The Man Without Qualities

by Robert Musil

Clarisse again felt intimidated at first by her confused impressions and could not get her bearings. And so it came as a friendly sign when she saw someone waving to her excitedly from a distance, calling out something to her while she was still many beds away. He was moving back and forth in his bed as if desperately trying to free himself in order to dash over to her, outshouting the chorus with his complaints and fits of rage, and succeeding in concentrating Clarisse’s attention on himself. The closer she came to him, the more she was troubled by her sense of his addressing himself only to her, while she was completely unable to understand a word of what he was trying to say. When they finally reached his bed, the senior attendant told the doctor something so softly that Clarisse could not hear, and Friedenthal, looking very grave, gave some instructions. But then he said something in a light vein to the patient, who was slow to react but then suddenly asked: “Who’s that man?” with a gesture indicating Clarisse.

  Friedenthal nodded toward Siegmund and answered that it was a doctor from Stockholm.

  “No, that one!” The patient insisted on Clarisse. Friedenthal smiled and said she was a woman doctor from Vienna.

  “No. That’s a man,” the patient contradicted him, and fell silent. Clarisse felt her heart thudding. Here was another who took her for a man!

  Then the patient intoned slowly: “It is the seventh son of our Emperor.”

  Stumm von Bordwehr nudged Ulrich.

  “That is not so,” Friedenthal told him, and continued the game by turning to Clarisse, saying: “Do tell him yourself that he’s mistaken.”

  “It’s not true, my friend,” Clarisse said in a low voice to the patient, so moved she could barely speak.

  “You are the seventh son,” the patient replied stubbornly.

  “No, no,” Clarisse assured him, smiling at him in her excitement as if she were playing a love scene, her lips stiff with stage fright.

  “Yes you are!” the patient repeated, and looked at her in a way she could not find words for. She could not think of another thing to say, and just kept gazing helplessly with a fixed smile into the eyes of the lunatic who took her for a prince. Something remarkable was happening in her mind: the possibility was forming that he might be right. The force of his repeated assertion dissolved some resistance in her; in some way she lost control over her thoughts, new patterns took shape, their outlines looming from mist: he was not the first who wanted to know who she was and to take her for a “gentleman.” But while she was still gazing at his face, caught up in this strange bond, taking no account of his age or of any other vestiges of a normal life still left in his countenance, something quite incomprehensible was beginning to happen in that face and in the whole person. It looked as though her gaze was too heavy for the eyes on which it rested; they began to slide away and fall. His lips, too, began to quiver, and like heavy drops merging more and more quickly, audible obscenities mixed themselves with a rush of jabbering. Clarisse was as stunned by this slithering transformation as if something were slipping away from her; she impulsively reached out to the miserable creature with both arms, and before anyone could interfere, the patient leapt to meet her: he cast off his bedclothes, knelt at the foot of the bed, and began to masturbate like a caged monkey.

  “Don’t be such a pig!” the doctor said quickly and sternly, while the attendants instantly grabbed the man and his bedclothes and in a flash reduced both to a lifeless bundle on the bed. Clarisse had turned dark red. She felt as dizzy as when the floor of an elevator all at once seems to drop away from under one’s feet. Suddenly it seemed to her that all the patients they had already passed were shouting at her back and the others, whom they had not yet seen, were shouting at her from in front. And as chance would have it, or the infectious power of excitement, a friendly old man in the next bed, who had been making good-natured little jokes while the visitors stood nearby, leapt up the instant Clarisse hurried past him, and began raving at them in foul language that formed a disgusting foam on his lips. On him, too, the attendants’ fists descended like a heavy press, crushing all resistance.

