after the funeral, I told myself. I’ll have to go to the attorneys’ offices and various other offices, the district commissioner’s, and so on. At present I could see only the tip of the iceberg. It’s odd, I said to my brother-in-law, to see my father and brother lying in state, but not my mother. On the other hand, I said, their faces no longer bear any relation to their real faces. They’re the faces of strangers who don’t have anything to do with me. They must be buried as quickly as possible. He had hardly gotten to know his parents-and brother-in-law, I said, and now they were dead. As I said this, I caught sight of the words fall victim in the newspaper lying on top of the pile in front of me, to which a few more copies had been added. The phrase fallvictim was ludicrous, like everything the papers wrote. I asked my brother-in-law whether he had read the newspaper reports of the accident. I had long since finished eating, but he was still wolfing down big slices of bread and sausage. With a shake of the head he declined even to open the papers. He could not possibly do so in front of me — it would be quite impermissible. I found this unpardonably tasteless. He was looking at the papers lying in front of me, yet at the same time he shook his head, refusing my offer of a chance to inform himself further about the accident and the precise course of events. There have been so many fatal accidents at that particular junction, I said, affecting the style of the newspapers. It can be seen quite clearly and doesn’t look particularly dangerous, yet again and again accidents take place there, most of them fatal, I said. My brother-in-law was meanwhile playing the moralist. As he wolfed down the bread and sausage, he first drew up his legs, then pulled back his arms, which were spread across the table, making sure that his cuff links did not come in contact with the plate of open sandwiches I had prepared for him. Munching his bread and sausage, he seemed to be asking how I could possibly imagine that he would have the effrontery to read these tasteless newspapers with their horror stories in my presence, or for that matter at all, at a time of family grief. He had glanced contemptuously at the front pages, which showed pictures of the victims, yet I could see that his contempt was accompanied by a certain disappointment at being prevented, by my presence, from staring at them unrestrainedly. He was pretending to be incapable of such unworthy conduct, whereas I had been quite capable of it, I thought. As he masticated his bread and sausage he kept eyeing the newspapers, especially when he thought I was not looking. They clearly interested him, and he would certainly have read them with the utmost avidity had he been alone, uninhibited by the presence of someone whom he was bound to think incapable of even contemplating such shameless conduct, let alone engaging in it. Yet all the time I knew that I had engaged in it two hours earlier. Not right now, he said. Coming from my brother-in-law, these words were as hypocritical as if they had come from me, for at that moment I could have said the same. The round went to me because he said it and I did not. I was the decent person who could control himself, whereas he had to put on an act by uttering the profoundly hypocritical words not right now. As soon as he had uttered them he too was bound to see how hypocritical they were. After all, I thought, the man wasn’t so stupid that he couldn’t see at once what the words really meant and what effect they had on me. He must have known that I saw through them. They slipped out more or less inadvertently and lost any credibility they might have had in their passage from brain to air. Now that my brother-in-law had been unmasked as a hypocrite in a profoundly sad situation, a situation that was literally one ofdeadly earnest, I could go a step further and show my magnanimity by pushing the papers toward him before he had finished all the open sandwiches. I suggested that he read them in order to get an idea of how the press saw the accident. He should take a look at them, I said, leaning back in my chair, as though not wanting to disturb him in his reading. I recalled something that Zacchi had once said about me — that I was infernally skillful at concealing my own beastliness. I was still amused by Zacchi’s remark. He made it at the Ancora Verde in Trastevere, where we had gone with Maria to talk about a planned excursion to Castel Gandolfo and about Sartre’s The Words, which we had all three read simultaneously without knowing it. We discussed The Words until late in the night, at much greater length than any book we had discussed before. As he chewed the last of the bread and sausage, the wine cork manufacturer began leafing through the newspapers, looking now at an illustrated page, now at an unillustrated one, and stretching out his legs as people do when reading a newspaper. He’s