sband, she had decided on this even before she called in the doctor, and had the laborers help her wash the body, because her sisters happened to be in town that morning; the dead sawmill owner had been quickly undressed, washed, and combed, Konrad said to Fro, no sooner had the doctor left than they all went to work carpentering a temporary bier in the former pigpen, by which time the children had come home from school, and the sawmill owner’s wife’s sisters were back from town, and they all did what they could to lay out the sawmill owner on his bier in state as quickly as possible, Konrad told Fro, Hoeller described it all carefully in the smallest, seemingly insignificant detail, Konrad said. The dead man’s children had been remarkably quiet, considering that they had come home from school to find their father had suddenly fallen off his tractor and was dead, and the sawmill owner’s wife’s sisters, who had always lived at the sawmill, as Konrad is supposed to have said to Fro, did their best to collect flowers for the dead man’s lying-in-state, they had wrapped him in a linen shroud which the sawmill owner’s wife had kept along with her own in one of her bedroom clothes chests, so in no time at all the sawmill had that atmosphere characteristic of a wake, Konrad said, that very definite odor of flowers and fresh linen and lifeless body and fresh wood and holy water; the news of the sawmill owner’s death had gotten around the entire region with incredible speed, Hoeller himself had heard of it within half an hour after the death from one of the wife’s sisters who had come round to the annex to tell Hoeller and ask him to come to the sawmill and help them put the bier together and of course Hoeller who had been busy chopping wood immediately dropped what he was doing and went to the sawmill with the sawmill owner’s wife’s sister, but by the time they got there his help was no longer needed because they had already put up a provisional bier on two trestles and even laid out the corpse on it; Hoeller arriving just three-quarters of an hour after the sawmill owner’s death found the corpse already lying in state surrounded by flowers and candles though, oddly enough, Hoeller is supposed to have told Konrad, Fro says, there was blood trickling from the left corner of the dead man’s mouth, his widow kept trying to wipe the blood away with a bit of linen rag, but she did not succeed in preventing the dead man’s fresh linen shroud from showing some rather large blood stains. The children knelt, as the children of dead people always kneel, Hoeller told Konrad, as he said to Fro, beside the corpse, and little by little the room where the bier stood, which happened in the case of the dead sawmill owner to be the former pigpen with the big cider press inside, was filling up, as always in the case of a death, with condolers. Hoeller is supposed to have given Konrad an exact description of the first several hours after the death of the sawmill owner at the sawmill, finding some characteristic little thing to tell about every single one of those present at the house of mourning, for instance how the sawmill owner’s widow had said to Hoeller, while he was standing in the entry to the sawmill planning the text of the death notice, to be ordered from the Sicking printer’s, with the widow’s older sister, the widow said to Hoeller that her husband’s death had not taken her completely by surprise, in fact the two of them, she and her husband, had talked about the possibility of his having a stroke just two days previously, though of course they had ended up laughing together, which now seemed strange, yes indeed, the sawmill owner’s widow is supposed to have said to Hoeller in the entry to the sawmill, as Konrad reported it to Fro, who knows, she said to Hoeller, what will happen now, and what kind of man will be coming into the house, meaning, as Hoeller thought, that the sawmill owner’s widow was alluding to the likely successor to the sawmill owner, after all she could not live there alone with all those children, still so little, she is supposed to have said to Hoeller not two hours after the death of the sawmill owner, and: the children were no help, but what with the sawmill being after all a property worth millions, she would unquestionably find a man before not too long, you must remember, Konrad said to Fro, that the sawmill owner married into the sawmill, originally, as the sawmill was part of the widow’s original property. Getting back to his own wife, Konrad said that if there was a man in the world who could put up with her, then he was that man, and she alone in the world was the woman who could endure him, Konrad said to Fro. Today I asked her to let me read her the Kropotkin for two hours, Konrad said to Fro, but she refused, but in the end we agreed to the following: she would put up with listening to two hours of Kropotkin if he, her husband, would help her put on the black, gold-embroidered dress, as she described her wedding dress; good, Konrad said to his wife, first you put on the dress, then you listen to me reading Kropotkin for two hours. But she had no sooner put on the black, gold-embroidered dress, meaning, naturally, that he had put it on her, than she said she wanted to take it off again, now that she had it on she could see quite clearly in the mirror that the black, gold-embroidered dress no longer suited her, I mean, she said, of course it suits me, but only in a frightening sort of way. So I took off her black, gold-embroidered dress again, Konrad is supposed to have said. No sooner was it off than she asked me to put on her gray dress with the white velvet collar, so Konrad hung the black, gold-embroidered dress back inside the wardrobe, took out the gray dress with the white velvet collar, feeling all the time that his wife was watching him closely, You are watching me, aren’t you? he is supposed to have said, waiting a bit before he turned around to hear her answer, but she kept silent, Konrad said to Fro. He had hardly put the gray dress with the white velvet collar on her when she straightened up as best she could to see herself in the mirror and then said: No, this dress won’t do either. I’d rather get back into my old dress, the one I’m always wearing, and Konrad patiently took off her gray dress with the white velvet collar again, and helped her into what she is always supposed to have called her terrible everyday dress. This is the smell that suits me, my everyday smell, she is supposed to have said, as soon as she had on her so-called terrible everyday dress once more. Now where did I have this terrible thing on for the first time, she asked, and he answered: In Deggendorf, don’t you remember, in Deggendorf, it was made for you by your niece’s seamstress in Deggendorf. Right, by my niece’s seamstress in Deggendorf, Mrs. Konrad is supposed to have answered. I wore it to the ball in Landshut, too. Yes, she repeated, says Fro, the ball in Landshut. Then Konrad read to her, as agreed, Kropotkin, for two hours straight. To Wieser: Hoerhager, Konrad’s cousin, would undoubtedly have let the lime works fall into disrepair. When the Konrad’s announced that they would move into the lime works, people laughed at them. You would have to be crazy to move into the lime works, the Sickingers are supposed to have said, Konrad said to Wieser, and: those people, my dear Wieser, were right. Only two years ago I was still of the opinion that the lime works would be good for my work, but now I no longer think so, now I can see that the lime works robbed me of my last chance to get my book actually written. I mean that sometimes I think, he is supposed to have told Wieser, that the lime works is precisely why I can’t write it all down, and then at other times I think that I still have a chance to get my book written down precisely because I am living at the lime works. The two ideas keep alternating in my head, namely that the lime works will enable me to write my book, and that I shall never be able to write my book, because I am here at the lime works. Not so long ago I was of the opinion that the lime works was my only salvation, which meant that it was also hers, (his wife’s) and yet today I am surprised that I could have had such an opinion at all. Though I must admit that the moment I have said the lime works will never let me write my book, hope springs up again that the lime works will be favorable to my writing it. But if you can’t get your book written here, his wife is supposed to have said again and again, why did we move to the lime works? If you can’t get it written here, why are we making the sacrifice of living here at the lime works when we could be living so much more pleasantly anywhere else, surely there can be no doubt, Wieser reports Mrs. Konrad saying to her husband, that living at the lime works means being committed to extreme self-sacrifice, let’s not fool ourselves, to immure ourselves in the lime works is madness, unless there is a so-called higher aim to justify it. Though it was true that they had by now gotten accustomed to their existence at the lime works, the question remained in any case: what was it all for, if it was not for the sake of the book, for the sake of