Correction

by Thomas Bernhard

  But what if this is my chance to free myself of this legacy? I thought, having meanwhile taken my jacket out of the closet and put it on, why don’t I just leave this whole mass of papers I’ve brought with me, the whole legacy, right here in Hoeller’s garret, leave it here, leave it here, I kept thinking while pacing the floor and wondering whether I was disturbing the Hoeller family with my endless pacing back and forth, disturbing the children in their sleep, who would know that I’d quite simply left the Roithamer legacy here and gone away again, perhaps up into the mountains after all, I could take refuge somewhere as high up as it was possible to go, I thought, I could leave everything behind me for once and think of nothing but my own health, all I had to do was stack up the papers neatly and leave them here and work on them later, at the right time, suddenly I felt that the moment for working on Roithamer’s papers hadn’t come yet, I’ve been too hasty, I kept thinking, I’ve acted overhastily, too precipitately, this needs time, preparation, it can’t be done in such a rush, so thoughtlessly as I’ve gone about it, better put it off for a year or two, or at least a few months or a few weeks, after I’ve had a chance to pull myself together and only then, when I’m really fit for the job, I can try to come to terms with Roithamer’s legacy. I’ve always had this unfortunate tendency to rush things, Roithamer hated rushing things and the tendency to rush things more than anything, everything in the world is done in a great rush nowadays, he’d say, everything is rushed, too rushed, every time, nothing is allowed to develop at its own natural pace, it’s all done in a mad precipitate brainless rush wherever you look, people simply rush into action and the results are sheerest chaos. The universal chaos in the world today, especially in recent times, is chiefly the result of every kind of precipitate action taken without first carefully considering what should be done, precipitateness and rushing things are the most terrible characteristics of our world today, Roithamer said, and this is why everything is so chaotic.

  In every area of life there’s nothing but chaos. Wherever we turn there’s chaos, in the sciences there’s chaos, in politics, it’s chaos, whatever we do, it’s all chaotic, wherever we look, purely chaotic conditions, chaotic conditions are all we ever have to deal with. Because everything is being done precipitately, in a rush. In such a time of precipitateness and overhastiness and the consequent chaotic conditions a thinking man should never act precipitately or overhastily in anything that concerns him, but every single one of us constantly acts precipitately, overhastily, in every way.

  What a terrible situation I’ve let myself in for by accepting Hoeller’s invitation and moving into Hoeller’s garret, I thought. I looked down at Hoeller’s workshop windows and I thought, there he is working away on and on because he can’t sleep, and then I thought that he must be thinking that I can’t sleep either, which is why I keep pacing the floor of the garret. People are always having to face things that upset and disturb them, mostly it’s at the very moment when they suppose themselves to be at peace, that they’re catapulted into turmoil, when they feel well balanced, they’re thrown out of balance. All we ever have is an illusion of peace, because at the very moment at which peace could enter into us, could could could, I say, we’re right back in the worst turmoil. So Hoeller down there in his workshop, his preservatory, may well be thinking that I’m in the greatest turmoil up here in the garret, because all the indications down in the workshop must be pointing that way, just as I was bound to think of Hoeller down there being in the greatest turmoil, because up here in the garret all the indications pointed to it. Of course I could leave the attic and go down and walk into the workshop and ask Hoeller why he was still working at an hour when nobody was up and at work any longer, I could probe into the reasons for his present condition, his work obsession, and I could in turn let Hoeller probe into my reasons for pacing the floor of the garret, marching up and down and back and forth as I was doing instead of going to bed. But I controlled myself and sat down on the old chair beside the door and stared at the floor. One lamp is enough, I thought, and I got up and turned off the ceiling light, with only the desk lamp on, I thought, the garret won’t be so brightly lit, and that may help to calm me down, I tried everything I could think of to calm myself down, but because I was so intent, working so hard without a letup at considering what to do in order to be able to sleep, to be able to go to bed in hopes of getting to sleep, I was undermining my own effort to relax, on the contrary, these efforts of mine kept driving me deeper into sleeplessness.

