoellers, she was suddenly a different person, at that moment she fell prey to a terminal disease, to this day no one knows what this terminal disease was, people like Roithamer’s sister tend to go suddenly into a decline, all at once at a certain moment in their lives, a moment naturally favorable to such a terminal disease, and they can then be seen slowly sinking deeper into sickness, developing a pathological eccentricity, little by little falling victim to this disease quite in accordance with their nature, because in reality, so I said to the Hoellers, Roithamer’s sister never believed that her brother could make his idea of building the Cone for her come true, she had always considered it a crazy, an unrealizable idea, but then she had underestimated her brother’s abilities and his toughness and his unyielding nature, though she loved her brother above all others, and so she had deceived herself about her own brother, who was closer to her than anybody. Roithamer, I told the Hoellers, was a man who wouldn’t let anything in the world deter him from whatever aim he had once set his mind on, nor was he a dreamer, because he was every inch a scientist, as well as being consistent and incorruptible in every way, he was a natural scientist and the very fact that he taught at an English university made him every inch a realist, I myself, I told the Hoellers, had never in my life met a man with a more down-to-earth head on his shoulders, no character more precise in his thinking and in making his will prevail.

  Furthermore, Roithamer so deeply knew his sister, and never ceased from deeply understanding her anew, that it was unimaginable that he should not have foreseen the effect upon her of his finishing the Cone and presenting the Cone to her. A man of such equally far-ranging and deep vision should not have overlooked this, that perfecting and presenting the Cone to his sister must result in her death. The fact is that Roithamer’s sister had consistently refused to believe even in the planning of the idea of the Cone, not to mention the actual realization and completion of it, had in fact, as the Hoellers knew, always refused to visit the site of the Cone while building was in progress, although her brother had kept inviting her to visit the site, to habituate herself to it, as it were; he had tried to visit the site in the middle of the Kobernausser forest with her several times a year, but he never prevailed upon his sister to come because, I now told the Hoellers, she was afraid, afraid in all kinds of ways, not only with respect to the Cone but afraid for her brother, meaning that she felt a growing fear that was becoming nearly unbearable for her, as I know, the ways in which building the Cone was affecting her brother, inwardly and outwardly, caused her increasing anguish through a growing suspicion that the project would undermine his health and could, in the end, because of everything involved with the Cone, kill him, and now I see, as I said to the Hoellers, that the Cone has in fact destroyed them both, first the sister and shortly thereafter the brother. All this I said while staring fixedly at the two death notices on the wall opposite, and my listeners at the still uncleared table in the Hoeller family room were most attentive. From a certain unforeseeable moment on, young men, mostly those getting on toward thirty-five, tend to push an idea, and they push that idea so far until they have made it a reality and they themselves have been killed by this idea-turned-reality, I said. I see now, I said, that Roithamer’s life, his entire existence, had aimed at nothing but this creation of the Cone, everyone has an idea that kills him in the end, an idea that surfaces inside him and haunts him and that sooner or later—always under extreme tension—wipes him out, destroys him . Natural science or so-called natural science (Roithamer’s words), I told the Hoellers, had served as a preparation for this idea, everything in his life had served only as a preparation for the idea of building the Cone, and then the outward spur for building and realizing the Cone had been Hoeller’s building of his house, on the one hand, I said, looking at those death notices on the wall opposite me, the idea of building deliberately in the Aurach gorge, while on the other hand the idea of building right in the middle of the Kobernausser forest, in the one case to assert oneself at last in the teeth of all reason and all accepted usage here in the Aurach gorge, in the other case the same process by other means, but from the same motive, in the middle of the Kobernausser forest.

