No More Learning

Diotima seemed to have changed her library books. He remembered seeing her, as he came in, surrounded by piles of books, but it had grown too dark to make out the titles; besides, some were covered by the medi- tative young woman's body as by a great serpent that had now reared up higher and was eagerly watching his face. Since girlhood Diotima had been inclined to nourish herself on very sentimental and subjec- tive books, but now, as Ulrich gathered from what she said, she had been seized by that spiritual urge for renewal which is constantly at work, striving to find what it has failed to find in the ideas of the last twenty years in the ideas of the next twenty years. This may tum out to be the root of those great changes of mood in history, which see- saw between humanitarianism and ruthlessness, rage and indiffer- ence, or other such contradictions for which there seems to be no adequate explanation. It passed through Ulrich's mind that the little residue of uncertainty left over from every moral experience, about which he had talked so much with Agathe, must really be the cause of this human instability; but because he shied away from the plea- sure with which he remembered those conversations, he forced his thoughts to tum aside and focus instead on the General, who had
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been the first to tell him that the age was receiving a new spirit, and had done so in a tone of healthy irritation that left no room for be- guiling oneself with bewitching doubts. And because he was now thinking of the General, the latter's request that Ulrich might look into the ruffled relationship between his cousin and Arnheim came to mind, so that he ended by responding bluntly to Diotima's speech of farewell to the soul:
" 'Boundless love' doesn't seem to have quite agreed with you! "
"Oh, you're incorrigible! " His cousin sighed, letting herself fall back into her pillows, where she closed her eyes; unaccustomed to such straightforward language in Ulrich's absence, she needed time to recollect just how much she had confided in him. But suddenly his nearness brought it back. She dimly remembered a talk with Ulrich about "love beyond measure," which had been continued at their last or penultimate meeting: a conversation in which she had sworn that souls could step outside the prison ofthe body, or at least lean out of it halfway, as it were, and Ulrich had retorted that these were the delirious ravings of starved love, and that she should concede her "concession" to Arnheim, or himself, or anyone at all; he had even named Tuzzi in that connection, as she now recalled-suggestions of this kind were probably easier to remember than the rest of the things a man like Ulrich talks about. At the time, she had probably been justified in feeling this as impudent, but since past pain is a harmless old friend compared with present pain, it now enjoyed the advantage of being a memory of frankness between friends. So Di- otima opened her eyes again and said: "There's probably no perfect love on this earth! "
She said it with a smile, but beneath her compress her brow was sadly furrowed, which gave her face a curiously twisted expression in the dim light. In whatever concerned her personally Diotima was not averse to believing in supernatural possibilities. Even General Stumm's unexpected appearance at the Council meeting had startled her as though it were the doing of spirits, and as a child she had prayed that she might never die. This made it easier for her to be- lieve in a supernatural way in her relationship with Arnheim, or more accurately, to believe with that not quite complete disbelief, that something-that-cannot-be-ruled-out, which today has become the basic attitude in matters of faith. Had Arnheim been capable of
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doing more than drawing something invisible from her soul and his own, something that touched in midair when they were five yards apart, or had their eyes been able to meet in such a way that some- thing tangible would come ofit-a coffee bean, a barleycorn, an ink stain-some trace of some kind of real use or even just a suggestion of progress, then the next thing Diotima would have expected was that someday this connection would go higher still, turning into one of those otherworldly connections that it is just as hard to form an exact idea of as it is of most worldly ones. She could even put up with Arnheim's lately being away more often and for longer periods than before, and his being immersed to a surprising degree in his business affairs even on days when he was present. She permitted herself no doubt that his love for her was still the great event in his life, and whenever they came together again alone, the level of their souls in- stantly rose so high, and their sense of contact was so powerful, that their feelings were struck dumb, and if they could not find anything impersonal to talk about, a vacuum developed that left a bitter ex- haustion in its wake. However little the possibility could be excluded that this was passion, she could just as little bring herself-accus- tomed as she was by the times she lived in to regard everything not practical as merely a matter of belief, or rather of unsettled un- belief-to exclude the possibility that something more would come of it, which would be contrary to all reasonable expectations. But at this moment, when she had opened her eyes to look straight at Ul- rich, ofwhom she could make out only a dark outline, and who stood there in silence, she asked herself: 'What am I waiting for? What am I really expecting to happen? "
At length Ulrich said: "But Arnheim wanted to marry you! "
Diotima again propped herself up on her arm, and she said: "Can one solve the problem of love by getting divorced or married? "
"So I was mistaken about the pregnancy," Ulrich noted mentally, unable to think ofanything to say in response to his cousin's outburst. Then he said abruptly: "I warned you about Arnheim! " Perhaps he now felt obligated to tell her what he knew about the tycoon's mixing up both their souls in his business deals; but he instantly dropped the idea, for he felt that in this conversation every word had its allotted place, like the objects in his study that he had found carefully dusted on his return, as though he had been dead for the space of a minute.
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Diotima chided him: "You shouldn't take it so lightly. There's a deep friendship between Arnheim and me; and if at times there's also something else between us, something I might call a great anxi- ety, it only comes from our frankness. I don't know whether you've ever experienced this, or whether you can: between two people who reach a certain level of emotional rapport any lie becomes so impos- sible that they can hardly speak to each other at all anymore! "
In this reproof Ulrich's finely tuned ear heard that his cousin's soul was more accessible to him than usual, and because he was highly amused by her unintended confession that she could not talk with Arnheim without lying, he demonstrated his own openness for a while by not saying anything either. Then, when she had lain back again, he bent over her arm and kissed its hand in a gentle gesture of friendship. Light as the marrow of elder twigs it rested in his own, and remained lying there even after the kiss. Her pulse throbbed on his fingertips. The powder-fine scent of her nearness clung to his face like a puff of cloud. And although this gallant kiss on the hand had been only in jest, it was like infidelity in leaving behind a certain bitter aftertaste of desire, of having leaned so closely over a person that one drank from her like an animal, and no longer saw one's own image rising back up out of the water.
