Correction: A Novel (14 page)

idleness,
perfect idleness
that I needed, to put myself into a state in which I could gradually become more and more relaxed, I thought, while hearing Hoeller down there in his workroom, his preservatory, busily filing and honing and sawing away, I had become so accustomed to the roaring of the Aurach that I could hear Hoeller at work all the way up here in my garret, from the various sounds coming up from Hoeller’s workroom I was able to
imagine
the tasks he had just finished, I felt that Hoeller was a man who, just like myself at this moment, was wholly under the spell of Roithamer’s suicide, he too was trying to distract himself by means of activity or inactivity from the fact that Roithamer, our friend, had killed himself, perhaps it would have been better had I not reminded Hoeller, and thereby myself, in such exact detail of our old teacher’s suicide, of the horrible discovery of his corpse in our classroom, anyway it was all wrong to have brought up our walks to school together and everything connected with those walks, to have spoken in my insistent way only of miseries and horrors which after all precipitated Hoeller as well as myself into disastrously sickening recollections from which we now both found it hard to escape, Hoeller is going through the same thing as I am, I thought, as I stood by the window, he’s also trying, so late at night, to cope with his problems and simply can’t cope with his problems, instead of making it easier for him, all I have done with my appearance and my subsequent by-no-means cheering presence is to have disturbed him as I should never have done, just as I have disturbed myself in the same inadmissible fashion, instead of easing my mind, there’s a great deal I should never have done or said,
never have suggested
, it is my suggestions above all, my habit of suggesting everything without explicit statement, which tends to disturb my interlocutor, or at least my listener, instantly makes him uneasy, as I’d made Hoeller instantly uneasy with my tactic of suggestion, possibly made all the Hoellers uneasy during our meal together, although I was as silent as they were, whether I was silent because of them or they because of me I don’t know, that it may have been wrong, I thought, possibly, for me to have stayed on after Hoeller’s wife and the children left the room, to keep sitting there and do my worst in irritating Hoeller. Most of all, to be quite honest with myself, I could have spared myself
forcing
Hoeller to give his description, his account of how
he discovered Roithamer in the
clearing
, because Hoeller wouldn’t have said anything about it of his own accord so soon, but I’d wanted to hear his story
now
and I forced it out of him without saying a word, by my silence, it’s a way I have which I myself find distasteful, of forcing people who are with me, now and then, to statements or accounts or even more descriptions which at the very least create an uneasiness, yet I drive them to make statements and give accounts which cause the speakers to become extremely upset mentally and emotionally, hard to calm down afterward, just as I tend to drive myself into an upset mental and emotional state. This characteristic relentlessness of mine is rooted in my extremely complicated nature which is always striving toward simplicity but by that very effort keeps moving more and more and further and further away from simplicity, dealing with others as it does with myself, capable only of relentlessness and thereby driven very quickly to exhaustion. It may be possible to transform by sheer willpower everything which is at the moment undoubtedly harmful to me in Hoeller’s garret—and I suddenly felt almost everything here to be harmful to me, everything in Hoeller’s garret suddenly had a destructive effect on me, not to say a deadly effect—possible to transform all these harmful and destructive, not to say deadly, influences into something useful, useful to me. The willpower to turn a dangerous situation, a situation of absolute danger, which is how I suddenly had to regard the garret, into a situation that might be useful at least for my constitution, the willpower, meaning the intellectual power and the physical power as well. Suppose I asked Hoeller to let me work in his workroom, to give me something to do, no matter what, because I believe that at the moment any physical activity would be better for me than mental activity, just now I dread mental activity more than anything, yet what was I intending to do in Hoeller’s garret if it wasn’t mental activity, working on Roithamer’s legacy was naturally a mental activity, one which in fact is likely to tax me beyond my mental and physical capacities, to let me bevel or saw or cut or pack or unpack things or paste them on or carry them in or out of the workroom or let me chop wood or saw wood or pile up wood behind the house or plant or dig or improve something in the garden. In my present vulnerable physical and therefore mental condition I cannot allow myself, permit myself, a mental activity, especially not the infinitely exacerbated kind of mental activity I can expect in occupying myself with Roithamer’s legacy now, leading to cerebral exhaustion and so also to physical exhaustion. But then again I thought that it might be precisely such mental work as my work with Roithamer’s legacy which could restore me, regenerate, normalize, my head and my body. Absorbed in these considerations I’d slowed down my pacing the floor in Hoeller’s garret. Then, standing by the window and looking down at the river as the light from Hoeller’s workroom windows fell brightly on the water, I was thinking that the greatest