  Still there’s nothing so extraordinary for me, I thought, in not being able to sleep, I’ve had to struggle with insomnia all my life, let’s face it, from the beginning of a certain stage of mental development, a certain age, that is, I never again had a real, satisfying, deep sleep in the natural way, in a fully relaxed state of my brain and my body. From a certain point in time onward, probably from the beginning of my present state of mind which has now been going on for two decades and which I call, as Roithamer did, my English state of mind, I haven’t even been able to imagine myself in a fully relaxed sleep, I see it as a privilege reserved for others, I said to myself, for a quite different breed of men, quite a different sort. Some people are so constituted that they can sleep well all their lives, or during the best part of their lives, or at least a tolerably good part of their lives, I thought, while some others, those like me, can’t sleep, they never sleep, they are condemned never to be able to sleep, for even when they are sleeping they are never really relaxed by nature and what they do can’t be called sleeping, these people never sleep as long as they live because all their lives, no matter how long they live, they have never had the advantage of a perfect relaxation of their head and their body. This entire valley is now at this hour filled with people who’re asleep, probably even deeply asleep, in all these houses and huts they are sleeping, and there isn’t a light anywhere, but here in Hoeller’s house there is lots of light and they’re not asleep, I’m sure that even the kids aren’t sleeping now, I thought, even Hoeller’s wife isn’t sleeping, because they’re all disturbed by the light from Hoeller’s workshop and from Hoeller’s garret. They’ve gotten used to the roaring of the Aurach, I thought, but not to the light from the workshop and from Hoeller’s garret. In this unusually disturbing condition they quite naturally can’t sleep, I thought. And for how many more nights will they be unable to sleep, because this unusual situation connected with Roithamer’s death will certainly continue for a time, I thought, Hoeller is likely to be in his workshop and not in bed for days to come and I, unless I’ve picked myself up and gone off altogether, and as I thought this, everything in me was against getting out and away, suddenly I was all for staying put again, I too would be unable to sleep in the nights ahead and I’d be leaving the lights on in Hoeller’s garret, after all I really couldn’t stand it in the pitch-dark in Hoeller’s garret, I thought. And I doubted that Roithamer had ever succeeded in falling asleep in Hoeller’s garret, because Roithamer was another one of those who can never sleep, who can’t ever relax by any means whatever, a man condemned to lifelong sleeplessness despite all those much-discussed and propagated relaxation gospels of our time. Even as a child Roithamer, as he often told me, couldn’t sleep, he fell asleep in the evening and woke up in the morning but to call it sleep, whatever it was between his nodding off and waking up, would be a lie. People made like Roithamer (and me), really always defenseless characters, beings, whatever, had no sleep capability, they may fall asleep and wake up again, but they never sleep. They’ve got something forever in their heads and their nerves that won’t let them sleep. All their lives they keep looking for a cure for this unbearable condition and they never find one because there is no cure for this disease, which really is nothing but a mental disease. All those insomniacs are born with this mental disease, they already have this mental disease in childhood and whether they are of the Roithamer type or the Hoeller type, they are incurable. The nights, Roithamer said, are always the worst. Everything is blown up out o
f all proportion at night, no matter how insignificant, at night it becomes monstrous, the most insignificant, the most harmless thing there is grows monstrous at night and won’t let a man like me or Roithamer or Hoeller sleep. And this persistent thought that one can’t sleep, under any circumstances, makes it worse. Sitting on the old chair by the door I was thinking with what a difference, and yet with what in difference, we went our ways, he coming from up in Altensam, me from down in Stocket, Hoeller, whose father had already been a zoological taxidermist in the old Hoeller house, the one Hoeller sold, which has since been torn down by its subsequent owner. How we moved from our different points of departure, our positions, toward one single point, the single acceptable point, death. Now Roithamer was dead, after first catapulting his sister to her death by his idea, and I lived, and Hoeller lived, and how he lived and how I lived. But it is already clear that I too must now be going quickly toward my death, even though I am differently constituted from Roithamer, not with the same bent toward suicide, probably somewhat more of a survivor than Roithamer, for I always seem to find a way out, while Roithamer could no longer find a way out, but one day I too shall no longer find a way out, everyone is destined, one day at some moment which is the crucial moment, to find no further way out, that’s how a man is made.

