peculiar, they suspected her of being basically crazy, though it was nothing but my father’s nature in her, it was Altensam, but because they couldn’t openly hate her, a girl, as they hated me, it was Altensam they hated, unconsciously, as my mother did, she always hated everything unconsciously, anyway everything in her and about her took effect unconsciously, though also in the most calculating way, for people like my mother simply aren’t rational beings, they are instinctual beings, and her feelings tend to be, actually, nothing but falsifications, in no matter what direction they move, they’re unconscious falsifications of nature into something unconsciously denatured like themselves. In reality, however, it was a case of my mother at first always trying to win me over, she had soon realized that I, that everything in me, was against her, which is why she left no stone unturned to draw me closer to herself, in every way and by every means, but when she saw, when she understood, that all she did to gain her ends, to bring me over to her side, which in the nature of things simply wasn’t possible, was in vain, a senseless struggle, then she gave her contempt and hatred free rein. I’d not been able to go against my nature and enter into hers, lose myself in hers, as she had probably envisioned. It’s always clear from the first, what a newborn child is made of and where it is tending, it is always a tendency backward, a tendency of return, in my case I was simply cut out of my father’s cloth and it had to be madness to refuse to see this and want to change it. Quite as in my sister’s case, but my mother naturally did not let her feel it in the same harsh manner, not in the case of someone so delicate even from childhood on. Though the child always remained a stranger to her, my mother never treated her roughly, she simply didn’t dare, or she’d have come into quite unimaginable conflict with my father. And so my parents had brought children into the world, quite consciously, I know what their motives were, motives of securing the succession on my father’s side, and motives of securing a lasting establishment and what this meant for her, our mother, namely to get Altensam into her possession, just the same they’d quite consciously committed a crime, that capital crime against nature, to beget and to procreate children out of sheer calculation, “calculation” underlined, children some of whom sided with the father and some of whom sided with the mother, my brothers siding with mother, what I called taking the part of Eferding, so Roithamer, I and my sister with father, what I called taking the part of Altensam, so Roithamer. In this way my parents had seen to it from the start that Altensam had to fall apart into two deadly halves. My father always understood all of this, and the reason why I later let him too go out of my sight and out of my mind and even for a long time let him disappear from my memory was the fact that he, and I suddenly see this again before me as a very definite image, that from the moment we had come into being he basically only turned his back on us and left us behind, that’s how I actually see my father, in his gray loden suit, walking into the woods to hunt or quite simply to escape, always walking away from us, and always walking away from us to make his escape, basically depressed by nothing but a bad conscience over having closed his books and given up his life. For how many years I had tried to win my father over, but he always pushed me away, no answers, nothing but walking away from me, not noticing me. Such years and even decades of rejection and refusal will end in our dropping such a man out of our thoughts from one moment to the next, no matter what we may have felt for him only a minute before, we cease to think of him and it is as if he had never existed, he may turn up in our thoughts now and then, but we immediately turn our minds to something else. Until his fortieth year my father must have been a fairly happy man, from his fortieth year onward, however, he was the opposite, so Roithamer. Attempt at a description of Altensam and everything connected with Altensam, with special attention to the Cone: to be able to concentrate entirely in the evenings, on Tuesdays and Fridays, even beginning with my so-called free afternoons, on my manuscript about Altensam, my room suddenly the ideal place for this work, after having seemed for years to be unsuitable, entirely unsuitable for this purpose, with its view of the stone wall, lately always wet, of the physics institute, a view favorable to my undertaking in any case, a state such as the one that always prevails in Hoeller’s garret, which was always ideal for my purposes, Hoeller’s garret was the only place where it was possible for me to construct the Cone, just as it is now possible for me here, in my room at Cambridge, this room without an actual view, giving only on the damp, wet wall of the institute, to think about my work on the Cone now that the Cone has been finished, now that I’m back here and before I’ve become totally absorbed again in my scientific work, before it claims all of my attention, my chance after my return to devote some time to this work, a writing job, “writing job” underlined, in retreat, “retreat” underlined, to clarify everything that has happened these last six years, since I did need six years to construct and to build the Cone, for one thing the time factor, a short time relative to myself, my origins, relative to Altensam, but basically much too long a time which very often and repeatedly drove me to the edge of madness. The idea and the realization of the idea, the achievement of the realization of the idea of the Cone as the tackling and the realization and the achievement of an aim that has totally dominated me these last years, the problem of making my intention, which has always been described as only a crazy and totally hopeless scheme, clearly understandable not only to myself but to everyone else who was involved with the realization and completion of the Cone. Taking under consideration the fact that I was on the one hand committed to England, to Cambridge, while on the other hand my energies were after all totally committed to my intention to build the Cone in the Kobernausser forest, I was duty-bound to this scene of the site of the Cone, the problem of being always here, in Cambridge, or in the Kobernausser forest, at the right moment, of not neglecting the one for the other, the lowest limit of my responsibility. Actually I should have spent years in Cambridge so as not to neglect Cambridge, while at the same time staying in the Kobernausser forest, meaning in Hoeller’s garret, specifically, so as not to neglect the building of the Cone, now that the Cone is finished and now that I haven’t lost Cambridge, I can see that it was possible for me to muster the necessary energy to build the Cone without neglecting Cambridge, that is, neither my teaching nor my own research, because it was possible for me to do the one under the stimulus of the other, not to neglect Cambridge by means of energies generated by my work on the Cone, not to neglect the Cone by means of energies generated at Cambridge, and to do both always in the highest state of concentration upon each objective as required. The assurance I acquired in the course of changing my scene of operations, staying now in Cambridge for a time, then again in Hoeller’s garret, in England on the one hand, in Austria on the other, always shifting from one to the other at the proper moment, without being aware of this fact, always doing the right thing as a gift, a form of talent, without consciousness, the change of locale, leaving Cambridge for the Kobernausser forest and vice versa, but also moving from one to the other in thought without any transition, for how often I was in Cambridge (in my thoughts) while being in reality in the Kobernausser forest, and how often, conversely, in the Kobernausser forest (in my thoughts) though in reality I was in Cambridge.