  But the magician Friedenthal had even more tricks to conjure up. Under guard at the exit as they had been at the entrance, the visitors left this ward at the far end, and suddenly their ears seemed plunged into healing silence. They found themselves in a clean, cheerful corridor with a linoleum floor, and encountered people in their Sunday best and attractive children, all greeting the doctor confidently and politely. They were visitors, waiting to get to see their relatives, and once again the impact of this healthy world was disconcerting; for a moment all these discreet and well-behaved people in their best clothes seemed like dolls, or extremely well-made artificial flowers. But Friedenthal passed through them hurriedly and announced to his friends that he was now about to take them to the ward for murderers and others of the criminally insane. The watchful looks and behavior of the attendants at the next iron gate did not bode at all well. They entered a cloistered courtyard surrounded by a gallery, resembling one of those gardens of modern design that have many stones and few plants. The empty air first seemed like a cube of silence; it was only after a while that one noticed figures sitting mutely along the walls. Near the entrance some retarded boys were squatting, runny-nosed, dirty, motionless, as if a sculptor had had the grotesque idea of attaching them to the pillars flanking the gate. Near them, the first figure by the wall, sitting apart from the others, was an ordinary-looking man still in his dark Sunday suit, but without a collar; he must have just been admitted, and was indescribably moving in his impression of not belonging anywhere. Clarisse suddenly imagined the anguish she would cause Walter if she left him, and almost burst into tears. It was the first time this had ever happened, but she quickly suppressed it, for the other men past whom she was being escorted merely gave the impression of habitual submission to be expected in prisons: They greeted the doctor with shy politeness and made minor requests. Only one made a nuisance of himself with his complaints, a young man who emerged from heaven knew what oblivion. He demanded to be released at once, and why was he here in the first place? When Dr. Friedenthal replied evasively that such requests were handled by the superintendent, not by him, the young man persisted; his pleas became repetitive, like links in a chain rattling past faster and faster; gradually, a note of urgency came into his voice and grew threatening, finally turning into brutish, mindless danger. At that point the giants pushed him back down on the bench, and he crept back into his silence like a dog, without having received an answer. By now Clarisse was used to this, and it merely became part of her general excitement.

  There would have been no time for anything else, since they had reached the armored door at the far end of the courtyard, and the guards were banging on it. This was something new, for up to this point they had used great caution in opening doors but had not announced themselves. On this door they banged their fists four times, and listened to the stirrings from the other side.

  “That’s the signal for everyone inside to line up against the walls,” Dr. Friedenthal explained, “or sit on the benches along the walls.”

  And indeed, as the door turned slowly, inch by inch, they could see that all the men who had been milling around quietly or noisily were behaving obediently, like well-drilled prisoners. Even so, the guards were so cautious as they entered that Clarisse suddenly clutched at Dr. Friedenthal’s sleeve and asked excitedly whether Moosbrugger was here. Friedenthal only shook his head. He had no time. He hastily admonished the visitors to stay at least two paces away from every prisoner. His responsibilities in this situation seemed to cause him some anxiety. They were seven against thirty, in a remote, walled courtyard full of insane men almost all of whom had committed a murder.

  Those who are accustomed to carrying a weapon feel more exposed without it than others, so one could not hold it against the General, who had left his saber in the waiting room, that he asked the doctor: “Don’t you have a weapon on you?” “Alertness and experience!” Dr. Friedenthal rep
lied, pleased at the flattering question. “It’s all a matter of nipping any potential disturbance in the bud.”

  And in fact at the slightest move among the inmates to break ranks, the guards rushed in and thrust the offender back into place so swiftly that these attacks seemed to be the only acts of violence occurring. Clarisse did not approve of them. “What the doctors don’t seem to understand,” she thought, “is that although these men are shut in here together all day long without supervision, they don’t do anything to each other; it’s only we, coming from the world that is foreign to them, who may be in danger.” She wanted to speak to one of them, suddenly imagining that she could certainly find a way to communicate properly with him. In a corner right near the entrance was a sturdy-looking man of medium height, with a full brown beard and piercing eyes; he was leaning against the wall with his arms folded, silently surveying the visitors’ activity with an angry expression. Clarisse stepped toward him, but Dr. Friedenthal instantly restrained her with a hand on her arm. “Not this one,” he said in a low voice. He chose another murderer for Clarisse and spoke to him. This was a short, squat fellow with a pointy head, shaved convict fashion, apparently known to the doctor as tractable, who instantly stood at attention and, answering smartly, showed two rows of teeth that dubiously suggested two rows of gravestones.

