"
By tacit agreement they treated all that was happening as a mere interlude.
By tacit agreement they treated all that was happening as a mere interlude.
Musil - Man Without Qualities - v2
A painting, too, has its own inexplicable way of ex- cluding every color or line not in accord with its basic form, style, and palette of colors, while on the other hand it extracts from the painter's hand whatever it needs, thanks to the laws of genius, which are not the same as the usual laws of nature.
At this point he no lon- ger had in him any of that easy, healthy self-assurance which scruti- nizes life's excrescences for anything that might come in handy and which he had been extolling only a little while ago; what he felt was more the misery of a little boy too timid to join in a game.
But Siegmund was not the man to let go of something so easily once he had taken it up. "Clarisse is high-strung," he declared. "She's always been ready to run her head through a wall, and now she's got it stuck in one. You'll have to get a good grip on her, even if she resists you. "
"You doctors don't have a clue about human psychology! " Walter cried. He looked for a second point of attack and found it. "You talk of'signs,' "he went on, his irritation overlaid by his pleasure in being able to speak about Clarisse, "and you carefully examine when signs indicate a disorder and when they don't, but I tell you this: the true
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 0 7
human condition is the one in which everything is a sign! But every- thing! You may be able to look truth in the eye, but truth will never look you in the eye; this divine, uncertain feeling is something you'll never know! "
"You're obviously both crazy," Siegmund remarked dryly.
"Yes, of course we are! " Walter cried out. "You're not a creative man, after all; you've never learned what it means to 'express one- self,' which means first of all, for an artist, to understand something. The expression we impart to things is what develops our ability to perceive them aright. I can only understand what I want, or someone else wants, by carrying it out! This is our living experience, as distinct from your dead experience! Of course you'll say it's paradoxical, a confusion of cause and effect; you and your medical causality! "
But Siegmund did not say this; he merely reiterated doggedly: "It will definitely be for her own good ifyou won't put up with too much. Excitable people need a certain amount of strictness. "
"And when I play the piano at the open window," Walter asked, as if he had not heard his brother-in-law's warning, "what am I doing? People are passing by, some of them young girls, perhaps anyone who feels like it stops to listen; I play for young lovers and lonely old people. Clever people, stupid people. I'm not giving them something to think about. What I'm playing isn't rational information. I'm giv- ing them myself. I sit invisible in my room and give them signs: just a few notes, and it's their life, and it's my life. You could certainly call this crazy too . . . ! " Suddenly he fell silent. That feeling: "Oh, I could tell all of you a thing or two! "-that basic ambitious urge of every inhabitant of earth who feels the need to communicate something but has no more than an average creative capacity-had fallen to pieces. Every time Walter sat in the soft emptiness of the room be- hind his open window and released his music into the air with the proud awareness of the artist giving happiness to unknown thou- sands, this feeling was like an open umbrella, and the instant he stopped playing, it was like a sloppily closed one. All the airiness was gone, it was as if everything that had happened had not happened, and all he could say was that art had lost its connection to the people and everything was no good. He thought of this and felt dejected. He tried to fight it off. After all, Clarisse had said: music must be played "through to the end. " Clarisse had said: 'W e understand something
1008 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
only as long as we ourselves are part ofit! " But Clarisse had also said: "That's why we have to go to the madhouse ourselves! " Walter's "inner umbrella" flapped halfway closed in irregular stormy gusts.
Siegmund said: "Excitable people need a certain amount of guid- ance, for their own good. You yourself said you wouldn't put up with it anymore. Professionally and personally, I can only give you the same advice: Show her that you're a man. I know she balks at that, but she'll come around. " Siegmund was like a dependable machine tirelessly reiterating the "answer" he had come up with.
Walter, in a "stormy gust," replied: "This medical exaggeration of a well-adjusted sex life is old hat! When I make music or paint or think, I am affecting both an immediate and a distant audience, with- out depriving the ones ofwhat I give to the others. On the contrary! Take it from me, there's probably no sphere of life in which onere- mains justified in living only for oneself, thinking of life as a private matter! Not even marriage! "
But the heavier pressure was on Siegmund's side, and Walter sailed before the wind across to Clarisse, of whom he had not lost sight during this conversation. He did not relish anyone's being able to say of him that he was not a man; he turned his back on this sug- gestion by letting it drive him over to Clarisse. And halfway there he felt the certainty, between nervously bared teeth, that he would have to begin with the question: ''What do you mean, talking about signs? "
But Clarisse saw him coming. She had already seen him wavering while he was still standing there. Then his feet were pulled from the ground and bore him toward her. She participated in this with wild elation. The blackbird, startled, flew off, hastily taking its caterpillar with it. The way was now clear for her power of attraction. Yet she suddenly thought better of it and eluded the encounter for the time being by slowly slipping along the side of the house into the open, not turning away from Walter but moving faster than he, hesitant as he was, could move out of the realm of telepathic effect into that of statement and response.
AGATHE IS QUICKLY DISCOVERED AS A SOCIAL ASSET BY GENERAL STUMM
Since Agathe had joined forces with him, Ulrich's relations with the extensive social circle of the Tuzzis had been making great demands on his time. For although it was late in the year the winter's busy social season was not yet over, and the least he could do in return for the great show of sympathy he had received upon his father's death was not hide Agathe away, even though their being in mourning re- lieved them of having to attend large affairs. Had Ulrich chosen to take full advantage of it, their mourning would actually have allowed them to avoid attending all social functions for a long time, so that he could have dropped out of a circle of acquaintances that he had fallen into only through curious circumstances. However, since Agathe had put her life into his charge Ulrich acted against his own inclination, and assigned to a part of himself labeled with the tradi- tional concept "duties of an elder brother" many decisions that his whole person was undecided about, even when he did not actually disapprove of them. The first of these duties of an elder brother was to see that Agathe's flight from her husband's house should end only in the house of a better husband.
"If things continue this way," he would say, whenever they touched on the subject of what arrangements needed to be made in setting up house together, "you will soon be getting some offers of marriage, or at least of love," and if Agathe planned something for more than a few weeks ahead he would say: "By that time everything will be different. " This would have wounded her even more had she not perceived the conflict in her brother, so that for the present she refrained from making an issue of it when he chose to widen their social circle to the limit. And so after Agathe's arrival they became far more involved in social obligations than Ulrich would have been on his own.
Their constant appearances together, when for a long time Ulrich
1009
1010 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
had always been seen alone and without ever uttering a word about a sister, caused no slight sensation. One day General Stumm von Bard- wehr had shown up at Ulrich's with his orderly, his briefcase, and his loaf of bread, and started to sniff the air suspiciously. Then Stumm discovered a lady's stocking hanging over a chair, and said reproach- fully: "Oh, you young fellows! "
"My sister," Ulrich declared.
"Oh, come on-you haven't got a sister! " the General protested. "Here we are, tormented by the most serious problems, and you're hiding out with a little playmate! "
Just then Agathe came in, and the General lost his composure. He saw the family resemblance, and could tell by the casual air with which Agathe wandered in that Ulrich had told the truth, yet he could not shake off the feeling that he was looking at one of Ulrich's girlfriends, who incomprehensibly and misleadingly happened to look like him.
"I really don't know what came over me, dear lady," he told Di- otima later, "but I couldn't have been more amazed if he'd suddenly stood before me as a cadet again! " For at the sight of Agathe, to whom he was instantly attracted, Stumm had been overcome by that stupor he had learned to recognize as a sign of being deeply moved. His tender plumpness and sensitive nature inclined the General to hasty retreat from such a tricky situation, and despite all Ulrich's ef- forts to make him stay, he did not learn much more about the serious problems that had brought the educated General to him.
"No! " Stumm blamed himself. "Nothing is so important as to jus- tify my disturbing you like this. "
"But you haven't disturbed us at all," Ulrich assured him with a smile. "What's there to be disturbed? "
"No, of course not," Stumm assured him, now completely con- fi! sed. "Ofcourse not, in a sense. But all the same . . . look, why don't I come back another time? "
"You might at least tell me what brought you here, before you dash off again," Ulrich demanded.
"Nothing, not a thing! A trifle! " the General cried in his eagerness to take to his heels. "I think the Great Event is about to start! "
"A horse! A horse! Take ship for France! " Ulrich threw in in fun.
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 1 1
Agathe looked at him in surprise.
"I do apologize," the General said, turning to her. "You can't have any idea what this is all about. "
"The Parallel Campaign has found its crowning idea! " Ulrich filled her in.
"No, I never said that," the General demurred. "All I meant was that the great event everyone was waiting for is now on its way. "
"I see," Ulrich said. 'Well, it's been on its way from the start. "
"No, not quite like this," the General earnestly assured him. "There is now a quite definite nobody-knows-what in the air. There's soon to be a decisive gathering at your cousin's. Frau Drangsal-"
'Who's she? " Ulrich had never heard of her.