"What are you thinking? " Diotima asked. Ulrich merely shook his head and so gave her a fresh opportunity-in the darkness that was brightened only by a last velvety glimmering-to make comparative studies of silence. She was reminded of a wonderful saying: "There are people with whom not even the greatest hero would trust himself to remain silent. " Or it was something like that. She seemed to re- member that it was a quotation; Arnheim had used it, and she had applied it to herself. Other than Arnheim's, she had since the first weeks of her marriage never held a man's hand in hers for longer than two seconds; but it was happening now with Ulrich's hand. Wrapped up in herself as she was, she overlooked what the next step might be, but found herself a moment later pleasantly convinced that she had been quite right not to wait idly for the hour of supreme love-perhaps yet to come, perhaps not-but to use the time oftem- porizing indecision to devote herself somewhat more to her hus- band. Married people have it easy; where others would be breaking faith with a lover, they can say that they are remembering their duty.
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And because Diotima told herself that, come what might, she must do her duty for now at the post where fate had placed her, she had undertaken to improve her husband's shortcomings and infuse him with a little more soul. Again a poet's words came to mind, roughly to the effect that there was no deeper despair than to be entwined in a common fate with a person one did not love; and that also proved that she must make an effort to feel something for Tuzzi as long as their fate had not separated them. In sensible contrast to the incalcu- lable events of the soul, from which she had made him suffer long enough, she set about it systematically; she felt pride in the books on which she was lying, for they concerned themselves with the physiol- ogy and psychology of marriage, and somehow everything harmo- nized: that it was dark, that she had these books by her, that Ulrich was holding her hand, that she had conveyed to him the magnificent pessimism that she might soon be expressing in her public role by renouncing her ideals. So thinking, Diotima pressed Ulrich's hand from time to time as if her suitcases were standing packed for her to take leave of everything that had been. She moaned softly, and the faintest wave of pain ran through her body by way of excuse; but Ul- rich reassured her with the pressure of his fingertips. After this had happened several times, Diotima thought it really might be too much, yet she no longer dared to withdraw her hand, because it lay so light and dry in his, even trembling at times, as she herself recog- nized, like an inadmissible indication of the physiology of love, which she had not the slightest intention of betraying by some awkward movement of flight.
It was "Rachelle," busying herselfin the adjoining room-she had been acting in an oddly impertinent fashion lately-who put an end to this scene by suddenly turning on the light on the other side of the open door. Diotima hastily pulled her hand away from Ulrich's, in which a space that had been filled with weightlessness remained lying for a moment longer.
"Rachelle," Diotima called in a hushed voice, "tum the light on in here too! "
When this was done their illumined heads had the look of some- thing just emerged from the depths, as though the darkness had not quite dried off them. Shadows lay around Diotima's mouth, giving it moistness and fullness; the little mother-of-pearl bulges on her neck
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and under her cheeks, which ordinarily seemed to have been created for the delectation of lovers, were hard as a linocut and shaded with slashes of ink. Ulrich's head, too, loomed up in the unaccustomed light, painted in black and white like that of a savage on the warpath. Blinking, he tried to make out the titles on the books surrounding Diotima, and saw with amazement what his cousin's choice of read- ing matter revealed about her desire to learn the hygiene of body and soul. "Someday he's going to hurt me! " she suddenly thought, follow- ing his glance and troubled by it, but it did not enter her conscious- ness in the form of that sentence: she merely felt much too defenseless as she lay there in the light under his gaze and struggled to recover her poise. With a gesture meant to be thoroughly supe- rior, as befitted a woman "independent" of everything, she waved her hand over her reading and said in the most matter-of-fact tone: "Would you believe that adultery sometimes strikes me as far too simple a solution for marital conflict? "
"At all events it's the most sparing," Ulrich replied, irritating her with his mocking tone. ''I'd say it can do no harm at all. "
Diotima gave him a reproachful look and made a sign to warn him that Rachel could hear what they were saying from the next room. Then she said aloud: "That's certainly not what I meant! " and called her maid, who appeared sullenly and accepted with bitter jealousy her being sent out.
This interlude had, however, given their feelings time to put them- selves to rights. The illusion, favored by the darkness, that they were committing a tiny infidelity together, though rather indefinabiy and toward no one in particular, evaporated in the light, and Ulrich now turned to the business that had to be attended to before he could leave.
"I haven't yet told you that I'm resigning as Secretary," he began.
Diotima, however, had heard of it, and told him that he would have to stay on; there was no way out ofit. "There's such an immense amount of work still to be done," she pleaded. "Be patient a while longer; we're bound to find a solution soon! A real secretary will be found to place at your disposal. "
This impersonal "will be found" aroused Ulrich's curiosity, and he asked for details.
