by Robert Musil
“I quickly ran over all the possibilities in my mind once again. Admittedly there wasn't any way of making dead certain, but my instinct was good enough for me. So I leaned over towards him and said in the most amiable way you can imagine, just as if I were gently driving a little thin, pointed stick into his brain: 'Look here, my dear Basini, why do you insist on trying to deceive me?' At that his eyes seemed to swim in his head with fear. And I went on: 'I dare say there are plenty of people you can take in, but I don't happen to be the right person. You know, don't you, that Beineberg . . .' He didn't turn red or white, it was as if he were waiting for some misunderstanding to be cleared up. 'Well, to cut a long story short,' I said, 'the money from which you've paid me back what you owed me is the money you took out of Beineberg's locker last night.”
“I leaned back to study the effect it had on him. He went as red as a tomato. He began spluttering and slavering, as though choked by his own words. Finally he managed to get it out. There were torrents of reproaches and accusations against me. He wanted to know how I could dare to make such an assertion and what faintest justification there was for such an abominable conjecture. He said I was only trying to pick a quarrel with him because he was the weaker and that I was only doing it out of annoyance because now that he had paid his debts he was out of my power, and that he would appeal to the class-the ushers-the Head-and that God would bear witness to his innocence, and so on and on ad infinitum. I really began to be quite worried that I had done him wrong and hurt his feelings for nothing, he looked so sweet with his face all red. He looked just like a tormented, defenceless little animal, you know. Still, I couldn't bring myself to let it go at that quite so easily. So I kept up a jeering smile-almost only out of embarrassment, actually-as I went on listening to his talk. Now and then I wagged my head and said calmly: 'Yes, but I know you did.'
“After a while then he quieted down. I kept on smiling. I felt as though simply by smiling at him like that I could make a thief of him, even if he weren't one already. 'And as for putting it right again,' I thought to myself, 'there's always plenty of time for that later.'
“And then after a while, when he had kept on glancing at me furtively, he suddenly got quite white. A queer change came over his face. The innocent and delightful look that had beautified him vanished out of his face, so to speak together with the colour. It turned quite green, cheesy, and puffy. I've only seen anything like it once before-once in the street when I came along just as they were arresting a murderer. He'd been going around among people too, without anyone's noticing anything queer about him. But when the policeman put his hand on his shoulder, he was suddenly changed into a different person. His face altered and his eyes popped with
terror and looked around, searching for some way of escaping-a thoroughgoing gallow's-bird he looked.
“That came back to my mind when the change came over Basini's face. Then I knew it all, and only had to bide my time.
“And then it all came out. Without my having to say anything, Basini-worn out by my silence-began to blubber and implore me for mercy. He said he'd only taken the money because he was in a fix, and if I hadn't found him out he would have put it back before anyone noticed. He said I shouldn't say he'd stolen it. He'd only taken it as a secret loan. . . . By that time he was blubbering too much to say any more.
“Afterwards he began pleading with me again. He said he would do my will in everything, he would do whatever I wanted, if only I wouldn't give him away. At this price he positively offered to be my slave, and the mixture of cunning and greed and fear that wriggled in his eyes was simply disgusting. So to get it all done with I told him I'd think it over and decide what was to be done with him, but I also told him that primarily it was Beineberg's affair. Well now, what do you chaps think we should do with him?”
While Reiting told his story Törless listened in silence, with his eyes shut. From time to time a shiver went through him, right to his finger-tips, and in his head the thoughts rose to the surface, wildly and chaotically, like bubbles in boiling water. It is said to be thus with one who for the first time sets eyes on the woman who is destined to involve him in a passion that will be his undoing. It is said that between two human beings there can be a moment of bending down, of drawing strength from deep within, of holding breath-a moment of utmost inner tension under a surface of silence. No one can say what happens in this moment. It is, as were, the shadow that coming passion casts ahead of it. This is a!) organic shadow; it is a loosening of all previous tensions and at the same time a state of sudden, new bondage in which the whole future is already implicit; it is an incubation so concentrated that it is sharp as the prick of a needle . . .And then again it is a mere nothing, a vague, dull feeling, a weakness, a faint dread .
That was how Törless felt it all. Reiting's story seemed to him, when he put it to himself squarely, to be of no importance in itself: a reckless misdeed, a mean and cowardly act, on Basini's side, and now, without doubt, some cruel whim of Reiting's would follow. On the other hand, however, he felt something like an anxious premonition that events had now taken a quite personal turn against himself and that there was in the incident some sharp menace directed against him, like a pointed weapon.
He could not help imagining Basini together with Bozena, and he glanced around the narrow room. The walls seemed to threaten him, to be closing in on him, to be reaching out for him with bloodstained hands, and the revolver seemed to swing to and fro where it hung....
Now for the first time it was as though something had fallen, like a stone, into the vague solitude of his dreamy imaginings. It was there. There was nothing to be done about it. It was a reality. Yesterday Basini had been the same as himself. Now a trap-door had opened and Basini had plunged into the depths. It was precisely as Reiting had described it: a sudden change, and the person had become someone else....
