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 healing