"Amheim has offered to lend you his own secretary. "
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"No, thanks," Ulrich replied. "I have the feeling that might not be quite disinterested. " Again he was more than strongly tempted to let Diotima in on the simple connection with the oil fields, but she had not even noticed the ambiguity of his answer, and simply continued:
"Apart from that, my husband has also offered to let you have one of the clerks in his office. "
'W ouldn't you mind? "
"To be frank, I wouldn't be entirely happy about that," Diotima said more energetically. "Especially as there's no dearth of possibili- ties. Even your friend the General has given me to understand that he'd be delighted to send you an aide from his department. "
"And Leinsdorf? ''
"These three offers were made to me spontaneously, so I had no reason to ask Leinsdorf; but I'm sure he wouldn't shrink from mak- ing a sacrifice. "
"Everyone's spoiling me," Ulrich commented, summing up with these words the amazing readiness of Arnheim, Tuzzi, and Stumm to plant a man of their own inside the Parallel Campaign at such low cost. "But perhaps it would be most advisable for me to take on your husband's clerk. "
"My dear friend-" Diotima said, still protesting, but she did not really know how to go on, which was probably why something quite tangled came out. Again she propped herself up on an elbow and said with feeling: "I reject adultery as too crude a solution of marital con- flicts-l've told you that! But even so, there's nothing so hard as being linked for life in a single destiny with a person one doesn't love enough! "
This was a most unnatural cry of nature. But Ulrich, unmoved, would not be shaken from his resolve. "No doubt Section Chief Tuzzi would like this way of having a hand in your operation; but so would the others," he pointed out. "All three are in love with you, and each of them has to reconcile this somehow with his duty. " How odd, he thought, that Diotima did not understand either the lan- guage of facts or that of the comments he made on them, and rising to take his leave, he added with even heavier irony: "The only one who loves you unselfishly is myself-because I have no duties of any kind and no commitments. But feelings without distraction are de- structive; you've meanwhile found that out for yourself, and you have
8go · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
always regarded me with a justifiable, even if only instinctive, mis- trust. "
Although Diotima did not know why, this was precisely and en- dearingly the reason that she was pleased to see Ulrich siding with her own house in this matter of the secretary, and she did not let go of the hand he offered her.
"And how does this fit in with your affair with 'that' woman? " she asked, playfully taking her cue from his remark-insofar as Diotima could be playful; the effect was rather that of a shot-putter playing with a feather.
Ulrich did not know whom she could mean.
"That judge's wife you introduced to me! "
"You noticed that, cousin? "
"Dr. Arnheim drew my attention to it. "
"Oh, did he? How flattering that he should think he can hurt my
standing with you in this fashion. But of course my relations with the lady are entirely innocent! " Ulrich stated, defending Bonadea's honor in the conventional fashion.
"She was in your house twice during your absence," Diotima said with a laugh. "The first time, we happened to be passing by, and we heard about the second time some other way. So there's no point in trying to be discreet. But on the other hand, I wish I could under- stand you! I simply can't! "
"How on earth could I explain this to you, of all people! "
"Try! " Diotima commanded. She had put on her expression of "of- ficial immorality," a sort of bespectacled look she donned whenever her mind commanded her to speak or hear things that were out of bounds for her soul as a lady. But Ulrich declined and repeated that his understanding of Bonadea could only be guesswork.
"All right," Diotima gave in, "even though your lady friend herself was not sparing with her hints! She seems to feel called upon to jus- tify some wrong or other in my eyes. But do speak of this, if you'd rather, as ifyou were merely guessing! "
Now Ulrich felt a thirst for knowledge, and he learned that Bona- dea had been to see Diotima several times, and not only in matters connected with the Parallel Campaign and her husband's position.
"I must admit I find her a beautiful woman," Diotima conceded, "and she is extraordinarily high-minded. I'm really upset that you're
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always eliciting confidences from me but always withholding yours! " At this moment Ulrich's attitude was approximately "the devil take both of you! " He felt like giving Diotima a scare and paying Bonadea back for her intrusiveness, or else he was suddenly feeling the full distance between himself and the life in which he had been
indulging.
"All right," he told her, summoning up a gloomy expression: "The
woman is a nymphomaniac and I find that irresistible! "
Diotima lmew "academically" what nymphomania was. There was a pause, and then she drawled: "The poor woman! And you find that
attractive? "
"Isn't it idiotic? " Ulrich said.
Diotima wanted to lmow "the details"-would he explain this "la-
mentable phenomenon" and enable her to understand it in "human terms"? He did so without exactly going into detail, but she was nev- ertheless overcome by a feeling of satisfaction that doubtless rested on that well-lmown gratitude to God that she was not like the other woman; but at its apex this feeling faded into dismay and curiosity, which was not to be without influence on her subsequent relations with Ulrich. Pensively she said: "But it must be simply awful to em- brace a person who doesn't mean anything to you! "
"You think so? " her cousin asked candidly. At this insinuation Diotima felt hurt and indignant to the marrow, but she could not let herself show it; she contented herself with letting go of his hand and sinking back into her pillows with a dismissive gesture. "You never should have told me this! " she said from where she lay. "You treated that poor woman very badly just now, and you've been most indiscreet! "
''I'm never indiscreet! " Ulrich objected, and could not help laugh- ing at his cousin. "You're really being unfair. You are the first woman to whom I've ever confided anything about another woman, and it was you who made me do it! "
Diotima was flattered. She wanted to say something of the same kind, to the effect that without a spiritual transformation one cheated oneself of the best in life; but she could not come out with it because it suddenly seemed too personal. Finally, something from one of the books surrounding her prompted her to answer noncommittally, from within the protection of her official persona: "Like all men,"
892 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
she chided him, "you make the mistake of treating your love partner not as an equal but merely as a complement to yourself, and then you're disappointed. Has it never occurred to you that the only way to a transcendent, harmonious eroticism may lie through stricter self-discipline? "
Ulrich's jaw nearly dropped, but he answered in spontaneous self- defense: "Do you know that Section Chief Tuzzi has already grilled me today on the possibilities of the origin and training of the soul? "
Diotima sat up straight: "What? Tuzzi talks with you about soul? " she asked in amazement.
"Of course he does; he's trying to find out what it is," Ulrich as- sured her, but he could not be induced to stay any longer. He merely promised to betray a confidence some other time and tell her all about that too.
PROBLEMS OF A MORALIST WITH A LETTER TO WRITE
With this visit to Diotima the restless state Ulrich had been in since his return came to an end. On the afternoon of the very next day he sat down at his desk, and in doing so felt at home again, and began writing a letter to Agathe.
