Agathe

by Robert Musil

  28

  A MIGHTY COLLOQUY

  At this moment Lindner entered the room, having made up his mind to say just as much as his visitor would; but as soon as they found themselves face-to-face, it all happened differently. Agathe immediately went on the attack with words that to her surprise turned out to be far more ordinary than seemed consonant with the events that had led up to them. “You probably remember my asking you to explain some things to me,” she began. “I am here now. I still have a clear recollection of what you said against my getting a divorce. Maybe I’ve understood it even better since!” They were sitting at a large round table, separated by the entire length of its diameter. By comparison with her last moments by herself, Agathe, at the first moment of this meeting, felt deeply compromised, but then she regained her footing; she had laid out the word “divorce” like a bait, although her curiosity to learn Lindner’s opinion was also sincere.

  And Lindner actually answered at almost the same instant: “I know quite well why you are asking me for this explanation. All your life you have probably heard people whispering in your ear that believing in a suprahuman reality, and obeying commandments that have their origin in this belief, belongs to the Middle Ages. You have learned that such fairy tales have been disposed of by science. But are you certain that this is really the case?”

  Agathe noticed to her surprise that at every third word or so, his lips beneath the sparse beard stiffened and bulged like two assailants. She gave no answer. “Have you thought about it?” Lindner sternly continued. “Do you know the vast number of problems this involves? I see: You don’t know! And yet you dismiss this with a grandiose wave of your hand, and you probably don’t even know that you are merely acting under the control of extraneous forces!”

  He had plunged into danger. It was not clear what whisperers he was thinking of. He felt himself carried away. His speech was a long tunnel drilled through a mountain in order to pounce on an idea, “lies of freethinking men,” that was displaying itself on the other side, shining in boastful self-glory. He meant neither Ulrich nor Hagauer, but he meant both of them, he meant all of them. “And even if you had thought about it,” he exclaimed in a boldly rising voice, “and were convinced of these falsehoods: that the body is nothing but a system of dead corpuscles, the soul an interplay of glands, society a ragbag of mechanical economic laws; and even if that were true, which is far from the case—I would still deny that such thinking knows the truth of life! Because that which calls itself science is not in the least qualified to elucidate by its superficial procedures what lives in a human being as an inner, spiritual certainty. The truth of life is a beginningless knowledge, and the facts of true life are not conveyed by proof: he who lives and suffers has them within himself as the mysterious power of higher claims and as the living exegesis of himself!”

  Lindner stood up. His eyes flashed like two pulpit orators from the eminence provided by his long legs. Looking down at Agathe, he felt powerful. “Why does he talk so much right away?” she thought. “And what does he have against Ulrich? He hardly knows him, yet he’s obviously speaking against him!?”

  Then her feminine experience in the arousal of feelings told her more quickly and certainly than reflection could have that Lindner was only speaking this way because he was ridiculously jealous. She looked up at him with an enchanting smile. The way he stood before her, tall, lissome, and armed, he appeared to her like a belligerent giant grasshopper from a past geological age. “Good heavens,” she thought, “now I’ll say something again that will make him mad and he’ll chase after me again. Where am I? What is this game I’m playing?” It confused her that Lindner made her laugh while particular phrases of his were not at all easy for her to forget—“beginningless knowledge,” for instance, or “living exegesis”—such alien words in these times, but secretly familiar to her, as if she had always used them herself, though she could not remember having so much as heard these expressions before. She thought: “It’s eerie, but he’s already planted some of his words into my heart like children!”

  Lindner noticed that he had made an impression on her, and this satisfaction appeased him slightly. He saw before him a young woman in whose face excitement and feigned indifference, even insolence, seemed to take turns in an untrustworthy fashion; but as he believed himself to be a connoisseur of the female soul, he did not allow himself to be deterred by this, knowing that the temptation to pride and vanity is extraordinarily great for beautiful women. He was generally unable to contemplate a beautiful face without an admixture of pity. According to his conviction, people distinguished in this way were almost always martyrs of their glossy exterior, which seduced them to conceit and its skulking train of coldheartedness and superficiality. Still, it can also happen that a soul dwells behind a beautiful countenance, and how often then has insecurity not hidden behind arrogance, and despair beneath frivolity! Often these are even particularly noble people who merely lack the support of a true and unshakable conviction. And now Lindner was, little by little, once again completely overcome by the thought that it is the successful man’s duty to put himself in the frame of mind of a person disadvantaged by neglect; and as he thought this, he became aware that the form of Agathe’s face and body possessed that lovely calm that is the very seal of all that is great and noble; and in fact her knee in the draped folds of its covering appeared to him like that of a Niobe.* He was astonished that this particular simile, which to his knowledge could not be fitting or applicable at all, should urge itself upon him, but apparently the nobility of his moral pain had of its own accord associated itself with the dubious idea of many children, for he felt no less attracted than alarmed. He now noticed her bosom, which was breathing in small, rapid waves. He was aroused, and if his knowledge of the world had not come to his aid again, he might have even felt at a loss: but at this extremely awkward moment it whispered to him that this bosom must enshrine something unspoken, a secret that, given everything that he knew, might well have something to do with the divorce from his colleague Hagauer. This saved him from embarrassing foolishness by instantly offering him the alternative of wishing for the revelation of the secret instead of the uncovering of the breast. He wished this with all his strength, and the link between sin and the chivalric slaying of the dragon of sin hovered before him in glowing colors, much as they glowed in the stained-glass picture in his study.

