Correction: A Novel (2 page)

Once, as I recall, he spent a whole night analyzing for us the word
circumstance
, the word
condition
, and the word
consistent
. It was touching to find all of Roithamer’s books and articles and plans and his writing utensils and thinking aids still right there in Hoeller’s garret, just as he had left them.

Hoeller’s garret was where all the ideas and designs for building the Cone had come into being, here all the ideas had
originated
, all the plans were sketched, all the necessary decisions for building the Cone had been made here, it was from here Roithamer had directed everything. Those pinewood shelves, common planks of pinewood, along the whitewashed walls, crammed with hundreds of thousands of books and articles about buildings and the art of building and everything connected with building, about nature and natural history, particularly the nature and natural history of the rock formations involved in the building of the Cone, about statics above all, and about the possible ways of building such a cone-shaped habitation within a natural environment such as the Kobernausser forest, these cheap pinewood boards nailed together with three-inch-steel spikes, and instantly, as I entered Hoeller’s garret where I had never been alone before, but always in Roithamer’s company or Hoeller’s company, or both their company, I suddenly felt that it was possible for me, from the first moments after I had stepped inside, to let myself go in Hoeller’s garret, to think freely about Hoeller’s garret, to give myself over entirely to all these suddenly available thoughts, relating of course to my plans regarding my work on Roithamer’s papers and especially to arriving at an understanding of his chief project, the building of the Cone, to sort it all out, to think it through, possibly even to pull it together where it did not really belong together, to reconstitute its original coherence as envisioned by Roithamer, because I had seen clearly from the very first time I went through Roithamer’s basic manuscript that the circumstances that interrupted his work, the death of his sister and the consequent irregularities in his methodical work-process, his work interrupted suddenly where it never should have been interrupted, on his basic manuscript about the Cone and consequently about Altensam and about Hoeller’s garret, about the course of the Aurach and about the Aurach gorge in particular, about building materials and, again, everything connected with the building of the Cone, but as it related to Hoeller’s garret, though basically the building was researched and planned and put up and actually completed out of veneration for her, is sister, I had seen clearly that because of all these circumstances the manuscript on which he had been working most energetically, as I happen to know, for the last half year of is life in England, in a room he had rented specifically for that purpose in Cambridge, as he told me, his purpose being to write at all costs a justification and analysis of his work on the Cone, even though he basically had no right to take the time off from his professional scientific work, but he couldn’t be bothered about that because he must have clearly understood that he simply had to complete his manuscript about the Cone and its attendant circumstances and everything in involved with it,
now
, immediately after his sister’s death, if he as going to complete it at all, he probably felt that he had no time to spare, that his life was doomed to end soon, that day by day it was increasingly self-doomed, so that he had to proceed with incredible ruthlessness, mostly against himself and his own highly vulnerable mental state, as I happen to know it was, he had to fulfill his intention and complete his manuscript about the building of the Cone, he had in fact begun by making a most energetic effort to plan and construct and put up and complete the Cone, then followed this up by making a similar if not even greater effort to explain the building of the Cone in an even greater, as I now see, a most extensive manuscript, and above all to justify what he had done, because he had been reprimanded on all sides for having had such an idea at all in a time opposed to such ideas, a time predisposed
against
such ideas and their realization, for having realized such an idea, given it embodiment and even brought it to completion, he was reprimanded for being, in a time generally predisposed
against
such men, such heads, such characters, such minds as Roithamer’s (and others!), precisely such a man and head and character and mind, so contradictory a character and mind and man as that, who used his unexpected inheritance in the service of an idea everyone considered crazy, an idea that had suddenly entered his crazy head and never again left it, the idea to use his sudden windfall for building his sister a cone, a cone-shaped habitation, and not only that, but most incredible of all, to erect this giant cone not where such a house might normally be located, but to design it and put it up and complete it way out in the middle of the Kobernausser forest, they had all thought at first that he would never go through with it, but little by little he made it happen, suddenly it was no longer only inside his head or clearly evident only in the intensity of his