by Thomas Mann
“You are right,” she answered, a faint glow rising in her cheeks. “At least I think so. A gift is pleasing; but the word ‘merit’ implies admiration of a different kind, not applicable to a gift nor to the instinctive at all.”
“There you have it!” cried Schwerdtfeger triumphantly, and Institoris laughed back: “By all means. You went to the right shop.”
There was something strange here; nobody could help feeling it, at least for the moment; nor did the flush in Inez’s cheek immediately subside. It was just in her line to disagree with her lover in all such questions. But it was not in her line to agree with the boy Rudolf. He was utterly unaware that there was such a thing as immoralism, and one cannot well agree with a thesis while not understanding its opposite—at least not before it has been explained to him. In Inez’s verdict, although it was logically quite natural and justified, there was after all something that put one off, and that something was underlined for me by the burst of laughter with which her sister Clarissa greeted Schwerdtfeger’s undeserved triumph. It surely did not escape this haughty person with the too short chin when superiority, on grounds which have nothing to do with superiority, gave something away and was just as certainly of the opinion that it gave nothing away.
“There!” she cried. “Jump up, Rudolf, say thank you, hop up, laddy, and bow! Fetch your rescuer an ice and engage her for the next waltz!”
That was always her way. She always stood up for her sister and said “Up with you!” whenever it was a matter of Inez’s dignity. She said it to Institoris, too, the suitor, when he behaved with something less than alacrity in his gallantries, or was slow in the uptake. Altogether, out of pride she held with superiority, looked out for it, and showed herself highly surprised when she thought it did not get its due. If he wants something of you, she seemed to say, you have to hop up. I well remember how she once said: “Hop up!” to Schwerdtfeger on Adrian’s behalf, he having expressed a wish—I think it was a ticket for Jeanette Scheurl to the Zapfenstosser orchestra—and Schwerdtfeger made some objection. “Yes, Rudolf, you just hop along and get it,” said she. “For heaven’s sake, have you lost your legs?”
“No, no,” said he, “I only, certainly, of course I—but—“
“But me no buts,” she cut him short, condescendingly, half farcically but also half reproachfully. And Adrian as well as Schwerdtfeger laughed; the latter, making his usual boyish grimace with the corner of his mouth and shrugging his shoulder inside his jacket, promised that he should be served.
It was as though Clarissa saw in Rudolf the sort of suitor who had to “hop”; and in fact he constantly, in the most naive way, confidingly and unabashedly sued for Adrian’s favour. About the real suitor who was courting her sister she often tried to worm an opinion out of me—and Inez herself did the same, in a shyer, more refined way, drawing back almost at once, as though she wanted to hear, and yet wanted to hear and know nothing. Both sisters had confidence in me; that is, they seemed to consider me capable of just evaluations of others, a capacity, of course, which, if it is to inspire full confidence, must stand outside any situation and view it with unclouded eye. The role of confidant is always at once gratifying and painful, for one always plays it with the premise that one does not come into consideration oneself. But how much better it is, I have often told myself, to inspire the world with confidence than to rouse its passion! How much better to seem to it “good” than “beautiful!
A “good” man, that was in Inez Rodde’s eyes probably one to whom the world stands in a purely ethical relation, not an aesthetically stimulated one; hence her confidence in me. But I must say that I served the sisters somewhat unequally and expressed my opinions about Institoris in a form proper to the person who asked for them. In conversation with Clarissa I spoke far more as I really felt; expressed myself as a psychologist about the motives of his choice and his hesitations (anyhow the hesitation was not all on one side), and did not scruple to poke a little fun at his “Miss Nancy” ways and worship of “brute instinct.” She seemed to concur. When Inez herself talked to me, it was not the same. I deferred to feelings which pro forma I assumed in her, without actually believing in them; deferred to the reasonable grounds on which in all probability she would marry the man, and spoke with sober regard of his solid qualities, his knowledge, his human decency, his capital prospects. To give my words adequate warmth and yet not too much was a delicate task; for it seemed to me equally a responsibility whether I strengthened the girl in her doubts and depreciated the security for which she yearned, or on the other hand encouraged her to give herself while cherishing such doubts. I even had some ground for feeling, now and then, that I ran more of a risk by encouraging than by dissuading.
