No More Learning

"
"And so it is," Amheim replied, "but the·simple virtues of courage, chivalry, and self-di~cipline, which his caste developed to such an ex- emplary degree, will always keep their value. In a wbrd, the ideal of the Master! I have learned to value the principle of the Master more and more in my business life as well. "
"Then. the ideal of the Masferwould, in the end, amount to almost the same thing as that of the Poem? " Diotima asked pensively.
"That's a wonderful way of putting it! " her friend agreed. "It's the secret of a vigorous life. Reason alone is not enough for a moral or a political life. Reason has its limits; what really matters always takes
place above and beyond it. Great men have always loved music, po- etry, form, discipline, religion, and chivalry. I would go so far as to say, in fact, that they and only they can succeed! Those are the so- called imponderables that make the master, make the man, and there is something, some obscure residue of this, in what the popu- lace admires in the actor. But to return to your cousin: Of course it isn't simply a matter of turning conservative when we begin to prefer our comforts to sowing wild oats. But even if we were all born as revolutionaries, there comes a day when we notice that a simple, good person, regardless of what we think of his intelligence-a de- pendable, cheerful, brave, loyal human being, in other words-is not only a rare delight but also the true soil from which all life springs. Such wisdom is as old as the hills, but it denotes a change in taste, which iri our youth naturally favors the exotic, to that of the mature man. I admire your cousin in many respects, or if this is saying too much, because there is little he says that is defensible, I could almost say that I love him, for something that is extraordinarily free and in- dependent in his nature, together with much that. is inwardly rigid and eccentric; it is just this mixture of freedom and mental rigidity that may account for his special charm, by the way. But he is a dan- gerous man, with his infantile moral exoticism and his highly devel- oped intelligence that is always on the lookout for some adventure
without knowing what, exactly, is egging him on. "
77
ARNHEIM AS THE DARLING OF THE PRESS
Diotima repeatedly had occasion to contemplate the imponderables of Arnheim's attitude.
It was on his advice, for instance, that the representatives of the leading newspapers were sometimes invited to the sessions of the Council (as Section Chief Tuzzi had somewhat sarcastically: dubbed
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the Committee to Draft a Guiding Resolution with Regard to the Seventieth Jubilee of His Majesty's Reign), and Arnheim, who was only a guest without any official status, enjoyed a degree of attention from them that put all other celebrities in the shade. For some rea- son newspapers are not the laboratories and experimental stations of the mind that they could be, to the public's great benefit, but usually only its warehouses and stock exchanges. If he were alive today, Plato-to take him as an example, because along with a dozen others he is regarded as the greatest thinker who ever lived-would cer- tainly be ecstatic about a news industry capable of creating, exchang- ing, refining a new idea every day; where information keeps pouring in from the ends of the earth with a speediness he never knew in his own lifetime, while a staff of demiurges is on hand to check it all out instantaneously for its content of reason and reality. He would have supposed a newspaper office to be that topos uranios, that heavenly realm of ideas, which he has described so impressively that to this day all the better class of people are still idealists when talking to their children or employees. And ofcourse ifPlato were to walk sud- denly into a news editor's office today and prove himselfto be indeed- that great author who died over two thousand years ago, he would be a tremendous sensation and would instantly be showered with the most lucrative offers. If he were then capable of writing a volume of philosophical travel pieces in three weeks, and a few thousand of his well-known short stories, perhaps even tum one or the other of his older works into a fUm, he could undoubtedly do very well for him- self for a considerable period of time. The moment his return had ceased to be news, however, and Mr. Plato tried to put into practice one of his well-known ideas, which had never quite come into their own, the editor in chief would ask him to submit only a nice little column on the subject now and then for the Life and Leisure section (but in the easiest and most lively style possible, not heavy: remem- ber the readers), and the features editor would add that he was sorry, but he could use such a contribution only once a month or so, be- cause there were so many other good writers to be considered. And both of these gentlemen would end up feeling that they had done quite a lot for a man who might indeed be the Nestor of European ,:mblicists but still was a bit outdated, and certainly not in a class for
current newsworthiness with a man like, for instance, Paul Arnheim.
Amheim himselfwould ofcourse never concur in this, because his reverence for all greatness would be offended by it, yet in many re- spects he was bound to find it understandable. These days, with ev- erything in the world being talked about helter-skelter, when prophets and charlatans rely on the same phrases, except for certain subtle differences no busy man has the time to keep track of1 and editors are constantly pestered with alarms that someone or other may be a genius, it is very hard to recognize the tr. ue value of a man or an idea; all one can do is keep an ear cocked for the moment when all the murmurs and whispers and shufflings at the editor's door grow loud enough to be admitted as the voice of the people. From that moment on, however, genius does enter a new state. It ceases to be a windy business of book or drama reViews, with all their contra- dictions, which the paper's ideal reader will take no more seriously than the babble ofchildren, but has achieved the status of a fact, with all the consequences that entails.
