The Man Without Qualities, Volume 2

by Robert Musil

  Clarisse, who was standing to one side next to Friedenthal, hidden slightly behind him, raised her mouth to his ear and, indicating Moosbrugger with her glance, whispered: “All he ever had was ersatz women!”

  “Shh, for heaven’s sake!” Friedenthal whispered back imploringly, and to cover the indiscretion stepped up to the table and asked aloud: “Who’s winning?” “I’m losing,” Pfeifer declared. “Moosbrugger was lying in wait! Our young colleague won’t take any advice from me; there’s no way I can convince him that it’s a fatal error for doctors to believe sick criminals belong in their hospitals.” Moosbrugger grinned. Pfeifer went on joking and picked up the skirmishing with Friedenthal where it had broken off; there was no point going on with the game anyway. “You yourself,” he pleaded ironically, “ought to be telling a young Hippocrates like this, when the occasion arises, that trying to cure evil people medically is a Utopia and, moreover, nonsense, for evil is not only present in the world but also indispensable for its continuation. We need bad people; we can’t declare them all sick.”

  “You’re out of tricks,” the calm young doctor said, and put down his cards. This time the cleric, looking on, smiled. Clarisse thought she had understood something. She became warm. But Pfeifer looked loathsome. “It’s a nonsensical utopia,” he joked. She was at a loss. Presumably it was only the undignified game of devils playing for a soul. Pfeifer had lit a fresh cigar, and Moosbrugger was dealing the cards. For the first time he looked over at Clarisse for a moment, and then he was asked for his response to the others’ bids.

  This time the intern was odd man out. He seemed to have been waiting for the opportunity, and very slowly pulled his thoughts together in words. “For a scientist,” he said, “there is nothing that does not have its basis in a law of nature. So if a person commits a crime without any rational external motive, it must mean he has an inner one. And that’s what I have to be on the lookout for. But it’s not subtle enough for Dr. Pfeifer.” That was all he said. He had turned red, and looked around with amiable annoyance. The cleric and Dr. Friedenthal laughed; Moosbrugger laughed the same way they did and threw a lightning glance at Clarisse. Clarisse said suddenly: “A person can also have unusual rational motives!” The intern looked at her. Pfeifer agreed: “Our colleague is quite right. And you are really betraying a criminal nature just by assuming that there are also rational motives for a crime!” “Oh, nonsense!” the younger man retorted. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” And again to Clarisse: “I’m speaking as a doctor. Splitting words may have a place in philosophy or somewhere else, but I find it repulsive!”

  Whenever he was entrusted with preparing a faculty report, he was known for getting angry and upset at the concessions he was expected to make to an unmedical way of thinking and at the unnatural questions to which he was expected to respond. Justice is not a scientific concept any more than the concepts derived from it are, and the doctor associates quite different ideas than does the lawyer with “deserving of punishment,” “free will,” “use of reason,” “derangement of the senses,” and all such things that determine the destiny of countless people. Since the lawyer, for whatever reasons, will neither dispense with the doctor nor yield to his judgment, which is understandable, medical experts who testify in court not seldom resemble little children forbidden by an older sister to speak in their natural way, even though at the same time she commands them to do so and then waits for the truth to emerge from their childish mouths. So it was not from any emotional sentimentality but from pure ambition and cutting zeal for his discipline that the young researcher with the dueling scars was inclined to exclude the persons in his report as much as possible from the court’s cerebral cortex, and since this had a chance of succeeding only when these persons could be classified quite clearly and distinctly under a recognized category of disease, he was in Moosbrugger’s case also collecting everything that pointed to one. But Dr. Pfeifer did exactly the opposite, although he only occasionally came to the clinic to inquire after Moosbrugger, like a sportsman who, once his own match is over, will sit on the rostrum and watch the others. He was recognized as an outstanding expert, even if a rather odd one, on the nature of mentally ill criminals. His practice as a physician could be called at most complaisant, and that only with the accompaniment of disrespectful statements against the value of his discipline. He lived mostly from a modest but steady income from testifying as an expert witness, for he was very popular in the courts on account of his sympathy for the tasks of justice. He was so much the expert (which also earned him Friedenthal’s benevolence) that out of sheer scientism he denied his science, indeed denigrated human knowledge in general. Basically, perhaps, he did this only because in this fashion he could abandon himself without restraint to his personal inclinations, which goaded him to treat with great skill every criminal whose mental health was questionable, like a ball that was to be guided through the holes of science to the goal of punishment. All kinds of stories were told about him, and Friedenthal, doubtless fearing that the usual conversation between the two adversaries might well erupt in a quarrel that was better left unheard this time, quickly seized the initiative by turning to Clarisse right after the young doctor and explaining to her what he understood by “splitting words.” “According to the opinion of our esteemed guest Dr. Pfeifer,” he said with a soothing glance and smile, “no one is capable of deciding whether a person is guilty. We doctors can’t because guilt, being held accountable for one’s actions, and all those things aren’t medical concepts at all, and judges can’t because without some knowledge of the important connections between body and mind, there is no way of arriving at a judgment about such questions either. It’s only religion that unambiguously demands personal responsibility before God for every sin, so ultimately such questions always become questions of religious conviction.” With these last words he had directed his smile at the pastor, hoping by this teasing to give the conversation a harmless turn. The priest did turn slightly red in the face and smiled back in confusion, and Moosbrugger expressed by an unmistakable growl his complete approval of the theory that he belonged before God’s tribunal and not psychiatry’s. But suddenly Clarisse said: “Perhaps the patient is here because he is standing in for someone else.”

