The Confusions of Young Master Törless (Alma Classics)

by Robert Musil

  He wasn’t depraved. When it came to the act itself, his revulsion for it and its possible consequences always prevailed. His imagination had simply taken an unhealthy turn. Whenever the weekday routine weighed on him like lead, these corrosive attractions would begin to beckon. The memory of his visits developed into a unique form of temptation. He saw Božena as the casualty of a monstrous process of decline, and his relationship with her, the emotions he experienced, as a ritual of self-sacrifice. What fascinated him was being forced to abandon the things that imprisoned him, his privileged position, the ideas and feelings with which he was constantly inoculated, everything that stifled him while offering nothing in return. What fascinated him was the thought of running naked, divested of everything, escaping to seek sanctuary with this female.

  In this he was little different from most adolescents. If Božena had been pure and lovely and he thus had been able to fall in love with her, he might have bitten into her, raised both his and her sensual desires to the lofty heights of pain. Because a young adult’s first great passion is never love for an individual, but hatred of everyone. The feeling of being misunderstood by and not understanding the world around us, far from being attendant on our first passion, is its sole, essential cause. And this passion is itself an escape, where being two only brings redoubled solitude.

  The first passion rarely lasts, and leaves a bitter taste. It is a mistake, a disappointment. Afterwards we no longer understand who we are, don’t know at whose feet to lay the blame. For the most part it is because the actors in this drama only know each other by coincidence: they are chance companions, both trying to escape. No sooner has the agitation left them than they no longer recognize each other. They only see what divides them, because they no longer see what they have in common.

  The only difference with Törless was that he was alone. The dissipated and ageing prostitute wasn’t capable of releasing the forces that lay deep within him. Yet she was enough of a woman to take those elements of his inner life, which like seeds were waiting for the moment of fertilization, and in a sense drag them to the surface prematurely.

  These, then, were his peculiar ideas, the temptations of his imagination. Yet there were times when he felt like throwing himself to the ground and crying out in despair.

  Božena still wasn’t taking any notice of Törless. It seemed as if she were doing it out of spite, to annoy him. Then suddenly she broke off the conversation: “Give me some money and I’ll go and get some tea and schnapps.”

  Törless handed her one of the silver coins that his mother had given him that afternoon.

  She took a battered spirit burner from the window sill, lit it, then shuffled down the stairs.

  Beineberg gave Törless a prod. “Why are you being so wet? She’ll think you’re in a funk.”

  “Leave me out of it,” replied Törless. “I’m not in the mood. Just talk to her by yourself. And why does she always go on about your mother, by the way?”

  “Ever since she found out my name she’s been saying that she used to work for my aunt, which is where she met my mother. There may be a grain of truth in it, but she’s making a lot of things up – just for the fun of it; although I don’t see what’s so amusing.”

  Törless blushed; he had just had an odd thought. But then Božena reappeared with the schnapps, sat next to Beineberg on the bed again and picked up the conversation where she had left off.

  “…Oh yes, your Mama was a beautiful girl. You don’t look much like her with those protruding ears of yours. And she was fun-loving with it. I bet she turned more than a few men’s heads. Good for her.”

  There was a pause, and then she seemed to remember something particularly amusing: “Do you remember your uncle, the one who was an officer in the Dragoons? I think his name was Karl, he was your mother’s cousin – and he paid court to her in those days, didn’t he just! But on Sundays when the ladies were in church he used to come chasing after me. Every five minutes I had to be taking this, that or the other up to his room. He was a fine-looking fellow, I can tell you, not the sort to be backward about coming forward…” She gave a knowing laugh. And she began to elaborate on the subject, which was clearly a source of special pleasure for her. She spoke in a familiar way, and her words seemed deliberately designed to tarnish everyone involved. “…What I mean to say is, I think your mother took a shine to him too. If only she’d known… I think your aunt would have had no choice but to chuck the pair of us out, him and me! But that’s fine ladies for you, ’specially when they don’t have a man of their own. Dear Božena this, dear Božena that – that was how it was from dawn till dusk! But when the cook got herself in the family way, well, there was a real to-do! I’m sure they thought the likes of us only washed our feet once a year. They didn’t say nothing to the cook, mind, but when I was working in the next room I heard them talking about her. From the expression on your mother’s face you’d have thought butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth! Of course, it wasn’t long before your aunt had a bun in the oven too…”

  As she was speaking, Törless felt unable to resist her vulgar innuendos.

  It was as if he could see what she was describing right in front of his eyes. Beineberg’s mother was transformed into his own. He remembered the light, airy rooms of the family apartment. The clean, well-groomed, unapproachable faces that inspired a certain respect in him during dinner parties at home. The cold, distinguished hands that never seemed to stoop to anything so degrading as eating. A host of details came flooding back to him, and he felt ashamed to be in this fetid little room, trembling to find a response to humiliating remarks made by a whore. The memory of the exquisite manners of a society where good form was always maintained had a more powerful influence on him than any moral considerations. The obscure morass of his passions suddenly struck him as absurd. With the intensity of a vision he saw the scandalized smile, the coolly dismissive wave of the hand with which he would be ejected like a grubby little animal. Yet he didn’t move, as if he were tied to the chair.

