Gargoyles

by Thomas Bernhard

  “Nine o’clock,” the prince said. “I read through my advertisement once more and reflect that it is a perfectly ordinary, not especially attractive notice. It surprises me that there should be a single person who comes in response to it, and then the two other applicants arrive, Henzig and Huber. First Henzig,” the prince said. “Let me give you a brief sketch of Henzig.” (Something hysterical about the prince’s tone!) “Thirty-four years old,” the prince said. “Henzig seems to me excellently fitted for the post, though I didn’t like him (in contrast to Huber, whom I found more likable than naturally fitted for the post). Henzig comes from the vicinity of Aussee, son of a family of foresters. His father is a commissioner of forests; he attended the School of Forestry, studied soils, and so on.… Sureness about everything he says; moreover, everything he says is correct,” the prince said. “Strip selection cutting—opening up the canopy—shelterwood, etc. I was stunned by the way the man knew everything. (Vertical group selection cutting, etc.) But I felt dislike for the man’s neatness,” the prince said. “Personal cleanliness, clothing, and so on—all merits that suddenly repel me. Why? I don’t have to look at the references to know that I’m dealing with an excellent man. Right at the beginning of the interview with Henzig I had to laugh the name Zehetmayer away. A poor wretched fellow, I say to myself, and let Henzig give me a summary of his previous employment while still savoring the unspoken name Puschach Lake. I had my mind on Zehetmayer, not on Henzig, Doctor. I had my mind on Zehetmayer’s generalized despair while Henzig was giving me specific data on his career. Suddenly I said aloud: Of course there are people who are so horribly constituted that they occupy one’s mind continually, and in a pleasant way, moreover. Henzig was irritated,” the prince said, “but only for the briefest moment. Then he went on with his summary. It was a pleasure for me to listen to Henzig and to think of Zehetmayer,” the prince said. “I had no difficulty in carrying this amusement to an extreme. Henzig said that he had been working for six years in Kobernausserwald, certainly the foremost forestry school in Austria, in the former Habsburg, now republican, state forests. Henzig said something about Douglas firs, about arid and humid strata, broad base, about conditions of payment, purchases and sales. I heard the name Liberia and the word mangroves; and several times, sounding very grotesque: The Habsburgs. It would have been wise to hire the man on the spot,” the prince said. “For I realized at once: Here is a top-notch man. But I did not hire him then and there,” the prince said. “This man reminded me of my youth, of long walks in the woods with Forest Commissioner Siegmund. Of conversations about the colors of game birds, fees for hunting licenses, tree diseases, sale of lumber to France and Italy, of my young manhood. I suddenly found myself looking through him into long and in any case secret and faded talks. The smell of all these talks and subjects and woods and clothes were in my nose, and the smell of the air on the banks of the Ache, the smell of Tyrol, Salzburg, Upper Bavaria, and Upper Austria, the smell of kindred forests. I looked into an official building on the margin of a Tyrolian forest, where the floorboards betray who is walking on them. You hear such phrases as: The forest commissioner is coming! or Dr. Konstanz or Marie is coming. The door opens into a library in which two thousand volumes of distorted history are lined up, from Descartes and Pascal to Schopenhauer and the obscure Schiern papers. When I looked through Henzig I saw the vast forests between the inn and the lowlands of Bavaria, or the endless woods of Slovenia,” the prince said. “I kept thinking: The tranquility of nature is and remains an infinite tranquility. Suddenly I said to Henzig: All in all,” the prince said, “and I said that in extreme embarrassment, all in all you seem to me too voting for the post. For you must realize, I say to Henzig, that you would be bearing an enormous responsibility entirely alone. In the Kobernausserwald, I say, there are many state employees, and no matter how good they are, they bear no responsibility. State employees do not bear responsibility. Under the Republic the word responsibility has become a foreign word! I say. I know it, I say to him,” the prince said, “in the state forests everything is irresponsible; that is the most conspicuous characteristic of these so-called new, but actually age-old systems: that there is no responsibility in them. And I say,” the prince said, “you see the consequences of this irresponsibility of course, my dear fellow. Of course you see them, I said, I mean, I said, I know what I mean by responsibility. In this position you have the utmost responsibility. In this post there is no such thing as this ridiculous Republic. On the Saurau property this ridiculous Republic doesn’t exist. Not yet, I say. This is a state in itself. Here, I say, our own laws prevail, the Saurau natural laws. Understand, I say, the Saurau laws of nature, not those of the Republic, not those of the pseudo-democracy. And I say: The area is vast; you surely know how large the area of the Saurau property is, still is. Henzig says he does. Well then, I say, and you mean to say you fed equal to such a position? Let me call your attention to the fact, I say to the man, that this is not a state operation, this is private enterprise. That is a tremendous responsibility! And I think, this man Henzig is perfectly right for the post, but I say: I can imagine an older man holding such a post, but such a young man.