Extract: The Loft by Marlen Haushofer

Pruschen, September 6^th

I don’t like the gamekeeper. He looks at me as if he is wondering whether for Hubert’s family’s sake he oughtn’t to shoot me dead. He’s used to giving sick animals the coup de grâce. I’m hiding these papers in the mattress because it’s unlikely anyone will look for them there. Not that it would matter much if the gamekeeper came across them; I doubt he could even read my handwriting.

He wouldn’t want to read them either, I’m not interesting in any way, not half as interesting as a cripple would be. You can live with a cripple because you can talk to a cripple. If I were repulsively ugly, for instance, or had a hump or a huge red birthmark, then people could be sorry for me or make fun of me; but they can’t do that because I can’t hear their pity, or their mockery either. I must seem weird to them, and my company hard to endure.

But I still wouldn’t like the gamekeeper, even if I was a proper able-bodied person again. In his eyes – those eyes that have no colour to them at all – I can see nothing except calculation. He is greedy and treats his animals rough. I can tell that because I can see it: I’m deaf all right but I’m not blind. He’s rough to them, not out of anger but because he despises them and they depend on him. I’m on a lower level still than they are, but he is paid to take me in and, up to a certain point, to take care of me. He probably finds me just about as useful as his cow, the only difference being that the cow turns her head towards him when he shouts at her. The fact that he daren’t quite treat me like the cow infuriates him. Sometimes he seems to be frightened of me – maybe on account of some superstition or other. There’s no telling what goes on inside that head. If he weren’t so avid for the money he would never have taken me in. I don’t think he feels any gratitude now towards my father-in-law, to whom he owes so much. The old man is dead and of no use to him any more. Maybe he wants to impress the village with his loyalty to his one-time patron. But again, maybe not. The people here have known him since he was born, and they can see through his actions as clearly as he through theirs. Gamekeepers are often unpopular: they are still looked on as lackey-figures who don’t quite belong in the village and whom nobody can really trust.

September 12^th

My room is small, with tiny windows, and it’s rather dark because the house is set right against the slope of the mountain. Anyone could easily climb up to me by shinning up a tree outside, but the windows are barred, giving the room a prison-like aspect. The gamekeeper’s house is somewhat brighter because the windows look out onto the valley side. He gets the morning sun, and I would get the midday sun if the mountain didn’t lie between me and the light. There are far too many mountains here. I’ve never liked mountains much.

My father-in-law used to sleep in this room when he was here for the hunting season. I don’t think he was that keen on hunting really, he just wanted to get away from his wife. The furniture belonged to him, and the gamekeeper has inherited it. A rustic bedstead with a painted headboard – God’s eye looking out at me from it, whether I’m asleep or awake. Then there’s a painted chest, a small writing table and an old brown leather armchair that you can curl up in and almost disappear. In the corner stands a green-tiled stove, and close by it a little kitchen with a built-in range, a wobbly cupboard and a simple stripped-pine table. At the far end of the kitchen lies the bathroom: my father-in-law had it specially put in to save himself the bother of going downstairs. I don’t use the range; I cook on an electric ring. The gamekeeper doesn’t approve of this: he glares in rage at such extravagance, but he’s paid so much money that he daren’t criticise openly. The gamekeeper isn’t young any more but he isn’t old either; he still carries out all his duties. He’s away a lot during the day, but he has to be home mornings and evenings in order to milk his cow. Either he never had a wife or she died; I tend to think the latter, that he is a widower.

The door of my bedroom leads onto a wooden balcony, from which a flight of stairs takes you down to ground level. This makes me very happy – as happy as I can be under the circumstances. In the mornings I sometimes sit on this balcony in search of a little sunlight. I sit on a very hard chair with a heart carved in its backrest. When I stand up again my head bumps against a pair of antlers – the veranda is hung all over with bleached bones.

The sun comes latish, never before nine o’clock: it has to climb over the mountains opposite first. In front of the house runs a little trout stream called the Prush; at present it has very little water because it’s so long since it last rained. On the far bank of the Prush the mountain already begins to soar. I sit here as if in a cage. Behind the mountains lie little valleys, or so I imagine, and then more and more mountains.

My grandfather had a big, spacious house; round it lay pastures that the cows used to graze on – proper big cows, nothing like the poor creature that belongs to the gamekeeper. All day long you could see the sun, and you felt free there, and safe. If my grandfather were still alive he would have had me stay with him, and I wouldn’t be alone: it wouldn’t have bothered him that we couldn’t talk to one another, we never talked much anyway. But he is dead and cannot help me. Nobody can help me. I don’t give much thought to Hubert or little Ferdinand – it’s not a good idea to think about them much.

I sit huddled up in the leather armchair, using my knees as a writing table. I’ve felt tired ever since I got here. But I don’t want to write the place off too soon: maybe the silence and fresh air will be good for me. And it’s not as if anywhere else in the world wouldn’t be just as silent. So maybe it’s the air, then, that’s making me so tired: I reckon I’ll have to get accustomed to it.