by Robert Musil
“The morality that has been handed down to us,” he said, “is like being sent out on a swaying high wire over an abyss, with no other advice than: ‘Hold yourself as stiff as you can!’
“I seem, without having had a say in the matter, to have been born with another kind of morality.
“You asked me what I believe. I believe there are valid reasons you can use to prove to me a thousand times that something is good or beautiful, and it will leave me indifferent; the only mark I shall go by is whether its presence makes me rise or sink.
“Whether it rouses me to life or not.
“Whether it’s only my tongue and my brain that speak of it, or the radiant shiver in my fingertips.
“But I can’t prove anything, either.
“And I’m even convinced that a person who yields to this is lost. He stumbles into twilight. Into fog and nonsense. Into unarticulated boredom.
“If you take the unequivocal out of our life, what’s left is a sheep-fold without a wolf.
“I believe that bottomless vulgarity can even be the good angel that protects us.
“And so, I don’t believe!
“And above all, I don’t believe in the domestication of evil by good as the characteristic of our hodgepodge civilization. I find that repugnant.
“So I believe and don’t believe!
“But maybe I believe that the time is coming when people will on the one hand be very intelligent, and on the other hand be mystics. Maybe our morality is already splitting into these two components. I might also say into mathematics and mysticism. Into practical improvements and unknown adventure!”
He had not been so openly excited about anything in years. The “maybe”s in his speech did not trouble him; they seemed only natural.
Agathe had meanwhile knelt down before the stove; she had the bundle of pictures and papers on the floor beside her. She looked at everything once more, piece by piece, before pushing it into the fire. She was not entirely unsusceptible to the vulgar sensuality of the obscenities she was looking at. She felt her body being aroused by them. This seemed to her to have as little to do with her self as the feeling of being on a deserted heath and somewhere a rabbit scutters past. She did not know whether she would be ashamed to tell her brother this, but she was profoundly fatigued and did not want to talk anymore. Nor did she listen to what he was saying; her heart had by now been too shaken by these ups and downs, and could no longer keep up. Others had always known better than she what was right; she thought about this, but she did so, perhaps because she was ashamed, with a secret defiance. To walk a forbidden or secret path: in that she felt superior to Ulrich. She heard him time and again cautiously taking back everything he had let himself be carried away into saying, and his words beat like big drops of joy and sadness against her ear.
136
ULRICH RETURNS AND LEARNS FROM THE GENERAL WHAT HE HAS MISSED
Forty-eight hours later Ulrich was standing in his abandoned house. It was early in the morning. The house was meticulously tidy, dusted and polished; his books and papers lay on the tables precisely as he had left them at his hasty departure, carefully preserved by his servant, open or bristling with markers that had become incomprehensible, this or that paper still with a pencil stuck between the pages. But everything had cooled off and hardened like the contents of a melting pot under which one has forgotten to stoke the fire. Painfully disillusioned, Ulrich stared blankly at these traces of a vanished hour, matrix of the intense excitement and ideas that had filled it. He felt repelled beyond words at this encounter with his own debris. “It spreads through the doors and the rest of the house all the way down to those idiotic antlers in the hall. What a life I’ve been leading this last year!” He shut his eyes where he stood, so as not to have to see it. “What a good thing she’ll soon be following me,” he thought. “We’ll change everything!” Then he was tempted after all to visualize the last hours he had spent here; it seemed to him that he had been away for a very long time, and he wanted to compare.
Clarisse: that was nothing. But before and after: the strange turmoil in which he had hurried home, and then that nocturnal melting of the world! “Like iron softening under some great pressure,” he mused. “It begins to flow, and yet it is still iron. A man forces his way into the world,” he thought, “but it suddenly closes in around him, and everything looks different. No more connections. No road on which he came and which he must pursue. Something shimmering enveloping him on the spot where a moment ago he had seen a goal, or actually the sober void that lies before every goal.” Ulrich kept his eyes closed. Slowly, as a shadow, his feeling returned. It happened as if it were returning to the spot where he had stood then and was again standing now, this feeling that was more out there in the room than in his consciousness—it was really neither a feeling nor a thought, but some uncanny process. If one were as overstimulated and lonely as he had been then, one could indeed believe that the essence of the world was turning itself inside out; and suddenly it dawned on him—how was it possible that it was happening only now?—and lay there like a peaceful backward glance, that even then his feelings had announced the encounter with his sister, because from that moment on his spirit had been guided by strange forces, until. . . but before he could think “yesterday,” Ulrich turned away, awakened as abruptly and palpably from his memories as if he had bumped against some solid edge. There was something here he was not yet ready to think about.
