Free Extinction by Thomas Bernhard

equal impatience for Novalis’s idea to be born in my head. On graduating from high school he bought himself a sailboat; I spent my graduation present on a trip to Anatolia with Uncle Georg. When Uncle Georg still lived at Wolfsegg I spent every spare minute with him, but my brother had scarcely any interest in Uncle Georg; he preferred to be with my father, whom he accompanied to the fields, the woods, and the mines, and to various offices in the neighboring towns. From the beginning I regarded Uncle Georg as my teacher, while Johannes saw Father as his. And unlike my brother, I did not hang around my mother. I detested the way he always clung to her skirts. I never clung to my mother’s skirts, and I always drew my head away when she made to kiss me. He was forever demanding to be kissed by her. At night, when he was asleep, I often left our shared bedroom and went to Uncle Georg to hear one of his stories; he invented hundreds of them to please me. My brother never dared to flout the rules at Wolfsegg, but I was always flouting them. I left the house whenever I wanted—he did not. I ran down to the village whenever I wanted, to observe the people who lived there—he did not. I talked to the villagers whenever I wanted—he did not talk to them unless he was given permission. Finally, when I had my own room I arranged it to suit my own taste; he would never have thought of doing such a thing. His schoolbooks were always clean and his writing like copperplate; my schoolbookswere always dirty, my writing careless and all but illegible. My brother was always punctual at mealtimes, but I had a problem with punctuality. I encouraged him to join in adventures, but he never encouraged me. The adventures usually ended with his getting hurt and crying, for he was always the clumsier of the two of us, often falling into a stream or a pond, tripping over a root, or grazing his face or his legs on bushes. Such things never happened to me. When I asked him whether he could see something or other in the distance, he never could because he was shortsighted, whereas I have always had good vision. I had no trouble learning to ride a bicycle, but it was ages before he could balance on one. He was no match for me at running. If we had to swim across a river he usually found it too much and had to give up. The consequence of all this was that at a very early age he came not so much to hate me as to develop a strong sense of inferiority, from which he continued to suffer and which ultimately turned into a more or less
unbridled hatred
that at times revealed itself quite openly. I could, for instance, run down to the village in three minutes, but it took him five. At school he was the most attentive pupil, and when the teacher called out his name he would jump up at once, whereas I was the most inattentive and usually did not hear my name called out, which naturally led to my being punished. Neither of us had friends during our first year at school, as we were not allowed to bring our classmates home and had to go straight back to Wolfsegg after school. But in later years, when we were allowed to bring friends home, we each had friends who were suited to our temperaments and differed as we did. My brother always slept soundly and was fully rested in the morning, but I suffered from sleeplessness, even as a child. I had the wildest and most exciting dreams—he did not. He took a long time to find a particular location on a map—I did not. I loved maps more than anything. I used to spread them out in front of me and go on long imaginary journeys, visiting the most famous cities and traveling the seas in my dream ships. My brother had quite different interests: he would crouch in the corner of the stable and watch the animals. When the Medrano Circus put up its tent in the village—we were five and six at the time—I went down to watch the circus people whenever I had a chance. I was particularly fond of the trapeze artists. For hours I