The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic

by Robert Musil

Siegmund said: “Excitable people need a certain amount of guidance, for their own good. You yourself said you wouldn’t put up with it anymore. Professionally and personally, I can only give you the same advice: Show her that you’re a man. I know she balks at that, but she’ll come around.” Siegmund was like a dependable machine tirelessly reiterating the “answer” he had come up with.

  Walter, in a “stormy gust,” replied: “This medical exaggeration of a well-adjusted sex life is old hat! When I make music or paint or think, I am affecting both an immediate and a distant audience, without depriving the ones of what I give to the others. On the contrary! Take it from me, there’s probably no sphere of life in which one remains justified in living only for oneself, thinking of life as a private matter! Not even marriage!”

  But the heavier pressure was on Siegmund’s side, and Walter sailed before the wind across to Clarisse, of whom he had not lost sight during this conversation. He did not relish anyone’s being able to say of him that he was not a man; he turned his back on this suggestion by letting it drive him over to Clarisse. And halfway there he felt the certainty, between nervously bared teeth, that he would have to begin with the question: “What do you mean, talking about signs?”

  But Clarisse saw him coming. She had already seen him wavering while he was still standing there. Then his feet were pulled from the ground and bore him toward her. She participated in this with wild elation. The blackbird, startled, flew off, hastily taking its caterpillar with it. The way was now clear for her power of attraction. Yet she suddenly thought better of it and eluded the encounter for the time being by slowly slipping along the side of the house into the open, not turning away from Walter but moving faster than he, hesitant as he was, could move out of the realm of telepathic effect into that of statement and response.

  150

  AGATHE IS QUICKLY DISCOVERED AS A SOCIAL ASSET BY GENERAL STUMM

  Since Agathe had joined forces with him, Ulrich’s relations with the extensive social circle of the Tuzzis had been making great demands on his time. For although it was late in the year the winter’s busy social season was not yet over, and the least he could do in return for the great show of sympathy he had received upon his father’s death was not hide Agathe away, even though their being in mourning relieved them of having to attend large affairs. Had Ulrich chosen to take full advantage of it, their mourning would actually have allowed them to avoid attending all social functions for a long time, so that he could have dropped out of a circle of acquaintances that he had fallen into only through curious circumstances. However, since Agathe had put her life into his charge Ulrich acted against his own inclination, and assigned to a part of himself labeled with the traditional concept “duties of an elder brother” many decisions that his whole person was undecided about, even when he did not actually disapprove of them. The first of these duties of an elder brother was to see that Agathe’s flight from her husband’s house should end only in the house of a better husband.

  “If things continue this way,” he would say, whenever they touched on the subject of what arrangements needed to be made in setting up house together, “you will soon be getting some offers of marriage, or at least of love,” and if Agathe planned something for more than a few weeks ahead he would say: “By that time everything will be different.” This would have wounded her even more had she not perceived the conflict in her brother, so that for the present she refrained from making an issue of it when he chose to widen their social circle to the limit. And so after Agathe’s arrival they became far more involved in social obligations than Ulrich would have been on his own.

  Their constant appearances together, when for a long time Ulrich had always been seen alone and without ever uttering a word about a sister, caused no slight sensation. One day General Stumm von Bordwehr had shown up at Ulrich’s with his orderly, his briefcase, and his loaf of bread, and started to sniff the air suspiciously. Then Stumm discovered a lady’s stocking hanging over a chair, and said reproachfully: “Oh, you young fellows!”

  “My sister,” Ulrich declared.

  “Oh, come on—you haven’t got a sister!” the General protested. “Here we are, tormented by the most serious problems, and you’re hiding out with a little playmate!”

  Just then Agathe came in, and the General lost his composure. He saw the family resemblance, and could tell by the casual air with which Agathe wandered in that Ulrich had told the truth, yet he could not shake off the feeling that he was looking at one of Ulrich’s girlfriends, who incomprehensibly and misleadingly happened to look like him.

