The Loser by Thomas Bernhard

Author:Thomas Bernhard
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: Vintage Books
Published: 0100-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

I said I would probably spend only one night at the inn, I’d suddenly felt the need to visit Traich one more time and thus spend the night in her inn, did she recall the name Glenn Gould, I asked her, yes, she answered, the world-famous one. He made it past fifty like Wertheimer, I said, the piano virtuoso, the best in the whole world, who was once in Traich twenty-eight years ago, I said, which she probably didn’t recall but she immediately contradicted this by saying she distinctly recalled this American. But this Glenn Gould didn’t kill himself, I said, he had a stroke, fell over dead at the piano, I said, I was conscious of the helplessness with which I said it, but I was less embarrassed before the innkeeper than before myself, I heard myself say fell over dead again as the innkeeper went to the open window to confirm that the stench from the paper factory was fouling the air, as it always did in windy weather, she said. Wertheimer killed himself, I said, this Glenn Gould didn’t, he died a natural death, I’ve never said anything so stilted in my life, I thought. Perhaps Wertheimer killed himself because this Glenn Gould had died. A stroke was a wonderful way to go, said the innkeeper, everybody wants to have a stroke, a fatal one. A sudden end. I’m going to Traich immediately, I said, did the innkeeper know whether someone was in Traich, who was guarding the house now. She didn’t know, but surely the woodsmen were in Traich. In her opinion nothing had changed in Traich since Wertheimer’s death. Wertheimer’s sister, who without doubt had inherited Traich, hadn’t even put in an appearance here, nor had any other heir, as she said. Whether I cared to eat something that evening in her inn, she asked, I said I couldn’t say now what I would want this evening, naturally I would eat one of her sausage and onion salads, I can’t get them anywhere else, I thought, but I didn’t say that, I only thought it. Business was as usual, the workers in the paper factory kept it going, they all came in the evening, hardly ever for lunch, that’s the way it always was. If anybody, it was the beer-truck drivers and woodsmen who came to the restaurant for some liverwurst, she said. But she had enough to do. That she was once married to a paper worker, I thought, whom she lived with for three years until he fell into one of the dreaded paper mills and was ground to death by this paper mill, and that she never married afterward. My husband has been dead for nine years, she said spontaneously, and sat down on the bench by the window. Marriage was out of the question now, she said, it’s better to be alone. But at first you risk everything for it, to get married, to find a husband; she didn’t say, and

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