agnostic. With Wertheimer I had visited the Wertheimer crypt in the Döbling cemetery, right next to the so-called Lieben crypt and the Theodor Herzl grave, it hadn’t irritated him that a beech tree growing out of the crypt had progressively dislodged the immense granite block inscribed with the names of all the Wertheimers in the Wertheimer crypt; his sister had always wanted to make him cut down the beech tree and put the granite block back in place, the fact that the beech tree had shot up out of the crypt and dislodged the granite block didn’t disturb him, on the contrary, every time he visited the crypt he marveled at the beech tree and the increasingly dislodged granite block. Now his sister will have the beech tree removed from the crypt and the granite block set straight and before that she will have Wertheimer transported from Chur to Vienna and buried in the crypt, I thought. Wertheimer was the most passionate cemetery lover I have ever known, even more passionate than me, I thought. With my right index finger I drew a large W on the dusty wardrobe door. Desselbrunn came to my mind at this point, for a moment I caught myself in the sentimental thought of perhaps also going to Desselbrunn, but repressed this thought immediately. I wanted to stick to my principles and said to myself, I’m not going to Desselbrunn, I’m not going to Desselbrunn for the next five or six years. Such a visit to Desselbrunn will surely weaken me for years, I said to myself, I can’t afford a Desselbrunn visit. The countryside outside my window was the dreary, sickening countryside I knew so well from Desselbrunn and which years ago I suddenly couldn’t take anymore. If I hadn’t left Desselbrunn, I said to myself, I would have succumbed, I wouldn’t be here anymore, I would have succumbed before Glenn and before Wertheimer, wasted away, as I have to say, for the countryside around Desselbrunn is a countryside meant for wasting away, like the countryside outside this window in Wankham, which threatens everybody, slowly suffocates everybody, never uplifts, never protects. We’re not asked to choose our place of birth, I thought. But we can leave our place of birth if it threatens to suffocate us, go off and away from the place that will kill us if we miss the moment of going off and away. I was lucky and left at the right moment, I said to myself. And in the end left Vienna, because Vienna was threatening to suffocate and choke me. Nevertheless I owe it to my father’s bank account that I’m still alive, still am allowed to exist, as I suddenly said to myself. Not a life-giving region, I said to myself. Not a soothing countryside. Not pleasant people. Lying in wait for me, I thought. Making me anxious. Pulling the wool over my eyes. I’ve never felt safe in this region, I thought. Constantly visited by disease, almost killed finally by insomnia. Sigh of relief when the men from Altmünster came and took away the Steinway, I thought, sudden freedom of movement in Desselbrunn. Didn’t give up art and whatever else the term means by giving the Steinway to the schoolteacher’s child in Altmünster, I thought. To have exposed the Steinway to a schoolteacher’s vulgarity, exposed it to the cretinism of the schoolteacher’s child. If I’d told the schoolteacher what my Steinway was truly worth he would have been shocked, I thought, this way he had no idea of the instrument’s value. Even when I had the Steinway transported from Vienna to Desselbrunn I knew it wouldn’t be in Desselbrunn for long, but naturally I had no idea I would give it away to the schoolteacher’s child, I thought. As long as I had the Steinway I wasn’t independent in my writing, I thought, wasn’t free, as I was from the moment the Steinway was out of the house for good. I had to part with the Steinway in order to write, to be honest I had been writing for fourteen years and actually had only written more or less useless junk because I hadn’t parted with my Steinway. The Steinway was barely out the door and I was writing better, I thought. In the Calle del Prado I was always thinking about the Steinway standing in Vienna (or in Desselbrunn) and thus could write nothing better than these inevitably botched attempts. I’d barely gotten rid of the Steinway and I was writing differently, from the first moment, I thought. But that doesn’t mean of course that I’d given up music with the Steinway, I thought. On the contrary. But it no longer had the same devastating power over me, simply didn’t hurt me anymore, I thought. When we peer into this countryside we are frightened. Under no circumstances do we want to return to this countryside. Everything is perpetually gray and the people are always depressing. Then I would just crawl into my room and be incapable of thinking a single useful thought, I thought. And would gradually become like everybody here, I just need to look at the innkeeper, this person who has been totally destroyed by the all-governing force of nature here, who can’t get out of her petty, vulgar ways, I thought. I would have perished in this evil-spirited countryside. But I never should have gone to Desselbrunn, I thought, never should have accepted my inheritance, could have renounced it, now I’ve abandoned it, I thought. Desselbrunn was originally built by one of my great-uncles, who was director of the paper factory, as a manor house with rooms for all his many children. Simply abandoned it, that was my salvation, surely. At first went to Desselbrunn with my parents only in the summer, then went to school for years in Desselbrunn and in Wankham, I thought, then to the gymnasium in Salzburg, then to the Mozarteum, once also for a year to the Vienna Academy, I thought, back to the Mozarteum, then back to Vienna and finally to Desselbrunn with the idea of withdrawing there permanently with my intellectual ambitions, but where I very quickly succumbed to the realization that I’d wound up in a dead end. The piano virtuoso career as an escape, but pushed nonetheless to the most extreme limit, to perfection, I thought. At the height of my ability, as I can say, gave everything up,