Correction: A Novel (11 page)

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