Young Torless (10 page)

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.

But now all this failed to have any effect.

He could not help seeing that his parents were in many ways right, and he also knew that it was scarcely possible to judge quite accurately from such a distance; yet something much more important seemed to be missing from their letter.

What was missing was an appreciation of the fact that something irrevocable had happened, something that ought never to happen among people in a certain stratum of society. What was missing was any sign of their being surprised and shocked. They treated it as though it were quite a normal thing, which must be handled with tact but without much ado, merely as a blemish, as something that was no more beautiful, but also no more avoidable, than the relief of one's natural needs. In their whole letter there was as little trace of any more personal feelings or dismay as there was in the attitude of Beineberg and Reiting.

Törless might usefully have taken some note of this too. Instead, however, he tore the letter into shreds and burnt it. It was the first time in his life that he committed such an act of disrespect towards his parents.

The effect on him was the opposite of what had been intended. In contrast with the plain view that had been set before him he was again suddenly filled with awareness of all that was problematic and ambiguous in Basini's crime. Shaking his head, he told himself that it still needed thinking about, although he could not give him-self any exact account of the reason for this attitude.

It was queerest of all when he pursued the matter dreamily rather than with conscious thought. Then at one moment Basini seemed to him comprehensible, commonplace, and clear-cut, just as his parents and his friends seemed to see him: and the next moment this Basini would vanish, only to come again, and yet again, as a small and even smaller figure, tiny and sometimes luminous against a deep, very deep background....

And then one night-it was very late and everyone was asleep-Törless was waked by someone shaking him.

Beineberg was sitting on the edge of his bed. This was so unusual that he at once realised something extraordinary must be afoot.

“Get up. Don't make a noise, we don't want anyone to notice. I want you to come upstairs, I've got something to tell you.”

Törless quickly put some clothes on, got into his slippers, and threw his coat round his shoulders.

When they were up in their lair, Beineberg put all the obstacles back in their places with special care. Then he made tea.

Törless, who was still heavy with sleep, relaxed in enjoyment of the golden-yellow, aromatic warmth pervading him. He leaned back in a corner and curled up; he was expecting a surprise.

At last Beineberg said: “Reiting is up to something behind our backs.”

Törless felt no astonishment; he accepted it as a matter of course that the affair must necessarily develop in some such way, and he felt almost as though he had been waiting for this. Involuntarily he said: “I thought as much.”

“Oh? You thought so, did you? But I don't suppose you noticed anything? That wouldn't be at all like you.

“That's true, there wasn't anything special that struck me. And I haven't been racking my brains about the whole thing.”

“But I've been keeping a good look-out. I didn't trust Reiting from the very beginning. I suppose you know Basini's paid me back my money. And where do you think he got it? D'you think it was his own? No.”

'And so you think Reiting has been up to something?”

'Definitely.”

For a moment all Törless could imagine was that now Reiting had got entangled in a similar way himself.

“So you think Reiting has done what -----?”

“What an idea! Reiting simply gave Basini some of his own money, so that he could settle his debt to me.”

“But I can't see any good reason why he should do that.”

“Neither could I for a long time. Still, it must have struck you too how Reiting stood up for Basini right from the start. You were quite right then. It would really have been the most natural thing to have had the fellow chucked out. But I knew what I was doing. I didn't take your side at the time, because I thought to myself: I must get to the bottom of this, I must see what he's up to. Frankly, I can't say for certain whether he had it all worked out quite clearly at that stage or whether he only wanted to wait and see what would come of it once he made completely sure of Basini. Anyway, I know how things stand now.”

“Well?”

“Wait, the whole story isn't so simple. I take it you know about what happened in the school four years ago?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well-that affair!”

“Vaguely. I only know there was a great row about some swinishness that had been going on, and quite a number of chaps got expelled.”

“Yes, that's what I mean. Once in the holidays I found out sonic more about it from one of the chaps in that class. It was all because of a pretty boy there was in the class, that a lot of them were in love with. You know that sort of thing, it happens every few years. But
they
went a bit too far.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well-how! Don't ask such silly questions! And that's what Reiting's doing with Basini!”

Törless suddenly understood what he meant, and he felt a choking in his throat as if it were full of sand.

“I wouldn't have thought that of Reiting.” He did not know what else to say.

Beineberg shrugged his shoulders. “He thinks he can take us in.”

“Is he in love with him?”

“Not a bit of it. He's not such a fool. It amuses him; at the most he gets some sort of excitement out of it.”