"That only shows how much you've been out of touch," the Gen- eral said reproachfully, and turned immediately to Agathe to mend matters. "Frau Drangsal is the lady who has taken the poet Feuer- maul under her wing. I suppose," he said, turning his round body back again to the silent Ulrich, "you don't know him either? "
"Yes, I do. The lyric poet. "
'Writes verses," the General said, mistrustfully avoiding the unac- customed word.
"Good verse, in fact. And all sorts of plays. "
"I don't know about plays. And I haven't got my notes with me. But he's the one who says: Man is good. In short, Frau Drangsal is backing the hypothesis that man is good, and they say it is a great European idea and that Feuermaul has a great future. She was mar- ried to a man who was a world-famous doctor, and she means to make Feuermaul world-famous too. Anyway, there's a danger that your cousin may lose the leadership to Frau Drangsal, whose salon has also been attracting all the celebrities. "
The General mopped the sweat from his brow, though Ulrich did not find the prospect at all alarming.
"You smprise me! " Stumm scolded him. "As an admirer of your cousin like everyone else, how can you say such things? Don't you agree, dear lady," he appealed to Agathe, "that your brother is being incredibly disloyal and ungrateful toward an inspiring woman? "
''I've never met my cousin," Agathe admitted.
"Oh! " said Stumm, and in words that turned a chivalrous intention
1012 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
into a rather backhanded compliment which involved an obscure concession to Agathe, he added: "Though she hasn't been at her best lately! "
Neither Ulrich nor Agathe had anything to say to this, so the Gen- eral felt he had to elucidate. "And you know why, too," he said mean- ingfully to Ulrich. He disapproved of Diotima's current absorption in sexology, which was distracting her mind from the Parallel Cam- paign, and he was worried because her relationship with Arnheim was not improving, but he did not know how far he might go in speaking of such matters in the presence of Agathe, whose expres- sion was now growing steadily cooler. But Ulrich answered calmly: "I suppose you're not making any progress with your oil affair if our Diotima no longer has her old influence on Arnheim? "
Stumm made a pathetically pleading gesture, as if to stop Ulrich from making a joke not fit for a lady's ear, but at the same time threw him a sharp glance ofwarning. He even found the energy, despite his weight, to bounce to his feet like a young man, and tugged his tunic straight. Enough ofhis original suspicion about Agathe's background lingered to keep him from exposing the secrets of the War Ministry in her presence. It was only when Ulrich had escorted him out to the hall that he clutched his arm and whispered hoarsely, through a smile: "For God's sake, man, don't talk open treason! " and enjoined Ulrich from uttering a word about the oil fields in front of any third person, even one's own sister. "Oh, all right," Ulrich promised. "But she's my twin sister. "
"Not even in front of a twin sister! " the General asseverated, still so incredulous about the sister that he could take the addition of "twin" in stride. "Give me your word! "
"But it's no use making me promise such a thing. " Ulrich was even more outrageous. 'We're Siamese twins, don't you see? " Stumm fi- nally caught on that Ulrich, whose manner was never to give a straight answer to anything, was making fun of him. "Your jokes used to be better," he protested, "than to suggest the unappetizing notion that such a delightful person, even if she's ten times your sister, is fused together with you! " But this had reawakened his lively mistrust of the reclusiveness in which he had found Ulrich, and so he ap- pended a few more questions to find out what he had been up to. Has the new secretary turned up yet? Have you been to see Di-
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 1 3
otima? Have you kept your promise to visit Leinsdorf? Have you found out how things are between your cousin and Arnheim? Since the plump skeptic was ofcourse already informed on all these points, he was merely testing Ulrich's truthfulness, and was satisfied with the result.
"In that case, do me a favor and don't be late for this crucial ses- sion," he pleaded while buttoning up his greatcoat, slightly out of breath from mastering the traversal through the sleeves. 'T il call you again beforehand and fetch you in my carriage, agreed? "
"And when will this boredom take place? " Ulrich asked, not ex- actly with enthusiasm.
"In a couple ofweeks or so, I think," the General said. 'We want to bring the rival party to Diotima's, but we want Arnheim to be there too, and he's still abroad. " With one finger he tapped the golden sword knot dangling from his coat pocket. 'Without him, it's not much fun for us, as you can understand. But believe me"-he sighed-"there's nothing I personally desire more than that our spir- itual leadership should stay with your cousin; it would be horrible for me, if I had to adapt to an entirely new situation! "
Thus it was this visit that brought Ulrich, now accompanied by his sister, back into the fold he had deserted when he was still alone. He would have had to resume his social obligations even if he had not wanted to, as he could not possibly stay in hiding with Agathe a day longer and expect Stumm to keep to himself a discovery so ripe for gossip. When "the Siamese" called on Diotima, she had apparently already heard of this curious and dubious epithet, if she was not yet charmed with it. For the divine Diotima, famed for the distinguished and remarkable people always to be met under her roof, had at first taken Agathe's unheralded debut very badly; a kinswoman who might not be a social success could be far more damaging to her own position than a male cousin, and she knew just as little about this new cousin as she had previously known about Ulrich, which in itself caused the all-knowing Diotima some annoyance when she had to admit her ignorance to the General. So she had decided to refer to Agathe as "the orphan sister," partly to help reconcile herself to the situation and partly to prepare wider circles for it. It was in this spirit that she received the cousins.
She was agreeably surprised by the socially impeccable manners
1014 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
Agathe was able to produce, while Agathe, mindful of her good edu- cation in a pious boarding school and always ready, with a mixture of irony and wonder, to take life as it came-an attitude she deplored to Ulrich-from the first managed almost unconsciously to win the gra- cious sympathies of the stupendous young woman whose ambition for "greatness" left Agathe quite cold and indifferent. She marveled at Diotima with the same guilelessness with which she would have marveled at a gigantic power station in whose mysterious function of spreading light one did not meddle. Once Diotima had been won over, especially as she could soon see that Agathe was generally liked, she laid herself out to extend Agathe's social success, which shear- ranged to throw greater credit on herself. The "orphan sister" aroused much sympathetic interest, which among Diotima's inti- mates began on a note of frank amazement that nobody had ever heard of her before, and in wider circles was transformed into that vague pleasure at everything new and surprising which is shared by princes and the press alike.
And so it happened that Diotima, with her dilettante's knack for choosing instinctively, among several options, that which was both the worst and the most promising ofpublic success, made the move that assured Ulrich and Agathe of their permanent place in the memory ofthat distinguished circle by promptly passing on the de- lightful story-as she now suddenly found it to be-that the cousins, reunited under romantic circumstances after an almost lifelong sepa- ration, called themselves Siamese twins, even though they had been blindly fated thus far to be almost the opposite. It would be hard to say why Diotima first, and then everyone else, was so taken with this circumstance, and why it made the "twins" ' resolve to live together appear both extraordinary and natural; such was Diotima's gift for leadership; and this outcome-for both things happened-proved that she still exerted her gentle sway despite all her rivals' maneu- vers. Amheim, when he heard of it on his return from abroad, deliv- ered an elaborate address to a select circle, rounding it off with a homage to aristocratic-popular forces. Somehow the rumor arose that Agathe had taken refuge with her brother from an unhappy mar- riage with a celebrated foreign savant. And since the arbiters of good form at that time had the landowners' antipathy to divorce and made do with adultery, many older persons perceived Agathe's choice in
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 1 5
that double halo of the higher life composed of willpower and piety which Count Leinsdorf, who looked upon the "twins" with special favor, at one point characterized with the words: "Our theaters are always treating us to displays of the most awful excesses of passion. Now here's a story the Burgtheater could use as a good example! "
Diotima, in whose presence this was uttered, responded: "It's become fashionable for many people to say that man is good. But anyone who knows, as I have learned in my studies, the confusions of our sex life will know how rare such examples are! "
Did she mean to qualify His Grace's praise or reinforce it? She had not yet forgiven Ulrich what she called his lack of confidence in her, since he had not given her advance notice of his sister's arrival; but she was proud of the success in which she had a part, and this entered into her reply.
. z8
Too MUCH GAIETY
Agathe proved naturally adept at making use of the advantages social life offered, and her brother was pleased to see her moving with so much poise in these demanding social circles. The years she had spent as the wife of a secondary-school principal in the provinces seemed to have fallen from her without leaving a trace. For the pres- ent, however, Ulrich summed it all up with a shrug, saying: "Our high nobility find it amusing that we should be called the Siamese twins. They've always gone in more for menageries than, say, for art.
