The Lime Works

ossible, 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 of what he is reading. When she fails to understand her beloved Novalis though she listens with might and main, there’s no pretense about that. Now at the Laska, where I sold another of our new policies today, they say that there’s a cripple living in the lime works, the Konrad woman, that’s whom they mean in the hostelries hereabouts when they refer, as usual, to “the woman,” and this cripple, they say, is cared for, according to some, or shamefully used, according to others, by her husband, the owner of the lime works, and a mad despot to his wife. According to the gossip he is terrible, devoted, sadistic, attentive, all at the same time. They praise him for fetching her meals from the tavern, but say he is destroying his wife by using her ruthlessly as a guinea pig for his scientific experiments, his so-called Urbanchich method, of which they have no conception except what they get from Hoeller’s weird descriptions after years of watching Konrad’s practices with his wife. They say that Konrad torments his wife by saying, shouting, whispering, either very quickly or with excruciating slowness, all sorts of incomprehensible things into her agonizingly inflamed ears and then forcing her to comment on each and every one of his utterances until she comes close to fainting. Even after Mrs. Konrad has reached a point of exhaustion when she can’t react at all any more, her husband will keep at her for hours after she has collapsed into total apathy, they say at Laska’s, sometimes until four in the morning, etc. He started out being fabulously rich, they say, but it’s all gone because he’s an idiot with money, and anyway his obsession with his so-called scientific work, something to do with the sense of hearing, has left them in straits, not that you could consider him actually impoverished, but there were rumors about an impending forced auction sale of the lime works. Nevertheless, they seem to think of him as a rich man still, but you have to remember that to a common working man, anyone who has one good suit and doesn’t have to go to work in overalls at six o’clock in the morning like himself is a rich man. Konrad himself, says Wieser, would probably never have called himself a rich man, though he might reluctantly have admitted to being well-to-do, back in Zurich or even as late as his Mannheim period, even though at that time he could still be considered a rich man by even the most exacting standards, yet Konrad himself said to Fro about two years ago: I am actually poorer than any of the people who call me a rich man, but how am I to make people understand that I am telling the truth? Talking with the woodcutters and other workmen who hang around the various taverns far into the night, toward the end of winter, was Konrad’s favorite recreation, he enjoyed their conversation more than anyone’s, he is supposed to have told Wieser. But he had not gone to any of the taverns for months now, what with the way things were getting worse for them at the lime works, he even missed his tavern-going habits less as time went on. For months on end he had not talked with the workmen, woodcutters, gamekeepers, etc., nor gone even once to the woods, he had not seen the village for six months, in fact, though he did go there, but only to the bank where he would cash a check and go straight back to the lime works, having drawn out a negligible amount of money, not enough to keep one alive, but too much to let a man croak. He had not even spoken to Hoeller for weeks, unless you counted telling Hoeller to chop some wood, or not to chop wood, or taking the food hamper he brought from the tavern and handing back the empty hamper. This year Hoeller had become a changed man, Konrad did not know why he seemed to have lost the confidence of this man of extraordinary integrity, he could only guess that it might be for the same reason he had lost confidence in himself to a degree. A simple question had in the past always elicited a simple answer from Hoeller, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, but nowadays all he ever got were ambiguous answers to the same simple questions. These days there was only mistrust between them, which made them uncertain with each other, full of unspoken reservations that entailed a daily circling around and around the unacknowledged source of their trouble. It was Hoeller’s cousin, the one with the seven or eight convictions for sexual offenses, who had taken to living with Hoeller in the annex, secretly, behind Konrad’s back, without his or Hoeller’s asking Konrad’s permission; ever since the cousin’s arrival Hoeller had ceased to come near Konrad except when he brought the food hamper or asked if he should chop some fire wood. According to Wieser, this means that Konrad has had to do without his conversations with Hoeller, an important source for his book; in fact, Konrad has also been deprived of the talk he valued so much with all the simple men of the region around the lime works. The Konrads preferred to spend their mornings mulling over what they would have to eat, Konrad is supposed to have told Fro, instead of Konrad simply going down to the kitchen to fix something, anything, when Hoeller was not going to the tavern for their lunch, whether because he was sick or had to chop wood or the like, so that Konrad was prevented from working on his book, what the Konrads would do was to sit and talk for hours, endlessly, about sauerkraut, cauliflower, meat, egg dishes, soups and sauces, salads and cooked fruit, unable to decide in favor of any specific kind of meal. To waste the entire morning like this on planning what to eat, thinking about what to eat, was absolutely disgusting. Encounter III: at about two A.M. Konrad said, he had heard a shot nearby, it had to have been fired quite close to the lime works, he thought, but he could see nothing, even after opening the window and looking outside, nothing. But somebody had just fired a shot, he said to himself, and there’s a second shot, and a third, after the third it was quiet again … before the Konrads moved into the lime works the annex had been a meeting place for the hunting men of the area; Konrad despised hunters as much as he did the hunt, all of his ancestors had been hunters, woodsmen, all their lives their heads were full of hunting to the exclusion of everything else, a hunter was invariably a stupid man, a hunter was always and every time a congenital dimwit, a hunting moron. Konrad had never been interested in hunting. The moment he moved into the lime works he abolished all the hunting privileges associated with the lime works; no more hunting meets in the annex, he declared, and ever since then the hunters naturally hated him and he was always terrified when he walked through the woods, even just setting foot outside the lime works, afraid of being shot at or shot down by a hunter, a hunter could always feel free to gun down any man he hated, Konrad said, though he would be brought to court, but the courts would let a hunter go scot-free, or else, if a hunter was convicted of murder, they would sentence him to a ridiculous suspended sentence, hunters could kill people to their hearts’ content in this country and go scot-free. Konrad hated hunters, he said, but he loved guns, especially hunting rifles, it was a paradox but he could explain it. Then: he greased his boots with concentrated beef fat, using the ball of his thumb. Greasing his boots was already beginning to cost him a tremendous effort, it had to be done with the ball of the thumb, as he learned before he was four years old from his father, he could still remember his father teaching him how to grease his boots with the ball of his thumb, never with a rag, only the ball of the thumb, no brushes; rags were a poor substitute for the ball of the thumb, which left the leather beautifully supple, if you worked it always from the inside out and with growing intensity; Konrad always liked the smell of boot grease, Polish or Slovakian, he loved the smell of his room after greasing his boots there in the wintertime, the only time he greased his boots in his room, the rest of the year he did it out in front of the house, but he particularly remembered the wintertime greasing of his boots indoors as a pleasant chore associated with a pleasant smell. But in recent ye