Extinction by Thomas Bernhard Page A

to Caecilia, my expensive lifestyle had reduced their standard of living and was responsible for the increasingly alarming depreciation of their inheritance, and so forth. They even went so far as to assert that my only reason for going to college and choosing to study at the most expensive universities in Europe was to keep them as short of money as possible. Why does it have to be London and Oxford, they repeatedly asked, when Innsbruck would do just as well? For as long as I can remember they always referred to me as their big-headed brother who squandered their money, though in fact it was my money, or at most my parents’. Because of my urge to show off I always went around dressed in the most expensive clothes, they said, while they were forced to wear the simplest. You’re to blame for our going around in rags, Amalia once told me. At first they blamed everything on Uncle Georg, and then they blamed me. My brother too had the gall to reproach me for the way I lived and informed me that Wolfsegg could notafford to keep me in such style. These were his very words. I could not believe my ears, but I had not misheard him. For the most part my brother and sisters only echoed my parents’ remarks, which they had to listen to all year round. Whenever I was at Wolfsegg they gave free rein to their malevolent idiocies and did not hold back. They repeatedly said that I led a useless and utterly futile life and tried to persuade my parents to discontinue my monthly allowance or at least radically reduce it, constantly urging them to make
short work
of me and not let themselves be led up the garden path. I happened to hear Caecilia say this one day when she and my mother were having tea in the summerhouse and I happened to turn up earlier than expected. I was continually subjected to their insolence, and for as long as I can remember they were secretly tormented by the thought that I got more than my due and seemed to lead a better and more agreeable life, to which they did not consider me entitled. What is he after all? they would say. Who does he think he is? If I was silent at table it displeased them; if I spoke it displeased them. You never say anything, they would complain, or alternatively, You’re always talking. If I stayed home they said, Why don’t you go out? If I went out they said, Why don’t you stay home? If I wore a light suit I should have been wearing a dark one; if I wore a dark suit I should have been wearing a light one. If I talked to the doctor in the village they would say disapprovingly, He’s always talking to the doctor, about us. If I did not talk to the doctor they would say, He doesn’t even talk to the doctor. If I said I preferred Rome to Paris they at once reacted by saying that I praised Rome only because they hated it. If I said I did not want a dessert they related this to themselves, though when I said it I was not thinking about them at all. Whatever I said, they assumed that it was directed against them. After a while I could no longer stand it at Wolfsegg. If I felt like driving to the lake they would accuse me of everlastingly driving to the lake, which was absurd, for I drove to the lake at most once a year, unlike my brother, who drove there every two or three days, and even more often in summer, but it never occurred to them to criticize him. If I went for a walk in the woods they thought I was crazy, but if my brother went into the woods it was entirely normal. When I
once
ordered a martini at the local hotel they immediately said, He always orders an expensive martini. If I sent them a picture postcardfrom somewhere they immediately said, He’s only sent it to offend us. He can afford to travel to Cannes, Lisbon, Madrid, and Dubrovnik, but we can’t. So I soon stopped sending them postcards. But when the postcards stopped coming they said, He doesn’t send us postcards because he’s too cheap. For a whole five or six days they would be angry with me because I had opened the