by Robert Musil
AGATHE
1
THE FORGOTTEN SISTER
WHEN ULRICH arrived in —— toward evening of the same day and came out of the train station, a wide, shallow square lay before him that spilled out into streets at both ends and exerted an almost painful effect on his memory, as happens with a landscape one has seen many times and forgotten again.
“I assure you, incomes are down by twenty percent and life is twenty percent more expensive: that amounts to forty percent!” “And I can assure you, a six-day bicycle race creates bonds of friendship between nations!” These voices were coming out of his ear; coupé voices.* Then he heard someone say, very distinctly: “Nevertheless, opera means more to me than anything!” “I suppose it’s a sport for you.” “No, it’s a passion!” He tilted his head as if to shake water out of his ear: the train had been crowded, the journey long. Drops of the general conversation that had seeped into him during the trip were now draining away. Ulrich had waited for the cheerfulness and bustle of arrival to pour out into the stillness of the square through the station gate, as if through the mouth of a duct, until its flow was reduced to small trickles; now he stood in the suction chamber of silence that follows upon noise. And along with the auditory disquiet induced by the sudden shift, he noticed an unfamiliar calm before his eyes. Everything visible was more pronounced than usual, and as he looked across the square, the cross-shaped frames of perfectly ordinary windows stood as black against the pale sheen of glass in the evening light as if they were the crosses of Golgotha. And all things in motion detached themselves from the stillness of the street in a way that does not happen in very large cities. Whether drifting or stagnant, everything here evidently had room to enlarge its importance. He detected this with some curiosity of reacquaintance as he regarded the large provincial town where he had spent some brief but not very pleasant parts of his life. It had, as he very well knew, a quality of rootless dislocation, like a colonial outpost. An ancient core of German burgher stock, transplanted centuries ago to Slavic soil, had worn away so thoroughly that, aside from a few churches and family names, hardly anything was left to remind one of them. Nor was there any evidence, except for a handsome palace that had survived, of the town’s having become the old seat of the provincial diet later on. But in the era of absolute government, this past had been covered over by a sprawling vice-regency, with its district headquarters, schools and universities, barracks, courthouses, prisons, episcopal residence, assembly rooms, and theater, along with their attendant staffs and the merchants and craftsmen they attracted, until eventually an industry of immigrant entrepreneurs filled the suburbs with one factory after another, exerting a stronger influence on the fate of this piece of earth in recent generations than anything else had. This town had a history, and it also had a face, but the eyes did not go with the mouth or the chin with the hair, and over everything lay the traces of a life roiled by much change and motion, but inwardly empty. It could be that under special personal circumstances this might favor some great departures from the ordinary.
To sum it up in a phrase that is no less imperfect: Ulrich felt a “spiritual vacuity” in which one could lose oneself so completely as to awaken an inclination toward unbridled fancies. He had in his pocket his father’s peculiar telegram, which was imprinted on his memory. “Take note herewith of my recent demise” was the message conveyed to him on the old man’s behalf—or was it not, rather, a direct communication? For such it appeared to be, given the signature underneath: “Your father.” His Excellency the High Privy Councilor was not given to levity at serious moments. The eccentric construction of the message, therefore, was devilishly logical, for it was he himself who was notifying his son when, in expectation of his end, he wrote or dictated those words, thereby declaring the resulting document valid as of the instant after he had drawn his last breath; indeed there was probably no way to state the facts more correctly, and yet this operation, in which the present sought to dominate a future it would no longer be able to experience, exuded an eerie sepulchral whiff of ragefully moldering willpower.
This mode of behavior, which Ulrich for some reason associated with the almost meticulously off-balance taste of small towns, made him think, not without some misgiving, of his sister, who had married in the provinces and whom he was supposed to meet in a few minutes. His thoughts had already turned to her during the trip, for he knew little about her. From time to time obligatory announcements of family events had reached him through his father’s letters; for example, “Your sister, Agathe, has married,” followed by additional information, as Ulrich had not been able to come home for the wedding. Then, about a year later, he had received notice of the young husband’s death; and three years after that, if he was not mistaken, word came that “Your sister, Agathe, I am pleased to say, has decided to marry again.” At this second wedding, five years ago, Ulrich had been present and had seen his sister for several days; but all he remembered was a ceaselessly whirling giant Ferris wheel of white lace, tulle, and linen. And he remembered the groom, whom he hadn’t liked. Agathe must have been twenty-two years old then, and he twenty-seven, for he had just received his doctorate; therefore she must be twenty-seven now. But he had not seen her since that time, nor had he exchanged letters with her. He only remembered that later his father had often written: “Lamentably, all does not seem to be going as well in your sister’s marriage as it might, though her husband is an upstanding man.” Or, once, “Your sister’s husband’s latest successes have given me much pleasure.” Such, more or less, were his father’s remarks, to which, regrettably, Ulrich had never paid any attention; but once, as he now remembered quite clearly, there had been, in connection with a disapproving comment on his sister’s childlessness, an expression of hope that she was nevertheless contented in her marriage, even though her character would not allow her to admit it. “I wonder what she looks like now,” he thought. It had been one of the peculiarities of the old gentleman, who showed such solicitude in keeping them informed about each other, that he had sent them away from home at a tender age, right after their mother’s death, to be educated in separate schools. Ulrich, who tended to misbehave, was often not allowed to go home on holidays, so that since their childhood, when they had loved each other very much, he had hardly seen his sister again, with the exception of one long visit when she was ten.
