The Man Without Qualities, Volume 2

by Robert Musil

  Meanwhile, in desperation, Gerda had run to Ulrich and reported that Hans had to be rescued, because he was not up to the conditions he had fallen into and was already clearly showing alarming signs of cracking up completely. She had still not returned to her parents’ house, kept her whereabouts hidden, and was quite proud at having found some piano lessons to give and being able to add a few pennies to the money her friends lent her. At that time Leo Fischel was making the most strenuous efforts to win her back, and so Ulrich intervened as mediator. After long back-and-forth and paternal admonitions, Gerda let herself be talked into considering favorably a promise to move back to her parents’ if Papa would declare himself ready and bring about, and Ulrich would support, freeing Hans from his doom. Ulrich spoke with General Director Fischel about it, and General Director Fischel had by then done many a worse thing than was now being asked of him in order to get his daughter back. He turned to Count Leinsdorf. General Director Leo Fischel was actively involved in business relations with Count Leinsdorf; after some commiseration and reflection, His Excellency recommended him to Diotima, who at the moment was on intimate footing with the Ministry of War and, for this reason too more suitable than he was, because this whole affair, especially because of the slightly irregular solution required, was more the province of woman, of the heart, and of feminine tact. In this way Leo Fischel came to Diotima.

  Count Leinsdorf had already prepared her for the visit, and she made a powerful impression on Fischel. He had thought that the time whenanything intellectual could compel his admiration lay behind him. But it appeared that beautiful women were especially qualified to soften his newly acquired hardness. He had had his first relapse with Leona. Leona had a face of the sort that General Director Fischel’s parents would have admired, and this face again came to his mind when he saw Diotima, although there was really no similarity. At that time, the most miserable drawing teacher or photographer would not have been at peace with himself if he had not felt in his hair or his necktie some breath of genius. For this reason Leona, too, was not simply beautiful for Leo but a genius of beauty; that was the special charm through which she had led him astray into risky undertakings. —A pity she had such a mean character, Fischel thought. —Her long fat legs were a long sight lovelier than the desiccated legs of these modern dancers. He did not know whether it was the desiccated legs or the unpleasant character that made him think of his wife, Clementine, but at any rate he remembered with emotion the happy years of his marriage, for then Clementine and he had still believed in the value of genius, and if one considers this in a well-disposed way, it was not so misplaced; the line of Leo Fischel’s life, looked at in this light, showed no break, for in the last analysis the belief that there were privileged geniuses was a possible way of justifying ruthless and risky deals. Diotima possessed the quality of awakening such ideas that roam through the far reaches of the soul when one sat opposite her for the first time, and General Director Fischel meanwhile needed only to brush his hands through his sideburns once and set his pince-nez to rights before he began to speak with a sigh. Diotima confirmed this sigh with a motherly smile, and before Fischel even got to what he wanted to say, this woman with a wholly justified reputation for her gift of empathy said: —I have been told the purpose of your visit. It is sad; humanity today suffers grievously from its failure to produce more geniuses, while on the other hand it denies and persecutes every young talent that might perhaps develop into one.

  Fischel ventured the question: —You have heard what’s happening to my protégé? He’s a troublemaker. Well, and what of it? All great people were troublemakers in their youth. I do not, by the way, in the least condone it. But he was also, if you will permit me the observation, a forceps birth; his head was somewhat compressed; he is extremely irritable, and I thought that that might perhaps be a way… ?

  Diotima raised her eyebrows sadly. —I spoke about it with one of the leading gentlemen of the War Ministry; unfortunately, I must tell you, General Director, that your request is meeting with almost insurmountable difficulties.

  Sadly and indignandy Fischel raised his hands. —But one cannot force an intellectual person when it goes against the intellect! The fellow has some ideas about refusing service in wartime, and the gentlemen will end up shooting him on me!

  —Yes, Diotima replied. —You are so right! One should not force an intellectual when it goes against the intellect. You are voicing my own opinion. But how is one to make a general understand that?

  A pause ensued. Fischel almost thought he should leave, but when he scraped his feet Diotima laid a hand on his arm with mute permission to remain. She seemed to be thinking. Fischel racked his brains to see if he could help her find a good idea. He would have gladly offered her money for the leading gentleman of the War Ministry she had mentioned; but such an idea was at that time absurd. Fischel felt helpless. —A Midas! occurred to him; why, he did not exactly know, and he sought to recollect this ancient legend, without quite being able to. The lenses of his spectacles almost misted over with emotion.

  At this moment Diotima brightened. —I believe, General Director, that I perhaps might indeed be able to help you a little. I would in any case be delighted if I could. I can’t get over die idea that an intellectual can’t be forced against the intellect! Of course, it would be better not to talk too much to the gentlemen of the War Ministry about the nature of this intellect.

  Leo Fischel obligingly concurred with this circumspection.