The truth was that she soon had enough of my opinions about Helmut Institoris and went on with her confidences in a general way, asking my opinion about certain other persons in the circle, for instance Zink and Spengler, or, for another example, Schwerdtfeger. What did I think about his violin-playing, she asked; about his character, whether and how much I respected him, what shade of seriousness or humour my regard showed. I answered as best I could, with all possible justice, quite as I have spoken of Rudolf in these pages, and she listened attentively, enlarging on my friendly commendation with some remarks of her own, to which again I could only agree, though I was rather struck by her insistence. Considering the girl’s character, her confirmed and mistrustful view of life, her ideas were not surprising, but applied to this particular subject I must say they rather put me off.
Yet after all it was no wonder that she, knowing the attractive young man so much longer than I, and like Clarissa in a brother-and-sister relation with him, had observed him more closely and had more matter for a confidential conversation. He was a man without vice, she said (she used a milder word, yet it was clear that was what she meant); a clean man, hence his confidingness, for cleanness was confiding (a touching word in her mouth, since she herself was not confiding at all, save by exception to me). He did not drink, talcing nothing but slightly sugared tea without cream, three times a day; he did not smoke, or at most only occasionally, he did not make a habit of it. For all such masculine pacifiers (I think I remember the word)—in short, for narcotics-flirtation was his substitute; he was utterly given to flirtation, he was a born flirt. She did not mean love or friendship; both of these by his very nature and, so to speak, under his hands became flirtation. A poseur? Yes and no. Certainly not in the ordinary vulgar sense. One need only see him with Bullinger, the manufacturer, who plumed himself so enormously on his money, and liked to sing:
A happy heart and healthy blood
Are better than much gold and goods
just to make people envious of his money. Rudolf was not like that at all. But he made it hard for one to feel sure of him all the time. His coquetry, his nice manners, his social coxcombry, his love of society altogether were really something frightful. Did I not find, she asked, that this whole free-and-easy, aesthetic life here in this place, for instance the smart Biedermeier celebration which we had lately attended in the Cococello Club, was in torturing contrast to the sadness and disillusionments of life? Did I not know, like her, that shudder at the spiritual vacuity which reigned in the average gathering, in glaring contrast to the feverish excitement induced by the wine, the music, and the undercurrents of human relations? Sometimes one could see how somebody talked with somebody else, preserving all the social forms, while his mind was entirely absent, fixed on another person at whom he was looking… And then the disorder of the scene afterwards, the rubbish strewn about, the desolation of an empty salon at the end of an entertainment! She confessed that sometimes after she got home she wept for an hour before falling asleep…
So she went on, expressing a general criticism and disapproval, and seeming to have forgotten Rudolf. But when she came back to him one had little doubt that he had been in her mind all the time. When she called him a coxcomb, she said, she meant something very harmless, almost l
aughable; yet it often made one feel sad. For instance, he was always the last comer at a party, he had to feel himself waited for, other people must always wait for him. Then he set store by rivalry and social jealousy: would tell how he had been at such and such houses, yesterday at the Langewiesches’, or whoever his friends were; or at the Rollwagens’, who had the two thoroughbred daughters (“it always upsets me just to hear that word”). But he always spoke apologetically, as though he really meant: “I have to appear there now and again, after all.” Though one could be sure that he said the same thing in the other place and tried to create the illusion that he liked them best—just as though everybody set great store by that. Yet he was so sure he was bringing joy to everybody that there was something contagious about it. He came to tea at five o’clock and said he had promised to be somewhere else between half past five and six, at the Langewiesches’ or Rollwagens’—probably it was not true at all. Then he stopped on until half past six, to show that he would rather be here, that he was so entertained where he was that the others would have to wait. And was so certain that one would be pleased that one actually was pleased.