"
By tacit agreement they treated all that was happening as a mere interlude. There was much that needed changing or rearranging in their household, as they had seen from the very first day; but they did nothing about it, because they shied away from another discussion whose limits could not be foreseen. Ulrich had given up his bedroom to Agathe and settled himself in the dressing room, with the bath-
1016 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
room between them, and had gradually given up most of his closet space to her. He declined her offer of sympathy for these hardships with an allusion to Saint Lawrence and his grille; and anyway it did not occur to Agathe that she might be interfering with her brother's bachelor life, because he assured her that he was very happy and be- cause she could have only the vaguest idea of the degrees of happi- ness he might have enjoyed previously. She had come to like this house with its unconventional arrangements, its useless extravagance of anterooms and reception rooms around the few habitable rooms, which were now overcrowded; there was about it something of the elaborate civilities of a bygone age left defenseless against the self- indulgent and churlish high-handedness of the present. Sometimes the mute protest of the handsome rooms against the disorderly inva- sion seemed mournful, like broken, tangled strings hanging from the exquisitely carved frame of an old instrument. Agathe now saw that her brother had not really chosen this secluded house without inter- est or feeling, as he pretended, and from its ancient walls emerged a language of passion that was not quite mute, but yet not quite audi- ble. But neither she nor Ulrich admitted to anything more than en- joying its casualness. They lived in some disarray, had their meals sent in from a hotel, and derived from everything a sort ofwild fun that comes with eating a meal more awkwardly on the grass at a pic- nic than one would have had to do at one's table.
In these circumstances they also did not have the right domestic help. The well-trained servant Ulrich had taken on temporarily when he moved in-an old man about to retire and only waiting for some technicality to be settled first----could not be expected to do more than the minimum Ulrich expected of him; the part of lady's maid fell to Ulrich himself, since the room where a regular. maid might be lodged was, like everything else, still in the realm of good intentions, and a few efforts in that direction had not brought good results. In- stead, Ulrich was making great strides as a squire arming his lady knight to set forth on her social conquests. In addition, Agathe had done some shopping to supplement her wardrobe, and her acquisi- tions were strewn all over the house, which was nowhere equipped for the demands of a lady. She had acquired the habit of using the entire house as a dressing room, so that Ulrich willy-nilly took part in her new purchases. The doors between rooms were left open, his
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 1 7
gymnastic apparatus seJVed as clotheshorse and coatrack, and he would be called away from his desk for conferences like Cincinnatus from his plow. This interference with his latent but at least potential will to work was something he put up with not merely because he thought it would pass but because he enjoyed it; it was something new and made him feel young again. His sister's vivacity, idle as it might appear to be, crackled in his loneliness like a small fire in a long-unused stove. Bright waves of charming gaiety, dark waves of warm trustfulness, filled the space in which he lived, taking from it the nature of a space in which he up till then had moved only at the dictates of his own will. But what was most amazing about this inex- haustible fountain of another presence was that the sum of the countless trifles ofwhich it consisted added up to a non-sum that was of a quite different kind: his impatience with wasting his time, that unquenchable feeling that had never left him since he could remem- ber, no matter what he had taken up that was supposed to be great and important, was to his astonishment totally gone, and for the first time he loved his day-to-day life without thinking.
He even overdid it a little, gasping in delight when Agathe, with the seriousness women feel in these matters, offered for his admira- tion the thousand charming things she had been buying. He acted as if the quaint workings of a woman's nature--which, on the same level of intelligence, is more sensitive than the male and therefore more susceptible to the suggestion of dressing up to a point of crass self-display that is even further removed from the ideal of a cul- tivated humanity than the man's nature--irresistibly compelled his participation. And perhaps it really was so. For the many small, ten- der, absurd notions he became involved with-tricking oneself out with glass beads, crimping the hair, the mindless arrangements of lace and embroidery, the ruthless seductive colors: charms so akin to the tinfoil stars at the fairgrounds that every intelligent woman sees right through them without in the least losing her taste for them- began to entangle him in the network of their glittering madness. For the moment one begins to take anything, no matter how foolish or tasteless, seriously and puts oneself on its level, it begins to reveal a rationale of its own, the intoxicating scent of its love for itself, its innate urge to play and to please. This was what happened to Ulrich when he helped equip Agathe with her new outfits. He fetched and
1018 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
carried, admired, appraised, was asked for advice, helped with trying on. He stood with Agathe in front of the mirror. Nowadays, when a woman's appearance suggests that of a well-plucked fowl ready for the oven, it is hard to imagine her predecessor's appearance in all its charm of endlessly titillated desire, which has meanwhile become ri- diculous: the long skirt, to all appearances sewn to the floor by the dressmaker and yet miraculously in motion, enclosing other, secret gossamer skirts beneath it, pastel-shaded silk flower petals whose softly fluttering movements suddenly turned into even finer tissues of white, which were the first to touch the body itself with their soft foam. And ifthese clothes resembled waves in that they drew the eye seductively and yet repulsed it, they were also an ingenious contriv- ance of way stations and intermediate fortifications around expertly guarded marvels and, for all their unnaturalness, a cleverly curtained theater of the erotic, whose breathtaking darkness was lit only by the feeble light of the imagination. It was these quintessential prelimi- naries that Ulrich now saw removed daily, taken apart, as it were from the inside. Even though a woman's secrets had long since lost their mystery for him, or just because he had always only rushed through them as anterooms or outer gardens, they had quite a differ- ent effect on him now that there was no gateway or goal for him. The tension that lies in all these things struck back. Ulrich could hardly have said what changes it wrought. He rightly regarded himself as a man of masculine temperament, and he could understand being at- tracted by seeing what he so often desired from its other side, for once, but at times it was almost uncanny, and he warded it offwith a laugh.
"As if the walls of a girls' boarding school had sprouted all around me in the night, completely locking me in! " he protested.
"Is that so terrible? " Agathe asked.
"I don't know," he replied.
Then he called her a flesh-eating plant and himself a miserable
insect that had crawled into her shimmering calyx. "You've closed it around me," he said, "and now I'm sitting surrounded by colors, per- fume, and radiance, already a part of you in spite of myself, waiting for the males we're going to attract! "
And it really was uncanny for him to witness the effect his sister had on men, considering his concern to "get her a husband. " He was
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 1 9
not jealous-in what capacity could he have been? -and put her in- terests ahead of his, hoping that the right man would soon come along to release her from this interim phase in which leaving Hagauer had placed her; and yet, when he saw her surrounded by men paying her attentions, or when a man on the street, attracted by her beauty and ignoring her escort, gave her a bold stare, Ulrich did not know what to make of his feelings. Here too, natural male jeal- ousy being forbidden him, he often felt somehow caught up in a world he had never entered before. He knew from experience all about the male mating dance as well as the female's warier technique in love, and when he saw Agathe being treated to the one and re- sponding with the other, it pained him; he felt as if he were watching the courtship of horses or mice, the sniffing and whinnying, the pout- ing and baring ofteeth, with which strangers parade their self-regard and regard of the opposite sex; to Ulrich, observing this without em- pathy, it was nauseating, like some stupefaction welling up from within the body. And if he nevertheless tried to put himself in his sister's place, prompted by some deep-seated emotional need, it sometimes would not have taken much afterward for him to feel, not just bewilderment at such tolerance, but the sort of shame a normal man feels when deviously approached by one who is not. When he let Agathe in on this, she laughed.
"There are also several women among our friends who take an in- terest in you," she said.
What was going on here?
Ulrich said: "Basically it's a protest against the world! " And then he said: "You know Walter: It's been a long time since we've liked each other. But even when I'm annoyed with him and know that I irritate him too, I nevertheless often feel, at the mere sight of him, a certain warmth aS ifwe understood each other perfectly, as in fact we don't. Look, there's so much in life we understand without agreeing with it; that's why accepting someone from the beginning, before un- derstanding him, is pure mindless magic, like water in spring running down all the hillsides to the valley! "
What he felt was: "That's the way it is now! " And what he thought was: "Whenever I succeed in shedding all my selfish and egocentric feelings toward Agathe, and every single hateful feeling of indiffer- ence too, she draws all the qualities out of me the way the Magnetic
I0. 20 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Mountain draws the nails out of a ship! She leaves me morally dis- solved into a primary atomic state, one in which I am neither myself nor her. Could this be bliss? "
But all he said was: 'Watching you is so much fun! "
Agathe blushed deeply and said: 'Why is that 'fun'? "
"Oh, I don't know. Sometimes you're self-conscious with me in
the room," Ulrich said. "But then you remember that, after all, I'm 'only your brother. ' And at other times you don't seem to mind at all when I catch you in circumstances that would be most interesting for a stranger, but then it suddenly occurs to you that I shouldn't be looking at you, and you make me look the other way. . . . " ·
"And why is that fun? " Agathe asked.
"Maybe it's a form of happiness to follow another person with one's eyes for no reason at all," Ulrich said. "It's like a child's love for its possessions, without the child's intellectual helplessness. . . . "
"Maybe it's fun for you to play at brother-and-sister only because you've had more than enough of playing at man-and-woman? "
"That too," Ulrich said, watching her. "Love is basically a simple urge to come close, to grab at something that has been split into two poles, lady and gentleman, with incredible tensions, frustrations, spasms, and petversions arising in between. We've now had enough of this inflated ideology; it's become nearly as ridiculous as a science of eating. I'm convinced most people would be glad if this connec- tion between an epidermic itch and the entire personality could be revoked. And sooner or later there will be an era of simple sexual companionship in which boy and girl will stand in perfectly tuned incomprehension, staring at an old heap of broken springs that used to be Man and Woman. ''
"But if I were to tell you that Hagauer and I were pioneers of that era you would hold it against me! " Agathe retorted, with a smile as astringent as good dry wine.
