The Glass Bead Game

by Hermann Hesse

  Master Alexander's mouth took on a slightly sour expression as he said: "Well yes, I have never hoped for anything very good from this man's influence upon you, any more than I have from your spoiled protege Tegularius. So it is Designori who brought you to the point of a complete breach with the system?"

  "No, Domine, but he helped me, in part without being aware of it. He brought fresh air into my quietude. Through him I came into contact with the outside world again, and only then was I able to realize and to admit to myself that I was at the end of my career here, that I had lost all real joy in my work, and that it was time to put an end to the ordeal. One more stage had been left behind; I had passed through another area, another space, which this time was Castalia."

  "How you phrase that!" Alexander remarked, shaking his head. "As if Castalian space were not large enough to serve a great many people worthily all their lives! Do you seriously believe that you have traversed this space and gone beyond it?"

  "Oh no," Knecht replied with strong feeling. "I've never believed anything of the sort. When I say that I have reached the border of this space, I mean only that I have done all that I as an official could do here. In this sense I have reached my limits. For some time I have been standing at the frontier where my work as Magister Ludi has become eternal recurrence, an empty exercise and formula. I have been doing it without joy, without enthusiasm, sometimes even without faith. It was time to stop."

  Alexander sighed. "That is your view, but not the view of the Order and its rules. A brother in our Order has moods, and at times he wearies of his work--there is nothing new and remarkable about that. The rules show him the way to regain harmony, to find his center again. Had you forgotten that?"

  "I do not think so, your Reverence. My administration is open to your inspection, and only recently, after you had received my circular letter, you conducted an investigation of the Players' Village and of me personally. You learned that the work was being done, that Secretariat and Archive were in order, that the Magister Ludi showed no signs of illness or vagary. I was able to carry on, and sustain my strength and composure, because of those very rules which you so skillfully taught me. But it cost me great effort. And now, unfortunately, it is costing me almost as much effort to convince you that I am not giving in to moods, whims, or vague yearnings. But whether or not I succeed, I insist at least on your acknowledging that my personality and my work were sound and useful up to the moment you last evaluated them. Is that asking too much of you?"

  Master Alexander's eyes twinkled rather sardonically.

  "My dear colleague," he said, "you address me as if we were two private individuals holding a casual conversation. But that applies only to yourself; you are now in fact a private individual. I am not, and whatever I think and say, I do not speak for myself, but as President of the Order, and he is responsible to his Board for every word. What you are saying here today will remain without consequences. No matter how earnest your intentions, yours is the speech of a private person urging his own interests. But for me, my office and responsibility continue, and what I say or do today may have consequences. I shall plead your cause before the Board. You want the Board to accept your account of the circumstances, or perhaps even acknowledge that you have made a correct decision. Your case then is that until yesterday, though you may have had all sorts of weird ideas in your head, you were an irreproachable Castalian, an exemplary Magister; that you may have experienced temptations, spells of weariness, but that you consistently fought and overcame them. Let us assume that I accept that; but then how am I to understand that the upright Magister who only yesterday obeyed every rule today suddenly defects? You must admit this is more understandable in terms of a Magister whose mind had in fact been impaired, who was suffering from psychic illness, so that he went on considering himself an excellent Castalian long after he had in reality ceased to be one. I also wonder why you make such a point of your having been a dutiful Magister up to the very end. Since you have after all taken the step, broken your vow of obedience, and committed the act of desertion, why be concerned about establishing such a point?"

  Knecht protested. "I beg your pardon, your Reverence, but why should I not be concerned about that? My name and reputation is involved, the memory I shall leave behind here. Also involved is the possibility of my working for Castalia on the outside. I am not here to salvage something for myself, or even to win the Board's approval of my action. I counted on being regarded by my colleagues henceforth as a dubious phenomenon, and am prepared for that. But I don't want to be regarded as a traitor or madman; that is a verdict I cannot accept. I have done something you must disapprove of, but I have done it because I had to, because it was incumbent upon me, because that is my destiny, which I believe in and which I assume with good will. If you cannot concede this much, then I have been defeated and have spoken with you in vain."

  "Again and again it comes down to the same thing," Alexander replied. "You want me to concede that in some circumstances an individual has the right to break the laws in which I believe and which it is my task to represent. But I cannot simultaneously believe in our system and in your personal right to violate it--please, don't interrupt me. I can concede that to all appearances you are convinced of the rightness and meaningfulness of your dreadful step, and that you believe you have been called to take such action. You certainly don't expect me to approve the step itself. On the other hand, you have achieved something, for I have given up my initial thought of winning you back and changing your decision. I accept your withdrawal from the Order and shall pass on to the Board the news of your voluntary resignation of your post. I cannot make any further concessions to you, Joseph Knecht."

  The Magister Ludi made a gesture of submission. Then he said quietly: "Thank you. I have already given you the casket. I now turn over to you, as representative of the Board, my notes on the state of affairs in Waldzell, especially on the body of tutors and my recommendations on the persons I consider possible successors to my office."

