Extinction (45 page)

away a manuscript that she’s examined, I’m invaded by a sense of relief, I thought. I embrace her and we both watch the manuscript go up in flames in her stove. With Maria that’s always a high point and induces a state of elation, I thought. Only Maria is in a position to demonstrate to me that my manuscripts are worthless and deserve to be consigned to the flames. She once accused me of
doing violence to philosophy
, of
sinning against the spirit
. She meant it as a joke, but I took it seriously. I haven’t given up, I told myself. I already have something new in mind. Maybe I’ll call it
Extinction
, I thought. As I write it I’ll try to extinguish everything that comes into my head. Everything I write about in this work will be extinguished, I told myself. I was pleased with the title. It exercised a great fascination over me. I could not remember where I had dreamed it up. I think it was Maria who suggested it to me: she had once called me an expert in
extinction
. I was her
extinction expert
, she said: whatever I set down on paper was automatically
extinguished
. When I get back to Rome I’ll set about writing this new work, but it’ll take me a year, I thought, and I don’t know whether I’ll have the strength to commit myself to it
for a whole year
, to concentrate on
Extinction
to the exclusion of everything else. I’ll write my
Extinction
and discuss everything relating to it with Gambetti, Spadolini, and Zacchi, and of course with Maria, I thought. I’ll
discuss
everything relevant to
Extinction
with them, but they won’t know what I have in mind. I felt an immense longing to be back in Rome. What I’d like most would be to go straight back to Rome with Spadolini, I thought. It pained me to have to deny myself this pleasure. Spadolini’s going back to Rome tomorrow and you’re staying on at Wolfsegg—that’s your life sentence, I thought. Having dinner with Maria, I thought, talking to her about her latest poems—that’s what I should be doing now. Listening to her. Confiding in her. Pouring wine for her. I picked up
Siebenkäs
again, opened it, and switched on the light. I wondered whether I had not been wrong, quite wrong, to give Gambetti this book. I had been right to give him
The Trial
, but not
Siebenkäs
. And instead of
Esch or Anarchy
I should have given him
Schopenhauer Revisited
. Now he’ll have started on
Siebenkäs;
he’ll be well into it, trying to master it. I pictured him in his study, where he could get away from his parents and devote himself to what interested him, namely German literature, and be entirely undisturbed—and all the
time thinking about dismantling the world and blowing it sky-high. Perhaps I’ll suddenly hear an almighty bang, I thought, indicating that Gambetti really has blown the world sky-high, that he’s put his ideas into effect. So far he’s only dreamed of dismantling the world and blowing it sky-high. But one day, I told myself, people like Gambetti, given the chance, put their fantasies into effect. Gambetti’s not just a born
fantasizer
, he’s also a born
realizer of his fantasies
. I’m still waiting for the big bang, I thought, stretching my legs out and listening to Spadolini showering. The floor of the library was covered with thousands of dead flies that had accumulated over the years and never been swept up, because nobody had entered the library. Now that I have the keys I’ll open them all, I thought, but not today—I’m too tired. I’ll do it in the morning, before sunrise. I’ll open all five libraries
forever
, I thought, whereupon I got up, walked to the window, and looked across at the Orangery. Maria would find this a tremendous sight, I thought, the inspiration for more than one poem. The gardeners were still carrying fresh wreaths and bouquets from the Farm to the Orangery. They won’t finish work this evening, I thought; they’ll have to go on throughout the night. The scene was utterly theatrical. Assuming that Spadolini would need at least another half hour for his toilet, I left the library and went down into the hall. It was half past eight, and there was no longer anyone around. I entered the chapel. Our aunt from Titisee had long since retired to her room. I sat down in the very place where she had sat with her young and—I must say—beautiful companion. The crone and the maiden, I thought, the protectress and the protected, and vice versa. I knelt down, again without thinking, then got up and sat in the pew. I reflected that the princes of the Church were all involved in an evil game, treating the Church as a monstrous universal drama in which they played the main parts. All these princes of the Church thrust themselves into the foreground and put on a grand performance. No matter what they say, they know that it is the biggest, the most mendacious show ever staged. Spadolini is always center stage, close to the main actor, the Pope. But not
so
close as to be in danger of dying or being toppled with him. He’s outlived three popes, I thought, and he’ll outlive the present one too, who’s known to be terminally ill, and he’ll go on playing his part with his usual