  “I really don’t know what came over me, dear lady,” he told Diotima later, “but I couldn’t have been more amazed if he’d suddenly stood before me as a cadet again!” For at the sight of Agathe, to whom he was instantly attracted, Stumm had been overcome by that stupor he had learned to recognize as a sign of being deeply moved. His tender plumpness and sensitive nature inclined the General to hasty retreat from such a tricky situation, and despite all Ulrich’s efforts to make him stay, he did not learn much more about the serious problems that had brought the educated General to him.

  “No!” Stumm blamed himself. “Nothing is so important as to justify my disturbing you like this.”

  “But you haven’t disturbed us at all,” Ulrich assured him with a smile. “What’s there to be disturbed?”

  “No, of course not,” Stumm assured him, now completely confused. “Of course not, in a sense. But all the same… look, why don’t I come back another time?”

  “You might at least tell me what brought you here, before you dash off again,” Ulrich demanded.

  “Nothing, not a thing! A trifle!” the General cried in his eagerness to take to his heels. “I think the Great Event is about to start!”

  “A horse! A horse! Take ship for France!” Ulrich threw in in fun.

  Agathe looked at him in surprise.

  “I do apologize,” the General said, turning to her. “You can’t have any idea what this is all about.”

  “The Parallel Campaign has found its crowning idea!” Ulrich filled her in.

  “No, I never said that,” the General demurred. “All I meant was that the great event everyone was waiting for is now on its way.”

  “I see,” Ulrich said. “Well, it’s been on its way from the start.”

  “No, not quite like this,” the General earnestly assured him. “There is now a quite definite nobody-knows-what in the air. There’s soon to be a decisive gathering at your cousin’s. Frau Drangsal—”

  “Who’s she?” Ulrich had never heard of her.

  “That only shows how much you’ve been out of touch,” the General said reproachfully, and turned immediately to Agathe to mend matters. “Frau Drangsal is the lady who has taken the poet Feuermaul under her wing. I suppose,” he said, turning his round body back again to the silent Ulrich, “you don’t know him either?”

  “Yes, I do. The lyric poet.”

  “Writes verses,” the General said, mistrustfully avoiding the unaccustomed word.

  “Good verse, in fact. And all sorts of plays.”

  “I don’t know about plays. And I haven’t got my notes with me. But he’s the one who says: Man is good. In short, Frau Drangsal is backing the hypothesis that man is good, and they say it is a great European idea and that Feuermaul has a great future. She was married to a man who was a world-famous doctor, and she means to make Feuermaul world-famous too. Anyway, there’s a danger that your cousin may lose the leadership to Frau Drangsal, whose salon has also been attracting all the celebrities.”

  The General mopped the sweat from his brow, though Ulrich did not find the prospect at all alarming.

  “You surprise me!” Stumm scolded him. “As an admirer of your cousin like everyone else, how can you say such things? Don’t you agree, dear lady,” he appealed to Agathe, “that your brother is being incredibly disloyal and ungrateful toward an inspiring woman?”

  “I’ve never met my cousin,�
� Agathe admitted.

  “Oh!” said Stumm, and in words that turned a chivalrous intention into a rather backhanded compliment which involved an obscure concession to Agathe, he added: “Though she hasn’t been at her best lately!”

  Neither Ulrich nor Agathe had anything to say to this, so the General felt he had to elucidate. “And you know why, too,” he said meaningfully to Ulrich. He disapproved of Diotima’s current absorption in sexology, which was distracting her mind from the Parallel Campaign, and he was worried because her relationship with Arnheim was not improving, but he did not know how far he might go in speaking of such matters in the presence of Agathe, whose expression was now growing steadily cooler. But Ulrich answered calmly: “I suppose you’re not making any progress with your oil affair if our Diotima no longer has her old influence on Arnheim?”