It seemed natural to Ulrich that under these circumstances they hadn’t exchanged letters. What would they have had to say to each other? At the time of Agathe’s first marriage, he was, as he now remembered, a lieutenant and confined to a hospital with a bullet wound he had received in a duel. God, what an ass he had been! In fact, strictly speaking, several asses at once! For he realized now that the memory of the dueling lieutenant didn’t belong there; he had been on the verge of becoming an engineer and had something “important” to do that kept him from the family celebration. Later he learned that his sister had loved her husband very much: he no longer remembered who had told him that, but what does “loved him very much” really mean? It’s a manner of speaking. She had married again, and Ulrich could not stand the second husband; that was the one thing he was sure of! He disliked him not only for the personal impression he had of him but for some books by him which he had read, and it was certainly possible that his subsequent forgetting of his sister may have been not entirely unintentional. It was not good of him to have done that; but he had to admit that even during the past year, when he had thought of so many things, he hadn’t remembered her once, not even when he learned of his father’s death. However, at the train station he had asked the old manservant who picked him up whether his brother-in-law had arrived yet, and was happy to hear that Professor Hagauer was not expected until the funeral. And though it would be no more than two or three days till then, it seemed to Ulrich a limitless retreat, which he would now spend with his sister as though they were the most intimate confidants in the world. It would have been useless to ask himself why he felt as he did.
Probably the thought of the “unknown sister” was one of those roomy abstractions in which many feelings that are not quite at home anywhere find a place.
And while he was occupied with such questions, Ulrich had slowly walked into the town, which opened up before him, at once strange and familiar. He had arranged for a car to follow behind him with his luggage, to which he had added quite a number of books at the last minute, and with the old servant, who, already belonging to his childhood memories, had come to combine the functions of caretaker, butler, and beadle in a manner that over the years had brought imprecision to their inner boundaries. Probably it was this humble, taciturn man to whom Ulrich’s father had dictated the telegram announcing his death, and Ulrich’s feet led him homeward in a kind of pleasant wonderment, as his now alert senses took in with curiosity the fresh impressions with which every growing city surprises a visitor who has not seen it in a long time. At a certain point, which they remembered before he did, Ulrich’s feet departed with him from the main street, and after a short time he found himself in a narrow lane formed by two garden walls. Diagonally across from him stood the house, barely three stories high, the central part of it taller than the wings, the old stable off to the side, and, still pressed against the garden wall, the little house where the butler lived with his wife; it looked as if, for all his dependence on them, the aged master had pushed them as far away from himself as he could while at the same time enclosing them within his walls. Absorbed in his thoughts, Ulrich had arrived at the closed entrance to the garden, raised the big ring-shaped knocker that hung there in place of a bell, and let it drop against the low, age-blackened door, before his attendant came running and corrected his error. They had to walk back around the wall to the front entrance, where the car had stopped, and only then, at the moment when he saw the shuttered facade of the house before him, did Ulrich take note of the fact that his sister had not come to meet him at the station. The butler informed him that Madam had complained of a migraine and retired after lunch, giving instructions to wake her when he, the Herr Doktor, arrived. Did his sister have migraines often, Ulrich went on to ask, and immediately regretted his awkwardness, which revealed his estrangement to the aged confidant of his father’s household and touched on family relations it was better to pass over in silence. “Madam gave orders for tea to be served in half an hour,” the old man replied with the politely blank face of a well-trained servant, giving discreet assurance that he understood nothing that went beyond his duty.
Inadvertently Ulrich glanced up at the windows, supposing that Agathe might be standing there observing his arrival. He wondered if he would find her agreeable, and realized with discomfort that his stay would be quite unpleasant if he did not like her. That she neither came to the train nor to the door of the house, however, seemed to him a confidence-inspiring sign, and it showed a certain kinship of feeling, for strictly speaking it would have been as unwarranted for her to rush to meet him as it would be for him to dash to his father’s coffin immediately upon arrival. He sent word that he would be ready in half an hour, and went to get himself in order. The room that had been prepared for him was in the garret-like third floor of the main building and had been his room when he was a child; it was now curiously supplemented by several pieces of furniture brought together haphazardly to serve the convenience of an adult. “There’s probably no way of arranging it differently as long as the body is still in the house,” Ulrich thought, settling in among the ruins of his childhood, which was not easy, but there was also a vaguely pleasant feeling that rose like mist from this floor. He decided to change his clothes, and as he began to do so it occurred to him to put on a pajama-like leisure suit he had come across while unpacking. “She should have at least come down to say hello when I got here!” he thought, and there was a touch of rebuke in the carelessness with which he chose this garment, even though he continued to feel that his sister must have a reason for acting as she did and that he could like her for it, which in turn lent his change of clothes something of the courtesy that lies in the unforced expression of ease with another person.
