Old Masters Read Free Page B

been firmly convinced, even a few days before her death, that she was going to survive him; she was the healthy one, I was the invalid, yes, it was in this belief and in this conviction that we always lived, he said. Nobody has ever been so healthy as my wife, she lived a whole life in health, whereas I have always led an existence in sickness, indeed an existence in mortal sickness, he said. She was the healthy one, she was the future, I was always the invalid, I was the past, he said. That he would ever have to live without his wife and actually on his own had never occurred to him, that was no thought for me, he said. And if she should die before me I would follow her into death, as quickly as possible, he had always thought. Now he had come to grips, on the one hand, with the error that she would die after him and, on the other, with the fact that he had not killed himself after her death, that he had not therefore, as he had intended, followed her into death. As I always knew that she was everything to me I was naturally unable to think of continued existence after her, my dear Atzbacher, he said. Out of this human weakness, though in fact it is unworthy of a human being, out of this cowardice, I did not follow her into death, but on the contrary, as it seems to me now (as he said yesterday), I have grown stronger, at times I have recently felt that I am stronger than ever. I now cling to life even more than in the past, whether you believe it or not, I am in fact holding on to life with the wildest fervour. I do not want to admit it, but I live with an even greater intensity than before her death. True, it took me over a year even to be able to think this thought, but now I am thinking this thought without embarrassment, he said. What depresses me so excessively is the fact that such a receptive person as my wife was should die with all that enormous knowledge which I conveyed to her, that she should have taken that enormous knowledge into death with her, that is the worst enormity, an enormity far worse than the fact that she is dead, he said. We force and we stuff everything within us into such a person, and then that person leaves us, dies on us, forever, he said. Added to it is the suddenness of it, the fact that we did not foresee the death of that person, not for one moment did I foresee the death of my wife, I looked upon her just as if she had eternal life, never thought of her death, he said, just as if she really lived with my knowledge right into infinity as an infinity, he said. Really a precipitate death, he said. We take such a person for eternity, that is the mistake. Had I known she was going to die on me I should have acted entirely differently, as it was I did not know she was going to die on me and before me and so I acted utterly senselessly, just as though she existed infinitely into infinity, whereas she was not made for infinity at all but for finiteness, like all of us. Only if we love a person with such unbridled love as I loved my wife do we in fact believe that person will live forever and into infinity. Never before, when sitting on the settee in that Bordone Room, had he kept his hat on, and just as the fact that he had ordered me to the museum for today disquieted me, because this was really the most unusual fact imaginable, as I thought, the fact that he had kept his hat on while sitting on the settee in the Bordone Room was most unusual, quite apart from a whole string of other unusual circumstances in this connection. Irrsigler had stepped into the Bordone Room and, having walked over to him, whispered something into Reger's ear, only to leave the Bordone Room immediately afterwards. Irrsigler's communication, however, at least viewed from the outside, produced no effect on Reger, after Irrsigler's communication Reger remained sitting on the settee just as before Irrsigler's communication. Nevertheless I was reflecting on what Irrsigler might have said to Reger. But I immediately gave up