by Robert Musil
“Don’t suppose for a minute that we never discuss these questions ourselves,” Gerda replied. “You can’t become a new human being overnight; but it is very bourgeois to consider this an argument against making the effort.”
“What your father wants is actually something quite different from what you think. He doesn’t even claim to know more about all that than you and Hans; he merely says that he can’t understand what you’re up to. But he does know that power is a very sensible thing. He believes there’s more sense in it than in you and him and Hans all rolled into one. What if he were to offer Hans enough money to let him finish his course and get his degree, without having to worry? And if he promised him, after a fair trial period, not that the marriage would take place, but at least that he would not stand in its way on principle? On only one condition: namely, that until the end of the trial period you two stop seeing each other, or keeping in touch, even to the extent you do now?”
“So this is what you’re lending yourself to, is it?”
“I merely want to help you understand your father. He is a sinister deity who wields uncanny powers. He thinks he can make Hans see things his way by using money. In his opinion, a Hans with a limited monthly income couldn’t possibly go on exceeding every limit of foolishness. But your father may be a dreamer, in his own way. I admire him, just as I admire compromises, averages, dry facts, dead numbers. I don’t believe in the Devil, but if I did I should think of him as the trainer who drives Heaven to break its own records. Anyway, I promised him to keep at you until there was nothing left of your fantasies—only reality.”
Ulrich was far from saying all this with a clear conscience. Gerda stood facing him as if in flames, the anger in her eyes overlaid with tears. All at once, a way had been opened up for her and Hans. But had Ulrich betrayed her, or did he want to help them? She had no idea, but whichever it was, it was likely to make her as unhappy as it made her happy. In her confusion she mistrusted him, and yet she felt with a passion that there was a sacred bond between them, if only he would admit it.
He now added: “Your father of course harbors a secret hope that I may use the opportunity to win you for myself and change your mind altogether.”
“That’s out of the question!” Gerda forced herself to say.
“As far as you and I are concerned, I suppose that is out of the question,” Ulrich said gently. “But we can’t go on like this, either. I’ve already gone too far.” He tried to smile, but felt extreme selfloathing as he did so. He really wanted none of this. He sensed the irresolution in her and despised himself for the cruelty it aroused in him.
At that very instant Gerda stared at him with horrified eyes. Suddenly she was beautiful, like a fire one has approached too closely; almost without form, only a warmth that paralyzes the will.
“You must come to see me,” he suggested. “We can’t speak freely here.” Male ruthlessness shone out of his eyes in a blaze of empty light.
“No,” Gerda said defensively. But she averted her eyes, and Ulrich sadly saw—as though by turning away she had again presented herself to his scrutiny—the body of this young girl, neither beautiful nor ugly, breathing hard. He gave a deep and wholly sincere sigh.
104
RACHEL AND SOLIMAN ON THE WARPATH
In the Tuzzi household, charged as it was with a high mission as a gathering place of ideas, there was a light-footed, quick, ardent, un-German creature in service. The little lady’s maid, Rachel, was like a chambermaid in Mozart. She opened the front door and stood ready with arms half outstretched to receive the visitor’s overcoat. At such times Ulrich sometimes wondered whether she had any idea of his connection with the Tuzzis and tried to catch her eye, but Rachel either turned her eyes away or let them meet his blankly, like two blind little patches of black velvet. He seemed to remember her eyes meeting his with quite a different expression at their first encounter, and several times noticed another pair of eyes, like two big white snails, aiming at Rachel from a dark corner of the entrance hall, Soliman’s eyes, but whether this boy might be the reason for Rachel’s reserve was an open question, because Rachel responded as little to that gaze as to Ulrich’s, and quietly withdrew as soon as she had announced the visitor.
