pure beings, while I was an impure being and destined to remain so for the rest of my life. I don’t belong here anymore, I thought, and certainly not among them. Yet all my life my dearest wish was to be one of them. It was an absurd idea, a preposterous idea that only a madman like me could entertain. All my life I have tried to form ties with simple people, but of course I have never succeeded. Now and then I believed I had, and for a long time I clung to this mistaken belief, especially when I was with the gardeners and the miners, to whom I was always attracted, but it was an illusion that invariably ended painfully. The more my family kept me away from so-called simple people and tried to alienate me from them, the more I longed to be with them. For years I was aware of a perverse craving for their company and sought to rid myself of it, knowing it to be senseless, but I did not have the strength to free myself, and I still suffer from it. While our supposed inferiors always strove upward to our level, I always strove downward to theirs. Our inferiors were always unhappy in their station, while I, their better, was unhappy in mine. I suffered from being their better, they from being my inferior. All my life I have wanted to insinuate myself into the company of simple people, who are really anything but simple, I thought as I pressed myself against the wall. I’ve tried many tricks in the hope of taking them in, but they’ve always seen throùgh me and blocked my way, just as my family blocked their way, having seen through them. In my Roman apartment I often imagine myself among them, I thought as I stood pressed against the wall, mixing with them, starting to speak their language, to think their thoughts, to adopt their habits. But I succeed only in dreams, not in reality. What I long for is quite illusory. I am not simple, I have to tell myself at such times, and they are not complicated. I am not like them and they are not like me. It is wrong to say that my family, their supposed betters, are mendacious and that they are not, for they, our inferiors, are just as mendacious in their own way as my family are in theirs. I may say that our inferiors are good people, that they are not greedy and overweening, but the truth is that in their own way they are equally greedy and equally overweening. All the same, I can honestly say that I am happier among simple people than among my own kind, yet I have always shuddered at the thought that I am wrong about them and guilty of betraying my own kind and myself. We always betray ourselves when we favor others and make them out to be better than they really are, I thought. We misuse them by pretending to belong to their kind, yet at the same time we misuse ourselves even more heinously, to their advantage and our own detriment. But we never succeed entirely in remaining ourselves and being with them, or succeed so rarely that it does not count. When we are with them we usually divest ourselves of everything that makes us what we are. Once we become aware of this, we find it discreditable and lose whatever confidence we had when we embarked upon the game. For we are only playing a game when we believe we have to identify with them for whatever reason — because we long to do so, because we can no longer bear to be ourselves and see them as some sort of ideal. This is a lifelong error, which gives rise to lifelong humiliation. Simple people are not as simple as we think, and complicated people are not as complicated as we think. From my vantage point by the wall I now saw the gardeners carrying big black sheets across from the Farm to the Orangery. These are known as catafalque sheets and are stored in a special room for use at lyings in state. I remember witnessing exactly the same scene as a child, with the gardeners (not the present ones, of course) carrying the catafalque sheets across from the Farm to the Orangery. At that time, of course, I did not stand by the wall but stood in front of the Orangery, calmly watching the gardeners from close quarters and not feeling the least shame or compunction, even though it was my beloved grandfather who was lying in state inside. Yet now, forty years on, I have to hide by the wall, for reasons that are not entirely clear but are depressing all the same. Suddenly I felt depressed. As I stood there I no longer had the natural self-confidence I had had as a child, which would have enabled me to go up to the gardeners and shake their hands, to tell them how fond of them I was and how much I had always admired them, to go up to them and be myself. I could not bring myself to do this. I was afraid to. It’ll be a disaster, I thought, if the natural comes up against the artificial, if I, an undoubtedly artificial person, come up against the undoubtedly natural gardeners. But then I told myself that I was only pretending to be artificial when in fact I was perfectly natural, just as I was only pretending that the gardeners were natural, when they were no less artificial and no more natural than I. My hands were cold, although the weather was hot. As a child I could always find the right words, I thought, but now I can’t. At one time I didn’t need to worry about how to communicate with the gardeners or the miners — it came quite naturally. And then I went out into the world, to Paris and London and Rome, I thought, only to end up far more inhibited than I’d ever been. I’ve pursued my studies and acquired a supposedly greater knowledge of people, yet I end up not knowing how to go up to the gardeners, shake hands, and exchange a few words with them. For a moment I felt that in all the years I had spent doing everything possible to free myself from Wolfsegg and make myself independent — not only of Wolfsegg but of everything — I had not in fact freed myself and made myself independent but maimed myself quite alarmingly. I am maimed, I told myself. Whereupon I nevertheless went up to the gardeners and shook hands with them. They were not surprised by my sudden appearance. I addressed them by their names and shook their hands. I told them that I had walked up from the village and watched them from the gateway for a time. They did not understand this, but they attached no importance to what I said and looked uncomprehendingly toward the gateway. They were more reserved than usual, in keeping with the occasion, but it was a quite natural reserve; they spoke only in answer to questions, and when I asked them how they were they remained silent. They expected me to go straight into the Orangery to see the dead, but I did not go in. Looking across to the door of the house, which I saw was wide open, then toward the Farm, where there was no one to be seen, then again across to the door, I asked the gardeners if my sisters were in the house. They said they were. I walked toward the doorway, a big black rectangle over which a black banner hung from the balcony. I recalled that a week earlier the park had been full of happy, colorfully dressed people, celebrating the wedding of the young couple, my sister Caecilia and her wine cork manufacturer, until a sudden storm had put an end to the outdoor festivities, causing the guests either to rush to their cars and set off for home or take refuge in the house, there to spend the whole night eating, drinking, and dancing. A dance band from Ebensee played throughout the night, so that those who retired at midnight could not get to sleep. It was not until five in the morning that the band stopped playing, the last revelers stopped dancing, and silence descended, I recalled as I walked toward the door. Even I had been infected by the general gaiety. I had not been just an observer but had joined in the celebrations. I had even danced twice, once with Amalia and once with Caecilia, but naturally these two dances had been enough for me. I did not dance at all badly; no one who has learned to dance ever forgets how. At least I danced with Caecilia better than the wine cork manufacturer, although fat people don’t dance badly, I told myself, usually better than thin people, and they’re more musical. The numerous young cousins I saw at the wedding soon got on my nerves, I recalled, and I was again struck by the superficiality of today’s twenty-year-olds, by their lack of interest in anything but their insensate craving for amusement. It was impossible to have a proper conversation with these young relatives. I cannot remember having a conversation, or even an amusing exchange of words, with any of them. When they were not dancing they stood around, stolid and humorless, visibly tormented by a deadly boredom that would afflict them all their lives because they had done nothing about it when there was still time. It’s too late, I thought, for any of these young people to escape this