Thomas Bernhard - Ereignisse (Occurrences)

7/22/2019 Thomas Bernhard - Ereignisse (Occurrences)

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THOMAS BERNHARD

EREIGNISSE (OCCURRENCES)


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ranslated 2012 by Douglas Robertson

shirtysleeves.blogspot.com


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WO YOUNG PEOPLE fee into a tower, which serves as the towns deensiveortication, and ascend it without uttering a single word. Tey intend not toextinguish their silence with a betrayal and they set about their scheme withthoughtless speediness. Halway up the tower they glimpse an incalculable de-

tail o the landscape in which the tower is situated. Te coldness o the wallscauses them to stagger upward as i through the inside o a block o ice: withmouths open and arms stretched to the ront in the idea that by means o thesehal-sincere gesticulations the distance they wish to cover might be articiallydiminished. Now it becomes evident that the girl by orce o imagination iscapable o pressing orward with greater speed than the intellectually limitedyoung man, and it is important to remark that the girl, although climbing eightor ten steps behind the young man, her lover, is in reality een or twentystep-lengths ahead o him. Te completely windowless tower is an incipienceo darkness and quite distinctly recognizable as such. When they nally reachthe top they undress and all naked into each others arms.


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HE GIRL is sitting on a bench under an apple tree next to the ront door o acastlesque building that stands in a loy valley and that a distinguished gentle-man has discovered on one o his rambles, which is leading him rom churchto church and rom one unusual architectural structure to another. He is stand-ing perectly still behind the garden ence and is ascinated by the beauty o thegirl, who wears her hair in long pigtails. He pretends to be writing somethingin his notebook, but in act he is observing the girl uninterruptedly. He is being

observed by the nuns who are working in the vegetable garden; but he does notnotice this. He wants to avoid destroying the tension that exists between thegirl and him; or this reason he does not step up to address her. But at a giveninstant he will introduce himsel, he thinks, and strike up a conversation withthe girl. He will relate to her the story o his travels, and connections are easilyestablished in ways like this. He will tell her about the world in which he lives.But at the moment at which he resolves to approach the girl, the girl stretches aull length stocking-swathed leg into the air and starts pulling her pigtails withboth hands. Because she cannot speak, she emits incomprehensible noises. Shekeeps tugging at her pigtails until her eyes turn dark with blood. Now the manrst becomes aware o the act that he is at the site o a madhouse, and he quitsthe site immediately without attracting any attention on the part o the nuns,who lay hold o the girl and drag her into the house.


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HE FORY-YEAR-OLD MAN has been catching the same bus or twelveyears. As he is walking home he refects that somebody else is to blame or hisunhappiness. Not he. Even though he does not know or certain who orcedhim into the twelve-year ordeal, he utters a term o abuse against the personin question. He rounds the corner where the elder bush is shedding its leaves.Naturally he does not perceive this at all. Clamped under his arm is a well-worn briecase in which on every day o the twelve years apart rom Sundays,

excluding vacations, he has kept his aernoon tea. As a rule he does not eat anyo it. It is eaten by the children when he gets home. At the spot where his pathdiscloses to view the house in which he lives with his amily, he raises his eyesor the rst time. He pictures to himsel his wie now setting dinner on the tableand putting their children to bed. He suddenly sees how his wie is removingher blouse and draping it over the back o the chair. She takes rom the kitchenstove a cup o coee, crumbles some white bread into it, and laps up the mix-ture with a spoon. Now he is cold and turns around and walks back along thesame path that he has just taken. He walks through the woods and goes to bedwith his mistress, who owns a one-story house with a vegetable garden. At thisinstant his wie is saying to the children: be quiet, or else the Christ Child wontbring you any presents.


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HE CASHIER at an ironworks has married a woman eight or nine years hissenior. Shortly aer their wedding the quarrels begin. It is with a boundlessantipathy that the two o them all asleep and wake up. Eventually the wiealls gravely ill, an event that is assuredly connected to her childlessness, getsbetter time and again, but suddenly loses the power o speech and can makehersel understood only by using her hands, at home she writes everything onthe pages o a calendar: I plan to go away, or example, or Its lovely outside.

She hates it when people eel sorry or her. Eventually she gets pains in her legsand grows quite sti. She has to be pushed around in a wheelchair. She sits onthe lookout at the window. When her husband gets home he has to wheel heroutside. Always the same stretch. Always arther. She shakes her clenched stsat him. She is always hungrier or new houses, new trees, new people. She peersout o the hood o her winter cape, looks through the gaps between the trees onthe avenue. One evening, as he is pushing her along near the curb o the side-walk, he turns the conveyance around and tips it into the abyss. She cannot cryout. Te metal conveyance splits into pieces. Tis deed is something he dreamsabout. But he will do something like this to her, he thinks.