… I keep thinking: Henzig is the man for the post, yet I say: You are surely biting off more than you can chew.… Henzig does not answer that. Then he says that incidentally he speaks French (of course), English, Russian, and Italian. Well, I say, I cannot decide at the moment. No,” the prince said, “at the moment you cannot expect a decision. I say: I’ll write to you. Give me your exact address. In two days you’ll receive a telegram. I stand up,” the prince said, “and offer my hand to Henzig. I open the door for him, because there is no one else around to open it for him, no one, and he’s gone. Henzig, no one else, I tell myself, and I think, sitting down in the office, and I think, why did the man’s Tightness, his general orderliness, order personified, so repel you? His education? I have to clap my hand to my head. This sudden dislike for enormous knowledge, I told myself,” the prince said. “Again and again I say: A good man, a good man, what a good man this fellow Henzig is.… I pace back and forth in the office. I reckon out the spring income from the gravel pits. I think: Are these gravel pits still profitable? While I begin to think about the large work force in the gravel pits (and in the mines) and to wonder whether I should not close the mines altogether—close them, I think, close the mines and the gravel pits, it’s high time—there is a knock at the door and another (the third) applicant stands before me: Huber.”

  The prince said: “Huber is from Bundau. He uses a language, has a way of speaking, that instantly made me think: inimical to civilization. I think: This is a man who is glad to and not glad to leave Bundau. Or rather: who would be glad to leave Bundau if he could leave it gladly. And so on.… He has left Bundau; but surely not only because of the advertisement. I ask him at once: Have you left Bundau because of my advertisement? The man is out of the question, I think. He says: Because of the ad, yes. I say: But I am looking for a topnotch man. I think of Henzig. To that Huber responds that he has thirty years’ experience, without saying experience in what. I look at the man and I know,” the prince said, “what kind of experience the man has had for thirty years. Foreman of a woodcutting crew. I tell him to sit down, there’s a chair, and Huber sits. Grotesque! I pour him a glass of whisky and again I say: I don’t drink, myself, on doctor’s orders, but talking is easier over a drink. Huber drinks his glass down at one swig. Grotesque! His clothes are neat; they are hung on a nail, not in a closet, I think. I pour him another. I look at his hat, his jacket, his trousers, his coat buttons. I think: It’s cold in Bundau, the winter never ends there, the people who live in Bundau are absolute winter people. Subsistence farmers, I think, Doctor, subsistence people. It’s an area that permits a bare minimum subsistence. The prevailing tone there is blackish green, a greenish blackness, a darkness so great it actually prevents suicides. In these people thought is perpetually on the verge of drowning, any pleasure in life on the verge of perishing, e
verything freezes and dies. Why, how are things in Bundau nowadays? I ask Huber. Always the same, Huber says. Several times, Doctor, he repeats: Always the same. Drack, the sawmill owner, lives in Bundau, doesn’t he? I say. Oh yes, Drack, the sawmill owner, Huber says. I say: It was Drack who made the floors for the Belvedere, wasn’t it? I say: Drack has three sisters. It’s a pleasure talking to Drack, I say. You know,” the prince said, “Drack is the only man in Bundau who has money. Yes, Huber says. I am thinking,” the prince said, “that it is inexplicable that three applicants should have come in answer to my advertisement the very first morning. What do you say to that, Doctor, three applicants on the first morning to a ridiculous want-ad in a ridiculous newspaper, composed in an altogether ridiculous style? What do you say? I say to Huber,” the prince said, “Drack has shifted entirely to making parquet, hasn’t he? He no longer makes ordinary flooring, does he? Except occasionally, I say. There are exceptions, Huber says. I am thinking that my want-ad was badly written. Why should three applicants respond to a badly written want ad on the first morning? Mysterious. Mysterious!” the prince said. “I thought, it’s not Huber’s fault. Fault? Huber? Why? Stop this, I thought. I ask Huber when he read the advertisement,” the prince said. “I certainly want to know that,” the prince said. “It strikes me that I also asked Henzig and Zehetmayer about it. I say: When did you read the want ad? Do you have it there in your pocket? I say. Huber takes the