The Lime Works

hrough the years; suddenly it was a comforting quiet: not a person, not a sound, how blissful! instead of: not a person, not a sound, how terrible! It was comforting, one of those rare times when one feels that suddenly everything is possible again, Konrad is supposed to have said to Fro. Suddenly everything was evolving out of me, and I was evolving everything, I was the possessor of possibility, capacity. Of course I did my best to hang on to this state of mind for as long as possible, but it didn’t last, the unquestioning assurance of earlier times; just now recaptured, was gone as suddenly as it came, the ideal constellation, ideal construction of the mechanism of revulsion had turned into its opposite. How easy it was once for my brain to enter into a thought, my brain was fearless then, while nowadays my brain is afraid of every thought, it enters a thought only when relentlessly bullied into it, whereupon it instantly conks out, in self-defense. First: a natural marshaling of all one’s forces, possible in youth, Konrad is supposed to have said, then, in old age, which is suddenly all there is, the unnatural marshaling of all impossible forces. While I was not defenseless when entering into my thoughts, in earlier times, nowadays I enter into my thoughts defenselessly, unprotected though heavily armed, whereas in earlier times I entered into my thoughts totally unarmed and yet not defenseless. These days his brain and his head were preoccupied and timid compared with former times when they were neither preoccupied nor at all timid, now they were timid in every respect, every possible or impossible manifestation, and so timid a brain must unquestionably withdraw from so timid a head as his, so timid a brain and so timid a head had to withdraw from the world, and yet it was a fact that head and brain, or rather brain and head could withdraw from the world only into the world, and so forth. You could, in fact, withdraw everything from everything and again into everything, meaning that you could not withdraw at all, and so forth. This resulted in a constant state of moral despair. You could try to circumvent nature by every conceivable means, every trick you could think of, only to find yourself in the end face to face with nature. There was no escape, but on the other hand, there was no real mystery in this, either, because the head, meaning the brain inside the head, no matter how high it holds itself, is only the height of incompetence, inseparable from the piece of nature it heads up, so to speak, which it cannot really control, and so forth. Some people whom the world dares to call philosophers — a classification that constitutes a public menace — even try bribery, Konrad said to Fro, who bought the new life policy from me yesterday. Nothing is ever mastered, everything is misused. And so: this quiet that suddenly reigned again in the lime works, Konrad is supposed to have said to Fro at one time, this quiet, a false quiet as I explained to you before, because it cannot be real, so that there can be no real quiet in the lime works, and therefore no real quiet in him, Konrad; in any case, this false quiet, for which he had no actual explanation, did make it possible for him even in his old age to approach ideas, from time to time, ideas no longer rightfully his, because they were the ideas of youth, so that in his case they could not be real ideas, as he allegedly expressed it. At such times he would be lying on his bed, listening, but hearing not a person, not a sound, nothing. At such moments he would believe that it was now possible for him to sit down at his desk and begin to write his book, and so he would sit down at his desk, but even while he felt he could now begin, he could not begin. It set him back whole decades, because what he experienced was a total setback in every respect in one single moment. This book of his would not be a long one, he is supposed to have said to Fro, not at all, it might even be the shortest book ever written, but it was the hardest of all to write. It might be only a question of the beginning, what words to begin with, and so forth. Perhaps it was a question of the right moment when to begin, as everything is a question of the right moment. He had been waiting for the right moment for months, for years, for decades, in fact; but because he was waiting for it, watching for it, the moment would not come. Although he understood this quite clearly, he nevertheless kept waiting for his moment, because even when I am not waiting for this moment, Konrad is supposed to have said to Fro, I nevertheless am waiting for this moment, still waiting for it, even now, regardless of whether I am waiting for it or not, I keep wearing myself out waiting, which is probably my real trouble. While waiting, he kept refining his points, he said, incessantly altering details, and by his endless alterations, refinements, unyielding preoccupation, unyielding experiments in preparation for writing, he made the writing impossible. A book one had completely in one’s head was probably the kind one couldn’t write down, he is supposed to have said to Fro, just as one cannot write down a symphony one has entirely in one’s head, and he did have his book entirely in his head. But he was not going to give up, he said, the book probably has to fall apart in my head before I can suddenly write it all down, he is supposed to have said to Fro, it has to be all gone, so that it