When he said nothing, probably simply sat there with his mouth hanging open, she took on a look of solicitude remarkable in someone so young, inflected possibly by the joy of knowing something an adult did not, and about a matter so serious, and she patted his arm and said: “There, there.” And then: “It’s a shock, I know, it was a shock for everyone, that’s what Father said, a terrible, terrible shock! We were all so sad, Father and I cried and cried, we even cried more than anyone else, especially more than Margaretha who I actually don’t even think cried at all, Wilhelmina cried probably the second most, but Father and I definitely cried the most most, Father because Heinrich was his only son and I because I was Heinrich’s favorite sister, everyone knows Heinrich loved me more than Wilhelmina and Margaretha, he tormented me more, yes, he used to tickle me the way that hurts more than it tickles, you know how instead of stroking your skin people sometimes poke into your bones? He thought I tickled him too gently but what he called proper tickling I called poking into my bones! He used to tickle me way past the point where I was laughing to the point where I was screaming, but even Margaretha admits that he obviously tormented me more because he loved me more. Heinrich used to say, Wilhelmina and Margaretha prefer people, you and I prefer animals, those two are people people, we are animal people, they prefer to go to balls and interact with people, we prefer to go to the menagerie and interact with animals, they’re perfectly happy to have the same conversations over and over and over again with the same small circle of people, we’re perfectly happy to have the same conversations over and over and over again with the same small circle of animals, they’d always rather dance with a duke than feed a donkey, we would always rather feed a donkey than dance with a duke, wouldn’t we, Ina?, and I would say, Much rather, much much much rather!” Katharina cried, the astronomer recalled. “He would say, We prefer cows to count palatines, and I would say, Much prefer!” Then she said: “But we don’t have to be too sad, at least not too too too sad, Father says, because Heinrich is happier in heaven, a lot happier, he wasn’t all that happy here, I mean here on Earth, Margaretha says he was always sighing and even though she doesn’t mean that nicely it’s true, he was always sighing, even while petting the animals he was sighing, even while petting his favorite animal, this big old hog of his, he would sigh. Father brought in more and more exotic animals to try to cheer him up, first a zebra, then a camel, then a lion, then an orangutan, but Heinrich never favored these exotic animals, he always favored that hog, but even while petting that hog of his, actually especially while petting that hog of his, he would sigh. He was always feeding that hog slices of melon from a bucket, flinging his arms around its big head, and sighing. I sigh, he told me once, precisely because he’s my favorite creature, we’re always saddest when we are with, not apart from, our favorite creatures, he said every single poet from Homer till now has got this completely backward, our loneliest loneliness actually occurs when we’re right beside our most beloved loved ones, we want to be able to do more to our favorite creatures than pet them, this we somehow feel is not enough, for certain casts of mind at least it is not enough, for some casts of mind it may be enough but for other casts of mind it is not enough, yet no matter what cast of mind we have we can do nothing but pet these beloved creatures, we can do no more than this, this is all we can do, he said the mind wants more from other beings than it can ever obtain from them, here I’m speaking mainly but not exclusively of beasts, in other words of the human-beast relationship, that’s what Heinrich said, I remember exactly,” Katharina said, according to the astronomer, Leibniz wrote to the Philosophical Transactions. “And I said: But you do do more than pet him, you also feed him melon, and he said: I want more than that, too, more than melon—I want to do more than just feed him slices of melon! I want more than this exchange of melon for affection, this wretched melon-affection transaction! But when I asked him what he wanted to do to his hog that he could not do to it, he got frustrated and said: If it could be put into words, Ina, then I could do it. Anything that can be put into words one is capable of doing to anyone. But what of what cannot be said? he said. Margaretha says he was just fundamentally an unhappy person, or a fundamentally unhappy person, I forget which, she’s always saying stuff like that even now that he’s gone, I think she says it to make me upset, she kind of likes it when I cry, she’ll say, Heinrich was never happy, and I’ll say, Well, he sometimes was, and then she’ll say, No, he never was, never! And I’ll try to run off before she can see me cry but obviously I’m usually already crying a little bit, and she’ll yell, Oh, great, that makes sense, go cry in the Music-Making Room simply because you can’t admit that Heinrich was a fundamentally unhappy person, incapable of joy! Wilhelmina says she says that stuff not to make me upset but just because Margaretha is also fundamentally an unhappy person, or a fundamentally unhappy person, and the favorite topic of conversation among the fundamentally unhappy is the fundamentally unhappy, it brings them a little bit of happiness to pick apart other people’s unhappiness, that’s their one little joy in life and they’re actually extremely extremely good at it, that’s what Wilhelmina says. She says people like Margaretha can never sense their own unhappiness but they’re brilliant at sensing other people’s unhappiness, the unhappy she says are like bloodhounds of unhappiness, always sniffing it out, tracking it down, tearing it apart in their huge jaws, yapping with pleasure the entire time, sound like anyone we know? That’s their one tiny little joy in life so you know what, fine, let them have it! That’s what Wilhelmina says, anyhow,” said Katharina. She lowered her voice: “She says if Margaretha weren’t so upset about the wedding she would be in heaven there, everyone’s unhappy at a wedding, even the happy couple!”