Fools who keep inveighing against such realities overlook the des- perate need for idealism. behind all this. The world of those who write and have to write is chockablock with big terms and concepts that have lost their referent. The attributes of great men and great causes tend to outlive whatever it was that gave rise to them, and so a great many attributes are left over. They had once been coined by a distinguished man for another distinguished man, but these men are long dead, and the surviving concepts must be put to some use. Writ- ers are in consequence always searching for the right man for, the words. Shakespeare's "powerful imagination," Goethe's "universal- ity," Dostoyevsky's "psychological depth," and all the other legacies of a long literary history hang like endless laundry in the heads of writers, and the resulting mental overstock reduces these people to calling every tennis player a profound strategist and every fashiona- ble writer a great man ofletters. Obviously they will always be grate- ful for a chance to use up their surplus without reducing its value. But it must always be applied to a man whosfl distinction is already an established fact, so that everyone understands that the words can be pinned on him, and it hardly matters where. And such a man was
Amheim, because Amheim was Amheim, whose very birth as the heir of his father was already an event, and there could be no doubt about the news value of anything he said. All he had to do was to take
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just enough trouble to say something that, with a little goodwill, could be regarded as significant. Arnheim himself formulated it as a principle: "Much ofa man's real importance," he used to say, "lies in his ability to make himself understood by his contemporaries. "
So now once again he got along beautifully, as always, with the papers, which fastened on him. He could afford to smile at those am- bitious financiers or politicians who stand ready to buy up whole for- ests of newspapers. Such an effort to influence public opinion seemed to him as uncouth and timid as offering to pay for a woman's love when it could be had so much more cheaply just by stimulating her imagination. He had told the reporters who asked him about the Council that the very fact of its convocation proved its profound ne- cessity, because nothirig in world history happened without a rational cause; a sentiment that so fully corresponded to their professional outlook that it was quoted appreciatively in several newspapers. It was in fact, on closer scrutiny, a good statement. For the kind ofpeo- ple who take everything that happens seriously would feel nauseated if they could assume that not every event has a good cause; on the other hand, they would also rather bite their tongues, as we know, than take anything too seriously, even significance itself. The pinch of pessimism in Arnheim's statement greatly contributed to the solid dignity of their professional endeavors, and even the fact that he was a foreigner could be read as a sign that the whole world was concern- ing itself with these enormously interesting movements in Austria.
The other celebrities. in attendance did not have the same instinc- tive flair for pleasing the press, but they noticed its e. ffect; and since celebrities in general know little about each other and in that train to immortality in which they are traveling together usually set eyes on each other only in the dining car, the special public recognition Am- heim enjoyed had its unexamined effect on them too; and even though he continued to stay away from all official committee meet- ings, in the Council itselfhe came quite automatically to play the role of a central figure. The further this meeting of minds progressed, the clearer it became that he was the really sensational element in it, al- though he basically did nothing to create that effect other than, pos- sibly, by expressing in conversation with its famous members his judgment, which could be interpreted as an openhearted pessimism, that the Council could hardly be expected to accomplish much of
anything, but that, on the other hand, so noble a task merited all the trustful devotion one could muster. So subtle a pessimism inspires confidence even in great minds, for the idea that the intellect nowa- days cannot really accomplish much is, for some reason, more conge- nial than the possibility that the intellect of some colleague might succeed in accomplishing something, and Arnheim's reserved judg- ment about the Council could be taken as leaning toward the more acceptable negative chance.
DIOTIMA'S METAMORPHOSES
Diotima's feelings did not develop in quite the same straight ascend- ing line as Arnheim's success.
It sometimes happened, in . the midst of a social gathering in her transformed apartment, with its rooms stripped of their usual fur- nishings, that she felt as though she were awakening in some dream- land. She would be standing there, surrounded by space and people, the light of the chandelier flowing over her hair and on down her shoulders and hips so that she seemed to feel its bright flood, and she was all statue, like some figure on a fountain, at the epicenter of the world, drenched in sublime spiritual grace. She saw it as a once-in-a- lifetime chance to bring about everything that she had always held to be most important and supremely great, and she no longer cared par- ticularly that she had no very clear idea what this might be. The whole apartment, the presence of the people in it, the whole eve- ning, enveloped her like a dress lined in yellow silk; she felt it on her skin, though she did not see it. From time to time she turned her gaze to Amheim, who was usually standing somewhere in a group of men, talking; but then she realized that her gaze had been resting on him all along, and it was only her awakening that now followed her eyes. Even when she was not looking at him, the outermost wingtips
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of her soul, so to speak, always rested on his face and told her what was going on in it.
