Hans says that Rainer says that it's appalling to imagine yourself a part of a whole. Because you must always remain an individual, completely on your own, and quite unmistakably distinctive. Which is a fortifying thought.
Mummy howls out loud. Not because she has cut herself but because her son is taking the wrong path. Turn back! You are trampling on the wishes and needs of your class, Hans. Nothing is universal. Instead of the unity and strength of your class, you want it split into individual molecules, every one of them isolated from the rest. Mother is like a hornet. Any moment she'll be sploshing semolina around the place and pointing for the fifty-thousandth time to murdered Papa, who did it better. You can see for yourself where it got him. And first he had to undergo inconceivable suffering, which is not to Hans's taste. After all, he wants to be inconceivably happy with Sophie.
Mother says it wasn't her that taught her son this egoism. Nor would his father have taught it him either. And out comes the motherfinger as usual, pointing to the well-loved but now almost forgotten features of that face. Hans says (it's all right if Papa hears this) that Love, to be exact: his love of Sophie, is a better way of tearing down barriers, whatever kind of barriers they may be, than fighting, no matter who the enemy may be, because his love knows no barriers or bounds.
Mother says she'd like to know why Love always crosses these famous barriers to go up and never to go down. Would he like a fruit yoghurt for afters? There's one left, standing all alone on the window sill, keeping its cool. No, Hans doesn't want a fruit yoghurt such as he ate in his early years, Hans wants a whisky or a cognac. Already he can hear the clink of ice, already he can see a white female hand, which is not a ghost's but quite specifically his Sophie's. It is specific yet unreal, like the concept of the working class. Unreal, like exploitation, which you can free yourself of at any time, after all, if you have the will to do so. It's all up to the individual.
Mother longs for the words, deeds and works of her dead husband, whom she'd still like to have with her in bed at times and whom she'd always like to have around, to help her get her bearings in bringing up her only son. Things aren't easy nowadays, Hansi (that was his name). Your poor maltreated bones have no idea that there are other crosses to bear besides the physical one. No doubt it hurt to die. You poor thing. I think such a lot about our cycling tours and all the things we shared. It was the last time you laughed. Those nights spent in barns, in the biting cold, squeezing up close together. Country milk and country butter from a farmer. Washing in the trough at the well. Discussions in backrooms of pubs with a tobacco haze in the air. And the ones who were going to continue the tradition but our son is not continuing anything, and what has become of the others? They are not in our old party any more. And then the shock, which must have been terrible. Having the life crushed out of your body, which wasn't ready for it. Though perhaps it had been prepared by the frightful pain beforehand, which one would rather endure dead than alive.
Sleep well, Hansi.
And Hansi, who is already a Hans, though he doesn't yet know what wee Hans ought to have learnt, removes a wad of addressed envelopes from their bed and stuffs them into the little kitchen stove behind his mother's back. Where the wad immediately goes up in flames. It's the second time he has done this.
Later, Mother will go on looking for the missing envelopes for a long time, once again unable to imagine where on earth they've got to.
THE HIGH ROAD twists through leafy, hilly landscape towards the Danube, but shortly before it, even before Klosterneuburg has been reached, it narrows, and the old Witkowski car has to twist as well, like the road, and inside it Rainer twists about, talking strained stuff about the inner tensions of artists, using the example of Camus to illustrate his point. Rainer doesn't have a licence but he is out driving with the permission of his invalid father, who is staying at home today, relying exclusively on his one leg if he wants to get about. Sophie is sitting in the front, next to Rainer, taking an outing to get some fresh air, which she gets all the time in any case, and Anna is in the back, exuding a pungent smell of sweat without any embarrassment, a smell like that of a frightened animal. But she still occupies a higher cultural position 'cause of playing the piano. It seems that whatever cannot escape via her mouth is making its way out through the pores. Her hopes are pinned on America, that vast land of infinite opportunity. She is applying for a scholarship, for next year. Her English grades are very good, and she is also a rebellious though basically quiet model pupil. In spite of the fact that she never so much as glances at a schoolbook at home. Now, as if on cue, a second frightened animal shows up, which in turn resembles Anna. This animal is on the back of a horse-drawn cart which evidently has wine-growers aboard. It is a dog. The dog is high up on a stack of winegrowers' tools and equipment, with a rope round its neck, and as it lurches about in despair the dog is digging in its toes as hard as it can, as if it were a cat and not a dog which can't extend its claws. The dog intuits that if it loses its balance and falls off the cart it'll be strangled. In its eyes there is naked horror at the brutality of its owners and of the world in general, which can really be a distinctly entertaining place if you're chasing some little animal, a springy feel in your paws, powerfully aware of the relish of Life. It is still spring. Spring is manifested in the new life all around, no doubt there are eggs all over the place, the deer are pregnant. But you cannot see them because things in a nascent state stay hidden to avoid premature extermination. Already the dog is gone, the brutal country labourers with their lack of affection for animals are gone, and the car with the three of them inside is gone too. It is a morning for playing truant from school, a morning when Hans is busy at work, which can be seen in the fact that he is boring away at the day, uninterested, waiting for evening to come. The schoolkids, by contrast, are interested as they bore away at things, since high school instils the researcher's curiosity in them.
They have already passed the Schot-tenhof. The road is a silvery-grey ribbon, just as roads are often described in books. Turn-offs would take you to the Salmannsdorf vineyards or to Neustift am Walde, but they are not taken because the party is heading for the Grinzing vineyards. The ribbon of road spirals gently upwards so that you have a view. The view from the Cobenzl, from the house on the Roan or from the Kahlenberg has even become famous. The car is parked and the walk is walked. On the left vineyards ascend the slope, on the right they drop down towards the Danube, which is likewise a silver ribbon, only further off. The air is clear and still so cold that they have to wrap up in their fashionable extra-long scarves. Above them are mathematically precise clouds. A breeze raises dust. The vines are not yet flowering, which (according to a Viennese song) will happen later, and elsewhere, to be exact: right beside the Danube when the vines are in flower. Then a thousand violins will play, the song continues and falls silent before its own idiocy. The three of them take the final plunge into the vineyards, beneath their feet the famed loess where vines flourish particularly well. The church belfries in the wine-growing villages are not yet in action because today is only Friday. You can hear dogs barking, hens cackling and their cocks crowing. The area is almost without people. After all, when you take a walk you're after solitude, and if the solitude won't come to you, you must go to it. Today's youngsters often bear solitude within, and without they are forever heading straight into it. The path they are on today is the upper Reisenberg path, which approaches the Grinzing inns with absolute fearlessness. Down below, they will go for a coffee. Old villas in the valleys, hiding behind trees although they are perfectly presentable. Glassed-in verandas with Virginia creeper growing on them, with its cousin the vine working for the villa owner and producing a harvest at a discreet distance. The incredible and utterly crazy beauty of the town elbows its way into the scene so forcefully that even Rainer tries to keep his trap shut, but he fails and promptly praises their surroundings. The air is completely transparent. Like aspic. The aspic would claim in turn that it was as clear as the air above vineyards.