by Robert Musil
“What are the things that seem odd to me? The most trivial. Mostly inanimate objects. What is it about them that seems odd? Something about them that I don't know about. But that's just it! Where on earth do I get this 'something' notion from? I feel it's there, it exists. It has an effect on me, just as if it were trying to lip-read from the twisted mouth of someone who's paralysed, and simply not being able to do it. It's as if I had one extra sense, one more than the others have, but not completely developed, a sense that's there and makes itself noticed, but doesn't function. For me the world is full of soundless voices. Does this mean I'm a seer or that I have hallucinations?
“But it's not only inanimate objects that have this effect on me. What makes me so much more doubtful about it all is that people do it too. Up to a certain point in time I saw them the way they see themselves. Beineberg and Reiting, for instance-they have their lair, a perfectly ordinary secret cubby-hole, because they enjoy having a place like that to retreat to. And they do one thing because they're furious with one fellow, they do another thing because they went to prevent someone else from having any influence on the others. All quite sensible, obvious reasons. But nowadays they some-times appear to me as if I were having a dream and they were only people in it. It's not only what they say or what they do-everything about them, bound up with their physical presence, sometimes has the same sort of effect on me as inanimate objects have. And all the same, I still hear them talking exactly the same way as before, I see how what they do and say still follows the same old patterns... This really goes to show all the time that there's nothing extraordinary happening at all, and at the same time something in me still goes on protesting that it isn't like that. So far as I can remember exactly, this change began with Basini's-“
Here Törless involuntarily glanced over at Basini himself.
Basini was still sitting hunched over his book in the same attitude, apparently memorising something. At the sight of him sitting there like that, Törless's thoughts came to a standstill, and now he had a chance to feel once more the workings of the seductive torments that he had just been describing. For as soon as he became aware of how quietly and harmlessly Basini was sitting there before him, in no way differentiated from the others to right and to left, he vividly recalled the humiliations that Basini had undergone. They sprang to life in his mind: that is to say, he was far from thinking of them with the kind of indulgence which goes with the moral reflection that it is in every one's nature to try, after having suffered humiliations, to regain at least an outward air of casualness and unembarrassment as quickly as possible. On the contrary, something instantly began in him that was like the crazy whirling of a top, immediately compressing Basini's image into the most fantastically dislocated attitudes and then tearing it asunder in incredible distortions, so that he himself grew dizzy. True, these were only figures of speech that he found for it afterwards. At the moment he merely had the feeling of something in his tightened breast whirling upwards into his head, like a wildly spinning top, and this was the dizziness. Into the midst of it, like sparks, like dots of colour, there sprang those same feelings that he had had at various times about Basini.
Actually it had always been one and the same feeling. And more accurately, it was not a feeling at all, but more like a tremor deep down within him, causing no perceptible waves and nevertheless making his soul shudder quietly and yet so violently that in comparison the surges of even the stormiest feelings were like harmless ripples on the surface.
If this one 'feeling' was one that had at different times seemed different to him, it was because all he had to help him in interpreting this tide of emotion that would flood through his whole being was the images it cast up into his consciousness-as if all that could be seen of a swell stretching endlessly far away into the darkness were single, separate droplets of foam flung high against the cliffs of some lighted shore and, all force spent, immediately falling away again, out of the circle of light.
So these impressions were unstable, varying, and accompanied by an awareness of their random nature. Törless could never hold on to them; and when he looked more closely, he could feel that these incidents on the surface were in no proportion to the force of the dark mass, deep down, of which they seemed to be the manifestations.
He never at any time 'saw' Basini in any sort of physically plastic and living attitude; never did any of all this amount to a real vision. It was always only the illusion of one, as it were only the vision of his visions. For within him it was always as if a picture had just flashed across the mysterious screen, and be never succeeded in catching hold of it in the very instant that this happened. Hence there was all the time a restlessness and uneasiness in him such as one feels when watching cinematographic pictures, when, for all the illusion the whole thing creates, one is nevertheless unable to shake off a vague awareness that behind the image one perceives there are hundreds of other images flashing past, and each of them utterly different from the picture as a whole.
But he did not know where in himself to search for this power of creating illusion-illusion that was, moreover, by an immeasurably slight degree always just insufficient. He simply had an obscure inkling that it was connected with that enigmatic quality his
spirit had of being assailed at times even by inanimate objects, by mere things, as by hundreds of mutely questioning eyes.