And as long as we're on the subject of feathers, one might add that there was also something dreamlike in his appearance, something of a businessman with golden angel's wings who had descended into the midst ofthis gathering. The rattle of express and luxury trains, the humming of limousines, the peace of hunting lodges, the flap- ping of sails on a yacht, were all in these invisible, folded plumes that rustled softly whenever he raised his arm in a gesture, in these wings with which her feelings had dressed him. Amheim was often away on his trips, as always, and this gave his presence a permanent air of reaching out beyond the present moment and local events, impor- tant as they were for Diotima. She knew that while he was in town a secret coming and going of telegrams, visitors, and emissaries in charge of his business affairs was constantly afoot. She had gradually formed an idea, perhaps even an exaggerated one, of the importance of a firm with global interests and its involvement in world affairs on the highest level. Arnheim sometimes told breathtaking stories about the ramifications of international finance, overseas trade, and their connection with politics; quite new horizons, indeed first-ever hori- zons, opened up for Diotima; all it took was to hear him once on the subject of Franco-German confrontation, of which Diotima knew not much more than that almost everyone she knew felt slightly anti- German while acknowledging a certain burdensome frateqtal duty. In Amheim's presentation it became a Gallo-Celtic-:-East European-
Transalpine complex interlinked with the problems of the coal mines of Lorraine and the oil fields of Mexico as well as the antagonism between Anglo- and Latin America. Of such ramifications Section Chief Tuzzi had no idea, or showed none. He confined himself to pointing out to Diotima yet again, from time to time, that in his opin- ion Amheim's presence and marked preference for their home was definitely inexplicable without·ulterior motives, but he did not say what these might be, and did not know himself.
And so his wife was deeply impressed with the superiority ofa new breed of men over the methods of an obsolete diplomacy. She had not forgotten the moment ofher decision to make Amheim the head of the Parallel Campaign. It had been the first great idea of her life, accompanied by the most amazing sensations of dreaming and melt-
ing all at once, and as the idea broadened out into marvelous dis- tances, everything that had made up Diotima's life hitherto melted toward it. What little part of this state of mind could be put into words did not amount to much: a glittering, a flickering, a strange emptiness and flight of ideas; nor did she mind admitting-Diotima thought-that its nucleus, the thought of placing Amheim at the head of the unprecedented patriotic campaign, would be impossible. Amheim was a foreigner in Austria, there was no getting around it. To put him in charge from the start, as she had presented it to her husband and Count Leinsdorf, was simply not feasible. Neverthe- less, everything had turned out as, in her spellbound state, she had known it would. For all her other efforts to inject a truly inspiring content into the campaign had remained fruitless so far; the great first session, all the committee work, even this special council, against which Amheim, by some strange irony of fate, had actually warned her himself, had so far led to nothing other than . . . Amheim, whom people were always crowding around, who had to keep talking endlessly, who formed the secret focus of all their hopes. He was the New Man, destined to take over the helm of history from the old powers. She could flatter herself that it was she who had discovered him on sight•. talked with him about the entrance of the New Man into the spheres of power, and helped him against all resistance to follow his path here. Even if Arnheim did have ulterior motives, as Tuzzi suspected, Diotima would in any case have felt almost justified in supporting him all the way; at such a fateful moment one cannot stop to split hairs, and Diotima felt with absolute certainty that her life had reached a pinnacle. .
Apart from the born losers and the lucky devils of this world, one human being is about as badly offas the next, but they lead their lives on different levels. For the man of today, who has on the whole not much perspective on the meaning of his life, the confident sense of his own level is a most desirable second best. In exceptional cases this confidence can rise to an ecstasy ofheight or power, just as there are those who tum giddy when they know themselves to be high up in a building, even though they are standing in the middle of a room with the windows shut. When Diotima reflected that one of the most influential men in Europe was working together with her to. infuse ideas into the strongholds of power, and how destiny itself must have
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brought them together, and what was going on, even if on this partic- ular day nothing special was actually happening on this high floor of a World-Austrian humanitarian. undertaking: when she reflected on it, her tangled ~houghts soon resembled knots that had slackened into loops; they came more easily and were soon racing along, accompanied by. an unusual sense of joy and success, as though streaming toward her and bringing flashes of amazing insights. Her self-confidence rose; successes she would never have dreamed of lay Within reach; she felt more cheerful than was her habit, sometimes even a daring joke would occur to her, and something she had never known in all her lif~. waves of gaiety, even of exuberance, ~oursed through her. She felt as though she were high up in a turret, in a room with many windows. But it was also a queer, scary feeling. She felt plagued by an indefmable, general, indescribable sense of well- being that made her want to do things, do something, anything, though she couldn't imagine what. It was as if she had suddenly become aware of the globe turning under her feet and could not shake this awareness off; or as if all this excitement without tangible cause were as inhibiting as a dog leaping about at one's feet, though how it had got there no one could say. And so Diotima sometimes
worried about the change she had undergone without her own ex- press permission, and her condition, all in all, most resembled that bright, nervous gray, the color of the faiflt, weightless sky at the hour of utter hopelessness, when the heat is at its worst.
