The Man Without Qualities, Volume 2

by Robert Musil

  But Siegmund was not the man to let go of something so easily once he had taken it up. “Clarisse is high-strung,” he declared. “She’s always been ready to run her head through a wall, and now she’s got it stuck in one. You’ll have to get a good grip on her, even if she resists you.”

  “You doctors don’t have a clue about human psychology!” Walter cried. He looked for a second point of attack and found it. “You talk of ‘signs,’ “ he went on, his irritation overlaid by his pleasure in being able to speak about Clarisse, “and you carefully examine when signs indicate a disorder and when they don’t, but I tell you this: the true human condition is the one in which everything is a sign! But everything! You may be able to look truth in the eye, but truth will never look you in the eye; this divine, uncertain feeling is something you’ll never know!”

  “You’re obviously both crazy,” Siegmund remarked dryly.

  “Yes, of course we are!” Walter cried out. “You’re not a creative man, after all; you’ve never learned what it means to ‘express oneself,’ which means first of all, for an artist, to understand something. The expression we impart to things is what develops our ability to perceive them aright. I can only understand what I want, or someone else wants, by carrying it out! This is our living experience, as distinct from your dead experience! Of course you’ll say it’s paradoxical, a confusion of cause and effect; you and your medical causality!”

  But Siegmund did not say this; he merely reiterated doggedly: “It will definitely be for her own good if you won’t put up with too much. Excitable people need a certain amount of strictness.”

  “And when I play the piano at the open window,” Walter asked, as if he had not heard his brother-in-law’s warning, “what am I doing? People are passing by, some of them young girls, perhaps anyone who feels like it stops to listen; I play for young lovers and lonely old people. Clever people, stupid people. I’m not giving them something to think about. What I’m playing isn’t rational information. I’m giving them myself. I sit invisible in my room and give them signs: just a few notes, and it’s their life, and it’s my life. You could certainly call this crazy too…!” Suddenly he fell silent. That feeling: “Oh, I could tell all of you a thing or two!”—that basic ambitious urge of every inhabitant of earth who feels the need to communicate something but has no more than an average creative capacity—had fallen to pieces. Every time Walter sat in the soft emptiness of the room behind his open window and released his music into the air with the proud awareness of the artist giving happiness to unknown thousands, this feeling was like an open umbrella, and the instant he stopped playing, it was like a sloppily closed one. All the airiness was gone, it was as if everything that had happened had not happened, and all he could say was that art had lost its connection to the people and everything was no good. He thought of this and felt dejected. He tried to fight it off. After all, Clarisse had said: music must be played “through to the end.” Clarisse had said: “We understand something only as long as we ourselves are part of it!” But Clarisse had also said: “That’s why we have to go to the madhouse ourselves!” Walters “inner umbrella” flapped halfway closed in irregular stormy gusts.

  Siegmund said: “Excitable people need a certain amount of guidance, for their own good. You yourself said you wouldn’t put up with it anymore. Professionally and personally, I can only give you the same advice: Show her that you’re a man. I know she balks at that, but she’ll come around.” Siegmund was like a dependable machine tirelessly reiterating the “answer” he had come up with.

  Walter, in a “stormy gust,” replied: “This medical exaggeration of a well-adjusted sex life is old hat! When I make music or paint or think, I am affecting both an immediate and a distant audience, without depriving the ones of what I give to the others. On the contrary! Take it from me, there’s probably no sphere of life in which one remains justified in living only for oneself, thinking of life as a private matter! Not even marriage!”

  But the heavier pressure was on Siegmund’s side, and Walter sailed before the wind across to Clarisse, of whom he had not lost sight during this conversation. He did not relish anyone’s being able to say of him that he was not a man; he turned his back on this suggestion by letting it drive him over to Clarisse. And halfway there he felt the certainty, between nervously bared teeth, that he would have to begin with the question: “What do you mean, talking about signs?”

  But Clarisse saw him coming. She had already seen him wavering while he was still standing there. Then his feet were pulled from the ground and bore him toward her. She participated in this with wild elation. The blackbird, startled, flew off, hastily taking its caterpillar with it. The way was now clear for her power of attraction. Yet she suddenly thought better of it and eluded the encounter for the time being by slowly slipping along the side of the house into the open, not turning away from Walter but moving faster than he, hesitant as he was, could move out of the realm of telepathic effect into that of statement and response.

  27

  AGATHE IS QUICKLY DISCOVERED AS A

  SOCIAL ASSET BY GENERAL STUMM

  Since Agathe had joined forces with him, Ulrich’s relations with the extensive social circle of the Tuzzis had been making great demands on his time. For although it was late in the year the winter s busy social season was not yet over, and the least he could do in return for the great show of sympathy he had received upon his father’s death was not hide Agathe away, even though their being in mourning relieved them of having to attend large affairs. Had Ulrich chosen to take full advantage of it, their mourning would actually have allowed them to avoid attending all social functions for a long time, so that he could have dropped out of a circle of acquaintances that he had fallen into only through curious circumstances. However, since Agathe had put her life into his charge Ulrich acted against his own inclination, and assigned to a part of himself labeled with the traditional concept “duties of an elder brother” many decisions that his whole person was undecided about, even when he did not actually disapprove of them. The first of these duties of an elder brother was to see that Agathe’s flight from her husband’s house should end only in the house of a better husband.