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HE CELLIS knows there is nothing but loathing between her and the op-eretta conductor. In spite o this every day at the same hour she slips throughthe door o his room and into his bed. Evil has taken possession o the thirty-year-old woman and the harder she attempts to end it o, the more relent-lessly the process o her destruction advances. In the attic o the conservatory

she incessantly plays sonata movements that she plunges into or the sake otearing them to pieces. With incredible ruthlessness she starves hersel, all daylong she lies drunk in bed or the sake o pursuing her annihilation project allthe more energetically. She sells everything, is suddenly le with a single blackhigh-necked dress. Smashes to pieces her instrument, gripping its neck withboth hands. She accelerates everything. Laughs. Is silent. Aer her nal assig-nation with the conductor she sits on an artists suitcase in the squalid, gloomypassageway and weeps.


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HE LANDED PROPRIEOR dreams that one o his laborers has been dig-ging up the earth at numerous spots on his estate, and that at every site a corpsehas been turning up. He has the laborer dig up the entire area around his house.But there is not a single spot under which a corpse does not lie. Now the landedproprietor has his entire estate dug up by a hundred laborers, but that act othe matter is that under a thin stratum o soil it is uninterruptedly covered bya thick layer o corpses. He has all the turned-up corpses, which are o all agesand both sexes, shown to him, and he remembers that he has slain them all

with his own hands. But or all that, the ear o being killed himsel keeps himrom inorming anyone o his crime. He hits upon the idea o having the crimeor the murderer ound out. o this end he organizes a committee o govern-ment o cials whom he buys o handsomely. Only a ew days later a murdereris discovered. Although the landed proprietor knows that in this man, who isa complete unknown, he cannot possibly be dealing with the murderer, he hashim delivered to a court o law that sentences him to death. Te murderer is ex-ecuted. In this manner, the o cials discover even more murderers. Eventuallythey discover exactly as many murderers as there are murder victims. Tey areall executed and buried on the landed proprietors estate. Now the landed pro-prietor wakes up and rises. He walks into the orest in order to determine whichtrees he still has to have cut down this autumn. Tis question preoccupies himthroughout the day.


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HE VILLAGE PRIESS SISER alls ill one day and when she is allowed toget up again people remark that the illness has aected her brain. She gets upto things that a normal person under normal circumstances never gets up toFor example while fourishing a myrtle wreath she dances through the villagesquare with her tongue sticking out, to the oended bemusement o uncompre-hending bystanders. She is also in the habit o suddenly stepping up to the altarin the middle o mass service and strewing about stemless roses out o a little

basket. Or she will write to the bishop a letter in which she apprises him thatthe mother o God has said to her in the potato eld that she would be welcometo reside in the church itsel rom now on. Not that anybody makes un o her,people regard her anxiously, timorously. She mutters tales involuntarily. Amongthe aorementioned tales is one to the eect that when everyone in the villagewithout exception is asleep, the Redeemer walks through the square pursuedby his tormentors, without saying a word, with bleeding stigmata. One eveningshe does not show up or supper, which is partaken o in the rectory. Nobodycan nd her. First thing next morning the schoolchildren nd her rozen intothe large fat o ice behind the brewery. Her open mouth is larger than her ace.Around her neck she is wearing, as always, a pointy starched collar. Her armsare spread out. Te water roze swily.


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HE ACOR has a part as an evil enchanter in a pantomime. He is thrust into asheepskin costume and into a pair o shoes that are ar too small and that cramphis eet. Te entire get-up is so uncomortable that he breaks into a sweat, buto course nobody notices this; and on the whole he is never happier than whenacting or children, because they are the most grateul o all audiences. Techildren, all three hundred o them, take right when he enters, because theyare entirely on the side o the young couple, whom he has transormed into

animals o separate species. Tey would most o all like to see nothing but theyoung couple covered rom head to toe in colorul clothing, but then the playwould not be a proper play; because rom time immemorial a pantomime hashad to include a malevolent, inscrutable gure who tries to destroy or at leastrender ridiculous the good and the scrutable. With the second rising o the cur-tain, the children can no longer be contained. Tey leap rom their seats and onto the stage, and it is as i there were no longer three hundred o them but manytimes as many and even though the actor is weeping underneath his mask andentreating them to please stop kicking him and hitting him, as they are doingwith hard metal objects, they reuse to be swayed and keep hitting him andstomping all over him until he ceases to move and his pale mutilated hands jutupwards into the dusty air o the gridiron. When the other actors come rushingover and remark that their colleague is dead, the children burst into a colossaldin o laughter that is so loud that it causes them all to lose their minds.


