Extinction (48 page)

Faust
, I
said—what megalomania! A totally unsuccessful experiment by a megalomaniac whose ambition went to his head and who imagined that this head could encompass the world. Goethe, the Frankfurter with big ideas who moved to Weimar, the megalomaniac patrician in the world of women. Goethe, who turned the Germans’ heads and made fools of them and has had them on his conscience for a hundred fifty years. Goethe is the gravedigger of the German mind, I told Gambetti. Compared with Voltaire, Descartes, or Pascal, for instance, and of course with Shakespeare, Goethe is an alarmingly small figure. The prince of poets—what a ridiculous notion! Yet how utterly German! Hölderlin is the great lyricist, Musil the great prose writer, and Kleist the great dramatist. Goethe fails on all three counts. But now my thoughts returned to what Spadolini had said about my mother’s being a special person. He’s right, I thought, in that every human being is special, including my mother, but that isn’t what he meant. Spadolini,
for opportunistic motives
, painted a false picture of her over supper, depicting her as unusually good, unusually cultured, and unusually interested in everything—which she was not. Mother was really quite ordinary, not at all unusual. There was nothing unusual about her, unless I were to say that she was unusually inconsiderate and, to my mind, unusually stupid, as well as unusually vain, in a primitive way. And unusually greedy where money was concerned, it now occurred to me, but Spadolini probably did not know this; perhaps he could not know it. When I think of the many apartments she acquired
secretly
, in every possible town, largely behind my father’s back! Possibly he never knew, or even suspected, how greedy she was, I thought. And I am reminded of her perverse enthusiasm for stocks and bonds. Over supper Spadolini painted an unwarrantably false picture of her, deploying all his artistry and charm in order to present us with a mother quite different from the real one. He idealized Mother much more than Father, though he began, quite deliberately, by painting an unbearably idealized portrait of him too. What he said to me and my sisters, I thought, amounted essentially to an unwarrantable idealization of ourselves. I was able to see through it, since by now I had a good ear for the tune he was playing. It was the calculating Spadolini who sat with us at supper, the calculating Spadolini who went with us to the Orangery, resolved to put on a calculated show of grief, I thought. He
idealized Wolfsegg too, for the Wolfsegg he described bore no relation to the real Wolfsegg. In the few hours he’s been here, this man of the church has shown himself immensely adept at calculation and falsification, I thought. Before our very eyes and ears he’s transformed fools into thinkers, malevolent individuals into saints, illiterates into philosophers, low characters into models of virtue, baseness and meanness into inward and outward greatness, monsters into human beings, an appalling country into a paradise, and a stolid populace into a nation deserving of respect. Spadolini had extolled the dead in a quite impermissible manner, I thought, essentially falsifying them and selling us the fake as the genuine article. He had abused our eyes and ears, as it were, by trying to deceive them and enlist us on his side, in order to show himself to the best advantage and get off as lightly as possible. But he miscalculated, I told myself, by overdoing the falsehood and falsification. He underestimated us, he even underestimated my sisters, who after all aren’t so stupid as to let Spadolini dictate to them what their parents and their brother were like. According to him they were wholly admirable, praiseworthy characters, but not even my sisters saw them as such. They weren’t stupid enough to swallow Spadolini’s bait, I thought. Even they must have known that Spadolini was talking twaddle, that everything he said was the opportunistic twaddle that people usually talk in such situations,
in the face of death
—to use a tasteless cliché—in order to make the dead palatable to the living, when throughout their lives they were distasteful and insufferable. He too subscribes to the principle that a false light must be cast on the dead, I told myself. And the false light that Spadolini cast on those who now lay in state was so glaring as to be positively repellent. Whoever dies has led a real life, I told myself, whatever it was like, and no one is entitled to falsify it by suddenly perverting the nature of the dead just because it serves his purpose, because he wishes to put on an appealing performance. Spadolini wished to put on an appealing performance by describing my mother, my father, and my brother as he did, I thought. And the performance this churchman put on was so appealing that it nauseated me—that’s the truth, I thought. Spadolini probably thought we were stupid enough to fall for it and felt obliged to display this distorted mirror image of the dead. Spadolini painted a picture of people he had never seen. He did not shrink from
