by Robert Musil
Nevertheless, the matter could not be properly resolved other than by Ulrich’s now taking action, and as soon as possible, to make up for his negligence. He should have sent his sister an immediate special delivery letter or telegram, which should have stated in effect: “I won’t have anything to do with you unless you…!” But he had absolutely no intention of writing anything of the kind; at the moment he simply could not do it.
Besides, they had decided before that fateful incident that in the next few weeks they would try to live together or at least move in together, and this was what they had mainly talked about in the brief time remaining before his departure. They had agreed that for the moment it would be for “the time it will take to get the divorce,” so that Agathe would have a refuge and counsel. But now, in thinking about it, Ulrich also remembered an earlier remark of his sisters about wanting “to kill Hagauer”; this “scheme” had evidently been working in her and taken on a new form. She had insisted vehemently on selling the family property at once, possibly also in the interest of making the inheritance evaporate, although it might seem advisable on other grounds as well. In any case, they had agreed to put the sale in the hands of a broker and had set their terms. And so Ulrich now had to give some thought as well to what was to become of his sister after he returned to his casually interim life, which he did not himself regard as real. It was impossible for her present situation to continue. Amazingly close though they had grown in so short a time—as though their fates were linked, even though this had arisen from all sorts of unconnected details; Agathe probably had a more quixotic view of it—they knew hardly anything of each other in the many and various superficialities on which a shared life depends. When he thought of his sister objectively Ulrich could even perceive numerous unsolved problems, nor could he form a very clear idea of her past; his best guess was that she dealt most casually with everything that happened to her or through her, and that she lived rather vaguely and perhaps with fantasies that ran alongside her actual life; such an explanation would plausibly account for her having stayed so long with Hagauer and then broken with him so suddenly. And even the carelessness with which she treated the future fitted in with this view: she had left home, and that seemed to satisfy her for the present; and when questions arose about what should happen now, she avoided them. Nor was Ulrich himself capable of either picturing a life for her without a husband, in which she would hover around in vague expectations like a young girl, or imagining what the man would look like who would be right for his sister; he had even told her so shortly before he left.
She had given him a startled look—perhaps she was clowning a bit, pretending to be startled—and then calmly countered with the question: “Can’t I just stay with you for the time being, without our having to decide everything?”
It was in this fashion, without anything more definite, that the idea of their moving in together had been ratified. But Ulrich realized that this experiment meant the end of the experiment of his “life on leave.” He did not want to think about the possible consequences, but that his life would henceforth be subject to certain restrictions was not unwelcome, and for the first time he again thought of the circle and especially the women of the Parallel Campaign. The idea of cutting himself off from everything, as part of his new life, seemed delightful. Just as it often takes only a trifling alteration in a room to change its dull acoustics to a glorious resonance, so now in his imagination his little house was transformed into a shell within which one heard the roar of the city as a distant river.
And then, toward the end of that conversation, this other special little conversation had taken place:
“We’ll live like hermits,” Agathe had said with a bright smile, “but of course we’ll each be free to pursue any love affairs. For you, at any rate, there’s no obstacle!” she assured him.
“Do you realize,” Ulrich said by way of an answer, “that we shall be entering into the Millennium?”
“What’s that?”
“We’ve talked so much about the love that isn’t a stream flowing toward its goal but a state of being like the ocean. Now tell me honestly: When they told you in school that the angels in heaven did nothing but bask in the presence of the Lord and sing His praises, were you able to imagine this blissful state of doing nothing and thinking nothing?”
“I always thought it must be rather boring, which is certainly due to my imperfection,” was Agathe’s answer.
“But after everything we’ve agreed on,” Ulrich explained, “you must now imagine this ocean as a state of motionlessness and detachment, filled with everlasting, crystal-clear events. In ages past, people tried to imagine such a life on earth. That is the Millennium, formed in our own image and yet like no world we know. That’s how we’ll live now! We shall cast off all self-seeking, we shall collect neither goods, nor knowledge, nor lovers, nor friends, nor principles, nor even ourselves! Our spirit will open up, dissolving boundaries toward man and beast, spreading open in such a way that we can no longer remain us’ but will maintain our identities only by merging with all the world!”
This little interlude had been a joke. He had been sitting with paper and pencil, making notes and talking meanwhile with his sister about what she could expect from the sale of the house and the furniture. He was also still cross, and he himself did not know whether he was blaspheming or dreaming. And with all this they had not got around to talking seriously about the will.
It was probably because of these ambiguities in the way it had happened that Ulrich even now was far from feeling any active regret. There was much about his sister’s bold stroke that pleased him, though he was himself the defeated one; he had to admit that it suddenly brought the person living by the “rule of the free spirits,” to whom he had given far too much ease within himself, into grave conflict with that deep, undefined person from whom real seriousness emanates. Nor did he want to dodge the consequences of this act by quickly making it good in the usual way; but then, there was no norm, and events had to be allowed to take their course.