really made himself at home with the accident and its exploiters, I thought. Nothing in his demeanor betrayed the least embarrassment. He was farsighted and could not see well close up. But he avoids wearing glasses, I thought. He held the paper up to the light from the window, far enough away from his eyes to be able to take everything in. He should have had glasses long ago, I thought, the kind of reading glasses I’ve had for years, but people like him are too vain to resort to glasses. I’ll tell Caecilia that her husband should get himself some glasses without delay, and I’ll also tell her that he read all about the accident in the newspapers lying on the kitchen table in my presence. I’ll tell her that he read them attentively, with extreme nonchalance and without a trace of embarrassment, savoring every morsel of news as he sat opposite me eating his bread and sausage — three or four slices; I was not sure exactly how many. I’ll say to Caecilia, Your husband even had difficulty with the big pictures taken during the night of horror, but fortunately he was sitting by the kitchen window, where the light fell at just the right angle. Observing my brother-in-law, I began to wonder how I could exploit this scene to his detriment when I reported it to his wife. Warming to my plan, I imagined a thoroughly theatrical scene in which I would go up to my sister and tell her how avidly her husband had read the newspapers. I would tell her that contrary to all her protestations, but in accordance with my suspicions, the wine cork manufacturer was actually a pretty unsavory character. I heard myself telling her, Your husband sat opposite me, reading the newspapers without any compunction, taking no notice of me, although I wanted to discuss something important with him. But he didn’t listen to me. I’m actually capable of such an outrageous perversion of the truth, I thought as I observed my brother-in-law. I knew I was not above such low conduct, having engaged in it hundreds of times before, having made a habit of it and evolved a routine, a regular routine, I thought. My brother-in-law was avidly reading the papers with my express permission, after a decent show of hesitation, though no more than a show. He was actually reading them, whereas I had of course just flicked through them, as they say, when I was alone in the kitchen two hours earlier. He looked at the pictures quite calmly and without embarrassment, whereas I had done so furtively, apprehensive lest I should be caught doing something improper, indeed shameful, and fully aware that I was committing a heinous offense. My brother-in-law, however, could afford to enjoy the newspapers under my indulgent gaze and with my express permission. I could see how much he enjoyed opening one paper after another and reading the reports. Anyone else would have put them down after a while and turned his attention to me, I thought, but my brother-in-law was not like that. He completely ignored me. He regarded the permission I had given him as an unlimited dispensation, preferring to immerse himself in the newspapers and digest his bread and sausage, rather than engage in conversation with me, which was bound to be disagreeable, as he not only felt but knew. He was using the newspapers as a means of avoiding me. The fact is that he constantly avoids me, I thought. He doesn’t seek contact with me, as I believed for a moment when I saw him standing in front of the Orangery, looking futile and stupid, not knowing what to do with himself. I had been quite mistaken, and I was certainly wrong to think that I had a duty to speak to him, that I must take him to the kitchen and place myself at his disposal. Yet I really took him with me because I wanted to needle him, not out of any sense of duty, I thought. I took him to the kitchen only to find out more about him. Getting him something to eat was merely a pretext I used in order to worm this or that bit of information out of him that I could then use against Caecilia and him. The imbecile is at least a producer of imbecilities and a revealer of all kinds of secrets, I had thought. This was my reason for taking him to the kitchen. But now I no longer wished to worm anything out of him. I was content simply to observe him, so that later, at a suitable moment, I could report my observations to Caecilia, or rather, to put it bluntly, falsify my observations for my own ends, to the detriment of them both. I would say to Caecilia, He sat there and kept me waiting the whole time. He was particularly interested in the shots of Mother’s severed head. The pictures of Father thrown back in the car seat next to Johannes, whose head was totally shattered, at least internally, were of great interest to my brother-in-law, your husband, I’ll tell her. How dare such a man immerse himself in this journalistic filth in my presence, I’ll say, especially at such a sad time for us all? I won’t say