the Well-Tempered Clavier is the cause, I thought, it doesn’t lie in the fact that Wertheimer’s sister cut herself off from her brother at the age of forty-six. Wertheimer’s sister is actually innocent in Wertheimer’s death, I thought, Wertheimer wanted, I thought, to shift the blame for his suicide to his sister, to deflect attention from the fact that nothing but Glenn’s interpretation of the Goldberg Variations as well as his Well-Tempered Clavier was to blame for his suicide, as indeed for his disastrous life. But Wertheimer’s disaster had already started the moment Glenn called Wertheimer the loser, what Wertheimer had always known Glenn said out loud, abruptly and without bias, as I have to say, in his Canadian-American way, Glenn mortally wounded Wertheimer with his loser, I thought, not because Wertheimer heard this concept for the first time but because Wertheimer, without knowing this word loser, had long been familiar with the concept of loser, but Glenn Gould said the word loser out loud in a crucial moment, I thought. We say a word and destroy a person, although the person we’ve destroyed, at the moment we say out loud the word that destroys him, doesn’t take notice of this deadly fact, I thought. A person confronted with such a deadly word and deadly concept still has no idea of the deadly effect of this word and its concept, I thought. Even before Horowitz’s course had begun Glenn said the word loser to Wertheimer, I thought, I could even specify the precise hour in which Glenn said the word loser to Wertheimer. We say a deadly word to a person and at that moment are naturally unaware that we have actually said a deadly word to him, I thought. Twenty-eight years after Glenn said to Wertheimer at the Mozarteum that he was a loser and twelve years after he said it to him in America, Wertheimer killed himself. Suicides are ridiculous, Wertheimer often said, the ones who hang themselves are the most disgusting, he also said, I thought, now of course it’s striking that he often spoke about suicide, and in doing so always more or less made fun of suicide victims, as I have to say, always talked about suicide and suicide victims as if neither one nor the other had anything to do with him, as if one like the other was out of the question for him. I was a suicide type, he often said, I recalled on the way to Traich, I was the one in danger, not he. And he had also thought his sister capable of suicide, probably because he best knew her actual situation, was familiar with the absolute hopelessness of her situation, like no other, because he, as he often said, thought he could see through his creation. But his sister, instead of killing herself, fled to Duttweiler in Switzerland, got herself married to Herr Duttweiler, I thought. Wertheimer finally killed himself in a way he always termed repulsive and disgusting, and of all places in Switzerland, his sister went to Switzerland to marry this wealthy chemical Duttweiler instead of killing herself, he went there however to hang himself from a tree in Zizers, I thought. He wanted to study with Horowitz, I thought, and was destroyed by Glenn Gould. Glenn died at the ideal moment, Wertheimer however didn’t kill himself at the ideal moment, I thought. If I really have another go at my description of Glenn Gould, I thought, I will have to incorporate his description of Wertheimer in it and it’s questionable who will be the focus of this account, Glenn Gould or Wertheimer, I thought. I’ll start with Glenn Gould, with the Goldberg Variations and with the Well-Tempered Clavier, but Wertheimer will play a crucial role in this account as far as I’m concerned, since from my point of view Glenn Gould was always linked to Wertheimer, no matter in what respect, and vice versa Wertheimer with Glenn Gould and perhaps all in all Glenn Gould does play a greater role in Wertheimer’s life than the other way around. The actual starting point has to be Horowitz’s course, I thought, the sculptor’s house in Leopoldskron, the fact that we came together completely by chance twenty-eight years ago was crucial for our lives, I thought. Wertheimer’s Bösendorfer against Glenn Gould’s Steinway, I thought, Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations against Wertheimer’s Art of the Fugue, I thought. Glenn Gould surely doesn’t owe Horowitz his genius, I thought, but Wertheimer is perfectly entitled to blame Horowitz for his downfall and destruction, I thought, for Wertheimer, attracted by the name Horowitz, had gone to Salzburg, without the name Horowitz he would never have gone to Salzburg, at least not in that fateful year. Whereas the Goldberg Variations were composed for the sole purpose of helping an insomniac put up with the insomnia he had suffered from all his life, I thought, they killed Wertheimer. They were originally composed to delight the soul and almost two hundred and fifty years later they have killed a hopeless person, i.e., Wertheimer, I thought on my way to Traich. If Wertheimer hadn’t walked past room thirty-three on the second floor of the Mozarteum twenty-eight years ago, precisely at four in the afternoon, he wouldn’t have hanged himself twenty-eight years later in Zizers bei Chur, I thought. Wertheimer’s fate was to have walked past room thirty-three in the Mozarteum at the precise moment when Glenn Gould was playing the so-called aria in that room. Regarding this event Wertheimer reported to me that he stopped at the door of room thirty-three, listening to Glenn play until the end of the aria. Then I understood what shock is, I thought now. The so-called Wunderkind Glenn Gould had meant nothing to us, Wertheimer and me, and we wouldn’t have given it a second thought if we had known something about him, I thought. Glenn Gould was no Wunderkind, from the very beginning he was a keyboard genius, I thought, even as a child simple mastery wasn’t enough for him. We, Wertheimer and myself, had our so-called isolation houses in the country and were running away from them. Glenn Gould built himself an isolation cage, as he called his studio, in America, close to New York. If he named Wertheimer the loser, I want to call him, Glenn, the refuser, I thought. I have to call the year 1953 the fateful one for Wertheimer, for in 1953 Glenn Gould played the Goldberg Variations in our sculptor’s house for no one else but Wertheimer and me, years before he became world famous overnight, as they say, with these same Goldberg Variations. In 1953 Glenn Gould destroyed Wertheimer, I thought. In 1954 we hadn’t had any news from him, in 1955 he played the Goldberg Variations in the Festspielhaus, Wertheimer and I listened to him from the catwalk together with a group of stagehands who otherwise had never heard a piano concert but were crazy about Glenn’s playing. Glenn, who always broke into a sweat, Glenn, the Canadian-American who without embarrassment called Wertheimer the loser, Glenn, who laughed in the Ganshof