The Confusions of Young Master Törless (Alma Classics)

by Robert Musil

  If someone standing on the staircase had looked in this direction, even once their eyes grew accustomed to the dark it would still have been impossible to make out anything more than a jagged mass of scenery flats crammed against each other.

  As Beineberg moved one of these aside, a narrow passageway appeared.

  They hid the crate that they had used to climb down on, and squeezed between the scenery.

  It was pitch dark, and finding their way required an intimate knowledge of the place. A tall canvas panel would sometimes rustle as one of them brushed against it, and dust cascaded onto the floorboards, scattering like a horde of startled mice and bringing with it the smell of musty packing cases. The three friends, who were familiar with the route, groped their way forward step by step, so as not to snag one of the pieces of string that they had stretched just above floor level to act as tripwires and alarm signals.

  It took quite a while for them to reach a small door on the right-hand side, next to the outer wall of the attic.

  When Beineberg opened it they found themselves in a cramped space below the last flight of stairs, which, in the flickering light from an oil lamp that Beineberg lit, took on a fantastical appearance.

  The only part of the ceiling that was horizontal was the area directly below the little landing, and even there it was only just high enough for someone to stand upright. It then sloped down towards the back, following the line of the staircase and finishing in a sharp angle. At the opposite, gable end was the partition that separated the attic from the stairs, while the longer wall was provided by the stonework that supported the staircase. Only the second lateral wall, where the door was, seemed to have been built specifically. It probably owed its existence to a need for storage space, or the whim of the architect, who when he saw this dark corner came up with the medieval idea of turning it into a hiding place.

  Whatever the case, the three friends were probably the only people in the school to know of its existence, let alone think of using it for this purpose.

  So when it came to furnishings, they had been able to indulge their taste for the bizarre.

  The walls were covered with blood-red bunting that Reiting and Beineberg had purloined from one of the attic rooms, and the floor with two layers of the heavy woollen blankets that were used as extra bedding in the dormitories during winter. At the front were three small, low chests covered in fabric, which served as seats; at the far end, in the corner where the sloping ceiling met the floor, they had set up a place to sleep. It was big enough for three or four people, shut off from the light and the rest of the room by a curtain.

  On the wall beside the door hung a loaded revolver.

  Törless didn’t like this room. The fact that it was small and isolated doubtless appealed to him: it was like being deep inside a mountain, and the smell of dusty scenery filled him with all manner of vague, confusing sensations. But the idea of a secret hiding place, tripwires, the revolver, all of which were supposed to heighten the illusion of clandestine revolt, struck him as ridiculous. It was as if they were desperate to convince themselves that they were a band of brigands.

  If Törless played along, it was only because he didn’t want to be left out. Beineberg and Reiting, on the other hand, took it all terribly seriously. Törless was aware of this. He also knew that Beineberg had duplicate keys to all the cellar and attic rooms in the school, and would often disappear from class for several hours and go somewhere or other – either to the uppermost rafters in the roof, or underground into one of the warrens of dilapidated vaults – where he would sit and read adventure stories or meditate on the supernatural by the light of a small lamp that he always took with him.

  He knew similar things about Reiting, who had his own hiding places, where he kept his secret diaries. These were filled with daring plans for the future, as well as detailed records of the causes, management and progress of the countless intrigues that he incited among his classmates. For Reiting there was no greater pleasure than stirring up ill feeling among people, using one boy to bring about the downfall of another and revelling in the favours and fawning remarks that he extorted from them, and behind which he could sense the antipathy of hatred.

  “I’m just practising” was the only explanation he ever gave, invariably with a charming smile. It was probably also to “practise” that on most days he would take himself off to some remote spot and box against a wall, a tree or a table to strengthen his arms and get calluses on his hands.

