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  • The Last of His Line Fiction
  • Fleur Jaeggy (bio)
    Translated by Ann Goldstein (bio)

Silent and morose the servants sat in the kitchen. The firstborn son of a Graubünden family wanders through the house followed by his dogs, who are quivering with exhaustion. Their whines, filaments of stray dreams, sound like a feminine voice, hoarse and grieving. With utter submissiveness they await execution. Veiled gazes. Yellowed eye sockets turned toward their master, Caspar, an old bachelor.

His line ends with him and began in the portraits on the wall of a long corridor with the features of Ursulina. Bride, mother, and widow. Three theological virtues. In the expression on her face, faith, hope, and charity were absent. Her descendants, beside her on the wall, as if they had not had a real existence, live in the portraits. The last generation are children. Anton at seven and Stephan at nine. They are standing, with the gentlest expression of apathy. They are Caspar's brothers. Having posed for the portraits, they seem to say: "We are no more." And more or less that was what happened. It was a winter day. The white landscape showed in the narrow windows. The house was constructed like a fortress, isolated from the rest of the town, and isolated in thought from the rest of the world. The lakes were frozen. Caspar was skating. He crossed the lake again and again. He hurtled violently over the sheet of ice. Did he want to run after [End Page 122] them? Immortality did not seem entirely convincing to him. He was eleven. In the wood, the brittle, glassy snow.

In the house, the silence is brutal. Caspar displayed a haughty, reserved coldness. He did not consider tears. He had tried to weep, he wanted to see grief visible on his face. No one is aware of his grief, not even himself. He was frightened. They had played together and suddenly they turned pale, as if under a spell. In brief, Anton and Stephan died. Caspar is full of questions. Indifferent to the answers. Death, he thought, makes us prisoners. And, like one condemned to forced thought, he found nothing better than to sit in the kitchen with the servants and question them. The bread was fragrant. The hearth blazing. They rise to their feet. They had never done so. All together cried out that they were grieved. They sit down heavily. They listen to Caspar's voice. They rested their hands, fingers interlaced, on the table, like pieces of heavy wood. Every word came slowly from their mouths. Eyes serene. Foreheads furrowed by the absence of joy. They were proud and seemed outcasts. "We don't know," they answered finally. From their tone it seemed that they were alluding to a threat; or simply to this, that not knowing is fulfillment. Again the child asks: "Perhaps you have had the courage to search for those who are no longer here." They answered in chorus. They do not go in search of miracles, nor of votive lambs.

At the end of the corridor the royal horns of the stag. He is the guardian saint of the portraits. He has no eyes, but bones. It is he who possesses majesty; it was Ursulina who followed him, with her binoculars, during the hunt. The two seem to look at each other still. One is without eyes, and the other has painted irises. It has been noted. The young deer of Rhäzüns circled the house and entered to look at their king. Timid and curious, they raised their eyes to their progenitor. The young deer may not know what the bones of a murdered creature are, but they recognized the trophy.

Ursulina didn't attend the hunt dinner; she disdains meat. They had assigned her the place at the head of the table. She was already a widow. And it isn't right for a widow to mix with men and game. She remained in her room, sitting beside the fireplace. The panting, sweating dogs at her feet. They had a foul odor.

After speaking with the servants, Caspar turned to the Divinity. Not knowing what it was, except...

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