You’re going to see your clever friend, I always tell myself, your imaginative friend, the great writer. For I have never doubted for a moment that everything Maria writes is great, greater than anything written by any other woman writer. I must call her and tell her why I have to cancel our date, why I have to go back to Wolfsegg, which I have always described to her as deadly and pestilential. Maria knows of no other Wolfsegg than the deadly, pestilential Wolfsegg, like Gambetti, Zacchi, and all the other people I meet in Rome. None of them has ever heard me describe Wolfsegg as anything other than a deadly, pestilential place, a provincial hell. I must call Maria, Gambetti, and Zacchi, I thought, then sat down again at my desk. Don’t take anything with you to Wolfsegg, I thought. Keep calm. Call your sisters. Tell them when you’ll be arriving. But first I must know when I’m leaving, I thought, and I don’t know yet. It was impossible to make up my mind; I could not reach a decision. If there’s a rail strike I’ll fly, I told myself. If there’s an airline strike I’ll go by rail. But if I go by rail I’ll have to leave tonight; if I go by plane I’ll have to leave at five in the morning. After returning from Wolfsegg I had thought of the place with such revulsion that I swore not to return for a long time. Now I had to go back immediately. I remembered our attorney in Wels, my father’s attorney, who has an office in Franz-Josef Square, which I have found revolting whenever I have set foot in it. I suddenly saw the attorney’s wife — equally revolting. I saw our doctor in Wels — revolting. His wife — revolting. I saw Wels itself, then all the neighboring small towns, which all appeared to me in a revolting light. Vöcklabruck — revolting. Gmunden — revolting. These awful people in their hideous winter overcoats, I thought, their tasteless hats, their clodhopping shoes. I saw the marketplace in Wels and thought, How dreadful, how repulsive! I saw the town square of Gmunden and thought, How repulsive! Talking to the people in these revolting towns makes the whole world seem revolting. But if we live there we have to mix with these revolting people all the time, I thought. We can’t escape them — they’re the norm. I can’t stand the way they speak, any more than I can stand the way they dress. I can’t stand the way they think, the way they show off about what they’ve done and intend to do. I dislike everything they say and do. I simply can’t bear their Catholic National Socialist way of life, I can’t bear their accent — not just what they say but how they say it. When I observe them, I can’t summon up the feelings they deserve — only quite unjust feelings that they don’t deserve, I told myself. Maybe I have an allergy to Wolfsegg, and this is what makes me unjust to them. Maybe this allergy determines my mental attitude and makes me grossly unjust to these people and everything connected with them. The simple fact is that I loathe them, I’m sickened by them. What good are the beautiful streets in these small towns, I asked myself, if they’re filled with such revolting people? What good are the beautiful squares if such ugly people stand around in them? For ages I haven’t been able to feel any sympathy with them. I despise and detest them, yet at the same time I know I’m being monstrously unjust. But I can’t and won’t make friends with these people, I won’t pander to them and try to ingratiate myself. I can’t go back to them and their like. I can’t go back to their ridiculous shops and visit their smelly offices. I can’t revisit their icy and meretriciously ornate churches. These doctors ruined me, these lawyers cheated me, these priests lied to me. All these people failed me and humiliated me in the most appalling fashion when I trusted them. I can’t go near them any longer, I thought. They’ve become intolerable, and nothing can make them tolerable again. All these people hate what I love, despise what I respect, and like what I dislike. The very air they breathe makes me sick. Everywhere else I have friends, I told myself, but in the place that should be my home I have never had any, except among the simple people, the farmworkers and miners. Everywhere else I have been happy, at least for a time; in many places I have been utterly happy, contented and thankful, but never here, where I should have been. They don’t understand you, they don’t understand anything, I told myself. They don’t know how to live. They live to work, they don’t work to live. They’re base and common, but at the same time they have big ideas. They have an unnatural way of saying Good morning and an equally unnatural way of saying Good evening and Good night. The thought of your family makes you sick. The thought of the others makes you equally sick. Naturally anyone who thinks like this really is sick, I told myself, and I at once realized what a dangerous mood I was in. Stay calm, I told myself, keep a cool head, stay calm, quite calm. But I could not escape from this dangerous mood. I could hear them saying, He suffers from persecution mania — that’s what they always say — from a form of megalomania that’s different from ours, from his form of megalomania. When they see me they feel sick. He says Good morning, and they find it unnatural, just as when he says Good evening or Good night, I told myself. The way he dresses they find equally repellent — his clothes, his hats, his shoes — what