Young Torless (22 page)

“For all this is possible. It has been done more than once. The miracles, the saints, and the holy men of India-they all bear witness to such events.”

“Look here,” Törless interjected, “you're rather talking yourself into believing this, aren't you? You had to put the lamp out specially so that you could. But would you talk just the same if we were sitting downstairs among the others, who are doing their geography or history or writing letters home, where the light is bright and the usher may come round between the desks? Wouldn't this talk of yours seem a bit fantastic even to yourself there, a bit presumptuous, as though we were not the same as the others, but were living in another world, say eight hundred years ago?”

“No, my dear Törless, I
should maintain the same things. Incidentally, it's one of your faults that you're always looking at what the others are doing. You're not independent enough. Writing letters home! Thinking of your parents where such things are concerned! What reason have you to believe they could at all follow us here? We are young, we are a generation later, and perhaps things are destined for us that they never dreamt of in all their lives. At least, I feel that it is so.

“Still, what's the use of going on talking? I shall prove it to you both anyway.

After they had been silent for a while, Törless said: “And how, if it comes to that, do you mean to set about getting hold of your soul?”

“I'm not going to explain that to you now, all the more since I shall have to do it in front of Basini anyway.”

“But you could at least give us some sort of idea.”

“Well, it's like this. History teaches that there is only one way:

entering into one's own being in meditation. Only this is where the difficulty begins. The saints of old, for instance, at the time when the soul still manifested itself in miracles, were able to reach this goal by means of fervent prayer. The fact is at that time the soul was of a different nature. Now that way is not open to us. Today we don't know what to do. The soul has changed, and unfortunately between then and now there lie times when nobody paid proper attention to the subject and the tradition was irrevocably lost. We can only find a new way by means of most careful thought. This is what I have been intensively occupied with recently. The most obvious choice is probably to do it by the aid of hypnosis. Only it has never yet been tried. All they do is keep on performing the same commonplace tricks, which is why the methods haven't yet been tested for their capacity to lead towards higher things. The final thing I want to say now is that I shall not hypnotise Basini by the usual methods but according to one of my own, which, if I am not mistaken, is similar to one that was used in the Middle Ages.”

“Isn't Beineberg a treat?” Reiting exclaimed, laughing. “Only he ought to have lived in the age when they went round prophesying the end of the world. Then he would have ended up by really believing it was due to his soul-magic that the world remained intact.”

When Törless looked at Beineberg after these mocking words, he saw that his face was quite rigid and distorted as though convulsed with concentration, and in the next moment he felt the touch of ice-cold fingers. He was startled by this high degree of excitement. But then the tension relaxed, the grip on his arm slackened.

“Oh, it was nothing,” Beineberg said. “Just an idea. I felt as though something special were lust going to occur to me, a clue to how to do it....”

“I say, you really are a bit touched,” Reiting said jovially. “You always used to be a tough sort of chap, you only went in for all this stuff as a sort of game. But now you're like an old woman.”

“Oh, leave me alone-you've no idea what it means to know such things are at hand and to be on the point of reaching them today or any day now!”

“Stop quarrelling,” Törless said. In the course of the last few weeks he had become a good deal firmer and more energetic. “For all I care each of you can do what he likes. I don't believe in anything at all-neither in your crafty tortures, Reiting, nor in Beineberg's hopes. For my own part, I have nothing to say. I'm simply going to wait and see what you two produce.”

“So when shall it be?”

The night after the next was decided on.

Törless made no resistance to its approach. And indeed in this new situation his feeling for Basini had completely died out. This was quite fortunate for him, since at least it freed him all at once from the wavering between shame and desire that he had been unable to get out of by exerting his own strength. Now at least he had a straightforward, plain repugnance for Basini; it was as if the humiliations intended for the latter might be capable of defiling him too.

For the rest he was absent-minded and could not bring himself to think of anything seriously, least of all about the things that had once so intensely preoccupied him.

Only when he went upstairs to the attic together with Reiting-Beineberg and Basini having gone ahead-the memory of what had once gone on in him became more vivid again. He could not rid himself of the sound of the cocksure words he had flung at Beineberg, and he yearned to regain that confidence. He lingered a little on each of the stairs, dragging his feet. But his former certainty would not return. Though he recalled all the thoughts he had had at that time, they seemed to pass him by, remote as though they were no more than the shadowy images of what he had once thought.

Finally, since he found nothing in himself, his curiosity turned again to the events that were to come from outside; and this impelled him forward.

Swiftly he followed Reiting, hurrying up the last of the stairs.

While the iron door was groaning shut behind them, he felt, with a sigh, that though Beineberg's plan might be only laughable hocus-pocus, at least there was something firm and deliberate about it, whereas everything in himself lay in an impenatrable confusion and perplexity.

Tense with expectation, they sat down on one of the horizontal beams, as though in a theatre.

Beineberg was already there with Basini.

The situation seemed favourable to his plan. The darkness, the stale air, the foul, brackish smell emanating from the water-tubs, all this generated a feeling of drowsiness, of never being able to wake up again, a weary, sluggish indolence.

Beineberg told Basini to undress. Now in the darkness Basini' s naked skin had a bluish, mouldy glimmer; there was nothing in the least provocative about it.

Suddenly Beineberg pulled the revolver out of his pocket and aimed it at Basini.

Even Reiting leaned forward as though preparing to leap between the two of them at any moment.

But Beineberg was smiling-smiling in a strangely distorted way, as though he did not really mean to at all, but rather as if fanatical words welling up in him had twisted his lips into a queer grimace.

