Young Torless

by Robert Musil

  “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 if”-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!”

  Törless was trembling with agitation when he stood up.

  And Beineberg was saying over and over again: “Well, we shall see, we shall see . .”

  When Törless was in bed that night he could not sleep. The quarters of the hours crept away like nurses tiptoeing from a sick-bed; his feet were icy cold, and the blankets merely lay heavy on him without warming him.

  In the dormitory there was nothing to be heard but the calm and regular breathing of the boys, all sunk in their healthy, animal sleep after their lessons, gymnastics, and running about in the open air.

  Törless listened to the sleepers' breathing. There was Beineberg's, Reiting's, Basini's breathing-which was which? He did not know. But each was one of the many regular, equally calm, equally steady sounds of breathing that rose and fell like the working of some mechanism.

  One of the linen blinds had jammed half-way down, and under it the clear night shone into the room, making out a pale, motionless rectangle on the floor. The cord must have got stuck at the top, or it had slipped off the roller, and now it hung down, hideously twisted, and its shadow crept like a worm across the bright rectangle on the floor.

  It was all grotesquely, frighteningly hideous.

  Törless tried to think of something pleasant. Beineberg came into his mind. Had he not taken him down a peg today? Dealt a blow to his sense of superiority? Had he today not succeeded for the first time in asserting his individuality against him? In making it apparent in such a way that the other must have felt the infinite difference in the fineness of sensibility distinguishing their two views of things? Had there been anything left for Beineberg to say? Yes or no?

  But this 'yes or no?' swelled up inside his head like a great bubble rising, and burst . . . and 'yes or no?' swelled, ceaselessly, in a stamping rhythm like the clatter of a railway train running over the rails, like the nodding of flowers on excessively long stems, like the thudding of a hammer that could be heard through many thin walls, in a silent house . . . This insistent, complacent 'yes or no?' disgusted Törless. His pleasure was not quite genuine, it hopped about so ridiculously.

  And finally, when he started up, it seemed to be his own head that was nodding, lolling about on his shoulders, or thudding up and down like a hammer...

  In the end all grew quiet in him. Before his eyes there was only a great circular plain spreading out in all directions.

  Then... right from the very edge... there came two tiny, wobbling figures.. . tiny figures approaching obliquely across the table. Evidently they were his parents. But they were so small that he could not feel anything about them.

  At the far rim they vanished again.

  Then came another two-but look, there was somebody running up behind them and past them-with strides twice as long as his body-and an instant later he had vanished over the edge of the table. Had it not been Beineberg? Now for the two-wasn't one of them the mathematics master? Törless recognised him by the handkerchief coyly peeping out of his breast-pocket. But the other? The one with the very, very thick book under his arm, which was half as big as himself, so that he could only just manage to trudge along wit
h it? .. . At every third step they stopped and set the book down on the ground. And Törless heard his teacher say in a squeaky little voice: 'If that is really so, we shall find the right answer on page twelve, page twelve refers us then to page fifty-two, but then we must also bear in mind what is pointed out on page thirty-one, and on this supposition...' As he spoke they were stooping over the book and plunging their hands into it, making the pages fly. After a while then they straightened up, and the other stroked the master's cheek five or six times. Then once more they went on a few paces, and after that Törless yet again heard the voice, just as if it were unraveling the long skein of some theorem in a mathematics lesson; and this went on until the other again stroked the master's cheek.

  This other . . . ? Törless frowned in the effort to see more clearly.

  Was he not wearing a peruke? And rather old-fashioned clothes? Very old-fashioned indeed? In fact, silk knee-breeches? Wasn't it-? Oh! And Törless woke up with a cry: “Kant!”

  The next moment he smiled. All was quiet around him; the sleepers' breathing was very quiet now. He too had been asleep. And meanwhile his bed had grown warm. He stretched luxuriously under the bed-clothes.

