The Man Without Qualities, Volume 2

by Robert Musil

  When they were among themselves, they did not even take it amiss if someone was an enemy of the military, for over a fairly long period of service most of them had become that way themselves, and there were even pacifists in Kakania’s army. But this does not mean that later on, in the war, they did not do their duty with as much enthusiasm as their comrades in other countries; on the contrary, one always thinks differently from the way one acts. This fact, of such extraordinary importance for the condition of world civilization as we know it today, is ordinarily understood to mean that thinking is a charming habit of the individual citizen, without damaging which, when it comes to action, one joins in with what is customary and what everyone is doing. This is not quite true, however, for there are people who are totally unoriginal in their thinking; but when they act, they often do so in a very personal way, which, because it is more appealing, is superior to their ideas, or, because it is more common, inferior to them, in any case more idiosyncratic. One comes closer to the truth if one does not stop with the object of the action, as opposed to the idea, but recognizes from the beginning that one is dealing with two different kinds of ideas. A person’s idea ceases to be only an idea whenever a second person thinks something similar, and between these two something happens, even if it is only being aware of each other, that makes them a pair. Even then the idea is no longer pure possibility but acquires an additional component of ancillary considerations. But this might be a sophism or an artifice. Nevertheless, the fact remains that every powerful idea goes out into the world of reality and permeates it the way energy enters a malleable material and finally rigidifies in it, without entirely losing its effectiveness as an idea. Everywhere, in schools, in law books, in the aspect of houses in the city and fields in the country, in newspaper offices awash in currents of superficiality, in men’s trousers and women’s hats, in everything where people exercise and receive influence, ideas are encapsulated or dissolved in varying degrees of fixity and content. This is of course no more than a platitude, but we are hardly always aware of its extent, for it really amounts to nothing less than a monstrous, inside-out, third half of the brain. This third half does not think; it emits emotions, habits, experiences, limits, and directions, nothing but unconscious or half-conscious influences, among which individual thinking is as much and as little as a tiny candle flame in the stony darkness of a gigantic warehouse. And not last among these are the ideas held in reserve, which are stored like uniforms for wartime. The moment something extraordinary begins to spread, they climb out of their petrification. Every day bells peal, but when a big fire breaks out or a people is called to arms, one sees for the first time the sort of feelings that have been clanging and churning inside them. Every day the newspapers casually write certain sentences that they habitually use to characterize habitual happenings, but if a revolution threatens or something new is about to happen, it suddenly appears that these words no longer suffice and that in order to ward off or welcome, one must reach back for the oldest hats in the store and the spooks in the closet. The mind enters every great general mobilization, whether for peace or for war, unequipped and laden down with forgotten things.

  Hans had fallen into this disproportion between the personal and the general, between living and reserve principles. In other circumstances, people would have been satisfied to find him not very likable, but the official document had raised him out of the midst of private individuals and made him an object of public thought, and had admonished his superiors that they were to apply to him not their uneducated, highly variable personal feelings, but the generally accepted ones that made them vexed and bored and that can at any moment degenerate wildly, like the actions of a drunk or a hysteric who feels quite distinctly that he is stuck inside his frenzy as inside a strange, oversize husk.

  But one should not think that Hans was being mistreated, or that impermissible things were being done to him: on the contrary, he was treated strictly according to regulations. All that was missing was that iota of human warmth—no, one cannot call it warmth; but coal, fuel, on hand to be used on a suitable occasion—which even in a barracks still finds a niche. Through the absence of the possibility of any personal sympathy, the right-angled buildings, the monotonous walls with the blue figures, the ruler-straight corridors with the innumerable parallel diagonal lines of guns hanging on them, and the trumpet signals and regulations that divided up the day, all had the effect of die clear, cold crystallizing of a spirit that till then had been alien to Hans Sepp, that spirit of the commonality, of public life, of impersonal community, or whatever it should be called, which had created this building and these forms.

  The most crushing thing was that he felt that his whole spirit of contradiction had been blown away. He could, of course, have thought of himself as a missionary being tortured by some Indian tribe. Or he could have expunged the din of the world from his senses and immersed himself in the currents of the transcendental. He could have looked upon his sufferings as a symbol, and so forth. But since a military cap had been clapped on his head, all these thoughts had become like impotent shadows. The sensitive world of the mind paled to a specter, which here, where a thousand people lived together, could not penetrate. His mind was desolate and withered.