  A man has an idea and then, at the critical point sometime in his life, finds another man who, because of his character and because his state of mind answers to that critical turning point in the other man’s life, brings that idea to fulfillment, finally perfects it in reality. Such a man with such an idea Roithamer undoubtedly was and he, Roithamer, just as undoubtedly found Hoeller at the critical point in his life, who made the fulfillment of his idea in reality possible, I said. And in the last analysis Roithamer’s Cone exhibited some striking characteristics of Hoeller’s house, as conversely Hoeller’s house did, of Roithamer’s Cone. The nature of the case was the same in both. But while Roithamer’s Cone had been his destruction, after his idea and his fulfillment of his idea had first, for good measure, killed his sister, Hoeller was still alive, he lived on not only in his idea, as people say about a dead man, a man killed and destroyed like Roithamer by his idea, which he had realized and fulfilled, but Hoeller was living on as an actual living man in his idea and in the realization and the fulfillment of his idea, namely the Hoeller house in the Aurach gorge, and there could be no doubt that Hoeller would go on living for a long time yet because he, Hoeller, unlike Roithamer, was not the kind of man to be killed off and destroyed by his
idea andsoforth, no, Hoeller would ultimately be destroyed, like every man, by something else, not by an idea. While I was looking at the death notices, also at Hoeller’s wife, who was listening to me, and at the death notices above her head, I was thinking that they were expecting me to tell them, even though they were not asking, they were not saying a word, still not saying a word to ask how this disaster could have come about, but they were expecting from me, as one always expects from a person who is believed to have inside knowledge of something as yet unclear to oneself, believed to know the underlying and deepest reasons for it, an explanation of what they don’t know , cannot know, waiting for me now to tell them what I know because they believe that I know something, at least much more than they know, because I’d been with Roithamer longer than anybody and on such an intimate footing, as they know, meaning an intense closeness such as is very often regarded by outsiders as a kind of total absorption in the other man, they were waiting for me to explain to them here and now, sitting with them at their table, what was as yet unclear to them, even if it was not at all clear to them what it was that was unclear to them, waiting for me to solve for them a riddle or various riddles concerning Roithamer which they could not solve, because I was equipped like no one else to judge the worth or worthlessness of the various assumptions or suppositions, because I was, so they thought, even if they did not say so because they clung stubbornly to their silence, while ever more intently staring at me, believing that they had got me not only into their charge but under their control, Roithamer’s best friend who had the key information, so they felt it was time to learn from me more about my friend, who had also been Hoeller’s friend, more than they knew themselves, that is, but for me it was the other way around, after all, I was hoping to find out more about Roithamer from them, especially from Hoeller himself, who must, as I thought, know more than I did at least about Roithamer’s final days, about the last fourteen days in his life, since Hoeller had after all spent those last days, if not always in his company, still always in Roithamer’s vicinity, perhaps Hoeller even was, in the last analysis, Roithamer’s closest confidant, I felt that Hoeller must know crucial things about Roithamer which I did not know, and so we were probably each waiting for the other to say something about Roithamer which he himself hadn’t known, Hoeller waiting to learn something from me which I didn’t know, couldn’t know, while I was waiting for Hoel er to tell me something he didn’t know, couldn’t know, because Hoeller’s friendship, his ties with Roithamer were quite as close as mine, the friendship was probably equally intense in both cases, though the friendship was in each case entirely different in kind, because I’m not Hoeller and Hoeller, conversely, isn’t me. But in the expectation that we, Hoeller and I, would find out something we didn’t know about Roithamer from each other, time passed and soon a whole hour had gone by and Hoeller’s wife had meanwhile risen from the table and taken the empty plates out to the kitchen, the children had followed her out, through the kitchen door we were aware of the dishwashing and the children’s footbaths, while Hoeller and I remained seated at the table treating each other to a copious silence. The thing was, I didn’t want to broach the subject of Hoeller’s having been the one who discovered Roithamer hanging from a tree in the clearing, not yet, the time to speak of it hadn’t quite come, nor did I have any intention to be the first to speak of it, before Hoeller saw fit to broach this delicate and in fact terrible topic. I’d known for a long time, had in fact heard it from one of my hospital visitors, the farmer Pfuster, that Hoeller had found Roithamer in the clearing and had personally cut him down from the tree with his own hands. Roithamer had been missing for some time, he could not be found either at Altensam or at Hoeller’s house for eight days after his sister’s funeral, but both families, the Altensamers and the Hoellers, had assumed that he’d gone back to England without telling anyone, which would have been entirely unlike him, though of course I too was waiting for him there all that time, and without a word from him, despite the fact that we had agreed he would send me word to my Cambridge address every