Excerpt: The Castle: A Novel by Seth Rogoff

February 6 (morning)
Yesterday, toward evening, I returned to the schoolhouse. I searched the teacher’s desk and discovered a notebook. I stayed up late into the night reading it. It contains a detailed record of the teacher’s observations of other villagers, including (and especially) his assistant, Miss Gisa.

Pages full of Miss Gisa, cataloguing everything about her—the cut of her long skirts, the styling of her thick, blond hair, the buttoning (and unbuttoning) of the blouses that seemed to choke her neck, her austere, sharp movements, the pain she inflicted on the students with her favorite tool of punishment, the ruler, the way she stroked the plump schoolhouse cat. Besides the lavish attention paid to Gisa, the teacher has pages on Schwarzer; on Brunswick and his wife; on Barnabas and his parents and his sisters Olga and Amalia; on Lasemann; Gerstäcker; the council chairman; the landlord of the inn by the bridge and his wife, Gardena; on the landlady of the gentlemen’s inn; Frieda; Pepi; and so on. A curious document— full of useless detail, overflowing with spite, pulsing with anger, hate, and envy. Even the schoolchildren are not spared. To the contrary, they get the worst of it. Stupid. Ignorant. Foolish. Little animals. The insults rain down from the teacher’s pen in tight, flawless letters.

Included in this informant’s notebook is a lecture on the castle structure. The following
indication is at the top of page: “To Be Repeated Each Year”:

Students, as you know, you have the honor of living in the territory of Count Westwest. Though you might never see the count, know he is watching over you and is aware of everything you do, even what you think. It is said that the count knows what you dream about, that he has methods of seeing into your mind as you sleep. The count’s total knowledge of his subjects enables him to rule his territory with enlightened perfection. He does this through his officials, who work to carry out his plan. Each official in the count’s system, from the lowest secretary to the highest steward, has a precise function and carries out his function flawlessly, like a well-oiled gear of a clock, never missing a tick, neither behind nor ahead but in perfect rhythm with the world. That you do not perceive the functioning of this mechanism says nothing about its perfection. It indicates only your very lowly station as a village child. No villager can see the whole of the village at one time. Only the count can do this by looking down from his window in the castle turret. From there, he can see all things, the whole domain, the relationship between one entity and another, including the distance—from your perspective infinite—between himself and you. What is unfathomable to you is within reach to him. What is incomprehensible to you is simple to him. It is your fate as children of the village to unburden yourselves by giving up questions about the count or the castle structure you will never be able to answer. Instead, immerse yourselves in love for the count. Look out at the castle above you as you look upon your father and mother—here merged into a single, venerable body of stone. This body is the form of absolute authority. Embrace it with unconditional love, as it embraces you.


Seth Rogoff is the author of five books, most recently The Kirschbaum Lectures


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