And so Törless sat quite still, transfixed, staring across at Basini, wholly involved in the seething whirl within him. And ever and again the same question rose up before him: What is this special quality I have? Gradually he ceased to see Basini any longer, or the hot glaring lamps, ceased to feel the animal warmth surrounding him, or to hear the buzzing and humming that goes up from a crowd of human beings even if they are only whispering. It all merged into one hot, darkly glowing mass that swung in a circle round him. His ears were burning, and his finger-tips were icy cold. He was in that state of more psychic than bodily fever which he loved. The mood went on intensifying, and now and then impulses of tenderness mingled with it. Previously, when in this state, he had enjoyed abandoning himself to those memories that are left in a young soul when for the first time it has been touched by the warm breath of a woman. And today too he felt that indolent warmth. A memory came to him . .. It was on a journey... in a little town in Italy . . . his parents and he were staying in a hotel not far from the theatre. Every evening the same opera was performed there, and every evening he heard every word and every note of it wafted over to him. He had no knowledge of the language; but for all that he spent his evenings sitting at the open window, listening. So it came about that he fell in love with one of the singers, without ever having set eyes on her. He was never again so moved by the theatre as at that time; the passion of those arias was for him like the wing-beats of great dark birds, and it was as though he could feel the lines that their flight traced in his soul. These were no longer human passions that he heard; no, they were passions that had escaped out of the human hearts, taking flight as out of cages that were too cramped, too commonplace, for them. In that state of excitement he could never think of the people who were over there-invisible-acting out those passions. If he did try to picture them, on the instant dark flames shot up before his eyes-or undreamt-of gigantic dimensions opened up, as in the darkness people's bodies grow and people's eyes shine like the mirroring surface of deep wells. This lurid conflagration, these eyes in the dark, these black wing-beats, were what he at that time loved under the name of the singer he had never seen.
And who had composed the opera? He did not know. Perhaps the libretto was some dreary sentimental romance. Had its creator ever felt that once set to music it would be transformed into something else?
A sudden thought made his whole body grow tense. Are even older people like that? Is the world like that? Is it a universal law that there's something in us stronger, bigger, more beautiful, more passionate and darker than ourselves? Something we have so little power over that all we can do is aimlessly strew thousands o
f seeds, until suddenly out of one seed it shoots up like a dark flame and grows away out over our heads? ... And every nerve in his body quivered with the impatient answer: Yes.
Törless glanced about him with blazing eyes. It was all still there, the lamps, warmth, and light, the boys busily at work. But here in the midst of it he seemed to himself as one elect-like a saint, having heavenly visions. For the intuition of great artists was something of which he did not know.
Hurriedly, with the hastiness of nervous dread, he snatched up his pen and made some notes on his discovery. Once again there seemed to be a light within him scattering its sparks in all directions . . . then an ash-grey shower of rain fell over his gaze, and the glory in his spirit was quenched.
The Kant episode was now practically over and done with. By day Törless had quite ceased to think of it; the conviction that he himself was very close to the answer to his riddles was much too strong for him to go on bothering about anyone else's way of dealing with such problems. Since the last evening it was as if he had already felt in his hand the knob of the door that would open into the further realm, and then it had slipped from his grasp. But since he had realised that he must manage without the aid of philosophic books, and since he put no real trust in them anyway, he was rather at a loss as to how he was to find that knob again. He several times made an attempt to continue his notes; but the written words remained lifeless, a series, it seemed, of irksome and all too familiar question-marks, and there was no re-awakening of that moment in which he had gazed through them as into a vault illumined by flickering candle-flames.
Therefore he resolved that as often as possible, and ever and again, he would seek those situations which had that for him so peculiar meaning. And especially often did his gaze rest on Basini, when the latter, having no sense of being watched, went about among the others as if nothing at all were wrong. 'Sooner or later,' Törless thought to himself, 'it'll come to life again, and then perhaps more intensely and clearly than before.' And he was quite relieved at the thought that where such things were concerned one was simply in a dark room and there was nothing else one could do, once the fingers had slipped from the right place, but keep on groping and groping at random over the walls in the dark.
Yet at night this thought lost some of its conviction, and he would be overtaken by something like shame at having shied away from his original resolve to seek in the book his teacher had shown him the explanation that it might, after all, contain. This happened when he was lying still and listening for the sound of breathing from Basini, whose outraged body drew breath as tranquilly as those of all the others. He would lie still like a stalker in his hiding-place, with the feeling that he only had to wait and the time so spent would surely bring its reward. And then the thought of the book would come into his mind, and at once a fine-toothed doubt would begin to gnaw in him, disturbing this stillness-a foreboding that he was wasting his time, a hesitant admission that he had suffered a defeat.
As soon as this vague feeling asserted itself, his attentiveness lost the comfortable quality of watching the development of a scientific experiment. It seemed then that some physical influence emanated from Basini, a fascination such as comes from sleeping near a woman and knowing one can at any instant pull the covers off her body. It was a tingling in the brain, which started from the awareness of only having to stretch out one's hand. It was the same thing that often drives young couples into orgies of sensuality far beyond the bodies' real demands.
* * *
According to the intensity with which it struck him that his enterprise would perhaps seem ridiculous even to himself if he knew all that Kant knew, all that his mathematics master knew, and all that those people knew who had got to the end of their studies-according to the varying force of this qualm in him there was a weakening or an intensification of those sensual impulses that often kept his burning eyes wide open, in spite of the stillness all round him, where everyone else was asleep. At times, indeed, these impulses overwhelmed all other thoughts. When at such moments he abandoned himself, half willingly, half despairingly, to their insinuations, it was with him only as it is with all those people who, after all, never so much incline to a mad outburst of soul-rending, wantonly destructive debauchery as when they have suffered some failure that upsets the balance of their self-confidence. .