  Hans Sepp had settled Gerda with the mother of one of his friends. He saw her rarely, and then he was mostly surly from fatigue and despair. Gerda wanted to make herself independent; she did not want anything from him; but she had no way of understanding the events to which he was exposed. Several times she had had the idea of picking him up after his daily duty, as if he were his usual self and was just coming from some land of event. Lately he had taken to avoiding her. He did not even have the strength to let it bother him. In the pauses during the day, those irregular pauses that fell at the most useless times, he hung around with the other conscripts doing their year of military service, drank brandy and coffee in the canteen, and sat in the disconsolate flood of their conversations and jokes as in a dirty creek, without being able to make up his mind to stand up. Now for the first time he came to hate the soldier class, because he felt himself subjected to its influence. —My mind is now nothing more than the lining of a military coat, he said to himself; but he felt astonishingly tempted to test the new movements in this clothing. It happened that even after duty he stayed with the others and tried out the rather coarse diversions of these half-independent young people.

  ***

  An elegant gentleman had his car stop and called out to Ulrich; with effort Ulrich recognized in the self-confident apparition (that leaned out of the elegant vehicle) Director Leo Fischel. —You’re in luck! Fischel called to him. —My secretary’s been trying for weeks to get hold of you! She was always told you were away. —He was exaggerating, but this magisterial confidence in his manner was genuinely impressive.

  Ulrich said softly: —I thought I’d find you in much different shape.

  —What have you been hearing about me? Fischel probed, curious.

  —I think pretty much everything. For a long time I’ve been expecting to hear about you through the newspapers.

  —Nonsense! Women always exaggerate. Wont you accompany me home? I’ll tell you all about it.

  The house had changed, taken on an aura of the top offices of some business enterprise or other, and had become totally unfeminine. But Fischel said nothing specific. He was more concerned with shoring up his reputation with Ulrich. He treated his departure from the bank as a minor incident. —What did you expect? I could have stayed there for ten years without getting anywhere! My leaving was entirely amicable. He had taken on such a self-important manner of speaking that Ulrich felt constrained to express his dry astonishment at it. —But you had ruined yourself so completely—he said inquiringly—that people assumed you had to either shoot yourself or end up in court.

  —I’d never shoot myself, I’d poison myself, Leo corrected. —I wouldn’t do anyone the favor of dying like an aristocrat or a section chief! But it wasn’t at al
l necessary. Do you know what a “starching,” a transitory illiquidity, is? Well! My family made a ridiculous to-do about it that they’re very sorry for today!

  —By the way, you never said a word—Ulrich exclaimed, having just thought of it—about becoming Leona’s friend; I should at least have had the right to know that I

  —Do you have any idea how this woman behaved toward me? Shameless! Her upbringing!

  —I always left Leona the way she is. I suppose that with her natural stupidity she’ll end up in a few years as a pensioner in a brothel.

  —Far from it! Moreover, I’m not as heartless as you, my friend. I’ve tried to arouse Leona’s reason a little and, so to speak, her economic understanding, as far as they apply to the exploitation of her body. And on the evening when my illiquidity began to make itself palpable to me, I went to her to borrow a few hundred crowns, which I assumed Leona would have laid aside. You ought to have heard this harpy scolding me for being a skinflint, a robber; she even cursed my religion! The one thing she didn’t claim was that I had robbed her of her innocence. But you’re wrong about Leona’s future; do you know who her friend is now, right after me?

  He bent over to Ulrich and whispered a name in his ear; he did this more out of respect than because the whispering was necessary.

  —What do you say to that? You have to admit she’s a beauty.

  Ulrich was astounded. The name Fischel had whispered to him was Arnheim.

  Ulrich asked after Gerda. Fischel blew his soul’s breath out through pursed lips; his face became anxious and betrayed secret worries. He raised his shoulders and slackly let them fall again. —I thought that you might know where she’s staying.