  “If things continue this way,” he would say, whenever they touched on the subject of what arrangements needed to be made in setting up house together, “you will soon be getting some offers of marriage, or at least of love,” and if Agathe planned something for more than a few weeks ahead he would say: “By that time everything will be different.” This would have wounded her even more had she not perceived the conflict in her brother, so that for the present she refrained from making an issue of it when he chose to widen their social circle to the limit. And so after Agathe’s arrival they became far more involved in social obligations than Ulrich would have been on his own.

  Their constant appearances together, when for a long time Ulrich had always been seen alone and without ever uttering a word about a sister, caused no slight sensation. One day General Stumm von Bordwehr had shown up at Ulrich’s with his orderly, his briefcase, and his loaf of bread, and started to sniff the air suspiciously. Then Stumm discovered a lady’s stocking hanging over a chair, and said reproachfully: “Oh, you young fellows!”

  “My sister,” Ulrich declared.

  “Oh, come on—you haven’t got a sister!” the General protested. “Here we are, tormented by the most serious problems, and you’re hiding out with a little playmate!”

  Just then Agathe came in, and the General lost his composure. He saw the family resemblance, and could tell by the casual air with which Agathe wandered in that Ulrich had told the truth, yet he could not shake off the feeling that he was looking at one of Ulrich’s girlfriends, who incomprehensibly and misleadingly happened to look like him.

  “I really don’t know what came over me, dear lady,” he told Diotima later, “but I couldn’t have been more amazed if he’d suddenly stood before me as a cadet again!” For at the sight of Agathe, to
whom he was instantly attracted, Stumm had been overcome by that stupor he had learned to recognize as a sign of being deeply moved. His tender plumpness and sensitive nature inclined the General to hasty retreat from such a tricky situation, and despite all Ulrich’s efforts to make him stay, he did not learn much more about the serious problems that had brought the educated General to him.

  “No!” Stumm blamed himself. “Nothing is so important as to justify my disturbing you like this.”

  “But you haven’t disturbed us at all,” Ulrich assured him with a smile. “What’s there to be disturbed?”

  “No, of course not,” Stumm assured him, now completely confused. “Of course not, in a sense. But all the same…look, why don’t I come back another time?”

  “You might at least tell me what brought you here, before you dash off again,” Ulrich demanded.

  “Nothing, not a thing! A trifle!” the General cried in his eagerness to take to his heels. “I think the Great Event is about to start!”

  “A horse! A horse! Take ship for France!” Ulrich threw in in fun.

  Agathe looked at him in surprise.

  “I do apologize,” the General said, turning to her. “You can’t have any idea what this is all about.”

  “The Parallel Campaign has found its crowning idea!” Ulrich filled her in.

  “No, I never said that,” the General demurred. “All I meant was that the great event everyone was waiting for is now on its way.”

  “I see,” Ulrich said. “Well, it’s been on its way from the start.”

  “No, not quite like this,” the General earnestly assured him. “There is now a quite definite nobody-knows-what in the air. There’s soon to be a decisive gathering at your cousin’s. Frau Drangsal—”

  “Who’s she?” Ulrich had never heard of her.

  “That only shows how much you’ve been out of touch,” the General said reproachfully, and turned immediately to Agathe to mend matters. “Frau Drangsal is the lady who has taken the poet Feuermaul under her wing. I suppose,” he said, turning his round body back again to the silent Ulrich, “you don’t know him either?”

  “Yes, I do. The lyric poet.”

  “Writes verses,” the General said, mistrustfully avoiding the unaccustomed word.

  “Good verse, in fact. And all sorts of plays.”

  “I don’t know about plays. And I haven’t got my notes with me. But he’s the one who says: Man is good. In short, Frau Drangsal is backing the hypothesis that man is good, and they say it is a great European idea and that Feuermaul has a great future. She was married to a man who was a world-famous doctor, and she means to make Feuermaul world-famous too. Anyway, there’s a danger that your cousin may lose the leadership to Frau Drangsal, whose salon has also been attracting all the celebrities.”

  The General mopped the sweat from his brow, though Ulrich did not find the prospect at all alarming.

  “You surprise me!” Stumm scolded him. “As an admirer of your cousin like everyone else, how can you say such things? Don’t you agree, dear lady,” he appealed to Agathe, “that your brother is being incredibly disloyal and ungrateful toward an inspiring woman?”

  “I’ve never met my cousin,” Agathe admitted.