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SEVERAL SHADOWS leap out at a homeward-bound workman. Tey violatehim on the riverbank and leave him behind. Te moment he tries to get up toset o on his way, the shadows are there again and strike him. Tey pull himout o his coat and drive him into the river. Tey push his head under the waterand draw long knives through his auditory canals. Tey attempt to hold him

under water until he asphyxiates. At another place he regains consciousnessand walks urther naked. Again the shadows suddenly appear and strangle himTey throw him into a pit, into a bomb crater and ll it in. He wakes up againand runs along the railway embankment. Now the shadows attack him with-out warning and throw him into the darkness. He escapes and begins runningaster than beore. But the shadows haul him in. He hears them screaming hisname. Tey throw him between two boulders that squeeze together and crushhim to a pulp. Now he wakes up and turns on the light. He discovers his wiebeside him in the bed. He puts on his coat and leaves the house or a couple ohours. In the early morning he is seen riding on his bicycle to the constructionsite.


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HE PROFESSOR was driven mad by the study o butterfies. First he wasbrought into the institution, only to be discharged two years later becausesomebody got the idea that his madness was not dangerous to the world. Hehas been in the peculiar habit o capering around the park with a butterfy net;which is a highly amusing sight inasmuch as the proessor is o a quite diminu-

tive stature. He takes hardly any meals and at his request there was installed inhis room a large, black chalkboard on which he writes the word JOY. Invari-ably, aer he has written the word JOY on it, he rings or the institutions jani-tor, who is obliged to erase the word with a large sponge. Each time he receivesor his pains a coin rom the proessor, such that by now he has accumulated awhole sackul o these coins. When the proessor is obliged to leave the institu-tion, to his great sadness, he requests that the word JOY should be le on theblackboard. He will instruct the janitor to erase it at a point o time that is yet

very distant. Te employees o the institution are actually inconsolable whenthe proessor is picked up and carried away to his sisters country estate. Terehe can o course move about reely but he still lives entirely in his recollectiono his residence at the institution. Everything that existed beore then he haslong since orgotten. Here on the estate, in the summertime, he wears white andcream-colored clothing. Te peasants/armers make un o him when they seehim climbing and descending the hill while swinging his butterfy net. From acertain day onwards, though, he insists on no longer leaving the house at anytime but at night, an insistence that his sister and the amily doctor, who centertheir entire existences on him, are hardly inclined to approve. But he managesto get his way. He says he wants to catch the lights, every light, because there isnothing more precious than light. He wants to gather together the lights, holdthem in trust in a sae place, and publish a book about them. So he walks aboutundisturbed throughout the night and catches the lights. One night he slips andalls on to the railway track. He holds his butterfy net up to the swily enlarg-

ing twin lights o the express train. Just beore they reach him, he catches themwith a swi movement o his tiny clasped hands.


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HE BUILDING PAINER has climbed to the top o a scaold and realizesthat he is some orty or y meters above street level. He leans against/is sup-ported by a plank o wood. As he rakes around in his bucket with a long splintero pinewood, he looks down at the people who populate the street. With greatavidity he searches or acquaintances o his and manages to spot some, but hehas no intention o shouting down at them, as they would then look back upand nd him ridiculous. A ridiculous individual dressed all in grimy yellowclothes and with a cap made out o newspaper on his head! Te painter orgets

his task and gazes perpendicularly down at the black dots. He discerns that heknows nobody who would ever nd himsel in such a ridiculous situation. Ihe were ourteen or een years old! But at the age o twenty-ve! Troughoutthis meditation, he is raking around in his paint bucket. Te other painters aretoo busy to notice anything about their colleague. A ridiculous man with a capmade out o newspaper on his head! A ridiculous individual! An appallinglyridiculous individual! Now he eels as though he is plunging into this medita-tion, deep into it and downwards, into eddies o seconds, and cries o alarm areheard, and once the young man has splatted, the people scatter. Tey see theoverturned bucket all on him and immediately the painter is doused by yel-low industrial paint. Now the passersby look up. But o course the painter is nolonger above them.


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HE SPECIAL DELIVERYMAN fees with his ull leather satchel across theborder. He swims across the river and pulls himsel out by means o a stump oa bough protruding rom the thicket. He removes his shoes and roams throughthe woods bareoot. Te arther away rom his village he walks, the gloomier thelandscape becomes. Eventually he is at the mercy o the darkness. He is obligedto crawl over mossy suraces and skins his knees. By his reckoning another ullday must so ar have passed. But the darkness does not vary. Even the cries that

he emits while sitting on a allen tree trunk receive no echo. He sees a light, theoutline o a peasants house. He approaches it, dragging the satchel along be-hind him. He opens and snaps shut the satchel and trudges orward once againTen he suddenly discovers: I am not allowed to go in! Hunger begins its workand eventually throws him everish into a ditch. Te impact wakes him up andhe remarks that the whole thing was only a dream o which nothing remainsbut his everish body. He gets up and goes out. He takes a walk and lies backdown to go to sleep only at our in the morning. Nevertheless the next day heresigns rom his position as a special deliveryman and has himsel transerredo his wie he says that he would preer to live in the city, among a large numbero people, that the darkness will not be so pronounced there.