At this point Djotima's striving toward the ideal underwent a sig- nificant change. This striving had never been clearly distinguishable from the proper admiration for all greatness; it was a noble idealism, a decorous high-mindedness, a disciplined exaltation, and since, in these more robust times of ours, we hardly recognize any of this any- more, perhaps it should be laid out briefly once more. This idealism had nothing to do with realities, because reality always involves work- ing at something, which means getting your hands dirty. I t was more like the flower paintings done by archduchesses, for whom flowers were the-only seemly choice of life study, and quite typical of this idealism was the term "culture"; it regarded itself as the vessel of culture. But this idealism could also be described as harmonious, be- cause it detested everything unbalanced and saw the bisk of educa- tion as reconciling all the crude antagonisms sadly so prevalent in the
world; in short, it was not perhaps so very different from what we still mean-though of course only wherever the great middle-class tradi. . : tions are still upheld-by a sound and pure idealism, the kind that distinguishes most carefully between conflicts worthy of its concern and those that aren't, and which, ~ecause of its faith in a higher hu- manity, does not share the conviction of the saints (along with doc- tors and engineers) that even moral garbage may contain unused heavenly fuels. Formerly, had Diotima been roused from her sleep and asked what she wanted, she would have said, without having to think, that a living soul's powers of love felt the need to share itself with all the world; but after being awake for a while she would have modified this by noting that in our present world, with its overgrowth of civilization and intellect, it would perhaps be safer to speak more cautiously, even in cases of the highest sensibilities, of a force analo- gous to the power of love. And she would really have meant it. Even today there are still thousands of people who are like atomizers, spraying the power of love around like a perfume.
When Diotima sat down to read her books she brushed her lovely hair back from her forehead, which gave her a logical air, and pro- ceeded to read responsibly, with a view to extracting from what she called culture whatever might help her in the none too easy social situation in which she found herself; and this was ·how she lived, dis- tributing herself in tiny droplets of rarefied love among all the things that deserved it, condensing as a cloudy breath upon them at some distance from herself, so that she was actually left with nothing but the empty bottle ofher body, one of the household effects of Section Chief Tuzzi. Before Amheim appeared on the scene this had finally led to moods of deep depression, when Diotima was still alone be- tween her husband and that most incandescent event ofher life, the Parallel Campaign; since then, however, her energies had quite natu- rally regrouped. The power of love had firmly pulled itself together and had reentered her body, as it were, and the "analogous" force had become something very selfish and unmistakable. The feeling her cousin had been the first to evoke, that she was about to take some kind of action and that something she could not yet bring her- self to imagine was about to happen between herself and Amheim, had now grown so much more intense than anything she had ever known that she felt exactly as if she had passed from dreaming to
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waking. A void, typical of the first stage of that transition, had opened up in Diotima, and she seemed to remember descriptions she had read that suggested it might herald the beginning of a great passion. She thought she could understand in that light much of what Arn- heim had been saying to her recently. Everything he told her about his position, the qualities needed and the duties laid upon him by his life, was in preparation for something inexorable, and Diotima, sur- veying everything that had been her ideal hitherto, felt the pessi- mism that casts its shadow on every act, just as, with one's trunks all packed, one casts a last look around the rooms that have been. home for years and are now seen with the life nearly gone out of them. The unexpected effect wa. S that Diotima's soul, temporarily unsupervised by the higher faculties, behaved like a truant schoolboy boisterously careening around until he is overcome by the sadness ofhis pointless liberty; and owing to this curious situation something briefly entered into her relations with her husband, despite the increasing distance between them, that bore a strange resemblance, if not to. a late springtime of love, then at least to a potpourri of all love's seasons.
