by Robert Musil
The Headmaster then berated them about the brutal behaviour that had just been brought to his attention, and said there would be a thorough investigation.
Basini had come forward and admitted what he had done.
Someone had obviously warned him about what was going to happen.
No one suspected Törless. He just sat quietly, wrapped up in his thoughts, as if the whole business had nothing to do with him.
Not once did it occur to Reiting and Beineberg that he might be the traitor. In fact they had never taken the threats they had made to him seriously: they had only done it to intimidate him, to show their superiority, or perhaps their anger; but now that had passed they barely gave it a thought. In any case, their obligations to Törless’s parents would have been enough to stop them from taking any action against him. For them this was such a matter of course that they would never have imagined him capable of the slightest intrigue.
Törless had no regrets about what he had done. Its clandestine and cowardly aspects didn’t matter compared with the feeling of total liberation that it had brought him. After all the turmoil everything was miraculously clear and uncluttered, like a vast open space.
He didn’t join in with the animated conversations that were going on around him about what might happen; he spent the day in a state of peace and tranquillity.
As evening drew in and the lamps were lit, he sat at his desk with the exercise book in which he had noted down his brief observations in front of him.
But he didn’t spend much time reading them. He ran his fingers over the pages, and it seemed as if a delicate fragrance was rising off them, like the scent of lavender from old letters. It was the nostalgia mingled with tenderness that we show for a past that is dead and buried when, in the soft, pale shadows that it casts, and which seem to hold everlasting flowers in their hands, we rediscover a long-forgotten resemblance to ourselves.
These delicate, melancholy shadows, this pale fragrance seemed to fade into a vast, warm, rolling stream – the life that now opened up before Törless.
A stage in his development had come to an end, his soul had acquired another ring as a young tree does every year – and this silent, overwhelming sensation justified everything.
He began to leaf through his memories. The phrases with which he had confusedly recorded what had happened – the various and astonishing events into which life had plunged him – seemed to come alive, move about and take on coherent form. It was as if a shining path lay before him, one that bore the traces of his first tentative steps. And yet something seemed to be missing – not new ideas, of course, but it wasn’t yet vivid enough to really seize hold of him.
He began to feel unsettled. And then anxious, because the next day he would have to stand in front of the masters and justify himself. But how? How could he explain all this? The dark, mysterious path that he had followed. When they asked him “Why did you ill-treat Basini?” could he really reply: “Because I was interested in the mental impression it would have on me, something that I still know very little about, and compared with which all my thoughts seem to be irrelevant”?
This last small step, which he needed to take in order to reach the end of the intellectual process, terrified him as if he were standing on the edge of a bottomless pit.
And before night had fallen he found himself in a state of feverish, anxious agitation.
21
THE NEXT DAY, WHEN THE PUPILS were called in individually to be questioned, Törless had disappeared.
He had last been seen the previous evening, sitting at his desk with an exercise book that he seemed to be reading.
A search was made of the entire school; Beineberg took a discreet look in the attic, but Törless was nowhere to be found.
At that point it became clear that he had run away, and so the local police were notified and asked to bring him back in as tactful a way as possible.
In the meantime the investigation had begun.
Reiting and Beineberg, who were convinced that Törless had run away because they had threatened to implicate him, felt duty-bound to divert any suspicion from him, and spoke up strenuously in his defence.
They shifted all the blame onto Basini, and one after another the whole class came in and testified that Basini was a good-for-nothing thief, whose response to their well-meaning attempts to make him mend his ways was to keep committing the same crimes. Reiting insisted that while they realized they had acted wrongly, they had only done it out of compassion, because they felt that one shouldn’t report a classmate until all the various friendly warnings had been tried; and the entire class swore for a second time that their ill treatment of Basini was just an outburst of rage, because he had repaid their magnanimity with contempt and base behaviour.
In a word it was an act of collusion, brilliantly stage-managed by Reiting, and which, in order to justify their behaviour, struck every moral chord to which they knew the masters were susceptible.
Basini maintained an impassive silence. Since the day before he had been in a state of mortal terror, and his isolation in a separate room and the calm, orderly process of the inquiry were a release for him. He wanted nothing more than for everything to be over quickly. Not only that, Reiting and Beineberg hadn’t neglected to threaten him with the most appalling revenge if he spoke out against them.
And then Törless was brought back. He had been found in the nearby town, dead on his feet and starving.
His reasons for running away now seemed to be the only mystery left in the whole affair. But circumstances were in his favour. Beineberg and Reiting had done a good job in preparing the ground, and had mentioned how excitable he had been lately, the moral sensitivities which had caused him to commit the crime of not immediately reporting something that he had known about from the start, thus making himself partly responsible for this calamity.
So Törless was met with a certain tender-hearted benevolence, which his friends were quick to alert him to beforehand.
