I’ve always hated pigeons, I told Caecilia, and started to count them. On one windowsill there were thirteen sitting close together in their own filth. The maids ought at least to clean the droppings off the windowsills, I told Caecilia, amazed that they had not been removed before the wedding. Everything else had been cleaned, but not the windowsills. This had not struck me a week earlier. Caecilia did not respond to my remarks about the pigeons. The gardeners had let some tramps spend the night in the Children’s Villa, she said after a long pause, during which I began to wonder whether I had given Gambetti the right books, whether it would not have been a good idea to give him Fontane’s Effi Briest as well. The tramps had lit a fire, she went on, and it had spread in the downstairs room where they spent the night, but the gardeners had put it out. The tramps had disappeared shortly after the outbreak of the fire, no one knew where to, but that was unimportant, as they would not be found anyway. The room that was burned out was the one where we kept the dolls we had as children, said Caecilia. As she said this she looked over the village to the mountains. Our dolls, of all things — it had to be our dolls, I thought, but I could think of nothing to say about the occurrence. I found it rather pleasant that tramps should have spent the night in the Children’s Villa and that it was they who had started the fire, as I did not know there were any tramps still around; I thought they had died out long ago. Naturally the gardeners would let them spend the night in the Children’s Villa. Caecilia probably expected me to inveigh against the gardeners, but to her great surprise I praised them. They’re the most loyal employees we have, I said, the most reliable, the most natural, the ones I’m fondest of. Just because Caecilia expected me to criticize the gardeners I spoke up for them, fully aware that I was saying the first thing that came into my head. I’ll have the Children’s Villa put in order, I said suddenly. This remark came as a shock to her, though it did not immediately strike me as being of any great consequence. She looked up and stared straight into my eyes. By saying this I had pronounced myself master of Wolfsegg, for I had said, in so many words, I’ll have the Children’s Villa put in order. Never before had I said I would have anything put in order at Wolfsegg, for until then I had not been entitled to say such a thing. On the contrary, I had always been shorn of my rights; for decades I had had no rights whatever. The truth is that I had never been accorded even the most marginal rights. The Children’s Villa is a jewel, I said, and must be restored to its original condition, in precise accordance with the old prints. I had the idea of starting work almost at once on restoring the Children’s Villa; I felt a great urge to do so. And the Home Farm must be restored too, I said; it’s completely run-down. It’s not that we’re short of money. Caecilia remained silent and let me go on. This was the method she always used — letting me go on until I had said far more than was good for me, more than it behooved me to say, until I had given too much away and she was able to score the winning point. Again I said too much and gave myself away. And I’ll get my restorer in from Vienna to catalogue and value our pictures, I said. No sooner had I said this than I felt embarrassed and tried to change the subject. I didn’t expect to be back here so soon, I said. I didn’t intend to come back for a long time. Rome is the ideal place for me. I can’t live in any other city, and certainly not in the country. Wolfsegg’s out of the question for me now, I said. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, I thought. The Children’s Villa is my favorite building, I said. Do you remember how we played Confucius, which we invented and wrote ourselves? We didn’t know what or who Confucius was, but the word Confucius inspired us to invent a play. By the way, what happened to all the plays we wrote? I asked Caecilia. She said she did not know. They must be in the attic of the Children’s Villa, I said — that’s where I last saw them. You painted your most beautiful set for Confucius, I said. And Amalia was a wonderful Confucia. The libraries must be opened up, I said. All those books must be aired. We don’t know what treasures we have there, shut off from the air and covered with dust. Wolfsegg must gradually become a living place again, as I imagine it. Caecilia said nothing. For decades our parents have kept everything locked up, I said. I looked across at the gardeners again. Two huntsmen came through the gateway and greeted me from a distance. Only hunting, never anything but hunting, I said, feeling more alone than ever. The pigeons were cooing so much that I looked up at the windows, especially the top-floor windows. Their cooing is always particularly dreadful when it’s going to rain, I said. My pupil Gambetti hates pigeons too, I said. Rome’s full of pigeons, and they ruin everything beautiful, all the architecture. The pigeons should be decimated, I said, and was instantly embarrassed at having used the word decimated. One of the gardeners came across and asked me whether the dosed coffin should be raised any further. Yes, said my sister, although the gardener had addressed his question to me. He went away to raise my mother’s coffin, with the help of a colleague. The gardeners are the best thing about Wolfsegg, I said, but Caecilia pretended not to hear. The accident had taken place on Wednesday evening. In the kitchen there was a pile of newspapers that the maids had brought in. I had gone to the kitchen in search of a cup of so-called house coffee, and the pile of papers on the little table by the window at once caught my eye. At first I resisted the urge, but was unable to stop myself from sitting down and scanning the newspapers. They reported our family tragedy in the usual vulgar fashion, with all the insensitivity and attention to detail that typifies the Austrian press, sensationalizing it with the ruthless cruelty that I had always found alarming in press reports of other people’s tragedies, while admiring the cold-bloodedness of such reports, which were avidly lapped up by readers, myself included. Ever since childhood I have been a keen newspaper reader with an appetite for crude sensationalism, but this time I was naturally sickened by what I read. It seemed that my parents had driven to Styria with Johannes in order to see a dealer and inspect the latest American harvester. Like all the agricultural equipment at Wolfsegg, it had to be a McCormick. My parents spent the afternoon in Styria and were driven around by Johannes to visit friends and do some shopping, Styria being a good place for shopping. Toward evening they had driven to Linz and attended a Bruckner concert, conducted by Eugen Jochum, in the Brucknerhaus by the Danube, one of the ghastliest cultural centers in the world. Immediately after the concert they had driven back in the direction of Wolfsegg, with my father at the wheel. The fatal accident had occurred just beyond Wels,on Federal Highway 1, right at the junction where the road to Gaspoltshofen branches off. Even the newspapers did not know exactly how the accident had happened, but they were not sparing with their abominable pictures. They even printed a large photograph of my mother’s headless body. I gazed at the picture for a long time, though all this time I was naturally afraid that someone might come into the kitchen and catch me at it. I drank some of the house coffee that was standing on the oven, still hot, and opened one newspaper after another. Each of the front pages carried at least one picture of the accident, and the captions had all the crudeness and vulgarity that have always typified the provincial press. They have no reason to worry about standards; it is the total lack of standards that makes them so popular and guarantees their high circulation and immense turnover. I was now experiencing at first hand the quite uninhibited crudeness of these provincial garbage sheets, and the longer I sat reading these provincial garbage sheets and studying the pictures, the more they disgusted me. Each paper felt obliged to outdo the next in vulgarity.