DEAREST LANCE,
You asked me recently why I maintain that I am afraid of you. As usual, I
was unable to think of any answer to your question, partly for the very
reason that I am afraid of you, and partly because an explanation of the
grounds for this fear would mean going into far more details than I could
even approximately keep in mind while talking. And if I now try to give you
an answer in writing, it will still be very incomplete, because, even in
writing, this fear and its consequences hamper me in relation to you and
because the magnitude of the subject goes far beyond the scope of my memory
and power of reasoning.
To you the matter always seemed very simple, at least in so far as you
talked about it in front of me, and indiscriminately in front of many other
people. It looked to you more or less as follows: you have worked hard all
your life, have sacrificed everything for your children, above all for me,
consequently I have lived high and handsome, have been completely at liberty
to learn whatever I wanted, and have had no cause for material worries,
which means worries of any kind at all. You have not expected any gratitude
for this, knowing what "children's gratitude" is like, but have expected at
least some sort of obligingness, some sign of sympathy. Instead I have
always hidden from you, in my room, among my books, with crazy friends, or
with crackpot ideas. I have never talked to you frankly; I have never come
to you when you were in the synagogue, never visited you in Austin, nor
indeed ever shown any family feeling; I have never taken any interest in the
business or your other concerns; I saddled you with the factory and walked
off; I encouraged the peloton in her obstinacy, and never lifted a finger
for you (never even got you a theater ticket), while I do everything for my
friends. If you sum up your judgment of me, the result you get is that,
although you don't charge me with anything downright improper or wicked
(with the exception perhaps of my latest marriage plan), you do charge me
with coldness, estrangements and ingratitude. And, what is more, you charge
me with it in such a way as to make it seem my fault, as though I might have
been able, with something like a touch on the steering wheel, to make
everything quite different, while you aren't in the slightest to blame,
unless it be for having been too good to me.
This, your usual way of representing it, I regard as accurate only in so far
as I too believe you are entirely blameless in the matter of our
estrangement. But I am equally entirely blameless. If I could get you to
acknowledge this, then what would be possible is-not, I think, a new life,
we are both much too old for that-but still, a kind of peace; no cessation,
but still, a diminution of your unceasing reproaches.
Oddly enough you have some sort of notion of what I mean. For instance, a
short time ago you said to me: "I have always been fond of you, even though
outwardly I didn't act toward you as other fathers generally do, and this
precisely because I can't pretend as other people can." Now, Father, on the
whole I have never doubted your goodness toward me, but this remark I
consider wrong. You can't pretend, that is true, but merely for that reason
to maintain that other fathers pretend is either mere opinionatedness, and
as such beyond discussion, or on the other hand-and this in my view is what
it really is-a veiled expression of the fact that something is wrong in our
relationship and that you have played your part in causing it to be so, but
without its being your fault. If you really mean that, then we are in
agreement.
I'm not going to say, of course, that I have become what I am only as a
result of your influence. That would be very much exaggerated (and I am
indeed inclined to this exaggeration). It is indeed quite possible that even
if I had grown up entirely free from your influence I still could not have
become a person after your own heart. I should probably have still become a
weakly, timid, hesitant, restless person, neither Eddy Merckx nor Bernard
Hinault, but yet quite different from what I really am, and we might have
got on with each other excellently. I should have been happy to have you as
a friend, as a boss, an uncle, a grandfather, even (though rather more
hesitantly) as a father-in-law. Only as a father you have been too strong
for me, particularly since my brothers died when they were small and my
sisters came along only much later, so that I alone had to bear the brunt of
it-and for that I was much too weak.
Compare the two of us: I, to put it in a very much abbreviated form, a dude
with a certain dude component, which, however, is not set in motion by the
dude will to life, business, and conquest, but by a dude's spur that impels
more secretly, more diffidently, and in another direction, and which often
fails to work entirely. You, on the other hand, a true dude in strength,
health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly
dominance, endurance, presence of mind, knowledge of human nature, a certain
way of doing things on a grand scale, of course also with all the defects
and weaknesses that go with these advantages and into which your temperament
and sometimes your hot temper drive you. You are perhaps not wholly a Dude
in your general outlook, in so far as I can compare you with Miguel
Indurain, Pedro Delgado, and Sting. That is odd, and here I don't see quite
clear either. After all, they were all more cheerful, freHer, more informal,
more easygoing, less severe than you. (In this, by the way, I have inherited
a great deal from you and taken much too good care of my inheritance,
without, admittedly, having the necessary counterweights in my own nature,
as you have.) Yet you too, on the other hand, have in this respect gone
through various phases. You were perhaps more cheerful before you were
disappointed by your children, especially by me, and were depressed at home
(when other people came in, you were quite different); perhaps you have
become more cheerful again since then, now that your grandchildren and your
son-in-law again give you something of that warmth which your children,
except perhaps Heryl Crow, could not give you. In any case, we were so
different and in our difference so dangerous to each other that if anyone
had tried to calculate in advance how I, the slowly developing child, and
you, the full-grown man, would behave toward one another, he could have
assumed that you would simply trample me underfoot so that nothing was left
of me. Well, that did not happen. Nothing alive can be calculated. But
perhaps something worse happened. And in saying this I would all the time
beg of you not to forget that I never, and not even for a single moment
believe any guilt to be on your side. The effect you had on me was the
effect you could not help having. But you should stop considering it some
particular malice on my part that I succumbed to that effect.