And once again this somehow linked up with Bozena. He had committed blasphemy in his thoughts. The rotten, sweet smell rising from them had made him dizzy. And this profound humiliation, this self-abandonment, this state of being covered with the heavy, pale, poisonous leaves of infamy, this state that had moved through his dreams like a bodiless, far-off reflection of himself, all this had now suddenly happened to Basini.
So it was something one must really reckon with, something one must be on one's guard against, which could suddenly leap out of the silent mirrors in one's mind?
But then everything else was possible too. Then Reiting and Beineberg were possible. Then this narrow little room was possible . . . Then it was also possible that from the bright diurnal world, which was all he had known hitherto, there was a door leading into another world, where all was muffled, seething, passionate, naked, and loaded with destruction-and that between those people whose lives moved in an orderly way between the office and the family, as though in a transparent and yet solid structure, a building all of glass and iron, and the others, the outcasts, the blood-stained, the debauched and filthy, those who wandered in labyrinthine passages full of roaring voices, there was some bridge-and not only that, but that the frontiers of their lives secretly marched together and the line could be crossed at any moment.
And the only other question that remained was: how is it possible? What happens at such a moment? What then shoots screaming up into the air and is suddenly extinguished?
These were the questions that this incident set stirring in Törless. They loomed up, obscurely, tight-lipped, cloaked in some vague, dull feeling. . . weakness . . . a faint dread.
And yet as though from a long way off, raggedly, at random, many of their words rang out within him, filling him with anxious foreboding.
It was at this moment that Reiting put his query.
Törless at once began to talk. In doing so he was obeying a sudden impulse, a rush of bewildered feeling. It seemed to him that something decisive was imminent, and he was startled to the approach of it, whatever it was, and wanted to dodge it, to gain time.... Even as he talke
d he could feel that he had nothing but irrelevant points to bring up, and that his words were without any inner substance, having nothing to do with his real opinion
What he said was: “Basini is a thief.” And the firm, hard ring of the last word pleased him so much that he repeated it twice. “A thief. And a thief gets punished- everywhere in the world. He must be reported. He must be expelled. If he reforms afterwards, that's his affair, but he doesn't belong here any more!”
But Reiting, with a look of being unpleasantly disconcerted, said:
“No, no, why go and rush to extremes?”
“Why? But isn't it a matter of course?”
“Not at all. You're coming on exactly as if fire and brimstone would be called down upon us all if we kept Basini in our midst a minute longer. It's not as if what he'd done were so very frightful, after all.”
“How can you talk like that! Do you really mean to sit, and eat, and sleep in the same room, day in, day out, with a creature who has stolen money and who's then gone and offered himself to you as your servant, your slave? I simply fail to understand you. After all, we're being brought up together because we belong together socially. Will it be all the same to you if some day you find yourself in the same regiment with him, or working together in the same government office, if you meet him at the houses of people you know-supposing he were to pay court to your sister?”
“Here, I say, you are exaggerating!” Reiting said with a laugh. “Anyone would think we'd joined a fraternity for life! Do you really think we shall go round for ever wearing a badge: 'Educated at W. College for the Sons of Gentlemen-has special privileges and obligations'-? Afterwards each of us will go his own way, and everyone will become whatever he's entitled to become. There isn't only one society. So I don't think we need to worry about the future. And as for the present, I didn't say we've got to be dear friends with Basini. There'll be some way of managing all right so that a proper distance is kept. We've got Basini in the hollow of our hand, we can do whatever we like with him, for all I care you can spit at him twice a day. So long as he'll put up with it, what's to bother us about having him among us? And if he rebels, there's always time to show him who's master.... You've only got to drop the idea that there's any relationship between us and Basini other than the pleasure we get out of what a rotten swine he is!”
Although Törless was far from being convinced of his own line of argument, he pressed on with it. “Look here, Reiting, why are you so keen to defend Basini?”
“Keen to defend him? Not that I know of. I've no particular reason to defend him at all. The whole thing leaves me stone-cold from A to Z. I'm only annoyed at the way you exaggerate. What's the bee in your bonnet? Seems to be some kind of idealism. Enthusiasm for the sacred cause of the school, or for justice. You've no idea how boring and virtuous it sounds. Or perhaps”-and Reiting narrowed his eyes in suspicion-“you have some other reason for wanting Basini kicked out and only don't want to admit what you're up to. Some old score to settle, eh? Well, come on, out with it! If there's enough in it we might really turn it to account.”
Törless looked at Beineberg. But Beineberg only grinned. He sat there, cross-legged in Oriental style, sucking at a long chibouk, and with his protruding ears in this deceptive light he looked like a grotesque idol. “For all I care,” he said, between puffs, “you chaps can do what you like. I'm not interested in the money, nor in justice either. In India they would drive a pointed bamboo pole through his guts. There'd be some fun in that, anyway. He's stupid and cowardly, so he would be no loss, and anyway it's always been a matter of the utmost indifference to me what happens to such people. They themselves are nothing, and what may yet become of their souls, we don't know. May Allah bestow his grace upon your verdict!”