panache
. Spadolini is completely absorbed in the ecclesiastical
drama. I had at first thought I would have time to go across to the Farm and visit the cowsheds, which I did at this time of day, if at all, when the animals had settled for the night, but then it occurred to me that I must not offend Spadolini by leaving him alone. I had also intended to go down to the village and look for Alexander, but I soon gave up that idea too, as I did not want to expose myself to the gaze of the villagers—not today, not this evening. Once, in Brussels, I had introduced Spadolini and Alexander to each other, intending to get the prince of the Church and the dreamer to converse with each other until they reached agreement. But my experiment failed: I had made a bet with myself, as it were, and I lost. At one moment Spadolini got the better of Alexander, and then Alexander got the better of Spadolini; it was a delight to hear them score points off each other, but the contest ended in a draw. Spadolini often said he would like to meet Alexander again, and Alexander would have liked to see Spadolini again. How unfortunate, I thought, that Spadolini, the prince of the Church, is staying with us at the house, while Alexander, the dreamer, has been exiled to the village. I briefly considered taking Spadolini, when he was ready, down to the village to look for Alexander, but I dropped the idea, as I could not expect Spadolini to go looking for Alexander when he had only just arrived and not had a bite to eat. Spadolini would in any case have rejected the idea out of deference to my sisters, who were now sitting in the drawing room waiting for him, His Excellency from Rome. For a moment it seemed perverse to be sitting in the chapel of all places, where I had once sat with Maria after returning from a walk in the woods. I had met her at Wolfsegg on her way from Paris to Rome, having invited her to stay here during my parents’ absence. When they returned, Maria and I were back in Rome, and my sisters told them a pack of stupid lies. Maria was naturally thrilled by Wolfsegg.
The best air I’ve ever breathed
, she said. I went for two long walks with her across the Hausruck, one of them as far as Haag, from where we returned by train. Johannes picked us up at Lambach. Maria thought Johannes
simple but a nice person
. We spent the evenings in the village, at the Brandl, where the atmosphere was always relaxing, and once we went to Ottnang, to the Gesswagner. Maria became quite talkative and immediately got into conversation with the landlord and his wife, and with all the other guests. This was
unusual for her, as she normally found it difficult to relate to simple people, more so than I did, for I have never found it difficult to make contact, at least not with simple people—
proletarians
are another matter. It transpired that Maria’s childhood had been similar to that of the landlord’s wife, whom I have always found a goodhearted woman. While she was staying with me Maria said,
I like Wolfsegg, but I don’t like your people
. I can still hear her saying this. She could not be persuaded to pay a second visit. It’s not my scene, she said. She wrote nothing while she was at Wolfsegg, or for weeks afterward. Wolfsegg’s not a place for poetry, she said. Not a place for
her
poetry, I reflected as I got up and left the chapel. Spadolini was with my sisters. The cook had been sent to the kitchen to get him some hot soup and roast meat. My brother-in-law sat opposite him, overawed and open-mouthed, never having been in the presence of a genuine archbishop before, a
real excellency
, and during the whole time after I joined them he remained silent. I sat next to Caecilia and drank a glass of wine, then a second, as I listened to Spadolini, who was a past master at initiating and conducting a conversation. He said he felt as though our parents would join us at any moment.
It’s as though your mother were about to enter the room
. It was true that nothing had changed since my parents’ death, at least not visibly, though in fact everything within us had changed. And within Spadolini too, of course. He said he had held my father in high esteem. He was a
noble
character. This was a word that Spadolini, being Italian, could permit himself to use, and he looked around, savoring its effect. He had had a
lifelong friendship
with my father,
a noble friendship
, he said. From anyone else’s lips such an expression would have been insupportable, but from Spadolini’s it sounded superb. He had first met my father at a dinner in Vienna, at the Irish ambassador’s residence in the Gentzgasse, just after the war,
at a time of extreme hardship
, he said. Father had at once struck him as the most unusual of all the guests, a
fine character, a man of perfect breeding
. He was the person he had most enjoyed talking to, and Father had invited him to Wolfsegg there and then.