advertisement out of his pocket and puts it on the desk. I read it through once more. Did you read it at breakfast, I ask. He says he did not, and indicates that he has not even had his breakfast yet,” the prince said. “He succeeds in conveying that without saying a word; everything about the man suddenly tells me that he has not yet eaten breakfast. I go into the kitchen,” the prince said. “I see that there is nobody in the kitchen, not a soul in the kitchen, I fix a ham sandwich and butter a roll for Huber, and go back to the office with it and tell him to eat. Cider? I ask. No, no cider. Of course he has children, but I am not sure whether there are three or four. I say, Eat! and ask: How many children do you have? Three, he says. How old, I want to know. Thirty-one, twenty-four, and sixteen, he says. Four have died. I think: What matters is life? I say: You have a fine wife, eh? She does a good job of farming eight and a half acres, Huber says,” the prince said. “If it weren’t for Drack, Drack in Bundau. He nods. Drack, I say, indirectly feeds Bundau. Drack philosophizes and his three sisters keep him well-stuffed, which he hates, I say. It’s tough sledding with three sisters, I say. Drack and Bundau …” the prince said. “And then it occurs to me: You have two sisters in the house yourself. It also occurs to me that I’m the same age as Drack. And it occurs to me that basically the same conditions exist in Drack’s house as in mine, the economic, familial, and personal circumstances, only Drack is down and I’m up, but I could just as well be down and Drack up.… I say to Huber,” the prince said. “But Drack’s sisters are hunchbacks, and I think that Drack is the victim of his three sisters. A man can be strong, as strong as he likes, and Drack is strong, but his three sisters are stronger.… Unmarried Drack is a result, I think; widowed Saurau is a result. I say: Drack could have made a dozen good matches. I say this more to myself than to Huber, but Huber hears it,” the prince said, “and he stops eating and says: The Princess of Thurn and Taxis. Afterward Huber says that hoof-and-mouth disease in Bundau has finished off almost all the livestock, that Bundau will never recover again. Do you hear that, Doctor, never recover again! Epidemics, I say, once they come, it’s too late. For the state, I say, everything is too late. For the kind of state we have nowadays, everything is always too late. The state wastes medicines on carcasses! Well, I say, when did you read the want ad, Huber? His wife brought the newspaper back with her from Knittelfeld very early in the morning. Gone there to consult the doctor,” the prince said. “Kidney disease. Huber took the newspaper from her while he was putting on his shirt. She’d been nagging him as she did every day, saying they had no money. He didn’t work, she worked her fingers to the bone, he idled, earned nothing, she was keeping everything going, he squandered everything, and so on.… Finally she called him a layabout and a shirker, and then he lost his temper,” the prince said, “and threatened to slap her, but didn’t do so and went into the bedroom and threw himself down on the bed. I read the want ad there on the bed, Huber said. He had immediately jumped up and dressed and left the house and come from Bundau to see me. On the way it had struck him as foolish to apply for the position (Zehetmayer!). But no, he had kept telling himself, I’ll go up there, I’ll go up, I’ll go up to see Prince Saurau. And what with repeating to himself, I’mgoingup, I’mgoingup, he suddenly found himself up on top. But the sight of the castle disheartened him, he said, and he walked around it four or five times before he knocked. Again and again he wondered whether he shouldn’t run off, down to a tavern.… But then he saw Henzig coming out, a rather impressive man, said Huber, and there was nothing left for him to do but knock. At my age it would be foolish to start in on a new job, Huber said to me. But his wife was constantly after him,” the prince said, “she was driving him crazy. Every day she proved to him her indispensability and his superfluousness. But of course he wasn’t at all suited to the post he was applying for, Huber said, and by that he meant not entirely unsuited—probably. It occurs to me that the abilities of a foreman are first-rate,” the prince said. “Huber’s abilities are probably the finest, and I say so. I say: Your abilities are undoubtedly excellent. But he might also be thinking that he was not suited to the post of steward, I said. No, no, I say,” the prince said, “such a post calls for a quite different sort of experience. He knows that, and I say candidly not that Huber is probably not suited to the post, but that he is simply unsuited for it. I say,” the prince said, “but it would surely be a blessing to get away from Bundau again. Yes, Huber said. I myself have not been in Bundau for two years,” the prince said. “As usual it is only a funeral that prompts me to leave the castle, to visit valleys. I’m constantly going to all sorts of regions in the country (and abroad too, of course) because someone dies whom I’m related to, whom I know or don’t know. People of our sort are always travelers to funerals, in addition to our regular occupations. And the ones who die, Doctor, are always those whom we expected to die. Surprises are rare. I say,” the prince said, “the cemetery in Bundau is being enlarged, isn’t it? And Huber says: Disputes. The mayor, the socialists … and so on.