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HE PLAELAYER who or seventeen years has been doing his job to the satis-action o his superiors and with some saved-up money has built himsel a smallhouse under the railway embankment, discovers on his way home through thereight-yard an open rerigerator car in which some slaughtered pigs are hang-ing. As none o the customs o cers who are otherwise always stationed nearthe cars is to be seen, he climbs, his curiosity now piqued, into the car in orderto learn through his own skin how cold it is in the car. He sits down on a planko wood that spans the foor and alls asleep. Because the man is sitting in a cor-

ner that cannot be seen by the customs o cers, he is not discovered by them;they seal up the door aer they have carried out their inspection, beore theplatelayer has climbed out. Four days later at the trains destination the man isound dead in the midst o and underneath the pig carcasses and sitting on thewooden plank. At rst the people who nd him believe that he roze to death,but then they discover that the man, who is wearing only his work-clothes, ando whom they consequently know nothing, can hardly have rozen to death,as the cars rerigerating mechanism has broken down and the pork, as closerscrutiny proves, is spoiled and inedible. Te men who transport the deceased tothe loading bay or the time being conjecture that in his terror at the thought onever getting out o the car and o inevitably reezing to death, he had a stroke.


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HE INNKEEPER along with his wie and his two sisters is busy stu ng blackpuddings into a long sausage skin and hanging them up to dry. By mixing in

barley meal he manages to tie o more than his allotted number o black pud-dings, but nobody is any the wiser about this. Aer the work is over and the lastremnant o the oal, which has lasted all day, has been fushed away, he sendsthe others o to bed. As he is taking in some resh air in the ront doorwayand planning dinner or this Sundays church-day estivities, which he is goingto host on the ront yard o his house, he is approached by a drunkard, whoimparts to him his intention to kill himsel. He is going to hang himsel romthe nearest tree, he says. Te innkeeper laughs at this, shuts the ront door and

retires or the night. Next morning as he is dragging two o the planks or theshooting gallery on to the lawn, he discovers the drunkard rom the previousevening on an apple tree. He really did hang himsel. But since the church-dayestivities must take place there on Sunday, the innkeeper does not run to thepolice to tell them about the incident, rather, he cuts the corpse rom the treeand lets it all on to the grass. He harnesses up a horse and carries the corpse tothe bridge-wagon. With swi resolve, he thereupon drives into the woods siteda hal an hour rom his house. He astens an iron wheel on to the dead body anddrops it into a pond behind the woods. Tis having been done, the church-dayestivities can take place without disruption. Between the shooting gallery andthe ree ood the people have a good time. Nobody is any the sadder or longabout the drunkard rom the neighboring parish, who is indeed looked or allthat day but has also been orgotten soon aerwards.


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A MACHINE that is like a guillotine is cutting o large pieces o a slowly ad-

vancing mass o rubber and letting them all on to a conveyor belt that is ad-vancing one level below and at which are seated emale temporary workerswho have to inspect the pieces and eventually pack them into large cardboardboxes. Te machine has been in operation or only a ew weeks, and the day oits dedication by the actorys management is one that nobody who was presentat that solemn ceremony will ever orget. It had been brought to the actory ina specially constructed train car, and the man who made the dedicatory speechemphasized that this machine represented one o the greatest o all technologi-

cal triumphs to date. Its entrance into the actory was greeted by the strains oan orchestra and the male workers and the engineers welcomed it with doedhats. Its installation took ourteen days and its owners were able to assure them-selves o its e ciency and reliability. It simply has to be lubricated regularly, andnaturally every ourteen days, with special oils. o this end a emale workeris obliged to climb a steel spiral staircase and slowly release the oil through avalve. Te emale worker is thoroughly brieed down to the smallest detail othe operation. In spite o this, the girl loses her ooting in such an unortunateway as to end up decapitated. Her head splats like the pieces o rubber downbelow. Te emale workers who are sitting at the conveyor belt are so appalledthat not one o them can cry out. Tey deal with the head in the usual way theydeal with the pieces o rubber. Te girl at the end o the line picks up the headand packs it into a box.


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HE YOUNG MAN is trying to prove to an old man that he, the young man, isalone. He tells him that he came to the city in order to meet people, but he hasso ar not succeeded in doing so, or even in nding a single human being. Hehas employed various stratagems or winning peoples trust. But he has repelledthem. o be sure, they let him say his piece and even listen to him, but they re-use to understand him. He has brought along presents, or with presents one

may be able to coax people into riendship and devotion. But they do not acceptthe presents and show him the door. For days on end he has pondered why theyhave not wanted him. But he has not gured out why. He has even transormedhimsel in order to win people over; he has been now this person, now that oneand has successully dissembled, but he has not by this means won over a singlehuman being. He remonstrates with the old man so vehemently that he sud-denly eels ashamed. He takes a step back and suddenly remarks that nothing ishappening in the old man. In the old man there is nothing that would be o anyyield to him. Now the young man runs to his room and hides under the covers.


