The Lime Works: A Novel (Vintage International) (16 page)

door only halfway? only wide enough, in fact, so that he can stick his head out to talk to me, but not to let me inside … But listen to me, I said to him, says Konrad, if I am disturbing you I shall go back to my room at once. If I am disturbing you … at this point I see, says Konrad, that the professor is already undressed, quite naked, in fact, under his dressing gown, I can see it, and I say: You’re already undressed for the night, I see! then I must be disturbing you, and if so I shall instantly go back to my room! you need only say the word, that you do not wish to be disturbed this late … but if you wouldn’t mind, if I may just once more, I would like to come in to see you for just a few moments, I say to him, I shall leave right away, I don’t even have any idea what time it is, I tell him, I’ve been pacing the floor in my room all this time, with this problem of mine, I’m afraid I’m going crazy … as you know, my dear professor, I haven’t been working for days now, I can’t write at all, not a line, not an idea, nothing … again and again it seems to me, stop, here’s an idea, but no, in reality there’s nothing, I tell him … and so I go about all day long, obsessed with the thought that I can’t think, as I walk back and forth in my room, actually thinking the whole time that I haven’t an idea, not one single idea … because in fact I haven’t had an idea for the longest time, I say … and I wait, and pace the floor, but what I am waiting for is only you, all day long I wait for you to come home … Today you came home two hours later than usual, I tell him, yesterday it was one and a half hours later than usual, actually it was two and a half hours later than usual today … I hear you because my hearing gets keener from one day to the next, I can hear you when you are still out on the street, when you turn the key in the lock of the front door, and when you lock the
door on the inside, then I hear you entering the vestibule, all day long I wait for you to enter the vestibule … Today you must have done your shopping, your errands, you probably paid your bills, went to the post office … once you are inside the vestibule, I anticipate your unlocking the door to your apartment, and when you have unlocked your door, I imagine you entering your room, taking off your coat, your shoes, then you sit down at your desk, perhaps … then you take a bite to eat, begin to write a letter perhaps, a letter to your daughter who lives in France, to your son who lives in Rattenberg … or a business letter … or else you are working on your morphology, perhaps … I seem to hear with increasing keenness how you turn the key in the lock—lately you have been unlocking the door much faster than formerly, in the beginning—then you walk quickly into your room, you pull off your coat … then I imagine you considering whether to lie down on the bed or not, whether to lie down in your clothes or not, lie on the bed without taking off your shoes, perhaps, or else not to lie down on your bed before you go back to your work on your morphology, to lie down … then, when you lie down on your bed, when you have lain down on your bed, you realize the senselessness of your work and the senselessness of your existence … I imagine that this realization of the senselessness of everything must come to you … that you have to earn your living so miserably, to continue your research so miserably, that everyone must earn his living so miserably, must continue his research so miserably … in such growing misery, you are thinking … and that you have no one in the world, after all, Konrad is supposed to have said to the professor … that, whether you sit down at your desk or not, lie down on the bed or not, you are bound to realize the whole
extent of your misfortune in life, a misfortune that seems greater every time you think about it … At this point the professor admits Konrad into the room … and, says Konrad, I go straight to his bed and I say to him, I see that your bed is already made, you have made your bed already, you evidently intended to go to bed already, or perhaps you have already been to bed? and I say to him, please don’t let me get in the way, do lie down if you feel like it, all I want is to pace the floor a bit in your room; as you know, I can no longer do it in my own room … when I pace the floor in my room, I tell him, it seems to me that everyone in the house can hear me doing it, just as you know, I am sure, when I am reading in my room, that I am reading in my room, and when I am thinking in my room, you know that I am thinking in my room, you know that I am writing when I am writing in my room, you know that I am in bed when I am in bed … I believe that all the people in the house know what I am doing … because, you know, these people know it when I am thinking, when I am thinking about my book in my room … which makes it impossible for me to do any thinking in my room, impossible to think about my book in my room, which is why I have been such a mental blank for such a long time now … and if it is impossible for me to think in my room, imagine how terrible it is for me to have to formulate a letter in my room … as a result of all this I have been unable to read for the longest time now, unable to think at all … but in your room, I said, I can still pace the floor … I can walk back and forth in your room, and relax … little by little, and after a while I can relax more deeply, I tell him, and then I can go back to my room … you see, I tell him, I am relaxing already, my whole body is relaxed now, and this