It was clear to him-as simple and clear as a windless day some- times is-that her rash scheme was extremely dangerous. What had happened so far could still be taken as a risky prank, of no concern to anyone but themselves, but that depended entirely on its being re- scinded before it acquired connections with reality, and the danger was growing with every passing day. Ulrich had written this much when he stopped, uneasy at the thought of entrusting to the mails a letter in which this was so openly discussed. He told himself that it would be better in every way to take the next train back, in place of
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the letter; but of course this made no sense to him either, since he had let days go by without doing anything about it. He knew he would not go.
He realized that there was something behind this tantamount to a choice: he simply felt like letting things take their course and seeing what came of this incident. So his problem was just how far he actu- ally, definitely could want to risk it, and all sorts of wide-ranging thoughts went through his mind.
It occurred to him right at the start, for instance, that whenever he had taken a "moral" stance so far, he had always been psychologically worse off than when he was doing or thinking something that might usually be considered "immoral. " This is a common occurrence, for in situations that are in conflict with their surroundings these ideas and actions develop all their energies, while in the mere doing of what is right and proper they understandably behave as if they were paying taxes. This suggests that all evil is carried out with zest and imagination, while good is distinguished by an unmistakable dreari- ness and dearth of feeling. Ulrich recalled that his sister had ex- pressed this moral dilemma quite casually by asking him whether being good was no longer a good thing. It ought to be difficult and breathtaking, she had maintained, and wondered why, nevertheless, moral people were almost always bores.
He smiled contentedly, spinning this thought out with the realiza- tion that Agathe and he were as one in their particular opposition to Hagauer, which could be roughly characterized as that of people who were bad in a good way to a man who was good in a bad way. Leaving out of account the broad middle of life's spectrum, which is, reasonably enough, occupied by people whose minds have not been troubled by the general terms good and evil since they let go of their mother's apron strings, there remain the two extremes where pur- poseful moral efforts are still made. Today these are left to just such bad/good and good/bad people, the first kind never having seen good fly or heard it sing, thus expecting their fellowmen to enthuse with them about a moral landscape where stuffed birds perch on dummy trees, while the second kind, the good/bad mortals, exasperated by their competitors, industriously show a penchant for evil, at least in theory, as if they were convinced that only wrongdoing, which is emotionally not quite as threadbare as doing good, still twitches with
894 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
a bit of moral vitality. And so Ulrich's world-not, of course, that he was fully aware ofthis-had at that time the option ofletting itselfbe ruined by either its lame morality or its lively immoralists, and to this day it probably does not know which of those two choices it finally embraced with stunning success, unless that majority who can never spare the time to concern themselves with morality in general did pay attention to one case in particular because they had lost confi- dence in their own situation and, as a result, had of course lost a number ofother things as well. For bad/bad people, who can so eas- ily be blamed for everything, were even then as rare as they are today, and the good/good ones represent a mission as far removed as a distant nebula. Still, it was precisely of them that Ulrich was think- ing, while everything else he appeared to be thinking about left him cold.
And he gave his thoughts an even more general and impersonal form by setting the relationship that exists between the demands "Do! " and "Don't! " in the place of good and evil. For as long as a particular morality is in the ascendant-and this is just as valid for the spirit of "Love thy neighbor" as it is for a horde of V andals- "Don't! " is still only the negative and natural corollary of "Do! " Doing and leaving undone are red hot, and the flaws they contain don't count because they are the flaws of heroes and martyrs. In this condition good and evil are identical with the happiness and unhap- piness of the whole person. But as soon as the contested system has achieved dominance and spread itself out, and its fulfillment no lon- ger faces any special hurdles, the relationship between imperative and taboo perforce passes through a decisive phase where duty is not born anew and alive each day but is leached and drained and cut up into ifs and buts, ready to serve all sorts of uses. Here a process be- gins, in the further course of which virtue and vice, because of their common root in the same rules, laws, exceptions, and limitations, come to look more and more alike, until that curious and ultimately unbearable self-contradiction arises which was Ulrich's point of de- parture: namely, that the distinction between good and evil loses all meaning when weighed against the pleasure of a pure, deep, spon- taneous mode of action, a pleasure that can leap like a spark from permissible as well as from forbidden activities. Indeed, whoever takes an unbiased view is likely to find that the negative aspect of
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morality is more highly charged with this tension than the positive: While it seems relatively natural that certain actions called "bad" must not be allowed to happen, actions such as taking what belongs to others or overindulgence in sensual gratification, or, if they are committed, at least ought not to be committed, the corresponding affirmative moral traditions, such as unlimited generosity in giving or the urge to mortify the flesh, have already almost entirely disap- peared; and where they are still practiced they are practiced by fools, cranks, or bloodless prigs. In such a condition, where virtue is de- crepit and moral conduct consists chiefly in the restraint of immoral conduct, it can easily happen that immoral conduct appears to be not only more spontaneous and vital than its opposite, but actually more moral, if one may use the term not in the sense oflaw and justice but with regard to whatever passion may still be aroused by matters of conscience. But could anything possibly be more perverse than to incline inwardly toward evil because, with all one has left of a soul, one is seeking good?
Ulrich had never felt this perversity more keenly than at this mo- ment, when the rising arc his reflections had followed led him back to Agathe again. Her innate readiness to act in the good/bad m o d e - to resort once more to the term they had coined in passing-as so notably exemplified in her tampering with their father's will, of- fended the same innate readiness in his own nature, which had merely taken on an abstract theoretical form, something like a priest's admiration of the Devil, while as a person he was not only able to lead his life more or less according to the rules but even, as he could see, did not wish to be disturbed in so doing. With as much melancholy satisfaction as ironic clear-sightedness, he noted that all his theoretical preoccupation ·with evil basically amounted to this, that he wanted to protect the bad things that happened from the bad people who undertook them, and he was suddenly overcome by a longing for goodness, like a man who has been wasting his time in foreign parts dreaming ofcoming home one day and going straight to the well in his native village for a drink of water. If he had not been caught up in this comparison, he might have noticed that his whole effort to see Agathe as a morally confused person, such as the present age produces in profusion, was only a pretext to screen out a prospect that frightened him a good deal more. For his sister's con-
8g6 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
duct, which certainly did not pass muster objectively, exerted a re- markable fascination as soon as one dreamed along with it; for then all the controversies and indecisions vanished, and one was left with the impression of a passionate, affinnative virtue lusting for action, which could easily seem, compared with its lifeless daily counterpart, to be some kind of ancient vice.