second day, besides, Hoeller should have noticed that Roithamer’s things, the clothes he was wearing on his back, that is, were not in the garret and where could he have gone without his clothes, anyway, it ought to have occurred to Hoeller soon enough that Roithamer must have had some mishap, because it certainly was most peculiar that he had gone away without saying good-bye, to anyone, and then those missing clothes, it’s true the Altensamers for their part had inquired after Roithamer at Hoeller’s but nobody did anything, probably because both families, the Hoellers at the Aurach and the Roithamers up at Altensam, had assumed, after all, that Roithamer had long since gone off to England, until Hoeller went once more to Altensam to ask if they knew anything of Roithamer’s whereabouts, and this time he, Hoeller, had found Roithamer in the clearing between Stocket and Altensam. Not a word from Hoeller about the fact that he personally had found him, nor did I bring it up, since my arrival that afternoon I had several times avoided pronouncing the word clearing, in fact, even though I needed the word clearing several times if I was to make myself understood in a matter I had mentioned. But everyone knows of course that it’s a shock to come upon a hanged man, and in this case it was, naturally, a terrible shock. While I felt I had a right to find out more about our friend’s last days from Hoeller, Hoeller expected to find out more about Roithamer from me, and since both of us kept waiting the whole time for the other to say something, naturally something about our friend Roithamer, we said nothing at all the whole time. I only kept wondering what Hoeller could be thinking about, while Hoeller probably was wondering what I could be thinking about, but in each case it had to be something to do with Roithamer, what else. That this was where he had spent his evenings and, as Hoeller told me, often the whole night, in this room, which was built by Hoeller quite in the style of the old traditional Aurach valley rooms, the floors were made of well-seasoned larch wood planks, so that it was always a pleasure to look at the floor, and Roithamer had often sat here alone till dawn, only listening to the torrential roar of the Aurach, withholding himself from scientific paperwork, so as not to slip into taking notes here as well, where the atmosphere was just as favorable to his ideas and his scientific work as it was upstairs in Hoeller’s garret, and possibly go on to doing more than taking notes, so that he would succumb to his scientific, his intellectual pursuits even down here in Hoeller’s family room which, unlike Hoeller’s garret which served Roithamer’s intellectual purposes, was meant to serve only eating and drinking purposes, it was enough that he let his intellectual work consume him utterly up in the garret, that he daily exhausted himself mentally up there, down here he had been able to relax, sharing food and drink with the Hoellers, and the children were always sure to divert him, everyone knows that he got along well with the Hoeller children, he knew all their ways, unlike other brain workers who have no idea how to behave with children, Roithamer had excellent rapport with children, as befitted his character, he had been able to spend hours with the Hoeller children in the Hoeller family room, playing with them, telling them stories, fairy tales he’d made up himself, that came to him in the telling, so that their spontaneity made them extraordinarily effective, when the children had to go wash up in the kitchen, or to bed, they always begged and pleaded to be allowed to stay, as all children do, though they could not prevail against the Hoeller child-raising routine, so then Roithamer was left alone with Hoeller at the table and they either fell into conversation or else they did not fall into conversation, it was only when such talk, very often of the simplest descriptive kind, or else of a philosophical kind, came about in the most spontaneous way that the two men left alone in the room, Hoeller and Roithamer, continued it. Roithamer had often told me about these conversations. All our talks were always such as would come naturally to us, Roithamer said, and so they thoroughly suited both him, Roithamer, and Hoeller too. Roithamer spoke mostly of England and of his studies and about the things he knew of Altensam, and
most recently, of course, he spoke of his preoccupation with the Cone, Hoeller spoke of his work as a taxidermist, he was the only one for hundreds of kilometers around, and about all the noteworthy occurrences in the villages as well as, of course, about the building of his house. He, Roithamer, had kept asking Hoeller, as I know, Why in the Aurach gorge, of all places? and he, Hoeller, as I also know, to Roithamer: Why in the middle of the Kobernausser forest, of all places? These questions never were answered. All that Hoeller had to go on with respect to the middle of the Kobernausser forest was his intuition, it seems to me, just as Roithamer had only his intuition with respect to the Aurach gorge question, just as I have my intuition about it. But Hoeller’s building of his house was not, according to Hoeller himself, comparable to Roithamer’s building of the Cone, to build such a house as his in the Aurach gorge was simple compared with building such a cone in the middle of the Kobernausser forest, which was extremely difficult, a simple head like his own (Hoeller’s) would do for building the house in the Aurach gorge while for building the Cone a scientific head like Roithamer’s was needed. He, Hoeller, had seen the Cone only once after it was ready, he didn’t say, as I and Roithamer did, finished (in the sense of perfected), Hoeller always spoke of it as being done. While the Cone was under construction, Hoeller had often driven with Roithamer into the