  Thinking it over, one’s life is both the longest possible and the shortest possible, simultaneously, because it can be rethought and reexperienced in a moment, always in that moment in which such a (bold) thought occurs to one. Always wanting the impossible and left with the possible in his minimal existence, the individual always finds himself in the lowest depths of dissatisfaction. Nevertheless he always manages to create another life situation for himself, probably because he really loves life, just as it is. We always crave something other than we can have, than we have, other than what is suitable for us, and so we’re unhappy. When we’re happy we immediately analyze this happiness to death, if we’re like Roithamer andsoforth, and are right back in misery. As I’d heard something that was different from what I’d been hearing till then, I’d gotten up and gone to post myself at the window, to look outside. The darkness was kept at bay by the workshop lights, Hoeller was busy stuffing a huge bird, I couldn’t tell what kind of bird. It was a huge black bird which Hoeller held on his knees, cramming polyurethane into it with a stick. It was eleven o’clock, and inasmuch as Hoeller always got up at four in the morning, all his life, even as a child, he’d always gotten up at four in the morning, because his father also had always been up by four in the morning, everybody in the Aurach valley got up between four and five o’clock in the morning, and so because Hoeller is always up at four in the morning, keeping such late hours, such very long late hours as these in these circumstances, will undermine his health, I thought. From my window up in the garret I kept watching Hoeller down there in his workshop stuffing that huge black bird, how he kept cramming it with more and more stuffing, I thought I’ll watch him from this. excellent vantage point until he’s finished stuffing that bird, and so I stood there motionless for a good half hour until I saw that Hoeller had finished stuffing the bird. Suddenly Hoeller had thrown the stuffed bird down to the floor, he’d jumped up and run off into the back room where I couldn’t see him anymore, but I waited, looking into the workshop, until I could see Hoeller again, he came back and sat down on his chair again and went back to stuffing the bird, now I noticed a huge heap of polyurethane on the floor beside Hoeller’s chair and I thought this huge heap of polyurethane is now going to be crammed into this bird which I’d supposed had already been crammed full long since. By stuffing this bird he is making the night bearable for himself, I thought. At twelve he was still busy stuffing that bird. Off and on I kept wondering what kind of a bird this was, I’d never seen so large and so black a bird before, probably a species never seen in our country at all, and I toyed with the idea of going down to the workshop to ask Hoeller what species of bird this was. It’s certainly possible that this bird is of a so-called exotic species, that one of the hunters living out there on the plain, living in affluence in that fertile country out there, men who take frequent hunting trips to foreign countries and overseas, brought the bird back from South America or Africa, with what incredible energy Hoeller was now stuffing that bird with polyurethane, I couldn’t imagine that so much polyurethane could be crammed inside that bird, yet Hoeller kept stuffing some more of the polyurethane into the bird, suddenly I felt repelled by the process of stuffing polyurethane into the huge black bird, I turned around, looked at the door, but found it impossible to look at the door for more than a second or so because even looking at the door I kept seeing the huge bird Hoeller was stuffing with polyurethane, so I turned back again and looked out the window and into Hoeller’s workshop, if I must see Hoeller stuffing this huge, black, really horrible bird, then I might as well see it in reality and not in my imagination, clearly I could not possibly expect to get any sleep now, full as I was of my impression of Hoeller stuffing that huge black bird with polyurethane, constantly accelerating the speed with which he was doing this job, it was nauseating, still I had to keep looking out the window and into the workshop as if hypnotized. I could no longer turn away, compelled to surrender myself entirely to watching this procedure of Hoeller’s cramming that bird with polyurethane, I was about to vomit when Hoeller suddenly stopped his horrible activity and set the bird down, with its huge claws and long heavy legs, on his worktable. Now he’s going to sew the stuffed bird together, I thought, and sure enough Hoeller had gotten up and disappeared into the back room of the workshop to bring in whatever he needed for sewing the bird up. Or else he’s stopping work now and is leaving the workshop to go to his room and lie down, I thought, but Hoeller was already back with various balls of thread and needles and had sat down at his worktable to continue his work. Why am I watching Hoeller at his work, I thought, why don’t I do something myself, start something that I can keep on doing all night if I like, I thought, no matter what I do, as long as it gets me through the night. But what could I do? There was no manual work of any kind I could have done in Hoeller’s garret, it wasn’t set up for anything like that, and my head was no longer clear enough for any kind of mental work. On the other hand I didn’t permit myself to go down to Hoeller’s workshop, in case I could be of some help there. I certainly could have found something to do in Hoeller’s workshop, even if it was only to sweep up. It took all of my willpower to get myself away from the window and I turned around and took a few steps toward the door, thinking as I did so that my situation was really desperate, that I was possibly already quite seriously insane. Had I gone crazy as a result of moving precipitately into Hoeller’s garret? I wondered, but then I immediately thought, what an idea, that’s what’s crazy, such an idea as that, and I walked over to the desk and took the yellow paper rose out of the top drawer. Something happened to Roithamer at that music festival, I thought, as I held the yellow paper rose up to the light, a change had come upon him during that music festival, even if I don’t know, or can’t know what kind of a change it was. But don’t we always immediately see and seek a meaning in everything we see and think?