Ulrich was not the man to indulge himself lightly in such exalta- tions of his feelings, least of all with this letter to write, so he redi- rected his mind into general reflections. These would have been incomplete had he not remembered how easily and often, in the times he had lived through, the longing for some duty rooted in com- pleteness had led to first one virtue, then another, being singled out from among the available supply, to be made the focus of noisy glorification. National, Christian, humanistic virtues had all taken their tum; once, it was the virtue of chromium steel, another time, the virtue of kindness; then it was individuality, and then fellowship; today it is the fraction of a second, and yesterday it was historical equilibrium. The changing moods of public life basically depend on the exchange of one such ideal for another: it had always left Ulrich unmoved, and only made him feel that he was standing on the side- lines. Even now all it meant for him was a filling in of the general picture, for only incomplete insight can lead one to believe that one can get at life's moral inexplicability, whose complications have become overwhelming, by means of one of the interpretations al- ready embedded within it. Such efforts merely resemble the move- ments of a sick person restlessly changing his position, while the paralysis that felled him progresses inexorably. Ulrich was convinced that the state of affairs that gave rise to these efforts was inescapable and characterized the level from which every civilization goes into decline, because no civilization has so far been capable of replacing its lost inner elasticity. He was also convinced that the same thing that had happened to every past moral system would happen to every future one. For the slackening of moral energy has nothing to do with the province ofthe Commandments or the keeping ofthem: it is independent of their distinctions; it cannot be affected by any outer discipline but is an entirely inner process, synonymous with the weakening ofthe significance ofall actions and offaith in the unity of responsibility for them.
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And so Ulrich's thoughts, without his having intended it, found their way back to the idea he had ironically characterized to Count Leinsdorf as the "General Secretariat for Precision and Soul," and although he had never spoken of it other than flippantly and in jest, he now realized that all his adult life he had consistently behaved as though such a General Secretariat lay within the realm of possibility. Perhaps, he could say by way ofexcuse, every thoughtful person har- bors in himself some such idea of order, just as grown men may still wear next to their skin the picture of a saint that their mother hung around their necks when they were small. And this image of order, which no one dares either to take seriously or to put away, must be more or less something like this: On one hand, it vaguely stands for the longing for some law of right living, a natural, iron law that allows no exceptions and excludes no objections: that is, as liberating as in- toxication and sober as the truth. On the other hand, however, it evinces the conviction that one will never behold such a law with one's own eyes, never think it out with one's own thoughts, that no one person's mission or power can bring it about but only an effort by everyone-unless it is only a delusion.
Ulrich hesitated for an instant. He was doubtless a believing per- son who just didn't believe in anything. Even in his greatest dedica- tion to science he had never managed to forget that people's goodness and beauty come from what they believe, not from what they know. But faith had always been bound up with knowledge, even if that knowledge was illusory, ever since those primordial days of its magic beginnings. That ancient knowledge has long since rot- ted away, dragging belief down with it into the same decay, so that today the connection must be established anew. Not, of course, by raising faith "to the level of knowledge," but by still in some way making it take flight from that height. The art oftranscending knowl- edge must again be practiced. And since no one man can do this, all men must tum their minds to it, whatever else their minds might be on. When Ulrich at this moment thought about the ten-year plan, or the hundred- or thousand-year plan that mankind would have to de- vise in order to work toward a goal it can have no way ofknowing, he soon realized that this was what he had long imagined, under all sorts of names, as the truly experimental life. For what he meant by the term "faith" was not so much that stunted desire to know, the credu-
8g8 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
lous ignorance that is what most people take it to be, but rather a lmowledgeable intuition, something that is neither lmowledge nor fantasy, but is·not faith either; it is just that "something else" which eludes all these concepts.
He suddenly pulled the letter toward him, but immediately pushed it away again.
The stem glow on his face went out, and his dangerous favorite idea struck him as ridiculous. As though with one glance through a suddenly opened window, he felt what was really around him: can- nons and business deals. The notion that people who lived in this fashion could ever join in a planned navigation of their spiritual des- tiny was simply inconceivable, and Ulrich had to admit that historical development had never come about by means of any such coherent combination of ideas as the mind of the individual may just manage in a pinch; the course of history was always wasteful and dissipated, as if it had been flung on the table by the fist of some low-life gam- bler. He actually felt a little ashamed. Everything he had thought during the last hour was suspiciously reminiscent of a certain "In- quiry for the Drafting of a Guiding Resolution to Ascertain the Desires of the Concerned Sections of the Population"; even the fact that he was moralizing at all, this thinking theoretically that surveyed Nature by candlelight, seemed completely unnatural, while the sim- ple man, accustomed to the clarity of the sun, goes straight for the next item, unbothered by any problem beyond the very definite one of whether he can risk this move and make it work.
At this point Ulrich's thoughts flowed back again from these gen- eral considerations to himself, and he felt what his sister meant to him. It was to her he had revealed that curious and unlimited, in- credible, and unforgettable state of mind in which everything is an affinnation: the condition in which one is incapable of any spiritual movement except a moral one, therefore the only state in which there exists a morality without interruption, even though it may only consist in all actions floating ungrounded within it. And all Agathe had done was to stretch out her hand toward it. She was the person who stretched out her hand and made Ulrich's reflections give way to the bodies and forms of the real world. All his thoughts now ap- peared to him a mere delaying and transition. He decided to "take a chance" on what might come of Agathe's idea, and at this moment he
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 8gg
could not care less that the mysterious promise it held out had started with what was commonly viewed as a reprehensible act. One could only wait and see whether the morality of "rising or sinking" would show itself as applicable here as the simple morality of honesty. He remembered his sister's passionate question as to whether he himself believed what he was saying, but he could affirm this even now as little as he could then. He admitted to himself that he was waiting for Agathe to be able to answer this question.
