The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic

by Robert Musil

  At this moment a jubilant war whoop sounded at the other end of the line.

  “Fine!” the General said fretfully. “But I also must absolutely talk to you about tonight. And I still have to report to my chief about it too. And he leaves the office at four!” He glanced at his watch and out of sheer hopelessness did not budge from his chair.

  “Well, I’m ready,” Ulrich said.

  “Your lovely sister isn’t coming?” Stumm asked in surprise.

  “My sister is out.”

  “Too bad.” The General sighed. “Your sister is the most remarkable woman I have ever met.”

  “I thought that was Diotima,” Ulrich said.

  “She’s another,” Stumm replied. “Diotima is admirable too. But since she’s been going in for sex education I feel like a schoolboy. I’m happy to look up to her—God knows, a soldier’s trade is a simple and crude kind of manual labor, as I always say, but precisely in the realm of sex it goes against one’s honor as an officer to let oneself be treated as a novice!”

  By now they were in the carriage and being driven off at a brisk trot.

  “Is your young lady pretty, at least?” Stumm inquired suspiciously.

  “She’s quite an original, as you’ll see,” Ulrich replied.

  “Now, as regards tonight”—the General sighed—“something is brewing. I expect something to happen.”

  “That’s what you say every time you come to see me,” Ulrich protested, smiling.

  “Maybe, but it’s true just the same. And tonight you’ll be present at the encounter between your cousin and Frau Professor Drangsal. I hope you haven’t forgotten everything I’ve told you about that. The Drangsal pest—that’s what your cousin and I call her between ourselves—has been pestering your cousin for such a long time that she’s got what she wanted: she’s been haranguing everyone, and tonight will be the showdown between them. We were only waiting for Arnheim, so that he can form an opinion too.”

  “Oh?” Ulrich had not seen Arnheim for a long time, and had not known that he was back.

  “Of course. Just for a few days,” Stumm said. “So we had to set it up—” He broke off suddenly, bounding up from the swaying upholstery toward the driver’s box with an agility no one would have expected of him. “Idiot!” he barked into the ear of the orderly disguised as a civilian coachman who was driving the ministerial horses, and he rocked helplessly back and forth with the carriage as he clung to the back of the man he was insulting, shouting: “You’re taking the long way round!” The soldier in civvies held his back stiff as a board, numb to the General’s extramilitary use of his body to save himself from falling, turned his head exactly ninety degrees, so that he could not see either his general or his horses, and smartly reported to a vertical that ended in the air that the shortest route was blocked off by street repairs, but he would soon be back on it. “There you are—so I was right!” Stumm cried as he fell back, glossing over his futile outburst of impatience, partly for the orderly’s benefit and partly for Ulrich’s. “So now the fellow has to take a detour, when I’m supposed to report to my chief this very afternoon, and he wants to go home at four o’clock, by which time he should have briefed the Minister himself! … His Excellency the Minister has sent word to the Tuzzis to expect him in person tonight,” he added in a low voice, just for Ulrich’s ear.

  “You don’t say!” Ulrich showed himself properly impressed by this news.

  “I’ve been telling you for a long time there’s something in the air.”

  Now Ulrich wanted to know what was in the air. “Come out with it, then,” he demanded. “What does the Minister want?”

  “He doesn’t know himself,” Stumm answered genially. “His Excellency has a feeling that the time has come. Old Leinsdorf also has a feeling that the time has come. The Chief of the General Staff likewise has a feeling that the time has come. When a lot of people have such a feeling, there may be something in it.”

  “But the time for what?” Ulrich persisted.

  “Well, we don’t need to know that yet,” the General instructed him. “These are simply reliable indications! By the way,” he asked abstractedly, or perhaps thoughtfully, “how many of us will there be today?”

  “How would I know?” Ulrich asked in surprise.

  “All I meant,” Stumm explained, “is how many of us are going to the madhouse? Excuse me! Funny, isn’t it, that kind of misunderstanding? There are days when there’s too much coming at one from all sides. So: how many are coming?”

