The Confusions of Young Master Törless (Alma Classics)

by Robert Musil

  When he woke with a start, it felt as if his own head was nodding, lolling about on his shoulders, tapping out a beat like a hammer…

  Eventually everything fell silent inside him. There was just an enormous black expanse before him, spreading in ever-growing circles in all directions.

  And then… from the farthest edge of this expanse… two tiny figures came tottering diagonally across the table. He could see quite clearly that it was his parents; but they were so small that he was unable to have any feelings for them.

  When they got to the other side they vanished.

  Then two more figures appeared – but what was this? A third one came running up from behind and overtook them with great strides that were twice as long as his body; in fact he had disappeared over the edge of the table already. Wasn’t it Beineberg? And the other two? Wasn’t one of them the maths master? Törless recognized him from the little handkerchief peeping playfully from his top pocket. But what about the other one? Under his arm he had an extremely thick book almost as big as he was, and which he was barely able to drag along. With every other step he stopped and put it down. And then Törless heard his maths tutor’s squeaky voice: “If I’m not mistaken we should find the answer on page twelve, and page twelve will refer us to page fifty-two, but we should also take account of the note on page thirty-one, and on this assumption…” They stood hunched over the book, manhandling the pages so energetically that clouds of dust rose from them. After a while they stood up again, and the other figure stroked the master’s cheek five or six times. Then they took a few steps forward, and again Törless heard the voice, exactly the same as in maths lessons when it embarked on a long, tapeworm-like theorem; on and on until the other person began to stroke the master’s cheek again.

  The other person… Törless peered, trying to see him more clearly. Wasn’t he wearing a powdered wig? Rather old-fashioned clothes? Extremely old-fashioned in fact. And even silk knee breeches? Wasn’t it?… Oh yes! Törless woke with a start and exclaimed: “Kant!”

  Then he smiled. All around him the dormitory was quiet and still, the sound of breathing much less audible. In the meantime he had been asleep too, and his bed was warmer. He stretched out contentedly beneath the covers.

  “So I dreamt about Kant,” he thought. “Why didn’t it last longer? We could have had a chat, he might have let something slip.” And he remembered once, when he hadn’t done his history prep, how the night before the lesson he had had a dream about the people and events in question which was so vivid that the next day he was able to talk about them as if he had been there in person, and got an A on the test. And then suddenly he remembered Beineberg, Beineberg and Kant – the conversation they had had the day before.

  Gradually the dream receded, like a silk sheet slipping slowly, gently, endlessly off a naked body.

  But his smile soon gave way to a strange sense of disquiet. Had he really got any further forward with his reflections? Was he able to draw any conclusions from this book, which was supposed to contain the solution to every enigma in the world? And his victory? It was probably just his unexpected brusqueness that had left Beineberg speechless.

  Again he was filled with a profound listlessness, an actual, physical desire to vomit. For a few minutes he lay there, drained by feelings of nausea.

  Then once again he became conscious of the soft, warm sensation of the sheets touching every part of his body. Slowly and very, very carefully he turned his head. Yes, the pale rectangle was still there on the stone floor, and although it was now slightly distorted the sinuous shadow was still creeping across it. It seemed as if there was something dangerous chained up over there that he could keep watch on from the safety of his bed as if he were protected by iron bars, serene in the knowledge that he was out of harm’s way.

  All of a sudden, in his skin, all over the surface of his body, he began to get a feeling that soon became a memory. When he was very young – yes, that was it – when he still wore dresses and didn’t yet go to school, there were times when he had an indescribable longing to be a little girl. Yet this longing wasn’t in his head – oh no! – nor did it come from his heart: it was more like a tickling sensation all over his body, an irritation beneath the skin. Yes, there were moments when he felt so vividly that he was a little girl that he believed it must be true. At the time, of course, he had no idea what physical differences meant, and couldn’t understand why everyone around him was always telling him that he would have to be a boy for ever. And whenever someone asked him why he thought he was a girl, he sensed that it wasn’t something that could be explained…

  Now today, for the first time he had a similar sensation. And once again it was just beneath his skin.

  It was something that seemed both physical and psychological at once. As if thousands of velvety butterflies’ antennae were chasing their way across his body. And at the same time it had that air of defiance with which young girls suddenly rush off when they sense that adults simply won’t understand them, that arrogance with which they giggle at them behind their backs, that timid arrogance that is always ready to run away and tells them that they can withdraw into some oh-so-secret hiding place inside their little bodies at any moment…

  He laughed quietly to himself, and stretched out contentedly beneath the covers again.

  That funny little man in his dream, how voraciously his fingers had turned the pages of the book! And what about that rectangle on the floor? What of it! As if such clever little men had ever noticed anything like that in their entire lives! He felt perfectly secure from these clever individuals, and for the first time he realized that in his sensual nature – and he had known this for some time – he possessed something that no one could take away from him or imitate, something that protected him from any strange, foreign intelligence like a high, hidden wall.