16
REUNION WITH DIOTIMA’S DIPLOMATIC HUSBAND
Next morning Ulrich’s mind was no clearer, and late that afternoon he decided to lighten the serious mood that was oppressing him by looking up his cousin who was occupied with liberating the soul from civilization.
To his surprise he was received by Section Chief Tuzzi, who came to greet him even before Rachel had returned from Diotima’s room.
“My wife’s not feeling well today,” the seasoned husband said, with that unconscious tone of tenderness in his voice which regular monthly use has made into a formula that exposes the domestic secret to the world. “I don’t know whether she’ll be up to a visit.” Though dressed to go out, he was quite willing to stay and keep Ulrich company.
Ulrich took the opportunity of inquiring about Arnheim.
“Arnheim’s been in England and is now in St. Petersburg,” Tuzzi told him. The effect of this trivial and predictable news on Ulrich, depressed as he was by his own experiences, was to make him feel as though world, fullness, and motion were rushing in upon him.
“A good thing too,” the diplomat added. “Let him travel here and there as much as he likes. It gives one a chance to make one’s observations and pick up some information.”
“So you still believe,” said Ulrich, amused, “that he’s on some pacifist mission for the Czar?”
“I believe it more than ever,” was the plain answer from the man who bore official responsibility for carrying out Austro-Hungarian policy. But suddenly Ulrich doubted whether Tuzzi was really so unsuspecting or was only pretending to be and pulling his leg; somewhat annoyed, he dropped Arnheim and asked: “I hear that ‘Action!’ has become the watchword since I left.”
As always when the Parallel Campaign came up, Tuzzi seemed to relish playing both the innocent and the shrewd insider. He shrugged and grinned.
“I’ll let my wife fill you in on that—you’ll hear all about it
from her as soon as she’s able to see you!” But a moment later his little mustache began to twitch and the large dark eyes in the tanned face glistened with a vague distress. “You’re a man who has read all the books,” he said hesitantly. “Could you perhaps tell me what is meant by a man having soul?”
This was apparently something Tuzzi really wanted to talk about, and it was obviously his insecurity that was responsible for the impression that he was distressed. When Ulrich failed to respond immediately, he went on: “When we speak of someone as ‘a good soul’ we mean an honest, conscientious, dependable fellow—I have an administrator in my office like that—but what that amounts to, surely, is the virtues of an underling. Or there’s soul as a quality of women, meaning more or less that they cry more easily, or blush more easily, than men do….”
“Your wife has soul,” Ulrich corrected him, as gravely as if he were stating that she had raven-black hair.
A faint pallor rushed across Tuzzi’s face. “My wife has a mind,” he said slowly. “She is rightly regarded as a woman of some intellect. I like to tease her about it and tell her she’s an aesthete. That galls her. But that isn’t soul….” He thought for a moment. “Have you ever been to a fortune-teller?” he asked. “They read the future in your palm, or from a hair of your head, sometimes amazingly on target. They have a gift for it, or tricks. But can you make any sense of somebody telling you, for instance, that there are signs that a time is coming when our souls will behold each other directly, so to speak, without the mediation of the senses? Let me say at once,” he added quickly, “that this is not to be understood only as a figure of speech, but if you’re not a good person, then no matter what you do, people today can feel it much more clearly than in earlier centuries, because this is an age of the awakening soul. Do you believe that?”
With Tuzzi, one never knew if his barbs were directed against himself or his listener, so Ulrich answered: “If I were you I’d just let it come to the test.”
“Don’t make jokes, my dear friend,” Tuzzi said plaintively. “It’s not decent when you’re safely on the sidelines. My wife expects me to take such propositions seriously even if I can’t subscribe to them, and I have to surrender without having a chance to defend myself. So in my hour of need I remembered that you’re one of those bookish people….”
“Both of these assertions come from Maeterlinck, if I’m not mistaken,” Ulrich said helpfully.
“Really? From…? Yes, I can see that. That’s the…? I see, that’s good; then perhaps he’s also the one who claims that there’s no such thing as truth—except for people in love! he says. If I am in love with a person, according to him, I participate directly in a secret truth more profound than the common kind. On the other hand, if we say something based on observation and a thorough knowledge of human nature, that’s supposed to be worthless, of course. Is that another of this Mae—this man’s ideas?”
“I really don’t know. It might be. It’s what you would expect from him.”
“I imagined it came from Arnheim.”
“Arnheim has taken a lot from him, as he has from others—they’re both gifted eclectics.”
“Really? Then it’s all old stuff? But in that case can you tell me, for heaven’s sake, how it is possible to let that sort of thing be published nowadays?” Tuzzi asked. “When my wife says things like: ‘Reason doesn’t prove a thing; ideas don’t reach as far as the soul!’ or There’s a realm of wisdom and love far beyond your world of facts, and one only desecrates it with considered statements!’ I can understand what makes her talk like that: she’s a woman, that’s all, and this is her way of defending herself against a man’s logic! But how can a man say such things?” Tuzzi edged his chair closer and laid a hand on Ulrich’s knee. “ The truth swims like a fish in an invisible principle; the moment you lift it out, it’s dead.’ What do you make of that? Could it maybe have something to do with the difference between an ‘eroticist’ and a ‘sexualist’?”