The little Section Chief, with his pleasant aroma of tanned dry skin, was baffled by what was happening. He had noticed several times that his wife, when guests were present, seemed strangely. dreamy, withdrawn, remote, and highly nervous, truly nervous and yet far away at the same time; still, when they were alone again and he approached her, somewhat intimidated and disconcerted, to ask her about it, she would suddenly throw her arms around him with inexplicable exuberance, and the pair of lips she pressed on his fore- head were so hot they reminded him of the barber's curling irons on his mustache when they got too close to his skin. Such unscheduled affection was not to his taste, and he stealthily wiped away its traces when Diotima was not looking. But whenever he felt like taking her in his arms, or had actually done so, which made it even worse, she hotly accused him ofnever having loved her, ofonly pouncing on her like an animal. Now, from the days of his youth, a certain degree of touchiness and moodiness had of course formed part of his image of a desirable woman who would complement a man's nature, and the ineffable grace with which Diotima proffered a cup of tea, picked up a new book, or passed judgment on a problem that, in his opinion, she could not possibly understand, had always delighted him with its
formal perfection. It all affected him like perfect background music by which to dine, something he dearly loved; but then, Tuzzi was also sure that the detachment of music from dining (or from church ser- vices) and the endeavor to cultivate it for its own sake was a sign of middle-class presumption, even though he'knew that one should never say so; anyway, it was not the sort of thing he ever seriously concerned himself with. But what was he to do when Diotima hugged him one minute and the next denounced him as a man be- side whom a person with a soul of her own could never be free to fulfill herself? What could a man say in answer to exhortations that he give more thought to the oceanic depths of beauty within, instead of fastening on her body? All of a sudden he was supposed to see the difference between Eros, the free spirit of love unburdened by lust, and mechanical sex. It was all, of course, stuff she had read some- where, and comical at that, but when a woman lectures a man in this fashion as she is undressing in front ofhim! -Tuzzi thought-it be- comes downright insulting. For he could not fail to notice that Di- otima's underwear had evolved in the direction of a certain worldly frivolity. She had always dressed with care and deliberation, since her social position required her to be smart without dressing above her station. But within the gradations from respectable durability to filmy, frilly provocation she was now making concessions to beauty she would once have called unworthy of an intelligent woman. How- ever, when Giovanni (Tuizi's name was really Hans, but he had been stylishly rechristened in keeping with his surname) noticed, she blushed down to her shoulders and brought up Frau von Stein, who had made no concessions even to a Goethe! So now Section Chief Tuzzi was no longer free, when he felt that the time had come, to escape from those weighty concerns of state beyond the private sphere and fmd release in the very lap of his own household; he found himself instead at Diotima's mercy; instead of the former clear line between mental exertion at the office and physical relaxation at home, he was faced with a virtual return to the strenuous and slightly ridiculous union of mind and body appropriate to courtship, to carry-
ing on like a cock pheasant or some lovesick, versifying youth.
It is hardly too much to say that he found this utterly revolting at times, and that because of it his wife's public success at this time caused him physical pain. Diotima had public opinion on her side,
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something Section Chief Tuzzi respected so unconditionally that he shied away from asserting his authority or meeting her incomprehen- sible moods with sarcasm, lest he seem unappreciative. It began to dawn on him that being the husband of a distinguished woman was a painful affliction that had to be carefully hidden from the world, much like an accidental castration. He took great pains to show noth- ing ofwhat he felt, came and went inconspicuously, always in a cloud of amiable official impenetrability, whenever Diotima had visitors or meetings, dropping the occasional politely. helpful suggestion or comforting ironic remark, and seemed to lead his life in a separate but friendly adjoining world, always in accord with Diotima, even en- trusting her with a little mission now and then when they were alone, publicly encouraging Amheim's visits to his home; in whatever spare time he had from the weighty cares of office, he studied Amheim's publications, and hated men who published their writings as the cause of his troubles.
For this was the question to which the main question-why was Arnheim frequenting his house? -sometimes reduced itself: Why did Amheim write? Writing is a particular form of chatter, and Tuzzi couldn't stand men who chatter. They made him want to clench his jaws and spit through his teeth like a sailor. . There were exceptions, of course; that he granted. He knew some high-ranking civil servants who had written their memoirs after they retired, and others who sometimes wrote for the newspapers. As Tuzzi saw it, a civil servant wrote only when he was dissatisfied or when he was a Jew, because Tuzzi held that Jews were ambitious and dissatisfied. Then there were also men of achievement who had written books about their experiences, but only in their old age and in America or, at most, in England. Besides, Tuzzi was of course versed in literature and, like all diplomats, had a preference for memoirs, from which one could pick up witty remarks and insights into the workings of men's minds. Still, that such works were no longer being written must signify something, so perhaps his was an old-fashioned taste, not in keeping with an age of functionalism. Finally, people wrote because it was their profession. Tuzzi could accept this without reservation, so long as it brought in enough money, or fell into the after all recognized category of "poet. " He even felt quite honored to receive the leading men in this profession, in which he had hitherto included those writ-
ers supported by the Foreign Office's Save the Reptile Fund, but without giving it much thought he would also have counted the Iliad and the Sermon on the Mount, both of which he certainly revered, among those achievements we owe to a profession that may either be practiced independently or have to he subsidized. But why a man like Amheim, who had no need whatsoever to write at all, should write so much was a problem behind which Tuzzi, now more than ever, suspected something that persisted in eluding him.