  Agathe interrupted this rumination with a question she addressed to him in a moderate, even restrained tone after she had regained her composure. “You claimed that I am acting under the influence of insinuations, that I am externally controlled. What did you mean by that?”

  Disconcerted, Lindner raised his eyes, which had been resting on her heart, to meet her gaze. Something happened that had never happened to him before: he could no longer remember what he had last said. He had seen in this young woman a victim of the spirit that was confounding the age, and his victorious joy had occluded the memory of his own words.

  Agathe repeated her question with a small alteration: “I confided to you that I want a divorce from Professor Hagauer, and you replied that I am acting under external compulsion. It might be useful to me to learn what you mean by that. I repeat, none of the customary reasons quite applies; even my aversion has not been insurmountable by the standards of the world. I have just become convinced that aversion to ordinary life should not be surmounted, but must instead be increased beyond all measure!”

  “By whom?”

  “Just that is the question you’re supposed to help me solve.” Again she looked at him with a gentle smile that was, so to speak, a horribly low-cut décolleté exposing an inner bosom covered with nothing but black silk lace.

  Involuntarily Lindner protected his eyes from the sight with a movement of his hand feigning an adjustment of his glasses. The truth was that courage played the same timid role in his worldview as it did in the feelings he harbored for Agathe. He was one of those people who have recognized that the victor
y of humility is facilitated if humility first knocks out arrogance with a fist, and his learned nature made him fear no arrogance more bitterly than that of independent science, which reproaches faith with being unscientific. Had someone told him that the saints with their empty, beseeching raised hands were obsolete and that to update them for the modern age they would have to be depicted with sabers, pistols, or even newer instruments in their fists, that might have aroused his indignation, but he did not want to see the weapons of knowledge withheld from faith. That was almost entirely an error, but he was not alone in committing it; and this was why he had assailed Agathe with words that would have merited a place of honor in his publications—and probably occupied that distinction in fact—but were out of place directed at the woman who was confiding in him. Seeing this emissary of worlds hostile to him sitting modestly and thoughtfully before him, delivered into his hands by a kind or demonic fate, he felt this himself and did not know how to answer her. “Oh!” he said, in as generalizing and dismissive a way as possible, and accidentally hit close to the mark: “I meant the prevailing spirit of our time that makes young people afraid of looking stupid or even unscientific if they don’t go along with all the modern superstitions. I have no idea what slogans there may be in your mind: Living it up! Life affirmation! Personal development! Freedom of thought, freedom in the arts! Everything, in short, except the commandments of simple and eternal morality.”

  The happy intensification “stupid, or even unscientific” pleased him by its subtlety and had aroused his fighting spirit again. “You are no doubt surprised,” he continued, “that in conversing with you I attach such importance to science, without knowing whether you have given it a lot of your attention or just a little—”

  “None!” Agathe interrupted him. “I am unfortunately ignorant of science!”†

  She emphasized this remark with her voice and seemed to find pleasure in it, perhaps with a kind of false impiety.

  “But this is your milieu!” Lindner corrected her emphatically. “And whether it’s freedom in manners or scientific freedom, both are an expression of the same development: thought, will, and feeling detached from morality!”

  Agathe again felt these words as sober shadows that were, however, cast by something darker that was in their proximity. She was not inclined to conceal her disappointment, but revealed it with a laugh: “Recently you advised me not to think of myself, but here you are talking about me incessantly.”

  He repeated: “You are afraid of seeming old-fashioned to yourself!”

  Agathe’s eyes flashed angrily. “I’m at a loss. So much of what you say has nothing to do with me!”

  “And I say to you: ‘Ye were bought with a price, become not bond servants of men!’” The manner of his delivery, so oddly contrasting with his physical appearance, like a heavy flower on a weak stem, amused Agathe. She asked urgently, almost coarsely: “So what should I do? I am hoping for a definite answer from you.”

  Lindner swallowed and his face darkened with earnestness. “Do that which is your duty!”

  “I don’t know what my duty is!”

  “Then you should look for duties!”

  “But I don’t know what duties are!”

