Correction: A Novel (15 page)

Still there’s nothing so extraordinary for me, I thought, in not being able to sleep, I’ve had to struggle with insomnia all my life, let’s face it, from the beginning of a certain stage of mental development, a certain age, that is, I never again had a real, satisfying, deep sleep in the natural way, in a fully relaxed state of my brain and my body. From a certain point in time onward, probably from the beginning of my present state of mind which has now been going on for two decades and which I call, as Roithamer did,
my English state
of mind
, I haven’t even been able to imagine myself in a fully relaxed sleep, I see it as a privilege reserved for others, I said to myself, for a quite different breed of men, quite a different sort. Some people are so constituted that they can sleep well all their lives, or during the best part of their lives, or at least a tolerably good part of their lives, I thought, while some others, those like me, can’t sleep, they never sleep, they are condemned never to be able to sleep, for even when they are sleeping they are never really relaxed by nature and what they do can’t be called sleeping, these people never sleep as long as they live because all their lives, no matter how long they live, they have never had the advantage of a perfect relaxation of their head and their body. This entire valley is now at this hour filled with people who’re asleep, probably even deeply asleep, in all these houses and huts they are sleeping, and there isn’t a light anywhere, but here in Hoeller’s house there is lots of light and they’re not asleep, I’m sure that even the kids aren’t sleeping now, I thought, even Hoeller’s wife isn’t sleeping, because they’re all disturbed by the light from Hoeller’s workshop and from Hoeller’s garret. They’ve gotten used to the roaring of the Aurach, I thought, but not to the light from the workshop and from Hoeller’s garret. In this unusually disturbing condition they quite naturally can’t sleep, I thought. And for how many more nights will they be unable to sleep, because this unusual situation connected with Roithamer’s death will certainly continue for a time, I thought, Hoeller is likely to be in his workshop and not in bed for days to come and I, unless I’ve picked myself up and gone off altogether, and as I thought this, everything in me was against getting out and away, suddenly I was all for staying put again, I too would be unable to sleep in the nights ahead and I’d be leaving the lights on in Hoeller’s garret, after all I really couldn’t stand it in the pitch-dark in Hoeller’s garret, I thought. And I doubted that Roithamer had ever succeeded in falling asleep in Hoeller’s garret, because Roithamer was another one of those who can never sleep, who can’t ever relax by any means whatever, a man condemned to lifelong sleeplessness despite all those much-discussed and propagated relaxation gospels of our time. Even as a child Roithamer, as he often told me, couldn’t sleep, he fell asleep in the evening and woke up in the morning but to call it sleep, whatever it was between his nodding off and waking up, would be a lie. People made like Roithamer (and me), really
always defenseless characters, beings
, whatever, had no sleep capability, they may fall asleep and wake up again, but they never sleep. They’ve got something forever in their heads and their nerves that won’t let them sleep. All their lives they keep looking for a cure for this unbearable condition and they never find one because there is no cure for this disease, which really is nothing but a mental disease. All those insomniacs are born with this mental disease, they already have this mental disease in childhood and whether they are of the Roithamer type or the Hoeller type, they are incurable. The nights, Roithamer said, are always the worst. Everything is blown up out of all proportion at night, no matter how insignificant, at night it becomes monstrous, the most insignificant, the most harmless thing there is grows monstrous at night and won’t let a man like me or Roithamer or Hoeller sleep. And this persistent thought that one can’t sleep, under any circumstances, makes it worse. Sitting on the old chair by the door I was thinking with what a difference, and yet with what
in
difference, we went our ways, he coming from up in Altensam, me from down in Stocket, Hoeller, whose father had already been a zoological taxidermist in the old Hoeller house, the one Hoeller sold, which has since been torn down by its subsequent owner. How we moved from our different points of departure, our positions, toward one single point, the single acceptable point, death. Now Roithamer was dead, after first catapulting his sister to her death by his idea, and I lived, and Hoeller lived, and how he lived and how I lived. But it is already clear that I too must now be going quickly toward my death, even though I am differently constituted from Roithamer, not with the same bent toward suicide, probably somewhat more of a survivor than Roithamer, for I always seem to find a way out, while Roithamer could no longer find a way out, but one day I too shall no longer find a way out, everyone is destined, one day at some moment which is the crucial moment, to find no further way out, that’s how a man is made.