Basini had dropped to his knees, as though paralysed, and was staring at the gun, his eyes wide with fear.

“Get up,” Beineberg said. “If you do exactly what I tell you, you won't come to any harm. But if you disturb me by making the slightest difficulty, I shall shoot you down like a dog. Take note of that!

“As a matter of fact, I am going to kill you anyway, but you'll come back to life again. Dying is not so alien to us as you think it is. We die every day-in our deep, dreamless sleep.”

Once again the wild smile distorted Beineberg's mouth.

“Now kneel down, up there”-he pointed to a wide horizontal beam that ran across the attic at about waist-level-“that's it-quite straight-hold yourself perfectly straight-keep your shoulders back. And now keep looking at this-but no blinking! You must keep your eyes open as wide as you possibly can!”

Beineberg put a little spirit-lamp in front of Basini in such a position that he had to bend his head back slightly in order to look right into the flame.

It was difficult to make anything out exactly in the dimness, but after some time it seemed that Basini's body was beginning to swing to and fro like a pendulum. The bluish gleams were flickering on his skin. Now and then Törless thought he could see Basini's face, contorted with terror.

After a time Beineberg asked: “Are you feeling tired?” The question was put in the usual way that hypnotists put it. Then he began explaining, his voice low and husky:

“Dying is only a result of our way of living. We live from one thought to the next, from one feeling to the next. Our thoughts and feelings don't flow along quietly like a stream, they 'occur' to us, which means they 'run against' us, crash into us like stones that have been thrown. If you watch yourself carefully, you'll realise that the soul isn't something that changes its colours in smooth gradations, but that the thoughts jump out of it like numbers out of a black hole. Now you have a thought or a feeling, and all at once there's a different one there, as if it had popped up out of nothingness. If you pay attention, you can even notice the instant between two thoughts when everything's black. For us that instant-once we have grasped it-is simply death.

“For our life is nothing but setting milestones and hopping from one to the next, hopping over thousands of death-seconds every day. We live as it were only in the points of rest. And that is why we have such a ridiculous dread of irrevocable death, for that is the thing that is absolutely without milestones, the fathomless abyss that we fall into. It is in fact the utter negation of this kind of living.

“But it is so only if it is looked at from the point of view of this kind of living, and only for the person who has not learnt to experience himself otherwise than from moment to moment.

“I call this The Hopping Evil, and the secret lies in overcoming it. One must awaken the feeling of one's own life in oneself as of something peacefully gliding along. In the moment when this really happens one is lust as near to death as to life. One ceases to live-in our earthly sense of the word-but one cannot die any more either, for with the cancelling out of life one has also cancelled out death. This is the instant of immortality, the instant when the soul steps out of our narrow brain into the wonderful gardens of its own life.

“So now pay close attention to what I say.

“Put all your thoughts to sleep, keep staring into this little flame. . . Don't think from one thing to another. . . Concentrate all your attention in an inward direction... Keep staring at the flame... Your thoughts are slowing down, like an engine gradually running slower and slower... slower... and... slower... Keep staring inward ... Keep on staring... till you find the point where you feel yourself, feeling without any thought or sensation...

“Your silence will be all the answer I want. Don't avert your gaze from within!”

Minutes passed.

“Do you feel the point. . . ?” No answer.

“Do you hear, Basini, have you done it?”

Silence.

Beineberg stood up, and his gaunt shadow rose high beside the beam. Up above, Basini's body could be seen rocking to and fro, drunk with darkness.

“Turn sideways,” Beineberg ordered. “What obeys now is only the brain,” he murmured, “the brain, which still goes on functioning mechanically for a while, until the last traces of what the soul imprinted on it are consumed. The soul itself is somewhere else-in its next form of existence. It is no longer wearing the fetters of the laws of Nature.” He turned to Törless for a moment: “It is no longer condemned to the punishment of making a body heavy and holding it together. Bend forward, Basini-that's right-slowly, slowly. And a bit further. A bit further still. As the last trace is extinguished in the brain, the muscles will relax and the empty body will collapse. Or it will simply float, I don't know which. The soul has left the body of its own accord. This is not the ordinary sort of death. Perhaps the body will float in the air because there is nothing left in possession of it-no force either of life or of death. Bend forward... And a bit more.”

* * *

At this moment Basini, who had been obeying all these commands out of sheer terror, lost his balance and crashed to the floor at Beineberg's feet.

Basini yelled with pain. Reiting burst out laughing. But Beineberg, who had fallen back a step, uttered a gurgling cry of rage when he realized that he had been tricked. With a swift movement he ripped his leather belt from his waist, seized Basini by the hair, and began lashing him furiously. All the tremendous tension he had been under now found release in these frantic blows. And Basini howled with pain, so that the attic rang with lamentation as if a dog were howling.

* * *

Törless had sat in silence during the whole of the previous scene. He has been secretly hoping that something might happen after all that would carry him back to the emotional realm he had lost. It was a foolish hope, as he had known all along, but it had held him spellbound. Now, however, it seemed to be all over. The scene revolted him. There was no longer any trace of thought in him, only mute, inert repugnance.

He got up quietly and left without saying a word, all quite mechanically.

Beineberg was still lashing away at Basini and would obviously go on doing so to the point of exhaustion.

When Törless was in bed, he felt: This is the end of it. Something is over and done with.

During the next few days he went on quietly with his school work, riot bothering about anything else. Reiting and Beineberg were probably now carrying out their programme item by item; but he kept out of their way.