"I no longer hold things against people," Ulrich said. He smiled. "A warrior unbuckled from his armor. For the first time since God knows when, he feels nature's air instead of hammered iron on his skin and sees his body growing so lax and frail that the birds might cany him off," he assured her.
And still smiling, simply forgetting to stop smiling, he contem- plated his sister as she sat on the edge of a table, swinging one leg in
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 2 1
its black silk stocking; aside from her chemise, she was wearing only short panties. But these were somehow fragmentary impressions, de- tached, solitary images, as it were. "She's my friend, in the delightful guise of a woman," Ulrich thought. "Though this is complicated by her really being a woman! "
And Agathe asked him: "Is there really no such thing as love? "
"Yes, there is," Ulrich said. "But it's the exception. You have to make distinctions. There is first of all a physical experience, to be classed with other irritations ofthe skin, a purely sensory indulgence without any requisite moral or emotional accessories. Second, emo- tions are usually involved, which become intensely associated with the physical experience, but in such a way that with slight variations they are the same for everyone; so that even the compulsory same- ness oflove's climax belongs on the physical-mechanical level rather than on that ofthe soul. Finally, there is also the real spiritual experi- ence of love, which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the other two. One can love God, one can love the world; perhaps one can only love God and the world. Anyway, it's not necessary to love a person. But if one does, the physical element takes over the whole world, so that it turns everything upside down, as it were. . . . " Ulrich broke off.
Agathe had flushed a dark red. If Ulrich had deliberately chosen and ordered his words with the hypocritical intention of suggesting to Agathe's imagination the physical act oflove inevitably associated with them, he could not have succeeded better.
He looked around for a match, simply to undo the unintended ef- fect of his speech by some diversion. "Anyway," he said, "love, if that is love, is an exceptional case, and can't serve as a model for everyday action. "
Agathe had reached for the comers of the tablecloth and wrapped them around her legs. 'Wouldn't strangers, who saw and heard us, talk about a perverse feeling? " she asked suddenly.
"Nonsense! " Ulrich maintained. 'What each of us feels is the shadowy doubling ofhis own selfin the other's opposite nature. I'm a man, you're a woman; it's widely believed that every person bears within him the shadowy or repressed opposite inclination; at least each of us has this longing, unless he's disgustingly self-satisfied. So my counterpart has come to light and slipped into you, and yours into
10. 2. 2 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
me, and they feel marvelous in their exchanged bodies, simply be- cause they don't have much respect for their previous environment and the view from it! "
Agathe thought: "He's gone into all that more deeply before. Why is he attenuating it now? "
What Ulrich was saying did, of course, fit quite well with the life they were leading as two companions who occasionally, when the company of others leaves them free, take time to marvel at the fact that they are man and woman but at the same time twins. Once two people find themselves in such an accord their relations with the world as individuals take on the charm of an invisible game of hide- and-seek, each switching bodies and costumes with the other, prac- ticing their carefree two-in-one deception for an unsuspecting world behind two kinds of masks. But this playful and overemphatic fun- as children sometimes make noise instead ofbeing noisy-was not in keeping with the gravity that sometimes, from a great height, laid its shadow on the hearts of this brother and sister, making them fall unexpectedly silent. So it happened one evening, as they exchanged a few chance words more before going to bed, that Ulrich saw his sister in her long nightgown and tried to joke about it, saying: "A hundred years ago I would have cried out: 'My angel! ' Too bad the term has become obsolete! " He fell silent, disconcerted by the thought: "Isn't that the only word I should be using for her? Not friend, not wife! 'Heavenly creature! ' was another term they used. Ridiculously high-flown, of course, but nevertheless better than not having the courage of one's convictions. "
Agathe was thinking: "A man in pajamas doesn't look like an angel! " But he did look fierce and broad-shouldered, and she sud- denly felt ashamed of her wish that this strong face framed in tousled hair might cast its shadow over her eyes. In some physically innocent way she was sensually aroused; her blood was pulsing through her body in wild waves, spreading over her skin while leaving her drained and weak inside. Since she was not such a fanatical person as her brother, she simply felt what she felt. When she was tender, she was tender, not lit up with ideas or moral impulses, even though this was something she loved in him as much as she shrank from it.
Again and again, day after day, Ulrich summed it all up in the idea: Basically, it's a protest against life! They walked arm in arm through
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 2 3
the city: well matched in height, well matched in age, well matched in their attitude to things. Strolling along side by side, they could not see much of each other. Tall figures, pleasing to one another, they walked together for the sheer enjoyment of it, feeling at every step the breath of their contact in the midst of all the strangeness sur- rounding them. We belong together! This feeling, far from uncom- mon, made them happy, and half within it, half in resistance to it, Ulrich said: "It's funny we should be so content to be brother and sister. The world in general regards it as a commonplace relation- ship, but we're making something special of it! "
Perhaps he had hurt her feelings in saying this. He added: "But it's what I've always wished for. When I was a boy I made up my mind to marry only a woman I'd have adopted as a child and brought up my- self. I think plenty of men have such fantasies; they're pretty banal, I suppose. But as an adult I actually once fell in love with such a child, though it was only for two or three hours! " And he went on to tell her about it:
"It happened on a streetcar. A little girl of about twelve got on, with her very young father or her older brother. The way she got on, sat down, and casually handed the fare to the conductor for both of them, she was every inch a lady, without a trace of childish affecta- tion. It was the same when she talked to her companion, or quietly listened to him. She was extraordinarily beautiful: brunette, with full lips, strong eyebrows, a slightly turned-up nose; perhaps a dark- haired Polish girl, or a southern Slav. As I recall, the dress she was wearing suggested some national costume: long jacket, tight waist, laced bodice, and frills at the throat and wrists, all in its way as per- fect as the little person herself. Perhaps she was Albanian. I was sit- ting too far away to be able to hear what she was saying. It struck me that the features of her grave little face were mature beyond her years, so that she seemed fully adult; yet it was not the face of a dwarfishly tiny woman, but unquestionably that of a child. On the other hand, it was not at all the immature stage of an adult's face. It seems that a woman's face may sometimes be complete at the age of twelve, formed even spiritually like a perfect first sketch from the hand of a master, so that everything added later to develop the pic- ture only spoils its original greatness. One can fall passionately in love with such a phenomenon, mortally so, and really without any
1024 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
physical desire. I remember I glanced around nervously at the other passengers, because I felt as if I were falling apart. When she got off, I got off, too, but lost her in the crowded street," he ended his little story.
After giving it a moment or two, Agathe asked with a smile: "And how does that fit in with the time for love being over, leaving only sex and companionship? "
"It doesn't fit in at all! " Ulrich laughed.
His sister thought about it, and remarked with a noticeable harsh- ness-it seemed to be an intentional repetition of the words he had used the evening of her arrival: "All men like to play at little-brother- and-little-sister. There must really be some stupid idea behind it. These little brothers and sisters call each other 'father' and 'mother' when they're not quite sober. "
Ulrich was taken aback It was not merely that Agathe was right, for gifted women are merciless observers of the men they love in their lives; but not being inclined to theorize, they make no use of their discoveries except when provoked. He felt somewhat affronted.
"Of course they've got a psychological explanation for it," he said hesitantly. "It's pretty obvious that the two of us are psychologically suspect. Incestuous tendencies, demonstrable in early childhood, to- gether with antisocial dispositions and a rebellious attitude toward life. Possibly even a not sufficiently rooted gender identification, al- though I-"
"Nor I, either! " Agathe broke in, laughing, if possibly somewhat against her will. "I have no use for women at all! "
"It really doesn't matter anyway," Ulrich said. "Psychic entrails, in any case. You might also say that there's a sultanesque need to be the only one who adores and is adored, to the exclusion of the rest of the world. In the ancient Orient it produced the harem, and today we have family, love, and the dog. And I don't mind saying that the mania to possess another person so entirely that no one else can come anywhere near is a sign of personal loneliness within the human community, which even the socialists rarely deny. If you'd like to see it that way, we represent nothing but a bourgeois extrava- gance! Oh, look at that! How splendid! " He broke off, pulling on her arm.
They were standing at the edge of a small marketplace surrounded
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 2 5
by old houses. Around the neoclassical statue of some intellectual giant, colorful vegetables were spread out, the big canvas umbrellas of the market stands had been set up, fruits tumbled, baskets were being dragged along, dogs chased away from the outspread trea- sures, and one saw the red faces of rough men and women. The air throbbed and pounded with industriously loud voices and smelled of the sun that shines on the earthly hodgepodge.
"Can we help loving the world when we simply see it and smell it? " Ulrich asked spiritedly. "Yet we can't love it, because we don't agree with what's inside people's heads," he added.
This did not happen to be a reservation entirely to Agathe's taste, and she did not reply. But she pressed her brother's ann, and both of them understoodthatthiswasasifshehadgentlylaidherhandover his mouth.
