Correction: A Novel (6 page)

The books that mattered the most to him don’t take long to list, I knew them from his constantly reiterated remarks in which he established a connection with these books, they were always basically the same: Montaigne, Novalis, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Ernst Bloch, and, because he thought that he recognized himself in them, the writings of Wittgenstein, a native of the same region as Roithamer and always a keen observer of Roithamer’s regional landscape, they were always just the same few books of philosophy and poetry which, with his name inscribed on the flyleaf, he always carried about with him no matter where he had been staying or working, so few that he had always been able to slip them into his traveling bag and take them along, they always had to be within reach. Here in Hoeller’s garret they had been left, after his death, where he himself had placed them, on the shelf above his desk, so now they belonged there forever, in this place that had been Roithamer’s actual study, his idea- and thought-chamber, where in his lifetime no one but myself and Hoeller had ever been permitted to set foot, Roithamer had made sure, in a secret understanding with Hoeller, that no one but himself ever set foot in this room, and in Roithamer’s absence only Hoeller, not even me, no one except for Hoeller, who had to enter the garret if only to air it out regularly, but under strict orders to change nothing in the garret, to leave everything as Roithamer had seen fit to leave it, and always in the best possible order, everything in Hoeller’s garret had its own fixed place, closely corresponding to Roithamer’s character, his peculiarities, and clearly explicable out of his own special view of the world, Roithamer would instantly have noticed the slightest change in Hoeller’s garret the moment he set foot in it after his return from England, or from South Tyrol, where he had often gone directly from England to visit a close friend, a musicologist who was also, as Roithamer always emphasized, a theoretical mathematician at the University of Trent who, when he was not teaching at Trent, had lived and worked on an isolated family estate, over a thousand meters above sea level, near Rovereto, where for many years he had devoted himself entirely to his work, so Roithamer said, having made himself the object of his extremely interesting investigations, or when Roithamer returned from Carinthia, another occasional refuge of his, because he had a beloved cousin there, the daughter of a Klagenfurt lumber merchant, he liked to spend a day or two with her every two or three years, but most times Roithamer came straight back from England to Hoeller’s garret, it would have been unthinkable to let anything be changed in Hoeller’s garret during Roithamer’s absence, Hoeller had always made absolutely certain that nothing was ever changed in Hoeller’s garret and he insured himself against such changes by simply never letting anyone set foot in Hoeller’s garret in Roithamer’s absence, Roithamer had offered Hoeller a regularly payable rental for the use of his garret, but Hoeller had firmly refused to accept anything of the kind, he considered it an honor that Roithamer could use this garret, otherwise completely unused and used by no one, for his own purposes, it was enough for Hoeller that the garret would be used, lived in, by Roithamer, a man known for many years before he ever moved into Hoeller’s garret to be quite extraordinary, a man of rare worth who was superior to at least all
known
men and, as Hoeller said, a
brilliant phenomenon
, it was enough for him, Hoeller, that this extraordinary and invaluable man, Hoeller said, this brilliant man, with regard to whom one could safely assume that he would come to be known even more widely as the extraordinary and rare and brilliant man he was, would be using Hoeller’s vacant garret, which otherwise was likely to decay quickly from lack of use, for his scientific purposes, and besides, he, Hoeller, considered it only natural to put this garret at the disposal of a friend, a childhood friend, a school friend, a friend of his youth, for that friend’s scientific and artistic pursuits which he, Hoeller, did not pretend to understand, but which he certainly admired as the continual manifestations of Roithamer’s extraordinariness; as Roithamer always waved away his friend Hoeller’s expressions of admiration, in fact he always was quick to rebuff his admiring friend whenever this friend showed his admiration too explicitly for the sensitive Roithamer’s comfort, he always did all he could to get Hoeller to understand that he, Roithamer, did not deserve admiration of any kind, although he did lay claim, like any man doing his job, to respect, an attitude of mutual respect was the most helpful attitude between friends, the most suitable and appropriate to them and especially to their friendship, people were always admiring where they should simply respect something or someone, the trouble with admiration was, it ought