had to have me, the source of her unhappiness, as she called me to my face on every possible occasion, on countless occasions. But she was not happy with my sisters either, who were born after me. She was never what is commonly called a happy mother, if indeed there is such a thing as a happy mother. The heir was accepted, but I was never really accepted: I was acknowledged as a possible stand-in, but no more. All my life I have had to see myself as a substitute for Johannes and been given to understand that I am only the reserve heir, conceived for the ultimate emergency, so to speak — one summer evening at the Children’s Villa, I am told. Reluctantly conceived, my mother has often told me. In the heat of battle, as it were, in the middle of August. My mother apparently consulted a specialist in Wels, in the hope of getting rid of me, but he refused to operate, as it would have endangered her life. Abortion was not so simple in those days and always involved a risk to the mother’s life. She accepted her fate, but all her life I was the unwanted child, and she would describe me as such, whatever the occasion, often calling me the most superfluous child one can imagine. I sought refuge with my grandparents, my maternal grandparents in Wels and my paternal grandparents at Wolfsegg, but I was always the one who did not belong. This actually made me impossible to bring up, almost ruining the early years of my life and nearly destroying me at the age of seventeen or eighteen. It was only Uncle Georg, I may say, who finally saved me by taking charge of me at a time when I felt abandoned by everyone. They were all fairly indifferent to the reserve heir, always looking to Johannes and not troubling themselves about me. It was always our Johannes when things were rosy. I was only ever mentioned when they turned sour. What made matters even worse, as I once told Gambetti, was the advent of National Socialism. My family was highly susceptible to National Socialism, which suited them down to the ground, because in it, one might say, they discovered themselves. Now, in addition to their great God, who in any case was only their dear God most of the time, they suddenly had their great leader. Although National Socialism had long been a thing of the past by the time I reached the years of discretion, as they say, I still felt its baleful effects. For the National Socialism of my parents did not end with the National Socialist era: in them it was inborn, and they continued to cultivate it. Like their Catholicism, it was the very stuff of their lives, an essential element in their existence; they could not live without it. Hence, although the National Socialist period had long been over, I was given a National Socialist and Catholic upbringing and thus subjected to the Austrian mixed-power regime that has such a dire effect on the growing child. This combination of the Catholic and National Socialist elements, of Catholic and National Socialist educational methods, is the norm in Austria. They are the commonest and most widespread methods, applied everywhere without restraint, and produce atrocious and devastating effects on the whole of this essentially National Socialist and Catholic nation. National Socialist and Catholic educational methods enjoy unrestricted authority in Austria. Anyone who denies this is a liar or an ignoramus. And the laws of the land are nothing other than National Socialist and Catholic laws, which operate as a mechanism that brings devastation and destruction. That’s the truth about Austria. By nature the Austrian is a National Socialist and a Catholic through and through, however hard he tries not to be. In this country and this nation Catholicism and National Socialism have always been in balance — now more National Socialist, now more Catholic — but never just the one or the other. The Austrian mind thinks only in National Socialist and Catholic terms. And this is true also of Austrian philosophers, who use their unappetizing National Socialist Catholic minds no differently from their compatriots. If we take a walk in Vienna, the people we see are all essentially National Socialists and Catholics, who behave at times more as National Socialists, at times more as Catholics, but usually as both simultaneously; this is why we find them so repulsive on closer acquaintance and closer scrutiny, whether we’re prepared to admit it or not, I told Gambetti. Any article we read in the Austrian press is either Catholic or National Socialist, and that, it must be said, is the essence of everything Austrian — doubly mendacious, doubly vulgar, doubly anti-intellectual. If we talk to an Austrian for any length of time, Gambetti, we soon have the impression that we’re talking to a Catholic, not to a free and independent human being, or else we have the impression that we’re talking to a National Socialist — but in the end we have the impression that we’re talking to an out-and-out Catholic National Socialist, and we are very soon revolted. The Catholic National Socialist spirit — if I am to besmirch the word spirit by using it in this context, because I can’t do otherwise — has always reigned supreme at Wolfsegg and always will. My brother is imbued with the same spirit, and so are my sisters, but with them it naturally takes the form of pertness and insolence. My brother, like my father, has spent more or less all his life cultivating the Catholic National Socialist spirit, which is in fact a negation of the spirit, a peculiarly Austrian form of mindlessness, as I’ve said before. I withdrew from its ambience, Gambetti, but I’ll have to contend with it all my life, because it’s inborn. Inborn spirits either can’t be exorcised at all or can be exorcised only for a time, at tremendous cost, and never permanently. The whole of my existence has been a struggle to throw off the disease of Austrian mindlessness, I told Gambetti, which constantly reinfects me. No sooner do I notice the symptoms of this archetypal Austrian condition than I summon up all my strength to fight it off. In 1931, I thought, looking at the picture taken at Victoria Station in 1960, my parents were newly married. My mother had scored her triumph and was riding high, as it were. My father, of course, had not yet realized his ambition of begetting an heir. Men like my father do not want a child, they want an heir, and they marry late in life, for this one compulsive purpose. In their desire for an heir they rush into marriage with a virtual stranger, about whom they know hardly anything. By the time an heir is born they are fairly debilitated and can already be described as old. The mother promises to give her husband an heir and then proceeds to rob him of more or less everything. The new father, for his part, feels that he has done his duty to himself. Once the heir is born he loses interest in his wife. Most of the time he punishes her by ignoring her, or, if the mood takes him and she gives him cause, he reproaches her for having grossly exploited his generosity and married him only to get her hands on his fortune. In due course they reproach each other with everything, and life becomes hell. Their marriage does not produce mutual respect or the comfort and succor that the one should have of the other. It does not generate sympathy and mutual understanding but gradually degenerates into a shared hell. The spouses accommodate themselves to this hell and end up hating each other, but they soon recognize this hatred as inevitable and use it to quite good effect as a means to enliven the remainder of their lives. As my father turned against my mother and gradually withdrew into himself, she began to look around for a sphere in which she could give expression to her womanly whims and passions, which were far from spent; in other words for a Spadolini, I told myself as I contemplated the photos. By a happy chance, these more or less unhappy circumstances brought her together with an archbishop, who had not only an enviable physique but one of the brightest minds. I am told that when she is happiest with Spadolini she calls him