  'So I've been dreaming about Kant,' he thought to himself. 'Why didn't it last longer? Perhaps he would have let me into some of the secret. . .' For he remembered that once recently when he had not done his history preparation he had all night long dreamt of the persons and events concerned, so vividly that the next day he had been able to recount it all lust as though he had been there, and he had passed the test with distinction. And now he thought of Beineberg again, Beineberg and Kant-their discussion the previous day.

  Slowly the dream receded-slowly, like a silk cover slipping off the skin of a naked body, but without ever coming to an end.

  Yet soon his smile faded again; he felt a queer uneasiness. Had he really come a single step forward in his thoughts? Could he really get anything, anything at all, out of this book that was supposed to contain the solution to all the riddles? And his victory? Oh, it was probably only his unexpected energy that had made Beineberg fall silent.

  And now again he was overwhelmed by profound discontent and a positively physical feeling of nausea. So he lay for long minutes, hollowed out by disgust.

  But then again suddenly he became conscious of how his body was lapped by the mild, warm linen. Warily, quite slowly. and warily, Törless turned his head. Sure enough, there the pale rectangle still lay on the floor-the sides of it now slanting rather differently, it was true, but still with that wormy shadow twisting across it. It was as if there some danger lay bound in chains, something that he could contemplate from here in his bed, as though protected by the bars of a cage, with the calm knowledge that he was in safety.

  In his skin, all over his body, there awoke a sensation that suddenly turned into an image in his memory. When he was quite small-yes, yes, that was it-when he was still in pinafores and had not yet begun to go to kindergarten, there had been times when he had had a quite unspeakable longing to be a little girl. And this longing too had not been in his head-oh no-nor in his heart either-it had tingled all over his body and gone racing round under his skin. Yes, there had been moments when he so vividly felt himself a little girl that he believed it simply could not be otherwise. For at that time he still knew nothing of the significant bodily differences between the sexes, and did not understand why they all told him he must just put up with being a boy once and for all. And when he was asked why then he thought he would rather be a girl, he had not known how to say what he meant....

  Today for the first time he felt something similar again-again that longing, that tingling under the skin.

  It was something that seemed to partake simultaneously of body and soul. It was a multifold racing and hurrying of something beating against his body, like the velvety antennae of butterflies. And mingled with it there was that defiance with which little girls run away when they feel that the grown-ups simply do not understand them, the arrogance with which they then giggle about the grown-ups, that timid arrogance which is always, as it were, poised for flight and which feels that at any instant it can withdraw into some terribly deep hiding-place inside its own little body. .

  Törless laughed quietly to himself, and once again he stretched luxuriously under the bed-clothes.

  How feverishly that quaint little mannikin he had dreamt of had gone leafing through the book! And the rectangle down there on the floor? Ha ha. Had such clever little mannikins ever in their lives noticed anything of that sort? He felt vastly secure now, safe from those clever persons, and for the first time felt that in his sensuality-for he had long known that this was what it was-he had something that none of them could take away from him, and which none of them could imitate, either, something that was like a very high and very secret wall protecting him against all the cleverness of the outside world.

  Had such clever little mannikins ever in their lives-he went on wondering-lain at the foot of a solitary wall and felt terror at every rustle inside the bricks and mortar, which was as though something dead were trying to find words that it might speak to them? Had they ever felt the music that the breeze kindled among the autumn leaves, and felt it through and through, so that suddenly there was terror looming behind it-terror that slowly, slowly turned into lust? But into such strange lust, more like running away from something, and then like laughter and mockery. Oh, it is easy to be clever if one does not know all these questions.

  In the meantime, however, the mannikin every now and then grew to gigantic size, his face inexorably stern; and each time this happened something like an electric shock ran agonisingly from Törless's brain all through his body. Then once again all his anguish at still being left to stand outside a locked door-the very thing that only an instant earlier had been flooded away by the warm waves of his pulsing blood-awoke in him again, and a wordless lament streamed through his spirit, like a dog's howling in the night, tremulous over an expanse of dark fields.