  She said this so quickly and unexpectedly that it got lost; several astonished glances brushed her, from whose face the color had drained except for two red spots, and then the conversation proceeded on its previous course.

  “That’s not entirely so,” Dr. Pfeifer responded, and laid down his cards. “We can’t even talk clearly about what it means to say I’m speaking as a doctor,’ about which our colleague has such a high opinion. A ‘case’ that occurred in life is placed before us in the clinic; we compare it with what we know, and the rest, simply everything we don’t know, simply our lack of knowledge, is the delinquent’s responsibility. Is that the way it is, or isn’t it?”

  Friedenthal shrugged his shoulders in statesmanlike fashion, but remained silent.

  ‘That’s the way it is,” Pfeifer repeated. “Despite all the pomp of justice and science, despite all hairsplitting, despite our wigs of split hairs, the whole business finally just comes down to the judge saying: 1 wouldn’t have done that’ and to us psychiatrists adding: ‘Our mentally disturbed patients wouldn’t have behaved that way’! But the fact that our concepts aren’t better sorted out can’t be allowed to lead to society’s being hurt. Whether the will of an individual person is free or not free, society’s will is free as far as what it treats as good and evil. And for myself, I want to be good in society’s sense, not in the sense of my private emotions.” He relit his dead cigar and brushed the hairs of his beard away from his mouth, which had become moist.

  Moosbrugger, too, stroked his mustache, and was beating rhythmically on the tabletop with the edge of his telescoped hand of cards.

  “Well, do we want to go on playing, or don’t we?” the intern asked patiently.

  “Of course we
want to go on,” Pfeifer responded, and picked up his cards. His eyes met Moosbrugger’s. “Moreover, Moosbrugger and I are of the same opinion,” he went on, looking at his hand with a worried expression. “How was it, Moosbrugger? The counselor at the trial asked you repeatedly why you put on your Sunday clothes and went to the tavern—”

  “And got shaved,” Moosbrugger corrected; Moosbrugger was ready to talk about it at any time, as if it was an act of state.

  “Calmly got shaved,” Pfeifer repeated. “ ‘You shouldn’t have done that!’ the counselor told you. Well!” He turned to the rest. “We do exactly the same thing when we say that our mental patients wouldn’t have done that. Is this the way to prove anything?” This time, his words were subdued and relaxed and only an echo of his earlier, more passionate protest, because the game had again begun to go around the table.

  A patronizing smile could be discerned on Moosbruggers face for quite some time; it slowly faded in his absorption in the game, the way pleats in a stiff material soften with constant use. So Clarisse was not entirely wrong when she thought she was seeing several devils struggling for a soul, but the relaxed way in which this was happening deceived her, and she was especially confused by the manner in which Moosbrugger was behaving. He apparently did not much like the younger doctor, who wanted to help him; he put up with his efforts only reluctantly and became restless when he felt them. Perhaps he wasn’t acting any differently from any simple person who finds it impertinent when someone busies himself about him too earnestly; but he was delighted every time Dr. Pfeifer spoke. Presumably what he was expressing in this case was not exactly delight, for such a condition formed no part of Moosbruggers demeanor, oriented as it was toward dignity and recognition, and much of what the doctors said among themselves he also found incomprehensible; but if talk there had to be, then it should be like Dr. Pfeifer’s. That this was, on the whole, his opinion was unmistakably evident. The collision of the two doctors had made him cheerful; he began to count his tricks again out loud and in English, and in conspicuous repetition threw into the conversation or into the silence from time to time the observation: “If it must be, it must be!” Even the good cleric, who had seen a good deal, shook his head at times, but the scorn heaped on earthly justice had pleased him not a little, and he was also pleased that the scholars of worldly science were not able to agree. He no longer recalled how all these problems that they had been talking about were to be decided according to canon law, but he thought calmly: “Let them carry on, God has the last word,” and since this conviction led him not to get involved in the verbal duel, he won the game.