he says, what he thinks, what he does or doesn’t do. They despise him as he despises them, they hate him as he hates them. Whose contempt, whose hatred, is the more justified? I can’t say, I told myself. I got up and went to the window, unable to go on sitting at the desk, and looked down on the Piazza Minerva. Zacchi has closed all his shutters, I told myself. He’s probably away, probably with his sister in Palermo. He often goes to see her. She has a kidney complaint and is in a hospital specializing in renal therapy, situated in one of the most beautiful regions of Sicily, below Monte Pellegrino. If all the shutters are closed he must have gone to Palermo to see his sister. All the same, I’ll try to tell him about my parents’ death. Late this evening — maybe he’ll be back by then. I went through the whole apartment, where I keep all the doors open, as wide open as possible, so that I can go back and forth unimpeded. In this way I can often avoid having to go out in the street for a break. It’s enough to walk back and forth a few times in my apartment. I removed myself from Wolfsegg, I told myself, walking through the apartment in one direction. Gradually I calmed down. I quite consciously removed myself from Wolfsegg and my family. I deliberately broke with Wolfsegg. I always offended my parents. I did everything to displease them, and I’ve always done everything to displease and offend my sisters. I was not fastidious about the way I offended them. I often ran them down and made fun of them when there was nothing about them to run down or make fun of, I told myself, and my head became clear again. I often leveled the basest accusations at my father when there was nothing to accuse him of. I lied to my mother and often made her look ridiculous in front of others, running her down in my arrogant way and hitting her where it hurt, I was now forced to tell myself. By now I really had calmed down, and my head was clear again. I quite deliberately parted from my family and willfully forfeited any rights I had in relation to them. I turned to walk in the opposite direction. I haven’t had the apartment painted for years because I can no longer bear to have workmen in, I told myself, looking at the cracks in the ceiling. I had to move into a Renaissance palazzo so that I could finally be alone, cut off from everybody, I told myself, for the truth is that I’ve cut myself off from everybody, not just from my family at Wolfsegg. The company I keep is reduced to a very small circle — Gambetti, Zacchi, Maria — and soon even this reduced circle will no longer exist, I told myself, and started to walk in the opposite direction. Come to think of it, I’m suddenly entirely alone, without a single human being, I told myself. I had my hands folded behind my back, a habit inherited from my paternal grandfather. If Uncle Georg knew how isolated I’ve suddenly become! I long to be alone, but when I am alone I’m desperately unhappy. I can’t endure being alone, yet I constantly talk about it. I may preach solitude, but I hate it profoundly, because nothing makes for greater unhappiness, as I know and am now starting to feel. I preach solitude to Gambetti, for instance, yet I am well aware that solitude is the worst of all punishments. In my role as his personal philosopher, I say to him, Gambetti, the highest condition is solitude, yet I know very well that solitude is the most fearful punishment of all. Only a madman propagates solitude, and total solitude ultimately means total madness, I thought as I turned to walk in the opposite direction. The apartment is so big that I have no cause to feel oppressed or restricted in my thinking. It affords my thoughts a freedom that they otherwise have only in large city squares. I took this into consideration when I rented the apartment, in a fit of megalomania, for indeed it was pure megalomania that made me take this big apartment in the Piazza Minerva, at immense cost, a cost that I could never have revealed to my family. I mentioned a certain sum to them because they wanted to know how much I paid for the apartment, but it was a fictitious sum, less than half the true cost. Had they known the true cost they would have said I was crazy. It’sone of the most reasonable apartments in Rome, I told them, and never said another word about its cost. But from time to time I feel that even this apartment is a prison, I told myself, when I sometimes pace up and down like a prisoner in his cell. I often call it my thinking cell, but only to myself, not to others, lest they should suspect insanity, for they would undoubtedly think that only a madman could describe an apartment as a thinking cell. I sat down at the desk and contemplated the photographs that I had been looking at — or rather studying — all afternoon. Placing them side by side, I told myself that the people depicted in them could not be judged like this, as figures in a photograph. I now put them one on top of the other, so that the picture of my parents about to board the Dover train at Victoria Station covered the other two. I had hoped for a different effect, but the impression they made was still as comic and ridiculous as before. Putting the photographs back in the desk, I decided to call my friends and take the early morning flight from Rome, to fly home. My fingers did not tremble, my body did not shake. My head was completely clear. I knew what the telegram meant.