At the time I was counselor to the nuncio
, said Spadolini. Wolfsegg had fascinated him. He had never seen anything like it in his life—buildings of such Austrian elegance and grandeur, at once grandiose and natural,
such friendly people and such excellent food
. Mother had always treated him
as a son
, he said. Father and
Johannes had visited him in Rome on their way to Palermo, and he had shown them around the city, but all the time he could not help thinking of Wolfsegg and its magnificence. His Italianate pronunciation and turn of phrase amused me and my sisters, not because they seemed ridiculous but because they were so charming. Spadolini has a highly musical manner of speaking, it seems to me. He described Father as a prudent man who was a blessing to his family, who never put on a show, who always acted for the good of his family and was popular wherever he went. Horses were his favorite animals, said Spadolini. Your father was happiest with the animals, in the company of his animals. And hunting, said Spadolini. He had often hunted with Father, though Mother was always scared. Huntsmen are unpredictable, he said. Father was
a real prince
, a true aristocrat. And a man of great intelligence. Highly educated. The father Spadolini saw was different from the one I saw, from the one my sisters saw. Everyone who describes a person sees him differently, I reflected. So many people describing the same person, each looking at him from a different viewpoint, a different angle of vision, produce as many differing views, I told myself. Spadolini’s view of Father is different from ours. It was certainly an unusual view, I thought, an extraordinary view that undoubtedly made Father seem more admirable than Spadolini really believed him to be, even as he was speaking. Father was wiser than others, he said. He had
so many interests
, more than almost any other
man of his class
. Father was
the most reassuring person
, he said, only to add a moment later that he was
the most restless
. He was
a model of decency. A great gentleman. A philosopher. A modest man. A generous man. A reasonable man, a good man, both controlled and popular
. Spadolini spared no encomiastic epithets in describing my father. He had once met him in Cairo, and they had
crawled into the Pyramid of Cheops
, he said, up and up across the wooden planks until they were exhausted. In Alexandria they had sent us a postcard that never arrived. In Rome he had always taken my father to the Via Veneto because my father loved it. Your father loved Rome, he told us. Your father was
such a marvelous man to drink wine with
, he said. Your father was
a philosophical person
, he said, and
highly educated politically
. Basically I thought that everything Spadolini said about Father as he sat eating his supper in our presence was wrong. Everything he says about Father is quite wrong, I thought. I would have
said the exact opposite—that he was neither reasonable nor controlled nor philosophical, nor any of the other things he had just been called. Spadolini had described a father who had never existed, I thought, but whom he now felt he had to invent. Yet although everything Spadolini has said about Father is wrong, I thought, it has an air of authenticity. We often hear the most arrant nonsense spoken about someone, downright lies and falsehoods, but accept it as the unadulterated truth because it is uttered by someone whose words carry conviction. But with me Spadolini’s words carried no conviction. It was quite obvious that his picture of Father was the one he
unshed
to see, not the real picture. Father was not at all like the person that Spadolini had just sketched, I thought. Spadolini’s sketch was an idealization, but not tasteless, I thought, as it was presented with such charm—and with an undertone of grief, which was not inappropriate, as Father had been dead for only two days—as to conceal the underlying tastelessness of the falsification. Spadolini must have been conscious of this, for he was too intelligent not to realize how false his picture of Father really was. Father was certainly decent and reassuring, as Spadolini said, and he was probably also a gentleman, but he was none of the other things Spadolini had credited him with being. Yet it was obvious from my sisters’ faces that they hung on Spadolini’s words as though they represented the pure unvarnished truth. For a long time Spadolini avoided speaking about Mother and dwelled at length on Father. I was obliged to conclude that although Father was not really interesting enough for Spadolini to speak of him at such length, he was a convenient means to divert Spadolini’s mind from Mother, who had been his mistress. Yet Spadolini must have known that as he was speaking of Father we were all waiting to hear what he would say about Mother. He and Father had once gone on a