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HE SAR PUPIL, whose lie is more methodical than those o grownups,dreams that he cannot solve an arithmetical problem and that moreover its so-lution has so ar not been ound, as his teacher peremptorily insists. Te teachertakes him to task during class and threatens to inorm his parents o the inci-dent. His schoolmates are brimming over with Schadenreude and push the

star pupil, who is a physical weakling, into a canal out o which he extricateshimsel only with the utmost eort. Te next day he does not dare to enter theschool and remains standing in its ront doorway or ten minutes aer the starto the school day. He does an about-ace and plays truant. He runs around ina park and there is discovered by the school porter, who reports the incidentto the administration. Now the star pupil awakens rom his dream. He rushessweating and hal-naked into his parents bedroom. But they sound him sodeeply and by such means that he does not tell them what his dream was about.ime and again he reuses to talk about it.

BEINGS OF SUPERIOR SRENGH order him to read a longish paragraphin a book, a paragraph that he cannot understand because he has not come to


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terms with what the paragraph says. And even though they keep telling himthat the content o the paragraph is simple and that or that reason he mustunderstand it, he has no idea where to begin with the matter treated o thereinTereupon they send him to another room, where he has to answer variousquestions, which he does without making a uss; or the questions are posed in

such a way that even he could have addressed them to the questioners. Eventu-ally, however, the last question comes, and even though he goes to great painsto answer it, it is impossible or him to do so. Te beings o superior strengthaccord him the period between the eleventh and the thirteenth hour, then theyconclude that the question must be regarded as unanswered. o the end o solv-ing his problem, they send him to another foor. Tey mentioned to him a doornumber or which he is now searching. He searches or hours on end, and whenhe collapses rom sheer atigue, he starts searching again, because or him there

is no other choice but to search or the door number. Eventually he aints. Hecomes to, continues his search or the door number. By now he is on the thirty-ourth foor, and he has still not ound the door number. Te corridors are longAt a not-very determinate point they peter out in darkness. So it takes him daysto reach the sixty-h foor. But even on the seventieth and on the seventy-hfoor he does not nd the door number, even though the higher he climbs thelikelihood o his nding the door number is constantly increasing. Every doormay supply the sought-aer number. He casts o his clothes in order to movemore swily orward. He works out a easible method o taking in two or eventhree door numbers at a glance. Te thought that he might be under the unin-terrupted infuence o drugs gives him unexpected powers between the ninety-ninth and one-hundred-tenth foors. On the hundred-tenth foor he collapses.But a voice that claims that it is that o a human being tells him that there areonly our more foors in this building. And so he struggles to his eet and coversthe remaining distance. Once he has drawn level with the last door number, he

believes that the number that the beings o superior strength mentioned to himsimply does not exist. In reality he has orgotten it. Out o ear that the beingso superior strength will think him mad, he remains on the top foor and hidesbehind a wastebasket. Tere he is discovered only months later.


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HE CHANCERY CLERK is appealing to the authority o a male voice that heheard on the near side o the bridge when he was about to go home. Tis voice,he says, called upon him to commit the statutorily criminal act. Tis voicebecame so orcible that I was at its mercy. But perhaps you do not know, gentle-men, how it is when one is dominated by such a voice. Tese voices catch one

completely unawares. He describes his route home in all its particulars. Yes,he says to himsel, I must still tell about this and this too, and I am not allowedto orget the most trifing detail. One sees in his ace the enormous eort thatremembering entails or him. People like him, members o the lower civil ser-vice, appear in court every day, and it is the very precision o their inormationthat bores their listeners. Te clerk says that he never wanted his lie at all, butultimately once you have yielded to it and it has yielded to you, you cant justturn around and destroy it, simply demolish it. As a child he was always at a

disadvantage. Naturally he tried through exceptional attentiveness to win theriendship o his teachers, but over time these eorts turned out to be pointless.He pitched up at a bureau and grew old. He got married because his contempo-raries o the same grade had married, and lost his wie through the negligenceo a motorist. He describes how he tried to tear the briecase away rom the oldman. I believe, he says, that at the time it was important or me to take thebriecase and run away; I had absolutely no intention o doing anything more.I never had any such intention. None, he said. But the man reused to beconvinced o this. He cried out. He did nothing but cry out. And even thoughI could then have run away, I stayed put. Is that not su cient proo o my inno-cence? It was as though I had suddenly become a constituent part o this man.I told the man why I did not intend to run away, but he did not listen. YourHonors, what I am saying is true. It is all true! And even i it were a lie, it wouldbe true. Moreover, gentlemen, he says, I happen by nature to be a good man,perhaps less a good man than an irreproachable one. I ask you please to bear

that in mind. Te court has no sympathy or him and even less or some malevoice conabulated, as they believe, by the accused himsel. Te court sentenceshim to twenty years in prison. o the maximum term, because, o course, thecrime in question was a robbery.