  “Ask him why he’s here,” Dr. Friedenthal whispered to Clarisse’s brother, and Siegmund asked the broad-shouldered man with the pointy head: “Why are you here?”

  “You know that very well!” was the curt reply.

  “No, I don’t know,” Siegmund—who did not like to give up too easily—said rather foolishly. “So tell me why you’re here.”

  “You know that very well!” The response was repeated with a stronger emphasis.

  “Why are you being rude to me?” Siegmund asked. “I honestly don’t know why!”

  “This lying!” Clarisse thought, and she was glad when the patient simply answered: “Because I choose! I can do as I like!” he insisted, and bared his teeth at them.

  “Well, there’s no need to be rude for no reason,” the hapless Siegmund persisted, just as unable as the insane man to come up with anything new.

  Clarisse was furious with him for playing the stupid role of someone teasing a caged animal in a zoo.

  “It’s none of your business! I do as I like, get it? Whatever I like!” The mental patient barked like a sergeant and produced a laugh from somewhere in his face, but not his mouth or eyes, which were both charged with uncanny anger.

  Even Ulrich was thinking: “I wouldn’t care to be alone with this fellow just now.” Siegmund was having a hard time standing his ground, since the madman had stepped up close to him, and Clarisse was wishing he would seize her brother by the throat and bite him in the face. Friedenthal complacently let the scene take its course, for after all, as a medical colleague Siegmund ought to be able to handle it, and Friedenthal was rather enjoying the other’s discomfiture. With his sense of theater, he waited for the scene to reach a climax, and only when Siegmund was beyond uttering another word did he give the signal to break it off. But the desire to meddle was back in Clarisse; it had somehow grown stronger and stronger as the man drummed out his answers. Suddenly she could no longer hold back and, walking up to the man, said:

  “I’m from Vienna!”

  It made as little sense as a random sound one might entice from a bugle. She neither knew what she meant by saying it nor where the idea had come from, nor had she stopped to wonder whether the man knew what town he was in, and if he did know, her remark would be even more pointless. But she felt tremendously sure of herself as she said it. And in fact miracles still do happen, occasionally, and they have a partiality for insane asylums. As she spoke, flaming with excitement, a glow came over him; his rock-grinder teeth withdrew behind his lips, and benevolence spread over the glare in his eyes.

  “Ah, Vienna, city of dreams! A beautiful place!” he said with the smugness of the former petit bourgeois who has his clichés in order.

  “Congratulations!” Dr. Friedenthal laughed.

  But for Clarisse the episode had become an event.

  “Now let’s go on to Moosbrugger!” Friedenthal said.

  But this was not to be. They moved cautiously back through the two courtyards and were walking up an incline toward what appeared to be a distant isolated pavilion, when a guard who seemed to have been looking for them everywhere came running up to them. He whispered to Friedenthal at some length, something important and disagreeable, to judge by the doctor’s expression as he listened and asked an occasional question. Finally, Dr. Friedenthal turned back to the others with a grave, apologetic air and told them that he had to go to another ward, to deal with an incident that would take some time, so that he would, regretfully, have to curtail their tour. He addressed himself primarily to the official personage in the General’s uniform beneath the lab coat; Stumm von Bordwehr gratefully assured him that he had seen enough of the outstanding organization and discipline of this institution, and that after what they had been through, one murderer more or less did not matter. Clarisse, however, had such a disappointed, stricken face that Friedenthal proposed to make up the visit to Moosbrugger, along with some other interesting cases, some other time; he would give Siegmund a call as soon as a date could be arranged.

  “Very kind of you”—the General thanked him on behalf of the group—“though for my part, I really can’t say whether other obligations will allow me to be present.”

