by Robert Musil
The landscape of counter-morality lies deep beneath that of ordinary life, not deep in yards but many octaves deeper. That is how it seemed to her. Everything great lives in the landscape of counter-morality (there). It goes the same ways others go, but without touching them. Against that Clarisse said to herself half aloud: —I am following in Nietzsche’s footsteps. She could also imagine that Moosbrugger had taken Nietzsche’s sorrow upon himself and was Nietzsche in the shape of a sinner. But that was not her object at the moment. Now she had to take “the sorrow” upon herself: this is what preoccupied her. She felt it hovering, otherworldly, in the vacancy of the morning. She was carrying something that towered up hugely from her shoulders. But then she thought something over and went home.
***
When she got there, Walter was not yet up, although he ought to have been on his way to the office already. He slept so badly that he could not get up on time in the morning. Dreams tortured him, leaving behind when he woke up, although he could not remember them, a feeling of being inwardly wiped out. Walter felt like a piece of paper that has been rolled up by an unpleasant warmth, and so dried out that it cracks at the slightest touch. That was the effect of Clarisse, who slept beside him, dressed and undressed beside him, but hardly permitted him to kiss her. His blood stagnated and became restless. It was dammed up like a crowd of people that is stopped at its head, while behind, where people no longer see the cause, they begin to push forward until they’re out of control. Walter pulled himself together; he did not want to hurt Clarisse, he understood her, she moved him with her childish resolve, there was nobility in her agonized exaggerating. But perhaps, too, that nervous exaltation which stigmatized everything she did. It seemed to Walter that it was his duty to clear away the obstacles she erected, even with force, if need be. It would be necessary to go through such brutality in order to restore normal intellectual opposition, if opposition there had to be. He felt it in himself; both their minds needed a surgeon: a mental growth had proliferated wildly and needed to be cut out. But he was convinced that a sorrow such as had been laid upon them would not be any less deep or strange than Tristan and Isolde’s.
Only his most extreme personal need had prompted him, a few days before, to seek a consultation with Clarisse’s brother Siegfried. —You know Clarisse—he had said—that is, of course you don’t know her, but you know a lot about her, and perhaps you can just this once, as a doctor, also give some advice. Siegfried gave this advice. It was remarkable how much patronizing he accepted from Walter. Life is full of such relationships, where one person humiliates and brushes aside another, who offers no resistance. Perhaps only healthy life. The world would probably already have perished at the time of the great migrations if people had all defended themselves to the last drop of blood; instead of which the weaker gave in and moved on, preferring to seek other neighbors, whom they in turn could brush aside. This is the model on which human relationships are still carried on, and with time everything works out by itself. In the circle where Walter was thought to be a genius who had not yet found his definitive expression, Siegfried was considered a lout and a blockhead. He had accepted that, never argued against it, and even today, if it should come to an intellectual collision with Walter, Siegfried would be the one to yield and pay homage. But for years he had as good as never been in this situation, for they had grown apart, and the old relations had become quite insignificant in comparison with new ones. Siegfried not only had his practice as a doctor—and the doctor rules differently from the bureaucrat, through his own intellectual power and not that of others, and comes to people who are waiting for his help and accept it obediently—but he also possessed a wife with means, who within a short time had been required to present him with three children and whom he cheated on with other women, if not often at least now and then, when he felt like it. Siegfried was quite logically also in a situation where he could give Walter the advice he demanded. —Clarisse—he diagnosed—is excessively nervous. It was always her way to charge through walls, and now her head has got stuck in a wall. You have to give a good tug, even if she resists. It is against her own advantage if you let her get away with too much. Neurotic people demand a certain strictness. Walter had answered that doctors understand absolutely nothing about spiritual processes, but meanwhile he managed to put Siegfried’s advice in a form that was personally agreeable to him: that two people had to suffer in order to accomplish their burdensome destiny of loving each other. As far as the situation itself was concerned, this amounted to the same thing. And he said to Clarisse: —Please, Clarisse, be reasonable!
Clarisse had just got home, had called out: You layabout! to Walter, filled the bath with cold water, and slipped out of her thin dress, when she felt Walter behind her. He was standing there the way he had got out of bed, in a long nightshirt that fell down to his bare feet, and had warm cheeks like a girl’s, while Clarisse, in her brief panties and with her skinny arms, looked like a boy. She put her hand on his chest and shoved him back. But Walter reached out for her. With one hand he seized her arm, and with the other sought to grasp her by the crotch and pull her to him. Clarisse tore at the embrace, and when that didn’t help shoved her free hand into Walter’s face, into his nose and mouth. His face turned red and the blood trembled in his eyes while he struggled with Clarisse. He did not want to let her see that she was hurting him, but when he was in danger of suffocating he had to strike her hand from his face. Quick as lightning, she went at it again, and this time her nails tore two bleeding furrows in his skin. Clarisse was free. Just then Walter again snatched at her, this time with all his strength. He had become angry, and feared nothing in the whole world so much as becoming rational again. Clarisse struck at him. She had lost her shoe and kicked at him. She understood that this time it was for real. Walter was gasping out meaningless sentences. The voices of loneliness, as if a robber had jumped on them. She felt she had the strength of giants. Her clothing tore; Walter seized the shreds; she reached for his neck. She would have liked to kill him. She did not know what she was doing. Naked, slippery, she struggled like a wriggling fish in his arms. She bit Walter, whose strength was not sufficient to overpower her calmly; he swung her this way and that, and painfully sought to block her attacks. Clarisse got tired. Her muscles became numb and slack. There were pauses where she was pressed by Walter’s weight against the wall or the floor and could no longer defend herself. Then again there would come a series of defensive movements and ruthless attacks against sensitive parts of the body and face. Then suffocation again, powerlessness, and the heart’s beating. Walter was intermittently ashamed. The pain hit him like a ray of light: Reasonable people don’t act this way! He thought that Clarisse looked as ugly as a madwoman.