  Lindner smiled grimly. “There we have it! The freedom of the personality!” he cried. “A vain mirage! You can see it in yourself: A person who is free is unhappy! A person who is free is a phantom!” he added, raising his voice further out of embarrassment as he spoke. But then he lowered it again and concluded with conviction: “You must return to your husband! Duty is what humanity in proper self-knowledge has erected against its own weakness. Duty is one and the same truth that all great personalities knew in their hearts or pointed to in visionary foreknowledge. Duty is the work of centuries of experience and the fruit of the inspired vision of the blessed. But duty is also what even the simplest person knows with certainty deep within himself, if only he lives his life with sincerity!”

  “That was a hymn with quivering candles,” Agathe noted appreciatively.

  To his annoyance, Lindner, too, felt that he had sung out of tune. He should have said something else but did not trust himself to recognize what the deviation from the genuine voice of his heart consisted in. He merely allowed himself the thought that this young creature must be deeply disappointed by her husband, since she was raging against herself so impudently and bitterly, and that despite all the censure she provoked, she was worthy of a stronger man; however, he had the impression that a far more dangerous thought was intent on following this one. But meanwhile Agathe slowly and very decisively shook her head; and with the instinctive assurance with which an excited person is seduced by another into doing something that brings a precarious balance to the point of collapse, she continued: “But we’re talking about my divorce! And why are you saying nothing more about God today? Why don’t you simply say to me: ‘God commands that you stay with Professor Hagauer!’? Because frankly I can’t imagine that He would want to command such a thing!”

  Lindner shrugged his high shoulders indignantly; in fact, their swift rising movement made it seem as if he himself were ascending. “I never talked to you about this. That was just something you tried to do!” he gruffly repudiated her. “And as for the rest, don’t believe for a moment that God concerns himself with our petty emotional squabbles! That is what His law is for, which we must follow! Or doesn’t that seem heroic enough for you, since all anyone wants these days is the ‘personal’ touch? Well, in that case I’ll challenge your standards with a higher heroism, that of heroic submission!”

  Every word he had said implied considerably more, he believed, than a layman ought to permit himself, even if it were only in his thoughts; Agathe, on the other hand, faced with such rude derision, could only smile steadily if she did not want to be forced to stand up and break off the visit; and of course she did this with such adroit assurance that Lindner felt himself vexed into ever greater confusion. He noticed how, more and more, an alarming influx of ideas was feeding an intoxicating ardor that robbed him of his powers of reflection and resounded with the will to break the obstinate mind and perhaps save the soul he saw before him. “Our duty is painful!” he exclaimed. “Our duty may be repulsive and disgusting! Don’t assume that I have the intention of being your husband’s advocate or that I am naturally predisposed to take his side. But you must obey the law, because that is the only thing that guarantees us lasting peace and protects us from ourselves.”

  Now Agathe laughed at him openly; she had guessed at the weapon that the effects stemming from her divorce had placed in her hand, and she turned the knife in the wound. “I understand little of all this,” she said. “But may I honestly confess to you an impression I have? When you are angry, you become a little salacious.”

  “Oh, stop that!” Lindner rebuked her. He recoiled and had only the single wish not to admit such a thing at any price. He raised his voice in defense and implored the sinful phantom sitting before him: “The spirit must not submit to the flesh and its charms and horrors! Not even in the form of revulsion! And I say to you: Even though mastery of your carnal reluctance, which the school of marriage has evidently exacted of you, may be painful, you are not allowed to run away from it. For there lives in man a desire for liberation, and we can no more be slaves to the repugnance of our flesh than to its pleasures! This is obviously what you wanted to hear, otherwise you would not have come to me!” he concluded, no less grandiosely than spitefully. He stood towering in front of Agathe, the threads of his beard moving around his lips. Never before had he spoken such words to a woman, except to his deceased wife, and there his feelings had been different. For now they were mingled with lust, as if he were swinging a whip in his fist to chastise the entire globe, and at the same time he felt anxious as he found himself soaring at the height of his penitentiary sermon, like a hat swept away by a tornado.

  “You just talked strangely again,” Agathe noted dispassionately, intending to shut off his insolence w
ith a few dry words; but then she imagined the enormous fall he would face and preferred to humble herself gently by checking her impulse, and continued with a voice that seemed suddenly to have been darkened by remorse: “I only came because I wanted you to guide me.”

  Lindner, helpless in his zeal, continued swinging his rhetorical whip; he sensed that Agathe was deliberately leading him astray, but he could not find his way back and entrusted himself to the future. “To be chained to a man for a lifetime without feeling any physical attraction is certainly a harsh punishment,” he exclaimed. “But hasn’t one brought this on oneself, especially if one’s partner is unworthy, by not paying enough attention to the signs of the inner life?! Many women allow themselves to be beguiled by external circumstances, and who knows if one is not being punished in order to be shaken up?” Suddenly his voice cracked. Agathe had been accompanying his words with assenting nods; but the notion of Hagauer as a beguiling seducer was too much for her, and the amusement in her eyes betrayed it. Extremely bewildered, Lindner blared in falsetto: “For he who spares the rod hates his child, but he who loves him chastises him!!”