  Törless knew about all of this, although he only understood it up to a point. Once or twice he had gone along with Reiting and Beineberg. The unconventional nature of their pursuits appealed to him – and he also enjoyed coming back into the daylight afterwards, into the midst of cheerful classmates, while still being able to feel the excitement of solitude and the delirium of darkness quivering in his eyes and ears. But if Beineberg or Reiting used these occasions as an opportunity to talk to someone else about themselves, to set out their ideas and explain what motivated them, then what they said completely escaped him. In fact he thought Reiting was slightly neurotic. His friend was fond of telling people that his father, who had always been an odd, unstable individual, had suddenly disappeared one day without leaving a trace. His name was probably assumed in order to conceal a grand aristocratic lineage. He was waiting for his mother to initiate him into the secret of his considerable birthright, envisaged a future of coups d’état and high politics, and wanted to be an officer.

  For Törless it was impossible even to conceive of such ambitions. As far as he was concerned the age of revolutions was over. And yet Reiting’s intentions were deadly serious – albeit on a small scale at this stage. He was a true tyrant, merciless to anyone who opposed him. His followers changed on a daily basis, but he always commanded the support of the majority. This was his greatest talent. A year or two earlier he had declared war on Beineberg, a conflict that had resulted in the latter’s defeat. In the end Beineberg found himself almost totally isolated, although when it came to character assessment, cold-bloodedness and the ability to incite animosity against those he disliked he had little to envy his opponent. But he lacked Reiting’s charm and powers of persuasion. His phlegmatic nature and unctuous philosophizing invariably aroused suspicions. People sensed that in the depths of his being he was capable of the most appalling excesses. Nonetheless he managed to make life difficult for Reiting, whose victory was eventually little more than a matter of chance. Ever since then they had deemed it best to combine forces.

  All this left Törless indifferent. In any case, he didn’t possess the necessary expertise for it. Yet he was still a prisoner in this world, witnessed with his own eyes every day what it meant to occupy the highest position in an empire – for in a school of this kind, every class is an empire in miniature. So he had a wary respect for his two friends. The occasional vague impulses that he felt to try to rival them went no further than amateurish attempts. As a result, and also being the youngest, his relationship with them was one of disciple or assistant. He benefitted from their protection, yet they gladly listened to his advice. Because of the three of them Törless had the most agile mind. Once on the right track he was capable of devising far and away the subtlest, most fertile twists and turns of reasoning. When it came to predicting what a particular individual could be expected to do in a particular set of circumstances, he was unequalled. But if it involved making a decision, taking a risk and acting on one of the psychological possibilities then he would shy away, lose all interest and enthusiasm. Nonetheless, it amused him to play the secret chief of staff – all the more because it was virtually his sole distraction in the depths of boredom.

  Yet there were times when he realized what he lost as a result of this inner dependency. He sensed that everything he did was only a game; something to help him through this larval stage of school life. It had no connection with his true nature, which would only emerge later, at some as yet remote and undecided time in the future.

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nbsp; Whenever he saw how seriously his friends took all of this, he felt his sense of reason rebelling. He would have liked to make fun of them, but was afraid there might be more to these fantasies of theirs than he was capable of understanding. In a sense he was torn between two worlds: the respectable bourgeois world, the one he was used to at home, in which everything was ordered rationally and according to clear rules; and another one, which was bizarre, inhabited by darkness, mystery, blood and undreamt-of happenings. They seemed to be mutually exclusive. The sardonic smile that he would have liked to wear permanently somewhat contradicted a shiver that ran down his spine. Hence the thoughts that were flitting through his mind…

  He longed to feel something certain in himself; definite needs that could help distinguish between good and bad, useful and not useful; to know how to make a choice, even if it was the wrong one – anything was better than this state of over-impressionability in which he simply absorbed everything…

  As he walked into the little room this inner dichotomy seized hold of him again, as it always did when he came here.

  Meanwhile Reiting had begun telling them what they had come to hear: Basini owed him money, and kept putting off paying him back; each time he had given his word of honour. “It doesn’t bother me that much,” said Reiting. “The longer it goes on, the more control I have over him. But breaking your word three or four times is no trifling matter, is it? In the end I needed the money myself. I mentioned this, and he gave me his solemn word – which he didn’t keep that time either, of course. So I threatened to report him. He begged for two more days, because he was expecting a package from his guardian. In the meantime I made enquiries into his circumstances; I wanted to know if he had any other debts – after all, you should always do your homework, shouldn’t you?