  Stumm made a pathetically pleading gesture, as if to stop Ulrich from making a joke not fit for a lady’s ear, but at the same time threw him a sharp glance of warning. He even found the energy, despite his weight, to bounce to his feet like a young man, and tugged his tunic straight. Enough of his original suspicion about Agathe’s background lingered to keep him from exposing the secrets of the War Ministry in her presence. It was only when Ulrich had escorted him out to the hall that he clutched his arm and whispered hoarsely, through a smile: “For God’s sake, man, don’t talk open treason!” and enjoined Ulrich from uttering a word about the oil fields in front of any third person, even one’s own sister. “Oh, all right,” Ulrich promised. “But she’s my twin sister.”

  “Not even in front of a twin sister!” the General asseverated, still so incredulous about the sister that he could take the addition of “twin” in stride. “Give me your word!”

  “But it’s no use making me promise such a thing.” Ulrich was even more outrageous. “We’re Siamese twins, don’t you see?” Stumm finally caught on that Ulrich, whose manner was never to give a straight answer to anything, was making fun of him. “Your jokes used to be better,” he protested, “than to suggest the unappetizing notion that such a delightful person, even if she’s ten times your sister, is fused together with you!” But this had reawakened his lively mistrust of the reclusiveness in which he had found Ulrich, and so he appended a few more questions to find out what he had been up to. Has the new secretary turned up yet? Have you been to see Diotima? Have you kept your promise to visit Leinsdorf? Have you found out how things are between your cousin and Arnheim? Since the plump skeptic was of course already informed on all these points, he was merely testing Ulrich’s truthfulness, and was satisfied with the result.

  “In that case, do me a favor and don’t be late for this crucial session,” he pleaded while buttoning up his greatcoat, slightly out of breath from mastering the traversal through the sleeves. “I’ll call you again beforehand and fetch you in my carriage, agreed?”

  “And when will this boredom take place?” Ulrich asked, not exactly with enthusiasm.

  “In a couple of weeks or so, I think,” the General said. “We want to bring the rival party to Diotima’s, but we want Arnheim to be there too, and he’s still abroad.” With one finger he tapped the golden sword knot dangling from his coat pocket. “Without him, it’s not much fun for us, as you can understand. But believe me”—he sighed—“there’s nothing I personally desire more than that our spiritual leadership should stay with your cousin; it would be horrible for me, if I had to adapt to an entirely new situation!”

  Thus it was this visit that brought Ulrich, now accompanied by his sister, back into the fold he had deserted when he was still alone. He would have had to resume his social obligations even if he had not wanted to, as he could not possibly stay in hiding with Agathe a day longer and expect Stumm to keep to himself a discovery so ripe for gossip. When “the Siamese” called on Diotima, she had apparently already heard of this curious and dubious epithet, if she was not yet charmed with it. For the divine Diotima, famed for the distinguished and remarkable people always to be met under her roof, had at first taken Agathe’s unheralded debut very badly; a kinswoman who might not be a social success could be far more damaging to her own position than a male cousin, and she knew just as little about this new cousin as she had previously known about Ulrich, which in itself caused the all-knowing Diotima some annoyance when she had to admit her ignorance to the General. So she had decided to refer to Agathe as “the orphan sister,” partly to help reconcile herself to the situation and partly to prepare wider circles for it. It was in this spirit that she received the cousins.

  She was agreeably surprised by the socially impeccable manners Agathe was able to produce, while Agathe, mindful of her good education in a pious boarding school and always ready, with a mixture of irony and wonder, to take life as it came—an attitude she deplored to Ulrich—from the first managed almost unconsciously to win the gracious sympathies of the stupendous young woman whose ambition for “greatness” left Agathe quite cold and indifferent. She marveled at Diotima with the same guilelessness with which she would have marveled at a gigantic power station in whose mysterious function of spreading light one did not meddle. Once Diotima had been won over, especially as she could soon see that Agathe was generally liked, she laid herself out to extend Agathe’s social success, which she arranged to throw greater credit on herself. The “orphan sister” aroused much sympathetic interest, which among Diotima’s intimates began on a note of frank amazement that nobody had ever heard of her before, and in wider circles was transformed into that vague pleasure at everything new and surprising which is shared by princes and the press alike.

