The Lime Works

Haffner is what she wants, she shall have it, he said to himself time and again. Most of the time, Konrad said to Fro, he was so exhausted by the time he played the Haffner for her that he nodded off to sleep while it was still on. Probably they both were aging more rapidly in the lime works. If only he could get his book written before he grew too old, absolutely too old and unfit to write it, he is supposed to have said to Fro and to Wieser. The minute he got to his room he went to bed. But the inner restlessness into which he was driven by the outward quiet would not let him sleep even when mortally exhausted, and so he wandered all over the lime works, several times all over the lime works, and spent the rest of the night lying on his bed quite unable to fall asleep. Once you have passed that boundary line between fatigue and exhaustion, it is absurd to believe that you can fall asleep, absurd to try to sleep, to force yourself to sleep; you weren’t going to fall asleep. Instead, he got the opposite of the hoped-for relaxation, the serenity he meant when he dreamed of finding a quiet place to work; instead of being able to relax, he only grew increasingly restless, so restless that he inevitably broke his own rest by doing something or other that brought unrest into it. Here he was at last, actually at the lime works he had taken such infinite pains to get into because it was such a quiet place, the outward quiet which was of its essence and which he had always believed would give him the inward quiet he needed for his work, but he soon found out what a fundamental mistake that was! Though he realized his mistake soon enough, it was too late just the same. A terrible self-deception, a terrible disappointment. But he had worked out for himself a mechanism, he said to Fro, by means of which he could control the outward quiet, in fact the extreme outward quiet so characteristic of the lime works and its environs, gradually to gain control of it and ultimately to exploit it wholly for his own purposes, i.e., for his work. This mechanism enabled him at all times to induce inward quiet by means of the outward quiet, not by nature but by using his brain, using the mechanism itself without any special manipulation of the mechanism. To exploit and transform the outward quiet, even the extreme outward quiet, for the sake of and into inward quiet was a high art, beyond comparison with any other art not only of self-control, control of one’s nerves, that is, he thought, and even though he had reached a high degree of mastery in it he did not claim to have mastered this art at all times. Instead of concentration (on his work), he is supposed to have said, nonconcentration (on his work) suddenly manifested itself. In a word: you had to be able to break away from your outward quiet at the moment when it had ceased to induce inward quiet; in the long run outward quiet never did induce inward quiet, it did so only briefly, much too briefly for intellectual purposes. The weather played a most important part in this, as in every other respect. For instance, when the foehn, that maddening mountain wind, suddenly started to blow: the longer he walked back and forth, this way and that, in the lime works, the greater grew his inward unrest, because he then had no control over the mechanism for inducing inner quiet. He then would try various expedients, substitutes for the mechanism which wouldn’t function, such as reading his Kropotkin, or the Novalis, a book that was basically hers, but even the Novalis did not help him to calm himself, he would try sitting down, standing up, sitting down again, standing up again; alternate between opening the Kropotkin and the Novalis, pace the floor in his room, first in one direction then in another, try putting his papers in order, mix them up again, open the chest, close it again, pull out various drawers, always the same drawers, of the chest, pull out bills, notes, toss them all in a heap, pick up one or the other, read through them, drop them again, move the chair from the window to the door, the one near the door over to the window, turn out the light, turn on the light, follow a line, two lines, several lines, on a wall map. It did no good to go into the kitchen, to carry the logs from the kitchen into his own room, to get the ashes out of the fireplace, empty the pail, none of it was any use. To remind oneself of one thing or another was no use. It did not help him to speak aloud what he was thinking, or feeling, or to utter sentences, as he is supposed to have said to Fro, sentences he had just made up, totally meaningless sentences, or possibly sentences already used as material for the Urbanchich method. He would wander around, Konrad said to Fro, all over the lime works without getting anywhere near calming himself, everywhere, that is, except one place, his wife’s room, because he did not want to aggravate his wife’s depression by his own restlessness, considering that she was already in a state of deepest depression, constantly, in fact, he said to Fro; like him she would delude herself into thinking that times of unrest would alternate with times of inner peace, but in reality neither one of them ever came inwardly to rest, and so they both lived a permanent lie, not only did they lie to each other but each lied, side by side with the other, to him- and herself, while she lied to him and he to her and then simultaneously they lied to each other, in any case they lied that they were having a bearable life