relaxation slowly goes to my brain as well; when I relax in your room it is a simultaneous relaxation of body and brain … actually, I tell him, I need merely enter your room and I feel relaxed already … Isn’t it strange? considering that it has become quite impossible for me to look up anybody, ever … but I set foot in your room, and instantly I feel relaxed … Today, I tell him, you came home so late, those silly errands of yours … all those silly letters you get day after day and have to answer day after day, all your silly people … I get no letters and I answer no letters … and those repulsive colleagues of ours that you have to put up with at your university, that you have had to put up with all these years … all the annoyances that prevent you from coming home earlier … then, as you are turning the key in the lock, I tell him, each time you do it I feel you are saving me from this frightful situation, I tell him, because you know, I always feel as if I were going to suffocate, I tell him … as if I am bound to end my life by suffocating, to suffocate in the end, how grotesque to have to end in suffocation … simply because you had a few extra errands this day, and came home too late … and by the time you got to your room, I would have long since suffocated, Konrad said to the professor, actually I expect every day at the same time that I will suffocate, here I am, suffocating, I tell myself, choking on an absurdity, because you are out, as it might be, as it certainly could turn out, on one of your errands, perhaps taking the long way home, or paying an unusually extended visit to your aunt or something … but then I hear your step outside, I hear you turning the key in the lock … and I say to myself, now I can relax; you can see for yourself how much more relaxed I am since you let me into your room, I tell him, but I do hope I am not disturbing
you, I think I have disturbed you often enough already, Konrad said to the professor, but if I have to be alone one more moment, he said, I always feel ready to suffocate … and then I hear you … What a lovely miniature you have here, on your wall, I tell him, I’ve never noticed these lovely miniatures before … and then I hear you unlocking your apartment door, and locking it again, and I hear you lying down on your bed and sitting down at your desk and getting up again from your desk … and then I pace the floor in my room a hundred times, back and forth, again and again, and I say to myself: now you can go down to the professor’s, at last, and then: no, not yet, not yet! no, not yet! then again, go ahead now, go down, quickly now, this minute … the indecision drives me nearly crazy, this incessant do-I-go-or-don’t-I, might I, but perhaps not … then I think: now! now I can! and in this way an hour has gone by, and I say to myself, but what if the professor is busy with his morphology … you were, in fact, busy with your morphology just now, I tell him, says Konrad, but you were too tired to work, too … you are too tired, I say to him … yet how busy! I say, and I walk over to his desk and I see that the professor has been busy working on his morphology … while I spent an hour wondering whether or not to go down to see him … Well, if I am disturbing you … do tell me if I am disturbing you … you must say that I am disturbing you, if I am disturbing you … that of course I am disturbing you, that I have been disturbing you for some time; I tell him, Konrad says: All these years I have been disturbing you … all these years I have been living in the same house with you … of course I am a harassment to you! … but you see, I tell him, says Konrad, I have been waiting for two hours, four hours, six hours, eight
hours … and still I don’t go down to see you … here you are, I say to myself, waiting all this time, and still not going down to see him! … and then of course I do go down and knock on your door, I go on interminably knocking on your door until you open it and let me in … and let me pace the floor in your room, so that I can gradually begin to relax … and I do relax, and I say: Possibly tonight I shall finally make a bit of headway with my book, even if it’s only the least bit … possibly, I say, but I do say this to myself day after day, every day, I say to myself that today, when the professor gets home, you will go down to him and pace the floor in his room and then you will go back to your own room and get going on writing your book … it is exactly what I still say to myself, as you know, Fro, to this day, that now, I always say to myself, now, this time, I shall begin at last to write my book down … and to the professor I say, Konrad reported, if only I’m not disturbing you … if only I didn’t know how easily people are disturbed, a man who needs his peace, a man like yourself, professor, a man like myself, professor, … whom people disturb when he is longing only to be left alone … but unlike myself, who can no longer stand being alone, I say to the professor, you do want to be alone, and what’s so strange about this is that you have become so old being the way you are, but you do want to be alone, because of course you have to be alone … and you always do tell me when I come in to see you that you want to be alone, I say to him, says Konrad, you tell me that you must be alone, and even when you do not say it, even when it is not you who says it, even when you say nothing at all, I can hear it, I hear you saying that you want to be alone … my dear professor, I tell him, I shall leave you now, I am quite relaxed, it is altogether