  “I wasn’t exactly overjoyed at what I discovered. He already owed Dschjusch and one or two others. He had paid back some of it, using the money I lent him, of course. The others had him over a barrel. That annoyed me. Did he take me for a soft touch? I wasn’t impressed. But then I said to myself: ‘Wait and see. You’re bound to find an opportunity to teach him the error of his ways.’ In fact one day he happened to mention the amount that he was expecting to arrive in the post, just to reassure me, since it was more than what he owed me. So I asked around and realized that it wouldn’t be enough to cover all his debts by a long way. ‘Aha,’ I thought, ‘he’ll be trying it on with me again.’

  “And sure enough he came to speak to me in private, and asked me to be patient a little longer, because the others were hounding him. This time I was quite frosty: ‘Go and beg the others then,’ I told him. ‘I’m not in the habit of taking second place.’

  “‘But I know you better than them,’ he replied, in a last-ditch attempt. ‘I trust you more.’

  “‘This is my last word,’ I said. ‘Either you bring me the money tomorrow or I’ll impose conditions.’

  “‘What conditions?’ he asked. You should have heard him! It was as if he was ready to sell his soul!

  “‘What are my conditions? Aha! You must promise to be my loyal lieutenant in all my ventures.’

  “‘Really, is that all? Of course I’ll do it – I’d be delighted to be on your side.’

  “‘Oh no, not just if it pleases you; you’ll have to do whatever I tell you – blind obedience!’

  “Then he gave me an odd look, part grin, part embarrassment. He wasn’t sure what he was letting himself in for, or how serious I was. I expect he would have promised to do anything, but he must have been afraid that I would put him to the test straight away. In the end he just went red and said: ‘I’ll bring you the money.’ It amused me actually; he was someone I’d never really noticed before, among the fifty or so others. You could say that he didn’t add up to much. And then all of a sudden he was so close that I could see every detail. Obviously I was in no doubt that he was prepared to sell himself; and without too much fuss either, as long as no one else found out. It was quite a revelation I can tell you, there’s nothing better than seeing someone reveal themselves like that: their true behaviour, which has always gone unnoticed, is suddenly laid out before you like the little tunnels made by woodworm when a piece of timber splits in two…

  “The next day he brought me the money as promised. In fact better than that, he invited me for a drink at the restaurant in town. He ordered wine, cakes, cigarettes, and asked me to accept them as a sign of ‘gratitude’ for my forbearance. What I didn’t like was that he was acting so innocently – as if there had never been a cross word between us. I pointed this out; but he just became nicer and nicer. It was as if he were trying to escape from my grasp, to put himself on an equal footing with me. He behaved as if everything were forgotten, and never stopped assuring me that he would always be my friend; but there was something in his eyes that gripped me, as if he were afraid that this elaborate pretence of camaraderie would soon evaporate. In the end he just disgusted me. And I thought: ‘Does he really think I’m going to allow myself to be treated like this?’ So I tried to think of a way of teaching him a lesson. Something that would cut him to the quick. Then suddenly I remembered that that same morning, Beineberg had told me that he had had some money stolen. The thought just came to me for no apparent reason, but it wouldn’t go away. My throat had gone quite dry. ‘It couldn’t have come at a better time,’ I thought, and so I asked him casually how much money he had left. When he told me I did a quick calculation, and the figures added up. ‘So in spite of everything, who’s still stupid enough to lend you more money?’ I laughed. And he replied: ‘Hofmeier.’

