Young Torless (15 page)
Authors: Robert Musil
Now, in Törless's hearing the name Kant had never been uttered except in passing and then in the tone in which one refers to some awe-inspiring holy man. And Törless could not think anything but that with Kant the problems of philosophy had been finally solved so that since then it had become futile for anyone to concern himself with the subject, lust as he also believed there was no longer any point in writing poetry since Schiller and Goethe.
At home these men's works were kept in the book-case with the green glass panes in Papa's study, and Törless knew this book-case was never opened except to display its contents to a visitor. It was like the shrine of some divinity to which one does not readily draw nigh and which one venerates only because one is glad that thanks to its existence there are certain things one need no longer bother about.
This distorted relationship to philosophy and literature in due course had its unhappy effect on Törless's development, and to it he owed many of these miserable hours. For in this way his ambition was diverted from the subjects to which he was really most inclined; and while, being deprived of his natural goal, he was searching for another, his ambition fell under the coarse and resolute influence of his companions at school. His inclinations re-asserted themselves only occasionally and shamefacedly, each time leaving him with a sense of having done something useless and ridiculous. Nevertheless they were so strong that he did not succeed in getting rid of them entirely; and it was this unceasing conflict that left his personality without firm lines, without straightforward drive.
Today, however, this relationship seemed to have entered a new phase. The thoughts that had just caused him to seek in vain for enlightenment were no longer the baseless concatenations produced by the random play of his fantasy; on the contrary, they created upheaval in him, holding him in their grip, and with his whole body he could feel that behind them there pulsed an element of his life. This was something quite new for him. There was within him now something definite, a certainty that he had never known in himself before. It was something mysterious, almost like a dream. It must, he thought to himself, have been very quietly developing under the various influences he had been exposed to in these last weeks, and now suddenly it was like imperious knuckles rapping at a door within him. His mood was that of a woman who for the first time feels the assertive stirring of the growing child within her.
He spent an afternoon full of wonderful enjoyment.
He got out of his locker all the poetical scribblings that he had stored away there. Taking them with him, he sat down by the stove, where he remained quite alone and unseen behind the huge screen. He went through one copy-book after another, afterwards slowly tearing each into small shreds and throwing the pieces into the fire one by one, each time relishing the exquisite pathos of farewell.
In this way he meant to cast away all the impedimenta he had brought with him from earlier days, just as though he must now travel light, giving all his attention to the steps that had to be taken, on into the future.
At last he got up and went to join the others. He felt free, able to look at everything squarely. What he had done had actually been done only in a quite instinctive way; there was no surety that he would really be capable of being a new person now, none at all unless the sheer existence of that impulse was surety. 'Tomorrow,' he said to himself, 'tomorrow I shall go over everything very carefully, and I shall get a clear view of things all right somehow.'
He strolled about the room, between the separate desks, glanced into copy-books lying open, at the fingers moving swiftly and busily along in the act of writing on that glaring white paper, each finger drawing along after it its own little brown shadow-he watched all this like someone who had suddenly waked up, with eyes for which everything seemed now to be of graver import.
But the very next day brought a bad disappointment. What happened was that first thing in the morning Törless bought himself the cheap paper-bound edition of the book he had seen in his mathematics master's room, and made use of the first break between lessons to begin reading it. But with all its parentheses and footnotes it was incomprehensible to him, and when he conscientiously went along the sentences with his eyes, it was as if some aged, bony hand were twisting and screwing his brain out of his head.
When after perhaps half an hour he stopped, exhausted, he had reached only the second page, and there was sweat on his forehead.
But then he clenched his teeth and read on, and he got to the end of one more page before the break was over.
That evening, however, he could not bring himself even to touch the book again. Was it dread? Disgust? He did not rightly know. Only one thing tormented him, with burning intensity: the mathematics master, that man who looked so thoroughly insignificant, quite openly had the book lying about in his room as if it were his daily entertainment.
He was in this mood when Beineberg came upon him.
“Well, Törless, how was it yesterday with the maths crammer?” They were sitting alone in a window-bay and had pushed the long clothes-stand, on which all the coats hung, across in front of them, so that all they heard and saw of the class was the rising and falling hum of voices and the reflection of the lamps on the ceiling. Törless fiddled absent-mindedly with one of the coats hanging in front of him.
“I say, are you asleep? He must have given you some answer, I suppose? Though I must say I can imagine it got him in quite a fix, didn't it?”
“Why?”
“Well, I dare say he wasn't prepared for a silly question like that.”
“It wasn't a silly question at all. I haven't done with it yet.”
“Oh, I didn't mean it like that, I only meant it must have seemed silly to him. They learn their stuff off by heart just the way the chaplain can reel off the catechism, and if you go and ask them anything out of turn it always gets them in a fix.”
“Oh, he wasn't at a loss for the answer. He didn't even let me finish saying what I wanted to say, he had it all so pat.”
“And how did he explain the thing?”
“Actually he didn't explain it at all. He said I wouldn't be able to understand it yet, these things were principles inherent in the mode of thought, and only become clear to someone who has gone on deeper into the subject.”
“There you are, you see, there's the swindle of it! They simply can't put their stuff across to someone who just has his brains and nothing else. It only works after he's spent ten years going through the mill. But up to then he's done thousands of calculations on the basis of the thing and erected huge constructions that always worked out to the last dot. What it means is he then simply believes in it the way a Catholic believes in revelation-it's always worked so nicely. And where's the difficulty, then afterwards, in getting such people to believe in the proof as well? On the contrary, nobody would he capable of persuading then' that though their construction stands, each single brick in it evaporates into thin air as soon as you try to get hold of it!”