Ulrich laughed, saying: "Not that I like myself either! That's what happens when one is always finding fault with other people. But even I have to be able to love something, and a Siamese sister who's nei- ther me nor herself, but just as much me as herself, is clearly the only point where everything comes together for me! "
He had cheered up again. And Agathe usually went along with his mood. But they never again talked as they had on the first night of their reunion, or before. That was gone, like castles in the clouds, which, when they hover over city streets teeming with life instead of over the deserted countryside, are hard to believe in.
But Siegmund was not the man to let go of something so easily once he had taken it up. "Clarisse is high-strung," he declared. "She's always been ready to run her head through a wall, and now she's got it stuck in one. You'll have to get a good grip on her, even if she resists you. "
"You doctors don't have a clue about human psychology! " Walter cried. He looked for a second point of attack and found it. "You talk of'signs,' "he went on, his irritation overlaid by his pleasure in being able to speak about Clarisse, "and you carefully examine when signs indicate a disorder and when they don't, but I tell you this: the true
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 0 7
human condition is the one in which everything is a sign! But every- thing! You may be able to look truth in the eye, but truth will never look you in the eye; this divine, uncertain feeling is something you'll never know! "
"You're obviously both crazy," Siegmund remarked dryly.
"Yes, of course we are! " Walter cried out. "You're not a creative man, after all; you've never learned what it means to 'express one- self,' which means first of all, for an artist, to understand something. The expression we impart to things is what develops our ability to perceive them aright. I can only understand what I want, or someone else wants, by carrying it out! This is our living experience, as distinct from your dead experience! Of course you'll say it's paradoxical, a confusion of cause and effect; you and your medical causality! "
But Siegmund did not say this; he merely reiterated doggedly: "It will definitely be for her own good ifyou won't put up with too much. Excitable people need a certain amount of strictness. "
"And when I play the piano at the open window," Walter asked, as if he had not heard his brother-in-law's warning, "what am I doing? People are passing by, some of them young girls, perhaps anyone who feels like it stops to listen; I play for young lovers and lonely old people. Clever people, stupid people. I'm not giving them something to think about. What I'm playing isn't rational information. I'm giv- ing them myself. I sit invisible in my room and give them signs: just a few notes, and it's their life, and it's my life. You could certainly call this crazy too . . . ! " Suddenly he fell silent. That feeling: "Oh, I could tell all of you a thing or two! "-that basic ambitious urge of every inhabitant of earth who feels the need to communicate something but has no more than an average creative capacity-had fallen to pieces. Every time Walter sat in the soft emptiness of the room be- hind his open window and released his music into the air with the proud awareness of the artist giving happiness to unknown thou- sands, this feeling was like an open umbrella, and the instant he stopped playing, it was like a sloppily closed one. All the airiness was gone, it was as if everything that had happened had not happened, and all he could say was that art had lost its connection to the people and everything was no good. He thought of this and felt dejected. He tried to fight it off. After all, Clarisse had said: music must be played "through to the end. " Clarisse had said: 'W e understand something
1008 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
only as long as we ourselves are part ofit! " But Clarisse had also said: "That's why we have to go to the madhouse ourselves! " Walter's "inner umbrella" flapped halfway closed in irregular stormy gusts.
Siegmund said: "Excitable people need a certain amount of guid- ance, for their own good. You yourself said you wouldn't put up with it anymore. Professionally and personally, I can only give you the same advice: Show her that you're a man. I know she balks at that, but she'll come around. " Siegmund was like a dependable machine tirelessly reiterating the "answer" he had come up with.
Walter, in a "stormy gust," replied: "This medical exaggeration of a well-adjusted sex life is old hat! When I make music or paint or think, I am affecting both an immediate and a distant audience, with- out depriving the ones ofwhat I give to the others. On the contrary! Take it from me, there's probably no sphere of life in which onere- mains justified in living only for oneself, thinking of life as a private matter! Not even marriage! "
But the heavier pressure was on Siegmund's side, and Walter sailed before the wind across to Clarisse, of whom he had not lost sight during this conversation. He did not relish anyone's being able to say of him that he was not a man; he turned his back on this sug- gestion by letting it drive him over to Clarisse. And halfway there he felt the certainty, between nervously bared teeth, that he would have to begin with the question: ''What do you mean, talking about signs? "
But Clarisse saw him coming. She had already seen him wavering while he was still standing there. Then his feet were pulled from the ground and bore him toward her. She participated in this with wild elation. The blackbird, startled, flew off, hastily taking its caterpillar with it. The way was now clear for her power of attraction. Yet she suddenly thought better of it and eluded the encounter for the time being by slowly slipping along the side of the house into the open, not turning away from Walter but moving faster than he, hesitant as he was, could move out of the realm of telepathic effect into that of statement and response.
AGATHE IS QUICKLY DISCOVERED AS A SOCIAL ASSET BY GENERAL STUMM
Since Agathe had joined forces with him, Ulrich's relations with the extensive social circle of the Tuzzis had been making great demands on his time. For although it was late in the year the winter's busy social season was not yet over, and the least he could do in return for the great show of sympathy he had received upon his father's death was not hide Agathe away, even though their being in mourning re- lieved them of having to attend large affairs. Had Ulrich chosen to take full advantage of it, their mourning would actually have allowed them to avoid attending all social functions for a long time, so that he could have dropped out of a circle of acquaintances that he had fallen into only through curious circumstances. However, since Agathe had put her life into his charge Ulrich acted against his own inclination, and assigned to a part of himself labeled with the tradi- tional concept "duties of an elder brother" many decisions that his whole person was undecided about, even when he did not actually disapprove of them. The first of these duties of an elder brother was to see that Agathe's flight from her husband's house should end only in the house of a better husband.
"If things continue this way," he would say, whenever they touched on the subject of what arrangements needed to be made in setting up house together, "you will soon be getting some offers of marriage, or at least of love," and if Agathe planned something for more than a few weeks ahead he would say: "By that time everything will be different. " This would have wounded her even more had she not perceived the conflict in her brother, so that for the present she refrained from making an issue of it when he chose to widen their social circle to the limit. And so after Agathe's arrival they became far more involved in social obligations than Ulrich would have been on his own.
Their constant appearances together, when for a long time Ulrich
1009
1010 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
had always been seen alone and without ever uttering a word about a sister, caused no slight sensation. One day General Stumm von Bard- wehr had shown up at Ulrich's with his orderly, his briefcase, and his loaf of bread, and started to sniff the air suspiciously. Then Stumm discovered a lady's stocking hanging over a chair, and said reproach- fully: "Oh, you young fellows! "
"My sister," Ulrich declared.
"Oh, come on-you haven't got a sister! " the General protested. "Here we are, tormented by the most serious problems, and you're hiding out with a little playmate! "
Just then Agathe came in, and the General lost his composure. He saw the family resemblance, and could tell by the casual air with which Agathe wandered in that Ulrich had told the truth, yet he could not shake off the feeling that he was looking at one of Ulrich's girlfriends, who incomprehensibly and misleadingly happened to look like him.
"I really don't know what came over me, dear lady," he told Di- otima later, "but I couldn't have been more amazed if he'd suddenly stood before me as a cadet again! " For at the sight of Agathe, to whom he was instantly attracted, Stumm had been overcome by that stupor he had learned to recognize as a sign of being deeply moved. His tender plumpness and sensitive nature inclined the General to hasty retreat from such a tricky situation, and despite all Ulrich's ef- forts to make him stay, he did not learn much more about the serious problems that had brought the educated General to him.
"No! " Stumm blamed himself. "Nothing is so important as to jus- tify my disturbing you like this. "
"But you haven't disturbed us at all," Ulrich assured him with a smile. "What's there to be disturbed? "
"No, of course not," Stumm assured him, now completely con- fi! sed. "Ofcourse not, in a sense. But all the same . . . look, why don't I come back another time? "
"You might at least tell me what brought you here, before you dash off again," Ulrich demanded.
"Nothing, not a thing! A trifle! " the General cried in his eagerness to take to his heels. "I think the Great Event is about to start! "
"A horse! A horse! Take ship for France! " Ulrich threw in in fun.
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 1 1
Agathe looked at him in surprise.
"I do apologize," the General said, turning to her. "You can't have any idea what this is all about. "
"The Parallel Campaign has found its crowning idea! " Ulrich filled her in.
"No, I never said that," the General demurred. "All I meant was that the great event everyone was waiting for is now on its way. "
"I see," Ulrich said. 'Well, it's been on its way from the start. "
"No, not quite like this," the General earnestly assured him. "There is now a quite definite nobody-knows-what in the air. There's soon to be a decisive gathering at your cousin's. Frau Drangsal-"
'Who's she? " Ulrich had never heard of her.
"That only shows how much you've been out of touch," the Gen- eral said reproachfully, and turned immediately to Agathe to mend matters. "Frau Drangsal is the lady who has taken the poet Feuer- maul under her wing. I suppose," he said, turning his round body back again to the silent Ulrich, "you don't know him either? "
"Yes, I do. The lyric poet. "
'Writes verses," the General said, mistrustfully avoiding the unac- customed word.