We laughed, but I did so with reserve, for I saw distress written on her face. She spoke as though she thought it necessary—did she really think it necessary?—to warn me not to put too much confidence in Schwerdtfeger’s amiable attentions. There was nothing to them. She had once happened to hear, from a little distance, word for word, how he implored somebody, to whom she knew him to be profoundly indifferent, to remain at a gathering, not to go away; spoke in a low voice, with charming, intimate inflections: “Ah, do, come on, be sweet, stay with me.” So now, when he spoke to her in the same way, or to me, it might be, the words would mean nothing at all.
In short, she confessed to a painful distrust of his seriousness, or any display he made of attention and sympathy—for instance, if one was not well and he came to see one. All that happened, as I myself would learn, only to be “nice” and because it was proper and socially the done thing, not from any inner feeling, one must not imagine it. One might even expect actual bad taste. Somebody once warned him in jest not to make some girl—or it might perhaps have been a married woman—unhappy, and he had actually answered, arrogantly: “Oh, there are so many unhappy!” She had heard it with her own ears. One could only think: “God save me from the humiliation of belonging to a man like that!”
But she did not want to be hard—perhaps the word “humiliation” was too strong. I must not misunderstand her, she did not doubt that there was a certain fund of nobility in Rudolf’s character. Sometimes even in company one could alter his loud and common mood to a gentler, more serious one, simply by a quiet word or surprised glance. It had really happened like that more than once, for Rudolf was extraordinarily susceptible; and then the Langewiesches and Rollwagens and whatever their names were became for the time mere shadows and phantoms for him. Yet it was enough for him to breathe other air, be exposed to other influences, to bring about a complete estrangement, a hopeless aloofness in the place of confidence and mutual understanding. Then he would feel it, for he really had fine feelings, and would try remorsefully to put things right. It was funny, and touching, but to restore good relations he might repeat some more or less apt phrase you had used, or a quotation you had once made from a book, to show that he had not forgotten, that he was at home among the higher things. Really it was enough to make one weep. And when he took leave for the evening, he showed his readiness to be sorry and do better: he came and said goodbye and made little jokes in dialect, at which one rather winced, for perhaps one was suffering from fatigue. But then when he had shaken hands all round he came back and said goodbye again, quite simply, so that one was able to respond. And that meant a good exit for him, which he simply had to have. At the two other houses he was going to he probably did the same thing…
Have I said enough? This is no novel, in whose composition the author reveals the hearts of his characters indirectly, by the action he portrays. In a biography, of course, I must introduce things directly, by name, and simply state such psychological factors as have a bearing on the life I am describing. But after the singular expressions which my memory leads me to write down, expressions of what I might call a specific intensity, there can be no doubt as to the fact to be communicated. Inez Rodde was in love with young Schwerdtfeger. There were only two questions to be asked: first, did she know it, and second, when, at what point had her original brother-sister relation with him assumed this ardent and distressful colour?
The first question I answer with a yes. So well-read a girl, one might say psychologically trained, keeping watch with a poet’s eye upon her own experiences must certainly have had an insight into the growth of her own feeling—however surprising, yes, unbelievable the development might have seemed to her at first. The apparent naivete with which she bared her heart to me was no evidence of ignorance; for what looked like simplicity was partly a compulsive desire to communicate and partly a motion of confidence in me, a strangely disguised confidence, for to some extent she was pretending that she thought me simple enough not to understand; and that was in itself a sort of confidence. But actually she knew and was glad to know that the truth was not escaping me since, to my honour be it spoken, she trusted her secret with me. She might do so, of course, might be certain of my discretion and my human sympathy, however hard it naturally is for a man to enter into the feelings of a woman on fire with love for somebody of his own sex. It is much easier for us to follow the feelings of a man for a woman—even though he be entirely indifferent to her himself—than to put himself in the place of a woman in love with another man. One does not at bottom “understand” that, one just accepts it as a well-bred man should, in objective respect for a law of nature—and indeed the attitude of a man is usually more tolerant and benevolent than that of a woman, who mostly casts a jealous eye on a friend who tells her a man is in love with her, even though she cares nothing at all for the man.
