The Confusions of Young Master Törless (Alma Classics)

by Robert Musil

  Desperately he tried to wake up, cry out to himself: “Basini is playing a trick on you: he’s trying to drag you down to his level so you won’t be able to despise him any more.” But the words died in his throat; nowhere in the vast school building was there a single sound; in the corridors and passages the dark tides of silence lay motionless, as if sleeping.

  He tried to regain his self-control; but like black-clad sentinels the silent tides were at every door.

  So he abandoned the search for words. The sensual desire that had taken advantage of every moment of despair to worm its way into him gradually had now reached its peak. It was lying naked at his side, draped its soft black cloak over his head. It whispered sweet nothings of surrender in his ear, while its warm fingers thrust aside any lingering doubts and duties as being in vain. And it murmured: “When you are alone, nothing is forbidden.”

  Just as he was about to be swept away he came to himself for a few seconds, and clung desperately to a single thought: “It isn’t me doing this!… It isn’t me!… Tomorrow I’ll be my usual self again!… Tomorrow…”

  15

  ON TUESDAY EVENING the first boys started arriving back at school. Others were travelling on the overnight sleeper train. The whole place was plunged into a constant uproar.

  Törless greeted his classmates with sullen ill humour; he had forgotten nothing. Not only that, they brought with them a breath of fresh air, elegance and sophistication from the outside world. He was ashamed that he had grown to love the sultry atmosphere of the cramped rooms and dormitories.

  In fact, he felt ashamed most of the time now. Not so much for allowing himself to be led astray – for in schools like this it was far from unusual – than for the fact that he couldn’t help but feel a sort of affection for Basini, while at the same time being even more convinced that he was a despicable and degenerate individual.

  He had frequent secret assignations with him. He took him to all the hiding places that Beineberg had shown him, although, as he wasn’t well versed in such surreptitious escapades, Basini, who was more ingenious in that respect, soon took the lead.

  At night, however, the pangs of jealousy that forced him to keep watch on Beineberg and Reiting prevented him from sleeping.

  But the two of them seemed to be avoiding Basini. Perhaps he had already begun to bore them. Whatever the case, they appeared to have undergone something of a change. Beineberg had become grim and uncommunicative; when he did say anything it was only to make mysterious allusions to some imminent event. Reiting’s interest had apparently moved on: with his usual skill he was busy spinning the web of some new intrigue with which he hoped to gain favours for himself, terrifying the others by artfully uncovering their little secrets.

  Whenever the three of them were alone together, Beineberg and Reiting seemed to be determined that Basini would soon have to be made to come up to the little room or to the main attic again. Törless used every excuse he could think of to try to postpone this, yet he suffered constantly from this covert collusion with them.

  Only a few weeks earlier he would have found such a state of affairs quite incomprehensible, because, if only as a result of his upbringing, he had always been a normal, strong, healthy boy.

  It must not be assumed from this, however, that Basini aroused – even momentarily and confusedly – what could strictly speaking be called desire in Törless. While something not dissimilar to passion had certainly been awoken in him, to give it the name of love would be only an incidental and imprecise description, in the same way that Basini himself was no more than a temporary substitute for its true aim. Even when Törless debased himself with him it never satisfied his desire, which grew beyond Basini and became a new hunger that had no apparent purpose.

  At first it was just the nakedness of the slender, boyish body that bedazzled him.

  The impression it made was no different from what he would have experienced if he had been confronted with a young girl, her form still devoid of sexual attributes. It was overwhelming, astonishing. And it was the spontaneous purity of the moment that had given his relationship with Basini the appearance of an inclination – this wonderful new sensation of disquiet. All the other elements of desire played little part in it: they had already existed when he first started going to Božena, in fact long before then. It was the mysterious, aimlessly drifting and melancholy sensuality of budding youth, so like the damp, dark, fecund soil of spring, or those obscure subterranean streams that take the first opportunity to burst their banks.

  The scene in which Törless had taken part was this very opportunity. A combination of surprise, misunderstanding, failure to appreciate the extent of the effect it had had on him, all conspired to break open the secluded hiding places in his soul where everything that was furtive, forbidden, sultry, uncertain and solitary had gathered, and to guide these obscure stirrings towards Basini. There they promptly came up against something warm, something that breathed, sweet-scented flesh, something that gave form to his ill-defined and shifting dreams and their particular beauty, instead of the corrosive ugliness with which Božena had infected them in her well of loneliness. It threw open the door of life to them, and in this gathering twilight everything mingled together, desires and reality, wild fantasies and impressions still warm from the touch of life, sensations that came to him from outside and flames that shot up to greet them from deep inside him, engulfing them until they were beyond recognition.

  Yet for Törless these details were now indistinguishable: all he had was a hazy, incoherent feeling which in his initial surprise he quite understandably mistook for love.

