engineered, as they say, by our aunt in Titisee. It is typical of Caecilia that she should have thought she could stay on at Wolfsegg after the wedding. What it must have cost my mother to persuade her to go to Freiburg with her husband, considering that she had secretly sworn not to let either of her daughters leave Wolfsegg, as she had a lifelong dread of being left alone! Both her daughters were to stay with her at Wolfsegg so that if she should lose one of them she would still not be entirely alone. Mother always planned well ahead and took all eventualities into account, especially where her own future was concerned. She had always reckoned with losing my father, but then I’ll still have my daughters, even if both my sons are no longer at Wolfsegg. This was her plan. And if one daughter leaves home I’ll still have the other. Throughout the wedding festivities she was angry with Caecilia for deserting her and let her feel it, but as she is shrewd — or rather was shrewd — she was careful not to display her anger and sudden hatred for the deserter; on the contrary, she made a point of expressing her delight at what she called this happy union. Now at last she was the happy mother she’d always wanted to be, she said, to the disgust of all who knew the truth. She had herself photographed with her son-in-law all over Wolfsegg — although she had never let herself be photographed by a stranger, so to speak — in all kinds of silly and, it seemed to me, shameless poses. At every moment she would embrace her son-in-law and ask one or another of the bystanders to take a picture of them. Her histrionic skill undoubtedly reached its peak at this wedding. And from the Black Forest! she exclaimed more than once. I’ve always loved Freiburg! And Titisee! Her tastelessness knew no bounds. Secretly she longed for nothing so much as a speedy breakup of Caecilia’s marriage to her awkward husband, who probably has no idea what he has done to deserve it all. She had never been fastidious. It may well be, I think, that our aunt in Titisee fixed up her niece Caecilia with the wine cork manufacturer in order to avenge herself on my mother, for it is abundantly clear that our aunt is to blame for this grotesque marriage. She could never stand my mother, and now she had her triumph. While my mother was putting on that distasteful act of hers during the wedding festivities, she was, I believe, already turning her mind to the question of how to destroy this unwelcome marriage as soon as possible. As she projected the image of the deliriously happy mother to the wedding guests, the mechanism of destruction was already at work in her mind. How sad that Uncle Georg couldn’t have lived to see this day! she exclaimed. My father behaved with a good deal of indifference during these days of celebration, attending to his business and spending most of his time at the Farm or in the woods. He had always disliked such festivities and put up with them only to please his wife and because she forced him to do so. All the time he was calmness itself, as they say. It struck me that he had suddenly become old, weak and quite apathetic. But I cannot say that I felt sorry for him. In childhood I had what seems to me a normal, though not especially good, relationship with my sisters, but when we grew up it was always a bad relationship, and now, with my parents and Johannes dead, I was afraid of having to face them. They’ll cause me the greatest difficulties, I thought. I won’t be able to endure their mocking and by now embittered faces, the way they talk, the way they walk, the way they dress, and the way they constantly hurl unfounded accusations at me. They had always reproached me for having rejected Wolfsegg and dealt my parents a cruel and more or less mortal blow, and now that our parents were dead their reproaches were bound to be even more shameless. They won’t shrink from the basest and most absurd accusation, I thought. It’ll be no good restraining myself and trying to keep out of their way: they’ll be there all the time, blaming me for the whole disaster. And Uncle Georg too, in spite of his having been dead for so long. They won’t miss a single opportunity of saying that I drove my parents crazy, that I drove them insane and wounded them mortally. Even though it has nothing to do with me. During their lifetime I was always to blame for their misfortune; not just our parents’, but theirs too. They had a theory according to which my leaving Wolfsegg and turning my back on Wolfsegg was the reason for their being chained to Wolfsegg and forced to languish there, unable to develop, unable to marry, and so forth. I was to blame for the fact that the whole atmosphere of Wolfsegg had darkened in the last twenty years, from the moment I moved to Rome. For the fact that their father and Johannes became ill and their mother started to surfer stomach and kidney disorders in addition to her lifelong migraines. For the fact that the health of all of them had deteriorated so much. For the fact that nothing had been renovated at Wolfsegg. Even for the fact that no repairs had been done to the roof. I was to blame when it rained in and they had to rush to the attic with their cloths and buckets to mop up the water. Earlier, before I left for Rome, Wolfsegg had always been fun, but not since. There was suddenly no music at Wolfsegg, for instance. Wolfsegg had become silent, Amalia once told me, because of me, because of my big-headedness, which had driven me to Rome, because I had no sense of responsibility, because I lacked all filial affection and had always hated my parents, whereas they had always loved them. My parents, they said, spent all their money on me and in doing so deprived them, because they had a claim on it too. According to Caecilia, my expensive lifestyle had reduced their standard of living and was responsible for the increasingly alarming depreciation of their inheritance, and so forth. They even went so far as to assert that my only reason for going to college and choosing to study at the most expensive universities in Europe was to keep them as short of money as possible. Why does it have to be London and Oxford, they repeatedly asked, when Innsbruck would do just as well? For as long as I can remember they always referred to me as their big-headed brother who squandered their money, though in fact it was my money, or at most my parents’. Because of my urge to show off I always went around dressed in the most expensive clothes, they said, while they were forced to wear the simplest. You’re to blame for our going around in rags, Amalia once told me. At first they blamed everything on Uncle Georg, and then they blamed me. My brother too had the gall to reproach me for the way I lived and informed me that Wolfsegg could not afford to keep me in such style. These were his very words. I could not believe my ears, but I had not misheard him. For the most part my brother and sisters only echoed my parents’ remarks, which they had to listen to all year round. Whenever I was at Wolfsegg they gave free rein to their malevolent idiocies and did not hold back. They repeatedly said that I led a useless and utterly futile life and tried to persuade my parents to discontinue my monthly allowance or at least radically reduce it, constantly urging them to make short work of me and not let themselves be led up the garden path. I happened to hear Caecilia say this one day when she and my mother were having tea in the summerhouse and I happened to turn up earlier than expected. I was continually subjected to their insolence, and for as long as I can remember they were secretly tormented by the thought that I got more than my due and seemed to lead a better and more agreeable life, to which they did not consider me entitled. What is he after all? they would say. Who does he think he is? If I was silent at table it displeased them; if I spoke it displeased them. You never say anything, they would complain, or alternatively, You’re always talking. If I stayed home they said, Why don’t you go out? If I went out they said, Why don’t you stay home? If I wore a light suit I should have been wearing a dark one; if I wore a dark suit I should have been wearing a light one. If I talked to the doctor in the village they would say disapprovingly, He’s always talking to the doctor, about us. If I did not talk to the doctor they would say, He doesn’t even talk to the doctor. If I said I preferred Rome to Paris they at once reacted by saying that I praised Rome only because they hated it. If I said I did not want a dessert they related this to themselves, though when I said it I was not thinking about them at all. Whatever I said, they assumed that it was directed against them. After a while I could no longer stand it at Wolfsegg. If I felt like driving to the lake they would accuse me of everlastingly driving to the lake, which was absurd, for I drove to the lake at most once a year, unlike my brother, who drove there every two or three days, and even more often in summer, but it never occurred to them to criticize him. If I went for a walk in the woods they thought I was crazy, but if my brother went into the woods it was entirely normal. When I