He went over to his desk and without taking off his coat looked through the mail lying there. He was disappointed not to find a telegram from his sister, although he had no reason to expect one. A huge pile of condolence mail lay intermingled with scientific communications and booksellers’ catalogs. Two letters had come from Bonadea; both so thick that he did not bother to open them. There was also an urgent request from Count Leinsdorf that he come to see him, and two fluting notes from Diotima, also inviting him to put in an appearance immediately upon his return; perused more closely, one of them, the later one, revealed unofficial overtones of a very warm, wistful, almost tender cast. Ulrich turned to the telephone messages that had come during his absence: General Stumm von Bordwehr, Section Chief Tuzzi, Count Leinsdorf’s private secretary (twice), several calls from a lady who would not leave her name, probably Bonadea; Bank Director Leo Fischel; and, for the rest, business calls. While Ulrich was reading all this, still standing at his desk, the phone rang, and when he lifted the receiver a voice said: “War Ministry, Culture and Education, Corporal Hirsch,” clearly taken aback at finding itself unexpectedly ricocheting off Ulrich’s own voice, but hastening to explain that His Excellency the General had given orders to ring Ulrich every morning at ten, and that His Excellency would speak to him right away.
Five minutes later Stumm was assuring him that he had to attend some “supremely important meetings” that very morning, but absolutely had to speak to Ulrich first. When Ulrich asked what about, and why it could not be taken care of over the phone, Stumm sighed into the receiver and proclaimed “news, worries, problems,” but could not be made to say anything more specific. Twenty minutes later a War Ministry carriage drew up at the gate and General Stumm entered the house, followed by an orderly with a large leather briefcase slung from his shoulder. Ulrich, who well remembered this receptacle for the General’s intellectual problems from the battle plans and ledger pages of Great Ideas, raised his eyebrows interrogatively. Stumm von Bordwehr smiled, sent the orderly back to the carriage, unbuttoned his tunic to get out the little key for the security lock, which he wore on a fine chain around his neck, unlocked the case, and wordlessly exhumed its sole contents, two loaves of regulation army bread.
“Our new bread,” he declared after a dramatic pause. “I’ve brought you some for a taste!”
“How nice of you,” Ulrich said, “bringing me bread after I’ve spent a night traveling, instead of letting me get some sleep.”
“If you have some schnapps in the house, which one may assume,” the
General retorted, “then there’s no better breakfast than bread and schnapps after a sleepless night. You once told me that our regulation bread was the only thing you liked about the Emperor’s service, and I’ll go so far as to say that the Austrian Army beats any other army in the world at making bread, especially since our Commissariat brought out this new loaf, Model 1914! So I brought you one, though that’s not the only reason. The other is that I always do this now on principle. Not that I have to spend every minute at my desk, or account for every step I take out of the room, you understand, but you know that our General Staff isn’t called the Jesuit Corps for nothing, and there’s always talk when a man is out of the office a lot; also my chief, His Excellency von Frost, may not, perhaps, have a completely accurate idea of the scope of the mind—the civilian mind, I mean—and that’s why for some time now I’ve been taking along this official bag and an orderly whenever I want to go out for a bit; and since I don’t want the orderly to think that the bag is empty, I always put two loaves of bread in it.”
Ulrich could not help laughing, and the General cheerfully joined in.
“You seem to be less enchanted with the great ideas of mankind than you were?” Ulrich asked.
“Everyone is less enchanted with them,” Stumm declared while he sliced the bread with his pocketknife. “The new slogan that’s been handed out is ‘Action!’ ”
“You’ll have to explain that to me.”
“That’s what I came for. You’re not the true man of action.”
“I’m not?”
“No.”
“Well, I don’t know about that.”
“Maybe I don’t either. But that’s what they say.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Arnheim, for one.”
“You’re on good terms with Arnheim?”
“Well, of course. We get along famously. If he weren’t such a highbrow we could be on a first-name basis by now!”
“Are you involved with the oil fields too?”
To gain time, the General drank some of the schnapps Ulrich had had brought in and chewed on the bread. “Great taste,” he brought out laboriously, and kept on chewing.
“Of course you’re involved with the oil fields!” Ulrich burst out, suddenly seeing the light. “It’s a problem that concerns your naval branch because it needs fuel for its ships, and if Arnheim wants the drilling fields he’ll have to concede a favorable price for you. Besides, Galicia is deployment territory and a buffer against Russia, so you have to provide special safeguards in case of war for the oil supply he wants to develop there. So his munitions works will supply you with the cannons you want! Why didn’t I see this before? You’re positively born for each other!”
The General had taken the precaution of munching on a second piece of bread, but now he could contain himself no longer, and making strenuous efforts to gulp down the whole mouthful at once, he said: “It’s easy for you to talk so glibly about an accommodation; you’ve no idea what a skinflint he is! Sorry—I mean, you have no idea,” he amended himself, “what moral dignity he brings to a business deal like this. I never dreamed, for example, that ten pennies per ton per railway mile is an ethical problem you have to read up on in Goethe or the history of philosophy.”
“You’re conducting these negotiations?”
The General took another gulp of schnapps. “I never said that negotiations were going on! You could call it an exchange of views, if you like.”
“And you’re empowered to conduct them?”
“Nobody’s empowered! We’re talking, that’s all. Surely one can talk now and then about something besides the Parallel Campaign? And if anyone were empowered, it certainly wouldn’t be me; that’s no job for the Culture and Education Department, it’s a matter for the higher-ups, even the Chiefs of Staff. If I had anything at all to do with it, it would be only as a kind of technical adviser on civilian intellectual questions, an interpreter, so to speak, because of Arnheim being so educated.”