presenting one lie after another to our ears and eyes, but our ears and eyes have always been sound, I believe, capable of hearing and seeing something quite different from what Spadolini presented to them. Spadolini is a born falsifier, I told myself, a born opportunist—a born prince of the Church. I suddenly understood why Spadolini had had such an incredible career, which took him to the highest office at such vertiginous speed. Maria has the advantage over me, I thought: she has an unerring eye that isn’t taken in by outward show. She never let herself fall for Spadolini’s outward show, least of all for his subtle art of persuasion. Never, I thought. Maria judged Spadolini correctly. She did not admire him as I did but was always repelled by him. I find Spadolini repellent, she often told me, and to you he’s dangerous. He endangers everything he touches, she said. She always called him the
dangerous Spadolini
. We’ve had this
dangerous Spadolini
to supper today, I thought. And now we have the
dangerous Spadolini
staying in the house. We immediately sanctify the dead in order to be safe from them, so that they will leave us in peace—that’s another saying of Maria’s, I thought. It’s not the first time I’ve been wrong about Spadolini, I thought. The repellent Spadolini. I’ve often been in this situation in Rome, first repelled by him and then the next day—or even just an hour later—fascinated by him again. One is constantly repelled by such people and then once more fascinated by them, I thought. Spadolini is the kind of person who both repels and fascinates, and often we’re unsure whether we’re fascinated or repelled, whether we should let ourselves be fascinated or repelled. But we can’t give up such a person, we tell ourselves, and I’ve never been able to give up Spadolini. And when I’m back in Rome I’ll go and see him and let myself be repelled and fascinated again, but more fascinated than repelled. I can’t do without him, I thought. Spadolini’s
always been indispensable to me
, I thought, but at the same time I remembered that this repellent character was spending the night in my father’s room, no doubt engaged in his habitual calculations. Spadolini’s calculations are always extreme, and he doesn’t spare himself, I thought. Before going to bed he swallows half a dozen tablets and observes himself in the mirror. Perhaps he’s sleeping in the silk nightshirt my mother bought him. Spadolini’s tastelessness is the opposite of my mother’s, but no less tasteless for all that. Over supper he was at pains to avoid mentioning his
innumerable secret meetings with my mother, although my sisters and I knew about most of them. All the time, I was struck by how cleverly he would speak of meetings we knew about, passing over and simply ignoring ones we did not know about. In this way he was able to exclude their secret meetings. But he shouldn’t have excluded them, I thought. It was much more embarrassing to exclude them than to speak of them openly. Had he done so, he could have spared himself a good deal of nervous tension, I thought, and talked about everything far more calmly. He wouldn’t have had to be so exceedingly cautious in presenting his sketches, as we possibly knew more about their secret meetings than about the others. But Spadolini was always an exceedingly cautious man, and this is what aroused such admiration in me, and not only in me, I thought. He was more than just a born diplomat. Spadolini talked about the Etna excursion, I thought, which was of course interesting, but less interesting than the one to Syracuse or the one to Trapani, to say nothing of the trip to Malta that he made with Mother behind my back. It would certainly have been more interesting if he’d talked about these trips and excursions, more interesting to me at least, though far more embarrassing for him, I thought. I could not help thinking of all the hotel bills that Mother used to leave around in her room, always made out for two persons, the second being Spadolini, who was naturally
kept
by her, as they say, on all these trips and excursions. The archbishop traveled at her expense, and she had her triumph. At the same time one could not help finding it highly touching that for thirty years they went on trips and excursions together and that during all these years he never tired of her or she of him. I know that their relationship never weakened but actually intensified as they grew older. This relationship was always beneficial to Father, I thought, as it enabled him to keep her increasingly under control. Father was the wittingly complaisant husband, and he was proud, as I know, of the way he performed this role, though he concealed it even from them. Father never objected to their relationship—or perhaps he did at first, when he must have blamed himself for introducing Mother to Spadolini, presumably knowing what he was like. For thirty years he calmly watched their association develop from a turbulent and shocking liaison into a relationship that he must have judged to be vital to her existence, a stable relationship that was best left