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HE CHIMNEY-SWEEP, who has been living in the village or orty years, butthroughout this period has remained an outsider and whom none o the arm-ers, nor even a single one o the villagers, takes seriously, because he has notacquired the tiniest parcel o o cially registered land, is on his way home roman inn at which a bender has taken place. He is so drunk that he has lost hisway and is walking in a direction directly opposite to that o his lodging. At thesite o the milk-table, on which in the early morning the armers set the milk-cans or the dairy-van, he slips out o his coat and casts it o. A couple o steps

arther on he makes a discovery that stops him in his tracks. He nds, in themiddle o the road, a man who is undoubtedly dead. Te chimney-sweep doesnot notice this and stoops down towards him. He addresses him as though thedead man, a armer who has had a stroke on his way home, is his best riend,and he kisses the dead man and says that he is glad to have ound him, that nowhe is no longer araid, until now he was araid. Nobody wants me, he saysTe man lying on the ground is well-disposed to him. He alone. Actually thechimney-sweep knows the dead man. He says his name. He reels around him acouple o times, then he drags him so close to the edge o the road that the deadman rolls into the brook. He is now completely screwed into the snow. He willlie down next to him, he says, and sleep with him. He does this very thing. Helies down next to him and presses his warm body against the already rozen-sti other one. He alls asleep immediately.


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HE CALE-DROVER on his way to . ancies that he is in a position to buyup all the beeves in the province. He suddenly sees how the other cattle-droversare driving cattle rom all points o the compass, and at its center he sits downand starts buying. He sits on a three-legged stool. By and by the cattle-ownerseven come to sell him their livestock in person. Tey no longer treat him likea completely ordinary cattle-drover, as they always have done until nowtheyeven invite him to their elegant houses. He has rented a large space so that hecan house the cattle on the spot. As well as the armhands who have to eed the

cattle, to milk the cows. Eventually nobody comes to him with a bee anymore,because he is now in possession o all the beeves in the province. Tere is not asingle cow le in a single barn, everybody says. Tis proves that he is the rich-est person in the province. Suddenly the densely packed cattle grow restless,and they recognize in the drover the being responsible or the terrible situationin which they nd themselves. By and by the eeding armhands are no longerable to penetrate the penned-up drove, which is unmissably huge, and the cattleget hungry and revolt and band together. At the moment at which two o thedistended cow bellies are crushing to a pulp the already insensible drover, heagain sees beore him the town o ., which he must get to, and to the rump othe bee in ront o him, which is plodding along the torrid country highwaytowards the town, he delivers a thump that causes the bee to emit a pain-dead-ening noise.


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HE OBACCONIS is gazing out o her kiosk on to the square, which is sited

between the canal and the cemetery wall, and in which twice a day large crowdso workers in gray smocks band together and wait or buses. It is six o clock inthe evening, and as void o people as the square is right now, it will be as chock-ull, as suocatingly gray in six or seven minutes. Te food o workers will dis-gorge itsel and inundate the square. Amid the gray mass the kiosk will jut outlike an island. Te young people will be the rst ones, the old people the lastIn the course o thirteen years the picture in her stereoscope has not changed.She takes a pack o tobacco down rom the storage rack and shoves it under

the shel. Ten she cradles her round, porierous ace in her elbows and looksacross at the large tree that juts upwards into the sky without enabling her tosee that it does. Her round breasts are held back by the abric o her blouse, onehas the eeling that they are bound to ooze out at any moment. In this soundlessattitude she awaits the arrival o her lover. Like everybody else he is employedat the actory. He is about twenty years older, even atter, even more porierous.While contemplating his image, which she beholds steaming in the square as ithrough a bank o og, she is seized by a t o nausea. For a while she contem-plates everything even more intensively without stirring. But then suddenly,in contravention o the rules, she lowers the roller blind, pulls the cash drawerout o the register, circumspectly places it in her shopping bag, and leaves thekiosk. She fies across the bridge and thence runs through the alleyways. Teoul stench o the workers, who behind her back are now streaming out o everyaperture, makes her gag on the nausea welling up in her throat.


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HE SCHOOL PRINCIPAL summons the teacher into his presence and ac-cuses him o having abused one o his pupils. Te principal does not knowwhat he should say, but the teachers transer to another village is inevitable.But probably he will even have to give up his career as a teacher. In any case theprincipal must make a report to the district superintendent o schools and the

whole aair will have much grimmer repercussions even than those just dis-closed. Te teacher makes no attempt whatsoever to explain himsel, he merelyasserts that he has not abused the pupil, that the very idea o committing suchan act, as the principal cannot rerain rom describing it in detail, would neverhave occurred to him. But no matter how the teacher answers back, it is no use.Eective immediately he is suspended rom service, says the principal, and dis-misses him without oering him his hand, as he was always ormerly wont todo. Because the teacher is conscious o no guilt, he thinks that in time he will