  “I don’t know who else will be coming—somewhere between three and six people.”

  “What I meant,” the General said earnestly, “was that if there are more than three of us, we’ll have to get another cab—you understand, because I’m in uniform.”

  “Oh, of course,” Ulrich reassured him.

  “I can’t very well drive in a sardine can.”

  “Of course not. But tell me, what’s this about reliable indications?”

  “But will we be able to get a cab out there?” Stumm worried. “It’s so far out you can hear the animals snoring.”

  “We’ll pick one up on the way,” Ulrich said firmly. “Now will you please tell me how you have reliable indications that it’s time for something to happen?”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” Stumm replied. “When I say about something that that’s the way it is and it can’t be otherwise, what I’m really saying is that I can’t explain it! At most one might add that this Drangsal is one of those pacifists, probably because Feuermaul, who’s her protégé, writes poems about ‘Man is good.’ Lots of people believe that sort of thing now.”

  Ulrich was not convinced. “Didn’t you tell me the opposite just a little while ago? That they’re now all in favor of taking action, taking a strong line, and all that?”

  “True too,” the General granted. “And influential circles are backing Drangsal; she has a great knack for that sort of thing. They expect the patriotic campaign to come up with a humanitarian action.”

  “Really?” Ulrich said.

  “You know, you really don’t seem to care about anything anymore! The rest of us are worried. Let me remind you, for instance, that the fratricidal Austro-German war of 1866 only happened because all the Germans in the Frankfurt Parliament declared themselves to be brothers. Not, of course, that I’m suggesting that the War Minister or the Chief of the General Staff might be worrying along those lines; that would be nonsense. But one thing does lead to another. That’s how it is! See what I mean?”

  It was not clear, but it made sense. And the General went on to make a very wise observation:

  “Look, you’re always wanting things to be clear and logical,” he remonstrated with his seatmate. “And I do admire you for it, but you must for once try to think in historical terms. How can those directly involved in what’s happening know beforehand whether it will turn out to be a great event? All they can do is pretend to themselves that it is! If I may indulge in a paradox, I’d say that the history of the world is written before it happens; it always starts off as a kind of gossip. So that people who have the energy to act are faced with a very serious problem.”

  “You have a point,” Ulrich said appreciatively. “But now tell me all about it.”

  Although the General wanted to expand on it, there was so much on his mind in these moments, when the horse’s hooves had begun to hit softer ground, that he was suddenly seized by other anxieties.

  “Here I am, decked out like a Christmas tree in case the Minister calls for me,” he cried, underlining it by pointing to his light-blue tunic and the medals hanging from it. “Don’t you think it could lead to awkward incidents if I appear like this, in full dress, in front of loonies? What do I do, for instance, if one of them decides to insult the Emperor’s uniform? I can hardly draw my sword, but it would be really dangerous for me not to say anything, either!”

  Ulrich calmed him down by pointing out that he would be likely to wear a doctor’s whit
e coat over his uniform. But before Stumm had time to declare himself fully satisfied with this solution they met Clarisse, impatiently coming to meet them in a smart summer dress, escorted by Siegmund. She told Ulrich that Walter and Meingast had refused to join them. And after they had managed to find a second carriage, the General was pleased to say to Clarisse: “As you were coming down the road toward us, my dear young lady, you looked positively like an angel!”

  But by the time he left the carriage at the hospital gate, Stumm von Bordwehr appeared rather flushed and ill at ease.

  156

  THE LUNATICS GREET CLARISSE

  Clarisse was twisting her gloves in her hands, looking up at the windows, and fidgeting constantly while Ulrich paid for the cab. Stumm von Bordwehr protested Ulrich’s doing this, and the cabbie sat on his box with a flattered smile as the two gentlemen kept each other back. Siegmund brushed specks off his coat with his fingertips, as usual, or stared into space.