can suddenly be back in its entirety, from one moment to the next. Encounter IV: With regard to his stay in Brussels of about twenty-two years ago, at which time he had briefly placed his wife in a clinic in Leeuwen, Konrad said the following, not quite but almost word for word: When I can no longer stand it in my room, because I can neither think nor write nor read nor sleep and because I can no longer do anything, not even pace the floor in my room, I mean that I am afraid that if I suddenly resume pacing the floor in my room, after having already paced the floor in my room for such a long time, even this resumption of pacing the floor will be made impossible for me because someone will knock, and because of this fear, it actually does become impossible for me to pace the floor. They knock because I am disturbing them, because my pacing the floor is disturbing someone, they knock or they shout, which I find unbearable because I am afraid that they will soon knock again or shout again or knock and shout together … then I leave my room, because I can’t stand it there any longer, and go down to the third floor and knock at the professor’s door … I knock and wait for the professor to answer the door, I stand there and wait for the professor to invite me in … and as I stand there waiting I think how cold it is, I am freezing, I don’t know whether it is eleven or twelve or one o’clock in the morning … my incessant pacing of the floor in my room has left me in a state of near unconsciousness, I keep waiting, thinking all this, every time I am standing at the professorial door, waiting to hear the professor say “Come in!” or: “The door isn’t locked!” and then I open the door and go in, I see the professor sitting at his desk … and so I wait, but I hear nothing. Nothing. I knock again. Nothing. I go on waiting and knocking until at last I decide that I ought to turn around and go back to my room, because the professor will not open his door, not today … he opened it yesterday, and the day before yesterday, and the day before that, too, he opened his door to me every day last week, every time I knocked he opened the door … but today, I start to worry, the professor won’t open up … I knock, and knock again, and listen, and hear nothing. Is the professor out? Or is he in, but out of earshot, perhaps? Could he have gone to the country again? How often the professor takes a ride out into the country, I say to myself, off he goes, unexpectedly, to the country. To all those hundreds of relatives, I guess. Suppose I were to knock a little louder? I think. Louder still? But I’ve already knocked twice or three times as loudly as before … Knock again! I say to myself. Knock again! By this time I am knocking as loudly as possible, everyone in the house must have been able to hear me, because I keep knocking more loudly than ever, and still more loudly! Someone must have heard me by now … these people all have sensitive ears, the most sensitive hearing of all … but I knock just once more, the loudest ever, and I listen, and I hear the professor, he is walking toward the door and opening it, though he opens it only half way, and I say: I hope I’m not disturbing you, though I know it’s late, but I do hope I am not disturbing you … I see now that the professor has been immersed in his work … My morphology! he says, according to Konrad, My morphology! and I say to him, Konrad says, if I am disturbing you I shall go back to my room immediately. But! I say, and the professor says: My morphology! and meanwhile I am wondering, says Konrad, why the professor has opened the door only halfway? only wide enough, in fact, so that he can stick his head out to talk to me, but not to let me inside … But listen to me, I said to him, says Konrad, if I am disturbing you I shall go back to my room at once. If I am disturbing you … at this point I see, says Konrad, that the professor is already undressed, quite naked, in fact, under his dressing gown, I can see it, and I say: You’re already undressed for the night, I see! then I must be disturbing you, and if so I shall instantly go back to my room! you need only say the word, that you do not wish to be disturbed this late … but if you wouldn’t mind, if I may just once more, I would like to come in to see you for just a few moments, I say to him, I shall leave right away, I don’t even have any idea what time it is, I tell him, I’ve been pacing the floor in my room all this time, with this problem of mine, I’m afraid I’m going crazy … as you know, my dear professor, I haven’t been working for days now, I can’t write at all, not a line, not an idea, nothing … again and again it seems to me, stop, here’s an idea, but no, in reality there’s nothing, I tell him … and so I go about all day long, obsessed with the thought that I can’t think, as I walk back and forth in my room, actually thinking the whole time that I haven’t an idea, not one single idea … because in fact I haven’t had an idea for the longest time, I say … and I wait, and pace the floor, but what I am waiting for is only you, all day long I wait for you to come home … Today you came home two hours later than usual, I tell him, yesterday it was one and a half hours later than usual, actually it was two and a half hours later than usual today … I hear you because my hearing gets keener from one day to the next, I can hear you when you are still out on the street, when you turn the key in the lock of the front door, and when you