But it had taken so much to get himself this far that the acting man ran on by himself, paying no attention to the feeling man. Clarisse, too, no longer had the feeling that she was being raped by Walter; she had only the feeling that she was not able to insist on her will, and when she was forced to yield she uttered a long, shrill, wild cry, like a locomotive. She herself found this inspiration quite strange. Perhaps her will was escaping in this cry, now that it was of no more use to her. Walter was scared. And while she had to endure his will she had the consolation: Just wait, I’ll get my revenge!
The moment this repulsive scene was over, shame crashed down on Walter. Clarisse sat in a corner, naked as she was, with a thunderous face and made no response to his pleas for forgiveness. He had to get dressed; blood and tears flowed through his shaving foam. He had to leave in a hurry. He felt that he could not leave the beloved of all the days since his youth in this condition. He sought to at least move her to get dressed. Clarisse countered that she could just as well remain sitting this way until Judgment Day. In his despair and helplessness, his whole life as a man shrank back; he threw himself on his knees and with hands raised begged her to forgive him, as he had once prayed against blows; he could not think of anything else to do.
&nb
sp; —I’ll tell Ulrich everything! Clarisse said, slighdy reconciled.
Walter begged her to forget it. There was something in his lack of dignity that called for reconciliation: he loved Clarisse; the shame was like a wound from which real, warm blood was flowing. But Clarisse did not forgive him. She could forgive him as little as an emperor who bears the responsibility for a kingdom can forgive; such people are something other than private individuals. She made him swear never to touch her again before she gave him permission. Walter was expected at a meeting; he gave his oath quickly, with the clock in his heart. Then Clarisse gave him the additional task of sending Ulrich over; she agreed to keep silent, but she needed the calming presence of a person she could trust.
***
During a break at work Walter took a taxi to Ulrich’s, to get there as quickly as possible.
Ulrich was at home. His life wearied him. He did not know where Agathe was. Since she had separated herself from him he had had no news of her; he was tortured by worries about what might be happening to her. Everything reminded him of her. How short a time ago he had restrained her from a rash decision. Yet he did not believe she would do it without speaking to him once more.
Perhaps for that very reason: for the intoxication—a real intoxication, an enchantment!—was over. The experiment they had undertaken to shape their relationship had failed irrevocably. Vast regions of emotions and fancies that had endowed many things with a perennial splendor of unknown origin, like an opalizing sky, were now desolate. Ulrich’s mind had dried out like soil beneath which the layers that conduct the moisture that nourishes all green things had disappeared. If what he had been forced to wish for was folly—and the exhaustion with which he thought of it admitted of no doubts about that!—then what had been best in his life had always been folly: the shimmer of thinking, the breath of presumption, those tender messengers of a better home that flutter among the things of the world. Nothing remained but to become reasonable; he had to do violence to his nature and apparently submit it to a school that was not only hard but also by definition boring. He did not want to think himself born to be an idler, but would now be one if he did not soon begin to make order out of the consequences of this failure. But when he checked them over, his whole being rebelled against them, and when his being rebelled against them, he longed for Agathe; that happened without exuberance, but still as one yearns for a fellow sufferer when he is the only one with whom one can be intimate.
With distracted politeness, Walter inquired about Ulrich’s absence; Ulrich waited with embarrassment for him to ask about Agathe, but fortunately Walter forgot to. He had recently come to realize that it is insanity to doubt the love of a woman whom one loves oneself, he began. Even if one should be disappointed, it was only a matter of letting oneself be disappointed fruitfully, in such a way that the inner lives of all concerned be raised a degree. All feelings that are only negative are unfruitful; on the other hand, there was nothing in which one could not find a core of fruitfulness if one peeled off the layers of world community. For instance: He had often committed the wrong of being jealous of Ulrich.
—Were you really jealous of me? Ulrich asked.
—Yes, Walter confessed, and for an instant, in an unconsciously significant but ridiculously chilling fashion, he bared two teeth. —Of course I never thought of it in any other way than intellectually. Clarisse feels a certain sensual kinship with your body. You understand: it’s not that your body attracts her body, or your mind her mind, but your body attracts her mind; you’ll have to admit that’s not so simple, and that it wasn’t always easy for me to behave properly toward you.
—And Meingast?