"Good verse, in fact. And all sorts of plays. "
"I don't know about plays. And I haven't got my notes with me. But he's the one who says: Man is good. In short, Frau Drangsal is backing the hypothesis that man is good, and they say it is a great European idea and that Feuermaul has a great future. She was mar- ried to a man who was a world-famous doctor, and she means to make Feuermaul world-famous too. Anyway, there's a danger that your cousin may lose the leadership to Frau Drangsal, whose salon has also been attracting all the celebrities. "
The General mopped the sweat from his brow, though Ulrich did not find the prospect at all alarming.
"You smprise me! " Stumm scolded him. "As an admirer of your cousin like everyone else, how can you say such things? Don't you agree, dear lady," he appealed to Agathe, "that your brother is being incredibly disloyal and ungrateful toward an inspiring woman? "
''I've never met my cousin," Agathe admitted.
"Oh! " said Stumm, and in words that turned a chivalrous intention
1012 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
into a rather backhanded compliment which involved an obscure concession to Agathe, he added: "Though she hasn't been at her best lately! "
Neither Ulrich nor Agathe had anything to say to this, so the Gen- eral felt he had to elucidate. "And you know why, too," he said mean- ingfully to Ulrich. He disapproved of Diotima's current absorption in sexology, which was distracting her mind from the Parallel Cam- paign, and he was worried because her relationship with Arnheim was not improving, but he did not know how far he might go in speaking of such matters in the presence of Agathe, whose expres- sion was now growing steadily cooler. But Ulrich answered calmly: "I suppose you're not making any progress with your oil affair if our Diotima no longer has her old influence on Arnheim? "
Stumm made a pathetically pleading gesture, as if to stop Ulrich from making a joke not fit for a lady's ear, but at the same time threw him a sharp glance ofwarning. He even found the energy, despite his weight, to bounce to his feet like a young man, and tugged his tunic straight. Enough ofhis original suspicion about Agathe's background lingered to keep him from exposing the secrets of the War Ministry in her presence. It was only when Ulrich had escorted him out to the hall that he clutched his arm and whispered hoarsely, through a smile: "For God's sake, man, don't talk open treason! " and enjoined Ulrich from uttering a word about the oil fields in front of any third person, even one's own sister. "Oh, all right," Ulrich promised. "But she's my twin sister. "
"Not even in front of a twin sister! " the General asseverated, still so incredulous about the sister that he could take the addition of "twin" in stride. "Give me your word! "
"But it's no use making me promise such a thing. " Ulrich was even more outrageous. 'We're Siamese twins, don't you see? " Stumm fi- nally caught on that Ulrich, whose manner was never to give a straight answer to anything, was making fun of him. "Your jokes used to be better," he protested, "than to suggest the unappetizing notion that such a delightful person, even if she's ten times your sister, is fused together with you! " But this had reawakened his lively mistrust of the reclusiveness in which he had found Ulrich, and so he ap- pended a few more questions to find out what he had been up to. Has the new secretary turned up yet? Have you been to see Di-
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 1 3
otima? Have you kept your promise to visit Leinsdorf? Have you found out how things are between your cousin and Arnheim? Since the plump skeptic was ofcourse already informed on all these points, he was merely testing Ulrich's truthfulness, and was satisfied with the result.
"In that case, do me a favor and don't be late for this crucial ses- sion," he pleaded while buttoning up his greatcoat, slightly out of breath from mastering the traversal through the sleeves. 'T il call you again beforehand and fetch you in my carriage, agreed? "
"And when will this boredom take place? " Ulrich asked, not ex- actly with enthusiasm.
"In a couple ofweeks or so, I think," the General said. 'We want to bring the rival party to Diotima's, but we want Arnheim to be there too, and he's still abroad. " With one finger he tapped the golden sword knot dangling from his coat pocket. 'Without him, it's not much fun for us, as you can understand. But believe me"-he sighed-"there's nothing I personally desire more than that our spir- itual leadership should stay with your cousin; it would be horrible for me, if I had to adapt to an entirely new situation! "
Thus it was this visit that brought Ulrich, now accompanied by his sister, back into the fold he had deserted when he was still alone. He would have had to resume his social obligations even if he had not wanted to, as he could not possibly stay in hiding with Agathe a day longer and expect Stumm to keep to himself a discovery so ripe for gossip. When "the Siamese" called on Diotima, she had apparently already heard of this curious and dubious epithet, if she was not yet charmed with it. For the divine Diotima, famed for the distinguished and remarkable people always to be met under her roof, had at first taken Agathe's unheralded debut very badly; a kinswoman who might not be a social success could be far more damaging to her own position than a male cousin, and she knew just as little about this new cousin as she had previously known about Ulrich, which in itself caused the all-knowing Diotima some annoyance when she had to admit her ignorance to the General. So she had decided to refer to Agathe as "the orphan sister," partly to help reconcile herself to the situation and partly to prepare wider circles for it. It was in this spirit that she received the cousins.
She was agreeably surprised by the socially impeccable manners
1014 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
Agathe was able to produce, while Agathe, mindful of her good edu- cation in a pious boarding school and always ready, with a mixture of irony and wonder, to take life as it came-an attitude she deplored to Ulrich-from the first managed almost unconsciously to win the gra- cious sympathies of the stupendous young woman whose ambition for "greatness" left Agathe quite cold and indifferent. She marveled at Diotima with the same guilelessness with which she would have marveled at a gigantic power station in whose mysterious function of spreading light one did not meddle. Once Diotima had been won over, especially as she could soon see that Agathe was generally liked, she laid herself out to extend Agathe's social success, which shear- ranged to throw greater credit on herself. The "orphan sister" aroused much sympathetic interest, which among Diotima's inti- mates began on a note of frank amazement that nobody had ever heard of her before, and in wider circles was transformed into that vague pleasure at everything new and surprising which is shared by princes and the press alike.
And so it happened that Diotima, with her dilettante's knack for choosing instinctively, among several options, that which was both the worst and the most promising ofpublic success, made the move that assured Ulrich and Agathe of their permanent place in the memory ofthat distinguished circle by promptly passing on the de- lightful story-as she now suddenly found it to be-that the cousins, reunited under romantic circumstances after an almost lifelong sepa- ration, called themselves Siamese twins, even though they had been blindly fated thus far to be almost the opposite. It would be hard to say why Diotima first, and then everyone else, was so taken with this circumstance, and why it made the "twins" ' resolve to live together appear both extraordinary and natural; such was Diotima's gift for leadership; and this outcome-for both things happened-proved that she still exerted her gentle sway despite all her rivals' maneu- vers. Amheim, when he heard of it on his return from abroad, deliv- ered an elaborate address to a select circle, rounding it off with a homage to aristocratic-popular forces. Somehow the rumor arose that Agathe had taken refuge with her brother from an unhappy mar- riage with a celebrated foreign savant. And since the arbiters of good form at that time had the landowners' antipathy to divorce and made do with adultery, many older persons perceived Agathe's choice in
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 1 5
that double halo of the higher life composed of willpower and piety which Count Leinsdorf, who looked upon the "twins" with special favor, at one point characterized with the words: "Our theaters are always treating us to displays of the most awful excesses of passion. Now here's a story the Burgtheater could use as a good example! "
Diotima, in whose presence this was uttered, responded: "It's become fashionable for many people to say that man is good. But anyone who knows, as I have learned in my studies, the confusions of our sex life will know how rare such examples are! "
Did she mean to qualify His Grace's praise or reinforce it? She had not yet forgiven Ulrich what she called his lack of confidence in her, since he had not given her advance notice of his sister's arrival; but she was proud of the success in which she had a part, and this entered into her reply.
. z8
Too MUCH GAIETY
Agathe proved naturally adept at making use of the advantages social life offered, and her brother was pleased to see her moving with so much poise in these demanding social circles. The years she had spent as the wife of a secondary-school principal in the provinces seemed to have fallen from her without leaving a trace. For the pres- ent, however, Ulrich summed it all up with a shrug, saying: "Our high nobility find it amusing that we should be called the Siamese twins. They've always gone in more for menageries than, say, for art.
"
By tacit agreement they treated all that was happening as a mere interlude. There was much that needed changing or rearranging in their household, as they had seen from the very first day; but they did nothing about it, because they shied away from another discussion whose limits could not be foreseen. Ulrich had given up his bedroom to Agathe and settled himself in the dressing room, with the bath-
1016 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
room between them, and had gradually given up most of his closet space to her. He declined her offer of sympathy for these hardships with an allusion to Saint Lawrence and his grille; and anyway it did not occur to Agathe that she might be interfering with her brother's bachelor life, because he assured her that he was very happy and be- cause she could have only the vaguest idea of the degrees of happi- ness he might have enjoyed previously. She had come to like this house with its unconventional arrangements, its useless extravagance of anterooms and reception rooms around the few habitable rooms, which were now overcrowded; there was about it something of the elaborate civilities of a bygone age left defenseless against the self- indulgent and churlish high-handedness of the present. Sometimes the mute protest of the handsome rooms against the disorderly inva- sion seemed mournful, like broken, tangled strings hanging from the exquisitely carved frame of an old instrument. Agathe now saw that her brother had not really chosen this secluded house without inter- est or feeling, as he pretended, and from its ancient walls emerged a language of passion that was not quite mute, but yet not quite audi- ble. But neither she nor Ulrich admitted to anything more than en- joying its casualness. They lived in some disarray, had their meals sent in from a hotel, and derived from everything a sort ofwild fun that comes with eating a meal more awkwardly on the grass at a pic- nic than one would have had to do at one's table.
