No phonecall,nothing, said Amalia. I had entered the drawing room. They stood up but could think of nothing to say. I embraced my sisters and shook hands with my brother-in-law. Without another word I accompanied Caecilia down to the Orangery. My first impression was that they respected me as the sole heir. They had no choice, and it occurred to me that I was being received like this because all their hopes were now pinned on me. It occurred to me too that they were now at my mercy, forced to rely on me for help and, above all, to heed what I said. It struck me that they could no longer exist without me and depended on my generosity, knowing that I was the natural heir and that they must rally round me, as the accident had left them helpless. The deserter who had been rejected, detested, and execrated had suddenly become the master, the provider, the deliverer. In this moment of reunion they staked everything on me, fervently hoping that I would forget everything that they and the dead had done to me, in order to save them, as I was more or less obliged to do. This was my undoubted intention, and I gave them to understand it, not in so many words but by my demeanor, which I cannot precisely describe. My brother-in-law was forced into the same position, expecting me to extend to him the protection I extended to my sisters and to consider him in my deliberations regarding the future. But I knew as little as they did about what was to happen, for the fact that Wolfsegg as a whole, with all its internal and external ramifications, now devolved upon me and upon me alone was something I had not considered, either in Rome the previous day, when I had received the fatal telegram, or between then and now, when I had been wholly preoccupied by my immediate return to Wolfsegg and had no time — or allowed myself no time — to think about the problems posed by its future. I had refused to think about them, as I did not wish to burden myself with these problems until my parents and my brother had been buried. Moreover, the news of their death had been far too sudden. As I have said, I was not shattered by the news, terrible though it undoubtedly was, but accepted it with a kind of indifference, which I did not have the strength to abandon and was therefore unwilling to abandon. I had simply taken out the photographs, put them on my desk, and fantasized about them, I may say, more or less to distract myself from the horror of what had happened. I now saw that this was the best thing I could have done. On receiving the telegram I was controlled, not shattered. I kept a hold on myself, as they say, and my head remained clear, but naturally I did not consider the full consequences of the news in detail, as I wanted to protect myself. I had to protect myself; I could not and would not allow myself to be crushed by the fact that my parents and my brother were now dead. Caecilia led the way to the Orangery, and as I followed her I reflected that my sisters and my brother-in-law were now entirely reliant on me, that their attitude to me had completely changed. This was inevitable. Now that my parents and my elder brother were dead, I was suddenly cast in a role they could never have imagined me playing, that of provider and protector. But I’m still the same person, I thought. I haven’t changed, I won’t change, even if they expect me to. Yet if they were not to despair and lose their hold on everything, they had to believe that I would. The fact is that on the way to the Orangery, despite the sadness of the occasion, which affected me too, I decided that my sisters would have to be paid off, as I had no intention of letting them stay on at Wolfsegg or allowing the estate to go on being run as it had been up to now. Ofcourse, I did not know how else it should be run, only that things could not go on as they had for centuries, right up to the present day. As she led me to the Orangery, Caecilia had the demeanor of the bereaved daughter and sister, broken by the sudden death of her parents and her brother, and perhaps she really was broken. Dressed in black, in a tight-fitting woolen dress and with her hair in a bun, she looked very smart. So did Amalia, I thought. She also looked good in black. If only they wouldn’t go around in those dreadful dirndls, I thought; they look so much better in black. When I first saw my brother-in-law standing beside Caecilia, he seemed quite helpless. He was no longer the triumphant though complex-ridden bridegroom of the week before, for the accident and its immediate consequences had made it quite impossible for him to conceal his futility and ineptitude. The couple had faced me in all their depressing insignificance. Instead of supporting Caecilia, as would have been natural, he was supported by her, or so it seemed to me when I entered the drawing room and looked first at Caecilia and her husband, and then at Amalia, who seemed more composed than the others. They had seen to everything, they said. I did not know quite what this meant but assumed it meant that they had made all the necessary arrangements. Before we reached the Orangery Caecilia said that Amalia had sent a telegram to Spadolini at the same time she had sent mine. It was up to me to decide who else should be told of the tragedy in addition to those they had already informed. She had taken it for granted that Spadolini should be notified. It was clear that Caecilia knew precisely what to make of Mother’s relations with Spadolini. My sisters were always in the know, I thought. The wine cork manufacturer is nothing but a nuisance, I thought, but I can’t count him out, as I have the impression that Caecilia will make a point of pushing him forward, as her protector, so to speak. This did not worry me, as I was not afraid of the wine cork manufacturer, even though he was now my brother-in-law. He’ll remain a marginal figure of no consequence, I thought. When I entered the drawing room, Caecilia had placed herself behind him, using him as a protective shield, so to speak, and making it only too obvious that she intended to push him to the fore. This at once struck me as ludicrous, not to say tasteless; I thought it unworthy of her but did not pursue the thought. It was not important, but at the same time I found it irritating, though I was fully aware that some confusion was inevitable in the present circumstances. Given the new situation at Wolfsegg, my sisters were at pains to show me that they had changed, but they only half succeeded, as they had not really changed. They were the same as ever. At first I fancied that they had changed, but this soon proved to be an error when I said I wanted to see my dead parents and my dead brother. Before we reached the Orangery I was still convinced that what my sisters required of me was nothing short of total self-abnegation. Do your best to protect them, I told myself, but be on your guard, or you’ll come off worst. After all, they’ve been trained by your mother and know how to exploit a tragedy like this for their own ends. I loathed myself for being able to entertain such a thought, but I did not do so without reason, and it was vital that I should. My family, including my sisters, had never recoiled from anything if it suited their designs, so why should they act differently now? I asked myself. Yet at the same time it occurred to me how deep-rooted my distrust must be if I could harbor such a thought at this moment, and I loathed myself for it. Distrust has always been the rule among us; we have developed our distrust to a quite abnormal degree, to the point where it is an absolutely invariable habit to distrust everyone and everything. But my distrust was confined to Wolfsegg and my family — elsewhere I distrusted no one. No sooner was I at Wolfsegg than my distrust reemerged; it belonged to Wolfsegg, like all other supposedly bad qualities, which are really just the natural means we employ in order to assert ourselves and avoid being worsted. In Rome I had expected to find my sisters despondent and reacting nervously to everything, but they were utterly calm. Or perhaps I was mistaken, perceiving only their outward calm and failing to discern their inward disquiet and nervousness. In Rome I thought I would find the whole house in a state of agitation, but nobody was agitated, and I wondered how great a misfortune it would take to knock my sisters off balance, to