publicize his innocence and that he will quite simply treat his suspension as aleave o absence. Tat the rumor will never even spread beyond the school. Buthe is mistaken. Te rumor spreads like wildre, and even the city newspaperreports on it. Te paper maintains that a man like the teacher ought to be putbehind bars. Tat no punishment could be too severe or him. Tat young peo-ple, and above all children, must be protected rom him. Because the teacherhas recently married, the aair is doubly unpleasant or him. His wie does notbelieve him and leaves him when she hears o the accusation. Only a ew daysaer his suspension the teacher receives a subpoena rom the district court.Nobody knows what he is up to in the days preceding the trial, in any case, heno longer shows his ace in public. Meanwhile nobody is any longer unamil-iar with his story. His landlady insists that he move out and gives him back hischeck or the present months rent. A day beore the trial his body is ound in ariver that is on the verge o fooding, seventeen kilometers rom the town wherehe lived. He most certainly did not, as it turns out, commit suicide, but rather

had the misortune o alling into the river and drowning. Now the pupil comesorward and says that the whole story is a lie, that he made it up in order to geteven with the young teacher.


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HE DICAOR has selected a shoeshine man out o a pool o over a hundredapplicants. He entrusts him with no other duty than shining his shoes. Tis

suits the simple man rom the countryside, and he swily increases in impor-tance and over the years the physical dissimilarity between him and his supe-riorand he is subordinate only to the dictatordwindles to a hairs breadth.Perhaps this is partially owing to the act that the shoeshine man eats the sameood as the dictator does. Soon he has acquired the same at nose and, aer hehas lost his hair, the same bald pate. A pair o puy lips appear, and when hegrins he displays his teeth. Everybody, even the cabinet ministers and the dicta-tors most intimate condants, is araid o the shoeshine man. In the evening he

crosses his booted legs and perorms on a musical instrument. He writes longletters to his amily, who spread his ame throughout the countryside. Whenyou are the dictators shoeshine man, they say, you are closer to the dictatorthan anybody else. Te shoeshine man is quite literally closer to the dictatorthan anybody else; or he always has to sit in ront o the doors to his chamber,and even to sleep there. He is not allowed under any circumstances to leavehis post. One night, though, when he eels himsel strong enough, he entersthe room without warning, awakens the dictator, and strikes him down withhis st, rendering him stone dead. Swily the shoeshine man gets out o hisclothes, slips them on to the dead dictator, and throws himsel into the dicta-tors uniorm. Standing beore the dictators looking-glass he remarks that hereally does look just like the dictator. Without a moments hesitation, he dashesoutside through the doors and cries out that his shoeshine man has suddenlyattacked him. Tat in sel- deense he has struck him down and killed him. Tatthe shoeshine man should be taken away and his survivors notied.


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ON HE GROUNDS OF HE MANOR HOUSE there is taking place an im-

portant christening ceremony that may saely be described as a celebration. Telanded gentry, timber-merchants, and common people rom all the surround-ing countryside have come together there. Over the orest reworks explode,wracking the landscape with a harmless thunderstorm o several mintues dura-tion. Bursts o light rend asunder the contours o the orest. Enormous quanti-ties o champagne and wine, brandy and French cognac, are transported to thespot by early aernoon. A che who is hersel a baroness has cooked and laidout a dinner o hot weather-riendly ingredients and sliced up a mountain o

white bread. An orchestra has set up in the park that stretches rom the statelyresidence down to the riverbank. I they are indeed the same band o musi-cians whom one invariably meets with on such occasions, the spectacle thatthey are capable o staging cannot but delight anybody who should happen tocontemplate it rom a birds-eye view. Te celebration, which began at aroundseven oclock in the evening, and to which a magician and a poet have contrib-uted their mutually distinctive shares, culminates at around eleven-thirty withthe appearance o the young mother, who along with her husband has spentthe whole o the evening so ar at the neighbors estate. Te christening, whichduring its perormance is described as the most successul in the entire region,ends at around our in the morning. At this point o time the young mother re-marks that her newborn son is lying asphyxiated under a damask blanket. Techilds nurse takes the blame.


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HE SACRISAN is disclosing himsel in ront o the altar, in the choir-stalls.Each time he lights the candles, he sees his own thin gure sandwiched be-

tween the pillars. He runs towards it. Te moment he reaches it, the imagevanishes. Aer mass it is the same. Te people are gone, he extinguishes thecandles, and he sees himsel walking through the rows o pews. Tis gure, hisown sel, makes him so anxious that he collapses at the oot o the altar. But henever talks about this experience. Not once to his wie, who has been bedriddenor years, does he so much as drop a hint about it. And yet he cannot completelyconceal it. Everybody notices that something has changed. Tey perceive thathe is getting even thinner, and during card games he makes mistakes that no-

