unworthy of him. Two sixes inevitably entailed repeating a year, but although we often got one, we never got two. Our rooms on the third floor were heated only in exceptional circumstances, when the temperature fell to ten degrees below freezing, though we always had more wood than we knew what to do with. And even then we had to carry the wood up to our rooms and light the stoves ourselves, as the servants weren’t allowed to carry firewood up to the third floor for us. This was on my father’s orders, because he wanted to bring us up tough. Gambetti did not understand this use of the word tough, and I tried to explain it to him. In fact these attempts to toughen us, to give us what my father called a tough upbringing, didn’t toughen us at all but made us exceptionally susceptible to every possible ailment, though less so than our sisters, who grew up on the north side. Father’s toughening methods only made us unusually sensitive and achieved the opposite of the desired effect, making us far sicklier than those who were spared such treatment, far sicklier than the village children, whose rooms were properly heated, even though their families were poor, while we were rolling in wealth. Wolfsegg, I told Gambetti, was dominated by the most dreadful avarice, and my mother was the most avaricious of them all. I’ve often thought that avarice was her only real passion. Leaving aside the small fortune she spent on clothes, I have to say that she was the cheapest person I’ve ever known. She never treated herself to anything. Only the most basic food could be cooked in the Wolfsegg kitchen, and it had to be home produced, not bought in the village. This was why we always ate so much pork and beef. At Wolfsegg we had blood sausage all the time, and all kinds of porridge, pasta, oatmeal, and puddings. And of course egg dishes galore. Only when some important visitor came did they put on a show; the kitchen would then go into top gear and produce an abundance of matchless delicacies. My mother was always anxious to impress outsiders and preoccupied with what others thought of her, how they assessed her, and she naturally wanted to be well thought of, well assessed. In the kitchen they could cook superbly, I exclaimed to Gambetti, but most of the time they produced boring dishes, which came around again every few days. I often wondered why we employed three gardeners, since we never had decent vegetables or any other reasonable garden produce, though it would have been so easy to serve good, tasty vegetables prepared in various ways, and delicious salads. I happen to be very fond of vegetables and salads. But no, all our vegetables and lettuces were sold: they never appeared on the table but were taken by the gardeners to the markets in Wels or Vöcklabruck, as this brought in a profit. There was no need for my father to suffer from stomach complaints, I said. The cooks and their assistants, as I have said before, were kept busy most of the time canning and pickling, and even making sausages, because the slaughtering was done at Wolfsegg and we ate only home-slaughtered meat. They certainly made the best blood sausage I’ve ever had. A butcher would come up from the village to slaughter the cows, calves, and pigs, which were then neatly dressed in our own butchery next to the Farm. It was a pleasure to see the butcher at work. As small children, of course, we found it repulsive and sickening, but later I came to regard butchery as one of the supreme arts, on a par with that of the surgeon, if not even more admirable. As small children we thought it natural for animals to be slaughtered and dressed, and were soon no longer scared by it. What had at first seemed repulsive came to be seen as entirely necessary. Butchery is a difficult art, and when it is done with consummate skill it deserves our admiration. From an early age country children are accustomed to dealing with life and death, once they’ve gotten over the first shock. It soon ceases to be scary, because it’s not sensational, merely natural. At the Farm we had a curing room in the attic, I told Gambetti. This expression amused him, and I had to repeat it for him several times. In our curing room hundreds of sausages and pieces of smoked meat hung from the ceiling. Around the inner courtyard of the main house, where the greater part of family life takes place, I told Gambetti, there is a colonnade at each floor level. That is where I always clean my shoes. At this remark Gambetti laughed again as he poured some wine into my glass. And in this courtyard, in winter, we used to keep the sick or injured deer that the huntsmen found and brought to Wolfsegg for us. The Huntsmen’s Lodge is in front of the Children’s Villa but in back of the Gardeners’ House, I told Gambetti. A bird’s-eye view of Wolfsegg is like this: high above the village is the house, and in front of it the park, roughly oval in shape, extending to the east for about a hundred sixty or a hundred eighty yards, as far as the boundary wall. Set in the wall is a high stone gateway, through which the farm vehicles pass. Built onto the wall at the right is the Orangery, and opposite this is the right wing of the Home Farm, which is built in the shape of a