...of feigned ignorance

...The fact that I had not heard from Joana for so long, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, had for some time struck me as suspicious, and I had often wondered lately whether Joana, a woman who had been deeply wounded, who had been cheated, deserted and scorned, might one day commit suicide. But in the Graben I had pretended to the Auersbergers that I knew nothing of Joana's suicide, feigning utter astonishment and shock, even though by eleven o'clock in the Graben I was no longer astonished or shocked by the tragedy, having heard about it at seven o'clock that morning; after walking up and down the Graben and Karntnerstrasse several times I found I was able to endure Joana's suicide, that I was able to bear it, in the bracing air of the Graben. Actually it would have been better had I not appeared utterly astonished by the Auersbergers' announcement of Joana's suicide; I should have told them that I had known for some time and that I even knew how she had killed herself. I ought to have told them the precise circumstances, I thought, and so deprived them of their triumph, which they were actually reveling in and savoring to the full, as I noted at the time while we were standing in front of Knizes'; for by pretending to know nothing whatever about Joana's death, by acting as though I had been stunned and shattered and dumbfounded by the terrible news, I had allowed the Auersebergers the thrill of being the sudden bearers of ill tidings, which naturally had not been my intention, though this was what I managed to achieve by my ineptitude, by claiming to know nothing whatever about Joana's suicide at the time of our meeting. All the time I was standing there with the Auersbergers I feigned ignorance, while knowing more or less everything about Joana's suicide...

[Woodcutters, Bernhard, T.]