Georg Letham by Ernst Weiß Read Free Book Online Page B

the procreation of offspring as the primary purpose of marriage. I wanted a child very much. But at the same time I was afraid to have one. I feared the responsibility of bringing one more life into this most terrible of all worlds–and this was one reason for marrying my wife, for in view of her age alone it was extremely unlikely that she would be granted another child. She herself did not believe she would be. Nevertheless she was unswerving in her conviction that any marriage between Catholics was an indestructible, objectively existing bond that could not be broken even if love turned to hatred and revulsion.
    She stood firm in her belief (it was possible for her to believe, only I had to be constantly doubting) that my fondness for her would return one day, because after all it had been there once, namely, when I had asked for her hand. One error compounded by another. Why should I explain to her my true motivations in marrying her? I had taken this desperate step only because I could not face living with myself on a permanent basis. For the same reason that so many individuals, and not the most worthless ones in many cases, resort to alcohol, morphine, or cocaine, or take pointless trips, amass idiotic collections. It was only to escape myself that I had courted her.
    I had expected her to provide her share of the “mutual succor.” That I could tell her. But she did not wish “base motives” to shackle me to her.Like so many rich people, she did not understand what money means to one who does not have it. She spoke to me as to a good but unreasonable child. She even went beyond the will that I have mentioned. On her own initiative, she began lengthy negotiations with an insurance agent. One evening she showed me the result. She had just paid the first premium on a mutual insurance contract: upon the demise of one party, the surviving party was to receive a large amount of money. I, if she died before me, and vice versa. What was she trying to do? Did she understand me after all? She was certainly rich enough already. What would she do with even more money after my death? But I needed money, she knew that. I would get it only after her death, but then without fail. Was she trying to test me? Had she caught the morbid desire for experiments from me, like an infection?
    I could only shrug. But she misinterpreted that as proof that her love and her life were more valuable to me than any earthly possessions. And yet even a fraction of that insurance money would have let me leave the city, go to America, break with everything I had done until then, and begin something new and different. For what was my life now? Just whatever the current experiment was, a positive or negative result. And then? When that experiment was over, when it got a thumbs up or a thumbs down, a new hypothesis was next in line, to be confirmed or disconfirmed, the result in turn forming the basis for further work. As idiotic as it sounds, as much as this kind of work seems to resemble the monotonous play of infants, or something even sillier, that really is how it is. This is what countless people do all their lives. The only joy is a flutter of the nerves, a sensation, an artificially evoked and just as artificially gratified arousal. But the “craving for excitement” is never satisfied, only thwarted, and so it goes to the last breath. Let anyone who does notbelieve this read, for example, the reports of the scholars, let him cast his eye upon the numerous scientific journals and weigh the immense, truly colossal volume of this work against its meager content ; let him set the work and the energy expended on it against its useful effect, whether in respect of the advances in what is actually known about reality or in respect of the instrumental capabilities by which needy humanity has been enriched through this activity.
    My wife was so little able to follow me here that she regarded me with compassionate eyes as though I