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suggested to him that instead of withdrawing his inheritance from Wolfsegg he should settle for a more or less guaranteed pension. But his perspicacity saved him from doing anything so foolish. When the need arises, people like my parents are never more unscrupulous than in their dealings with members of their own families. They recoil from no baseness, and under the cloak of Christian principle, high-mindedness, and social conscience they are merely rapacious and treat anyone as fair game. Right from the beginning, Uncle Georg failed to fit in with their plans. They were actually afraid of him, because he had seen through them at an early stage. Even as a child he had caught them out in their underhanded dealings, with which he was never afraid to reproach them. He is said to have been
the most feared child
at Wolfsegg. Clear-sighted from the beginning, he is reputed to have developed an early passion for exposing his family. As a small child he would spy on them and confront them with their unprincipled conduct. No child at Wolfsegg was known to have asked so many questions and demanded so many answers. My parents would always reproach me by saying that I was getting like my uncle Georg, as though he were the most dreadful person in the world.
You’re getting like your uncle Georg
, they would say, but they achieved nothing by holding up Uncle Georg as a warning example, because right from the start there was no one at Wolfsegg whom I loved more. Your uncle Georg is a monster, they would say. Your uncle Georg is a parasite! Your uncle Georg is a disgrace to us all! Your uncle Georg is a criminal! The list of horrific designations they came up with for Uncle Georg never produced the desired effect on me. Every few years he would come over from Cannes to visit us for a few days, occasionally for a few weeks, and during these visits I was the happiest person in the world. I had a great time whenever Uncle Georg was at Wolfsegg. It suddenly became a different place. It had the air of the big city about it. The libraries were aired, books moved around, and rooms that at other times seemed like cold, dark, silent caverns were filled with music. The rooms at Wolfsegg, usually forbidding, became cozy and homey. Voices that usually spoke in harsh or suppressed tones suddenly sounded quite natural. We were allowed to laugh and to speak in normal conversational tones, not only when instructions were being given to the staff. Why do you always talkFrench when the servants are present? Uncle Georg asked my parents fiercely—it’s quite ridiculous! It made me happy to hear him say such things. Why don’t you open the windows during this glorious weather? he would ask. Whereas the mealtime conversation normally centered on pigs and cattle, on wagonloads of timber or on whether the warehouse prices were favorable or unfavorable, we suddenly heard words like Tolstoy, Paris, or New York, Napoleon or Alfonso XIII or Meneghini, Callas, Voltaire, Rousseau, Pascal, or Diderot. I can’t see what I’m eating, my uncle would say without the least compunction, whereupon my mother would jump up from the table and open the shutters. You must open the shutters wider, he would say to her, so that I can see my soup. How can you exist in this semidarkness all the time? It’s like living in a museum! Everything looks as though it hasn’t been used for years. What’s the point of having that fine china in the cupboards if you don’t eat off it? And your expensive silver? I admired Uncle Georg. There was never any boredom when he was around. He did not sit stiffly and rigidly at table like the others but constantly turned to one or another of us to ask a question, tender sound advice, or pay a compliment. You must wear more blue, he once told my mother—gray doesn’t suit you. You look as if you were in mourning, and it’s fifteen years since Father died. You, he once told my father, look like one of your own
employees
. That made me laugh out