  —I have a suspicion—Ulrich answered—but I don’t know. I assume she’s taken a job.

  —Job! As what? As governess in a family with small children! Just think, she takes a job as a domestic servant when she could have every luxury! Just yesterday I concluded a deal on a house, top location, with an apartment that’s a palace by itself: But no, no, no! Fischel beat his face with his fists; his pain about his daughter was genuine, or at least was the genuine pain that she was preventing him from enjoying his victory completely.

  —Why don’t you turn to the police? Ulrich asked.

  —Oh, please! I can’t advertise my family affairs to the world! Besides, I want to, but my wife won’t hear of it. I immediately paid my wife back what I had lost of hers; her high-and-mighty brothers aren’t going to wear out their mouths about me! And in the last analysis, Gerda is as much her child as mine. In that line I’m not going to do anything without her agreement. Half the day she rides around in my car and searches her eyes out. Of course that’s absurd; that’s not the way to go about it. But what can one do when one’s married to a woman!

  —I thought your divorce was under way?

  —It was. That is, only verbally. Not yet legally. The lawyers had just fired the first shots when my situation visibly improved. I don’t know myself what our current relation is; I believe Clementine is waiting for a discussion. Of course she’s still living at her brother’s.

  —But then why don’t you simply hire a private detective to find Gerda? Ulrich interrupted, having just thought of it.

  —Good idea, Fischel replied.

  —She can be tracked down through Hans Sepp!

  —My wife intends to drive out to Hans Sepp yet again one of these days and work on him; he’s not saying anything.

  —Oh, you know what? Hans must be doing his military service now; don’t you remember? He got a six-month postponement on account of some exams he had to take, which he ended up not taking. He must have gone in two weeks ago; I can say that precisely because it was very unusual, since around this time only the medical students are called up. So your wife will hardly find him. On the other hand, his feet could really be held to the fire through his superiors. You understand, if someone there squeezes him between his fingers, it will really loosen his tongue!

  —Splendid, and thank you! I hope my wife will see that too. For as I said, without Clementine I don’t want to undertake anything in this direction; otherwise I’ll immediately be accused again of being a murderer!

  Ulrich had to smile. —Freedom seems to have made you anxious, my dear Fischel.

  Fischel had always been easily irritated by Ulrich; now that he had become an important man, even more so. —You exaggerate freedom— he said dismissively—and it appears that you’ve never quite understood my position. Marriage is often a struggle as to who is the stronger; extraordinarily difficult as long as it involves feelings, ideas, and fantasies! But not difficult at all as soon as one is successful in life. I have the impression that even Clementine is beginning to realize that. One can argue for weeks over whether an opinion is correct. But as soon as one is successful, it is the opinion of a man who might have been mistaken but who needs this incidental error for his success. In the worst case, it’s like the hobbyhorse of some great artist; and what does one do with the hobbyhorses of great artists? One loves them; one knows that they’re a little secret. Since Ulrich was laughing freely, Fischel did not want to stop talking. —Listen to what I’m telling you! Pay close attention! I said that if one has no other ambitions nothing to do has nothing / besides feelings and ideas, the quarrel is endless. Ideas and feelings make one petty and neurotic. Unfortunately, that’s what happened with me and Clementine. Today I have no time. I don’t even know for certain whether Clementine wants to come back to me; I only believe that she does; she’s sorry, and sooner or later that will come out of itself, but then most certainly in a simpler and better way than if I were to think out down to the last detail how it has to come about. You could never do business, either, with a plan that is unhealthily pinned down in every detail!

  Fischel was almost out of breath, but he felt free. Ulrich had been listening to him seriously, and did not contradict. —I’m quite relieved that everything has taken a turn for the better, he said politely. —Your wife is an excellent woman, and when it will be advantageous for you to have a great house, she will fulfill that task admirably.

  —Exactly. That too. Soon we’ll be able to celebrate our silver anniversary, and joking aside, if the money is new, the character at least ought to be old. A silver anniversary is worth almost as much as an aristocratic grandmother, which, moreover, she also has.