  With every detail he remembered, along with the shame came a growing collection of base thoughts. The first of these had appeared while Beineberg was explaining what Božena had said, which was why he had blushed.

  At the time he had been unable to stop himself thinking of his own mother, and this thought now had such a hold on him that he couldn’t shake it off. At first it only touched the outer limits of his consciousness, too much like a flash of lightning or something glimpsed in the distance to be described as a thought. And then in quick succession came a series of questions whose purpose was to block this out: “How can it be that this Božena creature is able to make a connection between her unsavoury existence and my mother’s? That she coexists with her within the confines of the same thought? Why doesn’t she touch the ground with her forehead before she mentions her name? Why isn’t it clear from what she’s saying that they have nothing in common, that there’s a gulf between them? How can this be? For me this woman is just a mass of sexual desires; while up till now my mother has floated far above my life like a heavenly body beyond all earthly longings, existing in a pure, blue, unclouded and infinite sky…”

  Yet none of these questions was the most important one; in fact they hardly had any effect on him. They were only secondary, something that occurred after the event. If they echoed each other it was because none of them got to the heart of the matter. They were merely excuses, paraphrases, a means of disguising the fact that, quite suddenly, instinctively and premeditatedly, he had experienced a concatenation of emotions that answered these questions before they had been asked, but in the wrong way. He feasted his eyes on Božena while unable to stop thinking about his mother, and thus a connection was established between the two women; everything else was just a desperate attempt to wriggle his way out of this tangle of ideas. This was the only true fact. But the futility of his efforts to shake off this yoke took on an obscure and terrifying significance that dogged him like a duplicitous smile.r />
  In order to chase these thoughts from his mind, Törless looked around the room. But by now they had left their imprint on everything: the cast-iron stove with a rusty top, the bed with its rickety legs and peeling, painted headboard, the holes in the bedspread through which the dirty sheets were visible; Božena herself, her chemise, with one of its straps half hanging off her shoulder, her cheap, rose-coloured petticoat, her loud, chattering laugh; and then there was Beineberg, whose behaviour reminded him of a licentious priest gone mad who was interspersing the solemnity of a prayer with double entendres… everything was heading in one direction, constantly besieging him, compelling his thoughts to follow the same road.

  Shifting from one object to another, his anxious gaze could find solace in only one place: the gap above the curtains at the window. From there he could see the clouds in the sky, the still, silent moon.

  It was like walking out into the cool, tranquil night air. For a moment his mind stopped turning. And then a pleasant memory came back to him. The house in the country where they had spent the summer. Nights in the silent grounds. The dark-blue-velvet heavens filled with trembling stars. His mother’s voice coming from the depths of the garden, where she was walking with Papa on the shimmering gravel paths. The songs that she sang softly to herself. But then… and a shudder ran through him… he felt the same agonizing comparisons. What did the two of them feel when they were alone together? Love? It had never occurred to him before. No, love was something completely different. Not something for grown-up people; still less for his parents. To sit by an open window at night and feel abandoned, to feel different from adults, to be misunderstood by every laugh and mocking glance, never able to explain who you really were, to yearn for someone who would understand… that was love! But for that you had to be young and alone. It was different for older people, surely; something calm and composed. Mama just sang in the garden in the darkness of evening and was cheerful…

  But this was precisely what Törless couldn’t understand. He didn’t realize that the patient plans which for adults bind the days, months and years together were still unknown to him. Like the dulling of the senses that stops us worrying that yet another day has come to an end. His life was focused on individual days. For him, each night was oblivion, obliteration, a tomb. He had yet to learn to lie down to die at night without letting it worry him.

  As a result he assumed that something lay behind this, something that people were concealing from him. For him the night was a dark gateway leading to mysterious pleasures to which he hadn’t been given the key, and so his life remained empty and unhappy.

  He remembered noticing how his mother had laughed in an unusual way on one of those evenings, how she squeezed her husband’s arm more tightly and playfully. It seemed to rule out any doubt. There had to be another door, one that led out of the world inhabited by these serene and hallowed beings. And now he knew this, he couldn’t think about it without giving the knowing smile with which he tried vainly to defend himself from malign suspicions…

  In the meantime Božena was still talking. Törless was only half listening. She mentioned someone else who also came to see her nearly every Sunday… “What’s his name now? He’s in your year.”

  “Reiting?”

  “No.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “About as tall as him.” Božena gestured towards Törless. “Except his head’s bigger.”

  “What, Basini?”

  “Yes, that’s the one. He’s rather comical. And posh; he only drinks wine. But he’s stupid. It costs him a small fortune, but all he ever does is talk. He never stops bragging about the so-called affairs he’s had back home; but what did he do exactly? It’s obvious he’s never been with a woman. I mean, you’re just a schoolboy too, but you know what’s what; he’s all fingers and thumbs and scared stiff: that’s why he goes on about how a bon vivant – yes, that’s the expression he used! – is supposed to handle a woman. He says women aren’t fit for anything else – where does one of you get that sort of thing from, that’s what I’d like to know!”

  Beineberg just sniggered sarcastically.

