The will
My arrival at Wolfsegg was unobtrusive and unannounced, and for this they never forgave me. I did not drive straight up to see them but got out of the taxi in the village. I asked the driver to drop me at a point where I was sure of being unobserved, near the school, at the entrance to the village where the main road branches off toward the mines. I was thus able to walk right across the village square without meeting anyone. All the villagers seemed to have withdrawn into their houses, not wishing to show themselves at this time, when my parents and my brother were presumably lying in state up at Wolfsegg. It was as though the whole village were in mourning, I thought, for I had forgotten that it was always deserted at midday, even on normal weekdays. Under no circumstances did I want to drive up to the house. Naturally the driver knew who I was. I had gotten off the train at Attnang-Puchheim and walked across the platforms to the taxi. At the station I had the impression that people recognized me, but I avoided their gaze by walking faster than usual, going straight to the taxi and telling the driver to take me to Wolfsegg as quickly as possible. Yet during the drive I did not think about Wolfsegg, where I was going, but about Rome, which I had left that morning. It’s only with reluctance that you’re driving along the road to Wolfsegg, only with reluctance that you’re here, I thought, as the taxi took me through some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, away from the Alpine foothills and toward the Hausruck, which I have always felt to be the most delightful and restful country, and would perhaps have acknowledged as the most beautiful, had I ever been able to dissociate it from Wolfsegg and my family. We were driving through my favorite landscape, through the dense woods near Kien and Stocket, toward Ottnang. You’ve always loved the local people, I told myself during the drive — simple people, the simplest people, farmworkers, miners, craftsmen, farmers’ families, quite unlike your relatives up at Wolfsegg, who always treated you abominably, even as a child. And during the drive I asked myself why I had always loved the people who lived down here and not the ones who lived up there, why I had always respected the people who lived in this low-lying area and despised, indeed detested, those who lived on the heights. All your life you’ve felt happy among the people down here but miserable among your own kind, the people up there, always at home with the people on the low ground but never with your own people on the high ground. I saw how beautiful the landscape was and remembered how fond I was of its inhabitants. You were especially fond of the miners, of the way they treated you and the way they treated one another. After all, you grew up with them, I told myself, you went to school with them and shared several years of your life with them. Having been preoccupied during the journey with thoughts of the countryside and its inhabitants, I realized only when I got out of the taxi that I had not spoken a word to the driver, who knew me by sight, though I did not know what he was called and did not ask. I usually ask all the local people their names — a habit I acquired from Uncle Georg, who had a great knowledge and love of people. No one was so good at getting along with people, especially simple, unsophisticated people. He taught me how to do the same, how to talk to them and strike the right balance between them and me. Uncle Georg loved simple people; it was with them that he got along best, and I can say the same of myself. There was not a soul in the village square. Even the cats, which usually lay around in the noonday heat, had disappeared. I would be able, I thought, to walk up to Wolfsegg unimpeded and
actually unobserved. The inn curtains were drawn, the baker’s window empty, the butcher’s shade lowered. Everything seemed to bear witness to our family tragedy. From Rome I had managed to call Zacchi in Palermo and tell him that I was not going to find it easy to go back to Wolfsegg only three days after returning from there. I had said this in a quite unseemly tone, it now occurred to me, which I ought never to have used with a person like Zacchi, who is as close a friend as Maria or Gambetti. As I crossed the square, I regretted having called Zacchi at all, for throughout our conversation he seemed to show scant understanding of my situation, whereas Maria understood everything, even the strange remarks I made, which she no doubt instantly recognized as typical of me. And to Gambetti too I said more than I should have, inveighing against my family without being able to retract what I said and launching into one of my uncontrolled tirades, which I myself hate more than anybody but cannot help indulging in when something demands to be said.