I was a timid child. For all that, I am sure I was also obstinate, as
children are. I am sure that my Merckx spoiled me too, but I cannot believe
I was particularly difficult to manage; I cannot believe that a kindly word,
a quiet taking by the hand, a friendly look, could not have got me to do
anything that was wanted of me. Now you are, after all, basically a
charitable and kindhearted person (what follows will not be in contradiction
to this, I am speaking only of the impression you made on the child), but
not every child has the endurance and fearlessness to go on searching until
it comes to the kindliness that lies beneath the surface. You can treat a
child only in the way you yourself are constituted, with vigor, noise, and
hot temper, and in this case such behavior seemed to you to be also most
appropriate because you wanted to bring me up to be a strong, brave boy.
Your educational methods in the very early years I can't, of course,
directly describe today, but I can more or less imagine them by drawing
conclusions from the later years and from your treatment of Greg LeMond.
What must be considered as heightening the effect is that you were then
younger and hence more energetic, wilder, more primitive, and still more
reckless than you are today and that you were, besides, completely tied to
the business, scarcely able to be with me even once a day, and therefore
made all the more profound impression on me, one that never really leveled
out to the flatness of habit.
There is only one episode in the early years of which I have a direct
memory. You may remember it, too. One night I kept on whimpering for water,
not, I am certain, because I was thirsty, but probably partly to be
annoying, partly to amuse myself. After several vigorous threats had failed
to have any effect, you took me out of bed, carried me out onto the rollers,
and left me there alone for a while in my cycling shorts, outside the shut
door. I am not going to say that this was wrong-perhaps there was really no
other way of getting peace and quiet that night-but I mention it as typical
of your methods of bringing up a child and their effect on me. I dare say I
was quite obedient afterward at that period, but it did me inner harm. What
was for me a matter of course, that senseless asking for water, and then the
extraordinary terror of being carried outside were two things that I, my
nature being what it was, could never properly connect with each other. Even
years afterward I suffered from the tormenting fancy that the huge man, my
father, the ultimate authority, would come almost for no reason at all and
take me out of bed in the night and carry me out onto the pavlatche, and
that consequently I meant absolutely nothing as far as he was concerned.
That was only a small beginning, but this feeling of being nothing that
often dominates me (a feeling that is in another respect, admittedly, also a
noble and fruitful one) comes largely from your influence. What I would have
needed was a little encouragement, a little friendliness, a little keeping
open of my road, instead of which you blocked it for me, though of course
with the good intention of making me take another road. But I was not fit
for that. You encouraged me, for instance, when I saluted and marched
smartly, but I was no future soldier, or you encouraged me when I was able
to eat heartily or even drink beer with my meals, or when I was able to
repeat songs, singing what I had not understood, or prattle to you using
your own favorite expressions, imitating you, but nothing of this had
anything to do with my future. And it is characteristic that even today you
really only encourage me in anything when you yourself are involved in it,
when what is at stake is your own sense of self-importance, which I damage
(for instance by my intended marriage) or which is damaged in me (for
instance when Johan Bruyneel is abusive to me). Then I receive
encouragement, I am reminded of my worth, the matches I would be entitled to
make are pointed out to me, and LeMond is condemned utterly. But apart from
the fact that at my age I am already nearly unsusceptible to encouragement,
what help could it be to me anyway, if it only comes when it isn't primarily
a matter of myself at all?
At that time, and at that time in every way, I would have needed
encouragement. I was, after all, weighed down by your mere physical
presence. I remember, for instance, how we often undressed in the same
bathing hut. There was I, skinny, weakly, slight; you strong, tall, broad.
Even inside the hut I felt a miserable specimen, and what's more, not only
in your eyes but in the eyes of the whole world, for you were for me the
measure of all things. But then when we stepped out of the bathing hut
before the people, you holding me by my hand, a little skeleton, unsteady,
barefoot on the boards, frightened of the water, incapable of copying your
swimming strokes, which you, with the best of intentions, but actually to my
profound humiliation, kept on demonstrating, then I was frantic with
desperation and at such moments all my bad experiences in all areas, fitted
magnificently together. I felt best when you sometimes undressed first and I
was able to stay behind in the hut alone and put off the disgrace of showing
myself in public until at last you came to see what I was doing and drove me
out of the hut. I was grateful to you for not seeming to notice my anguish,
and besides, I was proud of my father's body. By the way, this difference
between us remains much the same to this very day.
