But in their own way. It is wrong to say that my family are relics of a bygone age, for they exist in the present. But in their own way. Contrary to what one might think on observing them for a while, they do not belong to an age that is no longer relevant to our own. They belong to our own age. But in their own way. Everyone who exists in the present has a share in the present, I thought. It is wrong to think that my family have no part to play in the present, for the truth isthat they play a more vital part in it than others: they dominate the age and have a truer understanding of it than others, exercising a considerable influence on the world around them. They are people of a particular kind, their own kind, and it is immaterial whether or not one rejects their kind, whether or not one is repelled by it. To say that my family belongs to a different world is nonsense. That they have a very curious lifestyle and lead an extremely curious existence, that they take no cognizance of the way the world and humanity are changing, is another matter, but they unquestionably belong to the present age. The most foolish proposition of all would be that they belong to another age or another world, for they actually belong much more to this age and this world than millions of others, and they still play a dominant role in it. This is possibly their big trick, I thought — giving the appearance of belonging to a different age and a different world. It may be this trick that enables them to get along not all that badly, as they say, for on the whole they do quite well. They are better off than millions of others, who claim to belong to the present age and the present world — a claim that my family has never made, perhaps because they are endowed with a superior instinct with regard to the conditions that prevail in the present world and the present age. I would say that my family is more in tune with the age than most people I know. I was preoccupied by these thoughts as I stood in the chapel, unable to decide whether to go up and join my sisters. We take it upon ourselves to exclude people like my family from the present world and present society, maintaining that they do not fit in, that they are out of tune with the times, because we feel that we are wrong about them, for it is precisely their lifestyle that is really in tune with the times, and this becomes clearer to me with every day that dawns. To say that I reject their lifestyle does not mean that they do not belong to the present age or are out of tune with it. I might even go so far as to say that it is they who are on the right track, the track that leads, not to destruction and annihilation, but to security and stability, even though we may dislike the manner in which they pursue these goals, I thought. To say that I have nothing to do with these people does not mean that they should be eliminated, as is frequently supposed — an almost universal supposition that is almost universally acted upon. It now occurred to me that while rejecting this supposition, I had meanwhile cast myself in the role of their eliminator and extinguisher and thus sided with the very people whose thinking I now condemned as inept and inadmissible. The majority is not necessarily in tune with the times just because it’s the majority, I thought, though this too is a common belief that is often acted upon, to the detriment of the times. A minority may also be in tune with the times, often more in tune than the majority; even an individual may be more in tune with the times than the majority, indeed more so than everybody else. The majority has always brought misfortune, I thought, and even today we have the majority to thank for most of our ills. The minority and the individual are crushed by the majority because they are more in tune with the times and act accordingly. Ideas that are in tune with the times are always out of tune with them, I thought, for such ideas are always ahead of the times if they are truly in tune with them. Hence whatever is in tune with the times is in reality out of tune with them, I thought. I had once had a long conversation with Zacchi on this subject. If I say I am in tune with the times, this means that my thinking must be ahead of the times, not that I act in accordance with them, for to act in accordance with the times means to be out of tune with them, and so forth. I once spent several days discussing this question with Zacchi, in Orvieto, where he has a house in the hills, a bequest from one of his admirers. The basic truth is that however repugnant the inhabitants of Wolfsegg may appear to the individual or even to the majority, it is they who are really in tune with the times we live in, as we are bound to realize if we consider them carefully and dispassionately, without letting ourselves be fooled by current opinion, which is whipped up by the politics of the day, I thought. There has been political opinion for centuries, and there have been incontrovertible facts that contradict it. And it is an incontrovertible fact, I told myself, that the world is now in a state of chaos, while order reigns at Wolfsegg — I am careful not to say that order still reigns there, but merely that it reigns. While the world in general is unable to emerge from its coma and return to a state of consciousness, the people at Wolfsegg are fully conscious. Even though they reject me, even though I have withdrawn from them in disgust, I do not dispute that they act — or acted, I should say — more consciously than most of the rest of the world. In their own way, I added. At this point it struck me that what I had just been thinking was total nonsense, or at any rate a piece of mental foolery that led nowhere, a mental dead end. In order to pursue the notion that it was the people at Wolfsegg who were in tune with the times and not the rest of the world, I would have needed Zacchi or Gambetti, I thought— either would have done — but alone I was doomed to failure, as so often in my thinking, hoodwinked by a fallacy, by a philosophical impertinence. But we must always reckon with failure, lest we succumb to indolence, I thought. There is nothing outside our heads that must be combated more resolutely than indolence, and we must be equally resolute in combating indolence within our heads and proceed against it with all the ruthlessness at our command. We must allow ourselves to think, we must dare to think, even though we fail. It is in the nature of things that we always fail, because we suddenly find it impossible to order our thoughts, because the process of thinking requires us to consider every thought there is, every possible thought. Fundamentally we have always failed, like all the others, whoever they were, even the greatest minds. At some point, they suddenly failed and their system collapsed, as is proved by their writings, which we admire because they venture farthest into failure. To think is to fail, I thought. But we naturally do not act with the intention of failing, nor do we think with the intention of failing. Nietzsche is a good example of a