In these circumstances they also did not have the right domestic help. The well-trained servant Ulrich had taken on temporarily when he moved in-an old man about to retire and only waiting for some technicality to be settled first----could not be expected to do more than the minimum Ulrich expected of him; the part of lady's maid fell to Ulrich himself, since the room where a regular. maid might be lodged was, like everything else, still in the realm of good intentions, and a few efforts in that direction had not brought good results. In- stead, Ulrich was making great strides as a squire arming his lady knight to set forth on her social conquests. In addition, Agathe had done some shopping to supplement her wardrobe, and her acquisi- tions were strewn all over the house, which was nowhere equipped for the demands of a lady. She had acquired the habit of using the entire house as a dressing room, so that Ulrich willy-nilly took part in her new purchases. The doors between rooms were left open, his
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 1 7
gymnastic apparatus seJVed as clotheshorse and coatrack, and he would be called away from his desk for conferences like Cincinnatus from his plow. This interference with his latent but at least potential will to work was something he put up with not merely because he thought it would pass but because he enjoyed it; it was something new and made him feel young again. His sister's vivacity, idle as it might appear to be, crackled in his loneliness like a small fire in a long-unused stove. Bright waves of charming gaiety, dark waves of warm trustfulness, filled the space in which he lived, taking from it the nature of a space in which he up till then had moved only at the dictates of his own will. But what was most amazing about this inex- haustible fountain of another presence was that the sum of the countless trifles ofwhich it consisted added up to a non-sum that was of a quite different kind: his impatience with wasting his time, that unquenchable feeling that had never left him since he could remem- ber, no matter what he had taken up that was supposed to be great and important, was to his astonishment totally gone, and for the first time he loved his day-to-day life without thinking.
He even overdid it a little, gasping in delight when Agathe, with the seriousness women feel in these matters, offered for his admira- tion the thousand charming things she had been buying. He acted as if the quaint workings of a woman's nature--which, on the same level of intelligence, is more sensitive than the male and therefore more susceptible to the suggestion of dressing up to a point of crass self-display that is even further removed from the ideal of a cul- tivated humanity than the man's nature--irresistibly compelled his participation. And perhaps it really was so. For the many small, ten- der, absurd notions he became involved with-tricking oneself out with glass beads, crimping the hair, the mindless arrangements of lace and embroidery, the ruthless seductive colors: charms so akin to the tinfoil stars at the fairgrounds that every intelligent woman sees right through them without in the least losing her taste for them- began to entangle him in the network of their glittering madness. For the moment one begins to take anything, no matter how foolish or tasteless, seriously and puts oneself on its level, it begins to reveal a rationale of its own, the intoxicating scent of its love for itself, its innate urge to play and to please. This was what happened to Ulrich when he helped equip Agathe with her new outfits. He fetched and
1018 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
carried, admired, appraised, was asked for advice, helped with trying on. He stood with Agathe in front of the mirror. Nowadays, when a woman's appearance suggests that of a well-plucked fowl ready for the oven, it is hard to imagine her predecessor's appearance in all its charm of endlessly titillated desire, which has meanwhile become ri- diculous: the long skirt, to all appearances sewn to the floor by the dressmaker and yet miraculously in motion, enclosing other, secret gossamer skirts beneath it, pastel-shaded silk flower petals whose softly fluttering movements suddenly turned into even finer tissues of white, which were the first to touch the body itself with their soft foam. And ifthese clothes resembled waves in that they drew the eye seductively and yet repulsed it, they were also an ingenious contriv- ance of way stations and intermediate fortifications around expertly guarded marvels and, for all their unnaturalness, a cleverly curtained theater of the erotic, whose breathtaking darkness was lit only by the feeble light of the imagination. It was these quintessential prelimi- naries that Ulrich now saw removed daily, taken apart, as it were from the inside. Even though a woman's secrets had long since lost their mystery for him, or just because he had always only rushed through them as anterooms or outer gardens, they had quite a differ- ent effect on him now that there was no gateway or goal for him. The tension that lies in all these things struck back. Ulrich could hardly have said what changes it wrought. He rightly regarded himself as a man of masculine temperament, and he could understand being at- tracted by seeing what he so often desired from its other side, for once, but at times it was almost uncanny, and he warded it offwith a laugh.
"As if the walls of a girls' boarding school had sprouted all around me in the night, completely locking me in! " he protested.
"Is that so terrible? " Agathe asked.
"I don't know," he replied.
Then he called her a flesh-eating plant and himself a miserable
insect that had crawled into her shimmering calyx. "You've closed it around me," he said, "and now I'm sitting surrounded by colors, per- fume, and radiance, already a part of you in spite of myself, waiting for the males we're going to attract! "
And it really was uncanny for him to witness the effect his sister had on men, considering his concern to "get her a husband. " He was
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 1 9
not jealous-in what capacity could he have been? -and put her in- terests ahead of his, hoping that the right man would soon come along to release her from this interim phase in which leaving Hagauer had placed her; and yet, when he saw her surrounded by men paying her attentions, or when a man on the street, attracted by her beauty and ignoring her escort, gave her a bold stare, Ulrich did not know what to make of his feelings. Here too, natural male jeal- ousy being forbidden him, he often felt somehow caught up in a world he had never entered before. He knew from experience all about the male mating dance as well as the female's warier technique in love, and when he saw Agathe being treated to the one and re- sponding with the other, it pained him; he felt as if he were watching the courtship of horses or mice, the sniffing and whinnying, the pout- ing and baring ofteeth, with which strangers parade their self-regard and regard of the opposite sex; to Ulrich, observing this without em- pathy, it was nauseating, like some stupefaction welling up from within the body. And if he nevertheless tried to put himself in his sister's place, prompted by some deep-seated emotional need, it sometimes would not have taken much afterward for him to feel, not just bewilderment at such tolerance, but the sort of shame a normal man feels when deviously approached by one who is not. When he let Agathe in on this, she laughed.
"There are also several women among our friends who take an in- terest in you," she said.
What was going on here?
Ulrich said: "Basically it's a protest against the world! " And then he said: "You know Walter: It's been a long time since we've liked each other. But even when I'm annoyed with him and know that I irritate him too, I nevertheless often feel, at the mere sight of him, a certain warmth aS ifwe understood each other perfectly, as in fact we don't. Look, there's so much in life we understand without agreeing with it; that's why accepting someone from the beginning, before un- derstanding him, is pure mindless magic, like water in spring running down all the hillsides to the valley! "
What he felt was: "That's the way it is now! " And what he thought was: "Whenever I succeed in shedding all my selfish and egocentric feelings toward Agathe, and every single hateful feeling of indiffer- ence too, she draws all the qualities out of me the way the Magnetic
I0. 20 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Mountain draws the nails out of a ship! She leaves me morally dis- solved into a primary atomic state, one in which I am neither myself nor her. Could this be bliss? "
But all he said was: 'Watching you is so much fun! "
Agathe blushed deeply and said: 'Why is that 'fun'? "
"Oh, I don't know. Sometimes you're self-conscious with me in
the room," Ulrich said. "But then you remember that, after all, I'm 'only your brother. ' And at other times you don't seem to mind at all when I catch you in circumstances that would be most interesting for a stranger, but then it suddenly occurs to you that I shouldn't be looking at you, and you make me look the other way. . . . " ·
"And why is that fun? " Agathe asked.
"Maybe it's a form of happiness to follow another person with one's eyes for no reason at all," Ulrich said. "It's like a child's love for its possessions, without the child's intellectual helplessness. . . . "
"Maybe it's fun for you to play at brother-and-sister only because you've had more than enough of playing at man-and-woman? "
"That too," Ulrich said, watching her. "Love is basically a simple urge to come close, to grab at something that has been split into two poles, lady and gentleman, with incredible tensions, frustrations, spasms, and petversions arising in between. We've now had enough of this inflated ideology; it's become nearly as ridiculous as a science of eating. I'm convinced most people would be glad if this connec- tion between an epidermic itch and the entire personality could be revoked. And sooner or later there will be an era of simple sexual companionship in which boy and girl will stand in perfectly tuned incomprehension, staring at an old heap of broken springs that used to be Man and Woman. ''
"But if I were to tell you that Hagauer and I were pioneers of that era you would hold it against me! " Agathe retorted, with a smile as astringent as good dry wine.
"I no longer hold things against people," Ulrich said. He smiled. "A warrior unbuckled from his armor. For the first time since God knows when, he feels nature's air instead of hammered iron on his skin and sees his body growing so lax and frail that the birds might cany him off," he assured her.
