The Lime Works

your writing is what he is supposed to have said. Oh no, Konrad lied, thinking that the lie was about the only means of contact with another human being. Let us attend to whatever needs our attention, Konrad is supposed to have said, and the works inspector said something about grading the road and Konrad, without being asked, as he admitted, said, as you know, I am working on that book I have so often told you about. I am so entirely caught up in it, you know, he said, it’s a mania I’m afraid, I seem to be possessed by it, all there is of me, as you know it is in the nature of a mania that a man will give his entire life to it and destroy himself entirely by his obsession alone and nothing else. It’s a study of the sense of hearing, Konrad is supposed to have said to the works inspector. As you know, Konrad said, so much has been written about the brain, but virtually nothing, at least nothing of any consequence, has been done on the auditory sense. He had been working on it for about twenty years, Konrad is supposed to have told the inspector; I started by exhausting myself, he said, slowly but with gradually increasing intensity, with these experiments, then I summed it all up, did more experiments, summed up again, and again, etc., Konrad said, then I went back to experimenting, completed the experiments, wrote a summation and another summation, etc. I constantly experiment, and a series of experiments is always followed by another series of experiments, Wieser reports Konrad as saying. Then it all fell apart, at the very peak of concentration it all fell to pieces again. But now Konrad said he had the whole thing complete in his head, all the details together and in place, the most incredible material you can imagine, he said, everything to do with the auditory sense. But no sooner have I reached my peak of concentration than it all falls apart again, Konrad said. Now I have it, I think, but at that very moment it has all collapsed. But when one has had it all in one’s head for so long, completely in one’s head for all those years, he said to the works inspector, one is bound to assume that it is only a question of time, that the auspicious moment must come sooner or later when one will suddenly be able to set it all down on paper. This was the moment he had been waiting for, it had come, as he also said several times to Wieser, the moment was here, now, as he said to Fro too, as I know, and Konrad actually said this to the inspector, the moment came every day, indeed there was not a day without such a moment when he believed the time to begin had come, and that he would now finish writing his book, but every time it came, Konrad said to the works inspector, as soon as he sat down at his desk he would be interrupted, whether, as he said, by the baker or the chimney sweep or on one occasion by Wieser or else by Fro, or by the works inspector, or Hoeller, or his wife, or the forestry commissioner, or a noise, or whatever it was. But it was quite impossible not to go down and open the door when there was a knock at the door, he said to the inspector, to let someone knock incessantly on the door without responding was something impossible for him if only because it would drive him crazy in record time. People never cease their knocking, Konrad said, even when they know they are disturbing me, delaying my work, possibly ruining my book, ruining everything, but they will not stop knocking until I get up, move the papers aside, and go down to open the door. Invariably it is the most ridiculous trifle for the sake of which I am interrupted in my work, Konrad is supposed to have said, some enormous absurdity that threatens to ruin my life’s work. To think that he had always dreamed of the lime works as a place where he and his wife would be living in perfect isolation and freedom from interruption by people, that here in the lime works the destructive apparatus of the increasingly disturbed, nervous so-called consumer society, with its chronically irritating and ultimately ruinous effect on everything in the nature of intellectual effort could not touch them, that here they would have escaped all that, but in reality they continued to be irritated by people even here at the lime works, he simply did not have the strength, Konrad said to Wieser, to resist opening the door when someone knocked, he invariably yielded and opened the door, Konrad said, not from considerations of humanity, not from motives of civility about which he couldn’t have cared less, he hated every kind of propriety, he had learned to hate propriety in the course of decades of experiencing life, he hated everything to do with social forms, everything implied by civility toward people, and it was purely, as stated, a pitiable lack of personal energy that made him go down and open the door, made him desert his work, what could be more depressing than to desert a task like mine, so laboriously constructed in decades of hard work, to desert it for the sake of a chimney sweep, a baker, a works inspector, how low a man must have sunk to desert his work for the most absurd, the most trifling reason, because his wife upstairs wants her pillow straightened or needs a drink of water or wants to be read to from her favorite