Then, when at last, after midnight, he was drifting into an uneasy sleep, it several times seemed to him that someone got up, over where Reiting's and Beineberg's beds were, and took his coat and went across to Basini. Then they left the dormitory . . . But it might equally well have been imagination. . .
There came two public holidays; and since they fell on a Monday and Tuesday, the headmaster gave the boys Saturday off as well, so that they had four days free. For Törless this was still too short a time to make the long journey home worthwhile; and he had therefore hoped that at any rate his parents would come and see him. However, his father was kept by urgent affairs at his government office, and his mother did not feel well enough to face the strain of travelling alone.
But when Törless received his parents' letter, in which they told him they could not come, and added many affectionate words of comfort, he suddenly realised that this actually suited him very well. He knew now that it would have been almost an interruption-at least it would have embarrassed him considerably-if he had had to face his parents just at this stage.
Many of the boys had invitations to estates in the district. Dschjusch, whose parents owned a fine property at the distance of a day's drive from the little town, was one of those who went away, and with him went Beineberg, Reiting, and Hofmeier. Basini had also been asked, but Reiting had bidden him refuse. Törless excused himself on the grounds that he did not know for certain whether his parents might not come after all; he felt totally disinclined for innocent, cheerful frolics and amusements.
By noon on Saturday the great building was silent and almost quite deserted.
When Törless walked through the empty corridors, they echoed from end to end. There was nobody to bother about him, for most of the masters had also gone away for a few days' shooting or the
like. It was only at meals, which were now served in a small room next to the deserted refectory, that the few remaining boys saw each other. When they left the table they once more took their separate ways through the many corridors and class-rooms; it was as if the silence of the building had swallowed them up, and whatever life they led in these intervals seemed to be of no more interest to anyone than that of the spiders and centipedes in the cellars and attics.
Of Törless's class the only two left were himself and Basini, with the exception of a few boys in the sick-bay. When leaving, Reiting had exchanged a few words in private with Törless in the matter of Basini, for he was afraid that Basini might make use of the opportunity to seek protection from one of the masters; he had therefore impressed it on Törless to keep a sharp eye on him.
However, there was no need of that to concentrate Törless's attention on Basini.
Scarcely had the uproar faded away-the carriages driving to the door, the servants carrying valises, the boys joking and shouting good-bye to each other-when the consciousness of being alone with Basini took complete possession of Törless's mind.
It was after the first midday meal. Basini sat in his place in front, writing a letter. Törless had gone to a corner right at the back of the room and was trying to read.
It was for the first time again the volume of Kant, and the situation was just as he had pictured it: in front there sat Basini, at the back himself, holding Basini with his gaze, boring holes into him with his eyes. And it was like this that he wanted to read: penetrating deeper into Basini at the end of every page. That was how it must be; in this way he must find the truth without losing grip on life, living, complicated, ambiguous life. .
But it would not work. This was what always happened when he had thought something out all too carefully in advance. It was too unspontaneous, a
nd his mood swiftly lapsed into a dense, gluey boredom, which stuck odiously to every one of his all too deliberate attempts to get on with his reading.
In a fury, Törless threw the book on the floor. Basini looked round with a start, but at once turned away again and hurriedly went on writing.
So the hours crept on towards dusk. Törless sat there in a stupor.
The only thing that struck clearly into his awareness-out of a muffled, buzzing, whirring state of generalised sensation-was the ticking of his pocket-watch. It was like a little tail wagging on the sluggish body of the creeping hours. The room became blurred ... Surely Basini could no longer be writing... 'Aha, he probably doesn't dare to light a lamp,' Törless thought to himself. But was he still sitting over there in his place at all? Törless had been gazing out into the bleak, twilit landscape and now had to accustom his eyes again to the darkness of the room. Oh yes, there he was. There, that motionless shadow, that would be Basini all right. And now he even heaved a sigh-once, twice. He hadn't gone to sleep, had he?
A servant came in and lit the lamps. Basini started up and rubbed his eyes. Then he took a book out of his desk and began to apply himself to it.
Törless could hardly prevent himself from speaking to him, and in order to avoid that he hurried out of the room.
In the night Törless was not far from falling upon Basini, such a murderous lust had awakened in him after the anguish of that senseless, stupefying day. By good fortune sleep overtook him just in time.
The next day passed. It brought nothing but the same bleak and barren quietness. The silence and suspense worked on Törless's overwrought nerves; the ceaseless strain on his attention consumed all his mental powers, so that he was incapable of framing any thought at all.
Disappointed, dissatisfied with himself to the point of the most extreme doubt, he felt utterly mangled. He went to bed early.
He had for a long time been lying in an uneasy, feverishly hot half-sleep when he heard Basini coming.