  “You can laugh as much as you like!” Božena retorted, clearly amused. “I asked him once if he wouldn’t be ashamed to talk like that in front of his mother. ‘Mother?…’ he replies. ‘Mother? Who’s that? She doesn’t exist any more. I left all that behind when I came here…’ Oh yes, prick up those big ears of yours why don’t you, but that’s what you lot are like! Nice sons you are, fine young gentlemen! It’s me your mothers ought to feel sorry for!…”

  Hearing this, Törless saw himself as he had earlier. Leaving everything behind, breaking away from his parents’ image. But now he was confronted with the fact that what he was doing was nothing terrible: in fact it was utterly mundane. He felt ashamed. Yet the other thoughts hadn’t left him. They’re doing the same thing! They’re betraying you! You have hidden accomplices! Maybe it’s slightly different for them, although it must be almost the same as it is for you: a terrible, secret pleasure. Somewhere you can drown yourself and your fear of everyday monotony… Perhaps they knew more than he did… something absolutely extraordinary? Because during the day they were so calm and unruffled… and that laugh of his mother’s?… as if she were going quietly from room to room, closing all the doors…

  There came a point in this inner conflict where, sick at heart, Törless gave himself up to the storm.

  It was at this moment that Božena came over to him.

  “Why isn’t the young ’un saying anything? Is there something wrong?”

  Beineberg gave a malicious grin and whispered in her ear.

  “Homesick, eh? Has Mama gone and left him? And the first thing the horrid little boy does is come running to someone like me!”

  With feigned tenderness she ran her fingers through Törless’s hair. “Come on, don’t be silly. Give us a kiss. Even you posh types won’t break if I touch you.” And she tilted his head back.

  Törless wanted to reply, to pull himself together and produce some uncouth witticism; he sensed that the most important thing was to say something, it didn’t matter what, but he didn’t utter a sound. With a fixed smile he just stared at the face above him, into the unseeing eyes, and then the world around him began to shrink… to drift farther and farther away… the image of the young peasant with the stone flashed through his mind, as if jeering at him… and then he was completely alone…

  4

  “GUESS WHAT,” WHISPERED REITING, “I’ve got him.”

  “Who?”

  “The locker thief.”

  Törless and Beineberg had just got back. It was almost supper time, and the duty prefect had gone. Various groups were standing around chatting among the green tables, the room was a hive of activity.

  It was the standard schoolroom, with whitewashed walls, a large black crucifix and portraits of the Emperor and Empress either side of the blackboard. Beside the tall cast-iron stove, which hadn’t been lit yet, the boys who had been at the station with Törless and his parents that afternoon were sitting on the dais or on upturned chairs. As well as Reiting there was Hofmeier, who was very tall, and a little Polish count who was always known as Dschjusch.

  Törless’s curiosity was immediately aroused.

  The lockers were at the back of the classroom. They consisted of long chests divided into compartments in which pupils kept books, letters, money and every imaginable kind of trinket.

  For some time boys had been complaining that small amounts of money were going missing, although none of them had any definite theories as to the culprit.

  Beineberg was the first to be able to say with certainty that he had had a more substantial sum stolen the previous week. But only Reiting and Törless knew about this. They suspected the school servants.

  “So who is it?” said Törless.

  Reiting put his finger to his lips. “Ssh! Later. No one else knows yet.”

  “Is it one of the servants
?” whispered Törless.

  “No.”

  “At least give me a clue.”

  Moving away from the others, Reiting lowered his voice and said, “B.” Apart from Törless no one would have understood a word of this guarded conversation. But he was staggered by this information. B.? It could only mean Basini. And that was impossible! His mother was extremely wealthy, his guardian was an “Excellency”. Törless couldn’t believe it, but then what Božena had said suddenly came back to him.

  He could hardly wait for everyone else to go in to supper. Beineberg and Reiting didn’t join them, making the excuse that they had had too much to eat that afternoon.

  Reiting suggested that before doing anything else it would be best if they went “upstairs”.

  They set off along the long corridor that led from the schoolroom. The flickering gas lamps cast very little light, and they walked so quietly that the sound of their footsteps only carried from one alcove to the next.

  After about fifty metres they came to a staircase that led up to the second floor, which housed the natural-history department, various other collections and a number of disused classrooms.

  From here on the stairs became narrower, leading to the attic in a series of sharp, right-angled stages. As older buildings were often constructed in defiance of logic, with many unnecessary nooks and crannies and redundant steps, they climbed considerably higher than the level of the attic, and to reach the locked, heavy iron door that led to it they had to go down yet another flight of wooden stairs.

  At this point they found themselves in a large, empty space, several metres high and reaching all the way up to the rafters. It was probably a place where no one came any more, and was used to store scenery from long-forgotten school plays.

  Even during the day the staircase was always shrouded in a half-light of ancient dust, since, being in a remote wing of the massive school building, it was rarely used.

  When they reached the last flight of stairs, Beineberg vaulted over the bannisters, and then, holding on to the bars, slipped down between the pieces of scenery, followed by Reiting and Törless. Finding a foothold on a crate that was put there for the purpose, with a final leap they landed on the floor.