romantic poet, or wants the curtains drawn or opened, a piece of bread cut, her hair ribbon tightened, her garter tied, her sugar bowl filled, her spectacles set on her nose, her back rubbed with alcohol, or else because of Hoeller’s wood-chopping or Fro, or the man from the sawmill, or on your account, Wieser. Actually, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser in a tone of utter weariness, this endless knocking on my door, though quite constant in its actual sound level and intensity, in my head swells to a terrifying, ear-splitting thunderousness and drives me completely crazy. It forced him to get up, drop everything, go down and unlock the door, just to stop the knocking. Having done this, Konrad said, there was no point in being impolite about it, because the damage is done by then, so I am exquisitely polite although of course I ask myself every time I am so exquisitely polite why I am being so exquisitely polite. The whole day is ruined, everything in his head is dissipated beyond recall, there is nothing left but a few polite formulas such as, Do come in, Come in, How are you, Ah yes, or maybe just Yes indeed, or You don’t say, suddenly issuing from his lips. This time you have really ruined my work completely, Konrad said to the works inspector, according to Wieser, telling him the truth for the first time. First Hoeller started it with his wood-chopping, Konrad said to the inspector, and I went down and ordered Hoeller to stop it instantly, I ordered him to repair the waste baskets and went back to my room and sat down at my desk feeling that my book was saved, because Hoeller did not actually cause an interruption to the extent of completely dissipating my concept, but now you have come knocking at the door and you’ve wrecked the whole thing, to be interrupted twice in a row in so complex a mental effort as my book is fatal. While it was still possible to return to my book after Hoeller’s relatively superficial disturbance, this second interruption makes it impossible for me to go on with what I was doing. I hope you won’t mind, Konrad said to the inspector, according to Wieser, my speaking to you so frankly about it, and went on to say that the first interruption by Hoeller had been possible to overcome, with a little skillful effort, but not the second interruption by the inspector. Besides, it makes a difference, Konrad said, whether an interruption is caused by a man like Hoeller or a man like yourself; a simple man like Hoeller or a complicated man like yourself, after all, so complicated a man, Konrad is said to have exclaimed while offering the inspector some schnapps, but the inspector is said to have declined, at first, that is, but he ended by accepting, one always declines at first but one ends by accepting, Konrad said to the inspector, a type that Konrad felt quite familiar with, the type that always declines at first and then ends by accepting anyway. It’s a fact, Konrad said to the works inspector, according to Wieser, no really informative work on hearing exists, the only honest study of the subject that has any value is some three hundred years old, all the rest is botch work. Which is why I have become wholly absorbed in the idea of writing about it, doing a serious book on the subject, on the sense of hearing, has come to be a totally absorbing task for me, not at the beginning, of course, not totally absorbing before my thirtieth year, nor did it absorb me totally as yet even between my thirtieth and fortieth year, but ever since my fortieth year I have been totally absorbed by the idea of studying the sense of hearing, and writing the definitive book on it, I have been relentlessly, more and more exclusively absorbed by it. It was a fact, he said, that all thinkers tended to develop a subject of their own, until their thirtieth year, that would begin to absorb them completely one day, some time after their fortieth year, but only a very few surrender themselves wholly to their subjects, most of them flirt with their subject after the age of twenty-five and develop it for a time, but after their thirty-fifth or fortieth year they tend to drop it and drift off into society or quite simply into a life of bourgeois comfort. In this way, most regrettably, hundreds of thousands of vital scientific studies are lost to the world, works needed to bring light into the world’s darkness. As regards hearing, that would tend to be written about, quite superficially at that, Konrad is supposed to have said to the works inspector, according to Wieser, by a medical doctor, the wrong approach entirely, or else by a philosopher, also the wrong approach. Whatever a medical man wrote about it was sure to be worthless stuff, and whatever a philosopher wrote about it was also sure to be worthless. To tackle a subject such as the sense of hearing and write it up, one had to be more than a mere medical man or a mere philosopher. To do this it was absolutely necessary to be a mathematician and a physicist as well, that is to say, one should be a master of all natural science, as well as a prophet and a superlative artist. It was simply not enough to be a medical man, or a philosopher, or a physiognomist, to write the kind of book that was needed on the sense of