Nonetheless he was still extremely agitated, and the fear of not being able to make himself understood left him completely drained…
For reasons of discretion, as there was still a fear that there might be more revelations to come, the investigation was held in the Headmaster’s private apartments. Apart from him, the form master, the school chaplain and the mathematics tutor were also present, the last of whom, being the most junior member of staff, having been given the task of taking the minutes.
Asked why he had run away, Törless didn’t reply.
All the heads nodded sympathetically.
“Don’t worry,” said the Headmaster, “that has already been explained to us. But tell us what made you decide to keep Basini’s misconduct a secret?”
Törless could have lied. But his nervousness had left him. He had an irresistible urge to talk about himself and to try out his ideas on these people.
“I’m not quite sure, sir. When I first heard about it, it seemed to be something absolutely appalling… quite unimaginable…”
The chaplain gave him a satisfied and encouraging nod.
“I… I was thinking of Basini’s soul…”
The chaplain’s face lit up, the maths tutor wiped his pince-nez, put them back on, screwed up his eyes…
“I couldn’t imagine the moment when a humiliation of that kind had befallen Basini, and it was this that kept drawing me closer to him…”
“All right – but what you are probably trying to say is that you felt a perfectly natural revulsion for your classmate’s lapse, and that the sight of vice mesmerized you, so to speak, in the way the eyes of a serpent are said to transfix its victim.”
The form master and the maths tutor wasted no time in expressing their hearty approval of this allegory.
But Törless replied: “No, it wasn’t exactly revulsion. It was… At first I just thought he had behaved badly and that he ought to be reported to those with the authority to punish him…”
“That is what
you should have done.”
“…But then I started to see him in such a peculiar light that I forgot all about punishment, and I realized that my opinion had completely changed; and whenever I thought of him in this way it was as if a crack had opened up inside me…”
“You must try and express yourself more clearly, my dear Törless.”
“I can’t explain it in any other way, sir.”
“Come now, you’re agitated, we can see that – confused, in fact. What you just said is extremely vague.”
“Yes, it’s true that I’m confused – I could have put it more clearly. But it always comes back to the same thing, that there was something extremely strange inside me…”
“I don’t doubt that – but given the circumstances it’s perfectly understandable.”
Törless thought for a moment.
“Perhaps one could put it like this: there are certain things which in a sense are destined to have an effect on our lives in two different ways. In my case these are people, events, dark, dusty corners and a high, cold, silent wall that suddenly comes alive…”
“For Heaven’s sake, Törless, what are you talking about now?”
But Törless was enjoying being able to say what was on his mind.
“ …imaginary numbers…”
They all looked at each other, and then at Törless. The maths master gave a little cough:
“I ought just to add here, to help clarify this somewhat obscure statement, that young Törless came to see me one day to ask me to explain some of the basic concepts of mathematics – particularly imaginary numbers – which can cause real difficulties for an untrained mind. I would go so far as to say that he displayed undeniable acuity, although he had almost an obsession for finding what – to him at least – seemed to be a gap in the causality of human thought, so to speak. Do you remember what you said to me, Törless?”
“Yes. I said that it seemed that in these instances thought wasn’t enough in itself to allow us to make progress, and that we needed another certainty, an inner one, which would in a sense bridge the gap. And that was what I felt in Basini’s case too – that thought alone wouldn’t help.”
The Headmaster was beginning to lose patience with these philosophical digressions, but the priest was delighted with Törless’s response.
“So,” he asked, “do you feel more drawn to the religious viewpoint than that of science?” And he turned to the others. “It was clear to me that it was very similar with Basini. He appears to be highly receptive to the most elevated, I might even say the divine, transcendent aspects of morality.”
The Headmaster now felt obliged to go into this in more detail.
“Well, Törless, is it true what the Reverend Father says? Do you have a tendency to look beyond things and events – as you said in a rather roundabout fashion – in order to find a religious influence?”
He would have been very glad if Törless had finally given a straight answer, one that would have allowed him to base his verdict on solid evidence. But Törless answered: “No, it wasn’t that either.”
“So will you tell us once and for all, clearly and plainly, exactly what it was!” exclaimed the Headmaster. “This isn’t the time or place to get involved in a philosophical debate!”
But Törless was now in a defiant mood. He sensed that he hadn’t expressed himself very well, and yet the opposition as well as the misplaced approval that he had encountered gave him a sense of superiority over these older people, who appeared to know so little about the inner life.
“I can’t help it if what I’ve said isn’t what you thought I meant. I can’t describe exactly what I felt each time; but if I tell you what I think about it now, then perhaps you will understand why it has taken me so long to free myself from it.”
He stood proud and erect, as if it were him who were the judge, his gaze directed over their heads; he couldn’t bear to look at these preposterous characters.
Outside the window a crow was sitting on a branch; apart from that, all that could be seen was a vast white expanse.
Törless sensed that the moment had come to speak clearly, unambiguously and confidently about the things inside him, which at first had been ill defined and agonizing, and then later weak and lifeless.
