Siebenkäs, which was incidentally one of Uncle Georg’s favorite books. Poring over it for hours, I gradually forgot everything around me, including the fact that at the time I was supposed to be helping my mother sort her mail. I had forgotten that on alternate Saturdays I had to go to her writing room, as it was called, at six o’clock in the evening to sort her letters. Siebenkäs had made me forget everything, including my mother’s instructions. Every Saturday between six and seven she used to sit in her writing room and have either me or my brother sort the letters that had arrived during the week into the exact order of their receipt. Having sorted them, I had to put them in a certain spot on her desk. While sorting the letters I was able to have a quiet talk with my mother, which was not possible at any other time. She would meanwhile deal with her correspondence and give me a chance to consult her on various matters. Although she never liked it when I asked what she considered importunate questions, I was allowed to do so while sorting the mail, and she was prepared to answer them. This routine of sorting the mail in the writing room during the brief hour before supper gave me my one opportunity to get close to my mother. Sometimes she herself would address a kind, even affectionate, word to me. As I sorted the mail I often felt that I loved my mother, indeed that I loved her dearly. As I looked at her from the side, her face seemed beautiful, though at other times I was put off by its ordinariness. The feeble light cast by the lamp on her desk was flattering and showed her face to advantage, I told Gambetti on the Pincio. When I had sorted the letters and placed them on the desk, she would sometimes look up from her correspondence and place her hand on my head, almost tenderly. Then, as though instantly ashamed of this gesture, she would withdraw her hand and dismiss me. She would take her hand away and promptly return to her correspondence, as though suddenly realizing that I was not Johannes. But I wanted to tell you something else, Gambetti. It was nine o’clock when, having ensconced myself in the upper left library to read Siebenkäs and forgotten all about sorting the mail, I suddenly woke up, as it were, in a state of alarm and put the book aside. I left the library, which, as you know, was more or less off limits, and went down to join the others, who had long since finished supper. For five hours I had been rooted to my seat in the library, reading Siebenkäs, and had forgotten not only about the mail but also about supper. I came downstairs, Gambetti, to find them all sitting in the green drawing room, waiting for me. I was received in silence. After a while, during which my brother waited in gleeful anticipation of what was about to happen, my mother took me to task without so much as looking at me, demanding to know where I had been, why I had not turned up to sort the mail, and how it was that I had put the finishing touch to my customary insolence by not only ignoring the sorting of the mail but also failing to appear for supper. There was no excuse, she said, or at least none that she could imagine, for ignoring my obligation to sort the mail and leaving them to have supper without me. They had all been extremely worried about my whereabouts, she said, thinking of all the dreadful things that could have happened to me. Did I realize what terrible anxiety I’d caused her? You’ve no excuse whatever for not turning up to sort the mail and for missing supper, she said. She had still not deigned to look at me. Then she rounded on me and said, You’re a monster! If I’m not mistaken you’ve been in the library! And what have you been doing there? You’ve been pursuing your perverse thoughts again. My father, my brother, and my sisters waited tensely for the culmination of the accusation, their whole attention fixed on me as I stood terrified in the doorway. I was perhaps nine or ten at the time — I’m not sure exactly. I was trembling all over. My sisters, though still only very small girls, were agog with malevolent excitement, longing to see some sensational punishment meted out to me after my mother’s pitiless scolding. Now, what were you really doing in the library? my mother asked. I was reading Siebenkäs, I replied. Whereupon she jumped up, boxed my ears, and sent me to bed. My real punishment was to be locked in my room without food for three days. I sat down at my table and for three days did nothing but howl, while my sisters incessantly ran to and fro outside the door, gleefully shouting Siebenkäs,Siebenkäs,Siebenkäs.If you ever read Siebenkäs,my dear Gambetti, don’t forget this little story, I said. Does Gambetti still remember this story after all this time, I wondered, now that I’ve actually given him the book to read? All the books I read at Wolfsegg have a subsequent history like this; they are all linked to a subsequent history (or prehistory!)that has affected my whole life, I thought, though not always such a sad one. My mother had no idea what Siebenkäs was, Gambetti, and thought I was kidding her. When she was in Rome five years ago in the fall — you remember — I naturally took her on a tour of the city. But she was bored to death. All she wanted to see were the famous shops, especially those on the Corso and the Via Condotti. She had a long list of these famous shops and planned her walks accordingly, but she had listed them alphabetically, which she soon saw was a mistake, as their alphabetical order bore no relation to their locations. We visited one famous shop after another, especially in the vicinity of the Piazza di Spagna, and never spent less than half an hour at any one of them; in most of them she spent up to an hour, and this drove me almost to distraction. My mother has a quite primitive craze for jewelry, I told Gambetti, and so she rushed from one jeweler to another in search of not just one ring or one necklace that suited her taste but masses of them. I was extremely reluctant to accompany her, as you can imagine, but I had no choice. As you know, I disapprove of people who want to see only famous monuments and churches, but I must say that I have never known anybody with such a shameless and undisguised lack of interest in the countless cultural treasures that Rome has to offer. My mother went to see Saint Peter’s. I took her there, and she was of course thrilled by the Bernini altar, which I detest, but aside from this she saw nothing during her stay in Rome but the interior decor of Roman jewelry shops and fashion houses. On my recommendation she stayed at the Hassler, which was too old-fashioned for her. She found fault with everything there, although the Hassler is undoubtedly the best hotel in Rome and perhaps one of the three or four best in the world. Nothing was good enough for her. In the end she’d made so many purchases that she didn’t know what to do with them, and her room was piled high with parcels. We had five invitations to dinner with relatives, and of course with our friend Zacchi, I told Gambetti, but she accepted only one — not Zacchi’s, as you may imagine, but the Austrian ambassador’s, because she took it to be the grandest, though it was as boring as usual. The company at the embassy dinner consisted of the usual brainless diplomats and their even more brainless wives, who spent two hours reeling off their social inanities. But you must be wondering why I’m telling you all this, Gambetti. I’ll come to the point. On our way from the Hassler to the Austrian Embassy, my mother, quite suddenly and apropos of nothing, reverted to something that had happened years ago, in fact decades ago. What was this