  With this reservation, a future visit was agreed upon, and Friedenthal set off along a path that soon took him over the rise and out of sight, while the others, accompanied by the attendant Friedenthal had left with them, headed back to the gate. They left the path and took a shortcut across the grassy slope between fine beeches and plane trees. The General had slipped out of his lab coat and carried it jauntily over his arm, as one might carry a raincoat on an outing, but nobody seemed to feel like talking. Ulrich showed no interest in being coached further for the evening’s reception, and Stumm was himself too preoccupied with what was awaiting him at his office, though he felt called upon to make some amusing remarks to Clarisse, whom he was gallantly escorting. But Clarisse was absentminded and quiet. “Perhaps she’s still embarrassed over that filthy pig,” he mused, feeling the need to apologize somehow for not having been in a position to offer his chivalric protection, but on the other hand, it was probably best to say no more about it. So the walk back passed in silence and constraint.

  It was only when Stumm von Bordwehr had entered his carriage, leaving it to Ulrich to see Clarisse and her brother home, that his good spirits returned, and with them an idea that gave a certain shape to the whole depressing episode. He had taken a cigarette out of the big leather case in his pocket, and leaning back in the cushions and blowing the first little blue clouds into the sunny air, he thought comfortably: “Terrible thing, to be out of one’s mind like that. Come to think of it, all the time we were there I didn’t see a single one of them having a smoke! People don’t realize how well off they are as long as they’re still in their right mind!”

  157

  A GREAT EVENT IS IN THE MAKING. COUNT LEINSDORF AND THE INN RIVER

  This eventful day culminated in a gala reception at the Tuzzis’.

  The Parallel Campaign was on parade, in glory and brilliance: eyes blazed, jewels blazed, prominence blazed, wit blazed. A lunatic might conceivably conclude from this that on such a social occasion eyes, jewels, prominent names, and wit amount to the same thing, and he would not be far off the mark: everyone who did not happen to be on the Riviera or the north Italian lakes was there, except for those few who refused on principle to recognize any “events” so late in the season.

  In their place were quite a number of people whom no one had ever seen before. A long respite had torn holes in the guest list, and to fill it up again new people had been invited more hastily than was consonant with Diotima’s circumspect ways: Count L
einsdorf himself had turned over to her a list of people he wanted invited for political reasons, and once the principle of her salon’s exclusiveness had thus been sacrificed to higher considerations, she had no longer attached the same importance to it. His Grace was, in fact, the sole begetter of this festive gathering: Diotima was of the opinion that humanity could be helped only in pairs. But Count Leinsdorf held firmly to his assertion that “capital and culture have not done their duty by our historical development; we must give them one last chance!”

  Count Leinsdorf was always coming back to this point.

  “Tell me, my dear, haven’t you come to a decision yet?” he would ask. “It’s high time. All sorts of people are coming to the fore with destructive tendencies. We must give the cultural sector one last opportunity to restore the balance.” But Diotima, deflected by the wealth of variation in the forms of human coupling, was deaf to all else.

  Finally, Count Leinsdorf had to call her to order.

  “You know, my dear, I hardly seem to know you anymore! We’ve given out the password ‘Action!’ to all and sundry; I myself had a hand—surely I may tell you in confidence that it was I who was behind the Minister of the Interior’s resignation. It had to be done on a high level, you understand; a very high level! But it had really become a scandal, and nobody had the courage to put a stop to it. So this is just for your own ears,” he continued, “and now the Premier has asked us to bestir ourselves a bit with our Inquiry Concerning the Desires of the Concerned Sections of the Population with Respect to the Conduct of Home Affairs, because the new Minister naturally can’t be expected to have it at his fingertips; and now you want to leave me in the lurch, you who have always been the last to give up? We must give capital and culture a last chance! You know, it’s either that or. . .”

  This somewhat incomplete final sentence was uttered so menacingly that there was no mistaking that he knew what he wanted, and Diotima obediently promised to hurry; but then she forgot again and did nothing.