The phone rang shrilly, and Walter was suddenly rushing at him with flustered explanations and hasty snatches of words. Ulrich lis- tened indifferently but readily, and when he put down the receiver and straightened up he still felt the ringing of its bell, now finally stopping. Depth and darkness came flooding back into his surround- ings to soothe him, though he could not have said whether it hap- pened as sounds or colors; it was a deepening of all his senses. Smiling, he picked up the sheet of paper on which he had begun writing to his sister and, before he left the room, slowly tore it into tiny pieces.
19
ONW ARD TO MOOSBRUGGER
Meanwhile Walter, Clarisse, and the prophet Meingast were sitting around a platter loaded with radishes, tangerines, almonds, big Turk- ish prunes, and cream cheese, consuming this delicious and whole- some supper. The prophet, again wearing only his wool cardigan over his rather bony torso, made a point now and again of praising the natural refreshments offered to him, while Clarisse's brother, Siegmund, sat apart, with his hat and gloves on, reporting on yet an- other conversation he had "cultivated" with Dr. Friedenthal, the as- sistant medical officer at the psychiatric clinic, to make arrangements for his "completely crazy" sister Clarisse to see Moosbrugger.
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"Friedenthal insists that he can do it only with a permit from the District Court," he wound up dispassionately, "and the District Court is not satisfied with the application I obtained for all of you from the Final Hour Welfare Society but requires a recommenda- tion from the Embassy, because we lied, unfortunately, about Cla- risse's being a foreigner. So there's nothing else to be done: Tomorrow Dr. Meingast will have to go to the Swiss Embassy! "
Siegmund, who was the elder, resembled his sister, except that his face was unexpressive. If one looked at them side by side, the nose, mouth, and eyes in Clarisse's pallid face suggested cracks in parched soil, while the same features in Siegmund's face had the soft, slightly blurred contours of rolling grassland, although he was clean-shaven except for a small mustache. He had not shed his middle-class ap- pearance nearly as much as his sister, and it gave him an ingenuous naturalness even at the moment when he was so brazenly disposing of a philosopher's precious time. No one would have been surprised if thunder and lightning had burst from the plate of radishes at this imposition, but the great man took it amiably-which his admirers regarded as an event that would make a great anecdote-and blinked an assenting eye toward Siegmund like an eagle that tolerates a spar- row on the perch beside him.
Nonetheless, the sudden and insufficiently discharged tension made it impossible for Walter to contain himself any longer. He pushed back his plate, reddened like a little cloud at sunrise, and stated emphatically that no sane person who was neither a doctor nor an attendant had any business inside an insane asylum. On him, too, the sage bestowed a barely perceptible nod. Siegmund, who in the course of his life had appropriated quite a few opinions, articulated this assent with the hygienic words: "It is, no doubt, a revolting habit of the affluent middle class to see something demonic in mental cases and criminals. "
"But in that case," Walter exclaimed, "please tell me why you all want to help Clarisse do something you don't approve of and that can only make her more nervous than ever? "
His wife did not dignify this with an answer. She made an unpleas- ant face, whose expression was so remote from reality as to be fright- ening; two long, arrogant lines ran down alongside her nose, and her chin came to a hard point. Siegmund did not feel himself obliged or
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authorized to speak for the others, so Walter's question was followed by a short silence, until Meingast said quietly and equably: "Clarisse has suffered too strong an impression. It can't be left at that. "
"When? " Walter demanded.
"Just the other day-that evening at the window. "
Walter turned pale, because he was the only one who had not been
told before-Clarisse had evidently told Meingast and even her brother. Isn't that just like her! he thought.
And although it was not exactly called for, he suddenly had the feeling, across the plate of produce, that they were all about ten years younger. That was the time when Meingast-still the old, untrans- formed Meingast-was bowing out and Clarisse had opted for Wal- ter. Later she confessed to him that Meingast had still, even though he had already given her up, sometimes kissed and fondled her. The memory was like the large arc of a swing. Walter had been swung higher and higher: he succeeded in everything he did then, even though there were lots of downswings too. Yet even then Clarisse had been unable to speak with Walter when Meingast was present; he had often had to find out from others what she was thinking and doing. With him she froze up. "When you touch me, I freeze up! " she had said to him. "My body goes solemn-that's quite different from the way it is with Meingast! " And when he kissed her for the fust time she said to him: "I promised Mother never to do anything like this. " Later on, though, she adinitted to him that in those days Meingast was always secretly playing footsie with her under the din- ing room table. It was all Walter's doing! The richness of the inner development he had called forth in her had hindered her freedom of movement, as he explained it to himself.