  But he quickly learnt to be more discerning. He was now buffeted by constant agitation. No sooner had he picked something up than he put it down again. He was unable to have a conversation with his classmates without lapsing into silence for no reason, or changing the subject a dozen times. There were even moments when he was overcome with shame in mid-sentence and would blush, begin to stammer and had to look away…

  During the day he tried to avoid Basini. If he wasn’t able to stop himself from looking at him, he was nearly always disappointed. Basini’s every gesture filled him with disgust, the vague shadows of his illusions gave way to a cold, dull, pale light, and his soul shrivelled until there was nothing left except the memory of his original desire, which now seemed as incomprehensible as it was repugnant. It was as if he were trying to thrust his foot deep into the ground and huddle up to escape the clutches of this excruciating sense of shame.

  He wondered what the other boys, his parents, the masters would say if they found out about his secret.

  But it was with this last wound that his torments always came to an end. He would be seized with a cold feeling of lassitude; his hot, flaccid flesh would tauten with a shudder of contentment. At these moments he quietly let other people pass him by; yet there wasn’t one of them for whom he didn’t feel a certain disdain. He secretly suspected everyone he spoke to of the most appalling acts.

  What was more, he thought they were all devoid of shame. He didn’t believe they were capable of suffering in the way he did. Unlike him they didn’t wear a crown of thorns woven by a guilty conscience.

  He, however, had the impression that he had just woken from the pangs of death; he was like someone who has been brushed by the discreet and gentle hands of the Dark Angel; someone who can never forget the still, silent wisdom that is acquired from enduring a long illness

  When he was in this frame of mind he felt happy, and there were times when he looked back and longed to experience it again.

  It was then that he began to view Basini with indifference again, to laugh off the cheap and loathsome aspects of his character. He knew he was debasing himself, but this took on new meaning. The more sordid and degrading the things that Basini offered him became, the greater the contrast with the feeling of exquisite suffering that usually followed.

  He would withdraw to some quiet corner from where he could observe unnotice
d. When he closed his eyes he was filled with a kind of insistent yearning, but when he opened them again he was never able to find anything that could be compared with this sensation. And then suddenly he would think of Basini, and this thought kept growing until everything else was distorted, leaving him disorientated. It no longer seemed to bear any relationship to him, nor did it seem to be associated with Basini. Feelings and emotions would swish and swirl around him like lascivious women in high-necked dresses, their faces hidden by masks.

  He couldn’t put a name to any of these feelings, and had no idea what he might retain from them; but therein lay the exhilarating temptation. He no longer recognized himself, and it was precisely this that led his desires towards unbridled and shameless debauchery, like those wild carousals where the lights suddenly go out and no one is quite sure whom they are lying with on the floor and smothering with kisses.

  In years to come, once he had outgrown the events of adolescence, Törless would become a young man of refined and delicate sensitivities. His was one of those aesthetic, intellectual natures that take comfort from complying with the law and – at least partly – public morality, as this relieves them of having to think about crude and vulgar matters that are far removed from the subtle atmosphere of their inner lives, and yet along with this faintly ironic correctness show bored indifference for such matters whenever they are asked to express an interest in them. For the only thing that truly absorbs their interest is the development of the soul, the spirit or whatever we wish to call that element within us which we might glimpse between the lines of a book or the sealed lips of a portrait; which is sometimes woken in us when a solitary and persistent melody drifts away from us – crying out in the distance – strangely tugging at us with the slim, red thread of our blood. But this vanishes whenever we fill in an official form, build a machine, go to the circus or take part in countless other similar activities.

  People of this kind are indifferent to things that only appeal to their sense of moral rectitude. So it follows that, later in life, Törless would never regret the things he did at this time. His needs were focused so single-mindedly on aesthetic matters that if someone were to tell him a not dissimilar story about the behaviour of a particular debauched individual it would never have entered his mind to express outrage. He would have despised this person, not for his debauchery, but for failing to better himself, so to speak; not for his excesses, but for the state of mind that led him to behave like that in the first place; for his stupidity, or because his mind lacked a sense of balance… in short, because he presented such a sad, inadequate and feeble spectacle. And he would have despised him equally had his vices been sexual dissipation or if he were a compulsive smoker or drinker.

  Like all those who concentrate exclusively on heightening their intellectual capacities, the existence of sensual and disorderly emotions were of little importance to him. He liked to believe that a sense of enjoyment, artistic talent and a fastidious spiritual life were ornaments with which one could easily injure oneself. He considered it inevitable that someone with a rich and responsive inner life would always have things that he preferred other people not to know about, memories that he kept in secret compartments. All he asked was that one should know how to make subtle, discerning use of them later.

  Thus it was that, when someone whom he had told about this youthful episode once asked him if he weren’t sometimes still ashamed of it, he just smiled and gave this reply: “I certainly wouldn’t deny that it was degrading. And why not? It’s in the past now. But part of it will stay with me for ever: it’s the small dose of poison that is necessary to prevent the soul from becoming too comfortably and too securely healthy, to make it sharper, more subtle and understanding.