body makes. In the aernoons, he locks himsel away and pores over the oldnewspapers that rom time to time the resident priest leaves or him in the ves-tibule. His wie encounters him only at mealtimes, but she is like all wives; shedoes not draw his attention to his a iction, she tries, whether she knows it ornot, to avoid reminding him o it. On Easter Sunday he receives a blow on thehead rom this gure, whom he ever more clearly recognizes as himsel, andtumbles to the foor. Even beore the rst members o the congregation have ar-rived, he manages to stand up. On the crown o his head there is a warm blood-stain. He is obliged to bandage his head. Te priest asks him what happened tohim, and he replies: I ell down. He lost his ooting, he says. A ew days aerEaster some members o the congregation nd him dead with his head splitopen. o this day nobody knows who killed him; or nobody harbors so muchas the aintest suspicion o his neighbor or o himsel.


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HE OVERSEER OF HE LADY LANDOWNERS ESAE is accused by hermistress o having stolen no ewer than orty eggs. She denies the accusationand says that she has stolen not a single egg. Tat she had no need whatsoeverto steal even one egg. Tat she buys her eggs in town. She wonders, she says,

how the landowner could ever have been so base, so despicable, as to suspecther, to accuse her. She says that she has worked or her or twenty years and hasalways been obliged to work very hard. Tat in all these twenty years noth-ing untoward has ever happened. And that now she, her mistress, suddenlysuspects her o having stolen eggs rom her. At night by way o getting evenwith the landowner the overseer decapitates all the fowers on the grounds othe estate.


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A PAIR OF PEOPLE are obliged to dig a hole and are being watched over asthey dig by two soldiers with one machine gun. Te pair hail rom a amily witha amous name, a act that is o no signicance to the two uniormed men, whoare ollowing their every movement with unremitting attention. It is our inthe morning and cold. Te orest casts a large, arm-shaped shadow across thehole, which is swily getting bigger, because both the soldiers are impatient.

Te entire scene takes place in silence. Only the shovels and the clods o earththat roll o the heap are audible. When the hole is big enough, the people, whohave dug it, are obliged to station themselves at its edge with their backs to theorest. Tey are shot down by the machine gun and all ace-rst into the hole.Shortly aerwards an o cer appears with a group o six soldiers. Te two menwho shot the civilians down into the hole are now, like their victims, compelledto station themselves at the edge o the hole and elled. Shortly aerwards thesun rises, the slain are shoveled in, and the setting is completely void o humanpresence.


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HE CUSOMS OFFICER is, on account o his tininess, made un o by thechildren o the town. Tey shout terms o abuse at him, sitting up in the trees,

they pelt him with chestnuts so that he oen writhes in pain on his plank-bed. He is o a philanthropic temperament. I he had longer legs and a broadertorso, he would be popular with everybody. For all that, he has been keepingmore and more to himsel and spending his ree time either with comrades oralone in the garden o the custom-house. Since a certain point o time, he hasbeen hatching some extraordinary idea and keeping it a secret, because, as hetells himsel, one ought to keep ones most brilliant fashes o insight to onesel.He has set up an army, not an army that is compelled to serve him, but an en-

emy army. It is composed o the trees that line the avenue leading to the littlecustom-house on the bridge, o willow-columns, o ern-ormations, o snakes-tongue-units. It is not easy or him to expose himsel every day, unobserved, tosuch a mighty enemy host. But it is precisely this strategy, which costs him thebetter part o his energy, that he requires, no other will do. He talks about it inhis dreams, but the other customs o cers have no idea what it is about. Teynotice that he requires them less than he used to. He has completely given uphis visits to the town. He is now only ever seen in the avenue, amid the willows,amid the erns, amid the snakes tongues. In their midst he comports himsellike Alexander, like Napoleon. In the evening he eats a great deal and gets at.One day the customs o cer loses his nerve out o sheer excitement, and heraises his revolver and wildly shoots down one tree on the avenue aer anotheruntil he runs out o bullets. As all this has taken place in ull view o the othercustoms o cers, they take the weapon away rom him and lock him in the cot-tage. Late that night he is hauled o by two men in military overcoats.


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HE SURVIVOR NOES: towards the end o the war there are drilled into themountains o both cities tunnels into which people stream because they arethreatened with annihilation. Only because they go into the tunnels do theyescape with their lives. At rst they do not dare to venture into the light o day.

Only hesitantly do they let those whom they regard as weak and worthless stepoutside the gates, eventually they also let the children out, and in the aernoonthey all silently abandon the tunnels, in which many o them have asphyxiatedbecause they had too little oxygen. Tey voluntarily haul out the dead and hur-riedly bury them in ront o the exits. But now that the war is at an end, some-thing happens that nobody can comprehend: they do not ll in the tunnels,but rather, in conormity with established habit, go into them. Every day at thesame hour. As long as they live, they will seek out the tunnels.


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HE END

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Thomas Bernhard - Ereignisse (Occurrences)

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