Now he thought of the letters he and Clarisse had written to each other in those· days; he still l;>elieved that if one were to search through all of literature it would be hard to find anything to match them for passion and originality. . In those stormy days he would pun- ish Clarisse, when she was keeping company with Meingast, by run- ning off-and then he would write her a letter; and she wrote him letters, swearing that she was faithful, while candidly reporting that Meingast had kissed her once again on her knee, through her stock- ing. Walter had wanted to publish these letters as a book, and still thought, off and on, that he would do so someday. So far, unfortu-
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nately, nothing had come of it except for a fateful misunderstanding with Clarisse's governess. One day Walter had said to her: "You'll see, soon I shall make up for everything! " He had only meant it in his sense: namely, how splendidly he would be justified in the family's eyes once publication of the letters brought him fame and success; for strictly speaking, things between him and Clarisse at that time were not what they should be. Clarisse's governess-a family heir- loom, pensioned off in the honorable guise of serving as an assistant mother, misunderstood him, however, in her sense, and a rumor promptly arose in the family that Walter was about to put himselfin a position to ask for Clarisse's hand in marriage; once the word was out, it led to very particular joys and restraints. "Real life" instantly awakened: Walter's father announced that he would no longer pay his son's bills unless Walter began to earn his keep. Walter's prospec- tive father-in-law invited him to his studio, where he spoke to him of the hardships and disillusionments awaiting the practitioner of pure, disinterested art, whether in the visual arts, music, or literature. And finally both Walter and Clarisse began to itch with the suddenly tan- gible thought of having their own house, children, openly sharing a bedroom: like a crack in the skin that cannot heal because one un- consciously keeps scratching at it. And so it came to pass that Walter, only a few weeks after his impulsive words, actually became engaged to Clarisse, which made both ofthem very happy but also very tense, because it was the beginning of that search for an established place in life that burdens life with all the problems ofWestern civilization, since the position Walter was sporadically seeking had to pass muster not only as to income but as to how it would affect six major aspects of his life: Clarisse, himself, their love life, literature, music, and painting. Actually, they had only recently emerged from the whirl- wind of complications unleashed as soon as he let his tongue run off with him in the elderly mademoiselle's company, when he accepted his present position in the Department of Works and Monuments and moved with Clarisse into this modest little house, where the rest was up to fate.
In his heart Walter felt it would be quite pleasant iffate were now to call it a day: though the end would not be precisely what the begin- ning had promised-but then, when apples are ripe they don't fall up the tree, but to the ground. That was what Walter was thinking, and
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meanwhile, across the table from him, above the diametrically oppo- site end of the colorful tray of wholesome vegetarian food, his wife's small head hovered; Clarisse was trying to supplement Meingast's explanation with the utmost objectivity, indeed as objectively as Meingast himself: "I must do something to pulverize the shock. The shock was too much for me, Meingast says," she specified, and added on her own: "It was certainly no coincidence that that man stopped in the bushes right under my window. "
"Nonsense! " Walter waved this away as a sleeper waves off a fly. "It was just as much my window as yours! "
"Our window, then," Clarisse corrected herself, her thin-lipped smile so pointed that one could not decide whether it expressed bit- terness or scorn. 'We attracted him. But would you like me to tell you what that man was doing? He was stealing sexual pleasure! "
It made Walter's head ache, crammed full as it was of the past, and now the present was wedging itself in, leaving no clear difference between past and present. There were still bushes with their bright patches of foliage in Walter's head, with bicycle paths winding among them. Their adventurous long trips and walks could have hap- pened only this morning. Girls' skirts were swinging again just as they had in those years when ankles had been boldly exposed for the first time and the hems of white petticoats had frothed with the new movements of a sports-loving generation. In those days, Walter thought-to put it mildly-that what was going on between him and Clarisse was not all it should be, because what happened on these bike trips in the spring of the year they became engaged was in fact everything that can happen and leave a girl technically still a virgin. "Almost incredible, for such a nice girl! " Walter thought, reveling in his memories. Clarisse had called it "taking Meingast's sins upon ourselves"- h e had just gone abroad and was not yet known as Mein- gast. "It would be cowardly not to be sensual because he was! " was the way Clarisse phrased it, adding: "But with you and me I want it to be spiritual! " Walter did at times worry about the fact that these go- ings-on were too closely connected with the man who had been gone such a little while, but Clarisse replied: "People who aim at great- ness, as we do in art, for instance, can't be bothered with worrying about this and that. " Walter could remember the zeal with which they set about annihilating the past by repeating it in a new spirit,
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and the relish with which they found out how to excuse illicit physical pleasures by magically attributing to them some transcendent pur- pose. At that time, Clarisse had been as energetic in her lustfulness as she was later in refusing herself to him, Walter admitted, letting his mind wander for a moment to dwell on the refractory thought that her breasts were still as taut today as they had been then. Every- one could see that, even through her clothes. Meingast happened to be staring at her breasts just then; perhaps he didn't realize it. "Her breasts are mute! " Walter declaimed inwardly with all the richness of association of a dream or a poem; and in almost the same way, while this was happening, the reality of the present forced itself through the padding of emotions:
"Come, Clarisse, tell us what you're thinking," he heard Meingast prompting her, like a doctor or a teacher, in that polite, formal tone he sometimes took with her since his return.
Walter also noticed that Clarisse was looking questioningly at Meingast.
"You were telling me about a certain Moosbrugger, that he was a carpenter. . . . "
Clarisse kept her eyes on him.