Kobernausser forest to see how the construction was progressing, to give his expert opinion as well, for after Hoeller’s achievement of his own building project Roithamer naturally regarded him as an expert, the only building expert for him, since basically Roithamer had not engaged anyone else but Hoeller as expert toward the realization of his, Roithamer’s, building plans, considering as he did the so-called building experts to be no better than charlatans, incompetents one and all, and perverse exploiters of their helpless clients. He accused all the professional builders of messing up and destroying the surface of the earth. Those so-called architects (how he hated the term! as I have mentioned) and all the builders and their minions nowadays do nothing but wreck and ruin the face of the earth, every new building they put up is another crime they commit, a building crime against humanity, he once cried out with much feeling: every building put up by builders these days is a crime! And all these crimes can be committed with ease, in fact these criminal builders are actually being encouraged and challenged especially by the governments and their administrators to cover the earth with their perverse cultural filth and to do it in a manner and with a speed that will have the whole surface of the globe choked with these building abominations and building crimes. Then, when the whole world has been most horribly and tastelessly and criminally cluttered up by them, it will be too late, the face of the earth will be dead. We are helpless against the destruction of our global surface by the architects! he once exclaimed. If I had assumed that Hoeller and I, once we were alone, left to ourselves, that is, after Hoeller’s wife had left the room and taken the children into the kitchen, would soon fall to talking, the continuing silence now that Hoeller’s wife had left the room with the children and gone into the kitchen gradually increased my uneasiness, suddenly it was no longer enough to just sit and contemplate the room, to keep me there, yet I couldn’t go back up to the garret so soon after supper, it was barely half-past five, of course I could have gone up to the garret, no one would have interfered, but I really couldn’t on my first evening in the house. The silence between Hoeller and me was probably owing to Hoeller’s expectation that I would ask him about his finding Roithamer in the clearing and cutting him down from the tree, because he probably had nothing else in his head, he’d been haunted by it for weeks now, mostly while finding refuge in his work, in his workshop, or busy with his chores behind the house, the kind we see done all the time behind the houses of the Aurach valley, sawing wood, chopping wood, piling logs andsoforth, all of which probably enabled him to bear up better than the inactivity to which the fact of Roithamer’s suicide had undoubtedly driven him, but he had been countering this inactivity resulting from the fact of Roithamer’s suicide and Hoeller’s finding the body in the clearing by keeping himself occupied with constant work, so that he could bear it more easily, as anyone can bear a catastrophe, once it has occurred, by at least seeming to avoid it through keeping busy, no matter which work routine he forces himself into, Hoeller had more ways of finding work in his house than anyone, which is why he got out of bed very early every day, mostly around four in the morning, after this gruesome and truly shattering experience, because he could not shake it off even at night, those endless sleepless nights afterward had weakened him, as anyone could see at once, Hoeller had told me on my arrival that he never spent a peaceful night in his bed, not for a minute, most of the time he paced the floor in the bedroom they all shared, so that the children’s sleep was also disturbed by his restless pacing, he would spend half the night staring through the window, down at the raging Aurach, probably harboring terrible thoughts, his wife said, a man like Hoeller, his wife said, could get over such an experience, survive its aftermath, only with the utmost effort, she felt free to express herself like this only because I understood her husband better than anyone. But left to himself and with time on his hands he was the image of despair even when she and the children were present, she felt justified in hoping, she said, that my visit would help her husband to recover gradually from the shock of Roithamer’s suicide, especially the fact that her husband had found Roithamer in the clearing and had to cut him down from the tree, she hoped my presence would have a healing effect on his depression caused by that shock. I must say that he gave me the impression of a broken man, as he sat at the table with me, staring down at it. It is my duty, I thought, to speak to him now, to say something, anything, to take his mind off Roithamer’s suicide and everything involved with that suicide. But what I suddenly came up with was how we, Hoeller, Roithamer and I, used to go to school together, first Roithamer,. coming down from Altensam, picked up Hoeller, then me, and the three of us walked together to our grade school in Stocket, in winter with a piece of firewood tied to our leather satchels, every pupil had to bring a piece of firewood to school every day, the children of affluent or rich parents, like Roithamer of Altensam, a piece of hardwood, the poorer and poorest a piece of pine or softwood each, with these pieces of wood brought to school by every pupil the old tile stoves kept the school warm, I said. I looked down at the table, then up at the door opposite me, alternately at the two death notices and then again at Hoeller, and I was determined to continue with what I was saying even though I instantly felt and therefore knew that I should have stopped this recital, that