hearing. To think that such specialists could do justice to the subject was a misconception. What I have in mind is the formulation of a definitive statement on the subject, Konrad is supposed to have said, the final word on it, though of course the moment you achieved such finality it ceased to be final, and so forth. The principle involved was one on which Konrad said he had spoken to the works inspector before, had indeed familiarized him with it sufficiently so that he could now proceed from the premise that any final point is a starting point for a further development toward a new final point and so forth, Konrad is supposed to have said to the inspector, according to Wieser. However, it was all much more complicated than that, because basically much simpler than we assume, which is why nothing could be elucidated with any finality, ultimately. A so-called approach to a subject would get you nowhere. Communication was impossible except by means of the work as a whole. Radical changes were to be expected, Konrad is supposed to have said to the inspector, and said again, significantly: radical changes that would be transformations, and despite the fact that the inspector had listened to this remark with particular interest, Wieser reports that Konrad said to the inspector at this point that people tend to turn a deaf ear to the significant point, they just miss hearing it, even you, my dear inspector, miss hearing the significant point, just as everyone tends to miss hearing the most significant, or at least the highly significant remarks addressed to them, they miss them all the time, though apart from that, Konrad is said to have added, there is really no such thing as a really significant remark, not even a highly significant remark, nothing at all has any real significance and so forth, but intentionally or not, listeners tend to miss a great deal that is said to them, so that in effect they miss everything, and so forth; the unintentional is the intentional, the most unintentional the most intentional, and so forth. Whenever I am not working on my book, Konrad is supposed to have said, then it is quiet, the whole lime works is completely encapsulated in the quiet characteristic of the place. No need to describe this quiet to the works inspector, who was sufficiently acquainted with it. It was totally quiet when he, Konrad, was not working, when he was walking up and down, this way and that, turning things over in his mind, because when I am turning things over in my mind, he is supposed to have said, I am not actually working, i.e., of course I am working when I am thinking things over, but basically I do not really begin to do my work proper until after the phase of considerations and reconsiderations is ended, which is when I begin to do the actual work, but by then it’s all likely to be all over with the quiet here, what with Hoeller starting to chop wood all of a sudden, or else the baker arrives, or the chimney sweep, or Stoerschneider turns up, or the man from the sawmill, or you arrive, Wieser arrives, Fro arrives, someone comes knocking at the door, or else my wife needs something or other. All in the midst of this enormously demanding task, this medico-musico-metaphysical-mathematical work of mine, which is at all times so totally disruptible! As soon as I dare to sit down and start to think that the moment has come when I might be able to write the whole thing down in one sitting, someone invariably knocks at the front door, or my wife rings for a change of stockings. Even though she happens to be the most considerate person in the world, Konrad is supposed to have said. At Laska’s, too, everyone is always saying that Konrad’s wife is the most considerate person there is, and at Lanner’s it’s the same story. The moment someone says, as someone did at the Stiegler, yesterday, for instance, that Konrad is the most inconsiderate person, then someone else instantly counters with the observation that Mrs. Konrad is the most considerate person in the world. Twenty years ago, Konrad said, he had in all secrecy set his mind on writing this book of his, behind his wife’s back. And this foolishness, undertaken behind his wife’s back, held him in its grip ever since. At first he managed to keep his preoccupation with his work a secret from his wife, fearing that if she should suddenly discover that he was busying himself with a scientific work the results might be catastrophic, since she naturally knew that, as with anything else he did, he would never relinquish the undertaking until he had completed it. For years he had been able to keep it a secret, not only from his wife, of course, but from everyone else as well. She had known nothing about it in Augsburg, as yet, nor had anyone else, nor as yet in Aschaffenburg, nor in Bolzano, Merano, Munich; then suddenly, in Paris, he had revealed to her in the most casual manner that he was at work on a book. I am working on something about the sense of hearing, he is supposed to have said to his wife, about the auditory sense, no one has done anything about it yet. At that instant she realized that he, who had been everything in the world to her always, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, was lost to her — it was then she knew f