lock the door on the inside, then I hear you entering the vestibule, all day long I wait for you to enter the vestibule … Today you must have done your shopping, your errands, you probably paid your bills, went to the post office … once you are inside the vestibule, I anticipate your unlocking the door to your apartment, and when you have unlocked your door, I imagine you entering your room, taking off your coat, your shoes, then you sit down at your desk, perhaps … then you take a bite to eat, begin to write a letter perhaps, a letter to your daughter who lives in France, to your son who lives in Rattenberg … or a business letter … or else you are working on your morphology, perhaps … I seem to hear with increasing keenness how you turn the key in the lock — lately you have been unlocking the door much faster than formerly, in the beginning — then you walk quickly into your room, you pull off your coat … then I imagine you considering whether to lie down on the bed or not, whether to lie down in your clothes or not, lie on the bed without taking off your shoes, perhaps, or else not to lie down on your bed before you go back to your work on your morphology, to lie down … then, when you lie down on your bed, when you have lain down on your bed, you realize the senselessness of your work and the senselessness of your existence … I imagine that this realization of the senselessness of everything must come to you … that you have to earn your living so miserably, to continue your research so miserably, that everyone must earn his living so miserably, must continue his research so miserably … in such growing misery, you are thinking … and that you have no one in the world, after all, Konrad is supposed to have said to the professor … that, whether you sit down at your desk or not, lie down on the bed or not, you are bound to realize the whole extent of your misfortune in life, a misfortune that seems greater every time you think about it … At this point the professor admits Konrad into the room … and, says Konrad, I go straight to his bed and I say to him, I see that your bed is already made, you have made your bed already, you evidently intended to go to bed already, or perhaps you have already been to bed? and I say to him, please don’t let me get in the way, do lie down if you feel like it, all I want is to pace the floor a bit in your room; as you know, I can no longer do it in my own room … when I pace the floor in my room, I tell him, it seems to me that everyone in the house can hear me doing it, just as you know, I am sure, when I am reading in my room, that I am reading in my room, and when I am thinking in my room, you know that I am thinking in my room, you know that I am writing when I am writing in my room, you know that I am in bed when I am in bed … I believe that all the people in the house know what I am doing … because, you know, these people know it when I am thinking, when I am thinking about my book in my room … which makes it impossible for me to do any thinking in my room, impossible to think about my book in my room, which is why I have been such a mental blank for such a long time now … and if it is impossible for me to think in my room, imagine how terrible it is for me to have to formulate a letter in my room … as a result of all this I have been unable to read for the longest time now, unable to think at all … but in your room, I said, I can still pace the floor … I can walk back and forth in your room, and relax … little by little, and after a while I can relax more deeply, I tell him, and then I can go back to my room … you see, I tell him, I am relaxing already, my whole body is relaxed now, and this relaxation slowly goes to my brain as well; when I relax in your room it is a simultaneous relaxation of body and brain … actually, I tell him, I need merely enter your room and I feel relaxed already … Isn’t it strange? considering that it has become quite impossible for me to look up anybody, ever … but I set foot in your room, and instantly I feel relaxed … Today, I tell him, you came home so late, those silly errands of yours … all those silly letters you get day after day and have to answer day after day, all your silly people … I get no letters and I answer no letters … and those repulsive colleagues of ours that you have to put up with at your university, that you have had to put up with all these years … all the annoyances that prevent you from coming home earlier … then, as you are turning the key in the lock, I tell him, each time you do it I feel you are saving me from this frightful situation, I tell him, because you know, I always feel as if I were going to suffocate, I tell him … as if I am bound to end my life by suffocating, to suffocate in the end, how grotesque to have to end in suffocation … simply because you had a few extra errands this day, and came home too late … and by the time you got to your room, I would have long since suffocated, Konrad said to the professor, actually I expect every day at the same time that I will suffocate, here I am, suffocating, I tell myself, choking on an absurdity, because you are out, as it might be, as it certainly could turn out, on one of your errands, perhaps taking the long way home, or paying an unusually extended visit to your aunt or something … but then I hear your step outside, I hear you turning the key in the lock … and I say to myself, now I can relax; you can see for yourself how much more relaxed I am sin