  So had these clever little men ever lain at the foot of a secluded wall, he wondered, pursuing the idea further, had they ever been alarmed at the merest quiver beneath its surface, as if some long-dead presence inside it were trying to find the right words with which to communicate with them? Had they ever felt the music that the wind whips up among the autumn leaves – experienced it deeply and profoundly enough so that, lurking behind it, they suddenly discovered a horror that slowly and gradually turns into sensual pleasure? Yet a sensual pleasure so strange that it is more like an escape, and then a mocking laugh. Oh yes, it was easy to be clever when you were unaware of all these problems…

  In the meantime, however, the funny little man seemed to be growing bigger and bigger until he became enormous, with an implacably severe expression on his face, and every time Törless looked at him something like a painful electric shock shot from his brain all the way through his body. It was the pain of being forced to stand outside a closed door, a pain which a few moments before had been thrust aside by the warm pulsing of his blood, and which now came back to him, and a wordless lament surged through his soul like the tremulous howling of a dog echoing across the open fields at night.

  With that he fell asleep again. Once or twice as he was drifting off he glanced at the patch of light under the window, in the way we instinctively pull at a safety rope to make sure it is still taut. And then the vague intention began to take shape that tomorrow he would have to give this some careful thought, preferably with pen and paper at hand, yet in the end there was just the deliciously warm sensation – like a bath or sensual experience – that didn’t come to him in isolation, but which in some obscure yet powerful way was associated with Basini.

  Then he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  13

  YET THIS WAS THE FIRST THING that came to him when he woke the next morning. He would have dearly loved to know exactly what he had begun to think and dream about Basini as he was falling asleep, but he couldn’t remember.

  All that remained was a trace of the gentle, affectionate atmosphere that reigns in a house before Christmas, when the children know that the presents a
re there, but hidden away behind the mysterious locked door, through which filters only the occasional chink of light.

  At the end of school that evening he stayed behind in the classroom. Beineberg and Reiting had disappeared somewhere, probably up to the room in the attic; Basini was sitting in his usual place at the front, head in his hands and studying a book.

  Törless had bought an exercise book, and carefully laid out pen and ink beside it. After a moment’s hesitation he wrote at the top of the first page: “De natura hominum”, as he felt that such a philosophical subject was worthy of a Latin title. Finally he drew a large, elaborate scroll around the heading and then sat back to wait for the ink to dry.

  But even after it had been dry for some time, he still hadn’t picked up his pen. Something was holding him back. It was the entrancing atmosphere created by the blazing gas lamps, the animal warmth generated by a room full of bodies. He had always been susceptible to this environment, which was capable of making him quite feverish, and was invariably accompanied by an extraordinary level of intellectual and spiritual acuity. As was the case now. All day he had been mentally preparing himself for what he was going to write about: the whole series of experiences since the evening with Božena up until the last few days, when this ill-defined fit of sensuality had set in. Once everything was arranged in order, labelled fact by fact, then he hoped that the true, rational workings of his mind would appear of their own volition, in the way a shape emerges from the wild confusion of hundreds of intersecting curves. He asked for no more than that. Yet up till now he had been like a fisherman who feels a tug on the line and thinks he has a good catch in the net, but despite his best efforts isn’t able to haul it into the boat.

  Nonetheless he began to write, albeit hurriedly and with scant regard for what form it might take. “I can sense something within me,” he noted, “and I’m not sure what it is.” But he immediately crossed this out and replaced it with: “I think I must be ill… even mad!” And a shudder ran through him, so deliciously dramatic did it sound. “Mad – because otherwise why am I alarmed by things that other people find perfectly normal? And tormented by this alarm? Why does it make me feel so shameless?” He chose this last word, with its overtones of biblical unction, quite intentionally, because he found it more obscure, richer in meaning. “Up till now I’ve had the same attitudes as other boys of my age, as all my classmates…” Here he broke off, however. “But is that really true?” he thought. “With Božena, for example, it was actually quite bizarre; so when exactly did it start?… Still, it doesn’t matter,” he thought, “it just started.” Yet he left the sentence unfinished.

  “What are the things that alarm me? The most insignificant ones. Mostly inanimate objects. What is it about them that alarms me? Something I don’t recognize. But that’s just the point! Where does this ‘something’ come from? I can sense its presence; it has an effect on me; it’s as if it wants to talk to me. I’m as agitated as someone who is trying to read the contorted lips of a paralysed man, but with no success. It’s as if I have an extra sense that other people don’t have, a sense that is there, which draws attention to itself, yet which doesn’t function. For me the world is full of mute voices: so am I a visionary, or am I hallucinating?