“And because you’re always running into him, thanks to me and Diotima! My dear Stumm, if you want me to go on being your stalking horse, you’ll have to tell me the truth!”
But Stumm had had time to prepare himself for this. “Why are you asking, if you know it already?” he countered indignantly. “Do you think you can nail me down and that I don’t know that Arnheim takes you into his confidence?”
“I don’t know a thing!”
“But you’ve just been telling me that you do know.”
“I know about the oil fields.”
“And then you said that we have a common interest with Arnheim in those oil fields. Give me your word of honor that you know this, then I can tell you everything.” Stumm von Bordwehr seized Ulrich’s reluctant hand, looked him in the eye, and then said slyly:
“All right, since you’re giving me your word of honor that you knew everything already, I give you mine that you know all there is. Agreed? There isn’t anything more. Arnheim is trying to use us, and we him. I sometimes have the most complicated spiritual conflicts over Diotima!” he exclaimed. “But you mustn’t say a word to anyone; it’s a military secret!” The General waxed cheerful. “Do you know, incidentally, what a military secret is?” he went on. “A few years ago, when they were mobilizing in Bosnia, the War Ministry wanted to ax me. I was still a colonel then, and they gave me the command of a territorial battalion; of course, I could have been given a brigade, but since I’m supposed to be Cavalry, and since they wanted to ax me, they sent me to a battalion. And since you need money to fight a war, once I got there they sent me the battalion cashbox too. Did you ever see one of those in your time in the army? It looks like a cross between a coffin and a corn crib; it’s made of heavy wood with iron bands all around, like the gate to a fortress. It has three locks, and three officers carry the keys to them, one each, so that no one can unlock it by himself: the commander and his two co-cashbox-key-unlockers. Well, when I got there we congregated as if for a prayer meeting, and one after the other we each opened a lock and reverently took out the bundles of banknotes. I felt like a high priest with two acolytes, only instead of reading the Gospel we read out the figures from the official ledger. When we were done we closed up the box, put the iron bands back on, and locked the locks, the whole thing over again, except in reverse order. I had to say something I can’t remember now, and that was the end of the ceremony. Or so I thought, and so you’d have thought, and I was full of respect for the unflagging foresight of the military administration in wartime! But I had a fox terrier in those days, the predecessor to the one I have now; there was no regulation against it. He was a clever little beast, but he couldn’t see a hole without starting to dig like mad. So as I was going out I noticed that Spot—that was his name; he was English—was busying himself with the cashbox, and there was no getting him away from it. Well, you keep hearing stories about faithful dogs uncovering the darkest conspiracies, and war was almost upon us too, so I thought to myself, Let’s see what’s up with Spot. And what do you suppose was the matter with Spot? You must remember that Ordnance doesn’t provide the field battalions with the very latest supplies, so our cashbox was a venerable antique, but who would ever have thought that while the three of us were locking up in front, it had a hole in the back, near the bottom, wide enough to put your arm through? There’d been a knot in the wood there, which had fallen out in some previous war. But what was to be done? The whole Bosnian scare was just over when the relief troops we had applied for came, and until then we could go through our ceremony every week, except that I had to leave Spot home so he wouldn’t give our secret away. So you see, that’s what a military secret sometimes looks like!”
“Hmm . . . it seems to me you’re still not quite so open as that cashbox of yours,” Ulrich commented. “Are you fellows really closing the deal or not?”
“I don’t know. I give you my word of honor as an officer on the General Staff: it hasn’t come to that yet.”
“And Leinsdorf
?”
“He hasn’t the faintest idea, of course. Besides, he wouldn’t have anything to do with Arnheim. I hear he’s still terribly angry about the demonstration—you remember, you were there too. He’s now dead set against the Germans.”
“Tuzzi?” Ulrich asked, continuing the cross-examination.
“He’s the last man we’d want to find out anything! He would ruin the scheme at once. Of course we all want peace, but we military men have a different way of serving it than the bureaucrats.”
“And Diotima?”
“Oh, my dear fellow, please! This is altogether a man’s affair; she couldn’t think of such things even with gloves on! I certainly can’t bring myself to burden her with the truth. And I can see why Arnheim wouldn’t tell her anything about it. He talks such a lot and so beautifully, it might well be a pleasure for him to hold his tongue about something for once. Like taking a dose of bitters for the stomach, I imagine.”
“Do you realize that you’ve turned into a rogue?” Ulrich asked, and raised his glass. “Here’s to your health!”
“No, not a rogue,” the General defended himself. “I’m a member of a ministerial council. At a meeting everyone proposes what he would like and thinks right, and in the end something comes out that no one really wanted, the so-called outcome. I don’t know if you follow me—I can’t express it any better.”
“Of course I follow you. But the way you’re all treating Diotima is disgraceful, just the same.”
“I’d be sorry to think so,” Stumm said. “But a hangman, you know, is a disreputable fellow, no question about it; yet the rope manufacturer who supplies the prison with the rope can be a member of the Ethical Society. You don’t take that sufficiently into account.”