It wasn’t that this certainty and clarity came from any new thoughts, but as he stood there, bolt upright, as if he were in an empty space, he could feel it, he could feel it with his whole being, just as he had before when he let his astonished gaze wander over his classmates while they were busy writing and doing their prep.
For thought is a strange phenomenon. Often it is nothing more than an accident that vanishes without a trace, because for thought there is a time to be born and a time to die. We can make an amazing discovery, and yet it slowly withers away in the palm of our hand like a flower. The form remains, but its colour and fragrance have gone. Or, put another way, we might remember it word for word, the logical value of its phrases might remain intact, and yet it drifts aimlessly on the surface of our being and we don’t feel enriched by it. Until the moment – perhaps many years later – when it suddenly reappears, and we realize that in the interim we have been barely aware of its existence, although logically speaking we knew it all the time.
Yes, there are dead thoughts and living thoughts. The thought that moves around on the surface, in the light, and which can be regained by the threads of causality at any time, isn’t necessarily the most vivid. A thought we encounter in this way remains as insignificant to us as a random soldier in a column of marching troops. A thought that might have passed through our mind a long time ago only really comes alive at the moment when something which isn’t thought, which isn’t logic is added to it, with the result that we feel its truth, independent of any proof, like an anchor that has been dropped into living, bleeding flesh… Only half of any great discovery is made in the light-filled region of the mind, the other half is found in the dark soil of our inner depths, and this is above all a state of mind which grows at the farthest extremity of our thoughts like a flower.
Törless only needed to experience a violent emotional shock in order for this final, pressing desire to find its way to the surface.
Paying no attention to the looks of consternation on all the faces, and as if purely for himself, he gathered his thoughts and began to speak without pausing, his gaze fixed on the horizon.
“Perhaps I haven’t learnt enough yet to be able to express myself properly, but nonetheless I would like to describe what happened. I felt it in me again just a second ago. The only way I can explain it is to say that I see things in two different forms. Not only things, but thoughts as well. If I make an effort to distinguish between them, then they are the same today as they were yesterday, yet if I close my eyes then I see them in quite a different light. Perhaps I was mistaken about imaginary numbers; if I think about them in a mathematical context, so to speak, then they seem quite natural, but if I look at them in all their strange singularity they become inconceivable. But I may be mistaken, because I know so little about them. But I wasn’t mistaken about Basini, I wasn’t mistaken when I thought I could hear a faint murmuring on the high wall, when I couldn’t stop staring at the silent, living dust lit up by the beam of a lamp. No, I’m not mistaken when I say that things have another, secret life that goes unnoticed! I… I don’t mean it literally: I’m not saying that these things are actually alive, or that Basini has two faces – but that there is something else in me that doesn’t see all this with the eyes of reason. Just as I can sense when a thought is being born in me, I can also sense that whatever it is inside me comes to life at the sight of certain things, and when my thoughts have fallen silent. There is something dark and obscure in me, which lies beneath all my thoughts, which I am unable to quantify in rational terms, a life that can’t be described in words, and which nonetheless is still my life…
“This life of silence has oppressed me, exhausted me; I was unable to take my eyes off it. I was afr
aid that this was what our whole life might be like, that I would only ever experience it in odd, occasional snatches… oh yes, I was terribly afraid… completely distraught…”
In his highly agitated state of mind, these words and comparisons, which were very advanced for someone his age, seemed to come to him easily and naturally, in what was almost a moment of poetic inspiration. Then he lowered his voice and, as if still in the throes of angst, he added:
“…But that’s all in the past. I realize that I was mistaken after all. I’m not afraid of anything now. I know that things are just things and that is what they will always be; and that I will continue to see them first one way and then another. Sometimes with the eyes of reason, sometimes in other ways… And I will stop trying to make comparisons between them…”
After that he said nothing more. And he felt that this was the right moment to leave, and in fact when he walked out no one tried to stop him.
When he had gone, the masters all looked at each other in amazement.
The Headmaster just shook his head, nonplussed. The form master was the first to find his tongue. “Well! This young prophet was trying to lecture us. But I’m damned if I could make head or tail of it. He was almost beside himself! And the way he got himself in a complete muddle over the simplest things!”
“Highly suggestible, purely extemporaneous ideas,” agreed the mathematician. “It appears that he has attached far too much importance to the subjective elements of human experience, hence his confusion and all those obscure comparisons.”
The chaplain didn’t say anything. Törless had used the word “soul” so often that he would have liked to take the young man in hand. But he still didn’t really know what he had been talking about.
It was the Headmaster who brought matters to a close:
“I have no idea exactly what’s going on in Törless’s head, but he has got himself into such a state of overexcitement that it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to remain at the school any longer. His spiritual and intellectual nourishment requires the sort of careful nurturing that we are not in a position to provide. I don’t feel we can accept the responsibility from now on. Törless is better suited to private tuition: that is what I shall recommend when I write to his father.”