The truth was more romantic than curiosity could suppose. Ever since Soliman had succeeded, with his willful innuendos against Arnheim, in lending that radiant presence a shadowy aura of obscure machinations, tarnishing even Rachel’s childlike admiration for Diotima, all her passionate need to outdo herself in correct and devoted service had concentrated on Ulrich. Convinced by Soliman that a strict watch had to be kept on everything that went on in the house, she had become a zealous eavesdropper at keyholes, and while waiting on the guests had overheard more than one private conversation between Section Chief Tuzzi and his wife; nor had Ulrich’s position midway between Diotima and Arnheim, as a man they both distrusted and desired, escaped her notice, and this corresponded entirely to her own feeling, wavering between rebellion and remorse, for her unsuspecting mistress. Now she also realized that she had known for a long time that Ulrich wanted something from her. It never entered her mind that he might find her attractive. Driven from home as she had been, and longing to prove to her family back in Galicia how great a success she could make of herself despite all that, she naturally dreamed of striking it lucky, something like an unexpected inheritance, the discovery that she was of noble birth, a chance to save the life of a prince . . . but the simple possibility that a gentleman who came to her mistress’s house as a visitor might take a liking to her and want her to be his lover or even his wife would never have occurred to her. And so she simply held herself ready to do Ulrich some great service. It was she and Soliman who had sent the General an invitation when they learned that he was a friend of Ulrich’s, though there was no denying they also did it to get things moving; considering what they thought they knew, a general certainly seemed the right person to turn the trick. Rachel, in her obscure, elfin sympathy with Ulrich, inevitably developed an overwhelming identification with him, as she secretly watched every movement of his lips, his eyes, his fingers, as if these were actors to whom she was bound with the passion of someone who sees her own insignificant self brought by them onto a vast stage. The more she realized that this mutual involvement constricted her breathing like a tight dress when crouching at a keyhole, the more depraved she felt for not resisting with greater firmness Soliman’s simultaneous dark pursuit of her; this was the reason, of which Ulrich had no inkling, why she met his curiosity about her with that subservient passion for acting the well-trained, model maidservant.
Ulrich wondered in vain why this creature who seemed to be made for tender love play was so chaste that she might be almost a case of that rebellious frigidity not uncommonly found among some fine-boned women. He changed his mind, however, and was even a bit disappointed when he came upon a surprising scene one day. Arnheim had just arrived and gone in to see Diotima; Soliman was squatting on his haunches in the foyer, and Rachel had slipped away again as usual. Ulrich took advantage of the momentary stir caused by Arnheim’s arrival to return to the hall for the handkerchief in his overcoat pocket. The light was out again, and Soliman did not realize that Ulrich, in the shadow of the doorway, had not returned to the reception room. Soliman got to his feet stealthily and, with great care, produced a large flower from under his jacket, a lovely white calla lily, which he contemplated for a while, then he set off on tiptoe past the kitchen door. Ulrich quietly followed him until Soliman stopped at Rachel’s door, pressed the flower to his lips, and fixed it to the handle by twisting the stem around twice and squeezing its end into the keyhole.
It had not been easy to extract this lily from the bouquet on the way over with Arnheim and hide it for Rachel, and Rachel fully appreciated such attentions. Getting caught and fired would have meant Death and Judgment Day as far as Rachel was concerned, so it was naturally a great nuisance to have to watch out for Soliman all the time, wherever she mi
ght be, nor did she like being suddenly pinched in the leg without daring to cry out whenever she passed some hiding place where he might be lying in wait for her. Still, the fact that somebody was taking terrible chances just to be attentive to her, to spy devotedly on her every step and put her character to the test under the most difficult circumstances, could hardly fail to make an impression. The little ape was rushing her quite needlessly and dangerously, and yet, against all her principles and at odds with her crumpled dreams of great things in store, she sometimes felt a guilty craving to make the most of this African king’s son whose thick lips were waiting at every turn to serve her, the serving maid, as if made for her alone.
One day, Soliman asked her right out if she was game. Arnheim had gone to the mountains with Diotima and some friends for two days and had left Soliman behind. It was the cook’s day off, and Section Chief Tuzzi was taking his meals at a restaurant. Rachel had told Soliman about the cigarette stubs she had found in her room, and Diotima’s unspoken question what would the little maid make of it was answered by Rachel’s and Soliman’s agreeing that something seemed to be afoot in the Council, something that called for the two of them to take some action of their own. When Soliman asked her if she was game, he announced that he meant to take the documents proving his noble birth from where Arnheim had locked them up. Rachel did not believe in these documents, but life amid so many tempting mysteries had given her a craving for something to happen. They decided that she would keep on her maid’s cap and frilled apron when Soliman fetched her and took her to Arnheim’s hotel, as if she had been sent on an errand there by her employers. When they stepped out on the street, such a smoldering heat rose up from behind the lacy bib of her apron that it almost blurred her vision, but Soliman boldly stopped a cab; he had plenty of money these days, when Arnheim was so often absentminded. This stiffened Rachel’s spine too, and she stepped into the carriage in the sight of all the world as if she were charged and employed to ride in style with little black boys. The midmorning streets, with the well-dressed idlers to whom they belonged, flew by, and again Rachel’s heart was thumping as if she were a thief. She tried to lean back properly, as she had seen Diotima do, but could not keep her body from bouncing up and down in the rich upholstery as the closed carriage rocked along, while Soliman took advantage of her reclining position to press the broad stamp pads of his lips on hers, risking their being seen through the windows, and a sensation like the simmering of some scented fluid poured from the billowing cushions into Rachel’s back.