in the lime works, lied incessantly, although they were both trapped in an unbearable life, but if they did not simulate bearability, its unbearableness could simply not be borne, Konrad is supposed to have told Fro, an unwavering simulation of leading a bearable life while actually and incessantly enduring the unendurable is simply the only way to get on with it, Konrad is supposed to have said to Fro, he also said something like it to Wieser, he even spoke to me about the bearability of the unbearable being made possible by the pretense of bearability, in the same words, with the same invisible gestures, as I recall, that time in the timber forest; but to get back to what he was saying to Fro, he said that he would wander all over the lime works which on days of that particular kind indeed seemed boundless to him, and try to come to the end of them, but could not get to the end of the lime works because one could walk and run and crawl through the lime works and never get to the end of them, he is supposed to have said, and finally, reaching a sort of climax in the utter shamefulness of his situation, he was often reduced to putting his hands on the walls, those ice-cold rough masonry walls, the ice-cold doorframes, the ice-cold trapdoors to the attic, the icy window glass, the ice-cold wood of the few remaining pieces of furniture, saying to himself, with his eyes shut, over and over, steady now, steady, steady, man. The lime works is not exactly an idyll, he is supposed to have said to Wieser, though it is all too easy to regard the lime works as an idyllic place because one happens to have gotten stuck in one’s superficial prior judgment of the lime works; that the lime works is idyllic is only the judgment of people who judge the place on sadistic grounds, or on masochistic grounds, while in fact the lime works, as distinguished from its environs, is quite the opposite of an idyll. Visitors, for instance, tended to expect an idyll when coming to the lime works, even if they merely came to the vicinity, summer visitors as much as winter visitors, starting with their decision to visit the lime works, were expecting to enter an idyll, when in fact they had unknowingly decided to enter the very opposite of an idyll, had in effect quite unconsciously fallen victim to a total error at the very moment of their decision to go to the lime works. An idyll, they think, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, as they step through the thicket, an idyll, as they brace themselves to knock on the front door. All the signs, before entering the thicket, when stepping out of the thicket, point to an idyll. But when they have actually stepped free of the thicket, they are horrified and turn back, if they set foot inside the lime works they are horrified and escape, some turn back as soon as they have stepped free of the thicket, and escape, the others turn and run as soon as they have set foot in the lime works, a minimal few get as far as entering the rooms inside and in no time at all they can’t bear it. People don’t instinctualize any longer, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, mankind no longer instinctualizes. Aha, so that’s the idyll the Konrad couple have moved into, they may think, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, but in reality the Konrad couple, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, moved into quite the opposite of an idyll when they moved into the lime works. The return to an idyll, they think. Compared with the lime works, everything else is idyllic, Konrad is supposed to have said to Fro, London is an idyll compared with the lime works, Wuppertal is an idyll; the ugliest, the loudest, the most malodorous place is an idyll in comparison. But even the surroundings of the lime works have been deliberately falsified into an idyll. An intelligent person arriving in the area, of course, will realize at once that the place is no idyll, but most human beings, Konrad said to Wieser, are not possessed of intelligence, you know, though they may look intelligent; people appear to know, appear to understand, when in fact they know nothing and understand nothing. A dimwit is likely to be unobservant and notice nothing even after he has stepped forward out of the thicket. Konrad himself now knew without a doubt that to have gone into the lime works was to have gone into a trap. To Wieser: Last fall his wife had still been able to dress, get herself ready, unaided, but when winter came she could no longer do any of it without his help, which meant that Konrad had not only to do his room, making the fire and so on, but then had to make the fire in her room, dress her, make the bed and so on, with the inevitable catastrophic effect on his work; while for her, of course, nothing could be more depressing than being suddenly unable to dress herself any longer. How long would it be, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, before she could no longer feed herself without help, not even the smallest bite? So far she had managed to feed herself, if he cut up her meat for her, broke her bread in pieces and so on, anything further she refused to let him do for her, but the time was coming when she would no longer refuse to let him feed her, and then he would have to stick the meat and the bread in her mouth bit by bit, he would have to spoonfeed her the porridge, dribble the milk behind her teeth spoonful by spoonful. Merely to pull on her stockings had become an effort unutterably dreary to make and