The Lime Works

labyrinth to her, quickly at first, ten times in succession (forcing instant comments from her) and then at longer intervals again and again the word labyrinth (without comments from her). At not quite half past four in the afternoon he decided to go to his own room, saying to her, you take a rest now, I have an idea for my book. But as he enters his room his idea for the book is suddenly gone, he cannot recapture it, pace the floor as he will, it’s gone forever. To calm himself he sits down at his desk, however, and — starts to read his Kropotkin. I’ve got to read my Kropotkin now, because this evening I shall have to read Novalis to her, he says to himself, I promised to read Novalis to her tonight, so he reads all he can of the Kropotkin now. Just as he has started to read “A Change for the Better” he hears a knock at the front door. My method is always the same, he is supposed to have said to Fro, when I hear someone knocking at the front door, I decide not to go down, then whoever it is will stop knocking. But the knocking doesn’t stop, and I finally go down. It’s the works inspector at the door, saying he must have left his measuring tape behind last time he was here. I haven’t seen it, I tell him, Konrad said to Fro, your tape must be somewhere in the vestibule, meanwhile I am thinking if only I had waited a little longer before answering his knock, he might have left, but as it is the inspector is already inside the vestibule and both of us are searching for the missing tape. But we can’t find it. It simply has to be here, the inspector is supposed to have said, but where can it be? says Konrad, so the inspector bends over, Konrad bends over, both of them searching the floor inch by inch for the tape measure, without success. Could the tape measure be up on the first floor? the inspector asks Konrad, and Konrad replies at once, but you weren’t even up there! then the inspector: You’re right, of course, I never did go up to the first floor, so it can’t be up there, and they continue their search, primarily in the so-called wood-paneled room on the ground floor, and Konrad asks if the inspector might not have lost the tape measure at the tavern; or the sawmill, where he had surely been too? says Fro, but the inspector insists that he is certain he lost his tape measure at the lime works, but then he wavers and says, is it possible, after all, that I didn’t lose it at the lime works? could I have lost it in the village? left it somewhere in my office? but no, I remember clearly that I still had it when I came to the lime works, I put it down somewhere here in the lime works, somewhere on the ground floor, could someone have removed it from here? the works inspector asked Konrad, who said: I am all alone here at the lime works, my wife, who never gets out of her invalid chair, doesn’t count after all, she can’t get up out of her chair, and I, Konrad is supposed to have said firmly to the works inspector, do not remember the tape measure at all; Konrad did not even know what the inspector’s tape measure looked like, it was a brand new tape measure, the inspector told him, but Konrad did not remember even seeing the new tape measure, the old tape measure was kept inside a green case, a green leather case, Konrad is supposed to have said to the inspector, I can visualize your old tape measure in its green case, but I cannot recall the new tape measure at all, and they both allegedly spent over an hour searching for the tape measure without finding it, in the darkness of the vestibule it was impossible to find anything anyway, the inspector is supposed to have said to Konrad. They both ended up totally exhausted, lying on the floor of the ground floor vestibule, when suddenly the inspector cried out, here it is, my tape measure! and sure enough the inspector had found the tape measure, it was right inside his big outer coat’s breast pocket; he had completely forgotten that he had slipped the tape measure into his big breast pocket. Here we are hunting for that tape measure all over the place for over an hour, and all the time it’s inside my breast pocket! the inspector is supposed to have exclaimed, adding: What’s more, I probably interrupted you (Konrad) at work on your book, I am so sorry about that, whereupon Konrad said that the inspector had not disturbed him in the least, that he, Konrad, had done no writing at all all day long. I’ll never make it, Konrad said, even if all the conditions are favorable, all the human conditions, Konrad reiterated, according to Fro, but I cannot seem to make any headway on writing my book; you have not disturbed me, though of course when I am trying to work everything constitutes a disturbance, but when I am not working, you (the works inspector) cannot have disturbed anything, and so forth. While saying all this to the inspector, Konrad, according to Fro, was thinking: I am lying, everything I say is a lie. And he cursed the works inspector inwardly. This time he did not invite the works inspector to a glass of brandy as usual, not even in the wood-paneled room, in fact he did not invite the man in at all, not even into the coldest room there was, in short, absolutely not at all, and the inspector suddenly found himself outside the building again. Konrad was eavesdropping inside the front door, listening to the inspector