He gets on my nerves the whole time, Caecilia said more than once, and Amalia said nothing. The facade could no longer be maintained, for it concealed nothing but a deepening aversion. My brother-in-law had been sent away under a ludicrous pretext, I thought, so that my sisters could talk to me about him in the way they liked best — behind his back. The fact that he already got on Caecilia’s nerves the whole time proved that he had always done so, yet in spite of this she had taken up with him and brought him to Wolfsegg, with the connivance of her aunt in Titisee, who was intent upon one-upping my mother. Our aunt from Titisee, I thought, will turn up from the Black Forest and claim her seat in the front row reserved for the family, knowing that she has triumphed. Even if Caecilia’s marriage could already be considered a failure, this would only add to our aunt’s triumph, for she had achieved what she set out to do: she had delivered a body blow to her sister-in-law by prevailing upon my sister, her niece, to take up with this man and marry him shortly afterward. Her triumph is in no way diminished by the fact that the victim of the conspiracy is now dead, I thought; it’s my sister who now has to foot the bill for her aunt’s machinations. She’s landed with the wine cork manufacturer, and he’s begun to play his part. However pathetic his performance, I thought, it’ll be hard to drop him from the cast. At any rate it’ll be hard for Caecilia. I couldn’t care less, as I can get him out of Wolfsegg whenever I want. That’s for me to decide, and I don’t intend to put up with him at Wolfsegg for long, I told myself. And my sister won’t be at Wolfsegg much longer either. Perhaps she senses what I’m thinking — she may even know for certain, I thought. But that’s not my worry. If you enter into a grotesque marriage, as my sister has done, you have to take the consequences, I thought. The consequences of marrying a wine cork manufacturer are bound to be painful, indeed excruciating, and they’re beginning to show. We utter a warning, but it goes unheeded, I thought; we always say the same thing, but the ears it’s intended for don’t hear it. Caecilia turned a deaf ear when I said to her, Hands off the wine cork manufacturer — quit this perverse scheming against your mother. Our aunt from Titisee has incurred a twofold guilt, I thought, toward my mother and toward Caecilia, toward all of us, actually. She never got over the fact that my mother sent her into exile, as it were, thirty years ago because she could no longer bear to have her living at Wolfsegg along with my father, her brother. She exiled her to a small hunting lodge in the Black Forest that has always belonged to the family. Look what your precious Titisee aunt has done, I said to Caecilia. She understood me. I did not say this in a comforting way but in a tone of reproof that is not easily forgiven. He gets on my nerves, she had said, plainly indicating for the first time that she hated him. She wants him out of the way, I thought, and has sent him over to the Farm, where he’ll probably spend ages searching the attic for a box of funeral sheets that don’t exist, as she knows perfectly well. It was outrageous to send her husband up to the attic, where one sends only servants. He never leaves my side, she had said, which could mean only that she already loathed the wine cork manufacturer. I can’t sleep with the windows shut, she said, and he won’t sleep with them open. I’m forever opening the windows, and he’s forever shutting them, all night long. There was not just disappointment in her voice but real indignation, elemental hatred. I noticed that although the wedding decorations had been taken down, a few items were still hanging here and there, overlooked during the hasty funeral preparations. There were carnations, for instance, behind the lamps at the front door of the Farm, which should have been decorated with laurel to betoken mourning. My sister naturally did not say in so many words that her husband smelled, but she might just as well have done so. My mother need not have agonized over the quickest way to break up the marriage, which she had always described as grotesque, I thought; she could have spared herself the agony. I did not begrudge my dead mother this small triumph; in fact it seemed sad that she could no longer have the satisfaction of knowing that this marriage, which she once said she detested from the bottom of her heart and which had been engineered by our Titisee aunt and Caecilia, though chiefly by the former, was already on the rocks, as they say, only a few days after the wedding. While the wine cork manufacturer searched the attic for the funeral sheets in the box marked Sunlicht, his wife was running him down quite shamelessly, unaware of how contemptible her behavior was. The slender thread linking the wine cork manufacturer to Wolfsegg had snapped, although he could not know this. Caecilia had come over to my side, and Amalia was equally unscrupulous in her calculations. They’re trying to salvage whatever can still be salvaged, I thought. To do this they had to ally themselves with me, knowing that I now held the reins. The master they had never considered had suddenly materialized, and having always treated me with hostility, they had nothing good to expect of me. It was therefore vital that they should give an initial impression ofweakness, I thought, in order to be able to confront me later from a position of strength. I could see that this was the only tactic available to them. I’m not mistaken, I told myself. I needed a bath, or at least a shower, so I left my sisters and went upstairs. On the way one of the kitchen maids came up and handed me my wallet, which she said I had left in the kitchen. I could not imagine how this had happened, but assumed that I must have taken my wallet out of my jacket pocket without thinking and put it on the kitchen table, where the cook had found it under the newspapers. I’ve given myself away, I thought: if my wallet was found under the newspapers, that’s proof positive of my guilt. I put the wallet in my pocket and went up to my room. We fancy we can get away with lying and not be exposed, I thought, but then we’re exposed by our own carelessness. The air and rail journey from Rome had taken its toll, and I began to feel tired. My room looked as if I had only just moved out. I had not tidied it before returning to Rome, and no one had done so since. They said they’d tidy my room and put everything in order as soon as I’d left, I thought, but nothing had been done, as they had not reckoned on my returning so soon, I had caught them out once more in a bit of negligence. On the other hand, I thought, it’s quite pleasant to come into the room and find everything more or less in disorder. Nothing had been tidied; no one seeing my room would have guessed that I had been in Rome for the past week. Everything seemed to indicate that I had left only a few hours ago, or even less. In all the excitement they had even forgotten to make my bed. They’ve certainly no idea that it hasn’t been made, I thought. Normally they’d have made it, but they haven’t, and this raises doubts about what Caecilia always calls their