The Endless Construction

Fourteen years after he had passed away the house was to be set alight. I had cycled there with a heaviness in my chest, to see how the fire brigade would bring it all to an end. The wind howled as if the house were its flute, and the doors slammed back and forth while the men made their preparations.

A small spark from a match was all it took. The tar on the walls caught easily and soon great flames rose from the building. People said the blaze could be seen all the way down to the lake, reminding them a little of the northern lights.

I wept as if I had been amputated, for it was a piece of my own life turning to ash. It was here it had begun one early June morning when I was on the run after my father had struck me across the bridge of my nose. Only the hammer blows could be heard that hour as I crossed the field, and it was as if he called to me, and he was not even surprised to receive a visitor, though he had settled as far from others as he could. He said of course I could help, and there was room for more.

My task was to search the district for scrap timber, which I gathered on a cart and brought to the building site. Now and then I had to carry planks and raise walls, but mostly I was to listen to his accounts of the need for nurses’ housing when the war would come for us, and of course the eternal tirades about the end of the world. I listened with complete trust, for no one had ever spoken to me as an equal before, and that was surely why I was allowed to remain in his ark.

The building was unlike anything else. The rooms were stacked on top of each other like odd blocks, and at times I was a little afraid some higher addition might topple if I leaned too much against a wall. There was never any plan, instead he let circumstances shape the future. If a plank was too long, which was always the case as he never bought timber, he did not cut it but let it run on into a new room, set out a sofa and let the walls be built later, which made it impossible to rearrange furniture since the doorways were always narrow. There was no end to the house. It always needed a new room, a new staircase, a cableway, an indoor pool, a water-pump propeller, or an outdoor privy system adapted for use indoors.

The second summer he let me live in “the residence”, reached by a swaying suspension bridge from the first tower. Now he no longer wanted my help with lifting and fitting, but required only my head for reading. I had never even attempted a book before, but now he wanted my “young healthy mind” to thresh through Montaigne, Confucius and Schopenhauer, and to summarise what I had learnt for him at the end of each day. He had memorised the names over the years, reflecting on all that had passed him by in his head while his hands were occupied, but now I was to be his extended brain.

The residence was furnished for study, with desk and chair, and a chaise longue for contemplation. All of it things I had only imagined belonged to others, for I was the child of a wholesaler and knew nothing of the humanities, but now I was the only one at hand. So I tried, stumbled my way through the text and told him towards evening of the German philosopher’s words about the illusory and destructive nature of affirming the will, or of the Frenchman on how a person’s true masterpiece is to live rightly.

He showed little interest in what I had to say. I thought perhaps the idea sounded better in thought than in practice, but I persevered and read it all, was given new tomes and read those as well, which I within only a few weeks grew more and more skilled at understanding and reciting. Knowledge had taken root in me, it began to grow and branch, I could add new information to old, and soon I read of my own free will, for my inner self demanded more.

Not until the end of August did he let slip that I could stop talking since he had already read all those books. He was working on the drains and now needed my hands more than my words. I was seized by a sudden fury, which turned into astonishment, and asked: So why have you made me go to all this trouble? Well, who can say? he replied with a fatherly smile.