Thinking it over, one’s life is both the longest possible and the shortest possible, simultaneously, because it can be rethought and reexperienced in a moment, always in that moment in which such a (bold) thought occurs to one. Always wanting the impossible and left with the possible in his minimal existence, the individual always finds himself in the lowest depths of dissatisfaction. Nevertheless he always manages to create another life situation for himself, probably because he really loves life, just as it is. We always crave something other than we can have, than we have, other than what is suitable for us, and so we’re unhappy. When we’re happy we immediately analyze this happiness to death, if we’re like Roithamer andsoforth, and are right back in misery. As I’d heard something that was different from what I’d been hearing till then, I’d gotten up and gone to post myself at the window, to look outside. The darkness was kept at bay by the workshop lights, Hoeller was busy stuffing a huge bird, I couldn’t tell what kind of bird. It was a huge black bird which Hoeller held on his knees, cramming polyurethane into it with a stick. It was eleven o’clock, and inasmuch as Hoeller always got up at four in the morning, all his life, even as a child, he’d always gotten up at four in the morning, because his father also had always been up by four in the morning, everybody in the Aurach valley got up between four and five o’clock in the morning, and so because Hoeller is always up at four in the morning, keeping such late hours, such very long late hours as these in these circumstances, will undermine his health, I thought. From my window up in the garret I kept watching Hoeller down there in his workshop stuffing that huge black bird, how he kept cramming it with more and more stuffing, I thought I’ll watch him from this. excellent vantage point until he’s finished stuffing that bird, and so I stood there motionless for a good half hour until I saw that Hoeller had finished stuffing the bird. Suddenly Hoeller had thrown the stuffed bird down to the floor, he’d jumped up and run off into the back room where I couldn’t see him anymore, but I waited, looking into the workshop, until I could see Hoeller again, he came back and sat down on his chair again and went back to stuffing the bird, now I noticed a huge heap of polyurethane on the floor beside Hoeller’s chair and I thought this huge heap of polyurethane is now going to be crammed into this bird which I’d supposed had already been crammed full long since. By stuffing this bird he is making the night bearable for himself, I thought. At twelve he was still busy stuffing that bird. Off and on I kept wondering what kind of a bird this was, I’d never seen so large and so black a bird before, probably a species never seen in our country at all, and I toyed with the idea of going down to the workshop to ask Hoeller what species of bird this was. It’s certainly possible that this bird is of a so-called exotic species, that one of the hunters living out there on the plain, living in affluence in that fertile country out there, men who take frequent hunting trips to foreign countries and overseas, brought the bird back from South America or Africa, with what incredible energy Hoeller was now stuffing that bird with polyurethane, I couldn’t imagine that so much polyurethane could be crammed inside that bird, yet Hoeller kept stuffing some more of the polyurethane into the bird, suddenly I felt repelled by the process of stuffing polyurethane into the huge black bird, I turned around, looked at the door, but found it impossible to look at the door for more than a second or so because even looking at the door I kept seeing the huge bird Hoeller was stuffing with polyurethane, so I turned back again and looked out the window and into Hoeller’s workshop, if I must see Hoeller stuffing this huge, black, really horrible bird, then I might as well see it in reality and not in my imagination, clearly I could not possibly expect to get any sleep now, full as I was of my impression of Hoeller stuffing that huge black bird with polyurethane, constantly accelerating the speed with which he was doing this job, it was nauseating, still I had to keep looking out the window and into the workshop as if hypnotized. I could no longer turn away, compelled to surrender myself entirely to watching this procedure of Hoeller’s cramming that bird with polyurethane, I was about to vomit when Hoeller suddenly stopped his horrible activity and set the bird down, with its huge claws and long heavy legs, on his worktable. Now he’s going to sew the stuffed bird together, I thought, and sure enough Hoeller had gotten up and disappeared into the back room of the workshop to bring in whatever he needed for sewing the bird up. Or else he’s stopping work now