"Who else was a carpenter? The Savior! Wasn't that what you said? In fact, you even told me that you had written a letter about it to some influential person, didn't you? "
"Stop it! " Walter burst out. His head was spinning. But he had no sooner expressed his protest than it occurred to him that the letter was something else he had not heard about, and growing weak, he asked: "What letter? "
He got no answer from anyone. Meingast, passing over his ques- tion, said: "It's one ofthe most timely ideas. We're incapable ofliber- ating ourselves by our own efforts, no doubt about it; we call it democracy, but that's merely the political term for our psychological state, our 'you can do it this way, but you can also do it another way. ' Ours is the era of the ballot. Each year we determine our sexual ideal, the beauty queen, by ballot, and all we have done by making empirical science our intellectual ideal is to let the facts do the voting for us. We are living in an unphilosophical, dispirited age; it doesn't have the courage to decide what is valuable and what isn't, and de- mocracy means, expressed most succinctly: Do whatever is happen-
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ing! Incidentally, this is one of the most disgraceful vicious circles in all the history of our race. "
While he spoke, the prophet had irritably cracked and peeled a nut, the pieces ofwhich he was now shoving into his mouth. Nobody had understood what he was saying. He broke off his speech in favor of a slow chewing motion of his jaws, in which the turned-up tip of his nose also participated, while the rest of his face remained asceti- cally still, but he did not take his eyes off Clarisse. They remained fixed somewhere in the region of her breast. The eyes of both the other men involuntarily left the master's face to follow his abstracted gaze. Clarisse felt a suction, as though these six eyes might lift her right out of her chair if they remained fastened on her much longer. But the master vigorously gulped down the last of his nut and went on with his lecture:
"Clarisse has found out that Christian legend has decreed that the Savior was a carpenter. That's not quite correct: his foster father was. Nor is she in the least justified in trying to make something of the fact that some criminal she's heard of happens to be a carpenter too. In- tellectually that's simply beneath criticism. Morally it is frivolous. But it shows courage! It really does! " Here Meingast paused, to let the force with which he had said "courage" take effect. Then he qui- etly continued: "She recently saw, as we did also, a psychopath ex- posing himself. She makes too much of it; there is in general far too much emphasis on sexuality these days. But Clarisse says: 'It is not by chance that this man stopped under my window. . . . ' Now, let us try to understand her rightly. She's wrong, for causally the incident is, of course, a coincidence. But what Clarisse is really saying is: If I regard everything as explained, then a person will never be able to change the world. She regards it as inexplicable that a murderer whose name, ifI am not mistaken, is Moosbrugger happens to be a carpen- ter; she regards it as inexplicable that an unknown sufferer from sex- ual disturbances should have stopped just under her window; and so she has fallen into the habit of regarding all sorts of other things that happen to her as inexplicable and . . . " Again Meingast kept his lis- teners waiting awhile; his voice had become reminiscent of a man with a resolve who is firmly but warily tiptoeing up to something, and now he pounced: "And so she will do something! " Meingast ended on a strong note.
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It gave Clarisse goose pimples.
"I repeat," Meingast said, "this is not subject to intellectual criti- cism. But. intellectuality is, as we know, only the expression or the tool of a life that has dried out, while the point Clarisse is making may arise from another sphere: that of the will. Clarisse may never be able to explain what is happening to her, but she may well be able to solve it, resolve it. So she is quite right to call it 'salvation'-she is instinctively using the right term for it. It would be easy for one of us to speak ofdelusional thinking, or to say that Clarisse is a person with weak nerves, but what would be the point? The world is currently so undeluded that it doesn't know when to hate or to love anything, and since we're all of two minds about everything, all of us are neuras- thenics and weaklings. In short," the prophet concluded abruptly, "although it is not easy for a philosopher to renounce insight, it is probably the great, growing insight of the twentieth century that this is what must be done. For me, in Geneva, it is today of greater spiri- tual importance that we have a French boxing coach than that the dissector Rousseau did his thinking there! "
Meingast could have continued talking, now that he had hit his stride: To begin with, the idea ofsalvation had always been anti-intel- lectual. "What the world today needs more than anything else is a strong, healthy delusion" was what he had been on the point of say- ing, but he had swallowed it in favor of the other ending. Second, there was the concomitant physical meaning implied in the etymol- ogy ofsalvation, its link with "salve" carrying an inference that deeds alone could save, or at least experiences involving the whole person, neck and crop. Third, he had been prepared to say that the overintel- lectualization of the male could under certain conditions bring woman to the fore as the instinctive leader in action, of which Cla- risse was one of the first examples. Finally, there were all the trans- formations of the salvation idea in the history of peoples, and the present movement from salvation as a purely religious concept, which had been dominant for centuries, toward the realization that salvation must be brought about by resoluteness of will and even, if necessary, by force. Saving the world by force happened to be his central idea at the moment.
Meanwhile, however, the suction of all those eyes on her was becoming more than Clarisse could stand, and she cut off the mas-
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ter's discourse by turning to Siegmund, as the point of least resist- ance, saying to him rather too loudly:
"That's what I told you: we have to experience something our- selves to understand it. That's why we have to go to the asylum our- selves! "
Walter, who had been peeling a tangerine as a way of keeping steady, at this moment cut too deeply; an acid jet spurted into his eyes, making him start back and grope for his handkerchief. Sieg- mund, as always well dressed, first contemplated with an expert's concern the acid's effect on his brother-in-law's eye, then moved his gaze to that still life of respectability, the pigskin gloves and bowler hat resting on his knee. It was only when he could not shake off his sister's relentless stare, and no one spoke to save him the trouble, that he looked up with a grave nod and murmured serenely: "I have never doubted that we all belong in an asylum. "
Clarisse then turned to Meingast and said: "I've told you about the Parallel Campaign. That could be another tremendous opportunity and obligation for us to do away with all the 'you can do it this way . . . and another way' that is the great evil ofour century. "
The master waved this off with a smile.
Clarisse, overcome with a heady sense of her own importance, cried out obstinately and somewhat incoherently: "A woman who lets a man have his way with her when it's only going to weaken his mind is a sex murderer too! "
Here Meingast issued a gentle warning: "Let's keep this on a gen- eral plane! Incidentally, I can set your mind at rest on one point: As regards those absurd committee meetings where a dying democracy is trying to give birth to one more great mission, I've had my observ- ers and confidential agents for a long time now. "
Clarisse simply felt ice at the roots of her hair.
Walter made another vain stab at stemming developments. Defer- entially, he took his stand against Meingast, his tone very different from that which he might have used with Ulrich, for example: "What you say probably amounts to much the same thing I've been saying for a long time, that one ought to paint only in pure colors. It's high time to finish with the broken and blurred, with our concessions to the inane, to the fainthearted vision that no longer dares see that each thing has a true outline, true colors. I put it in pictorial terms,
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you in philosophic terms. But even though we share a point of view . . . "He suddenly became embarrassed, feeling that he could not talk openly in front ofthe others about why he dreaded Clarisse's involvement with the insane.
"No, I won't have Clarisse doing it!