ISO
PARTISAN REVIEW
sky where a dark lint of clouds was formed by the evil summer wind,
the horses' steps and the muffled creaking of the carriage behind were
in tone with the silent advance of the rubber-tipped crutches. Some
four hundred yards ahead of them the priory, toward which
all
the
dark lines of the valley converged, had finally appeared, its beauty
massive and austere. Walter Berger, leaning on his left crutch, had
extended his right arm:
"There it is." And modestly: "A barn. Just a barn."
What would the chateau be! my father thought.
"It's a barn...." Walter had repeated, scorning any reply. And
they had finally gotten into the carriage.
Walter looked at the barely illuminated portraits and the rows
of books in the shadows, as though expecting this cloister of the mind
to lift my father to a state of grace. The light struck
his
face from
below, accentuating its quality of unfinished sculpture. He had taken
off his glasses and the low light that threw its contours into relief
created an illusion of his dead brother's face. This was the man that
my grandfather, after a rupture of fifteen years, had wanted as
his
executor-and it was to send them to him that he had bought the
journals that spoke of my father's activity in Turkey.
"I loved Dietrich," Walter said as though bestowing an honor,
but not without emotion.
There was in
his
voice, as in his regard, something absent-as
if he had been afraid of committing himself by what he said, or as
if
his
remark had not quite distracted him from some meditation.
However, he inquired:
"He had poison ready, I was told, in case the verona! should
not ... be effective!"
"There was a little vial of strychnine on the bedside table. But
the revolver was under the bolster too, uncocked."
Standing every week for so many years, at the same hour, at
the same place outside the church. . ..
Walter nearly began a sentence, stopped, finally decided :
"Would you be able to illuminate me-I say only: illuminate
me-as to the reasons that might have ... impelled Dietrich to this
. . . accident?"
"No. I should even say: on the contrary. Two days before
his
death we dined together; we happened by chance to talk about Na–
poleon. He asked me, rather ironically:
'If
you could choose a life,
whose would you choose?' 'And you?' He thought about it quite a
while and all of a sudden said, gravely: 'Well you know, really,
