Gargoyles by Thomas Bernhard Page B

picture. I saw no good purpose in telling him that there were still many things that oppressed me, that I was by no means free from problems. Or that my problems were also increasing with time.He may believe I had no problems at all, I thought. I go on deliberately giving him a false picture. Just at this moment I was not at all sure why. “I have always taken pleasure in resolving my problems myself,” I said. Had I said too much? My father was not even listening to me. Perhaps he was thinking only of the two Krainer children, or of Prince Saurau. I am strong enough now to resolve everything by myself, I thought. Often I am ashamed of feeling that I am stronger than others, though this feeling keeps recurring. But I did not speak of that.
    The most striking thing about me is my incommunicativeness, which differs entirely from my sister’s incommunicativeness. My silence is the opposite of my sister’s. And my father’s silence, his incommunicativeness, is again entirely different. What I know of him is always too little for me to be able to put together a picture of him as he really is, I thought.
    For a moment I thought: You intended to spend today with your sister.
    Aloud, I said: “The unforeseen is what is beautiful.”
    I still have tomorrow, I thought, with relief. Tomorrow, Sunday, I’ll get up early and take a very long walk with my sister. And talk with her. In Leoben, I thought, I spend the whole week in my room, shut up within myself in my room, more and more hermetically isolated from the outside world as the year draws to its end, I don’t even allow myself a breath of air any more! I offend many people by isolating myself that way. If once in a while I weaken and engage in a conversation because the others press me, I am always sorry. Is there any other way for me? I must go to bed before eleven, I think, and I rise at five. If I let myself deviate byeven a hair’s breadth from my schedule, I lose my equilibrium. As a scientist the only way is to pass through the endless, dark, and most of the time almost entirely airless corridor of your science in order to reach life.
    We parked the car beside the waterfall and began climbing the dangerous footpath as quickly as possible. We had to watch every step; it was not advisable to look around. In silence we soon reached the outer walls of the castle. The climb had not strained my father at all. That surprised me. Before us we saw the one-story house in which the Krainer children live. Young Krainer, the son of upstanding parents who have served the Sauraus all their lives, is crippled. His sister led us straight into his room. He had heard us coming for some time, his sister said, and was restless. Their parents had gone into the castle early in the day. Young Krainer was just exactly my age, twenty-one, but looked twice as old. He had a black nightcap on his head and extended his hand to my father like a madman. Not to me. I sat down on a chair just inside the door. From there I watched what was going on in the room. Krainer’s sister said there was a draft from the window. She closed it. He had come today for a “general examination,” my father said.
    I had the impression that up here an even more absolute silence reigned than down there in the gorge. It was no longer so dark as in the gorge, but everything here was also under the influence of darkness. The Krainer house, I had seen as we arrived, lay permanently in the shadow of the castle. The air on this height is keen; when you look down you are plainly looking into a pocket of sultriness.
    My father and his sister undressed the cripple. It seemed to me that my father must be the only person whom theyoung Krainers see, aside from their parents, who work in the castle all day and are at home only at night.
    As we emerged from the gorge and reached the peak, my father had proposed that while he was at the Krainers’ I walk on the lower wall of the castle. But I wanted to see the cripple and his