  He took a few folded sheets of paper from his pocket and placed them on the table. Then he rose, and the President rose also. Knecht took a step toward him, looked into his eyes for a long moment in sorrowful friendliness, then bowed and said: "I had wanted to ask you to shake hands with me in parting, but I suppose I must forgo this now. You have always been especially dear to me, and today has not changed that in any way. Good-by, dear and revered Master."

  Alexander stood still. He was rather pale. For a moment it seemed as though he meant to extend his hand to the departing Magister. He felt his eyes growing moist. Then he inclined his head, responded to Knecht's bow, and let him go.

  After Knecht had closed the door behind him, the President stood unmoving, listening to the departing footsteps. When the last one had faded away and there was nothing more to be heard, he walked back and forth across the room for a while, until footsteps again sounded outside and there was a soft knock at the door. The young servant entered and reported that a visitor wished to see him.

  "Tell him that I can receive him in an hour and that I request him to be brief; there are urgent matters to attend to. No, wait a moment. Also go to the Secretariat and inform the First Secretary to convoke a meeting of the entire Board for the day after tomorrow. All members must attend; only severe illness will be acceptable as an excuse for absence. Then go to the steward and tell him I must leave for Waldzell early tomorrow morning; have my car ready by seven."

  "I beg your pardon," the young man said, "but the Magister Ludi's car is at your disposal."

  "How is that?"

  "His Reverence came by car yesterday. He has just left word that he is continuing his journey on foot and leaving the car here at your disposal."

  "Very well, I'll take the Waldzell car tomorrow. Repeat, please."

  The servant repeated: "The visitor will be received in an hour; he is to be brief. The First Secretary is to convoke the Board for the day after tomorrow, attendance mandatory, absence excused
only on grounds of severe illness. Departure for Waldzell at seven o'clock tomorrow morning in the Magister Ludi's car."

  Master Alexander took a deep breath once the young man had gone. He went over to the table where he had sat with Knecht. Still echoing in his ears were the footsteps of that incomprehensible man whom he had loved above all others and who had inflicted this great grief upon him. He had loved this man ever since the days he had first helped him; and among other traits it had been Knecht's way of walking that had appealed so strongly to him--a firm, rhythmic step that was also light, almost airy, expressing something between dignity and childlikeness, between priestliness and the dance--a strange, lovable, and elegant walk that accorded with Knecht's face and voice. It accorded equally well with his peculiar way of being a Castalian and Magister, his kind of mastership and serenity, which sometimes reminded Alexander of the aristocratically measured manner of his predecessor, Master Thomas, sometimes of the simple, heartwarming former Music Master. So he had already left, in his haste, and on foot, who could say where, and probably he, Alexander, would never see him again, never again hear his laugh and watch the fine, long and slender fingers of his hand drawing the hieroglyphs of a Glass Bead Game phrase. Alexander reached for the sheets of paper that had been left lying on the table and began reading them. They amounted to a brief testament, extremely terse and matter-of-fact, frequently consisting only of cue words rather than sentences; their purpose was to facilitate the Board's work in the forthcoming investigation of the Vicus Lusorum and the appointment of a new Magister. The laconic, sensible remarks stood there in neat, small letters, the words and handwriting just as uniquely and unmistakably typical of Joseph Knecht as his face, his voice, his gait. The Board would scarcely find a man of his stature for his successor; real masters and real personalities were all too rare, and each one was a matter of good luck and a pure gift, even here in Castalia, the province of the elite.

  *

  Joseph Knecht enjoyed walking; it was years since he had last traveled on foot. In fact, when he reviewed the matter it seemed to him that his last real walking tour had been the one that had long ago taken him from Mariafels monastery back to Castalia and to that annual game in Waldzell which had been so overshadowed by the death of Magister Thomas von der Trave and had resulted in his own appointment to succeed the Magister Ludi. Ordinarily, when he thought back upon those days, let alone upon his student years and the Bamboo Grove, it had always been as if he were gazing from a cool, dull room out into broad, brightly sunlit landscapes, into the irrevocable past, the paradise of memory. Such recollections had always been, even when they were free of sadness, a vision of things remote and different, separated from the prosaic present by a mysterious festiveness. But now, on this bright and cheerful September afternoon, with the strong greens and browns all around him and the ethereal, gently misted tones of blue verging into violet in the distance, as he trudged along at an easy pace, with frequent pauses to look about him, that walking tour of so long ago did not seem a distant paradise cut off from a resigned present. Rather his present journey was the same as that of the past, the present Joseph Knecht was close as a brother to the Knecht of those days. Everything was new again, mysterious, promising; all that had been could recur, and many new things as well. It was long, long since he had looked out upon the day and the world and seen them as so unburdened, so beautiful and innocent. The happiness of freedom, of commanding his own destiny, flooded through him like a strong drink. How long it was since he had last had this feeling, last entertained this lovely and rapturous illusion. He pondered that, and recalled the time this precious feeling had first been bruised, then given a fatal blow. It had happened during a conversation with Magister Thomas, under the latter's friendly and ironic glance. He now recalled the strange sensation of that hour in which he had lost his freedom. It had not really been a pang, a burning anguish, but rather an onset of timidity, a faint shiver at the nape of his neck, an organic warning somewhere above his diaphragm, a change in the temperature and especially in the tempo of his consciousness of life. That anxious, constricting sensation, the hidden threat of suffocation of that fateful hour, was being recompensed now, or healed.