preparatory studies, but all at once the road through the Kobernausser forest was actually being built, a road that would go to the exact center of the forest at an angle he had calculated for months, working nights, because he meant to build that cone in the exact center of the Kobernausser forest, and he did build it in the exact center of the Kobernausser forest, the calculations all had to be made by him personally because, now I have to come out with it, he hated all architects and he hated all professional builders with the exception of the manual workers, he kept at it relentlessly until he had all his figures as to the exact center of the Kobernausser forest just right so that he could begin with the digging of the foundations, it was a rude shock to all the people who had until this moment refused to believe that Roithamer’s crazy scheme would actually be executed, when the road to the center of the Kobernausser forest was
actually built
and he
had
started digging the foundations, he had come back from England, once he had done his calculations, and installed himself in Hoeller’s garret and had, by supervising every detail personally, so expedited the building of the road and the digging of the foundations that the experts were mystified that one man could so speed up a project that the road was finished in half the normal time and the foundations dug in a third of the time normally required for such a job. The foundation was the deepest ever dug and the road was the best-laid road, everything had to be the best. Nobody, in fact, had even believed that Roithamer could possibly succeed in acquiring the plot of land for the Cone in the middle of the Kobernausser forest, and certainly not
for such a crazy
purpos
e, everyone and the experts especially thought it was completely crazy to build such a structure as the Cone and they still do and always will think it completely crazy, anyway the land on which Roithamer built the Cone had become government property after the aristocrat who previously owned it, a Habsburg, had been dispossessed, and the very idea of getting such a piece of state property in the middle of the Kobernausser forest back from the government into private hands, no matter whose, was in itself an absurd and actually an utterly crazy idea, to say nothing of getting back all the land for the road leading to the Cone, buying it all back from the government to be privately held, by whomever, yet Roithamer had managed to reacquire from the government, in the shortest possible time and in absolute, prearranged secrecy, all the land needed for the road he wanted to build and also, immediately thereafter, the large plot of land in the middle of the Kobernausser forest on which he wanted to build the Cone for his sister, then, shortly after acquiring the land and not without having completely settled all the formalities, he began laying out the road and building the road and building the Cone,. at which point everyone was horrified, to begin with it was a rude shock especially to Roithamer’s brothers who had never dreamt that their brother’s crazy scheme could become a reality, made into a reality by the crazy Roithamer, but they had to accept the fact of the valid deeds of purchase, and take note that the road was beginning to be built and, finally, that the Cone was under construction, even at this late date, they had tried to have Roithamer declared incompetent, they instituted a proceeding to have him placed under guardianship, but he was declared
completely sane
by a team of doctors, in any case the experts who testified against Roithamer’s mental condition and who had been hired and paid by Roithamer’s brothers remained in the minority against the experts who testified that Roithamer was sane. That a man who lets such an idea as that of building the Cone develop in his head, then uses his inherited fortune, for which he had no other use, to turn this idea into a reality, and actually goes ahead, with great energy and enthusiasm, with his project to build the Cone, still does not quite prove, after all, that the man is crazy, even though the majority of bystanders and relatives believe that such a man is crazy, that he simply
must
be crazy, because no sane man could possibly spend such an enormous amount of inherited money, an amount that goes into the millions, the hundreds of millions, on so crazy an idea as the idea of building such a cone,
a cone the likes of which has never been built before
, and Roithamer actually did sink all of his inheritance into the building of that Cone, except for a sum in seven or eight figures, I don’t know exactly how much, which Roithamer had set aside to be at his sister’s disposal for the rest of her life, precisely the amount now at issue between the Roithamer brothers living in Altensam, because that amount of money reverted to Roithamer after his sister’s death, and to his brothers after Roithamer’s own death. At this point let me state that the Cone itself and all the land and property pertaining to it, purchased at such vast expense but in accordance with all due process from the state, has reverted to the state, with the proviso that
the Cone is to be left to
decay, never again to be touched by anyone, and is to be abandoned entirely
to nature
where Roithamer had placed it. But I won’t go into it at this point.