  In a low voice, the General said to Ulrich: “There’s something odd about your lady friend. She lectured me the whole way about what will is. I didn’t understand a word!”

  “That’s the way she is,” Ulrich said.

  “Pretty, though,” the General whispered. “Like a fourteen-year-old ballerina. But why does she say that we came here in order to follow our ‘hallucination’? The world is ‘too free of hallucinations,’ she says. D’you know anything about that? It was so distressing, I simply couldn’t think of a word to say.”

  The General was obviously holding up the departure of the cab only because he wanted to ask these questions, but before Ulrich could answer he was relieved of the responsibility by an emissary who welcomed the visitors in the name of the director of the clinic, and apologizing to the General for having to keep them waiting because of some urgent business, he led the company upstairs to a waiting room. Clarisse took in every inch of the staircase and the corridors with her eyes, and even in the little waiting room, with its chairs upholstered in threadbare green velvet so reminiscent of an old-fashioned first-class waiting room in a railway station, her gaze roved about slowly almost the whole time. There the four of them sat, after the emissary had left, and found nothing to say until Ulrich, to break the silence, teased Clarisse by asking her whether the thought of meeting Moosbrugger face-to-face wasn’t making her blood run cold.

  “Bah!” Clarisse said. “He’s only known ersatz women; it had to come to this.”

  The General had come up with a face-saving idea, something having belatedly occurred to him: “The will is now very up-to-date,” he said. “We’re very much concerned with this problem in our patriotic action too!”

  Clarisse gave him a smile and stretched her arms to ease the tension in them. “Having to wait like this, one can feel what’s coming in one’s arms and legs, as if one were looking through a telescope,” she replied.

  Stumm von Bordwehr gave it some thought, careful not to put a foot wrong again. “That’s true!” he said. “It may have something to do with the current cult of exercise and bodybuilding. We’re concerned with that also.”

  At this point the Medical Director swept in with his cavalcade of assistants and nurses and a gracious word for everyone, especially Stumm; mumbled about something pressing, which would, regrettably, prevent him from taking them around himself, as he had intended; and introduced Dr. Friedenthal, who would take good care of them in his stead.

  Dr. Friedenthal was a tall, slender man with a somewhat effeminate body and a thick mop of hair, who smiled at them, as he was introduced, like an acrobat climbing a ladder for a death-defying performance. When the director had gone, the white lab coats were brought in. “We don’t want to get the patients excited,” Dr. Friedenthal explained.

  As Clarisse slipped into hers she experienced a strange surge of power. She stood there like a little doctor. She felt very much a man, and very white.

  The General looked around for a mirror. It was hard to find a lab coat to fit his idiosyncratic proportion of girth to height; when they finally managed to get him into something that covered him completely, he looked like a child in an adult’s nightshirt. “Don’t you think I should take my spurs off?” he asked Dr. Friedenthal.

  “Army doctors wear spurs too,” Ulrich pointed out.

  Stumm made one last feeble and laborious effort to see what he looked like from behind, where the medical coverall was caught up in heavy folds above his spurs. Then they set out. Dr. Friedenthal enjoined them to keep calm no matter what they might see.

  “So far so good!” Stumm whispered to his friend. “But I’m not really interested in any of this. Could use the time much better to talk with you about tonight’s meeting. Now look, you said you wanted me to tell you frankly what’s going on. It’s quite simple: the whole world is arming. The Russians have a brand-new field artillery. Are you listening? The French are using their two-year conscription law to build up an enormous army. The Italians …”

  They had descended the same old-fashioned princely staircase they had climbed before and, after somehow turning off the main corridor, found themselves in a maze of small rooms and twisting passages with whitewashed beams protruding from the ceiling. These were mostly utility rooms and offices, cramped and dreary because of a shortage of space in the ancient building. Sinister figures, only some of whom wore institutional uniforms, populated them. One door bore the inscription “Reception”; another, “Men.” The General’s talk dried up. He had a premonition that things could happen at any moment, requiring by their unprecedented nature great presence of mind. He could not help wondering what he would do if an irresistible need forced him to leave the group and he were to stumble, alone and without an expert guide in a place where all men are equal, upon a madman.