—Meingast has left—Walter began by saying—but that was different. I admire Meingast myself. Nobody today can compare with him, all in all. There’s no way I could forbid Clarisse to love him.
—Yes, you could. First you would have to tell her that Meingast is a woolgatherer—
—Cut it out! Today I need your friendship, not a quarrel!
—Then you could always say to Clarisse that it’s not the mission of a great man to draw the nails out of every marriage like a giant magnet; therefore, on the side of the marriage, there has to be something that can’t be changed by the superiority of this third person. You’re conservative, you’ll no doubt be able to work that out. Moreover, it’s an absorbing question. Just consider: Today every writer, musician, philosopher, leader, and boss finds people who think he’s the greatest thing on earth. The natural consequence, especially for women who are more easily moved, would be that they flock to him as a whole person. Their own personal, bodily philosopher or writer! These words have a right to be taken literally; for where else should one wish to go with soul and body if not to this ultimate refuge? But it’s just as certain that this doesn’t happen. Today only hysterical women run after great minds. And why?
Walter answered reluctantly. —You said yourself that there are other reasons for living together. Children, the need for a solid place; and then there’s a suitability of two people for each other that’s greater than the meeting of their minds!
—Those are just excuses! The agreement you’re talking about is nothing more than trusting opinions even less than a life of habit that has turned out to be not entirely unbearable. It’s just lucky that one doesn’t quite trust the person one admires. The confusion through which one is always robbed of vitality by the other has obviously become a means of preserving life. The inclination for each other holds together through a delicate remnant of disinclination against the third person. And altogether, of course, it’s nothing but the soul of the Pharisee, which, once it’s got inside a body, imagines that every other body has secret defects!
—I started out by saying—Walter exclaimed indignantly—that if Clarisse really loved Meingast I could not forbid it.
—Then why don’t you permit her to love me? Ulrich asked, laughing. —Because you don’t like me. And you don’t like me because when we were children I beat you up a couple of times. As if I had never run into stronger boys who beat me up! That’s so absurd, so narrow-minded and petty. I’m not reproaching you; we all have this weakness of not being able to shake off such things, indeed that such idiotic chance happenings actually form the inner building blocks of our personalities, while our knowledge is no more than the breeze that blows around them. Who’s stronger, then: you or I? Engineer Short or Art Historian Long? A master wrestler or a sprinter? I think that (the individual) this business has lost a lot of its meaning today. None of us are isolated or individual. To speak in your language: We’re instrumentalists who have come together in expectation of playing a marvelous piece, the score for which has not yet been located. So what would happen if Clarisse were to fall in love with me? The idea that one can love only one other person is nothing but a legal (civil law) prejudice that has totally overrun us. She would love you, too, and in those circumstances precisely in the way that suits you best, because she would be free of die gnawing anger that you don’t have certain qualities which she also considers important. The only condition would be that you would really have to behave toward me as a friend; that doesn’t mean you have to understand me, for I don’t understand the cells in my brain either, although something far more intimate exists between us than understanding!… And you could contradict me with all your emotions and thoughts, but only in a certain way: for there are contradictions that are continuations, for example those within ourselves; we love ourselves along with them.
This seemed to Walter like a bucket being emptied down a flight of steps. What Ulrich said spread out and at some point had to stop; he, meanwhile, paced back and forth in the room but couldn’t wait for that to happen. He stopped and said: —I must interrupt you. I don’t want to either contradict you or agree with you. I have no idea why you’re saying these things; it seems to me that you’re talking into the air. Both of us are some thirty years old, everything isn’t hovering in the air the way it was when we were nineteen,
one is something, one has something/and everything you’re saying is infinitely humdrum. But what’s horrible is that I’ve had to promise Clarisse to send you out to see her today. Promise me that you’ll speak less unreasonably with her than with me!
—But for that I’d have to first promise that I’ll go. Today I don’t have the slightest desire to! Excuse me, I don’t feel well either.
—But you must say yes! It doesn’t matter to you, you can put up with it; but for days Clarisse has been in an alarming state. And on top of that I’ve let myself be guilty of a great mistake, repulsive, I assure you; one is sometimes like an animal. I’m worried about her! For a moment the memory overwhelmed him. He had tears in his eyes and looked at Ulrich angrily through the tears. Ulrich placated him and promised to go.
—Go right now, Walter begged. —I had to leave her all upset. And he hurriedly told Ulrich that Meingast’s unexpected departure, which had strangely affected him too, had obviously shaken Clarisse, because since then she was strikingly changed. —You know what she’s like—Walter said, a veil of tears again and again running over his eyes—her whole nature keeps her from allowing something she doesn’t think right to prevail; letting things happen, which our whole civilization is full of, is for her a cardinal sin! He reported the incident with the newspaper, which he himself suddenly saw in a new light. Then he added softly that after Meingast’s departure, Clarisse had confessed to him that while he had been there she had often suffered from obsessive ideas, which all added up to her regarding the entire peculiar progression to greatness that Meingast had gone through, since he had left them long ago as an ordinary young Lothario, as having their basis in his taking upon himself the sins of all the people with whom he came into contact and, it turned out, also the sins of Clarisse and Walter himself.