Where the pinewood shelves crammed with books and articles ended in the Hoeller garret, the walls were covered with hundreds of thousands of plans, all concerning the building of the Cone, millions of lines and numbers and figures covered these walls, so that at first I thought I’d go mad or at least get sick from looking at all these millions of lines and numbers and figures, but then I got accustomed to the sight of these lines and numbers and figures, and once I had reached a certain degree of equanimity, beyond the point of losing my mind from looking at all those cone calculations, I could begin my study of those notations, beginning with all the calculations and sketches on the walls of Hoeller’s garret, then going through the books and articles on the shelves, and finally all the material in the file drawers; I did, after all, have to familiarize myself with the fact that here in Hoeller’s garret I was confronted with all the intellectual data, hitherto unknown to me, out of which Roithamer had designed and then built the Cone and everything connected with it. And so it was out of the question to start on my actual studies of all these papers immediately, at least not in the first few hours after my arrival, instead I began by making myself comfortable in Hoeller’s garret, unpacked my bag, put away my few indispensable belongings, examined my bed, which had just been made and, like all freshly made beds in the country, smelled deliciously of the surrounding outdoors. It was a good bed, as I could tell by sitting on it; then, I hung my coat in the wardrobe; I am all alone in what I may certainly call Roithamer’s garret, Hoeller’s garret is Roithamer’s garret, even Hoeller referred to this garret as Roithamer’s garret, I had the immediate impression of being inside a thought-chamber, everything in this chamber had to do with thought, once a man was inside it he had to think, being in this chamber presupposed incessant thinking, no one could have endured it for a minute without thinking incessantly, whoever enters Hoeller’s garret, enters into thinking, specifically into thinking about Hoeller’s garret, and at the same time into Roithamer’s thinking, and must continue to think these thoughts as long as he remains in the garret, if he breaks off these thoughts he is instantly crazy or dead, I think. Whoever enters here has to give up everything he ever thought prior to entering Hoeller’s garret, he must make a clean break with all of his past thinking and start completely afresh, at once, thinking only Hoeller-garret thoughts, to stay alive even for a moment in Hoeller’s garret it’s not enough merely to keep on thinking, it must be
Hoeller-garret-thoughts
, thinking solely about everything to do with Hoeller’s garret and Roithamer and the Cone. As I stood there looking around Hoeller’s garret it was instantly clear to me that my thinking would now have to conform to Hoeller’s garret, to think other than Hoeller-garret-thoughts in Hoeller’s garret was simply impossible, and so I decided to familiarize myself gradually with the prescribed mode of thinking in this place, to study it so as to learn to think along these lines, entering Hoeller’s garret unprepared and learning to adjust, to entrust and subject oneself to these mandatory lines of .thought and make some progress in them is not easy. Everything inside Hoeller’s garret came from Roithamer and I even went so far as to state that this garret
is
Roithamer, even though one’s head should beware of such judgments, I yielded up my entire existence to this judgment the moment I set foot in Hoeller’s garret.

Hoeller himself had not touched a thing in this garret since Roithamer’s last visit here, immediately after his sister’s funeral in Altensam, as I’ve since learned from Hoeller, Roithamer had attended the funeral most reluctantly, as I’ve also learned, not of course on account of his sister but because of his brothers, Roithamer wore black, Hoeller said, which he’d never worn before, no matter who was being buried, Roithamer wore black only this one time in his life, it was only for his sister’s funeral that he dressed in black, he looked extremely well dressed in those black clothes, Hoeller says, and so there he was in his elegant black clothes in Hoeller’s parlor and sat there in silence, in
total
silence, as Hoeller says, without eating or drinking anything, Hoeller had the impression that Roithamer, with his sister now dead and buried, had come to an end himself, except that he was still alive, but though he was still alive he actually felt that he was already dead, because his sister, for whom he had built the Cone, had meant everything to him, next to his work, his natural science, which he taught at Cambridge, as I have said, he simultaneously taught and studied at Cambridge, but now, Hoeller said, you know how an educated man can suddenly look as though he had been mortally wounded, and Hoeller described Roithamer as looking not only completely exhausted after his sister’s funeral, but looking as if he were already dead, Roithamer had entered Hoeller’s house a dead man, not merely an exhausted or totally exhausted man, and there he sat in Hoeller’s family room for two hours, and would not let Hoeller’s wife give him anything to eat or drink, though he had never refused her before, except that after three hours he took a glass of water which he drank down in one long gulp, and nothing else, then he kept on sitting there in the downstairs family room deep into the night, in silence, Hoeller himself didn’t dare to say anything, not in this situation, said Hoeller, who could describe the situation very well, though he couldn’t explain it, in fact every time Hoeller talked about Roithamer he could describe everything very well though he couldn’t explain it, but Hoeller didn’t need words to make himself understood and to explain whatever and wherever something needed explaining, Hoeller’s method of elucidation always worked best when he operated in silence, and so Roithamer sat in the parlor all night long and did not wish to retire to the garret, Hoeller said, he probably didn’t want to return ever again to the world of the garret, which stood for
everything
. Around midnight Hoeller’s wife wrapped a coverlet around Roithamer’s legs because of the sudden cold, and Roithamer had let her do so without offering any resistance, Hoeller said, then, at about four in the morning, Roithamer stood up and went upstairs without a word, to the garret, where he stood stock-still for a few moments.