Free The Lime Works: A Novel (Vintage International) by Thomas Bernhard Page A

responding was something impossible for him if only because it would drive him crazy in record time. People never cease their knocking, Konrad said, even when they know they are disturbing me, delaying my work, possibly ruining my book, ruining everything, but they will not stop knocking until I get up, move the papers aside, and go down to open the door. Invariably it is the most ridiculous trifle forthe sake of which I am interrupted in my work, Konrad is supposed to have said, some enormous absurdity that threatens to ruin my life’s work. To think that he had always dreamed of the lime works as a place where he and his wife would be living in perfect isolation and freedom from interruption by people, that here in the lime works the destructive apparatus of the increasingly disturbed, nervous so-called consumer society, with its chronically irritating and ultimately ruinous effect on everything in the nature of intellectual effort could not touch them, that here they would have escaped all that, but in reality they continued to be irritated by people even here at the lime works, he simply did not have the strength, Konrad said to Wieser, to resist opening the door when someone knocked, he invariably yielded and opened the door, Konrad said, not from considerations of humanity, not from motives of civility about which he couldn’t have cared less, he hated every kind of propriety, he had learned to hate propriety in the course of decades of experiencing life, he hated everything to do with social forms, everything implied by civility toward people, and it was purely, as stated, a pitiable lack of personal energy that made him go down and open the door, made him desert his work, what could be more depressing than to desert a task like mine, so laboriously constructed in decades of hard work, to desert it for the sake of a chimney sweep, a baker, a works inspector, how low a man must have sunk to desert his work for the most absurd, the most trifling reason, because his wife upstairs wants her pillow straightened or needs a drink of water or wants to be read to from her favorite romantic poet, or wants the curtains drawn or opened, a piece of bread cut, her hair ribbon tightened, hergarter tied, her sugar bowl filled, her spectacles set on her nose, her back rubbed with alcohol, or else because of Hoeller’s wood-chopping or Fro, or the man from the sawmill, or on your account, Wieser. Actually, Konrad is supposed to have said to Wieser in a tone of utter weariness, this endless knocking on my door, though quite constant in its actual sound level and intensity, in my head swells to a terrifying, ear-splitting thunderousness and drives me completely crazy. It forced him to get up, drop everything, go down and unlock the door, just to stop the knocking. Having done this, Konrad said, there was no point in being impolite about it, because the damage is done by then, so I am exquisitely polite although of course I ask myself every time I am so exquisitely polite why I am being so exquisitely polite. The whole day is ruined, everything in his head is dissipated beyond recall, there is nothing left but a few polite formulas such as, Do come in, Come in, How are you, Ah yes, or maybe just Yes indeed, or You don’t say, suddenly issuing from his lips. This time you have really ruined my work completely, Konrad said to the works inspector, according to Wieser, telling him the truth for the first time. First Hoeller started it with his wood-chopping, Konrad said to the inspector, and I went down and ordered Hoeller to stop it instantly, I ordered him to repair the waste baskets and went back to my room and sat down at my desk feeling that my book was saved, because Hoeller did not actually cause an interruption to the extent of completely dissipating my concept, but now you have come knocking at the door and you’ve wrecked the whole thing, to be interrupted twice in a row in so complex a mental effort as my book is fatal. While it