79
SOLIMAN IN LOVE
Soliman, the little black slave or African prince, as the case may be, had meanwhile managed to convince Rachel, Diotima's little maid or, alternatively, confidante, that they would have to keep a sharp eye on what went on in the house, in order to forestall a sinister plan of Arnheim's when the time came. Not that she was entirely convinced, but the two of them kept watch like conspirators, and always eaves- dropped when there were visitors. Soliman talked endlessly about couriers coming and going and mysterious visitors to his master at the hotel, and said he was prepared to give his oath as an African prince that he would get to the bottom of it. The African princely oath entailed Rachel's slipping her hand between the buttons of his jacket and shirt so she could lay it on his bare chest while he recited the vow, and his hand doing the same to her; this Rachel declined. All the same, little Rachel, who dressed and undressed her mistress and took her telephone calls, and through whose hands Diotima's black hair flowed every morning and evening while golden words from her mistress's lips flowed through her ears: this ambitious little creature. who had been living as though posed atop a pillar ever since the Parallel Campaign had started, trembling with adoration that flowed upward from her eyes to the goddess she served day after day,
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had for some time taken pleasure in spying on her, plain and simple. Through open doors from neighboring rooms or the crack of a slowly closing door or simply while lingering over some small task nearby, she tried to overhear everything said by Diotima and Am- heim, Tuzzi and Ulrich, and picked up glances, sighs, hand-kissings, words, laughter, gestures, like scraps of a tom-up document she could not fit together again. But most of all it was the little keyhole that opened up vistas which curiously, somehow, reminded Rachel of the long-forgotten time when she lost her virtue. That tiny open- ing let her gaze slip deep inside the room's interior, where people broken . up into sections flat as cardboard moved about, their voices no longer held within the fine borders of words but proliferating into meaningless sound; the awe, reverence, and admiration that bound Rachel to these people then came wildly undone, dissolving in ex- citement as when a lover suddenly penetrates, with all. his being, so deeply into the beloved that ~verythinggrows dark before her eyes, and behind the drawn curtain of her skin the light flares up. Little
Rachel crouched at the keyhole, her black dress tight over her knees, throat, and shoulders; Soliman cowered beside her in his live~, like hot chocolate in a dark-green cup; when he happened to lose his bal- ance he would steady himself against Rachel's shoulder, knee, or skirt with a quick movement of his hand, letting it rest there for an instant till he let go until only his fingertips still touched her; then these·, too, were slowly, caressingly, withdrawn. He couldn't help gig- gling, and then Rachel would lay her soft fingers on the swelling bol- sters of his lips.
Unlike Rachel, Soliman was not interested in the Council, and whenever he could dodged the chore of_helping her serve the guests. He preferred coming along on Amheim's private visits to Diotima. This meant waiting in the kitchen for Rachel to be free again, to the annoyance of the cook, who had so enjoyed his first visit, because he had since then apparently lost his tongue. Bu~ Rachel never had time to sit in the kitchen for long, and when she was gone again the cook, a single woman in her thirties, paid him little motherly attentions. He put up with that for a while, with an extremely haughty look on his chocolate face; then he would get up, like someone who has forgot- ten something or is looking for something, his eyes rolled up to the ceiling, his back to the door, walking backward as ifto see the ceilin~
better. The cook already knew this clumsy act was coming, as soon as he stood up and rolled his eyes, showing the whites; but she was too annoyed and jealous to let on that she noticed, until Soliman finally ceased bothering about his act, now reduced to a formula that took him to the threshold of the brightly lit kitchen, where he would hesi- tate with a most ingenuous expression on his face. The cook then made a point of not looking'in his direction. Soliman glided back- ward into the dark foyer, like a dark image in dark water, listening for another second, quite unnecessarily, and then suddenly tookto pur- suing Rachel with fantastic leaps throughout the strange house.
