Appalled was a quite inept expression, I told Gambetti. My brother-in-law, I went on, was the type of person who was known in Southwest Germany as a Baden gourmet, an average petit bourgeois who had attained a degree of affluence and liked to flaunt it, to whom it was important to be fat and overweight, to cut an imposing figure. To be thin was seen in that part of the world as a sign of sickness, something menacing that was to be shunned because it was associated with the devil. To these people any form of asceticism was repugnant, whereas the fat man represented the ideal. Fatness was reassuring, and in Southwest Germany, especially Baden, they attached the greatest importance to reassurance, and so, for that matter, did all Germans. Fat men were trusted and worthy of emulation, but thin men were distrusted. Gambetti only laughed at my theory, and I joined in his laughter. Such people are terribly idle, I now thought, sitting opposite my brother-in-law, but their idleness isn’t what I would call creative idleness — it’s the stolid idleness of the pig, I thought, which today is possibly more human than the human being, who has become more and more piglike in the last hundred years. My brother-in-law could not be roused from his idleness. I took advantage of the situation to give free rein to my own thoughts. I won’t be so unmolested for a long time, I thought. It was about half past four, and the people who were coming to express their condolences could not be kept waiting. This time spent in the kitchen with my brother-in-law would probably be my last chance to be more or less alone, I thought, even though I had my brother-in-law sitting opposite me. Dreadful, isn’t it? I said, but he did not react. These people always pretend to be the life and soul of the party, to love wine and conviviality, I had told Gambetti, but they’re actually anything but convivial. They have to have conviviality at any price, and if you refuse to join in they’re ruthless; everything inside them turns to hatred. They use their conviviality to subjugate those around them and make life hell for them if they refuse to come up with the conviviality they crave. At least this is what I always feel, I told Gambetti, when people insist on forcing their conviviality on me. As I observed my brother-in-law I had visions of Rome, until in the end I fancied I was in my study in Rome, even though I was sitting opposite my ponderous brother-in-law in our kitchen at Wolfsegg. My father’s faulty vision ultimately proved fatal, I said. They’ll be delivering the new harvester, I said, but who knows whether we’ll need it? I said this in the tone of the owner of Wolfsegg, as a farmer, so to speak. I repeated these words several times in my mind and was amazed by their farmerly tone. It was like hearing my brother speak, I thought. Uttering these words, I had turned myself into a farmer, which I had no desire to be. They’ll probably all demand that I become a farmer; they probably expect I’m one already, I thought. I was aware of this after uttering these words. That’s naturally what’s in their minds, I thought, but all my life the last thing I’ve ever wanted to be is a farmer. Of course they expect me to give up everything else, to sacrifice it all in order to provide them with the farmer they need, the farmer they must have. They undoubtedly expect me to give up Rome and are already going around full of glee at the prospect. They expect me to give up everything connected with Rome, even to be capable of doing so, I thought, but that’s absurd. Yet the idea took root in my mind that they actually believed it, because they had to believe it. As the heir apparent I was expected to surrender virtually my whole being in order to run Wolfsegg for them. It was out of the question. Gambetti, Zacchi, Maria, even Spadolini, and all the others, I thought — there’s no way I’m going to give up that atmosphere for an inherited nightmare. But all the time there’s a gleeful look in their faces, in my sisters’ faces, I thought, because I’ve now been hit by something they never dreamed of for a moment, by the ultimate absurdity: I am to become a farmer, to run Wolfsegg, to have the whole of Wolfsegg hung around my neck, and they, my sisters, are to be the beneficiaries of this nightmare scenario. My brother-in-law, still immersed in the newspapers, had no idea of what was passing through my mind as he indulged his appetite for sensation. He’d also be a beneficiary of the violence they’re planning to do me, I thought, of the self-surrender they expect — the wine cork manufacturer from Freiburg im Breisgau with his forty-five workers and office staff who probably do nothing but piss on him, as they say. But my sisters don’t really know me, I told myself. They actually believe that I’ll enter into my inheritance in the manner laid down. We’ve always known about the will; it doesn’t even need to be opened in order to be understood. My dear Gambetti, I had said on the telephone, you don’t know what I have coming to me, because you don’t know what Wolfsegg’s like. I could hear these words of mine quite clearly. While my brother-in-law, as I could see, was still enthralled by the newspapers, fascinated by the press reports of the accident, I could hear myself saying to Gambetti, Wolfsegg won’tkillme — I’ll see to that. And it occurred to me that perhaps Gambetti did not understand me. He had thought I was telephoning to decline the invitation to dinner with his parents, when all I wanted was to tell him briefly that my parents and my brother Johannes had died, fallen victim to a road accident, I said, which was a quite unsuitable formulation for a language teacher to use. However, I