because of his incessant preoccupation with nature. His wife naturally thought it weird how passionately he hated nature and, as a logical consequence, all the creatures. To Fro: bare walls, functionalism, strategy for self-injury. Catastrophicephaleconomy. To Wieser: firmly locked, firmly bolted doors, closely barred windows, everything locked up, bolted, barred. Do you realize that the lime works doors used to be fastened by simple latches! Konrad is supposed to have cried, imagine, simple latches! Nowadays the doors were all secured by heavy bolts of dressed timber set deep in the walls. Set deep into those thick walls, Konrad is said to have told Wieser, bolts that have to be pushed in or pulled out by force, what with the constant humidity here it was of course always necessary to use a good deal of force. The security factor was the most important one by far. First of all, Konrad had said to his wife according to Wieser, they had to secure themselves against intrusion from the outside world from which they had at last succeeded in escaping, so all the windows had to be barred at once, and all the doors had to be bolted, and that was what in fact they did, right after moving in, Konrad told Wieser, the very day after paying an unheard of, actually an incredibly high purchase price for the lime works, the Konrads moved in and instantly had all the windows barred and all the doors bolted, they had bolts attached even to the inside doors, heavy bolts, and heavy bars on the windows, in fact, the blacksmith at first refused to make bars that heavy, Konrad said, but he finally gave in because Konrad would not yield an inch and also promised to pay quite a lot, and the carpenter made him those heavy wooden bolts, actually the blacksmith who made those heavy bars and the carpenter who made those heavy bolts are said to have shaken their heads over Konrad, but in the end his arguments are said to have convinced both the blacksmith and the carpenter, and now the blacksmith and the carpenter are both proud of their handiwork, the blacksmith is proud of his heavy bars which he shaped with extreme precision in accordance with Konrad’s strict instructions, and the carpenter is proud of the heavy bolts he made just as exactly in accordance with Konrad’s precise instructions. And to stop the curiosity seekers who kept passing the lime works, unwanted and unbidden, as is their way, from eyeing the building, Konrad is said to have told Wieser, Konrad and his wife needed high thickets, as Konrad said to his wife, we need high thickets around the lime works, the tallest-growing shrubs there are, and they had immediately ordered the tallest shrubs from Switzerland brought to Sicking where they were planted by experts. Today the lime works is totally hidden from view, Konrad is supposed to have told Wieser two years ago, completely unnoticeable, unseen, and even if it should be noticed and seen, Wieser remembers Konrad saying, there is absolutely no way to get inside. The thickets have grown so high, my dear Wieser, that no one can get a glimpse of the lime works, there is no way to see the lime works, in fact, unless you are standing right in front of it (Konrad to Wieser), that is, standing a yard or half a yard from the building, which is not to see it, after all, there’s no seeing it that close up. Remember that the lime works is accessible only from the east, it’s a strange fact that the lime works is accessible only from the east, but then again it is not so strange, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser, on the one hand it was strange, on the other hand not so strange after all, everything is strange on the one hand and not at all strange on the other hand (Wieser specifically recalls that bit about strange-yet-not-strange); to the north and to the west, the lime works is surrounded by water, ideally one might say, and to the south it is bounded ideally by ramparts of rock. Even access from the east is often barred in winter, because the lime works is no longer a lime works and so the snow plow no longer comes as far as the lime works, obviously no snow plow is going to come this far out to a dead, abandoned lime works, Konrad is said to have told Wieser, no workmen, no lime production, no snow plow, he said; for the sake of an individual good-for-nothing Konrad and his wife, an equally good-for-nothing Konrad, no snow plow comes in, it was economically wasteful to have the snow plow come in just for their sake, consequently the snow plow had not come that far for years, as it suddenly struck Konrad, not since his nephew Hoerhager was no longer at the lime works had the snow plow come any farther than the tavern, for Hoerhager had served in various ways as a town official, a man in public office could count on the snow plow coming all the way to his door, while I, Konrad is supposed to have said, I serve no public function, I serve no function whatsoever, certainly not a public function, he even hated the word function, there was nothing he hated more bitterly than the word functionary, a word it nauseated him even to hear, because nowadays everybody was a functionary, all of them were functionaries now, they all functioned, there are no human beings left, Wieser, nothing but functionaries, that’s why I can’t stand the expression functionary, the word functionary makes me retch, but my nephew Hoerhager was a functionary by nature, a town functionary, and to a functionary, especially a town functionary, the snow plow comes, it will always come to a functionary! Konrad is supposed to have exclaimed to Wieser, while for an old fool like me and a crippled old fool of a woman like my wife the snow plow will not come, even though it would be so easy for the snow plow to make a turn at the lime works, but it simply does not come as far as the lime works anymore. A winter harassment! Konrad is supposed to have shouted, over and over: A winter harassment! Wieser says that for over an hour Konrad kept calling it a farce that the public snow plow comes only as far as the tavern but no longer as far as the lime works. In Sicking everything was a farce, whatever you looked at in Sicking was a farce, no matter what you looked at, from whatever point of view, you were looking at a farce. However, it was also to the Konrads’ advantage that the snow plow no longer went on past the tavern to the lime works, Konrad insisted: not a soul comes stomping through that deep snow all the way to us. To be so cut off from everything and isolated naturally meant that they enjoyed absolute quiet. Wieser thinks that the absolute quiet at the lime works in winter was precisely what had so enthralled Konrad at first about the lime works. The thought haunted him, the thought that in winter there was absolute quiet at the lime works gave Konrad no peace for years on end. He nearly drove himself crazy brooding about it. To the lime works! he kept thinking, to the lime works! only the lime works! again and again, even while his wife was thinking of nothing but: Toblach, back to Toblach! but his wife was obedient to a fault. The rock spur even shielded them from the sawmill noises on the other side of it, Konrad is supposed to have said over and over, but if he was to be frank about it, Konrad conceded, sawmill noises bothered him not at all, they never had bothered him, no more than his own breathing bothered him, because like his own breathing they had always been there; he had never thought: there, that’s a noise from the sawmill, I can’t hear myself think because of it! because he had always lived and done his thinking next door to sawmills, no matter where he had lived it had somehow always been in the vicinity of one or even several sawmills, his family, all his people, even all their relatives, had always owned at least one sawmill. As to the tavern, Wieser reports Konrad saying, it stood far enough from the lime works so that Konrad never heard anything from there. Just as the rock spur keeps the sawmill noises out, no sounds come from the tavern either, even at its noisiest, here at the lime works he heard none of it. Sometimes you could hear an avalanche, Konrad is supposed to have said, or a rock slide, ice, water, birds, the sound of wild animals, wind, all that, yes. Because one heard hardly any sounds at the lime works, one’s hearing tended to grow remarkably acute here, especially with as hypersensitive an ear as he had. This gave him a natural advantage in the research, for his book dealing, not quite coincidentally, with the sense of hearing, after all it would bear the title