Section Chief Tuzzi was never at home, and Soliman was not wor- ried about Amheim and Diotima, knowing that they had ears oniy for each other. He had even tested this now and then, by knocking something over, without being noticed. He lorded it throughout the rooms like a stag in the forest. His blood pressed upward through his. head like antlers with eighteen dagger points. The tips of these ant- lers brushed walls and ceilings. The blinds were usually drawn in all the rooms not in use, to save the colors of the furnishings from being faded by the sunlight, and so Soliman rowed through this twilit world with wide movements of his arms, as . if through leafy undergrowth. He enjoyed making a dramatic dance of it. He was intent on vio- lence. This youngster, whom women tended to spoil out of curiosity, had never actually had intercourse with a woman but only picked up all the vices of European ·boys, and his cravings were as yet so unap- peased by experience, so unbridled and flaring in every direction, that his lust did not know whether it was supposed to be quenched by Rachel's blood or her kisses, or else by a freezing up of all the veins in his body the moment he set eyes on his beloved.
Wherever Rachel might be hiding, he suddenly turned up, with a smile of triumph at his own cleverness. He would bar her way, re- specting the sanctity of neither the master's study nor Diotima's bed- room; he popped up from behind curtains, desk, closets, beds, making Rachel's heart stand still every time, in horror at such impu- dence, such a tempting of fate, whenever the dimness somewhere condensed into a black face in which two white rows of teeth gleamed. But the moment Soliman found himself face-to-face with Rachel in the flesh, he was instantly recalled to propriety. This girl was so much older than he, and so beautiful, like a fine shirt of his
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master's one couldn't bring oneself to soil the very first moment it came fresh from the laundry, and anyway she was so real that all his fantasies paled in her presence.
She scolded him for carrying on like a little savage, and tried to teach him some respect for Diotima, Arn- heim, and the great honor of having a share in the. Parallel Cam- paign; Soliman, for his part, always had little presents for her, whether it was a flower plucked from his master's bouquet for Di- otima, a cigarette stolen at the hotel, or a handful of bonbons he had scooped up in passing from a bowl; he only pressed Rachel's fingers and, as he gave her his gift, laid her hand on his heart, which wa-; flaming inside his black body like a red torch in a dark night.
There was also the time Soliman had made his way right into Ra- chel's room, where she had been banished with her sewing on striCt orders from Diotima, who had been disturbed the previous day by some scuffling in the hall while Amheim was with her. Before enter- ing on her house arrest she had quickly looked around for him with- out finding him, but when she stepped sadly into her little room, there he was, seated on her bed with a radiant expression on his face. Rachel hesitated before shutting the door, but Soliman leapt up and did it for her. Then he rummaged in his pockets, pulled some- thing out, blew on it to clean it off, and approached the girl like a hot flatiron.
"Hold out your hand! " he ordered.
Rachel held it out to him. He had some twinkling shirt studs in his hand and tried to fit them into her cuff. Rachel thought they were glass.
"Diamonds! " he explained proudly.
The girl, sensing that something was wrong, hastily pulled her arm back. Not that she had any definite suspicion; the son of an African prince, ·even if he had been kidnapped, might still have a few gem- stones sewed secretly into his shirt; one never knew. Yet some in- stinct made her afraid of these buttons, as if Soliman were offering her poison, and suddenly all the flowers and candies he had already given her took on in retrospect a sinister air. She pressed her hands to her body ~d looked at him aghast. It was time to speak to him seriously; she was older than he and in service with a kind mistress. But all she could think of was old saws like "Honesty is the best pol-
icy" or "Give the Devil your little finger and he'll take your whole hand. " She turned pale; such sayings were not enough. It was the wisdom she had been raised on at home; it was upright, proper, and simple as old pots and pans, but there was not much you could do with it; such a saying was usually just one sentence, with a period at the end. At this moment she felt ashamed· of parading such child- hood maxims, as one feels ashamed of old, threadbare clothes. That the ancient clothes chest from some poor man's attic turns up, a hun- dred years later; as a decorative item in the salons of the rich was beyond her ken; like all respectable simple people, she admired a new chair made of wickerwork. She tried hard to come up with something she had learned in her new life, but of all the thrilling scenes of love and terror she remembered from the books Diotima had given her, none fitted the present case; all those fine words and feelings were tied to their contexts and would be as much use here as a key in the wrong lock. It was the same with the great pronounce- ments and admonitions she had from Diotima. Rachel felt a red mist swirling around her and was close to tears. At length she said hotly: "I don't steal from my mistress! "
"Why not? " Soliman flashed his teeth at her.
"I just don't. "
"I didn't either. This is mine! " Soliman shouted.
A good mistress takes care of the likes of us, Rachel felt. Love was
what she felt for Diotima. Boundless respect for Arnheim. Deep loathing for those mischievous and mutinous types who are called subversive elements by the good police. But she could not find the words for all this; like a huge farm wagon overloaded with ·hay and fruit, with its brakes out of order, this huge ballast of feelings went rolling out_of control inside her.
