My Prizes: An Accounting by Thomas Bernhard Read Free Book Online

over owning a car, the first car in my life, and what a car! I congratulated myself on my taste. That I should have asked even one person for expert advice on whether the car was worth something under the hood never crossed my mind. I have a car! I have a white car! I thought. Finally I turned around and went back to the Heller dealership, which was one of the most elegant car dealers in Vienna, and when I came around the corner my car was already standing in front of the door. I collected my papers inside, got into the car, and drove off. In the event I had no difficulty steering the car, although it would incontrovertibly have been easier to steer heavy trucks than this little Triumph Herald. Now of course I drove to the Obkirchergasse and showed the car to my aunt. She was absolutely amazed that such an elegant car could be bought for five thousand marks. On the other hand, five thousand marks was an awful lot of money! Of course I couldn’t rest in peace until I made my first major trip, which took me first to the north across the Danube and then, because I couldn’t get enough, by way of Hollabrunn all the way to Retz. In Retz I’d already used up a lot of gas. I filled up the tank and drove back, itwas a beautiful day. But when I was back and in the vicinity of the Obkirchergasse, I didn’t want to stop and get out and so I now drove east. First I drove through the entire city and then out into the Burgenland. Shortly before Eisenstadt it began to get dark and I thought if I keep driving I’ll be in Hungary in half an hour. I drove back. During the night sleep was not even to be thought of, it was a wonderful feeling to own a car, and an English car what’s more, white, with red leather seats and a wooden dashboard. And all that for
Frost
, I thought. The next day I took my aunt on an outing to Klosterneuburg and on the way we stopped at the cemetery in Grinzing. Two months later, I’d accustomed myself to being a car owner and trips in my Herald were already becoming normal, I drove to Istria and the coast of Lovran where my aunt had already gone to stay several weeks before. We were living as so often before in the Villa Eugenia, a villa of the gentry built in 1880 with splendid broad balconies and a pebbled path that curved gently directly down to the deep blue water. Gagarin had just completed his first space flight, I still remember. My white Herald was parked downstairs next to the gateway, it was no gate, it was a gateway and upstairs on the third floor, as the sole master of three large rooms with six largewindows behind whisper-thin silk curtains that dated from before the war, I wrote
Amras
. When I’d finished
Amras
, I immediately sent it to my editor at Insel. Four or five days after dispatching
Amras
I was already up at three in the morning with a rush of energy, a feeling I had to head out, up and out, for it was a perfectly cloudless, clear, tangy day. Wearing only trousers and gym shoes and a sleeveless shirt, I climbed the rocky slopes of the so-called Monte Maggiore, now named Učka. Halfway up I lay down in the shade and looked at the sea in front of me, far below, crisscrossed by ships. I had never been happier. At midday, when I ran down the mountain again, laughing aloud, exhausted with happiness, I can say I felt once again that I wouldn’t change places with anyone in the world. In the Eugenia there was a telegram waiting for me.
Amras outstanding, everything fine
, was the text. I changed clothes and got into my car and drove into Rijeka, the ancient Croatian-Hungarian port town. I walked all around the little streets and I was quite unbothered by how gray all the people were, unbothered by the pollution in the air from hundreds of cars. I absorbed everything with the utmost intensity, I listened to everything, breathed everything in. Around five in the afternoon I drove back to Eugenia, thecoast road, past the shipyards. I think I sang. Before Opatija, where the great rock face catches