Haller looked at him with a mixture of admiration and sorrow, as if he had stepped on something valuable.
“I’m just a bitter mole,” he said, “someone who digs and digs in the earth.”
“But you’re not blind.”
“Blinded,” said Haller.
“By what?”
“Perhaps I’ll tell you sometime.”
Haller fell silent and looked down at the floor, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He had pushed his chair out so far from the table that he seemed to be sitting in the middle of the kitchen. The associate professor felt exhausted. He had seldom if ever let his emotions run away like this.
“If there’s an occasion,” Haller continued.
It was this addition, expelled like a sigh, that made the associate professor regret his vehemence. He had also seen the solitary man’s misgivings in his sorrowful eyes and tormented expression, and he sensed that Karsten Haller was simply a lonely person, like himself unused to contact with others. He felt that he was guilty of a blunder that he now wished he could undo.
“I’m sure there will be an occasion,” said the associate professor, trying to adopt a more conciliatory tone. “You have a Fothergilla waiting,” said the associate professor. “A cultivated witch alder.”
Haller looked up and nodded mutely.
“But you are right on one point,” said the associate professor.
“And that is?”
“Perhaps I can tell you some time,” said the associate professor, and was rewarded with a cautious smile and a nod.
They separated in mutual silence, both of them embarrassed at how the coffee break had developed. Haller loaded the sacks of leaves on his trailer, after having declined help with a deprecating gesture, and took off. A few minutes later the associate professor could see him carrying the sacks onto the neighbor’s yard and emptying them out. Against the wall of the house several yellow sacks were also visible that he suspected contained peat moss.
He realized that it would be a long workday for the gardener. There, at work, perhaps he was happy in his solitude, mixing a cultivation substrate-wrestling with a bale of peat and kicking leaves and spruce needles around-and demanded no social competence, no education either in the classical sense.
The associate professor went up to the tower and watered, increasingly sparingly the further into autumn it was. What was it that made him so upset? He could not remember when that last happened. At work he had seldom if ever taken sides; there he let pure idiocy and bullying pass by. He usually backed off to avoid hearing more, with a look that expressed the point of view of the morally superior, a silent demonstration that did not seem to impress anyone.
Was it out of pure cowardice? Or perhaps simply an expression of the sense of inferiority that he recognized as the driving force in Haller’s primitive condescension? Because of course he had despised, downright loathed, many of his fellow students for their ill-mannered behavior and monumental ignorance of life outside the dormitories and student societies. There was a certainty in their demeanor, a lack of humility, as if they could never be wrong. If they were caught in a lie or momentarily bothered by something, they immediately dismissed the discomfort, as if to say, “Of course, maybe that wasn’t so successful, but what of it?” They were protected, and knew it.
He never enlightened them about the life and conditions in a farm laborer’s home, but instead assumed a passive attitude. Only a few of his fellow students came from working-class homes, and probably none from the rural proletariat. He was basically alone in his experiences, alone in his language. He was proud of his background but never took sides, never got involved in controversy, did not even respond to the worst forms of class-conditioned contempt and ignorance, as he had now done with Haller.
The associate professor had become righteously angry at Haller’s impolite manner but at the same time in some strange way embarrassed on the other man’s behalf and therefore he wanted to tell him off, and perhaps by that means himself. Because he understood very well that Haller’s open contempt for the professor, and above all his apparently pleasurable hurling of the stone, had wakened his own bad conscience, reminded him of Bubb’s insistent encouragement to take part in the campaign against the Nobel Prize committee’s selection, as well as his own extremely real feeling of having been discriminated against, both before and now.
The professor’s words that there was no absolute justice in the world, above all not in academia, had been grinding in his head and now the meaning of the words was clearer to him than ever.
At Lundquist’s the gardener worked away, the preparation work was as good as finished, it was soon ready for planting. Haller knew his business, that was clear. He had laid out two planks as walkways to avoid trampling down and compressing the soft, inviting beds.
The associate professor felt a stab of jealousy. Haller could lose himself in meaningful work, while what he busied himself with in his tower resembled therapy. But I’ve done my share, he thought further, I contributed to a scientific breakthrough that reduced suffering and saved human lives. I don’t need to apologize for my actions or because now I cultivate exotic plants in a tower. I paid back with interest what it cost society to educate me and I think I have the right to enjoy…
“But am I enjoying myself?” he asked right out loud and turned toward Lundquist’s lot, as if the answer could be found there.
Haller looked up at the same moment. The associate professor understood that he was well outlined against the dull foliage of the olive tree. He waved and Haller waved back.
Perhaps Haller can become a friend? The thought was mind-boggling, as if the mere idea of the existence of a friend was beyond reasonable. It struck him that he had not even used the word “friend” in many years. When would that have been? Well, perhaps when he wrote the obligatory Christmas letter to Düsseldorf, which he always began with “Lieber Freund.”
The associate professor laughed joylessly at these ridiculous thoughts. Should Horst Bubb be the one he called and told about his worries, the one he asked for advice and sought support from? Bubb, who was filled by a single thought: disqualifying Bertram von Ohler, a person he had never met or had any difficulty with. Whatever he would say to his “dear friend,” the German would reply with a salvo about the Academy of Sciences and Wolfgang Schimmel’s heroic struggle for the melancholy Alan Ferguson in Vermont.
But he would not quarrel, he would not choose sides, despite the sense that an injustice had been committed. Did that make him a lesser person, a coward? Was it struggle that could lift the discomfort from his shoulders?
After a final glance toward Haller the associate professor left the tower.
Thirteen
Algot Forslund held out his hat. Agnes thought it smelled bad, a mixture of smoke and something rotten, and quickly consigned it to the shelf. He wriggled out of his coat and hung it up all by himself.
She and the attorney were the same age but he looked considerably older. The change had come quickly, his posture had always been poor but his face had collapsed during the past year. The previously so fleshy and rosy cheeks now hung loose and gray in color.
Agnes sensed that it was not only the daily alcohol consumption that was the reason. He’s sick, she was sure, but she felt indifferent in the presence of the bent man who passively stood and waited for her to open the door to the library. Forslund had never interested her, either young or old, sober or tipsy, so why should she start caring now?
These days Bertram von Ohler was his only client and he would visit the house four or five times a year. There were always some papers that had to be arranged. Agnes suspected it was the will that was up for discussion again. Now and then it would be adjusted, some detail added or removed. During the day the professor had been rooting in the “archive,” as he called the old safe. Agnes knew, the only one besides the professor himself, where the key to the safe was stored: in an old tin can in the cellar.