horseshoe and is altogether two hundred fifty yards long. In back of the Farm, directly to the east, is the Gardeners’ House, in back of this the Huntsmen’s Lodge, and a little farther on the Children’s Villa that I love so much. This was built about two hundred years ago, in the style of the Florentine villas you can still see on the way to Fiesole. Of course it’s less ornate, but it’s quite extraordinary for Austria. Yet you can’t say it’s out of place in the Austrian landscape; on the contrary, it’s more attractive than anything else in the landscape. It may sound odd, but it was built for children. It has a miniature theater, where puppet plays used to be put on. The children wrote the plays, little comedies of the kind that young people can easily think up, with sad endings that on reflection weren’t really all that sad. And naturally in verse. Hundreds of children’s costumes are stored in the villa. Today the building is locked up, and I don’t think anyone has set foot in it for years. Some of the windows have been broken, probably by children from the village, but the roof doesn’t let in the rain, or at least not yet.I’ve always wanted to restore it, I told Gambetti, but my family wouldn’t countenance spending money on anything so stupid. My brother and sisters and I often put on shows there but were then forbidden to because we should do more studying and less playacting. It’s a pity that the Children’s Villa is now dead, I said, as it’s the most beautiful building for miles around. You can’t imagine how charming it is, Gambetti, in a part of the world that is not rich in charming buildings, attractive houses, and architectural gaiety. Perhaps one day I’ll get my way with the family and restore the villa. Then I’ll have the local children put on a comedy for the opening. My greatest delight was to watch the performances given by the local children, all wearing costumes that were centuries old and so colorful, so imaginative, so artistic, so truly poetic. Yet as always, I told Gambetti, whatever is truly poetic is more neglected than anything else. It’s as though no one had any use for the truly poetic. The Children’s Villa, locked up and left to dilapidate, is a rather sad but interesting chapter in the history of Wolfsegg, I said, perhaps the saddest. The huntsmen were never my friends, I told Gambetti. It was only with reluctance that I visited the Huntsmen’s Lodge, though it was my brother’s favorite haunt. Hunting soon became his ruling passion, just as it was my father’s. He goes hunting whenever he can, and several times a year they have hunting parties at Wolfsegg, which I haven’t attended in recent years. Members of the upper crust converge on Wolfsegg from all over Europe, and for days on end one hears many languages spoken, especially Spanish, when our Spanish relatives come over from Bilbao and Cádiz. These hunting parties were inaugurated by my father, who refused to let my mother put a stop to them. They’re now part of the Wolfsegg tradition. On these occasions all the rooms are occupied, even the coldest and most unfriendly. And a lot of Italians come too. The larders are emptied and dozens of jam jars are opened, and there’s even a large variety of salads and compotes. My brother loves the Huntsmen’s Lodge and retires there to work on the Wolfsegg balance sheets. All the bookkeeping is done there. I’ve never had much of a liking for hunting trophies, I told Gambetti. I’ve always been put off by the trophy cult. And I’ve always loathed hunting itself, though I’m convinced that it’s absolutely necessary. Whenever he can, my brother goes to Poland to hunt, even to Russia. To indulge his great passion he’s prepared to put up with the conditions in these Communist countries. Where hunting’s concerned, no price is too high for him. He’s crazy about sailing and crazy about hunting. And he’s only ever seen wearing hunting gear, which has long been the national costume of the Austrian countryside, so to speak. Because it’s so practical, I said. Everybody, of whatever class, goes around in hunting gear, even if he has no connection with hunting. They go around in their green-and-gray outfits, and sometimes it seems as though the whole population of Austria is made up of huntsmen. Even in Vienna they go around in their thousands dressed in hunting gear. Even city dwellers seem to have been smitten with the hunting craze, I said, for how else can you explain why you see people going around everywhere in hunting outfits, even where it seems ridiculous and perverse. The Huntsmen’s Lodge was built at the end of the last century, on the site of an earlier one that was destroyed by fire. A great-grandfather of mine had set up a library in it, I said. Imagine, Gambetti: that would have been the sixth library at Wolfsegg. It had originally been intended simply as a collection of hunting literature, but it was later extended and became a general library. I found the most incredible treasures in it, I said. It was ideal for anybody who wanted to devote himself to the books, to yield himself up to them undisturbed. No one visits the Huntsmen’s Lodge, so no intrusion need be feared. The building is airy and warm, and hanging on the walls are fine examples of