I must not go on with it, but I couldn’t stop, it all seemed too significant for me to stop now that I had begun to speak at last, besides I was suddenly aware of the impact on Hoeller of what I was saying, he looked as if he already knew where my reminiscence, this story of our childhood, was going to take us, it was too late for me to stop, and so I said, quite calmly outwardly but inwardly in the greatest excitement, that the most conspicuous thing about the three of us walking to school together was our taciturnity, and again I spoke of the firewood we always brought to school in winter, so that the school could be heated with our firewood, the memory of this firewood brought to school by the pupils seemed to me most significant for what I had to say, and I asked several times whether he, Hoeller, also remembered how each of us had always had to bring a piece of firewood to school in the wintertime, and how we always used to make a fire in the old tile stoves of the old grade school with our wood, the rich kids, I reiterated, had to bring hardwood, the poorer ones and the poorest could bring softwood, and did he remember that I and he both had always brought softwood, because it was all we were supposed to bring, while Roithamer, as I recall, had to bring not one but actually two pieces of hardwood. Where this order came from, I couldn’t remember, probably from the principal’s office, but it could have come from the city administration of schools, in any case it was based upon absolutely correct information. You and me one piece of pine or softwo
od each, I said, Roithamer two pieces of hardwood. And I continued my description of our way to school, going to school together had of course been the basis for our friendship, I said, which had become a friendship for life, even though we had often lived for a long time very far apart, our friendship had never been affected by that, regardless of all the ups and downs of history we had already lived through, for example all through the war; on the contrary, the friendship that bound the three of us had deepened from year to year and was, I actually said this too, because I suddenly felt that I must get it all said after that long and finally tormenting silence, I had to get everything said all at once, it was the most beautiful of friendships. And I let myself go so far as to state that such friendships as ours had been, for the three of us, endured beyond death itself. The minute I made this statement I felt embarrassed by it, and Hoeller noticed how painfully embarrassed I was to have come out with such a statement even though it was probably quite a natural thought in itself, and so, to put this embarrassment behind me as quickly as possible, I tried to say a great deal quickly, moving purposefully toward my point, suddenly I’d found a way to make up for that overlong silence between us earlier on. It was as though that unbroken silence at table, in the presence of Hoeller s wife and Hoeller’s children, had been necessary for what I could now say with all the more vehemence and yet vividly as well. Suddenly I no longer had to hold back anything. I said, putting off a little what I’d primarily meant to say, that my finest memory, and probably Hoeller’s as well, and Roithamer’s too, was my memory of our walks to school together, it was on our way to school that we had our most intense experiences, I said, when we think of everything on that way to school over the rocks and through the woods, along the Aurach, past the mine workers’ cottages and on past Stocket, that is, right through the village, where we noticed all sorts of things, things that would determine our lives, rich in meanings, already determining the whole shape of our future and in fact already controlling it, since actually everything we are today, everything we see and observe and _ encounter on its way toward us, is influenced by what we saw and observed on our way to school then, if it isn’t altogether made up of it, as I actually asserted to Hoeller, after all our way to school was not simply a way to school, I said, since, to begin with, we were scared on our way to school, it was an extremely dangerous way to school, dangerous because it led only over rocks and through dense woods, along the Aurach which was dangerous all along the way, and most of the time on our way to school we were frightened, too, I identified our way to school as my way through life, because our way to school was from beginning to end comparable, with all its peculiarities, occurrences, possibilities and impossibilities, to the course of my own life and probably also the course of Hoeller’s life, since the course of our life was after all also always a dangerous course, on which we are bound to be frightened always, with all its occurrences, peculiarities, possibilities and impossibilities to be faced by us day after day as we go over rocks and through woods, I said, my childhood is always connected for me with this walk to school and nothing in my childhood exists apart from it, there we had all our experiences, the kind we’d have later on again and again, everything that happened later had in some way already happened on this walk of ours to school, this fear that we often feel today we already felt on our walk to school, these thoughts, closely attached to that fear, they keep coming today, though differently, yet always referring back to the thoughts we had on our walk to school, our way to school, just like our way through life, has always been a Via Dolorosa to us, a way of suffering, yet it was always also a way to every possible discovery and to utmost happiness, indescribable happiness, I said, did he, Hoeller, also remember our way to school so well, did he remember many thousands and hundreds of thousands of details, sensations, perceptions, feelings, intimations of feelings, those