Beineberg's exaggeration made Törless feel uncomfortable.
“I don't think it's quite so bad as you make out. I've never doubted that mathematics is right - after all, the results show that it is- the only thing that s
eemed queer to me was that every
now and then it all seems to go against reason. And after all it's quite possible that that only seems to be so.”
“Well, you can wait and see at the end of ten years, and perhaps by then your brain will be properly softened
up and receptive to it. But I'v
e been thinking about it too since we talked the other day, and I'm perfectly convinced there's a catch in it somewhere. Come to think of it, you talked about it quite differently then from the way you're talking today.”
“Oh no. It still seems pretty dubious to me even now, only I'm not going to rush off into exaggerations the way you do. It certainly
is
thoroughly queer. The idea of the irrational, the imaginary, the lines that are parallel and yet meet at infinity-in other words, they do meet
somewhere-it
all simply staggers me! When I start thinking about it, I feel stunned, as though I'd been hit on the head.” Törless leaned forward, right into the shadows, and his voice was low and husky. “Everything was all so clear and plain in my head before. But now it's as if my thoughts were like clouds, and when I come to these particular things, it's like a sort of gap you look through into an infinite, indefinable distance. Mathematics is probably right. But what is this thing in my head, and what about all the others? Don't they feel it at all? How does it look to all of them? Or doesn't it look like anything?”
“It seems to me you could see that from how your maths master reacted. When
you
hit on a thing like that, you always take a look round and wonder: now how does this fit in with everything else in me?
They've
bored a track through their brains, with thousands of spiral whorls in it, and they can only see as far as the last turning, whenever they look back to see if the thread they spin out behind them is still holding. That's why it gets them in a fix when you come along with that sort of question. None of
them
ever finds the way back. And anyway, how can you say I'm exaggerating? These people who've grown up and become so very clever have just spun themselves lip completely in a web, with each mesh of it keeping the next in place, so that the whole thing looks as large as life and twice as natural. But there's nobody who knows where the first mesh is that keeps all the rest in place.
“The two of us have never talked seriously about this before-after all, one doesn't particularly care to make a lot of fuss about such things-but now you can see for yourself what a feeble point of view these people have and how they come to terms with this world. It's all delusion, it's all swindle, mere feebleness of mind! It's anemic! Their intellect takes them just far enough for them to think their scientific explanation out of their heads, but once it's outside it freezes up, see what I mean? Ha ha! All these fine points, these extreme fine points that the masters tell us are so fine and sharp that we're not capable
of
touching them yet-they're all dead-frozen-d'you see what I mean? There are these admired icy points sticking out in all directions, and there isn't anyone who can do anything with them, they're so dead!”
For some time now Törless had been leaning back again. Beineberg's hot breath was caught up among the coats and made the little corner warm. And as always when he was excited, Beineberg made a disagreeable impression on Törless. It was especially so now when he thrust up close, so close that his unwinking, staring eyes were like two greenish stones straight in front of Törless's own eyes, while his hands darted this way and that in the half-darkness with a peculiarly repellent nimbleness.
“Everything they assert is quite uncertain. They say everything works by a natural law. When a stone falls, that's the force of gravity. But why shouldn't it be the Will of God? And why should someone Ir. whom God is well pleased not some time be liberated from sharing the fate of the stone? Still, why am I saying such things to you? You'll never be more than half a human being, anyway! Discovering a little bit of something queer, shaking your head a little, being horrified a little-that's your way. Beyond that you lust don't dare to go. Not that it's any loss to me.
“But it is to me, you think? Yet it isn't as if your own statements were by any means so certain.”
“How can you say such a thing! They're the only thing that
is
certain. Anyway, why should I quarrel with you about it? You'll see all right some day, my dear Törless. I'd even be prepared to bet that the day will come when you'll be quite confoundedly interested in the way it is with these things. For instance, when things with Basini turn out as
I
-“
“I don't want to hear about that,” Törless cut him short. “I don't want that mixed up with it just now.”
“Oh, and why not?”
“Just like that. I don't want to, that's all. I don't care for it. Basini and this are two different things for me. This is one thing, and Basini is an entirely different kettle of fish.”
Beineberg grimaced in annoyance at this unaccustomed decisiveness, indeed roughness, on the part of his younger friend. But Törless himself realised that the mere mention of Basini had undermined all the confidence he had been displaying, and in order to conceal this he talked himself into annoyance too.
“Anyway, you make these sweeping statements with a certainty that's positively mad. Hasn't it occurred to you that your theories may be just as much without a solid basis as anyone else's? The spiral whorls in your own head go a lot deeper and call for a whole lot more good will.”
Remarkably enough, Beineberg did not lose his temper. He only smiled-though rather twistedly and his eyes gleamed more restlessly than ever-and he said over and over again: “You'll see for yourself, you'll see for yourself.
“Well, what shall I see? Oh,
all right
then, I'll see, I'll see. But I don't give a damn about it, Beineberg! It doesn't interest me. You don't understand me. You simply don't know what interests me.
If mathematics torments me and i
f”-but he instantly thought better of it and said nothing about Basini-“if mathematics torments me, it's because I'm looking for something quite different behind it from what you're looking for. What I'm after isn't anything supernatural at all. It's precisely
the natural-don't you see? Nothing outside myself at all-it's something in me I'm looking for! something natural, but, all the same, something I don't understand! Only you have just as little feeling for it as any maths master in the world. Oh, leave me in peace-I've had enough of your speculations!”