had never described myself as a language teacher; I simply called myself his teacher, just as I called him my pupil. I’m not a specialist teacher, I now reflected. I merely convey knowledge that is relevant to German literature. I naturally try to do my job well and convey knowledge that is worth more than the fee he pays me, which I only accept pro forma, as it were. I claim my fee as a matter of principle, and it is paid to me as a matter of principle, if for no other reason than to maintain the necessary distance in our teacher-pupil relationship. I could forgo my fee, but that would be extremely foolish, the first step toward destroying this relationship, I thought, observing my brother-in-law even more closely. I could do this quite unimpeded, for he took no notice of me whatever and sat there as though I had long since gotten up and left the kitchen. If I had gotten up and left the kitchen, I thought, he wouldn’t even have noticed. Our terrible misfortune has long since lost its sensational aspect, I told myself, and the living proof of this is sitting opposite me. My brother-in-law comes from a family whose peasant ancestors moved to a small town, prompted by an ambition to better themselves, whatever that means. They staked everything on shaking off first their peasant origins for small-town respectability, then their small-town respectability for something higher, the nature of which I cannot define. My brother-in-law is the end product of this strenuous process, as it were, which is naturally doomed to failure. For such people stake virtually everything on getting away from their real selves, but they never succeed, because they lack the intellectual energy, because they have not discovered the intellect — the intellect around them or the intellect within them — and have therefore not taken even the first step, which is the precondition for taking the second. They suddenly find themselves stranded, like my brother-in-law, no longer knowing what to make of the world around them, or of themselves, and end up getting on everyone’s nerves. Wolfsegg has simply acquired a new comic figure, I told myself as I observed my brother-in-law, but this hasn’t made the comedy any more bearable or any more interesting. This new comic figure is not amusing, only tiresome — not a wag, but a drag. For a moment I wished I had brought Gambetti with me, but Gambetti would certainly not have wished to act as my intellectual shield against all the distasteful conditions at Wolfsegg. He might even have been a liability, I thought. Even as a protective shield he would only have given me trouble, and I’ve enough of that already. At Wolfsegg our relations would have been quite different from those we enjoy in Rome. I would not have been able to devote the same attention to him as I do in Rome. Everything that makes his company such a pleasure would have been impossible. Wolfsegg air is not Roman air, the Wolfsegg atmosphere is certainly not the Roman atmosphere: Wolfsegg, in short, is not Rome. It would have been a grave error to bring Gambetti to Wolfsegg. The proper garment for the funeral, in view of the climate, would undoubtedly be my loden, I thought, but I won’t wear it. I’ll wear one of the Roman coats I have hanging in the closet, if only to distinguish myself from the others. Princes of the Church are always afraid of catching a chill and wear lodens over their vestments when officiating out of doors. And everybody else is bound to be wearing a loden. If I wear one of my Roman coats I’ll be able to distinguish myself from them, I thought, and thereby document the fact that I’m no longer a Wolfsegger but a Roman. I’ll present myself as a Roman, which is what they’ve nicknamed me for years. I’ll make my entrance like a Roman. The coat I had in mind was one that I had bought in Padua the previous year. Tomorrow I must come across as a metropolitan, I thought. I’ll wear Roman shoes and a Roman scarf. In this way I’ll distinguish myself outwardly from the loden-clad masses, whom I’ve always detested. The loden-clad masses will do everything they can to overpower me, I thought, but I’ll know how to defend myself. Tomorrow’s Roman won’t let himself be worsted by the loden-clad masses. I was still sitting in the kitchen with my brother-in-law when I heard the first mourners arrive, not just local people who had come to offer their condolences, as I thought at first, but guests who would be staying the night at Wolfsegg. I stood up, and so did my brother-in-law, who until now had been buried in the newspapers. There was a knock on the door. Only now did it occur to me to wonder where the kitchen maids and the cook were and what had become of my sisters. The first guests had made their way to the end of the entrance hall without being received by anyone and now knocked on the kitchen door, causing me instant embarrassment. I later took my sisters to task, asking them how it was possible that the first guests had not been received at the door and had been able to get to the end of the entrance hall without being greeted. My sisters had undertaken to receive all the guests, not only those who merely came to offer condolences but those who would be staying overnight, and had placed a guest list on one of the hall tables, stating precisely where each of the guests was to spend the night, or in some cases more than one night. Some were to be put up in the village, but close relatives and close friends like Spadolini were to stay in the main house, the Huntsmen’s Lodge, or the Gardeners’ House, where rooms were said to have been prepared for them. Spadolini was to be put up in the main house, I discovered, on looking through the list.