to be nothing but respect for the other person, something of which most people were incapable, apparently respecting the other person was the hardest stance to maintain between individuals, most people are simply incapable of respecting others, but respecting others is most important, people prefer admiring to respecting even though they only irritate the other person with their admiration and destroy with their admiration what is valuable in the other person instead of preserving it by duly respecting it, but that man Hoeller was virtually addicted to admiring Roithamer, and as time went on Roithamer tired of fending off Hoeller’s admiration by rebuffing it. But perhaps Hoeller’s admiration for Roithamer had been nothing more than just his respect, they esteemed each other, in fact, as I know, they held each other in the highest esteem, each in his own way and in accordance with his own capacities. In opening the chest of drawers, which simply does not match the rest of the Hoeller furnishings, it’s a rare eighteenth-century period piece of nutwood, with three drawers, simple ornamentation, so I suppose that it was brought over from Altensam to Hoeller’s garret at Roithamer’s request and perhaps even from among his own personal possessions, it could be one of Roithamer’s favorite pieces, I thought, the aroma also, when I opened the top drawer to put in my toilet articles, this exceptionally well-made chest, not veneered but carpentered out of the whole, evenly grained nutwood, instantly reminded me of Altensam, Altensam where I had gone so often, even in earliest childhood, with my grandfather, who had been a friend of old Roithamer’s, and afterward by myself, almost every day, I must say that when I was at home I was always and constantly drawn to Altensam, that unfailingly mysterious and vast, inexhaustible Altensam with its innumerable, infinitely ancient walls, its hundreds of rooms with their thousands upon thousands of furnishings and pictures that are bound to attract, even to fascinate a young man, especially a child, raised in diametrically opposite, rather restricted circumstances, not to mention the people of Altensam, the most mysterious people in the world to the child I was; in opening that drawer—the chest, I suddenly thought, undoubtedly came from that vast collection of furniture in Altensam—I discovered the yellow paper rose Roithamer won that time at the shooting gallery, the story is as follows: on Roithamer’s twenty-third birthday which he had decided, on an impulse in his rooms at Cambridge, to spend with me in Altensam, and which we actually did spend together in Altensam, after a journey made adventurous by vast inundations of the Dutch coast, from Altensam Roithamer and I went to the annual music festival in Stocket, in early May, we spent the whole evening of his birthday and the night until dawn at this open-air music festival, eating and drinking without restraint, both of us in a mood to let go completely, to go wild, because we’d spent the previous four or five months totally immersed in our studies, he, Roithamer, in his scientific research and I in my mathematical studies, both of us quite consciously and completely isolated within the scientific world of Cambridge. As may be expected this music festival was just the thing to bring us release from our scientific obsession, and we’d instantly and most eagerly seized upon this chance to relax completely at this music festival, to take our minds completely off the subjects of our intellectual obsessiveness upon which we had naturally been concentrating to a really dangerous degree. In itself that music festival was nothing special, these music festivals in our country are all alike, performing a most useful function especially for all those people who are chained to their labors, year in and year out, so naturally everybody comes flocking to the two or three music festivals per year, with their actual and their so-called amusements and distractions, these affairs are called music festivals because unlike the usual so-called country fairs they feature a band, an enormous attraction to the populace, that’s all it is, but the organizers know that they can draw a much larger crowd by calling it a
music festival
rather than a
country fair
, so it has become the custom to call these events music festivals even if they are nothing more than country fairs, everybody attends these music festivals which usually begin early on Saturday night and end late on Sunday morning. In Altensam, where nobody had remembered even Roithamer’s birthday and none of Roithamer’s siblings were home, we soon turned the possibility of going to the music festival into an actuality, after dressing suitably for the occasion. We immediately got into the swing of it, drinking several glasses of beer and schnapps in quick succession, we quickly got ourselves into the necessary high spirits for such an occasion, both of us naturally meeting lots of familiar faces of schoolmates and their sisters and wives, with whom we soon got involved