undisturbed. At supper Spadolini was reticent about all that was dearest to him in his relationship with Mother and touched only upon incidental aspects of it, throwing us a few crumbs, as it were, but keeping to himself whatever was precious to him. Yet Spadolini could have told all and admitted all, I thought, as we had long been aware of their secret, and his reticence could not fail to rekindle the embarrassment that had been dormant for years. But it didn’t occur to Spadolini that we knew more than he thought we did, that we’d long since arrived at our own conclusions, based on this superior knowledge, I in my own way and my sisters in theirs, and that what was to him a reason for reticence—for locking up the facts, locking them away, keeping them under wraps—was to us a foregone conclusion. To this extent, listening to Spadolini’s reminiscences about Mother was a ludicrous experience. Spadolini will get along quite well without Mother in future, I reflected. In fact he’s already put her behind him and is detained only by the funeral formalities. In Rome he’ll go on telling little stories about her, I thought, using her as a means to obtain further subsidies, to coax money out of me in the name of my dead mother. I was at once appalled by this thought and appalled by myself for thinking it. I would have given anything not to have thought it, but as I reflected on Spadolini’s suppertime conversation I could not suppress it, could not switch it off. It had to be thought, I told myself, like so many other thoughts we’re forced to think, whether we want to or not. There was no question of my being able to sleep, and naturally I did not want to take any sleeping tablets, as I had to be up early. I therefore decided to pass the time reading—a method that had proved effective millions of times before and been a habit with me for decades. Kierkegaard and his
Sickness unto Death
came to mind. Thinking that I would find it in the upper right library, the one nearest my room, I went out as quietly as possible to get it. I had read
Sickness unto Death
once, many years before, at least twenty years before. But on the way to the library it struck me as ridiculous to want to read
Sickness unto Death
, of all books, to want to read anything by Kierkegaard, of all authors, given the circumstances and the proximity of Spadolini. It was perverse to want to read Kierkegaard’s
Sickness unto Death
now, I thought, and I turned back before I reached the library, because it seemed altogether senseless to read anything. I could think of no book
that might interest me or hold my attention. Perhaps something by Jean Paul, I thought, or Börne—perhaps Kleist, I thought, or Heine. Or perhaps I should go
straight for Schopenhauer
. But it was not a good idea to read anything—much better to sit quietly in my room and reflect. How long it is since I’ve sat quietly and reflected! I thought. I went back to my room, sat down, stretched my legs out, and closed my eyes. But I was too agitated to sit for long. I had missed my chance, it was no longer possible, and so I got up and walked back and forth in my room, but even this did not calm me, because I kept wondering how I would get through the night, this most dreadful of all nights, I thought, which will stretch on and on and can’t be shortened. I dread nothing so much as these endless nights that cannot be shortened. However intense my reflections, I won’t be able to shorten the night, I thought. I’m fully in control of myself, I haven’t taken sleeping pills for ages, and I can’t escape the night. Even when I think I shall be unable to sleep and it gets to half past twelve or half past one, I still do not take a pill. In any case there’s no problem, I thought: I mustn’t take one under any circumstances, as I have to be up by four at the latest in order to get ready for the funeral. I opened the window to let in some fresh air, but the air that came in was warm and heavy. Curiously, the air in the room was better than the air outside, and so I shut the window. Spadolini can afford to take a sleeping pill, I thought, rather enviously. He can stay in bed until eight or nine. And my silly sisters always sleep well. They’ve never taken a sleeping pill in their lives. However, since I could not take a pill and did not want to read, being sickened by the thought of literature of any kind—even French or English literature, with which I usually whiled away the night when I could no longer endure German literature—I had to think of something else to do. It was clear that simply sitting in a chair or walking up and down was on the one hand not enough and on the other hand too much. I wondered whether it would not be better to leave my room and go out. I slipped on my jacket and went down into the hall. I looked into the kitchen. The kitchen maids had not cleared away the chaotic remains of the buffet left by the guests. This irritated me, as it indicated negligence not only on the part of the kitchen staff but indirectly on the part of my sisters, their mistresses, or at any rate a degree of sloppiness that could not be allowed to continue. The pile of