Read Online Correction: A Novel by Thomas Bernhard - Free Book Online Page B

Roithamer’s extraordinariness; as Roithamer always waved away his friend Hoeller’s expressions of admiration, in fact he always was quick to rebuff his admiring friend whenever this friend showed his admiration too explicitly for the sensitive Roithamer’s comfort, he always did all he could to get Hoeller to understand that he, Roithamer, did not deserve admiration of any kind, although he did lay claim, like any man doing his job, to respect, an attitude of mutual respect was the most helpful attitude between friends, the most suitable and appropriate to them and especially to their friendship, people were always admiring where they should simply respect something or someone, the trouble with admiration was, it ought to be nothing but respect for the other person, something of which most people were incapable, apparently respecting the other person was the hardest stance to maintain between individuals, most people are simply incapable of respecting others, but respecting others is most important, people prefer admiring to respecting even though they only irritate the other person with their admiration and destroy with their admiration what is valuable in the other person instead of preserving it by duly respecting it, but that man Hoeller was virtually addicted to admiring Roithamer, and as time went on Roithamer tired of fending off Hoeller’s admiration by rebuffing it. But perhaps Hoeller’s admiration for Roithamer had been nothing more than just his respect, they esteemed each other, in fact, as I know, they held each other in the highest esteem, each in his own way and in accordance with his own capacities. In opening the chest of drawers, which simply does not match the rest of the Hoeller furnishings, it’s a rare eighteenth-century period piece of nutwood, with three drawers, simple ornamentation, so I suppose that it was brought over from Altensam to Hoeller’s garret at Roithamer’s request and perhaps even from among his own personal possessions, it could be one of Roithamer’s favorite pieces, I thought, the aroma also, when I opened the top drawer to put in my toilet articles, this exceptionally well-made chest, not veneered but carpentered out of the whole, evenly grained nutwood, instantly reminded me of Altensam, Altensam where I had gone so often, even in earliest childhood, with my grandfather, who had been a friend of old Roithamer’s, and afterward by myself, almost every day, I must say that when I was at home I was always and constantly drawn to Altensam, that unfailingly mysterious and vast, inexhaustible Altensam with its innumerable, infinitely ancient walls, its hundreds of rooms with their thousands upon thousands of furnishings and pictures that are bound to attract, even to fascinate a young man, especially a child, raised in diametrically opposite, rather restricted circumstances, not to mention the people of Altensam, the most mysterious people in the world to the child I was; in opening that drawer—the chest, I suddenly thought, undoubtedly came from that vast collection of furniture in Altensam—I discovered the yellow paper rose Roithamer won that time at the shooting gallery, the story is as follows: on Roithamer’s twenty-third birthday which he had decided, on an impulse in his rooms at Cambridge, to spend with me in Altensam, and which we actually did spend together in Altensam, after a journey made adventurous by vast inundations of the Dutch coast, from Altensam Roithamer and I went to the annual music festival in Stocket, in early May, we spent the whole evening of his birthday and the night until dawn at this open-air music festival, eating and drinking without restraint, both of us in a mood to let go completely, to go wild, because we’d spent the previous four or five months totally immersed in our studies, he, Roithamer, in his scientific research and I in my mathematical studies, both of us quite consciously and completely isolated within the scientific world