effort of all would probably be required for working on that part of Roithamer’s legacy which dealt primarily with Altensam and with everything connected with Altensam, with special emphasis on the building of the Cone for his sister, a radical statement from beginning to end, which never for a moment neglected the philosophical aspects involved, it described Altensam as the making of Roithamer, the source of all he ever was and still is in what remains of him, his legacy, a most extraordinary personality entirely devoted to his scientific work, yet on the other hand it also described Altensam as the cause of his destruction, how Altensam simultaneously and with equal force destroyed him, how it killed and annihilated him. This manuscript of Roithamer’s which, with its corrected version, makes up Roithamer’s testament, as aforesaid, gives a full account of Roithamer’s conscious existence as well as a full account of the destruction of Roithamer’s conscious existence, and so it represents Roithamer’s entire life in the form of this verifiable manuscript, which I placed at once, before I did anything else, in the desk drawer, when I entered Hoeller’s garret, for fear that I might otherwise go
immediately to
work on it, a self-destructive thing to do, sure to have a devastating effect on
me or at least on my mental state
, as shown by this manuscript which is simultaneously, in consequence of his total correction of it, a destroyed manuscript, it is his own destruction of his manuscript which makes it the only authentic manuscript. While still at the hospital I’d started, timidly at first but soon driven by mounting curiosity and uncontrollable interest, to glance over this manuscript and its corrected version, quite superficially, in full and clear awareness that I must first concern myself with the
original
and only thereafter with the
corrected
version and only then with
the original and
corrected
version, this idea as my basic condition for working on his manuscript at all I’d had at my first contact with the manuscript, from the first it seemed a death-defying undertaking to let myself in for Roithamer’s manuscript at all, and thinking about it, as I again paced the floor of Hoeller’s garret, one moment I’d feel capable of working on it, then again I’d feel incapable, optimistic one minute, apprehensive the next, alternating between feeling fully capable of working on the manuscript not to mention Roithamer’s other posthumous papers, and feeling definitely not up to such work, especially after so grave an illness by no means overcome as yet, how could I let myself in for such a backbreaking task, besides, what if I wasn’t the right person for it? Roithamer’s show of confidence in me by leaving me his papers moved me deeply, of course, but I also knew full well what a terrible business this was. More than anything else Roithamer needed freedom of thought, but while he had to be free to think anything whatever, he had to speak only the truth, something he, like any other thinking man, found most difficult to do, but his life had actually been based on this tacit understanding with everyone else, how easy it is to say of one man or another that he’s been a man of intelligence or even of intellect, but actually to be such a man of intelligence or intellect is the hardest thing in the world, and to be a man of intelligence or intellect all the time is impossible, Roithamer said. Just a few cursory inspections of Roithamer’s papers had given me a clear idea what sort of task I was taking on in accepting Roithamer’s literary legacy, yet I still had the courage to address myself to it again, time after time, in giving me this task he may well have meant to destroy me, which is why I lived in constant fear, actually, of getting involved with this legacy of his, I fully expected to be annihilated or at least destroyed or at the very least to become permanently disturbed by it, irreparably chronically disturbed. On the other hand I could understand Roithamer’s line of thought, first making an end of himself and his sister, then of me, by leaving me his papers, what else could he have meant by making me his literary executor than to destroy me, because I was so entirely part of his development, as he felt. Such thoughts, which I had as I continued pacing the floor this way and that, hither and yon, in the garret, thoughts suddenly in my mind, even against everything in my mind, actually did have a devastating and destructive effect on me, all these thoughts connected with Roithamer, and I was suddenly made up of nothing but such thoughts, I’d already spoken of this downstairs at Hoeller’s table to Hoeller, of my fear that working on our friend’s literary remains would disturb me for a long time, and that it would get in the way of my own work which I had totally neglected all this while, though during my hospitalization I had always thought that, once I was released and had recovered or at least halfway recovered, I would immediately resume my work which I had abandoned months ago, before Christmas in Cambridge, yet suddenly the fact that Roithamer had willed me his papers, incidentally by an unequivocal proviso tacked on at the end of the slip of paper which he designated as his will and which he had probably written just before his suicide, probably when he was already in the clearing, this fact that Roithamer’s will ended with the proviso that his literary remains were to go to me, because by means of this unequivocal proviso, presented in a fashion as if to say that this was the most important concern in his head at the last moment, he had taken complete possession of me, so that it had now become my foremost duty.