Törless made no reply to this. After Reiting had disagreed with him and Beineberg had refused to take sides in the matter, leaving the decision to the two of them, he had no more to say. He did not feel capable of arguing further; indeed, he felt he no longer had any desire to do anything in order to prevent whatever was imminent.
And so a proposal that Reiting now put forward was accepted. It was resolved that for the present they should keep Basini under surveillance, appointing themselves, as it were, his guardians, in order to give him a chance to make good what he had done. His income and expenditure were from now on to be strictly checked and his relations with the rest of the boys to depend on permission from the three guardians.
This decision had the air of being very correct and benevolent. But this time Reiting did not say it was 'boring and virtuous'. For, without admitting it even to themselves, each of them was aware that this was to constitute only a sort of interim state. Reiting would have been reluctant to renounce any chance of carrying the affair further, since he got such pleasure out of it; on the other hand, however, he could not yet see clearly what turn he should give it next. And Törless was as though paralysed by the mere thought that from now on he would be in close touch with Basini every day.
When he had uttered the word 'thief' a short time earlier, for a moment he had felt easier. it had been like a turning out, a pushing away from himself, of the things that were causing such upheaval in him.
But the problems that instantly rose up again could not be solved by the use of this simple word. They had become more distinct, now that there was no longer any question of dodging them.
Törless glanced from Reiting to Beineberg, shut his eyes, repeated to himself the resolve that had just been made, and looked up again.... He himself no longer knew whether it was only his imagination that was like a gigantic distorting-glass between him and everything, or whether it was true and everything was really the way it uncannily loomed before him. And was it then only Beineberg and Reiting who knew nothing of these problems-and this although it was precisely the two of them who had from the beginning been so at home in this world that now all at once, for the first time, seemed so strange to him?
Törless felt afraid of them. But he felt afraid only as one might feel afraid of a giant whom one knew to be blind and stupid.
One thing, however, was settled: he was much further ahead now than he had been only a quarter of an hour earlier. There was no longer any possibility of turning back. A faint curiosity rose in him about what was to come, since he was held fast against his will. All that was stirring within him still lay in darkness, and yet he already felt a desire to gaze into the darkness, with all the shapes that populated it, which the others did not notice. There was a thin prickling chill mingled with this desire. It was as though over his life there would now always be nothing but a grey, veiled sky-great clouds, monstrous, changing forms, and the ever-renewed question: Are they monsters? Are they merely clouds?
And this question was for him alone! A secret, strange territory forbidden to the others..
So it was that Basini for the first time began to assume that significance which he was later to have for Törless.
The next day Basini was put under surveillance.
It was done not without ceremony. It was in the morning, when they had slipped away from gymnastics, which were performed on a large lawn in the school grounds.
Reiting delivered a sort of speech. It was not exactly short. He pointed out to Basini that he had forfeited his right to exist, that he actually ought to be reported, and that it was only thanks to their extraordinary mercifulness that for the present they were sparing him the disgrace of expulsion.
Then he was informed of the particular conditions. Reiting took it upon himself to see that they were kept.
During the whole scene Basini was very pale, but did not utter a word, and his face revealed nothing of what was going on in him.
Törless found the scene alternately in very bad taste and of very great significance.
Beineberg's attention was focused on Reiting more than on Basini.
During the following days the affair seemed to be practically forgotten. Reiting was scarcely to be seen at all, except in
class
and at meals, Beineberg was more taciturn than ever, and Törless continually put off thinking about the matter.
Basini went around among the other boys just as if nothing had ever happened.
* * *
He was a little taller than Törless, but very slight in build, with slack, indolent movements and effeminate features. He was not very intelligent, and he was one of the worst at fencing and gymnastics, but he had a pleasing manner, a rather coquettish way of making himself agreeable.
His visits to Bozena had begun only because he wanted to play the man. Backward he was in his development, it was scarcely to be supposed that he was impelled by any real craving. What he felt was perhaps only a compulsion, a sort of obligation, lest he should be noticeably lacking in the aura of one who has had his experiences in gallantry. He was always glad when he left her, having got that behind him; all that mattered to him was to have the memory of it.
Occasionally, too, he lied-out of vanity. After every holiday, for instance, he came back with souvenirs of little affairs-ribbons, locks of hair, tiny billets-doux. But once, when he had brought back in his trunk a dear little scented, sky-blue garter, and it subsequently turned out to belong to none other than his own twelve-year-old sister, he was exposed to a great deal of jeering on account of his ridiculous boasting. their characters were still unformed and undergoing development. It was doubtless best, of course, to treat Basini in a strict and serious way, but at the same time one should be charitable in one's attitude to him and try to reform him.
They reinforced this by a whole series of examples, which were familiar to Törless. He distinctly remembered that in the junior classes, where the authorities favoured Draconic measures and kept pocket-money within strict limits, many of the little boys, in their natural greed for sweets and delicacies, often could not resist begging the fortunate possessor of a ham sandwich, or the like, for a piece of it. He himself had not always been proof against this temptation, even if, ashamed of it as he was, he tried to cover it up by abuse of the wicked, unkind school regulations. And he owed it not only to the passing of the years, but also to his parents' admonitions, as kindly as they were serious, that he had gradually learnt to have his pride and not to give in to such weaknesses.