in all sorts of conversations, but these conversations mostly consisted of our, Roithamer and me, having to explain why we had gone off to England and what we were doing there and what had become of us in England, and why we hadn’t stayed at home and made something of ourselves here, at home, as they had. At first these conversations, consisting basically of questions addressed to us both, had not bothered us and we readily answered all these questions put to us, such as whether we were now English, no longer Austrians, whether we were living in London or if not, where, whether we had become scientists, known experts, whether we were thinking of returning home and most of all, again and again, how much we were making, in Austrian schillings not in English pounds, it was evidently too much trouble for them to convert English pounds into Austrian schillings, and was it true that it was always raining in England and that everything was always shrouded in fog there, had we ever seen the Queen, had we met her personally, had we ever spoken with her, the questions came at us in an endless stream and a constantly growing number of people had so questioned us and we had to keep on answering more and more, they kept asking and we kept answering questions until we could no longer stand it and finally made our way through these hundreds of people, drunk as they’d been for some time, to a shooting gallery. Both of us were astonished at finding ourselves, suddenly, standing
in front of a
shooting gallery
, since neither I nor Roithamer had ever been to a shooting gallery for any reason whatsoever, we had apparently never in our lives had any business at a shooting gallery, in contrast to Roithamer’s brothers, who did not merely claim to be but actually were excellent proven marksmen who had of course always taken part in all the shooting matches and hunting shoots, and had on display in their rooms hundreds upon hundreds of trophies attesting to their prowess, they were known and respected far and wide as brilliant marksmen, in fact as fanatical hunters and great shots, in contrast to me and my friend Roithamer, who not only couldn’t shoot and had never indulged in any illusions about being able to shoot, and who basically despised hunting and everything related to hunting, in fact, deep down, we hated it, I know that Roithamer hated it as I did, he understood hunting but he hated it, he had often talked to me about his brothers’

passion for hunting and, again and again, talked about how he loathed this passion of theirs, but he knew that it was a Roithamer family passion for hunting, even his father had been a great hunter and marksman, he had been Chief Game Warden and Hunting Commissioner for years, indeed for decades, that to be born in Altensam was synonymous with being born to hunt and to shoot, it was probably the first time in Altensam’s history that someone had actually turned up who not only did not like hunting but in fact despised hunting and most decidedly hated it, so it was quite understandable that the Roithamers regarded their deviant brother, for no reason except that they simply couldn’t understand him, if not with hatred, then with a certain reserve, though they naturally had not dared to show him either contempt or hatred on this point for a long time, since they were dependent on their brother, who suddenly was the sole owner of Altensam, actually they felt they were at his mercy and that he might one day drive them, in all their degenerate state, out of Altensam, something he’d never do, however; but to get back to hunting, what a peculiar situation, that a Roithamer who defied all the rules of Altensam’s history by being absolutely no hunter and absolutely no marksman, had nevertheless turned out to be the man, he and no other, I thought, as we found ourselves, out of the blue and only because we’d been forced to escape from those hundreds, even thousands, of crazy questions which were getting on our nerves and driving us out of our heads, standing in front of that shooting gallery, he and no other is standing here in front of this shooting gallery. To shoot? I asked myself and at the very same moment Roithamer paid for two dozen shells and started to shoot, he was shooting at those paper roses lined up in quite disorderly fashion in their holders opposite him, he was shooting them down one after the other, to the momentary stupefaction of all the bystanders, including even the owner of the shooting gallery, whom I recognized as a woman from the village and who had also recognized us, since of course none of the onlookers had believed that Roithamer would hit even a single one of the roses, yet he had shot down
every last one
of the roses in the shortest possible time. As the shooting gallery owner bent over to pick up the paper roses in order to place them, all tied up in a bunch, in Roithamer’s hand, I was observing the onlookers who now, like it or not, agreed that Roithamer was the best shot of paper roses they had ever encountered at one of their music festivals.