thinker who pursued his thinking so far into failure that ultimately it can be described only as demented, I had once remarked to Zacchi. In these cold, whitewashed walls I was able to develop, my mother used to say, as I now recalled, standing in the entrance hall and debating whether I should go straight upstairs and see my sisters or first go and see the others, who, as I now saw, were gathered in the kitchen. The kitchen maids and housemaids in the kitchen were conversing in the restrained tones proper to a house in mourning. I lingered outside the kitchen door, trying to make out what they were talking about, but I caught only odd words that I could not string together, though I gathered that they were talking about their families, as the name Mühlviertel kept recurring. Though conscious of the impropriety of loitering outside the kitchen door, I went on standing there, unable to decide whether to put an end to my stage-by-stage approach to my sisters by going upstairs and greeting them or to spin it out by opening the kitchen door and greeting the women and girls inside. There was a sudden burst of laughter in the kitchen, and it occurred to me that if they were suddenly to open the door I would be found eavesdropping. The thought made me shudder. I could not help thinking that my behavior was absolutely indefensible. Whatever I decided to do — whether to open the door and greet the women and girls in the kitchen or to go upstairs and greet my sisters — I had already made myself guilty in my own way, which was naturally both offensive and incomprehensible. The conversation in the kitchen had become clearer, and I followed it attentively as I stood in the hall. It turned on the various funerals they had attended and the accidents that had led to them. An old man of seventy-eight had fallen into the stream; an old woman of sixty-six had hanged herself from a bedroom window; a child had been run over by a horse and cart delivering sacks of coal to his family at our miners’ settlement. They talked of how the bodies had had an unpleasant smell and the wreaths had been very expensive, of how there were more and more morticians, how the bereaved families no longer wore mourning for six months, as they used to, how not even the closest relatives did so any longer, not even the widows. They seemed to be preparing their afternoon coffee in the kitchen. They have coffee around two, I thought, but they don’t put the water on for the family upstairs until about five; that’s when they themselves have supper, whereas the family dines at half past seven. I was pleased to think that the day-to-day customs at Wolfsegg had not changed. In the kitchen there was talk of a train driver who had been attacked and killed, leaving five children to be provided for, of how his widow was looking for a job so that she could support the five children, as the state paid nothing to the dependents of murder victims, even when the murderer was caught, and of how unfair the law was in Austria. They also talked about how the kitchen maids had been pushing a cart with a number of wooden benches from the Children’s Villa to the main house, when the cart overturned. Then one of them made some remark about egg-laying hens, at which they all laughed loudly, then suddenly stopped, as if ashamed of their laughter, realizing that it was unseemly. If I go in and greet them I’ll put myself out of favor, I thought, and so I went upstairs. Even in this atmosphere of mourning I was secretly amused by the fact that I had come from Rome with no luggage or, to be more precise, with only my wallet and a handkerchief. I’ll have all the pictures on the walls and in the attics examined and get a rough idea of their value, I told myself as I passed the painting of my great-great-great-granduncle Ferdinand on my way upstairs. Take it easy, don’t get out of breath, I told myself, stopping on the landing to listen. My sister Amalia was obviously talking to her brother-in-law, who is my brother-in-law too, the wine cork manufacturer from Freiburg, who had supplied the Baden wines. I had hardly spoken to him at the wedding, not because I was too proud but because he chose to avoid me and repeatedly ran away from me, doubtless fearful of the questions I might ask him. I can still see him standing by himself under the oak tree in the park, I thought. This seemed to be my chance to go up and talk to him, to find out more about him than I already knew, which was precious little, as my sister had never been very forthcoming about her fiancé, but when I went up to the oak tree my brother-in-law had vanished. He had been watching me, and seeing that I was about to approach him, he had at once escaped by going across to the Orangery for no obvious reason, as there seemed to be no one there. So I was left standing under the oak tree without my rich brother-in-law. I had not been able to talk to him at the wedding breakfast either, as he averted his gaze whenever I looked his way. He obviously disliked being observed, though it is perfectly natural for the bride’s brother to observe his sister’s husband in order to see how he behaves, what he has to say for himself, how he comports himself, not only outwardly but inwardly, as it were. But the wine cork manufacturer chose to keep out of my way. Not once during my stay at Wolfsegg did I have an opportunity to talk to him, I now recalled, though I was naturally eager to do so. People of his type, especially if they come from Baden, from the wine-growing districts, are adept at making themselves scarce if someone wants to talk to them, I thought at the time; they avoid anyone who wants to question them and are very smart when it comes to taking evasive action. We may describe a person as stupid but at the same time have to admit that he is smart. Fat people are always smarter than others, and basically more mobile. But their mobility is only a physical characteristic, for their minds, if that is the right word, are completely immobile. I had wanted to put my brother-in-law through a number of tests and imagined that this would be easy. I had wanted to question him, to see what made him tick, as they say, but I had grossly overrated my interpersonal skills and failed dismally. But why does my brother-in-law avoid me? I wondered. What is it about me that scares him off? After all, I am the brother of the bride, now his wife, and entitled to inquire about him. It was undoubtedly felt that my sister had acted monstrously in marrying this man, more or less without asking any questions, without really knowing him, for it was clear that she did not know him. All she would say was that our aunt in Titisee had known him and his family very well ever since he was born. But that’s not enough, I thought. And my mother was of the same opinion, having pondered the matter much more profoundly than I, but she could not prevent the wedding, for Caecilia was insistent and stood her ground, as they say, for the first time in her life. This was to commit a crime against her mother, who from the beginning actually described the marriage as