Nor was the young Moor disposed to forgo the pomp of driving right up to the hotel entrance. The porters in their black silk sleeves and green aprons grinned when Rachel stepped out of the carriage, the doorman peered through the glass door as Soliman paid the fare, and Rachel felt as though the pavement were giving way under her feet. But when no one stopped them as they walked through the vast pillared lobby, she thought that Soliman must enjoy a certain status in the hotel. Again she flushed with embarrassment when she felt the eyes of some armchair loungers following her as she passed by, but going up the stairs, she saw many chambermaids dressed in black with their white caps, like herself, if not perhaps as smartly, and she began to feel quite like an explorer wandering over an unknown, possibly dangerous island, who encounters human beings at last.
Then Rachel found herself for the first time in her life inside the rooms of a distinguished hotel. Soliman immediately locked all the doors and then felt called upon to kiss his little friend again. The kisses these two had been giving each other of late had something of the glow of a child’s kiss, intended more for mutual reassurance than as any assault upon the moral fiber, and even now, when they were for the first time alone together in a locked room, Soliman’s most pressing concern was to find even more romantic ways of hiding themselves away. He pulled down the blinds and stopped up all the keyholes giving on the corridor. Rachel was much too excited by all these preparations to think of anything other than her own daring and the disgrace of a possible discovery.
Next, Soliman led her to Arnheim’s closets and trunks, all open except for one. This was clearly the one harboring the secret. He took the keys from all the open trunks and tried them one by one, with no success, while chattering nonstop, pouring out all his reserves of camels, princes, mysterious couriers, and insinuations against Arnheim. He borrowed one of Rachel’s hairpins and tried to pick the lock with it. When this failed him, he ripped all the keys from all the closet doors and drawers, spread them out between his knees as he squatted on the floor, and paused to brood over this collection, trying to think of a fresh expedient. “Now you can see how he hides things from me!” he said to Rachel, rubbing his forehead. “But I may as well show you everything else first.”
And so he simply spread the bewildering riches from Arnheim’s trunks and closets out before Rachel, who was crouching on the floor, with her hands clasped between her knees, staring at these things with curiosity. The intimate wardrobe of a man accustomed to the choicest of luxuries was something she had never seen before. Her own master was certainly not poorly dressed, but he had neither the money nor the need for the ultrasophisticated concoctions of the best tailors and shirtmakers, the creators of luxuries for home and travel. Even her mistress had nothing to compare with the exquisite things, feminine in their delicacy and complicated in their uses, that belonged to this immensely rich man. Something of Rachel’s original awe for the nabob came to life again, even as Soliman puffed himself up with pride in the stunning impression he was making on her as he dragged out everything, showing off all the gadgets and eagerly explaining all the mysteries. Rachel was beginning to tire of the endless display, when she was suddenly struck by an odd coincidence. She realized that things of this kind had been cropping up lately among Diotima’s lingerie and household things. They were not as numerous or as expensive as Arnheim’s, but compared to Diotima’s former monastic simplicity, they were certainly closer to what she was seeing here than to her austere past. Rachel was overcome by the outrageous notion that the link between her mistress and Arnheim might be less spiritual than she had supposed.
She blushed to the roots of her hair.