walking away in the snow, the inspector always walks ten times more laboriously than usual in snow, Konrad is supposed to have told Fro, claiming that he, Konrad, had seen the works inspector furiously throwing the tape measure, which he had just recovered with so much trouble, into the snow-covered road, gesturing violently, before he picked it up, dusted it off, and rolled it up again, the inspector was enraged at having made such a fool of himself in Konrad’s eyes, after all he was the first to start creeping around on the floor on hands and knees searching for a lost tape measure which he actually had in his breast pocket the whole time. The works inspector is a mess of neurotic complexes, Konrad is supposed to have thought as he watched the man stomping off through the snow, in that uncomfortable posture (for Konrad) one has to hold when looking through a keyhole, which I have gotten accustomed to in the course of time, Konrad is supposed to have said to Fro. The moment the inspector had vanished into the thicket Konrad went back to his room and back to reading his Kropotkin, but he had barely read two pages, basically not more than a quick review of what he had already read of “A Change for the Better,” when he heard a bell ring, this time upstairs, his wife demanding attention. He instantly went upstairs to her. Think of it, my dear Fro, everything I am telling you, describing to you, intimating to you, Konrad is supposed to have told Fro, basically goes on here every day, over and over again! everything that goes on here goes on day after day after day, it’s the height of absurdity, and by dint of being the height of absurdity it is the height of terribleness, day after day after day. It’s true, Fro’s testimony agrees in every respect with Wieser’s testimony, the works inspector confirms everything Fro and Wieser have said, and conversely, both Wieser and Fro confirm what the works inspector says, basically one confirms the other, they all confirm each other’s testimony. What is it? Konrad is supposed to have said to his wife when he got to her room; he had been reading his Kropotkin, he had gotten no work at all done on his book that day, he had been interrupted by the inspector, then, finally, he had at least managed to get back to his Kropotkin when she rang and there was no way he could avoid going up to see what she wanted, he intended no reproach to her, he had reached the point where he never reproached her with anything in any way, but as soon as he entered her room, he said, she said at once: Read to me, meaning that he had to start reading Novalis to her. To Wieser: For many days now Konrad had noticed that his wife’s eyelids were inflamed, not that he ever mentioned it to her because he assumed she knew her eyelids were red with inflammation, after all she looked into her mirror often enough and intently enough, there were many times she would sit for an hour staring at herself in the mirror, so she was bound to know that she had inflamed eyelids, Konrad said to Wieser. Causes: dry air, solitude, age. He did not mention his observation to her, because he had given up wasting another word on any of her ailments; for him to draw her attention to some new infirmity was out. For instance, only six months ago she had still been able to sit up so straight that you could not see a certain miniature painting representing her paternal grandmother, which hung behind the invalid chair in which she sat. Now, only six months later, her posture was so slumped, Konrad is supposed to have told Wieser, that not only could you see the miniature in its entirety, almost, but she was bent over almost three or four inches below it. Week by week, sitting opposite his wife, Konrad claimed to have seen more and more of this miniature portrait behind her, though for weeks he had refused to believe it, but in the end he had to admit it: his wife was gradually slumping lower, the miniature rising behind her, so to speak, until Konrad felt able to calculate precisely the moment when he would see the portrait in its entirety, not that he actually worked it out, he just knew he could if he wanted to calculate the precise moment of full visibility. He thought about this, and about the fact that nowadays his wife, when he helped her up and walked with her a bit, took steps just half the length of those she could take only six months ago, Konrad is supposed to have told Fro, soon she would not be able to walk all the way to the window, not even to the center of the room; soon she would not be able to get out of her chair, in fact; suppose that moment has suddenly arrived, he would think; he realizes that she can no longer stand up — and a new phase of their life together has begun. Nowadays when he reads Novalis to her she sometimes fails to understand whole passages, he is supposed to have told Fro, he asks her if she has been listening and she says yes, she has been listening attentively, but she hasn’t understood everything she heard; in this connection, it is necessary to explain that the Novalis, though she loves it, unlike him who can’t stand the Novalis, is nevertheless a difficult book, as commonly understood; this has nothing to do with the fact that when he reads her his beloved Kropotkin, to punish her for something, she deliberately pretends not to understand more than half