  So among these four men there was a quite cordial understanding. It was true that the prize being offered was Moosbruggers head, but that was not in the least troublesome as long as each person was completely preoccupied with what he had to do first. After all, the men concerned with forging, polishing, and selling knives are not constantly thinking of what it might lead to. Moreover, Moosbrugger, as the only one personally and directly acquainted with the slaying of another person, and whose own execution was in the offing, found that it was not the worst thing that could befall a man of honor. Life is not the highest of values, Schiller says: Moosbrugger had heard that from Dr. Pfeifer, and it pleased him greatly. And so, as he could be touching or a raging animal depending on how his nature was appealed to or manipulated, the others too, as friends and executioners, were stretched over two differing spheres of action that had hardly a single point of contact. But this greatly disturbed Clarisse. She had seen right away that under the guise of cheerfulness something secret was going on, but she had grasped this only as a blurred picture and, confused by the content of the conversation, was just now beginning to understand; but not only did she understand, she saw persistent evidence, ominous and indeed urgent in its uncanniness, that these men were surreptitiously observing Moosbrugger. But Moosbrugger, unsuspecting, was observing her, Clarisse. From time to time he furtively directed his eyes at her and tried to surprise and hold her glance. The visit of this beautiful lady who had come so far—it was only Clarisse’s thinness and small size that were just a little too unimpressive—flattered him greatly, in spite of all the deference with which he was generally treated. When he found her extraordinary glance directed at him, he did not doubt for an instant that his bushy-bearded manliness had made her fall in love with him, and now and then a smile arose beneath his mustache that was meant to confirm this conquest, and this, along with the superiority practiced on servant girls, made a quite remarkable impression on Clarisse. An inexpressible helplessness squeezed her heart. She had the notion that Moosbrugger found himself in a trap, and the flesh on her body seemed to her a bait that had been cast before him while the hunters lurked around him.

  Quickly making up her mind, she laid her hand on Friedenthal’s arm and told him that she had seen enough and felt tired.

  “What did you really mean when you said he had always had only ‘ersatz women?” Friedenthal asked after they had left the room.

  “Nothing!” Clarisse, still upset at what she had been through, responded with a dismissive gesture.

  Friedenthal became melancholy and thought he needed to justify the strange performance. “Basically, of course, none of us are responsible for our actions,” he sighed. Clarisse retorted: “He least of all!”

  Friedenthal laughed at the “joke.” “Were you very much surprised?” he continued, in apparent astonishment. “Some of Moosbrugger’s individual traits emerged quite nicely.”

  Clarisse stopped. “You shouldn’t allow that to continue!” she demanded forcefully.

  Her companion smiled and devoted himself to dramatizing his state of mind. “What do you expect!” he exclaimed. “For the medical man everything is medicine, and for the lawyer, law! The justice system is in the final analysis a function of the concept of ‘compulsion’ which is part of healthy life but is mostly applied without dunking to sick people as well. But in the same way, the concept of ‘sickness’ our starting point as doctors, and all its consequences, are also applicable to healthy life. These things can never be reconciled!”

  “But there are no such things!” Clarisse exclaimed.

  “Oh, but there are,” the doctor complained gently. “The human sciences developed at different times and for different purposes, which have nothing to do with each other. So we have the most divergent concepts about the same thing. At most the only place it comes together is in the lexicon. And I bet it’s not only the priest and myself but you, too, and, for instance, your brother or your husband and I—each one of us would know only one corner of the contents of every term we would look up in it, and of course each of us would know a different corner! The world hasn’t been able to arrange things any better than that!” Friedenthal had leaned over Clarisse, who was standing in a window alcove, and supported his arm against the window bars. Some sort of genuine feeling resonated in his words. He was a doubter. The insecurity of his discipline had opened his eyes to the insecurity of all knowledge. He would have loved to be someone important, but in his best hours had an inkling that for him the paralyzing confusion of everything about which truth existed, did not yet exist, or would never exist, permitted nothing more than a vain and sterile subjectivity. He sighed, and added: “I sometimes feel as if the windows of this building were nothing more than magnifying glasses!”

  Clarisse asked seriously: “Can we go to your office for a bit? I can’t talk here.” Two arrows shot forth from beneath the shield of her eyelids. Friedenthal slowly disengaged his hand from the window and his glance from her eyes. Then he also disengaged his thoughts from the absorption he had revealed, and said, as they walked along the tiled corridor: “This fellow Pfeifer is an extraordinary figure. He lives without friends or girlfriends, but he has the biggest collection of paintings, trial proceedings, and memorabilia connected with the death sentences of the last twenty or thirty years. I saw them once. Extraordinary. Drawers full of his ‘victims’: polished and bruta
l faces of men and women, some marked by crime, some quite ordinary-looking, smile up at you from yellowed newspapers and faded photographs, or gaze into their unknown future. Then there are scraps of clothing, rope ends—real gallows ropes—canes, vials of poison. Do you know the museum in Zermatt, where what’s left behind by those who’ve fallen from the surrounding mountains is preserved? It’s that kind of impression. He obviously has a tender feeling for these things. You notice it, too, whenever he talks of the ‘victims’ to whose legal murder, or whatever you want to call it, he himself has contributed. As astute observer might see in this something like a rivalry, the joy of intellectual superiority, sexual cunning. All of course entirely within the bounds of what is permissible and scientifically admissible. But one could indeed say that being preoccupied with danger makes one dangerous—”