is supposed to have said, that have long ceased to be the same structures or mental complexes they once were. For twenty years now the lime works had been shut down, dead. One fine day someone realized, Konrad said, that the lime works had become unprofitable, so they let the workers go and shut down the lime works. The manager had written to Hoerhager in Zurich that the lime works had ceased to make a profit and the manager proposed to Hoerhager that he shut it down, Konrad is supposed to have told Wieser; liquidate the lime works, the manager is supposed to have written to Hoerhager, or rather, to have telegraphed, and Hoerhager immediately liquidated the lime works; Hoerhager, who was a bachelor, is said to have instantly liquidated the works without a moment’s hesitation, upon receiving the manager’s proposal to liquidate, Konrad is supposed to have told Wieser. But the manager was a crook, Konrad said, everything about him was crooked, at least his intentions were. Hoerhager had actually never paid any attention to the lime works, Konrad told Wieser. The manager had been using Hoerhager, managers are by their very nature the exploiters of owners, all the managers in the world are exploiters, they never think of anything else than how to exploit the owners, the principle of exploiting owners has gradually been developed by them to a truly vertiginous science. At the time the lime works were liquidated, Konrad and his wife were living in Augsburg, crammed with all their possessions into a house that, as Konrad told Wieser, was well-suited to Konrad’s carrying on his research. Konrad at this time remembered the lime works, as he had remembered it for decades before and for decades to come, as his first childhood playground, a structure associated in his mind with damp, chill, darkness, getting hurt, currently owned by his peripatetic nephew Hoerhager who was then spending his time mostly in Zurich, caught up in social distractions. Already the lime works had meant to Konrad a place of eclipse, an ideal retreat for working on his book, and already in Augsburg he started to think about buying the lime works from Hoerhager, Konrad reminisced to Wieser, though he did not know, did not even dream that he would actually one day buy the lime works from his nephew, even though that day would not arrive for two decades more. Hoerhager was then at the point of liquidating the lime works at long distance, from Zurich, and in cold blood. Yet despite the fact that the nephew never took the slightest interest in the lime works other than the financial, Hoerhager held off for decades on selling it to Konrad. My nephew probably knew that I was absolutely determined to buy the lime works, that my life, my very existence, depended upon my acquiring the lime works, and so he would not sell to me, Konrad is said to have told Wieser. My wife’s health was growing noticeably worse that time in Augsburg, as I remember, Konrad said, we kept trying every kind of specialist in nearby Munich, which was at the time world famous for its outstanding doctors, particularly its specialists for the various kinds of deformity, for cripples. In Augsburg I used to take long walks along the Lech River, Konrad recalled, it’s a usable sort of city, actually. The lime works manager was rumored to have demanded a horrendous sum of compensation from Hoerhager, Konrad told Wieser, which Hoerhager instantly agreed to pay, just as Hoerhager always instantly agreed to whatever the manager proposed, simply to avoid being bothered, Konrad supposed. The manager offered to discharge the workmen, turn off the power, lock the gates for good. Lime works like this one in Sicking, i.e., of middling size, no longer had a future, the manager wrote to Hoerhager, so he, the manager, would undertake to wind it all up in orderly fashion; as usual, Hoerhager agreed to everything the manager proposed. The manager could have Hoerhager’s power of attorney to do whatever needed to be done, Hoerhager wrote from Zurich to Sicking. I remember his being in Zurich then, Konrad said to Wieser, while we were in Augsburg, he was in Zurich, a city that takes a great interest in the advancement of culture. The lime works were liquidated within a week. All that hardly interested my nephew Hoerhager in Zurich, said Konrad, while I was always interested in anything to do with the lime works, and the liquidation of the lime works aroused my interest in Augsburg all the more, in that a shut-down, abandoned, really dead lime works was more suitable than ever for me and my scientific work, more ideal a place to live and work than ever before. I instantly dispatched a telegram to Zurich: “Buying limeworks” two words just like that, “Buying limeworks,” but Hoerhager, my offer in hand, would not sell, Konrad is said to have told Wieser. So