… Nobody wanted to give up any land for the town, Huber says. So the town simply expropriated some. Expropriated, I think. For me that is a cue that brings to mind the whole repulsiveness of the state, the stupidity of the state, the whole idiotic bureaucratic rabble who run the state. Expropriated! Everywhere there are expropriations, I say; everywhere down below me land is being expropriated for the most paltry reasons. The politicians expropriate here and there. Everywhere. They expropriate and they ruin. Nature is being ruined. Expropriated! I cry out, and I say: I hope this state expropriates itself soon. I hope it commits suicide as fast as possible, I cry! It’s high time for this Republic to expropriate itself!” the prince said. “This ridiculous Republic, I said. Expropriated! They hack off your toes, Doctor, they cut off toes and heels. Nobody can walk any more! Suddenly,” the prince said—we had stood still and were gazing down into the gorge—“suddenly I’ve poured Huber another glass of whisky and am in the midst of talking politics with him. The state is rotten, I say, in all seriousness the Republic is rotting. That is my favorite phrase of late, Doctor: The state is rotten. Everything is empty, I say to Huber: The Reds are empty and the Blacks are empty, the monarchy is empty of course, and of course the Republic is empty. After all, everything is lying dully, lethargically in its death-throes, right? Everything except for science. I say to Huber: The republican death-throes are probably the most repulsive, the ugliest of all. Aren’t they, Doctor? I say: The common people are stupid, they stink, and that has always been so. Huber says then that there are Communists in Bundau, and what is more among Dra
ck’s workers. Communists! I say. Communists! Yes, Communists. There are plenty of them working for me as well, I say. Everybody down below the castle is communistic, I say. Everybody. But the Communists don’t know what Communism is. Unfortunately! Then, coming back to my want ad, I say to Huber that he, Huber, is undoubtedly a good man, but as I’ve said, unsuited for the post of steward.” The prince said he thought the man was fifty but he looked sixty. “Fifty years ago it would have been perfectly possible to consider a foreman for such a post,” the prince said. “But not nowadays. Nowadays the business requires a scientific type, like Henzig. No, I say to Huber, after all you did not seriously think that I could employ you! Half past eleven, Huber, I say,” the prince said. “I pour a fourth glass for him. I say: The man you saw going out, the good-looking man, he’s the one. Henzig, I say, he’s the one. Forestry school, I say, soil culture, Vienna, Paris, London, Madrid. And a robust body besides, as I said, I say. English, French, Italian … Kobernausserwald, I say. Has that modern arrogance and scientific attitude, unsparing even toward himself. Those scientists aren’t stupid people, I say. Basically it seems to me,” the prince said, “forestry today is simply an economic science, if not a pure natural science. Everything is a science today, I say,” the prince said. “Huber wants to stand up, but doesn’t. Everything is a gigantic scientific apparatus, I say. Absurd, I say. Huber stands up. In Austria, I say to Huber, everything is bogged down in a perverse backwardness. Two hundred years behind the times in almost all fields, I say. Ridiculous, I say. That isn’t any exaggeration, Doctor, and I say: Substances, I say, a mighty chemistry. The farther away it moves from the conventional concept of nature, the more beautiful, the mightier, I want even to say, the more poetic. Huber, I say, how is the mail delivery in Bundau nowadays? Still a ghastly mess, Huber says, ghastly. And the schoolchildren? I ask. Without further words, by merely saying schoolchildren I summon to mind all my concern for the misery of the schoolchildren in the mountain districts. Huber goes to the door,” the prince said. “I think: His trousers, absurd. His jacket, absurd. His walk, absurd. Grotesque, I think. The concept of schoolchildren, Doctor, is equivalent to misery throughout the world, but in the Bundau region the situation is the worst, the bitterest it can be anywhere. For twenty years there has been talk about building a new school at the end of the Bundau valley, but to this day no new school has been built. I think repeatedly: The whole educational system in our country is backward, simply outmoded, wretched, isn’t it, Doctor? And I think: If you allow every sudden inspiration to coagulate into a thought.… I say: Huber, one must not reflect.… I have been reflecting, Doctor, on the stupidity of all phrases, on stupidity, on the stupidity in which man lives and thinks, thinks and lives, on the stupidity.