tragic, I’ll say sad: tragic is theatrical hyperbole—sadhas a more human ring. My sister is bound to be horrified to learn that my brother-in-law is such a low character. But is that what I want? I asked myself. It’ll make him a more important figure than he is. On the other hand, I can’t ease up on him if I mean to expel him, to drive him out of Wolfsegg, though clearly I won’t need to make the slightest effort to achieve this. He’ll see to it himself, and my sisters will help in their underhanded way. My brother-in-law’s days are numbered, I thought. There he sat, not devouring the newspapers, as they usually say, but devoured by them. And there I was sitting opposite him and giving him my blessing, for he could do what I had been unable to do: he could read the newspapers without feeling embarrassed and apprehensive, under the aegis of his suddenly all-powerful brother-in-law. After all, I’m his brother-in-law now, just as he’s mine, I told myself, but I’m the one to be feared, the one who’ll determine the future and decide what’s going to happen to Wolfsegg. That’s the difference between us. The powerful brother-in-law is sitting opposite the powerless one who has no say in anything, I thought. The wine cork manufacturer from Baden was able to enjoy the newspapers to the full, while I had to deny myself this enjoyment. Such people always have it easy, I thought — we never do. They never have to exert themselves — we always do. Given our present situation, I would naturally have refused to peruse the newspapers if someone had suggested it. I would have had to forgo them and leave them untouched. But my brother-in-law, after a moment’s hesitation, acts upon my suggestion and falls upon these newspaper reports. Dreadful, isn’t it? was the only thing I said to him as he sat immersed in the newspapers. Twice I uttered the word dreadful, aword I often use in relation to such press reports of accidents. Dreadful is the right word in such a context, and I use it often, too often, I told myself, far too often, even in contexts where it’s inappropriate. But in the present context it was entirely appropriate. I used it now, but my brother-in-law did not look up. He did not let himself be distracted by it, he did not let it interfere with his appetite for sensation. My father must have been driving too fast, I said. My brother-in-law pretended not to hear. Nobody knows why my father was driving and not Johannes, I said, because Johannes usually took the wheel. For a long time my father had been shortsighted, I said. People over sixty should have their driver’s license revoked, I said. It’s people over sixty who cause all the accidents. They’re the ones who cause all the disasters on our roads, because their reactions are too slow. I was embarrassed at having said this, as it sounded like a typical sentence from one of the newspapers that lay on the table. Newspaper editors purvey nothing but dirt, I thought — but the dirt they throw at us is our own dirt. The world that these purveyors of dirt present in the newspapers is essentially the real world, I said. The printed world is the real world. The world of dirt printed by the newspapers is our own world. Whatever is printed is real, and the real is only what we suppose to be real. I could not expect my brother-in-law to understand me. He was probably not listening, for he did not react to what I said but went on looking at a picture showing my mother’s head, separated from the torso by at least ten inches, on a laboratory slab. Using ambulances to take away the dead is absurd, I said. My brother-in-law did not look up. I remembered describing him to Gambetti before the wedding, when I had seen him only once, as a fat man of less than forty who was getting progressively fatter, so that his clothes were getting progressively tighter, and whose fatness, due to overeating, caused breathing difficulties when he spoke, so that he had to speak in short sentences. His breathing is stertorous, I had said, and when you’re walking with him he keeps stopping and stretching out his hand to point to some object, or if there’s no object for him to point to, he’ll point vaguely in some direction at the interesting landscape, hoping in this way to divert attention from his shortness of breath. Everything about him is a function of his obesity, I had told Gambetti. Feeling embarrassed at denigrating my future brother-in-law to such an extent, I had said to Gambetti, I’m appalled by my meanness, but then I apologized for using such a distasteful word as appalled, for as his teacher I should never have used such a banal expression. I clearly remember telling Gambetti that although we were constantly annoyed by others when they talked in clichés, we succumbed to the same lamentable habit ourselves.