began my decades of struggle for possession of the lime works. The harder I kept after him, Konrad said to Wieser, the less inclined Hoerhager seemed to make a deal, though he could certainly have used my money, especially on the eve of World War II, yet he would not sell to me, but on the other hand he did not sell to anyone else, either, so as not to put an end to my efforts to buy the lime works, he needed for me to go on making those desperate efforts, in which he took a sadistic delight, Konrad is said to have told Wieser. As my offer went up, his resistance stiffened. This went on for two decades. In the end, by this time we had moved to Mannheim, I did buy the lime works for a high price, probably by two hundred or three hundred percent too high a price, and probably, Konrad is said to have told Wieser, when it was already too late. Hoeller was to continue staying in the annex, on a pension, as the lime works manager is supposed to have requested and Hoerhager agreed instantly to the pension for Hoeller and to let him stay on at the annex, an additional charge Konrad took over, Hoeller’s pension and continued occupancy of the annex, along with the lime works, but he didn’t mind, on the contrary, he needed Hoeller. It was necessary to keep someone at the lime works who would be part and parcel of it, the manager wrote to Hoerhager in Zurich, and Konrad is said to have told Wieser that this was correct, a complex like the lime works needed a man like Hoeller. Hoeller had been lime works foreman for thirty years. He would have been incapable of leaving the lime works, besides; the others simply went, most of them took jobs in the brewery, the candle factory, the quarry, and that was that. Workmen simply turn their backs on their place of work, Konrad said to Wieser, their place of work is no more to them than a machine for providing them with money. To Hoeller the lime works was home. Though it must be said that the shut-down, dead state of the lime works depressed Hoeller, Konrad told Wieser, even now. It felt weird to him. Konrad struck him as weird, too, Konrad said, but Konrad for his part regarded Hoeller, quite to the contrary, with increasing warmth as a thoroughly dependable, needed man. Konrad to Fro: he (Konrad) would start by going up to the attic, then down to the third floor, then the second, the first, and finally he would walk through all the rooms on the ground floor, to make sure that there really was not another salable thing in the house except for the Francis Bacon which he had bought in Glasgow. Just looking for something that could be converted into cash, that’s all. But he found nothing. Apparently, he thought, he had sold everything already. He did not know the full extent of his indebtedness, but he knew it was enormous. His debts amounted to more than the value of the lime works. Now he had absolutely nothing left, he thought. He might go up to the attic once more, but there really was nothing at all left in the attic. Old suit cases, beer glasses, preserve jars, hat boxes, crutches. He would search every corner, because he could not believe that there could be absolutely nothing salable left in the attic, not even an old icon, nothing at all. Nothing left in the rooms, nothing on the walls, nothing. Only three years ago all these walls had still been full of things, but there was nothing hanging on them now. You could still see how much there had been, the outlines of the pictures were still visible. Now the lime works walls were bare. It had all been taken down and sold. At a ridiculous price, Konrad is said to have told Fro. But though he realized that everything was gone, that there was nothing left because he had gradually sold even the most unsalable items he’d had, he kept going back through all the rooms again, as if to reassure himself for the hundredth or the thousandth time that there was nothing left in those rooms, not one thing. The empty rooms on the ground floor are the most depressing of all, he said, according to Fro. High-ceilinged empty rooms make a terrible impression on first entering a house. He had only just been through all the rooms again, including the annex, he said, according to Fro, and there was no doubt at all that there was nothing salable left even in the annex. He said he had been considering sneaking something out of his wife’s room to sell, but that would be the hardest thing to do. In his own room there was nothing left except the Francis Bacon, which he would not sell, he would never part with that painting. I might just possibly succeed in smuggling something salable out of my wife’s room without her noticing it, he said. You must remember that I’ve nothing left in the bank, Fro quoted him saying. They had already told him at the bank that he had exhausted his account. But a man had to have