  So he fell asleep. And even as he dropped off he looked across once or twice to the patch under the window, like someone mechanically reaching out for a supporting rope, to feel whether it is still taut. Then vaguely a resolution loomed up in his mind: the next day he would again do some hard thinking about himself... it would be best to do it with pen and paper... and then, last of all, there was only the pleasant warmth that lapped him . . . like a bath and a stirring of the senses . . . but no longer conscious to him as that, only in some utterly unrecognisable but very definite way being linked with Basini.

  Then he slept soundly and dreamlessly.

  And yet this was the first thing in his mind when he woke the next morning. Now he intensely wished he could know what it had really been that he had half thought, half dreamt, about Basini as he fell asleep; but he could not manage to recollect it.

  So all that remained was a tender mood such as reigns in a house at Christmas-time, when the children know the presents are already there, though locked away behind the mysterious door, and all that can be glimpsed now and then is a glow of light through the chinks.

  In the evening Törless stayed in the classroom. Beineberg and Reiting had disappeared; probably they had gone off to the lair by the attics. Basini was sitting in his place in front, hunched over a book, his head supported on both hands.

  Törless had bought himself a copy-book and now carefully set out his pen and ink. Then, after some hesitation, he wrote on the first page: De natura hominum. The Latin title was, he thought, the philosophic subject's due. Then he drew a large artistic curlicue round the title and leaned back in his chair to wait until it dried.

  But it had been dry for a long time, and still he had not picked up his pen again. Something held him fast, kept him motionless. It was the hypnotic atmosphere of the big, hot lamps, and the animal warmth emanating from all the living bodies in the crowded room. He had always been susceptible to such an atmosphere, and this state was one that could rise to such a pitch
of intensity that he became physically feverish, which again was always associated with an extraordinary heightening of mental perceptiveness. So it was today too. He had worked out, during the course of the day, what it actually was he wanted to make notes about: the whole series of those particular experiences from the evening with Bozena on, culminating in that vague sensual state which had recently been coming over him. Once that was all put down, fact for fact, then-or so he hoped-the real intellectual pattern of it would emerge of its own accord, just as an encompassing line stands out distinctly and gives form to a tangled composition of hundreds of intersecting curves. And more than that he did not want. But so far he had fared like a fisherman who can feel by the jerking of his net that he has got a heavy haul and yet in spite of all his straining cannot manage to get it up into the light.

  And now Törless did begin to write after all, but rapidly and without paying any attention to the form. “I feel something in me,” he wrote, “and don't quite know what it is.” Then, however, he hastily crossed this line out and wrote instead: “I must be ill-insane!” At this a shudder went through him, for the word was pleasantly melodramatic. “Insane-else what is it that makes things seem so odd to me that are quite ordinary for the others? And why does this oddness of things torment me? And why does this oddness cause me lusts of the flesh?”-he deliberately used this Biblical and unctuous expression because it struck him as more obscure and laden with implication. “Before, I used to have the same attitude to this as any of the others here-“ but then he came to a halt. 'Is that really true?' he wondered. 'For instance, even that time at Bozena's it was all so queer. So when did it actually begin? . . . Oh well.' he thought, 'it doesn't matter. Some time, anyway.' But he left his sentence unfinished.

  “What are the things that seem odd to me? The most trivial. Mostly inanimate objects. What is it about them that seems odd? Something about them that I don't know about. But that's just it! Where on earth do I get this 'something' notion from? I feel it's there, it exists. It has an effect on me, just as if it were trying to lip-read from the twisted mouth of someone who's paralysed, and simply not being able to do it. It's as if I had one extra sense, one more than the others have, but not completely developed, a sense that's there and makes itself noticed, but doesn't function. For me the world is full of soundless voices. Does this mean I'm a seer or that I have hallucinations?