I did not fail, then, in friendly good will, even though I was prevented by nature from understanding in the sense of fellow-feeling. My God, little Schwerdtfeger! His facial structure had something of the pug about it, his voice was guttural, he was more like a boy than a man, the lovely blue of his eyes, his good straight growth and captivating violin-playing and whistling, his general niceness admitted and agreed. Well, then, Inez Rodde loved him. Not blindly, but for that reason suffering the more; and my inward attitude was that of her mocking sister Clarissa, who looked down her nose at the other sex: I should have liked to say to him: “Hop, man! Hop up and do your duty—what do you think of yourself?”
But hopping was not so simple, even if Rudolf had acknowledged the obligation. For there was Helmut Institoris, the bridegroom, or bridegroom in spe, Institoris the suitor. And here I come back to the question: since when had Inez’s sisterly relations with Rudolf turned into passionate love? My human powers of intuition told me: it had happened when Dr. Helmut approached her, as man to woman, and began to woo her. I was and remain convinced that Inez would never have fallen in love with Schwerdtfeger without the entry of Institoris into her life. He wooed her, but in a sense for another. A man not passionate himself could by his courtship and the trains of thought connected with it arouse the woman in her: it might go that far. But he could not arouse it for himself, though on grounds of good sense she was ready to accept him—that far it did not go. Instead her awakened femininity turned straightway to another man, towards whom thus far she had consciously felt only tranquil sisterly feelings—and now others had been released in her. It was not that she found him “the right one” or worthy of her love. No, it was her melancholy nature, seeking unhappiness, which fixed upon him as its object; upon him from whom she had heard with disgust the words: “There are so many unhappy ones!”
And stranger still: her inadequate suitor’s predilection for soullessness and the beauty of instinct, so repugnant to her own views—had she not fallen victim to it herself, i
n her love for Rudolf? She was, in a way, betraying Institoris with his own convictions; for did not Rudolf represent to her wise and disillusioned gaze something like sweet unthinking life itself?
Compared with Institoris, who was a mere instructor in the beautiful, Rudolf had on his side the advantage of art at first hand: art, nourisher of the passions, transcender of the human. For by his art the person of the beloved is elevated, from art the emotions ever draw fresh food, when the artist’s own individuality is associated with the joys his art purveys. Inez at bottom despised the aesthetic traffic of the sense-loving city into which she had been transplanted by her mother’s craving for a less strait-laced life. But for the sake of her bourgeois security she took part in the festivities of a community which was just one great art-society, and this it was emperilled the security she sought. My memory preserves pregnant and disquieting images of this time: I see us, the Roddes, the Knoterichs perhaps, and myself, after a particularly brilliant performance of a Tchaikovsky symphony in the Zapfenstosser concert hall, standing in the crowd in one of the front rows and applauding. The conductor had motioned the orchestra to stand up to receive the thanks of the audience for its beautiful work. Schwerdtfeger, a little to the left of the first violin, whose place he was soon to take, stood with his instrument under his arm, warm and beaming, face towards the hall and nodding to us with not quite permissible familiarity, while Inez, at whom I could not resist stealing a glance, with her head thrust out, her mouth mischievously pursed, kept her eyes obstinately directed at some other point on the stage, perhaps on the leader, or no, farther along, on the harps. Or another time I see Rudolf himself, all on fire over a classic performance by a guest colleague, standing in the front of an almost emptied hall, applauding up at the stage where the soloist stood bowing for the tenth time. Two steps away, among the disarray of chairs, stands Inez, who sees him and waits for him to stop clapping, turn round and speak to her. He does not turn, he continues to applaud. But out of the corner of his eye he looks—or perhaps not quite looks, perhaps his blue eyes are only the slightest shade turned from a direct gaze up at the platform and towards the corner where she stands and waits. He does not pause in his enthusiastic activity. Another few seconds and she turns away, pale with anger, lines between her brows, and moves towards the door. At once he stops clapping and follows her. At the door he overtakes her; she puts on an air of chilling surprise to find him here, to find that he exists at all. Refuses to speak, refuses her hand, her eyes, and hastens out.