But what if this is my chance to free myself of this legacy? I thought, having meanwhile taken my jacket out of the closet and put it on, why don’t I just leave this whole mass of papers I’ve brought with me, the whole legacy, right here in Hoeller’s garret,
leave it here, leave it here
, I kept thinking while pacing the floor and wondering whether I was disturbing the Hoeller family with my endless pacing back and forth, disturbing the children in their sleep, who would know that I’d quite simply left the Roithamer legacy here and gone away again, perhaps up into the mountains after all, I could take refuge somewhere as high up as it was possible to go, I thought, I could leave everything behind me for once and think of nothing but my own health, all I had to do was stack up the papers neatly and leave them here and work on them later, at the right time, suddenly I felt that the moment for working on Roithamer’s papers hadn’t come yet, I’ve been too hasty, I kept thinking, I’ve acted overhastily, too precipitately, this needs time, preparation, it can’t be done in such a rush, so thoughtlessly as I’ve gone about it, better put it off for a year or two, or at least a few months or a few weeks, after I’ve had a chance to pull myself together and only then, when I’m really fit for the job, I can try to come to terms with Roithamer’s legacy. I’ve always had this unfortunate tendency to rush things, Roithamer hated rushing things and the tendency to rush things more than anything, everything in the world is done in a great rush nowadays, he’d say, everything is rushed, too rushed, every time, nothing is allowed to develop at its own natural pace, it’s all done in a mad precipitate brainless rush wherever you look, people simply rush into action and the results are sheerest chaos. The universal chaos in the world today, especially in recent times, is chiefly the result of every kind of
precipitate action
taken without first carefully
considering
what should be done, precipitateness and rushing things are the most terrible characteristics of our world today, Roithamer said, and this is why everything is so chaotic.

In every area of life there’s nothing but chaos. Wherever we turn there’s chaos, in the sciences there’s chaos, in politics, it’s chaos, whatever we do, it’s all chaotic, wherever we look, purely chaotic conditions, chaotic conditions are all we ever have to deal with. Because everything is being done precipitately, in a rush. In such a time of precipitateness and overhastiness and the consequent chaotic conditions a thinking man should
never act precipitately or overhastily
in anything that concerns him, but every single one of us constantly acts precipitately, overhastily, in every way.

What a terrible situation I’ve let myself in for by accepting Hoeller’s invitation and moving into Hoeller’s garret, I thought. I looked down at Hoeller’s workshop windows and I thought, there he is working away on and on because he can’t sleep, and then I thought that he must be thinking that I can’t sleep either, which is why I keep pacing the floor of the garret. People are always having to face things that upset and disturb them, mostly it’s at the very moment when they suppose themselves to be at peace, that they’re catapulted into turmoil, when they feel well balanced, they’re thrown out of balance. All we ever have is an illusion of peace, because at the very moment at which peace could enter into us,
could could could
, I say, we’re right back in the worst turmoil. So Hoeller down there in his workshop, his preservatory, may well be thinking that I’m in the greatest turmoil up here in the garret, because all the indications down in the workshop must be pointing that way, just as I was bound to think of Hoeller down there being in the greatest turmoil, because up here in the garret all the indications pointed to it. Of course I could leave the attic and go down and walk into the workshop and ask Hoeller why he was still working at an hour when nobody was up and at work any longer, I could probe into the reasons for his present condition, his work obsession, and I could in turn let Hoeller probe into my reasons for pacing the floor of the garret, marching up and down and back and forth as I was doing instead of going to bed. But I controlled myself and sat down on the old chair beside the door and stared at the floor. One lamp is enough, I thought, and I got up and turned off the ceiling light, with only the desk lamp on, I thought, the garret won’t be so brightly lit, and that may help to calm me down, I tried everything I could think of to calm myself down, but because I was so intent, working so hard without a letup at considering what to do in order to be able to sleep, to be able to go to bed in hopes of getting to sleep, I was undermining my own effort to relax, on the contrary, these efforts of mine kept driving me deeper into sleeplessness.