Read Online My Prizes: An Accounting by Thomas Bernhard - Free Book Online Page A

deeply was the announcement by the Minister that I, and I can still hear every word in my ear,
was a foreigner born in Holland
, but who
had already been living among us for some time
(i.e., among the Austrians, of whom Minister Piffl-Perčevič did not consider me one). I was amazed atmy calm as I listened to the Minister. One shouldn’t hold their provinces against provincials, but when they appear in public with Herr Piffl-Perčevič’s unrivaled arrogance, one should try not to let it slide. Now I had the opportunity and I didn’t let it slide. A literally indescribable arrogance had displayed itself on the dull-witted, totally insensible, and unmusical face of the Cultural Minister as he proclaimed to the audience who I was. But probably even in this case nobody but my friends had any idea that the Minister was scattering nothing but dull-witted falsifications about me around the room. He felt nothing, he read out his secretary’s brainless inanities in his natural monotone, one false statement after the other, one vulgarity after the next. Did I need this? I asked myself while the Minister was speaking if it wouldn’t have been better not to come. But this question no longer made any real sense. I sat there and couldn’t defend myself, I couldn’t just jump up and say to the Minister’s face that what he was saying was all nonsense and lies. I was tied to my chair by invisible cords, condemned to immobility. This is the punishment, I thought, now you have your reckoning. Now you’ve made yourself one of them, the people sitting in this hall listening with their hypocritical ears to his Holiness the Minister.Now you belong to them, now you’re one of the pack that’s always driven you mad and you’ve avoided having anything to do with your whole life. You’re sitting there in your dark suit taking blow after blow, one brazen lie after another. And you don’t move, you don’t jump up and box the Minister’s ear. I told myself to stay calm, I kept saying to myself,
calm, calm, calm
, I said it over and over again until the Minister was done with his arrogant outrages. He would have deserved having his ears boxed, but what he got was tumultuous applause. The sheep were applauding the God that fed them, the Minister sat down amid the deafening clapping, and now it was my turn to stand up and go to the lectern. I was still shaking with rage. But I hadn’t lost my self-control. I took the piece of paper with my text out of my jacket pocket and read it out, possibly in a trembling voice, it could be. My legs were shaking too, not surprisingly. But I hadn’t got to the end of my text before the audience became restive, I had no idea why, for my text was being spoken quietly by me and the theme was a philosophical one, profound even, I felt, and I had uttered the word
State
several times. I thought, it’s a very calm text, one I can use here to get myself up out of the dirt without causing a ruckus because almost no one will understandit, all about death and its conquering power and the absurdity of all things human, about man’s incapacity and man’s mortality and the nullity of all states. I hadn’t even finished my text when the Minister leapt to his feet, bright red in the face, ran at me, and hurled some incomprehensible curse word at my head. He stood before me in wild agitation and threatened me, yes, he came at me with his hand raised. He took two or three steps, then an abrupt about-turn, and he left the hall. He rushed to the glass door of the Audience Chamber without any of his attendants and slammed it with a loud bang. This all took place in a matter of seconds. Hardly had the Minister single-handedly and above all furiously hurled the door of his Audience Chamber shut behind him than there was chaos in the hall. That is, first, after the Minister had slammed the door, there was a moment when embarrassed silence reigned. Then the chaos broke out. I myself had no idea what had happened. I had had