  “Oh!” said Stumm, and in words that turned a chivalrous intention into a rather backhanded compliment which involved an obscure concession to Agathe, he added: “Though she hasn’t been at her best lately!”

  Neither Ulrich nor Agathe had anything to say to this, so the General felt he had to elucidate. “And you know why, too,” he said meaningfully to Ulrich. He disapproved of Diotima’s current absorption in sexology, which was distracting her mind from the Parallel Campaign, and he was worried because her relationship with Arnheim was not improving, but he did not know how far he might go in speaking of such matters in the presence of Agathe, whose expression was now growing steadily cooler. But Ulrich answered calmly: “I suppose you’re not making any progress with your oil affair if our Diotima no longer has her old influence on Arnheim?”

  Stumm made a pathetically pleading gesture, as if to stop Ulrich from making a joke not fit for a lady’s ear, but at the same time threw him a sharp glance of warning. He even found the energy, despite his weight, to bounce to his feet like a young man, and tugged his tunic straight. Enough of his original suspicion about Agathe’s background lingered to keep him from exposing the secrets of the War Ministry in her presence. It was only when Ulrich had escorted him out to the hall that he clutched his arm and whispered hoarsely, through a smile: “For God’s sake, man, don’t talk open treason!” and enjoined Ulrich from uttering a word about the oil fields in front of any third person, even one’s own sister. “Oh, all right,” Ulrich promised. “But she’s my twin sister.”

  “Not even in front of a twin sister!” the General asseverated, still so incredulous about the sister that he could take the addition of “twin” in stride. “Give me your word!”

  “But it’s no use making me promise such a thing.” Ulrich was even more outrageous. “We’re Siamese twins, don’t you see?” Stumm finally caught on that Ulrich, whose manner was never to give a straight answer to anything, was making fun of him. “Your jokes used to be better,” he protested, “than to suggest the unappetizing notion that such a delightful person, even if she’s ten times your sister, is fused together with you!” But this had reawakened his lively mistrust of the reclusiveness in which he had found Ulrich, and so he appended a few more questions to find out what he had been up to. Has the new secretary turned up yet? Have you been to see Diotima? Have you kept your promise to visit Leinsdorf ? Have you found out how things are between your cousin and Arnheim? Since the plump skeptic was of course already informed on all these points, he was merely testing Ulrich’s truthfulness, and was satisfied with the result.

  “In that case, do me a favor and don’t be late for this crucial session,” he pleaded while buttoning up his greatcoat, slightly out of breath from mastering the traversal through the sleeves. “I’ll call you again beforehand and fetch you in my carriage, agreed?”

  “And when will this boredom take place?” Ulrich asked, not exactly with enthusiasm.

  “In a couple of weeks or so, I think,” the General said. “We want to bring the rival party to Diotima’s, but we want Arnheim to be there too, and he’s still abroad.” With one finger he tapped the golden sword knot dangling from his coat pocket. ‘Without him, it’s not much fun for us, as you can understand. But believe me”—he sighed—”there’s nothing I personally desire more than that our spiritual leadership should stay with your cousin; it would be horrible for me, if I had to adapt to an entirely new situation!”

  Thus it was this visit that brought Ulrich, now accompanied by his sister, back into the fold he had deserted when he was still alone. He would have had to resume his social obligations even if he had not wanted to, as he could not possibly stay in hiding with Agathe a day longer and expect Stumm to keep to himself a discovery so ripe for gossip. When “the Siamese” called on Diotima, she had apparently already heard of this curious and dubious epithet, if she was not yet charmed with it. For the divine Diotima, famed for the distinguished and remarkable people always to be met under her roof, had at first taken Agathe’s unheralded debut very badly; a kinswoman who might not be a social success could be far more damaging to her own position than a male cousin, and she knew just as little about this new cousin as she had previously known about Ulrich, which in itself caused the all-knowing Diotima some annoyance when she had to admit her ignorance to the General. So she had decided to refer to Agathe as “the orphan sister,” partly to help reconcile herself to the situation and partly to prepare wider circles for it. It was in this spirit that she received the cousins.

  She was agreeably surprised by the socially impeccable manners Agathe was able to produce, while Agathe, mindful of her good education in a pious boarding school and always ready, with a mixture of irony and wonder, to take life as it came—an att
itude she deplored to Ulrich—from the first managed almost unconsciously to win the gracious sympathies of the stupendous young woman whose ambition for “greatness” left Agathe quite cold and indifferent. She marveled at Diotima with the same guilelessness with which she would have marveled at a gigantic power station in whose mysterious function of spreading light one did not meddle. Once Diotima had been won over, especially as she could soon see that Agathe was generally liked, she laid herself out to extend Agathe’s social success, which she arranged to throw greater credit on herself. The “orphan sister” aroused much sympathetic interest, which among Diotima’s intimates began on a note of frank amazement that nobody had ever heard of her before, and in wider circles was transformed into that vague pleasure at everything new and surprising which is shared by princes and the press alike.