  And so it happened that Diotima, with her dilettante’s knack for choosing instinctively, among several options, that which was both the worst and the most promising of public success, made the move that assured Ulrich and Agathe of their permanent place in the memory of that distinguished circle by promptly passing on the delightful story—as she now suddenly found it to be—that the cousins, reunited under romantic circumstances after an almost lifelong separation, called themselves Siamese twins, even though they had been blindly fated thus far to be almost the opposite. It would be hard to say why Diotima first, and then everyone else, was so taken with this circumstance, and why it made the “twins” ‘resolve to live together appear both extraordinary and natural; such was Diotima’s gift for leadership; and this outcome—for both things happened—proved that she still exerted her gentle sway despite all her rivals’ maneuvers. Arnheim, when he heard of it on his return from abroad, delivered an elaborate address to a select circle, rounding it off with a homage to aristocratic-popular forces. Somehow the rumor arose that Agathe had taken refuge with her brother from an unhappy marriage with a celebrated foreign savant. And since the arbiters of good form at that time had the landowners’ antipathy to divorce and made do with adultery, many older persons perceived Agathe’s choice in that double halo of the higher life composed of willpower and piety which Count Leinsdorf, who looked upon the “twins” with special favor, at one point characterized with the words: “Our theaters are always treating us to displays of the most awful excesses of passion. Now here’s a story the Burgtheater could use as a good example!”

  Diotima, in whose presence this was uttered, responded: “It’s become fashionable for many people to say that man is good. But anyone who knows, as I have learned in my studies, the confusions of our sex life will know how rare such examples are!”

  Did she mean to qualify His Grace’s praise or reinforce it? She had not yet forgiven Ulrich what she called his lack of confidence in her, since he had not given her advance notice of his sister’s arrival; but she was proud of the success in which she had a part, and this entered into her reply.

  151

  TOO MUCH GAIETY

  Agathe proved naturally adept at making use of the advantages social life offered, and her brother was pleased to see her moving with so much poise in these demanding social circles. The years she had spent as the wife of a secondary-school pr
incipal in the provinces seemed to have fallen from her without leaving a trace. For the present, however, Ulrich summed it all up with a shrug, saying: “Our high nobility find it amusing that we should be called the Siamese twins. They’ve always gone in more for menageries than, say, for art.”

  By tacit agreement they treated all that was happening as a mere interlude. There was much that needed changing or rearranging in their household, as they had seen from the very first day; but they did nothing about it, because they shied away from another discussion whose limits could not be foreseen. Ulrich had given up his bedroom to Agathe and settled himself in the dressing room, with the bathroom between them, and had gradually given up most of his closet space to her. He declined her offer of sympathy for these hardships with an allusion to Saint Lawrence and his grille; and anyway it did not occur to Agathe that she might be interfering with her brother’s bachelor life, because he assured her that he was very happy and because she could have only the vaguest idea of the degrees of happiness he might have enjoyed previously. She had come to like this house with its unconventional arrangements, its useless extravagance of anterooms and reception rooms around the few habitable rooms, which were now overcrowded; there was about it something of the elaborate civilities of a bygone age left defenseless against the self-indulgent and churlish high-handedness of the present. Sometimes the mute protest of the handsome rooms against the disorderly invasion seemed mournful, like broken, tangled strings hanging from the exquisitely carved frame of an old instrument. Agathe now saw that her brother had not really chosen this secluded house without interest or feeling, as he pretended, and from its ancient walls emerged a language of passion that was not quite mute, but yet not quite audible. But neither she nor Ulrich admitted to anything more than enjoying its casualness. They lived in some disarray, had their meals sent in from a hotel, and derived from everything a sort of wild fun that comes with eating a meal more awkwardly on the grass at a picnic than one would have had to do at one’s table.