Never since she had entered Diotima’s service had her thoughts wandered into this area. Her eyes had gulped down the glory of her mistress’s body without giving any thought to the possible uses of such beauties, like gulping down a powder with its paper envelope. Her satisfaction at being permitted to share the life of persons of such exalted station had been so great that in all this time Rachel, who was so easily seduced, had never thought of any man as a sexual being, but only as someone different in a romantic way, like in a novel. Her high-mindedness had made her a child again, transporting her, as it were, back to the stage before puberty, that time of selfless enthusiasms for the greatness of others. This was in fact how Rachel had come to swallow Soliman’s tall stories so willingly, in such a trance of gullibility, that it made the cook laugh at her. But now, as Rachel crouched on the floor and saw the suggestive tokens of an adulterous union between Arnheim and Diotima spread out before her in broad daylight, a long-impending change took place inside her—the awakening from an unnatural state of exaltation into the mistrustful state of the actual world of the flesh.
Gone in a flash was her romanticism; she was a down-to-earth little body with a somewhat irritated notion that even a servant girl had some rights in life. Soliman was squatting beside her before his outspread bazaar, having collected up all the things she had especially admired, and was trying to stuff into her pockets whatever was not too big, as presents from him. Now he leapt up and made another quick attack with a pocketknife on the locked trunk, while rattling on about having to get a lot of money from the bank before Arnheim returned, using his master’s checkbook—in money matters the mad little devil had quite lost his innocence—so that he and Rachel could run away together, but not before he had his papers.
Rachel abruptly stood up, firmly emptied her pockets of all the
“presents” he had stuffed into them, and said, “Don’t talk such nonsense! I have to go now. What time is it?” Her voice sounded deeper. She smoothed her apron and adjusted her cap. Soliman instantly realized that she was through with playing the game, and that she was suddenly much older than he. But before he could reassert himself, Rachel was kissing him good-bye. This time her lips did not tremble but pressed hard into the luscious fruit of his face as she bent over him, forcing the boy’s head back and keeping at it so long that he almost choked. Soliman struggled, and when she finally let go he felt as if a taller, stronger boy had been holding him under water, so that his first impulse was to get even with her for an unfair trick played on him. But Rachel had slipped out the door, and the look he sent after her—for that was all of him that caught up with her—as inflamed as the red-hot tip of a burning arrow, gradually faded to a soft ash. Soliman then picked up his master’s belongings from the floor to put them back in order; he had now turned into a young man who could look forward to something that had ceased to be unattainable.
105
LOVE ON THE HIGHEST LEVEL IS NO JOKE
Following, their excursion to the mountains, Arnheim had gone abroad for longer than usual. “Gone abroad”—as he had come to think of it himself—was certainly an odd expression to use, considering that it should have been “gone home.” It was because of this and other such reasons that it was in fact becoming urgently necessary for him to come to a decision. He was haunted by unpleasant daydreams such as had never before entered his disciplined head. One especially persistent one was of seeing himself standing with Diotima on a tall church steeple, where they gazed briefly at the green landscape stretched far below and then jumped off. A vision of forcing his way unchivalrously into the Tuzzis’ bedroom at night to shoot the Section Chief obviously came to the same thing. He could perhaps have chosen to finish him off in a duel, but this seemed less natural; the fantasy was already loaded down with too many realistic rituals, and the closer Arnheim approached reality, the more troublesome the increase of inhibitions. Asking Tuzzi simply and openly for the hand of his wife in marriage was conceivable, but what would Tuzzi be likely to say to that? It simply meant opening oneself up to all sorts of ridicule. And even if Tuzzi were to be civilized about it and there was a minimum of scandal, or possibly no scandal at all, divorce having come to be tolerated even in the best circles, there was still the fact that an old bachelor always made himself a bit ridiculous by a late marriage, much like a couple having a baby for their silver wedding anniversary. And if Arnheim really had to do such a thing, he owed it to the firm to marry a prominent American widow at the very least, or a great lady of ancient lineage with connections at court, and not the divorced wife of a middle-class government official. He could not make a move, even if it were merely of a sensual nature, that was not permeated with responsibility. In a time like the present, when responsibility for one’s acts or thoughts plays so slight a role, it was by no means mere personal ambition that raised such objections, but a truly suprapersonal need to bring the power fostered by the Arnheims (a formation rooted in simple greed, which it had long since outgrown, however; it now had a mind of its own, a will of its own, it had to keep growing, to solidify its position, lest it sicken, lest it become rusted when it rested!) into accord with the forces and hierarchies of life itself, nor had he ever knowingly made a secret of this to Diotima. An Arnheim was of course free to marry even some peasant if he chose, but free only as regarded his own person; he would still be betraying a cause for a personal weakness.