  —But this case has also, so to speak, a maternal side—Diotima went on—a feminine, unlogical aspect; I mean, given so-and-so many thousands of soldiers, just one can’t be so important. I’ll try to make clear to a high officer who is a friend of mine that out of political considerations His Excellency considers it important to have this young man mustered out; the right people should always be put in the right places, and your future son-in-law is not of the slightest use in a barracks, whereas he … well, somehow that’s the way I see it. Unfortunately, the military is uncommonly resistant to exceptions. But what I hope is that we can at least get the young man a fairly long leave, and then we can think what to do about the rest.

  Charmed, Leo Fischel bent over Diotima’s hand. This woman had won his complete confidence.

  The visit was not without its effect on his way of thinking either. For understandable reasons, he had lately become quite materialistic. His experiences of life had led him to the viewpoint that a right-thinking man had to watch out for himself. Be independent; need nothing from others for which you did not have something they wanted in return: but that is also a Protestant feeling, much as it was for the first colonists in America. Leo Fischel still loved to philosophize, even though his time for it had become much more limited. His affairs now sometimes brought him into contact with the high clergy. He discovered that it is the mistake of all religions to teach virtue as something which is only negative, as abstinence and selflessness; this makes it anachronistic and gives the deals one has to make an aura of something like secret vice. On die other hand, the public religion of efficiency, as he met it in Germany through his business, had seized hold of him. People are glad to help a capable and enterprising person; in other words, he can get credit anywhere: this was a positive formula that allowed one to get somewhere. It taught one to be ready to help without reckoning on gratitude, just as Christian teaching demands, although it did not include the uncertainty of having to rely on noble feeling in someone else, but made use of egotism as the single dependable human quality, which it without doubt is. And money is a tool of genius that makes it possible to calculate and regulate this basic quality. Money is ordered selfishness brought into relation with efficiency. An enormous organization of selfishness according to the hierarchical order of how it is earned. It is a creative umbrella organization built on baseness—emperors and kings have not tamed the passions the way money has. Fischel often wondered what human demiurge might have invented money. If everything were to be accessible to
money, and every matter to have its price, which unfortunately is still far from being the case, then any other morality besides the existence of trade would be of no use at all. This was his opinion and his conviction. Even during the time when he had revered the great ideas of humanity, he had always felt a certain aversion to them in the mouth of anybody else. If someone simply says “virtue” or “beauty,” there is something as unnatural and affected about it as when an Austrian speaks in the past tense. Now even that had increased. His life was consumed by work, striving for power, efficiency, and the dependence on the greatness of affairs, which he had to observe and exploit. The intellectual and spiritual spheres came to seem to him more and more like clouds having no connection with the earth. But he was no happier. He felt himself somehow weakened. Every amusement seemed to him more superficial than before. He increased his stimuli, with the result that he succeeded only in making himself more distracted. He made fun of his daughter, but secretly he envied her her ideas.

  And as Diotima had spoken so naturally and freely of maternal feeling, soul, mind, and goodness, he was constantly thinking: —What a mother this would be for Gerda! (? wife for you) He wept inside to hear the beauty of her speech, and he had great satisfaction in noticing how these great words gave birth to a tiny element of corruption—however elegantly—for she was ultimately fulfilling his request, whatever reasons might have been behind it. In certain cases, when there is a question of some injustice, idealism is almost better than naked calculation; this was the teaching that Fischel drew directly from the impressions of his visit, and that he intended to think about urgently on his further course.

  ***

  Hans Sepp had left the barracks and not shown up for duty, although he had been transferred from the hospital back to his company. He knew that his return would entail the most unbearable consequences; being punished like an animal and, still worse—for punishment is solitary—beforehand the dull, set face of the captain and the necessity of having to be interrogated by him. Hans knew that he had made up his mind not to go back. For the first time the holy fire of defiance again flared up in him, and the unbending sense of purity that avoids contamination with the impure flashed through him. This made even more of a torture the memory that he had lost the right to it. He considered his illness incurable and was convinced that he had been sullied for the rest of his life. He had resolved to kill himself; he had left the barracks to completely cut off a return to life; the thought that in a few hours he would have killed himself was the only thing that could to some degree substitute for his self-respect, even if it could not restore it.

  In order not to be immediately recognized if they should be looking for him, he had put on civilian clothes. He walked through the city on foot, for he felt incapable of taking a cab; he had a long route before him, as it had seemed to him for some reason a matter of course that he would kill himself only in the open countryside. He actually could have done it on the way, in the middle of the city; presumably, certain ceremonies merely serve to postpone the business a bit, and among these Hans included a last glimpse of nature; but he was not at all one of those people who think about such questions in a situation such as the one he was now in. The famous dark veil that arises when the moisture content of the emotions becomes extreme without precipitating tears lay before his eyes, and the noises of the world echoed softly. Passing cars, the throng of people, housefronts stretching for blocks, all looked like a bas-relief. The tears that Hans Sepp did not want to shed outwardly in public or for other reasons nonetheless fell through him inwardly as if down an incredibly deep, dark shaft onto his own grave, in which he already felt himself lying, which signifies about the same thing as that he was simultaneously sitting beside it and grieving for himself. There is in all this a force that is very cheering, and by the time Hans got to the city line, where the train tracks ran upon which he wanted to throw himself as soon as a train came along, his grief had become attached to and affiliated with so many things that it really felt quite good. The stretch he was on was apparently not well traveled, and Hans had to tell himself that upon arriving he would have immediately thrown himself in front of a train had one happened to be passing by at that instant, but that not knowing the schedule, he could not simply lie down on the tracks and wait. He sat down among the sparse vegetation on the slope at the top of a cut where the railway made a curve, and he could see in both directions. A train passed, but he gave himself time. He observed the incredible increase in speed that takes place when the train shoots, as it were, through one’s vicinity, and listened to the din of the wheels in order to be able to picture how he was going to be pounded in it by the next train. This clanging and bawling seemed, in contrast to what he saw, to last for an extraordinary length of time, and Hans turned cold.