to watch, he could see that she could no longer bend over, nor could she any longer stretch out at full length. When she stood up, she could not stand straight, when she walked, she could not walk straight, and when she lay down, she could not lie straight, her posture was about as crooked as it could possibly get, her head hung down like an awkward weight. Everything hurt her. Frequently she could no longer say where she was hurting the most, in the body or in the head, she didn’t know whether to treat herself for bodily pains or for headache, head and body had for a long time now been one continuous pain, a pain that had become the best proof she had of her existence. All of her body and all of her head were now nothing other than one single pain, she is supposed to have said to Konrad four weeks before Christmas, that is, four weeks before her violent death. He simply couldn’t stand this any longer, he is supposed to have said when he was arrested; apart from this he is supposed to have said nothing at all. But there is no telling what our courts will do, Wieser says, depending entirely on the way a court happens to be constituted, how the jury happens to be constituted, Konrad might get the minimum sentence, or the maximum, or else he could be declared insane. As daily experience teaches, it was all anybody’s guess until the very last moment of every court trial, every time. In the last analysis there was nothing more spineless and more subject to whims and weather, sympathies and antipathies than the courts and especially juries, who could be swayed by the most unpredictable circumstances. Speaking to the public works inspector, too, the Konrad woman once said that her pains were by now all the proof she had that she was still here (alive). Konrad saw how she wanted to get over to the window and couldn’t, wanted to stand up and couldn’t, wanted to take a few steps and couldn’t, that she was cold but couldn’t pull up her blanket; and so he went and pulled up her blanket. She no longer noticed that he was wearing a dirty jacket, torn pants; that, after months of neglect, he had come to look like a derelict. The whole lime works is filthy from top to bottom, and she doesn’t see it, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser. That above all the bed linen was filthy dirty because it hadn’t been changed in months was something she did not see, and he couldn’t possibly clean the bed linen, he no longer had the strength to do it, because he simply didn’t have the time; as recently as six months ago she had still taken care of such things as the bed linen etc. from her invalid chair, she had swamped Hoeller with orders to clean things, but she could do this no longer, she had lost her grip on the situation, what with having to concentrate on enduring her pains, Konrad is supposed to have told Wieser, and how he would see that she wanted to get out of her room, but couldn’t, that she wanted to go to the woods and couldn’t, to the village, and couldn’t. That she thought about traveling, but couldn’t travel. That she needed to see people, but couldn’t see people, couldn’t have company, Konrad said. For years she had enjoyed no kind of social contact with others, meaning social contact with people congenial to both of them. However, there was really no such thing as congenial company, because in the whole world there was no person really congenial to another — an observation typical of Konrad, Wieser said. Such people as did come to see them, not recently but until about the end of October, these so-called congenial people, had not been at all congenial, they were all mere curiosity seekers, legacy hunters, swindlers, Konrad is supposed to have said. Compared with them, the works inspector, the chimney sweep, Hoeller, and he, Wieser, and Fro, were far more congenial than those so-called congenial visitors, but seeing people socially was, as far as the Konrads were concerned, anachronistic in principle. Nevertheless one could not live entirely without seeing other people, Konrad is supposed to have said, adding that it did not embarrass him to say over and over again what everybody tended to say over and over again, no matter how ridiculous, simplistic, trite it was, except that he said it in full awareness of what he was doing, unlike most people; that was the difference, as Wieser undoubtedly knew, since it did after all always make a difference who said what and how he said it, and a serious person, or, more precisely, a person who was to be taken seriously, could just go ahead and say whatever he pleased without needing to worry whether he was uttering something banal or trite, a so-called truism, because if the person who said something banal or trite or platitudinous was a serious person, a person to be taken seriously, what he said ceased to be any of these things. For the longest time they had not been seeing people at all, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, because all of the people they had to see, such as the baker, Hoeller, Stoerschneider and the rest were people they had to see on business, not at all the same thing as people one saw socially. He could see that his wife was constantly thinking of people she was longing to see, friends, relatives, it was no use at all to try talking her out of wanting to see them, no use trying to explain to her that there was no such thing as friends, and that kinfolk were basically anything but kin, that kinship was a deception, a self-deception; a mistake, in fact. At the beginning al