Parents and Johannes killed in accident. Caecilia, Amalia, it read. Holding the telegram, I kept a clear head, walked calmly to my study window, and looked down on the Piazza Minerva, where there was not a soul in sight. I had given Gambetti five books that I thought would be useful and necessary to him in the next few weeks, telling him to read them slowly and carefully: Jean Paul’s Siebenkäs, Kafka’s The Trial, Thomas Bernhard’s Amras, Musil’s The Portuguese Woman, and Broch’s Esch or Anarchy. I opened the window so that I could breathe more easily and reflected that I had been right to give Gambetti these five books rather than any others, since he would find them increasingly important in the course of our lessons. I also remembered telling him in passing that next time we would discuss Elective Affinities and not The World as Will and Idea. It was a delight to talk to Gambetti again after the dreary and labored conversations I had had with my family at Wolfsegg, all of them confined to day-to-day concerns of a wholly private and primitive kind.