and is leaving the workshop to go to his room and lie down, I thought, but Hoeller was already back with various balls of thread and needles and had sat down at his worktable to continue his work. Why am I watching Hoeller at his work, I thought, why don’t I do something myself, start something that I can keep on doing all night if I like, I thought, no matter what I do, as long as it gets me through the night. But what could I do? There was no manual work of any kind I could have done in Hoeller’s garret, it wasn’t set up for anything like that, and my head was no longer clear enough for any kind of mental work. On the other hand I didn’t permit myself to go down to Hoeller’s workshop, in case I could be of some help there. I certainly could have found something to do in Hoeller’s workshop, even if it was only to sweep up. It took all of my willpower to get myself away from the window and I turned around and took a few steps toward the door, thinking as I did so that my situation was really desperate, that I was possibly already quite seriously insane. Had I gone crazy as a result of moving
precipitately
into Hoeller’s garret? I wondered, but then I immediately thought, what an idea,
that’s
what’s crazy,
such
an idea as that, and I walked over to the desk and took the yellow paper rose out of the top drawer. Something happened to Roithamer at that music festival, I thought, as I held the yellow paper rose up to the light, a change had come upon him during that music festival, even if I don’t know, or can’t know what kind of a change it was. But don’t we always immediately see and seek a meaning in everything we see and think?

How could a man who never fired a shot in his life, suddenly, at a music festival, pick off twenty-four paper roses with twenty-four shots? And then hand twenty-three of these paper roses over, in passing, to an unknown girl, or an unknown young woman, keeping only one yellow rose for himself. And then keep this one yellow paper rose for so many years, taking it along wherever he goes, apparently unable to live without it ever again. By taking the paper rose out of the drawer I’d calmed myself down. I sat down with the paper rose in my hand on the old chair and held the paper rose up to the light. We mustn’t let ourselves go so far as to suspect something remarkable, something mysterious, or significant, in everything and behind everything, this is a yellow paper rose,
the
yellow paper rose, to be precise, which Roithamer shot down at the music festival in Stocket that one time, together with twenty-three others in different colors, that’s all. Everything is what it is, that’s all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later, I thought. We may see only what we do see which is nothing else but that which we see. Again I watched Hoeller from my window in Hoeller’s garret, as he sewed together the huge black bird which he had stuffed to bursting. Suddenly I saw, perhaps my eyes had become adjusted to the lighting down there in Hoeller’s workshop, or else the lighting had suddenly changed, anyway I saw several such huge birds, the back of Hoeller’s workshop was filled with such birds, not all of these great, indeed huge birds were equally large, not all of them were black, but these were absolutely
no local birds
, probably, I thought, these are birds from the collection of some bird fancier, one of those rich bird freaks who can afford to travel to America, to South America or to India, in order to shoot such huge birds and add them to his collection. A huge bird collection, I kept thinking, a huge bird collection, and I slapped my forehead as I thought again and again, a huge bird collection, a huge bird collection! Roithamer had always spoken at length about Hoeller’s work, his procedures in preserving, stuffing andsoforth all kinds of animals, every possible kind of fowl, Roithamer had always profited, so he himself said, from watching Hoeller at work, seeing how those dead creatures were dissected and stuffed and sewed up. For Roithamer, I now thought, these products of nature, stuffed and turned into artifacts, always provided an occasion for various reflections on nature and art and art and nature, to him they were almost the most mysterious products of art because they were only just barely works of art andsoforth, mysterious by virtue of the fact that they had been made into artifacts here in the midst of a natural world still abounding with hundreds and thousands of creatures still purely natural andsoforth, that they had been turned into artifacts by Hoeller, products of nature turned by Hoeller’s hands into products of art here in nature’s own bosom andsoforth. Hoeller turns nature’s products into art products and these artificial creatures seem always more mysterious than the purely natural creatures they once were.