And still smiling, simply forgetting to stop smiling, he contem- plated his sister as she sat on the edge of a table, swinging one leg in
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 2 1
its black silk stocking; aside from her chemise, she was wearing only short panties. But these were somehow fragmentary impressions, de- tached, solitary images, as it were. "She's my friend, in the delightful guise of a woman," Ulrich thought. "Though this is complicated by her really being a woman! "
And Agathe asked him: "Is there really no such thing as love? "
"Yes, there is," Ulrich said. "But it's the exception. You have to make distinctions. There is first of all a physical experience, to be classed with other irritations ofthe skin, a purely sensory indulgence without any requisite moral or emotional accessories. Second, emo- tions are usually involved, which become intensely associated with the physical experience, but in such a way that with slight variations they are the same for everyone; so that even the compulsory same- ness oflove's climax belongs on the physical-mechanical level rather than on that ofthe soul. Finally, there is also the real spiritual experi- ence of love, which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the other two. One can love God, one can love the world; perhaps one can only love God and the world. Anyway, it's not necessary to love a person. But if one does, the physical element takes over the whole world, so that it turns everything upside down, as it were. . . . " Ulrich broke off.
Agathe had flushed a dark red. If Ulrich had deliberately chosen and ordered his words with the hypocritical intention of suggesting to Agathe's imagination the physical act oflove inevitably associated with them, he could not have succeeded better.
He looked around for a match, simply to undo the unintended ef- fect of his speech by some diversion. "Anyway," he said, "love, if that is love, is an exceptional case, and can't serve as a model for everyday action. "
Agathe had reached for the comers of the tablecloth and wrapped them around her legs. 'Wouldn't strangers, who saw and heard us, talk about a perverse feeling? " she asked suddenly.
"Nonsense! " Ulrich maintained. 'What each of us feels is the shadowy doubling ofhis own selfin the other's opposite nature. I'm a man, you're a woman; it's widely believed that every person bears within him the shadowy or repressed opposite inclination; at least each of us has this longing, unless he's disgustingly self-satisfied. So my counterpart has come to light and slipped into you, and yours into
10. 2. 2 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
me, and they feel marvelous in their exchanged bodies, simply be- cause they don't have much respect for their previous environment and the view from it! "
Agathe thought: "He's gone into all that more deeply before. Why is he attenuating it now? "
What Ulrich was saying did, of course, fit quite well with the life they were leading as two companions who occasionally, when the company of others leaves them free, take time to marvel at the fact that they are man and woman but at the same time twins. Once two people find themselves in such an accord their relations with the world as individuals take on the charm of an invisible game of hide- and-seek, each switching bodies and costumes with the other, prac- ticing their carefree two-in-one deception for an unsuspecting world behind two kinds of masks. But this playful and overemphatic fun- as children sometimes make noise instead ofbeing noisy-was not in keeping with the gravity that sometimes, from a great height, laid its shadow on the hearts of this brother and sister, making them fall unexpectedly silent. So it happened one evening, as they exchanged a few chance words more before going to bed, that Ulrich saw his sister in her long nightgown and tried to joke about it, saying: "A hundred years ago I would have cried out: 'My angel! ' Too bad the term has become obsolete! " He fell silent, disconcerted by the thought: "Isn't that the only word I should be using for her? Not friend, not wife! 'Heavenly creature! ' was another term they used. Ridiculously high-flown, of course, but nevertheless better than not having the courage of one's convictions. "
Agathe was thinking: "A man in pajamas doesn't look like an angel! " But he did look fierce and broad-shouldered, and she sud- denly felt ashamed of her wish that this strong face framed in tousled hair might cast its shadow over her eyes. In some physically innocent way she was sensually aroused; her blood was pulsing through her body in wild waves, spreading over her skin while leaving her drained and weak inside. Since she was not such a fanatical person as her brother, she simply felt what she felt. When she was tender, she was tender, not lit up with ideas or moral impulses, even though this was something she loved in him as much as she shrank from it.
Again and again, day after day, Ulrich summed it all up in the idea: Basically, it's a protest against life! They walked arm in arm through
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 2 3
the city: well matched in height, well matched in age, well matched in their attitude to things. Strolling along side by side, they could not see much of each other. Tall figures, pleasing to one another, they walked together for the sheer enjoyment of it, feeling at every step the breath of their contact in the midst of all the strangeness sur- rounding them. We belong together! This feeling, far from uncom- mon, made them happy, and half within it, half in resistance to it, Ulrich said: "It's funny we should be so content to be brother and sister. The world in general regards it as a commonplace relation- ship, but we're making something special of it! "
Perhaps he had hurt her feelings in saying this. He added: "But it's what I've always wished for. When I was a boy I made up my mind to marry only a woman I'd have adopted as a child and brought up my- self. I think plenty of men have such fantasies; they're pretty banal, I suppose. But as an adult I actually once fell in love with such a child, though it was only for two or three hours! " And he went on to tell her about it:
"It happened on a streetcar. A little girl of about twelve got on, with her very young father or her older brother. The way she got on, sat down, and casually handed the fare to the conductor for both of them, she was every inch a lady, without a trace of childish affecta- tion. It was the same when she talked to her companion, or quietly listened to him. She was extraordinarily beautiful: brunette, with full lips, strong eyebrows, a slightly turned-up nose; perhaps a dark- haired Polish girl, or a southern Slav. As I recall, the dress she was wearing suggested some national costume: long jacket, tight waist, laced bodice, and frills at the throat and wrists, all in its way as per- fect as the little person herself. Perhaps she was Albanian. I was sit- ting too far away to be able to hear what she was saying. It struck me that the features of her grave little face were mature beyond her years, so that she seemed fully adult; yet it was not the face of a dwarfishly tiny woman, but unquestionably that of a child. On the other hand, it was not at all the immature stage of an adult's face. It seems that a woman's face may sometimes be complete at the age of twelve, formed even spiritually like a perfect first sketch from the hand of a master, so that everything added later to develop the pic- ture only spoils its original greatness. One can fall passionately in love with such a phenomenon, mortally so, and really without any
1024 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
physical desire. I remember I glanced around nervously at the other passengers, because I felt as if I were falling apart. When she got off, I got off, too, but lost her in the crowded street," he ended his little story.
After giving it a moment or two, Agathe asked with a smile: "And how does that fit in with the time for love being over, leaving only sex and companionship? "
"It doesn't fit in at all! " Ulrich laughed.
His sister thought about it, and remarked with a noticeable harsh- ness-it seemed to be an intentional repetition of the words he had used the evening of her arrival: "All men like to play at little-brother- and-little-sister. There must really be some stupid idea behind it. These little brothers and sisters call each other 'father' and 'mother' when they're not quite sober. "
Ulrich was taken aback It was not merely that Agathe was right, for gifted women are merciless observers of the men they love in their lives; but not being inclined to theorize, they make no use of their discoveries except when provoked. He felt somewhat affronted.
"Of course they've got a psychological explanation for it," he said hesitantly. "It's pretty obvious that the two of us are psychologically suspect. Incestuous tendencies, demonstrable in early childhood, to- gether with antisocial dispositions and a rebellious attitude toward life. Possibly even a not sufficiently rooted gender identification, al- though I-"
"Nor I, either! " Agathe broke in, laughing, if possibly somewhat against her will. "I have no use for women at all! "
"It really doesn't matter anyway," Ulrich said. "Psychic entrails, in any case. You might also say that there's a sultanesque need to be the only one who adores and is adored, to the exclusion of the rest of the world. In the ancient Orient it produced the harem, and today we have family, love, and the dog. And I don't mind saying that the mania to possess another person so entirely that no one else can come anywhere near is a sign of personal loneliness within the human community, which even the socialists rarely deny. If you'd like to see it that way, we represent nothing but a bourgeois extrava- gance! Oh, look at that! How splendid! " He broke off, pulling on her arm.
They were standing at the edge of a small marketplace surrounded
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 2 5
by old houses. Around the neoclassical statue of some intellectual giant, colorful vegetables were spread out, the big canvas umbrellas of the market stands had been set up, fruits tumbled, baskets were being dragged along, dogs chased away from the outspread trea- sures, and one saw the red faces of rough men and women. The air throbbed and pounded with industriously loud voices and smelled of the sun that shines on the earthly hodgepodge.
"Can we help loving the world when we simply see it and smell it? " Ulrich asked spiritedly. "Yet we can't love it, because we don't agree with what's inside people's heads," he added.
This did not happen to be a reservation entirely to Agathe's taste, and she did not reply. But she pressed her brother's ann, and both of them understoodthatthiswasasifshehadgentlylaidherhandover his mouth.
Ulrich laughed, saying: "Not that I like myself either! That's what happens when one is always finding fault with other people. But even I have to be able to love something, and a Siamese sister who's nei- ther me nor herself, but just as much me as herself, is clearly the only point where everything comes together for me! "
He had cheered up again. And Agathe usually went along with his mood. But they never again talked as they had on the first night of their reunion, or before. That was gone, like castles in the clouds, which, when they hover over city streets teeming with life instead of over the deserted countryside, are hard to believe in.