  “In any case, do you want to keep a record of the degradations that every great passion has seared into your soul? What of the times when lovers humiliate themselves intentionally! Those times of rapture when they lean over a deep well, or take it in turns to listen to each other’s heart to see if they can hear the restless cats scratching at the walls of their dungeon? Just to feel themselves shudder! Just to be frightened by their own solitude at the edge of these dark, infamous depths! Just to seek refuge in each other against their fear of being alone!

  “You only have to look young couples in the eye. What do you imagine they are saying? ‘Think what you like, but you have no idea of the depths to which we are capable of sinking!’ Those sparkling eyes which secretly mock anyone who can fail to know so many things, and the tender, loving pride of people who have been through hell together.

  “And, like those lovers, I have been through all that – but on my own.”

  If Törless would express such opinions later in life, at this precise moment, however, when he found himself alone in a storm of desires and emotions, he was far from confident that the episode would have a happy ending. The enigmas that had recently tormented him were still having a vague effect, which rang out like a distant bass note behind everything he experienced. But he preferred not to think about it.

  But there were times when he had to. At these moments he sunk into the depths of despair, and at the very memory of these things he was filled with a quite different and debilitating form of shame, in which the future seemed to hold out no hope for him.

  And yet he was unable to account for any of this.

  It was caused by the particular circumstances of life at the school. In a place where the tide of youthful energy was contained within the tall grey walls, all manner of voluptuous images piled up at random in the imagination, causing many a boy to go astray.

  A degree of promiscuity was deemed manly, a sign of daring, the bold conquest of forbidden pleasures – especially when compared with most of the masters, who from their appearance were wasting away with respectability. As a result, any incitement to virtue was immediately – and absurdly – connected with anyone with sloping shoulders, a pot belly and spindly legs, and whose eyes, behind their glasses, were like those of lambs grazing innocently, as if life were a meadow full of the flowers of solemn edification.

  In a word, the pupils at the school still knew nothing of life, and had not the slightest idea about the subtle distinctions that separate vulgarity from lechery and perversion from the absurd, which are among the first things that fill adults with revulsion when they hear about such behaviour.

  Yet all these inhibiting elements, whose effectiveness cannot be overestimated, were something that Törless didn’t possess. He had blundered into this misconduct out of pure naivety.

  At the time he also still lacked the powers of moral resistance, the highly developed intellectual sensibility that he would later value so highly. And yet it was already dormant within him. Törless was adrift, all he saw were the shadows cast across his consciousness by something within him that he didn’t recognize, and which he mistook for reality: yet he realized he had work to do on himself, on his soul, although he wasn’t yet mature enough to do so.

  All he knew was that he had followed something vague and indistinct along a path that led into the depths of his being – and this had left him exhausted. He had hoped to make extraordinary discoveries, but only succeeded in straying into the narrow, winding back roads of sensuality. Not out of perversion, but by going down a spiritual dead end.

  It was this betrayal of a solemn ideal that gave him a vague sense of guilt; he was permanently dogged by secret disgust, an ill-defined anxiety, like someone walking in the dark and who doesn’t know whether he is still on the path or if he has lost his way.

  He did his best to stop thinking altogether. He simply got on with life, numb, vacant, saying little, putting all earlier questions out of his mind. The subtle delight that he had taken in degrading himself began to wane.

  The feeling never quite left him; although when this brief period came to an end, and more decisions were taken about what should be done with Basini, he made no attempt to object.

  16

  THESE DECISIONS WERE
TAKEN a few days later, when the three friends were alone together in the room in the attic. Beineberg looked very serious.

  It was Reiting who spoke first: “Beineberg and I have come to the conclusion that the methods we’ve used on Basini so far aren’t working. He’s got used to the fact that he owes us obedience, it doesn’t make him suffer any more; he’s taken on that insolent familiarity that you find in servants. So I think it’s time to go a step further. Do you agree?”

  “It depends on what you’re thinking of doing.”

  “It’s not quite as simple as that. Obviously we should keep humiliating and crushing him. I’d like to see how far we can go with that. But how exactly we do it, well that’s another matter entirely. Mind you, I’ve got one or two good ideas. For example, we could make him sing psalms of thanksgiving while we beat him – that would be quite fun: listening to someone singing where every note makes your flesh creep, if you see what I mean. Or we could make him go and find the most unsavoury objects and bring them to us. We could take him to Božena, make him read out his mother’s letters, and then let her have whatever fun she likes. But there’s no hurry to decide. We’ve got time to think about it, refine our ideas and come up with new ones. It might sound boring at the moment, but that’s because we haven’t worked out the details. Maybe we could hand him over to the whole class. That would be the wisest thing. In a large group, each person would only have to play a small part and he’d be torn to pieces. Besides, I enjoy seeing crowds in action: no one does anything in particular, and yet the tide gets higher and higher until everyone is engulfed. You’ll see: no one will lift a finger, but there’ll be a whirlwind. I can think of no greater pleasure than staging something like that.”

  “So what do you want to do first?”

  “As I said, I’d prefer to save all that for later. In the meantime I’ll be quite happy if we can get to the point – either by threatening or beating him – where he starts saying ‘yes’ to everything again.”