alone,despite the fact that several people had offered to drive me there, I thought, and it had been distasteful to talk to the woman from the general store, Joana’s friend, as though I had been closest to her; it had been inconsiderate to monopolize her company, leaving her no time to attend to the other people who had come to the funeral, I thought. I had made myself the starof the funeral,I thought, and I now saw how monstrous this had been. I had downgraded Joana’s companion and all the others at the funeral and at the same time upgraded myself — and that was contemptible. On the other hand I had believed at the time that I was behaving properly. During the funeral I had been unaware of incurring any guilt: only now, sitting in the wing chair, did I develop what might be called a sense of guilt with regard to my conduct at Kilb. The fact that Joana had killed herself did not make me feel any sadder in Kilb, I thought, sitting in the wing chair: it simply aroused my indignation against her friends, though I could not explain to myself why this should be. The truth is that I was not in the least shocked to get the telephone call from the owner of the general store, informing me that Joana had committed suicide; I pretended to be shocked, I now reflected, but in fact I wasn’t — I was curious,but not shocked. I only feigned shock; I was merely curious and immediately wanted her to tell me everything about Joana’s suicide. I displayed the most outrageous curiosity, and it was only now, sitting in the wing chair, that I felt shocked by this — by the fact that I had not been sad, but merely curious, and that I had forced more information out of the woman than she was willing to impart, for during our telephone conversation she showed a decency that was entirely lacking in me. Naturally Joana had become such a stranger to me and we had been out of touch for so many years, that the call from the woman at the general store, as I have said, could not possibly have come as a shock, nor could it cause me any immediate sadness; it produced merely curiosity, and this curiosity forced her to tell me everything about Joana’s suicide there and then. I was interested not in the fact of her suicide, but in the circumstances. I was sad.I was really saddened,and it was in this mood of sadness that I walked into town — to the Graben, the Kärntnerstrasse and the Kohlmarkt, then to the Bräunerhof in the Spiegelgasse, where I glanced through the Corriere, LeMonde,the ZürcherZeitungand the Frankfurter AllgemeineZeitung,as I had been in the habit of doing for years. Then, sickened by the newspapers, I went back to the Graben to buy myself a tie, but instead of buying a tie I ran into the Auersbergers, to be told once again about Joana’s suicide. By now I knew much more about it than they did, yet I pretended to know nothing. I put on such an act of bewilderment that the couple must have felt I was shocked by Joana’s suicide, whereas in fact I was only feigning shock. I had actually felt saddened by Joana’s suicide as I walked back and forth in the city, and then, quite suddenly and quite shamelessly, I pretended to the Auersbergers that I was shocked by it. And just as my shock was feigned, so too was my acceptance of the invitation to their artistic dinner,because the whole of my conduct toward the Auersbergers during our meeting in the Graben was pure dissembling. Sitting in the wing chair, I reflected that I had pretended to be shocked by Joana’s suicide and pretended to accept the Auersbergers’ invitation to their artistic dinner. When I accepted it I was only pretending, I now thought, yet in spite of this I had acted upon it. The idea is nothing short of grotesque, I thought, yet at the same time it amused me. Actually I’ve always dissembled with the Auersbergers, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, and here I am again, sitting in their wing chair and dissembling once more: I’m not really here in their apartment in the Gentzgasse, I’m only pretending to be in the Gentzgasse, only pretending to be in their apartment, I said to myself. I’ve always pretended to them about everything — I’ve pretended to everybody about everything. My whole life has been a pretense, I told myself in the wing chair — the life I live isn’t real, it’s a simulated life, a simulated existence. My whole life, my whole existence has always been simulated—my life has always been pretense,never reality, I told myself. And I pursued this idea to the point at which I finally believed it. I drew a deep breath and said to myself, in such a way that the people in the music room were bound to hear it: You’vealways lived a life of pretense,not a reallife — a simulated existence,not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real. But I must put an end to this fantasizing lest I go mad, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, and so I took a large gulp of champagne. While I had been drinking champagne all the time, the people in the music room, as I could see, had been content with sherry and in the end simply with water, not wanting to get as recklessly drunk before supper, before the so-called artistic dinner, as Auersberger was already. I was not afraid of drinking too much, and so I went on drinking. But naturally I did not drink so recklessly that I became as drunk as the host. I continued to drink, but confined myself to one mouthful every ten or fifteen minutes — that is the truth. After all I was no longer twenty, but fifty-two — a fact that I never once forgot during this evening in the Gentzgasse. At Kilb all these artistic people had seemed grotesque. Their artistic preoccupations and their artistic activity made them seem somehow unnatural, at least to me: they had an artificial wayof walking,an artificial way of talking; everything about them was artificial, whereas the cemetery itself seemed the most natural place in the world. When they bowed their heads they bowed them too low. When they stood up or sat down they did so too soon (or too late); when they started to sing they did so too soon (or too late). When they spoke the responses they spoke them too soon (or too late) — whereas the local people, of whom there was a good turnout,as they say, did everything naturally — they spoke naturally, sang naturally, walked naturally, stood up and sat down naturally, doing nothing too soon or too late or too quickly or too slowly. And whereas the artistic people from Vienna were grotesquely attired for the funeral, the local people were dressed with the utmost propriety, I reflected as I sat in the wing chair. The local people were in tune with the village and its cemetery, while the artistic folk from Vienna clashed with both. The metropolitan note struck by these Viennese mourners is out of keeping with this village cemetery, I had thought as I walked in the long cortege. Every one of these mourners from Vienna is a foreign body in Kilb, I had thought as I followed the coffin, walking between the woman from the general store and Joana’s unhappy companion, who coughed as though he had some lung disease all the way from the church to the cemetery (which must have been over a mile). The possibility that he might have lung disease made me anxious, and whenever he coughed I held my breath for fear of being infected, until suddenly I reflected that I too had lung disease and was probably more infectious than he was, whereupon I began to cough even more than he did, and as soon as I started coughing he stopped, as though realizing that