Free Old Masters by Thomas Bernhard Page B

first half of his adult life in Stein-on-Danube and the second half in Garsten near Steyr, which are the two biggest Austrian penal establishments —that, needless to say, they never mentioned, although they should have invariably mentioned it in the same way. I myself have never shrunk from saying that one of my relatives had been a prisoner in Stein and in Garsten, which is probably the worst thing an Austrian can say about his relatives, on the contrary, I have mentioned the fact more often than would have been necessary, which of course can also be interpreted as a character flaw, Reger said. Similarly I never concealed the fact that I have tuberculosis and that I have always had tuberculosis, he said, and I have never in my life been afraid of this flaw or weakness. I have very often said that I am related to Stifter and to Heidegger and to Bruckner and to a double murderer who served his sentence in Steyr and in Stein, even when I was not asked about it, Reger said yesterday. We have to live with our relationships, no matter what they are, he said. After all, we are those relationships, he said, within myself I am all those relatives combined. Reger loves fog and gloom, he shies away from light, that is why he goes to the Kunsthistorisches Museum and that is also why he goes to the Ambassador, because at the Kunsthistorisches Museum it is just as gloomy as at the Ambassador, and while in the mornings he can, at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, enjoy his ideal temperature of eighteen degrees Celsius, he enjoys his ideal afternoon temperature of twenty-three degrees Celsius at the Ambassador, quite apart from anything else that, as he puts it, suits him at the Kunsthistorisches Museum on the one hand and at the Ambassador on the other. The sun can no more penetrate into the Kunsthistorisches Museum than it can into the Ambassador, that is as he likes it, because he does not like solar radiation. He avoids the sun, there is nothing he shuns more than the sun. I hate the sun, you know that I hate the sun more than anything in the world, he says. What he likes best are foggy days, on foggy days he leaves the house very early in the morning, actually takes a walk, which he does not normally do, for basically he hates walking. I hate walking, he says, it seems so pointless to me. I walk, and while I am walking I keep thinking how I hate walking, I have no other thoughts at the time, I cannot understand that there are people who are able to think while walking, to think of something other than that walking is pointless and useless, he says. I prefer to walk up and down in my room, it is then that I have my best ideas. I can stand by the window for hours, looking down into the street, that is a habit I acquired in childhood. I look down into the street and observe the people and ask myself who are these people, and what is moving them down there in the street, what keeps them going, that, as it were, is my principal occupation. I have always exclusively concerned myself with people, nature as such has never interested me, everything in me was always related to human beings, I am, you might say, a fanatic for human beings, he said, naturally not a fanatic for humanity but a fanatic for human beings. I have always only been interested in human beings, he said, because in the nature of things they repelled me, I have never been attracted more intensively by anything than by human beings and at the same time never more thoroughly repelled by anything than by human beings. I loathe people but they are, simultaneously, the sole purpose of my life. When I get home from a concert at night I very often stand by my window until about one or two in the morning, looking down into the street and observing the human beings passing there below. During that observation I gradually develop my work. I stand by the window, looking down into the street, and at the same time I work on my essay. Towards two in the morning I do not, as you might think,