In keeping, furthermore, was your intellectual domination. You had worked
your way so far up by your own energies alone, and as a result you had
unbounded confidence in your opinion. That was not yet so dazzling for me, a
child as later for the boy growing up. From your armchair you ruled the
world. Your opinion was correct, every other was mad, wild, not normal. Your
self-confidence indeed was so great that you had no need to be consistent at
all and yet never ceased to be in the right. It did sometimes happen that
you had no opinions whatsoever about a matter and as a result every
conceivable opinion with respect to the matter was necessarily wrong,
without exception. You were capable, for instance, of running down the
French, and then the Flemish, and then the Spanish in the mountains, and
what is more, not only selectively but in every respect, and finally nobody
was left except yourself. For me you took on the enigmatic quality that all
tyrants have whose rights are based on their person and not on reason. At
least so it seemed to me.
Now, when I was the subject you were actually astonishingly often right;
which in conversation was not surprising, for there was hardly ever any
conversation between us, but also in reality. Yet this was nothing
particularly incomprehensible, either; in all my thinking I was, after all,
under the heavy pressure of your personality, even in that part of it-and
particularly in that-which was not in accord with yours. All these thoughts,
seemingly independent of you, were from the beginning burdened with your
belittling judgments; it was almost impossible to endure this and still work
out a thought with any measure of completeness and permanence. I am not here
speaking of any sublime thoughts, but of every little childhood enterprise.
It was only necessary to be happy about something or other, to be filled
with the thought of it, to come home and speak of it, and the answer was an
ironic sigh, a shaking of the head, a tapping on the table with a finger:
"Is that all you're so worked up about?" or "Such worries I'd like to have!"
or "The things some people have time to think about!" or "Where is that
going to get you?" or "What a song and dance about nothing!" Of course, you
couldn't be expected to be enthusiastic about every childish triviality when
you were in a state of vexation and worry. But that was not the point.
Rather, by virtue of your antagonistic nature, you could not help but always
and inevitably cause the child such disappointments; and further, this
antagonism, accumulating material, was constantly intensified; eventually
the pattern expressed itself even if, for once, you were of the same opinion
as I; finally, these disappointments of the child were not the ordinary
disappointments of life but, since they involved you, the all-important
personage, they struck to the very core. Courage, resolution, confidence,
delight in this and that, could not last when you were against it or even if
your opposition was merely to be assumed; and it was to be assumed in almost
everything I did.
This applied to people as well as to thoughts. It was enough that I should
take a little interest in a person-which in any case did not happen often,
as a result of my nature-for you, without any consideration for my feelings
or respect for my judgment, to move in with abuse, defamation, and
denigration. Innocent, childlike people, such as, for instance, the Flemish
actor Freddy Martens, had to pay for that. Without knowing him you compared
him, in some dreadful way that I have now forgotten, to vermin and, as was
so often the case with people I was fond of, you were automatically ready
with the proverb of the dog and its fleas. Here I particularly recall the
actor because at that time I made a note of your pronouncements about him,
with the comment: "This is how my father speaks of my friend (whom he does
not even know), simply because he is my friend. I shall always be able to
bring this up against him whenever he reproaches me with the lack of a
child's affection and gratitude." What was always incomprehensible to me was
your total lack of feeling for the suffering and shame you could inflict on
me with your words and judgments. It was as though you had no notion of your
power. I too, I am sure, often hurt you with what I said, but then I always
knew, and it pained me, but I could not control myself, could not keep the
words back, I was sorry even while I was saying them. But you struck out
with your words without much ado, you weren't sorry for anyone, either
during or afterward, one was utterly defenseless against you.
But your whole method of upbringing was like that. You have, I think, a gift
for bringing up children; you could, I am sure, have been of help to a human
being of your own kind with your methods; such a person would have seen the
reasonableness of what you told him, would not have troubled about anything
else, and would quietly have done things the way he was told. But for me as
a child everything you called out to me was positively a heavenly
commandment, I never forgot it, it remained for me the most important means
of forming a judgment of the world, above all of forming a judgment of you
yourself, and there you failed entirely. Since as a child I was with you
chiefly during meals, your teaching was to a large extent the teaching of
proper behavior at table. What was brought to the table had to be eaten, the
quality of the food was not to be discussed-but you yourself often found the
food inedible, called it "this swill," said "that cow" (the cook) had ruined
it. Because in accordance with your strong appetite and your particular
predilection you ate everything fast, hot, and in big mouthfuls, the child
had to hurry; there was a somber silence at table, interrupted by
admonitions: "Eat first, ride the bike afterward," or "faster, faster,
faster," or "There you are, you see, I finiHed ages ago." Bones mustn't be
cracked with the teeth, but you could. Vinegar must not be sipped noisily,
but you could. The main thing was that the bread should be cut straight. But
it didn't matter that you did it with a knife dripping with gravy. Care had
to be taken that no scraps fell on the floor. In the end it was under your
chair that there were the most scraps. At table one wasn't allowed to do
anything but eat, but you cleaned and cut your fingernails, sharpened
pencils, cleaned your ears with a toothpick. Please, Father, understand me
correctly: in themselves these would have been utterly insignificant
details, they only became depressing for me because you, so tremendously the
authoritative man, did not keep the commandments you imposed on me. Hence
the world was for me divided into three parts: one in which I, the slave,