  Clarisse, on the other hand, was walking a step ahead of Dr. Friedenthal. His having said that they had to wear these white coats so as not to alarm the patients buoyed her up like a life vest on the current of her impressions. She was mulling over some of her pet ideas. Nietzsche: “Is there a pessimism of strength? An intellectual predisposition to whatever is hard, sinister, evil, problematic in life? A yearning for the terrible as a worthy foe? Perhaps madness is not necessarily a symptom of degeneracy.” She was not thinking this in so many words, but she remembered it as a whole; her thoughts had compressed it all into a tiny packet, admirably fitted to the smallest space, like a burglar’s tool. For her this excursion was half philosophy and half adultery.

  Dr. Friedenthal stopped in front of an iron door and took a flat key from his pants pocket. When he opened the door they stepped out from the shelter of the building and were blinded by the brightness. At the same moment Clarisse heard a frightful shriek such as she had never heard before in her life. For all her pluckiness, she winced.

  “Just a horse!” Dr. Friedenthal said, smiling.

  And in fact they were on a road that led from the front gate, along the side of the administration building, and around to the kitchen yard of the institution. It was no different from other such roads, with old wheel tracks and homely weeds on which the sun was blazing hotly. And yet all the others too, with the exception of Dr. Friedenthal, felt oddly disconcerted and—in a startled, confused fashion—almost indignant, to find themselves on a wholesome and ordinary road after having already survived a long, arduous passage. Freedom, at first blush, had something disconcerting about it, even though it was incredibly comforting; it actually took some getting used to again. With Clarisse, who was more vulnerable to the clash of contrasts, the tension shattered in a loud giggle.

  Still smiling, Dr. Friedenthal strode ahead across the road and on the other side opened a small but heavy iron door in the high wall of a park. “This is where it begins,” he said gently.

  And now they really found themselves inside that world to which Clarisse had felt herself inexplicably attracted for weeks, not only with the shudder at something incommensurable and impenetrable, but as though she were fated to experience something there that
she could not imagine beforehand. At first there was nothing to differentiate this world from any other big old park, with the greensward sloping up in one direction toward groups of tall trees, among which small white villa-like buildings could be seen. The sweep of the sky behind them gave promise of a lovely view, and from one such lookout point Clarisse saw patients with attendants standing and sitting in groups, looking like white angels.

  General Stumm took this as the right moment to resume his conversation with Ulrich. “Now, let me prime you a bit more for this evening,” he began. “The Italians, the Russians, the French, and the English too, you know, are all arming, and we—”

  “You want your artillery; I know that already,” Ulrich interrupted.

  “Among other things!” the General continued. “But if you don’t ever let me finish, we’ll soon be among the loonies and won’t be able to talk in peace. So, as I was saying, we’re in the middle of all this, in a very risky position from the military point of view. And in this fix we’re being badgered—I’m referring to the Parallel Campaign—to think of nothing but the goodness of man!”

  “And your people are against it! I understand.”

  “Not at all, on the contrary!” Stumm protested. “We’re not against it! We take pacifism very seriously! But we must get our artillery budget through. And if we could do that hand in hand with pacifism, so to speak, it would be the best safeguard against all those imperialistic misunderstandings that are so quick to assert that we’re endangering world peace! It’s true, if you like, that we’re in bed with La Drangsal, just a little. But we also have to proceed with caution because her opposition, the nationalist movements, who now have their people inside the Campaign too, are against pacifism and in favor of getting our army up to scratch!”

  The General had to cut himself short, with an expression of bitterness, for they had almost reached the top of the incline, where Dr. Friedenthal was awaiting his troop. The angels’ gathering place turned out to be lightly fenced in; their guide crossed it without paying it much attention, as a mere prelude. “A ‘quiet’ ward,” he explained.