It was a wide, soft, woolen pajama, almost a kind of Pierrot costume, checkered black and gray and gathered at the waist, wrists, and ankles; he liked it for its comfort, a quality that felt pleasant as he came down the stairs after the sleepless night and the long journey. But when he entered the room where his sister was waiting for him, he was more than a little surprised by his outfit, for by a secret directive of chance he found himself face-to-face with a tall, blond Pierrot swathed in delicate gray-and-rust stripes and diamonds, who at first glance looked quite like himself.
“I didn’t know we were twins!” Agathe said, her face lighting up with amusement.
*A train compartment in Austria and Germany was called a “coupé.” The literal meaning of the French word—“cut”—adds a punning reference to the cutoff phrases still lingering in Ulrich’s memory.
2
TRUST
THEY DID not greet each other with a kiss but merely stood facing each other amicably, then shifted positions, and Ulrich was able to look at his sister more closely. They were of matching height. Agathe’s hair was lighter than his, but was of the same fragrant dryness as Ulrich’s skin, the only feature he loved about his own body. Her chest did not lose itself in breasts, but was slim and sturdy, and her limbs seemed to have the long, slender spindle shape that combines natural fitness with beauty.
“I hope your migraine is gone,” Ulrich said. “There’s no sign of it that I can see.”
“I had no migraine at all, it was just simpler to say that,” Agathe explained. “I couldn’t very well send you a more intricate message through the butler: I was just lazy. I took a nap. I’ve got into the habit here of sleeping whenever I have a free minute. I’m lazy in general: out of desperation, I think. And when I heard you were coming, I said to myself: Let’s hope this will be the last time I’ll be sleepy, and then I indulged myself in a kind of sleep cure by taking one more nap. After careful consideration, for the butler’s purposes, I called the whole thing a migraine.”
“You don’t go in for sports?”
“Some tennis. But I detest sports.”
As she spoke, Ulrich regarded her face again. He didn’t find it very similar to his own; but maybe he was mistaken, there could be a resemblance like that between a pastel and a woodcut, where the difference of medium could distract the viewer from noticing an accordance of lines and planes. There was something about this face that unsettled him. After a while he realized what it was: he couldn’t make out its expression. It lacked whatever it is that allows one to draw the usual conclusions about a person. It was not an empty face by any means, but nothing in it was emphasized or summed up as a readable character trait.
“How come you dressed the same way?” Ulrich asked.
“I didn’t give it much thought,” she said. “I thought it would be nice.”
“It’s very nice!” Ulrich said, laughing. “But it’s quite a conjuring trick on the part of chance. And Father’s death doesn’t seem to have greatly upset you either.”
Agathe rose slowly on her toes and then just as slowly sank to her heels.
“Is your husband here too?” her brother asked, just to say something.
“Professor Hagauer won’t be coming until the funeral.” She seemed to relish the opportunity to pronounce the name so formally and place it at a distance from herself as something alien.
Ulrich did not know how to respond. “Yes, so I’ve heard,” he said.
They looked at each other again, and then, as moral custom suggests one ought, they went into the little room where the body lay.
This room had been kept artificially dark for the whole day; it was drenched in black. Within it, flowers and lighted candles glowed and exuded odors. The two Pierrots stood tall and erect before the dead man and seemed to be watching him.
“I’m not going back to Hagauer!” Agathe said, just to have it said. One could
almost think the dead man was supposed to hear it too.
There he lay on his pedestal, in accordance with his own instructions: in full evening dress, the shroud drawn halfway up to his chest, the stiff shirt showing above it, hands folded without a crucifix, decorations affixed. Small, hard orbital arches, sunken cheeks and lips. Sewn inside a corpse’s ghastly, eyeless skin, which is still a part of the entity and yet already extraneous; life’s traveling bag. Ulrich felt shaken at the root of existence, where there is neither feeling nor thought; but nowhere else. If he had had to put it into words, he would only have been able to say that a tiresome relationship without love had come to an end. Just as a bad marriage corrupts people who cannot get free of it, so does every onerous bond reckoned to last through eternity when the mortal substance shrivels away beneath it.
“I would have liked you to come sooner,” Agathe continued, “but Papa would not allow it. He made all the arrangements for his death himself. I think he would have been embarrassed to die with you looking on. I’ve been living here for two weeks now. It was dreadful.”
“Did he love you at least?” Ulrich asked.
“Everything he wanted done he told his old servant to take care of, and from then on he gave the impression of a person who has nothing to do and has lost his reason for living. But every fifteen minutes or so he would lift his head to see if I was in the room. That was during the first few days. Afterward it was only every half hour, then every hour, and on that horrible last day it only happened two or three times. And all those days he never said a word to me, even when I asked him a question.”