… I permit myself to live—absurd! Everyone lives—absurd. The stupidity of entrusting oneself to the German language, my dear Doctor—absurd! And not only the German language, I think, but still the German language above all. The stupidity resulting from German, I think.… The stupidity of a world consisting of advantage and disadvantage and of nothing else.… Philosophize! No! In Bundau I once saw a plump pheasant sitting on a boar, I say to Huber. I really did. Huber listens. Listen, Doctor, Huber listens.… He is standing at the door. Yes, yes, I say, I went down into Bundau hundreds of times with my father, for the pheasants and the boars, I say. Bundau kept drawing my father into it—the attraction of Bundau, I say. I was perhaps eight or nine years old, I say, when we went to Bundau, very early in the morning, and suddenly deep in the valley we saw the pheasant sitting on the boar. Then my father described to me the relationship between the pheasant and the boar. Grotesque! I say. And he told me all sorts of things about pheasants and boars. We were sitting on a log, my father and I, and as the pheasant shamelessly bobbed up and down on the boar’s tail, my father shot it. Shot it right off the boar’s tail, I say. The boar takes one leap and disappears into the underbrush. I go after the pheasant, and while I am stooping for it my father fires a second shot. I ask him as I come back with the pheasant why he fired the second shot. Into the air, I say, why into the air? My father doesn’t know why. I’ve never fired a shot pointlessly into the air, my father says. There are fine pheasants and fine boars in Bundau, I say. Huber wants to leave. He steps into the vestibule. Of course, I say, I can use you, though not for the steward’s post. I propose to Huber that he work for me as foreman, though without old-age pension; Krainer needs help. But he doesn’t accept my offer. A queer man. It’s clear that Huber doesn’t want to work, not any more, never again. No, no, he says. He would rather go on listening to his wife’s nagging every day. I think : Huber would be a real help to me. You see, everything is neglected, Doctor. But it’s no use, Huber leaves. I reflect that my want ad has helped him escape from Bundau. Cold Bundau, I think. Huber as steward, I think. Huber and Zehetmayer—grotesque! I’ll settle with Henzig at once, I think. Henzig is the only fellow for the job. Basically Henzig is what I have always been looking for and never found. I realize,” the prince said, “that there is a personality who in no time will become priceless, indispensable to me. The man is first-rate. Of course it takes a whole day,” the prince said, “for the telegram to reach Kobernausserwald. If I send it now, at noon, I thought, it won’t reach Kobernausserwald until tomorrow morning. The postal system, the hopeless, ruined Austrian postal system. I go into the vestibule and dictate the telegram to my elder sister, and she calls old Krainer and he rides down to the post office. I’m not running any risks with Henzig,” the prince said. “I’ve already settled the financial side with him. He’ll live in the hunting lodge, no, in the Pavilion, no, in the hunting lodge, in the hunting lodge. Assume duties of position at once if you wish, I telegraphed. But it occurs to me that Henzig is still under contract to the state and can’t begin work until next week at the earliest. The state forests which ruin everything,” Prince Saurau said, “the state which ruins everything, the unending, everlasting suicide of the state. Doctor, nowadays all states are constantly committing suicide, and not only in Europe. It is my ancient theme, Doctor,” the prince said. “The state that ruins everything, the people who do not know how to run their state and ruin it. The phrase intellectual catastrophe occurs to me, Doctor. After Huber has left, I have a sign reading Steward’s position filled put up on the big gate, and go into the office. And sure enough, a number of other applicants for the job arrive. I watch them until they leave, some immediately after reading the sign, most after hesitating for quite a while. Much too old. Again and again I wonder that so many applicants should respond to this particular want ad. Remarkable, I think, that the right man was among the first three applicants, isn’t it, Doctor? To talk with people one has just met makes you thoughtful and is very tiring. There is always the question of how much one should make contact with them, whether one should make contact with them at all. Doctor, don’t you think … contacts,” the prince said. “As you always say, Doctor: I am insofar as I have contact with people, and so on. But contact always brings out first of all the ironic element in my mind.… Irony, which diminishes the unbearableness.… Brushing against the peripheries of people with weak nerves.… I think: Was I too friendly with Huber, or was I not friendly enough with Huber? And how was I toward Zehetmayer? Odd that the question of whether I was too friendly or too unfriendly always arises as soon as a person has left me. But I was quite friendly toward Huber, I think. And I was also quite friendly toward Zehetmayer. I certainly was least friendly with Henzig. It was a very short interview, an encounter, a surge of dislike for the man. Henzig, I think, is the ideal steward.”