earliest important beginnings of thought on our way to school, for it was then we began to think as we still think today, the kind of precise thinking which has since then become the mechanism of our adult intelligence, I could remember those thousands, hundreds of thousands of weather conditions on our walk to school, abrupt shifts in the weather, I felt them suddenly take place, transforming our way to school from one minute to the next and thereby transforming us inside from one minute to the next, and the incessant changing of colors in the woods and in the Aurach as it tumbled headlong from the woods down to the plain, everything on our way to school had always been changes of color and of temperatures and of our moods, that muggy atmosphere in the summertime that sickened us on our way to school so that we came to be horribly sick later in school; or the cold in winter that we could cope with only by attacking it all along the way to school, we had to counterattack the cold, stomping all bundled up and scared through the deep, the deepest snow, running through the Aurach gorge where the snow was not quite so high, from one clump of ice to the next, and in school we felt as though we had lost our minds through the effort of making our way to school so that we no longer had the strength to keep up with the lessons. Did he, Hoeller, remember the young teacher who always appeared in a black dress buttoned high to the neck, whom we liked to listen to and whom we loved because she behaved considerately toward us, she was always considerate of us and therefore of our conditions and circumstances, when as a rule people and especially teachers are never considerate, I never again had a teacher who was in the least considerate of me, I said, but this teacher was considerate in every way, took everything about us into consideration, all my life long I never forgot this considerateness in the midst of so much ruthlessness, at the mercy of which life or anyway existence, all human existence, finds itself. Our way to school took its course just as our subsequent life did, I said, with all its passages through darkness, back to light, with all its habits and unexpected coincidences, our way through life like our way to school kept being subjected to abrupt changes of weather, kept following the course of a torrential river always to be feared, for as we always lived in fear on our way to school, fear of falling into the raging Aurach among others, so on our way through life we always lived in extreme fear of falling into this river where we lived, always terrified of this river which is invisible but always torrential and always deadly. However, I said to Hoeller, while we were always suitably dressed for our way to school, we weren’t always suitably dressed for our way through life, and I said that, of the three of us, Roithamer had the longest way to go, that he, Hoeller, had the second longest way to go, and I had the shortest way to school, Roithamer had had to clamber down those rock-faces from Altensam all alone on his way to Hoeller, the two of you, I said, Roithamer and you then came to me in Stocket and from Stocket all three of us then went on together to school. So by the time Roithamer met you, I said to Hoeller, he’d already experienced quite a lot, and the two of you had been through quite a lot together by the time you picked me up, all things considered, Roithamer always had the longest way to school, seven kilometers, Hoeller had five kilometers to go, I had three, of course the Altensamers up there could have put some sort of vehicle at Roithamer’s disposal to take him to school, but it was never customary for the Altensamers to put a vehicle at the disposal of their school-age children, and I said that the three other Roithamer children were at boarding school, our Roithamer had not been sent to boarding school, by their deliberate choice Roithamer was the only one not to be sent to boarding school, the others had spent their entire childhood and adolescence in the cities, in the city boarding schools, while Roithamer attended the village school in Stocket, at his own request, as I know and in accordance with his father’s wish. This fact was crucial for Roithamer’s life, I said. Then, later on, I said to Hoeller, the others returned from the cities and stayed in Altensam, where they are still today, while Roithamer left home just when they returned, and this departure at the right moment was decisive for Roithamer’s whole development, he even attended preparatory school in this area, in Gmunden, the county seat, but never went to a boarding school, nor wa
s he forcibly sent to a boarding school, Roithamer’s wishes with regard to his so-called schooling were all granted by his parents, and especially by his father, he was not required to enter a boarding school, in contrast to his siblings, all of whom, including his sister, were eager from the first to go to boarding school, they had left Altensam prematurely, I said to Hoeller, only to return, to return, that is, as complete failures, while Roithamer, our friend, left Altensam only at the right moment, the moment of their return, that is, and then went directly to England, which had always fascinated him, and where he gradually, but with the greatest assurance, became the man we knew, I am not classifying Roithamer at this point, because no classification would hold one hundred percent for him in any case, but my remark about Roithamer’s personality certainly showed that I hold him in the highest esteem, as Hoeller’s reaction proved. In England Roithamer became the man we admired, I said, the man whom, as his friends, we still admire today, as a scientist, I said, and as a personality, I had managed at the last possible moment to switch from the word “man” which I already had in mind to the less embarrassing word