  Ulrich got up to leave, but Fischel was now in high spirits. —But you shouldn’t think that Leona managed to clip my wings! I left her to Dr. Arnheim with no envy whatsoever. Do you know the dancer … He mentioned an unfamiliar name and pulled a small photo from his wallet. —Well, where should you know her from, she has seldom appeared in public; private dance evenings, distinguished, Beethoven and Debussy, you know, that’s now the coming thing. But what I wanted to tell you: you’re an athlete, can you manage this? He stepped over to a table and accompanied his words with an echo of arm and leg. —For instance, she lies this way on a table. The upper body flat on the top, her face leaning with one ear on her propped-up arms, and smiling deliciously. But at the same time her legs are spread apart, like this, along the narrow edge of the table, so that it looks like a big T. Or she suddenly stands on her forearms and palms—like this—of course I can’t do it. And she has one foot way over her head and almost on the ground, the other against the cabinet up there. I tell you, you couldn’t do a tenth of it, in spite of your gymnastics. That’s the modern woman. She’s lovelier than we, cleverer than we, and I believe that if I tried to box with her I’d soon be clutching my belly. The only thing in which a man is stronger today than a woman is in earning money!

  ***

  Who had been responsible for Hans Sepp’s receiving his black mark? Remarkably enough, it was Count Leinsdorf. Count Leinsdorf had one day asked Ulrich about this young man, and Ulrich had presented him as a harmless muddlehead; but Count Leinsdorf had recently taken to mistrusting Ulrich, and this information confirmed his conviction that in Hans Sepp he had before him one of those
irresponsible elements who are continually preventing anything good from being done in Kakania. Count Leinsdorf had lately become nervous. He had heard through General Director Leo Fischel that a quite distinct group of immature young people that had formed around Hans Sepp had been the real instigator of the demonstration that had caused His Excellency more unpleasantness than might be supposed. For this political procession had created “a quite unfavorable impression upstairs.” There was no question that it was completely harmless, and that if one had seriously wanted to prevent such a thing it could be done by a handful of police at any time; but the impression such events make is always much more terrifying than they actually merit, and no true politician dares neglect impressions. Count Leinsdorf had had serious discussions about this with his friend the Commissioner of Police, which had not produced any results, and when Count Leinsdorf afterward learned the name of Hans Sepp, the Commissioner was quite ready to have this lead followed up in order to appease His Excellency. The Commissioner had been convinced from the start that any findings that might have previously escaped his police would be trifling, and was only confirmed in this opinion by the results of the inquiries he had ordered. But still, the preoccupation of a bureaucracy with an individual always leads to the conclusion that this individual is shady and unreliable, that is to say, as measured by the standards of precision and security according to the rules and regulations one applies in a bureaucracy. For this reason the Commissioner found it expedient, when there was room for doubt, not to reproach a man like Count Leinsdorf for imagining things but rather to allow the case of Hans Sepp to be treated according to the model that at the moment nothing could be proved against the suspect, on which account he only remained under suspicion until the matter could be completely cleared up. This complete clearing up was tacitly set for Saint Never-Plus-One’s Day, when all the files that are still open rise up from the graves of the archives. That in spite of this it brought suffering on Hans Sepp was a totally impersonal matter, which did not involve trickery of any kind. A buried open file must from time to time be raised from its grave in order to note on it that it is still not possible to close it, and to mark it with a date on which the archivist is again to present it to his supervisor. This is a universal law of bureaucracy, and if it should involve a file that was never intended to be closed, on the pretext that its documentation was not complete, one must pay very close attention, for it can happen that bureaucrats are promoted, transferred, and die, and that a neophyte receiving the file causes, in his excessive zeal, a small supplementary investigation to be added to one of the last investigations that took place years ago, which causes the file to be kept alive for a few weeks until the investigation ends as a report to be inserted in, and disappear with, the file. Through some such process Hans Sepp’s file, too, had, without any particular purpose, become current; since Hans Sepp happened to be in the army, his file had to go to the Ministry of Justice, from there to the Ministry of War, and from there to the Commanding Officer, etc., and it is easy to understand how, handed on through the various in and out stamps, presentation stamps, confirmations of action, additions with bureaucratic courtesy, Relinquished, For Report, Not Known in this Office, and such, this file took on a dangerous appearance.