  The day before, during his drive to Hirsland, Knecht had decided that whatever might happen there, he would not repine. Now he forbade himself to think over the details of his conversations with Alexander, of his struggle with him and his struggle to win him. He left himself entirely open to the feeling of relaxation and freedom that filled him like the approach of evening leisure for a peasant whose day's work lies behind him. He was conscious of being safe and under no obligations. For a moment he was utterly dispensable, exempt from all responsibilities, not required to perform any tasks, to do any thinking. The bright, varicolored day surrounded him with a gentle radiance, wholly visual, wholly present, imposing no demands, having neither yesterday nor tomorrow. Now and then as he walked he contentedly hummed one of the marching songs he and his schoolmates used to sing in three or four parts on outings, when he was an elite pupil at Eschholz, and out of that serene early morning of his life small bright memories and sounds came fluttering to him like the chirping of birds.

  Under a cherry tree with leaves already showing glints of purple he stopped to rest and sat down in the grass. He reached into the pocket of his coat and took out a thing that Master Alexander would never have guessed he would be carrying, a small wooden flute, which he contemplated for a moment with tenderness. He had not owned this naive, childish-looking instrument for long, perhaps half a year, and he recalled with pleasure the day he had acquired it. He had ridden to Monteport to discuss some problems of musical theory with Carlo Ferromonte. Their conversation had turned to the woodwinds of certain ages, and he had asked his friend to show him the Monteport instrument collection. After an enjoyable stroll through several halls filled with old organ manuals, harps, lutes, and pianos, they had come to a building where instruments for the schools were stored. There Knecht had seen a whole drawer full of such little flutes; he had examined and tried one, and asked his friend whether he might have one. Laughing, Carlo had invited him to choose; still laughing, he had presented him with a receipt to sign; but then he had seriously explained the structure of the instrument, its fingering, and the technique of playing it. Knecht had taken the pretty little toy with him, and practiced on it occasionally--for he had not played a wind instrument since the recorder of his boyhood in Eschholz, and had often resolved to learn one again. In addition to scales, he had used a book of old melodies which Ferromonte had edited for beginners, and every so often the soft, sweet notes of the flute had sounded from the Magister's garden or from his bedroom. He was far from a master of the instrument, but had learned to play a number of chorales and songs; he knew the music by heart, and also the words of a good many of them. One of these songs now sprang into his mind; it seemed highly suitable to the moment. He sang a few lines under his breath:

  My body and head

  Lay asleep like the dead,

  But now I stand strong,

  Gay as the day is long

  And turn my face to heaven.

  He brought the instrument to his lips and blew the melody, looking out into the radiant plain that arched toward the distant mountains, listening to the serenely devout song ringing out in the sweet notes of the flute, and feeling at one and content with the sky, the mountains, the song, and the day. With pleasure, he felt the smooth wand between his fingers and reflected that aside from the clothes on his body this toy flute was the only piece of property he had allowed himself to take from Waldzell. In the course of years he had accumulated a good many things that could be more or less regarded as personal property, above all writings, notebooks, and so on. He had left all these things behind; the Players' Village might use them as it wished. But he had taken the flute, and he was glad to have it with him; it was a modest and lovable traveling companion.

  On the second day he arrived in the capital on foot and called at the
Designori home. Plinio sped down the steps to meet him and embraced him with emotion.

  "We have been longing for you, and anxiously waiting for you!" he exclaimed. "You have taken a great step, friend--may it bring good things to all of us. But to think that they let you go! I never would have believed it."

  Knecht laughed. "You see, I am here. But I'll tell you about it by and by. But now I'd like to greet my pupil, and of course your wife, and discuss everything with you--how we are going to arrange my new position. I am eager to start on it."

  Plinio called a maid and told her to bring his son at once.

  "The young gentleman?" she asked, seemingly astonished, but hurried off while Plinio showed his friend to the guest room. He began eagerly describing what preparations he had made for Knecht's arrival, and how he imagined the tutoring of young Tito would work out. Everything had been arranged as Knecht wished it, he said; Tito's mother, after some initial reluctance, had also grasped the reasons for these wishes and assented to them. The family owned a vacation cottage in the mountains, called Belpunt, pleasantly situated on a lake. There Knecht would live with his pupil for the time being. An elderly servant would keep house for them; she had already left several days ago to put the place in order. Of course they could stay there only for a short time, at most till the onset of winter; but such isolation would certainly be beneficial, especially for the initial period. Fortunately, Tito loved the mountains and Belpunt, so the boy made no difficulties about going there. He was even looking forward to the project. At this point Designori remembered that he had an album of photos of the house and its environs. He drew Knecht along into his study, searched eagerly for the album, and when he had found it began showing his guest the house and describing the big farm kitchen-living room, the tile stove, the arbors, the lake shore, the waterfall.