  The question of what had made him want to end his life by means of a railway train was not at all clear. Hanging had something distorted and spooky. Jumping out a window is a woman’s way. He had no poison. To cut his veins he needed a bathtub. On this path of eliminating other possibilities, he pursued methodically the same course he had taken in blind determination with a single step: it satisfied him; his instincts had not yet been affected. To be sure, he had left out death by shooting; he thought of it now for the first time. But Hans did not own a pistol, nor did he know what to do with one, and he did not want to share his last moment with his army rifle. He had to be free of small misfortunes when he exited this life. This reminded him that he had to prepare himself inwardly. He had sinned and contaminated himself: he had to hold on to that. Someone else in his situation might perhaps have hoped for the prospect of recovery; but while recovery might be possible, salvation was irrevocably lost. Involuntarily, Hans pulled out of his coat his little notebook and a pencil; but before he could jot down his idea, he remembered that this was now quite pointless. He idly held notebook and pencil in his hands. His whole mind was directed at the phrase that he had become impure and godless. There was a lot to be said about that. For instance, that Christianity, influenced by Judaism, permitted sin to be redeemed through remorse and penitence, while the pure, Teutonic idea of being healthy and whole permitted of no bargaining or trading. Wholeness is lost once and for all, like virginity; and of course that is precisely where the greatness and challenge of the idea lies. Where today does one find such greatness? Nowhere. Hans was convinced that the world would suffer a great loss from his having to eliminate himself. The size and force of a train was really almost the only possible way of expressing the size and force of such a case. Another one went past. This technological marvel was small and tiny if one compared it to the astronomical construction techniques of the Egyptians and Assyrians, but at all events a train almost succeeded in enabling the present to express itself gothically, yearning outward beyond the limitations of matter. Hans raised his hand and almost irresolutely waved at people, who waved back and shoved their heads out the window in bunches, like the people-grapes on ancient naive sculptures. This made him feel better, but feeling good, grief, and everything he could think of was simply like smoke, and when it had drifted away the sentence that Hans Sepp had become impure and was not to be saved lay there again, undisturbed; nothing lasting was connected with it, the idea no longer wished to grow. If Hans had been sitting at home before a table with pen and paper, it perhaps might have turned out otherwise; it was just this that gave him the feeling that he was here for no other purpose than to put an end to his existence.

  He snapped the pencil in two and tore the notebook into little pieces. That was a major step. Then he climbed down the slope, sat in the grass at the edge of the gravel ballast, and threw the shreds of his intellectual world in front of the next train. The train scattered them. Nothing was to be found of the pencil; the bright paper butterflies, broken on the wheels and sucked up, covered the right-of-way on both sides for five hundred paces. Hans calculated that he was approximately twelve times larger than the notebook. Then he seized his head in both hands and began his f
inal farewell. This pulling everything together was to be devoted to Gerda. He wanted to forgive her and, without leaving her a written word, to die with the all-embracing thought of her on his lips. But even though all kinds of thoughts appeared and disappeared in his mind, his body remained quite empty. It seemed down here in the narrow cut that he could not feel anything and needed to go and sit up above again in order to embrace Gerda once more in his mind. But it seemed silly, it annoyed him to have to crawl up the slope. Gradually the emptiness in his body increased and became hunger. —That’s my mind beginning to disintegrate, he told himself. Since his illness, he had lived in constant fear of going insane. He had let train after train go by and had sat down here in the narrow, stupid world of the railway cut without thinking of anything at all. It might already be late afternoon. Then Hans Sepp became aware, as if someone suddenly turned something around in him, that this was his final state, to be succeeded only by its execution. He had the nauseating feeling of an imaginary skin eruption over his whole body. He pulled out his pocket knife and cleaned his nails with it; this was an ill-bred habit he had, which he considered very tidy and elegant; it made him want to cry. Hesitantly he stood up. Everything inside him had receded from him. He was afraid, but he was no longer master of himself; the sole master was the irrevocable resolve that ruled alone in a dark vacuum. Hans looked left and right. One might say that he had already died as he looked in both directions for a train, for this looking was all that was alive in him, this and isolated feelings that drifted past like clumps of grass in a flood. For he no longer knew what to do with himself. He still noticed that his head commanded his legs to leap before the train approached; but his legs were no longer paying attention, they sprang when they wanted to, at the last minute, and Hans’s body was struck in the air. He still felt himself plunging down, falling on great sharp knives. Then his world burst into fragments.