  “I was so delighted that I think I must have been trembling. Only two hours before, Hofmeier had asked me to lend him some money. So the thought that had passed through my mind a few minutes earlier had suddenly become reality. It was like looking at a house and saying to oneself, jokingly: ‘This house is about to catch fire,’ and the next second flames are shooting into the sky…

  “Very quickly I went over the various possibilities again in my mind; I admit that at that point I wasn’t absolutely certain, but what my instinct told me was enough. I leant forward and said to him in the most courteous way possible, as if I were gently driving a thin, pointed stake into his brain: ‘Look here, Basini my dear fellow, why are you lying to me?’ As I said it his eyes seemed to be afloat in a sea of anxiety, but I pressed on: ‘You might be able to fool some people, but I’m not one of them. You know very well that Beineberg…’ His face didn’t change colour at all, it was as if he were waiting for a misunderstanding to be cleared up. ‘To cut a long story short,’ I went on, ‘the money you used to pay me back was money that you stole from Beineberg’s locker last night!’

  “Then I sat back to observe his reaction. He went as red as a beetroot; in his struggle to find a reply he began foaming at the mouth; finally he managed to get the words out. It was a stream of accusations directed at me: how dare I make such suggestions? Did I have the slightest evidence to justify such disgraceful assertions? I was just trying to pick a quarrel with him because he was weaker than me; I was only angry because paying back the money he owed me meant I no longer had a hold over him; but he was going to tell the whole class… the prefects… the headmaster; as God was his witness he was innocent, and so on and so forth ad infinitum. And I began to get genuinely worried that I had accused him wrongly and upset him for no reason, because his face had turned such a bright shade of red… he looked like a defenceless little animal being tormented. But I couldn’t bear the thought of giving up so easily. So as I listened to what he had to say I kept smiling my mocking smile – although it was actually just one of embarrassment. Occasionally I nodded and said quietly: ‘Yes, I’m aware of that.’

  “After a while he calmed down. I carried on smiling. I had the feeling that my smile alone was enough to make him a thief, even if he wasn’t. And I thought: ‘There’ll be time to arrange that later.’

  “A few more minutes went by, during which he gave me the
odd furtive glance, and then all of a sudden he went pale. His air of innocent charm seemed to vanish along with the colour in his cheeks. He was now a greenish shade, whey-faced and puffy. I’d only ever seen something like that once before – when I happened to walk past as a murderer was arrested in the street. He had been mingling with the crowd too, without anyone paying the slightest attention to him. But when the constable put his hand on his shoulder he immediately became a completely different person. His features were transformed, his eyes bulged with fright and searched desperately for a way out – it was the face of a real gallows bird.

  “That was what the change in Basini’s expression reminded me of. So now I knew; all I had to do was wait…

  “I didn’t have to wait for long. Without another word from me, Basini – who had been pushed to the brink by my silence – burst into tears, and begged me to have mercy. He had only taken the money out of dire necessity; if I hadn’t found out he would have put the money back before anyone was any the wiser. I ought not to call it stealing – he had simply borrowed it without anyone knowing… but he couldn’t carry on, because he was crying too much…

  “Then he started pleading with me again. He would be my obedient servant, do whatever I wanted, as long as I didn’t tell anyone. For this he was willing to be my slave, and the combination of guile and greedy, grasping fear that was writhing around in his eyes was repulsive to behold. So I promised to give some thought to what was going to happen to him, but in the first instance it was a matter for Beineberg. So what do you both think we should do with him?”

  Törless had listened to Reiting’s account with his eyes closed, not saying a word. Every now and then he shuddered to the tips of his toes, while wild, unruly thoughts jostled and exploded in his head like bubbles in a pan of boiling water. It is said that this is what happens the first time you see a woman who is destined to drag you into a destructive passion; that there is a moment between two people when the soul withdraws into itself, gathers its strength, holds its breath, a moment of outer silence that conceals a state of inner tension. There is no way of knowing what really happens at such times. It could be described as a shadow cast by passion. A living, all-encompassing shadow; an easing of the tension that has gone before, and at the same time a new and sudden constraint which contains everything that is yet to come; a period of incubation so concentrated that it seems like the prick of a needle… Yet which is also a void, a vague, uncertain sensation, a feeling of weakness, anxiety…