Ulrich smiled. “Do you really want me to tell you?”
“I can’t wait to hear!”
“I don’t know how to begin.”
“There it is, you see! Men can’t bring themselves to utter such things. But if you had a soul, you would now simply be contemplating my soul and marveling at it. We would reach heights where there are no thoughts, no words, no deeds. Nothing but mysterious forces and a shattering silence! May a soul smoke?” he asked, and lit a cigarette, only then recalling his duty as host and offering one to Ulrich. At bottom he was rather proud of now having read Arnheim’s books, and precisely because he still found them insufferable he was pleased with himself for having privately discovered the possible usefulness of their puffed-up style for the inscrutable workings of diplomacy. Nor would anyone else have wanted to do such hard labor for nothing, and anyone in his place would have continued making fun of it to his heart’s content, only to yield after a while to the temptation of trying out one quotation or another, or dressing up something that could not be stated clearly in any case in one of those annoyingly fuzzy new ideas. This is done reluctantly, because one still considers the new “costume” ridiculous, but one quickly gets used to it, and so the spirit of the times is imperceptibly transformed by its new terminology, and in specific cases Arnheim might in fact have gained a new admirer. Even Tuzzi was ready to concede that the call to unite soul and commerce, despite any hostility to it on principle, could be thought of as a new psychology of economics, and all that kept him unshakably immune from Arnheim’s influence was actually Diotima herself. For between her and Arnheim at that time—unknown to anyone—a certain coolness had begun to gain ground, burdening everything Arnheim had ever said about the soul with the suspicion of being a mere evasion; with the result that his sayings were flung in Tuzzi’s face with more irritation than ever. Under these circumstances Tuzzi could be forgiven for assuming that his wife’s attachment to the stranger was still in the ascendant, though it was not the kind of love against which a husband could take steps, but a “state of love” or “loving state of mind” so far above all base suspicion that Diotima herself spoke openly of the ideas with which it inspired her, and had lately been insisting rather unrelentingly that Tuzzi take spiritual part in them.
He felt inordinately bewildered and vulnerable, surrounded as he was by this state that blinded him like sunlight coming from all sides at once without the sun itself having any fixed position to orient oneself by, so as to find shade and relief.
He heard Ulrich saying: “But let me offer this for your consideration: Within us there is usually a steady inflow and outflow of experiences. The states of excitation that form in us are aroused from outside and flow out of us again as actions or words. Think of it as a mechanical game. But then think of it being disturbed: The flow gets dammed up. The banks are flooded in some fashion. Occasionally it may be no more than a certain gassiness….”
“At least you talk sensibly, even if it’s all nonsense…,” Tuzzi noted with approval. He could not quite grasp how all this was supposed to explain matters to him, but he had kept his poise, and even though he was inwardly lost in misery, the tiny malicious smile still lingered proudly on his lips, ready for him to slip right back into it.
“What the physiologists say, I think,” Ulrich continued, “is that what we call conscious action is the result of the stimulus not just flowing in and out through a reflex arc but being forced into a detour. That makes the world we experience and the world in which we act, which seem to us one and the same, actually more like the water above and below a mill wheel, connected by a sort of dammed-up reservoir of consciousness, with the inflow and the outflow dependent on regulation of level, pressure, and so forth. Or in other words, if something goes wrong on one of the two levels—an estrangement from the world, say, or a disinclination to action—we could reasonably assume that a second, or higher, consciousness might be formed in this fashion. Or don’t you think so?”
“Me?” Tuzzi said. “I’d have to sa
y it’s all the same to me. Let the professors work that out among themselves, if they think it important. But practically speaking”—he moodily stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, then looked up in exasperation—”is it the people with two reservoirs or only one reservoir who run the world?”
“I thought you only wanted to know how I imagine such ideas might arise….”
“If that’s what you’ve been telling me, I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” Tuzzi said.
“But it’s very simple. You have no second reservoir—so you haven’t got the principle of wisdom and you don’t understand a word of what the people who have a soul are talking about. Do accept my congratulations!”
Ulrich had gradually become aware that he was expressing, in ignominious form and in curious company, ideas that might be not at all unsuited to explain the feelings that obscurely stirred his own heart. The surmise that in a state of enhanced receptivity an overflowing and receding of experiences might arise that would connect the senses boundlessly and gently as a sheet of water with all creation called to mind his long talks with Agathe, and his face involuntarily took on an expression that was partly obdurate, partly forlorn. Tuzzi studied him from under his indolently raised eyelids and gathered from the form of Ulrich’s sarcasm that he himself was not the only person present who was “dammed up” in a manner not of his own choice.
Both of them hardly noticed how long Rachel was taking. She had been detained by Diotima, who had needed her help in quickly putting herself and her sickroom into an ordered state of suffering that would be informal, yet proper for receiving Ulrich. Now the maid brought a message that Ulrich should not leave but be patient just a bit longer, and then hurried back to her mistress.