  “But it isn’t just inanimate objects that have this effect on me – no, what also troubles me is human beings. Up to a certain point in time I used to see them as they see themselves. Beineberg and Reiting for instance – they have their little room, an ordinary room in the attic, because it amuses them to have a retreat where they can go and hide. They do one thing because they are angry with a certain individual, and another because they want to prevent that individual from influencing their friend. All perfectly clear, comprehensible motives. But sometimes it seems as if I’m dreaming, and that they are part of that dream. Not just what they say, not just what they do – no, everything about them, everything associated with their physical proximity has an effect on me, in the same way inanimate objects do. And yet I can still hear them talking just like before, everything they do and say follows exactly the same unchanging form… as if to continually reassure me that nothing out of the ordinary is happening, while equally continually something inside me contradicts this. If I remember correctly, these changes began when Basini…”

  And before he knew what he was doing, he had glanced in his direction.

  Basini was still staring at his book, and appeared to be doing his prep. Seeing him sitting there, Törless’s mind emptied of thoughts, and he could feel the same delicious torments that he had just been describing beginning to take effect on him again. And as soon as he saw how quiet and inoffensive Basini was, sitting there in the front row, how he was no different from the boys either side of him, then the humiliations that Basini had endured came alive for him. He actually relived them: which is not to say that he believed – as those of a moral disposition might be inclined to do, with that joviality peculiar to them – that after suffering a humiliation everyone tries to regain at least an outward appearance of composure and normality; instead, a wild swirling was unleashed inside him, taking the image of Basini and disfiguring it into the most unbelievable, impossible contortions, to the point where it made him dizzy. Admittedly these were only comparisons that he made later on. At the time he just had the impression that an incredible spinning top was whirling its way up from his contracting chest to his head, the centre of his giddiness. Among all the confusion, like splashes of colour, were scattered the emotions that he had felt for Basini at different times.

  In reality there had only ever been one emotion. To be precise, it was not so much a feeling as a tremor deep below the surface, whose waves were not visible above ground, and which shook his soul so violently and yet with such restraint that the waves of the most tempestuous emotions seemed like ripples on a millpond by comparison.

  If he only became aware of this emotion in different forms and at different times, it was because his only means of understanding the wave that washed over his being were the images captured by his senses, in the way that flecks of foam shoot up momentarily from the great swell rolling endlessly into the darkness, spraying over the rocks of a sunlit shore only to drop back immediately outside the circle of light.

  As a result his impressions were erratic, changeable and accompanied by an awareness of their transitory nature. Not once was he able to retain them, for no sooner did he fix his gaze on them than he realized that these emissaries at the surface bore little relationship to the power of the dark, unfathomable mass that they claimed to represent.

  Not once did he actually “see” Basini as a distinct and lively physical presence in any particular pose; in fact he had no vision of him at all. It was simply an illusion, in a sense just a vision of his visions. It always seemed as if an image had just flashed across a vast, mysterious expanse, and he was never able to catch hold of it at the moment it appeared. This was why he was in a state of constant agitation, not dissimilar to what we sometimes experience at the cinema, when, along with the illusion created by the whole film, we can never quite shake off the vague awareness that behind the images we actually see countless others are flashing past, each one, when viewed individually, quite different from the rest.

  Yet exactly where within himself he might find this power of illusion – which was always too weak to create a true illusion – he didn’t know. He just had a vague inkling about his relationship with his soul’s mysterious ability to detect thousands of silent, questioning gazes in ordinary inanimate objects.

  So there he sat, motionless, unable to take his eyes off Basini, totally caught up in this state of inner turmoil. From its depths the same question kept resurfacing again and again: “What exactly is this special quality that I have?” Gradually he lost sight of Basini and the blazing gas lamps, he no longer felt the animal warmth that hung in the air around him, the murmuring and humming that comes from a crowd of people even if they are only whispering. It swirled around him in a hot, d
ark, confused mass. All he could feel was that his ears were burning and the tips of his fingers were like ice. He recognized it, not as a bodily fever but the fever of the soul that he so adored. It grew stronger and stronger, mingled with tender emotions. Whenever he had found himself in this state in the past he had enjoyed abandoning himself to the memories that are left behind in a young soul after a woman’s warm breath has brushed against it for the first time. That same weary warmth was now reawakened in him. He remembered… It was during a trip to… a small town in Italy… he and his parents were staying at a hotel not far from the theatre. Every evening they performed the same opera, and every evening he heard every word, every note. But he couldn’t understand much of the language. And yet every evening he sat by the open window and listened. Thus it was that he fell in love with one of the actresses without ever setting eyes on her. Never had he been so overwhelmed by the theatre; in the passion of the arias he felt the beating wings of a great dark bird, it was as if he could follow the trace of their flight into the depths of his soul. It was no longer human passions he heard, but passions that had escaped from human hearts as if from a cramped, prosaic cage. In this state of excitement he was incapable of thinking about the people who – unseen – were acting out these passions somewhere nearby; if he tried to imagine them, dark flames would shoot up in front of his eyes, or incredible gigantic forms, as if human bodies were growing in the shadows, their eyes shining as if reflected in the depths of a well. At the time it was this sombre flame, these eyes in the darkness, these black, beating wings that he loved under the name of an unknown opera singer.

  Who had written the opera? He didn’t know. Perhaps the libretto was taken from an insipid romantic novel. Thanks to this music, had its author sensed it becoming something entirely different?