Free Wittgenstein's Nephew by Thomas Bernhard

prose, he wrote a number of poems—with the left hand, as it were—which were really amusing, full of madness and wit. Just before being readmitted to one of his madhouses, he would read out the longest of them to anyone willing to listen. There is a tape recording of this poem, which centers upon himself and Goethe’s Faust; listening to it, one is highly amused and at the same time deeply disturbed. I could recount not just hundreds, but thousands of Paul’s anecdotes in which he is the central figure; they are famous in the so-called
upper reaches
of Viennese society, to which he belonged and which, as everybody knows, have lived on such anecdotes for centuries; but I will refrain from doing so. He was a restless character who always lived on his nerves and was perpetually out of control. He was a brooder, endlessly philosophizing and endlessly accusing. He was also an incredibly well trained observer, and over the years he developed his gift for observation to a fine art. He was the most ruthless observer and constantly found occasion to accuse. Nothing escaped his accusing tongue. Those who came under his scrutiny survived only a very short time before being savaged; once they had drawn
suspicion
upon themselves and become guilty of some
crime
, or at least of some
misdemeanor
, he would lambaste them with the same words that I myself employ when I am roused to indignation, when I am forced to defend myself and take action against the insolence of theworld in order not to be put down and annihilated by it. In the summer we had our regular places on the terrace of the Sacher, where we spent most of our time in accusations. Whatever came within range became a target for fresh accusations. We would sit on the terrace for hours over a cup of coffee, accusing the whole world, root and branch. Having taken our places on the terrace of the Sacher, we would switch on our well-tried accusation mechanism behind what Paul called
the arse of the opera
. (If one sits on the terrace in front of the Sacher and looks straight ahead, one has a rear view of the opera house.) He took pleasure in such formulations as
the arse of the opera
, even though this one denoted the rear elevation of the house on the Ring which he loved more than anything else in the world and from which he had for so many decades drawn virtually everything requisite to his existence. We would sit on the terrace for hours and watch the passersby. I still know of no greater pleasure—in Vienna—than to sit on the terrace of the Sacher in summer, watching the world go by. Indeed, I know no greater pleasure than observing people, and to observe them while sitting in front of the Sacher is a particular delight that Paul and I often shared. The
Herr Baron
and I had discovered a corner of the terrace that was specially suited to our purposes, where we could see everything we wanted without being seen by anyone. Walking with him through the center of the city, I was amazed to discover how many people he knew and how many of them were actually relatives of his. He seldom spoke of his family, and when he did it was only to say that basically he wanted nothing to do with it and that his family, for its part,wanted nothing to do with him. Now and then he would mention his
Jewish
grandmother, who had committed suicide by throwing herself out of the window of her house in the Neuer Markt, and his aunt Irmina, who had been a so-called
Reich peasants’ leader
in the Nazi period and whom I knew from several visits to her farmhouse on the hill overlooking the Traunsee. When he said
my brothers
he meant
my tormentors
. The only person he spoke of with affection was a sister who lived in Salzburg. He had always felt threatened and shunned by his family, which he described as a family that was inimical to the mind and art and choking on its millions. Yet it was this family that had produced Ludwig and Paul—and then rejected them at the most convenient