I had lung disease and might infect him,for as soon as I began coughing he turned his face the other way and held a paper tissue to his nose as he walked. The woman from the general store wore a gray waterproof coat, the most sensible garment I saw at the funeral, I thought as I sat in the wing chair. In fact the local people were all sensibly dressed, whereas all the people from Vienna got hopelessly drenched, and those who had come in their ostentatious fur coats, expecting the weather to be cold (though in fact it was fairly warm), seemed grotesque and ludicrous; moreover the rain at once made them look messy, trickling down their fur coats like so much dirty gravy. Their umbrellas were soon blown inside out, and some were broken, by a fierce gust of wind that blew across the graves from the mountains as the cortege reached the cemetery. As always on such occasions, I recalled in the wing chair, the village priest had delivered a totally inept address at the graveside. All the same, times have changed, I remembered thinking as I stood at the graveside: he was at least delivering an address—only ten or twelve years earlier no priest would have delivered an address by a suicide’s grave anywhere in Austria. It was as primitive as all the other graveside addresses I have heard, and the voice of the priest, who seemed to have some kind of throat ailment, was so disagreeable and high-pitched that it hurt my ears to listen to it. Unfortunately, however, his address was also comprehensible and contained all the mendacity and hypocrisy the Catholic Church purveys on such occasions. Toward the end he recalled that he and Joana had both attended the village school and that he liked to remember her as the nicelocal girl,and referring to her years in Vienna he spoke of the morass of the big city. He had the face of a small town official, not a typical peasant face, but the kind of face we find ourselves looking at whenever we go into a country store and ask for a hammer or a hoe, a pair of rubber boots or a scouring cloth, I thought, sitting in the wing chair — a sly, distrustful face that we dare not look at for more than a few seconds. By attending this funeral, I thought as I sat in the wing chair, this whole artistic contingent from Vienna was subjecting itself to a Catholic ceremonial with which it was no longer familiar (if it ever had been) or had become unfamiliar over the years, as I had; having had no contact with this kind of Catholic ceremonial for decades, if for no other reason, I found it entirely hypocritical. The Viennese mourners pretended to know when to stand up and when not, what to sing, what prayers to say and when, yet like me they were completely at sea. Consequently they prayed and sang mezza voce in a way that nobody could understand, always sitting down and standing up a second later than the local people. This Viennese artistic contingent only mouthed their words, and so the effect they produced was merely theatrical, I thought, and so was the effect I produced — or failed to produce, as the case may be. During the funeral my mind was totally occupied with the contents of Joana’s coffin and what they must look like. Throughout the ceremony my mind was taken up by this one abominable thought. After everything that Joana’s companion had told us in the Iron Hand about his experience in the mortuary chapel, I could not expel this obscene thought from my mind during the whole of the funeral ceremony, however hard I tried, for in all truth I did not wish to think about such a thing — naturally not, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, and it occurred to me that what had prompted these speculations about the contents of the coffin was the complete lack of embarrassment shown by Joana’s companion (whom the woman from the general store always addressed as John,though I did not yet know why) as he gave us his grisly account of his visit to the mortuary chapel and the transfer of Joana’s body. John shouldn’t have returned from the mortuary chapel and told us this story while we were eating our goulash, I thought, sitting in the wing chair; on the other hand I now admired him precisely for his lack of embarrassment and his obvious truthfulness, and I reflected that it would have been impossible for me or any of these artistic folk to give such an unembarrassed account of the transfer of the body. The mention of the plastic bag had made me feel sick, and indeed John did not spare us any details of the proceedings in the mortuary chapel. Only an unartistic person like him would have been capable of giving such a grisly account without feeling embarrassed, yet at the same time without any appearance of indecency, for there seemed to be nothing indecent about what he said, whereas it would have seemed indecent had anyone else said it. I reflected that it would have been indecent — indeed it would have been base and contemptible — had I given a similar account of the transfer of the body. John remained silent throughout the funeral, whereas all the others whispered to one another from time to time, I thought. It had seemed strange to all who were present that he should be the first to step up to the edge of the grave, take a handful of earth from the shovel held out to him by the sexton, and throw it onto the coffin lying far below, though probably none of them could have said why it seemed strange; in fact it was entirely logical for him to do so, since Joana’s former husband, the tapestry artist, was not present and there were apparently no surviving relatives. Standing by Joana’s open grave he looked both ugly and pathetic; the people watching him were profoundly disturbed by the sight, and I myself was revolted by it, though privately (without expressing or in any way indicating how I felt) I was prepared to think of him as a good man. He’s a good man,I said to myself, seeing him standing like that beside Joana’s grave; I do not know what prompted this reaction, and it is not important. While we were still at the graveside Auersberger’s wife spoke to me and asked me whether I would like to drive back to Vienna with them, but I immediately refused with a brusqueness which never fails to give offense whenever I resort to it. I simply said No. Afterwards, in the Iron Hand,most of the people from Vienna got together at a long table; I had to sit there too, the Auersbergers having more or less forced me to do so by addressing me in characteristic fashion in front of all the others and inviting me to join them, in such a way that I was unable to refuse. I would much rather have sat at the same table as Joana’s companion, the woman from the general store, and one or two other local people who had been childhood friends of Joana’s. The Auersbergers forced me, by the manner of their invitation, to sit at their table, which was something I had been dreading throughout the funeraclass="underline" I had no wish to spend even the shortest time with them in Kilb,since I was invited to their artistic dinner that same evening in the Gentzgasse. I pretended to be struck dumb by grief over Joana’s suicide and did not say a word, while the Auersbergers and the others had a goulash like the one I had had before the funeral I ordered myself a plate of sliced sausage and salad with extra onions; I also ate a couple of rolls, something I had never done before — simply out of nervousness. The Auersbergers talked incessantly about their artistic dinner, to which they had invited the actor, the Burgtheater actor, and they kept on saying how much this tragedian (as Auersberger’s wife insisted on calling him) had impressed them in The Wild Duck. Auersberger’s wife kept on wanting to tell us what role the actor had played in The WildDuck,but she could not remember, until in the end