Robert Musil
GRIGIA
There is a time in life when everything perceptibly slows
down, as though one's life were hesitating to go on or trying to change
its course. It may be that at this time one is more liable to disaster.
Homo had an ailing little son. After this illness had dragged on
for a year, without being dangerous, yet also without improving, the
doctor prescribed a long stay at a spa; but Homo could not bring
himself to accompany his wife and child. It seemed to him it would
mean being separated too long from himself, from his books, his plans
and his life. He felt his reluctance to be sheer selfishness, but perhaps
it
was rather more a sort of self-dissolution, for he had never before
been apart from his wife for even as much as a whole day; he had
loved her very much and still did love her very much, but through
the child's coming this love had become frangible, like a stone that
water has seeped into, gradually disintegrating it. Homo was very
astonished by this new quality his life had acquired, this frangibility,
for to the best of his knowledge and belief nothing of the love itself
had ever been lost, and during all the time occupied with preparations
for their departure he could not imagine how he was to spend the
approaching summer alone. He simply felt intense repugnance at the
thought of spas and mountain resorts.
So he remained alone at home, and on the second day he re–
ceived a letter inviting him to join a company that was about to
reopen the old Venetian gold mines in the Val Fersena. The letter
was from a certain Mozart Amadeo Hoffingott, whom he had met
while traveling some years previously and with whom he had, during
those few days, struck up a friendship.
Copyright
©
1965 by Martin Seeker
&
Warburg Limited.