“And how about Basini?”

“Oh, him! Hasn't it struck you how uppish he's become recently? He hardly takes anything from me at all now. It's always Reiting, Reiting, with him-as if Reiting were his private patron saint. He probably decided it was better to put up with everything from one than with a bit from everyone. And I dare say Reiting's promised to look after him as long as he does whatever Reiting wants of him. But they'll find out they've made a mistake, and I'm going to knock such ideas out of Basini's head!”

“How did you find out?”

“I followed them once.”

“Where to?”

“
I
n there, in the attic. Reiting had my key to the other door. Then I came up here, carefully opened up the gap and crept up to them.”

The fact was that in the thin partition-wall dividing the cubbyhole from the attics they had broken open a gap just wide enough to allow one to wriggle through. It was intended to serve as an emergency exit in the event of their being surprised, and it was generally kept closed with loose bricks.

Now there was a long pause, in which all that could be heard was the faint hiss when the tips of their cigarettes glowed.

Törless was incapable of thinking; he simply saw . . . Behind his shut eyelids there was all at once a wild vortex of happenings . . . people, people moving in a glare, with bright lights and shifting, deep-etched shadows . . . faces . . . one face . . . a smile . . . an upward look... a shivering of the skin. .. He saw people in a way he had never seen them before, never felt them before. But he saw them without seeing, without images, without forms, as if only his soul saw them; and yet they were so distinct that he was pierced through and through by their intensity. Only, as though they halted at a threshold they could not cross, they escaped him the moment he sought for words to grasp them with.

He could not stop himself from asking more. His voice shook. “And-did you see?”

“Yes.”

“And-did Basini-was he-?”

But Beineberg remained silent, and once again there was nothing to be heard but, now and then, the vaguely disturbing hiss of the cigarettes. Only after a long time did Beineberg begin to talk again.

“I've considered the whole thing from all points of view, and, as
you know, I have my own way of thinking about such things. First of all, as far as Basini goes, it's my view he's no loss in any case. It makes no difference whether we go and report him, or give him a beating, or even if we torture him to death, just for the fun of it. Personally, I can't imagine that a creature like that can have any meaning in the wonderful mechanism of the universe. He strikes me as being merely accidental, as it were a random creation outside the order of things. That's to say-even he must of course mean something, but certainly only something as undefined as, say, a worm or a stone on the road, the sort of things you never know whether to walk round or step on. In other words, they're practically nothing. For if the spirit of the universe wants one of its parts to he preserved, it manifests its will more clearly. In such a case it says 'no' and creates a resistance, it makes us walk round the worm and makes the stone so hard that we can't smash it without tools. And before we can get the tools, it has had time to interpolate resistances in the form of all sorts of tough little scruples, and if we get the better of them, well, that jus
t
shows that the whole thing has had another meaning all along.

“With a human being, it puts this hardness into his character, into his consciousness as a human being, into the sense of responsibility he has as a part of the spirit of the universe. And if a human being loses this consciousness, he loses himself. But if a human being has lost himself, abandoned himself, he has lost the special and peculiar purpose for which Nature created him as a human being. And this is the case in which one can be perfectly certain that one is dealing with something unnecessary, an empty form, something that has already long been deserted by the spirit of the universe.”

Törless felt no inclination to argue. He was not even listening very attentively. He himself had never felt the need to go in for such a metaphysical train of thought, nor had he ever wondered how anyone of Beineberg's intellect could indulge in such notions. The whole problem had simply not yet risen over the horizon of his life.

Thus he made no effort to enquire into the possible meaning, or lack of meaning, of Beineberg's remarks. He only half listened.

One thing he did not understand, and that was how anyone could approach this matter in such a longwinded way. Everything in him quivered, and the elaborate formality with which Beineberg produced his ideas-wherever he got them from-seemed to him ridiculous and out of place; it irritated him.

But Beineberg continued calmly: “Where Reiting is concerned, on the other hand, it's all very different. He has also put himself in my power by doing what he has done, but his fate is certainly not so much a matter of indifference to me as Basini's is. You know his mother is not very well off. So if he gets expelled, it'll be all up with his plans. If he stays here, he may get somewhere. If not, there's not likely to be much chance for him. And Reiting never liked me-see what I mean?-he's always hated me. He used to try to damage me wherever he could. I think he would still be glad if he could get rid of me. Now do you see what an immense amount I can make out of what I've discovered?”