thanks to you that I have been able to calm myself like this … though probably even you will soon be unable to help me relax, just as my wife can no longer help me to relax, nobody, nothing can help me, I tell him … thank you, thank you, I say, walking to the door, the professor opens it for me, and I tell him that I did not intend, certainly did not mean to disturb you and I turn around and I hear the professor going back inside his room … how quickly I got back to my own room, I think, it’s astonishing, and I sit down at my desk and get ready to write, but I can’t begin to write … I must be able to write, I think, but I can’t write … and I get up and pace the floor in my room, on and on, just as I do here at the lime works … an unfortunate natural predisposition is what makes me pace the floor in my room all night long, all night and in the morning, when the professor has long since left the house, I keep on pacing back and forth, and I feel afraid of this pacing back and forth, as I still feel afraid of it today, just as I felt afraid of it all that time ago in Brussels, I still fear this pacing back and forth today in the lime works and I pace back and forth and I walk and wait and think, I wait and walk and walk and walk … and walk … To Fro: Konrad said that he and his wife preferred to spend the entire morning, in that unsurpassable, deadly togetherness of theirs, deadly from the moment it began, in mulling over the menu, viz., what Hoeller should bring them to eat from the tavern, Konrad being either too busy with his stepped-up experimental work to go, or too exhausted physically by his work: should they have a meat course or a pasta; or perhaps neither meat nor pasta but fish, instead? and what about soup and a salad as well, both of them prized a salad beyond anything, and he would rather, said Konrad to Fro, do without meat or
fish and even without soup, in fact, but, if at all possible, he did not wish to do without a salad, so they went on for hours mulling over such questions as whether Hoeller would be taking twenty or thirty or even forty minutes to bring the food from the tavern to the lime works, and it was heartbreaking (Fro) how much time and energy they would give to guessing at the possibility that Hoeller might be unusually late, impermissibly late, that is, as a result of running into someone on the way and dawdling over a conversation, instead of Konrad concentrating, as he should, all his available forces upon getting his book written; he would welcome any distraction at all, nothing was too absurd or too trivial or too insignificant to serve as a distraction from his work, his writing, even though he would awaken in the mornings smothered in a horrible miasma of conscience trouble that positively tasted like brain rot and pressed painfully against the back of his head, at the mere thought of writing his book, in fact, he no longer thought of his writing, he is supposed to have told Fro, because as time went on this thought had become the most excruciating torture to him, though he was nevertheless in any case confronted with the problem of how to go about writing his book, regardless of what he was thinking or doing or considering, anything whatever was inescapably connected with his book, with getting it written, darkening his defenseless head with shame (he never explained to Fro in what way shame entered into it). Shall we have sauerkraut or potatoes, or will they have meringues today or even those fluffy beef roulades they both loved so much, and what about apple crumb cake or apple strudel or possibly pot strudel? or bacon-dumplings or pickled meat or spleen soup if not baked-noodle soup, or boiled beef with horseradish,
perhaps? on the other hand, there might be a well-aged venison with cranberry sauce; they wondered at length whether Hoeller might bring them news, political or farming or social news from the tavern, news of a death or a wedding, a baptism, a crime, and how, where, and when something might have happened that even two well-traveled people like themselves might regard as sensational, something that had been kept secret for a long time but could no longer be kept secret, and to what extent the work on the roads had progressed, as well as the so-called shore improvements and the damming of the mountain streams, how cold the lake was, how dark the woods, how dangerous the precipice, whether people were talking about Mrs. Konrad and what they were saying, at the tavern, at the sawmill, in the village, whether the rumors about themselves were still making the rounds (works inspector), just how much people really knew about the Konrads’ affairs, or really did not know, how they felt about Konrad’s not having set foot in the village in such a long time, about his not being seen in the woods for such a long time, or in the sawmill, the tavern, at the bank; whether the market had drawn a good crowd last market-day or not, what people were saying about the new church bells, whether the cost of funerals had gone up, whether the new members of the government had taken hold, whether the deer and the chamois were fewer this year, whether things represented as true were indeed true, whether things that had seemed to be true for years had turned out to be untrue, whether things that had seemed to be in doubt had cleared up, all this and more they wondered about, says Fro, and they kept thinking up more questions, more things worth looking into, for hours on end, distracting themselves with all this nonsense (Fro) so that he