"It's mine! Take it! " Soliman repeated, grabbing for Rachel's hand again. She snatched her arm away, and as he tried to hang on to it, with his anger mounting as he sensed he would have to let go be- cause his boyish strength was no match for Rachel's resistance--she was pulling away from his grasp with the whole weight ofher body- he lost his head, bent over, and bit her ferociously in the arm.
Rachel gave a scream, but had to stifle it, and hit Soliman in the face.
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But by this time his eyes were brimming with tears; he threw him- self to his knees, pressed his lips to Rachel's dress, and cried so hard that Rachel felt the hot wetness coming through to her thighs.
There she stood, helpless in the clutch of the kneeling boy who had taken hold of her skirt and was digging his head into her body. She had never in her life known such a feeling, and gently stroked the soft wiry mop of his hair with her fingers.
8o
GETTING TO KNOW GENERAL STUMM, WHO TURNS UP UNACCOUNTABLY AT THE COUNCIL
Meanwhile the Council had been enriched by a remarkable addition: despite the rigorous weeding out of those ;lSked to attend, the Gen- eral had turned up one evening, thanking Diotima effusively for the honor of her invitation. A soldier had only a modest part to play in the council chamber, he averred, but to be allowed to be present at so eminent a gathering, even if only as a silent bystander, was a dream he had cherished since his youth. Diotima gazed around over his head in silence, looking for the guilty party: Arnheim was talking, as one statesman to another, with His Grace; Ulrich, looking unutter- ably bored, stared at the buffet as though he were counting the cakes on it; the. familiar scene presented a solid front without the slightest opening for the intrusion of such an unusual suspicion. Yet there was nothing Diotima was so sure ofas that she herselfhad not invited the General, unless she had taken to walking in her sleep or having fits of amnesia. It was an awkward moment. Here stood the little General, undoubtedly with an invitation in the breast pocket of his forget-me- not-blue uniform tunic, for a man in his position could not possibly be suspected of so outrageous a gamble as coming without being asked; on the other hand, there in the library stood Diotima's grace-· ful desk, with all the leftover printed invitations in a locked drawer to
which Diotima almost alone had access. Tuzzi? she briefly won- dered, but this, too, was unlikely. How the invitation and the General had come together remained something of a spiritualistic conun- drum, and since Diotima was inclined to believe in the supernatural where she personally was concerned, she felt a shiver go through her from head to foot. But she had no choice, in any case, other than to bid the General welcome.
He had wondered a little at the invitation himself, incidentally, late as it was in coming, since Diotima had regrettably given him not the slightest sign of such an intention on his two visits, and he had noticed that the address, obviously written by an underling, showed inaccuracies as to his rank and the style of salutation not to be ex- pected from a lady of Diotima's social position. But the General was an easygoing m~, not inclined to suspect anything out of the ordi- nary, let alone anything out of this world. He assumed that there had been some little slip-up, which was not going to stop him from enjoy- ing his success.
For Major General Stumm von Bordwehr, Chief of the War Min- istry's Department for Military Education and Cultural Affairs, was sincerely pleased with the official mission that had come his way. On the eve of the great inaugural meeting of the Parallel Campaign, the ChiefofAdministration had sent for him and said: "Stumm, old man, you're the scholarly type. We're going to write you a letter of intro- duction, and off you go. Just give it the once-over and tell us what they're up to. " No amount of protesting afterward did any good; the fact that he had not succeeded in gaining a foothold in the Parallel Campaign was a mark against him in his ille, which he had tried in vain to erase by his visits to Diotima. So he had hotfooted it to Ad- ministration when the invitation arrived after all, and daintily setting one foot before the other under his paunch, with a touch of noncha- lant impudence, but a little out of breath, he reported that his care- fully planned initiatives had led to the expected result, after all.
"There yo~ are, then," Lieutenant General Frost von Aufbruch said. "I always knew you'd make it. " He offered Stumm a chair and a cigarette, switched on the electric sign over the door that said "In Conference, No Admittance," then briefed Stumm on his mission, mainly a matter of reconnaissance and reporting back. "There's re- ally nothing special we're after, you see, so long as you just show up
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there as often as you can and let them see we're in the picture; not being on any of the committees is probably in order, at this point, b~t there's no reason we shouldn't be in on any plans to honor our Su- preme Commander and Sovereign with some spiritual sort of pres- ent on his birthday. That's why I picked you, personally, and proposed you to His Excellency the Minister for this detail; nobody can have any objection. So good luck to you, old man, and do a good job. " lieutenant General Frost von Aufbruch dismissed him with a friendly nod, and General Stumm von Bordwehr forgot that a soldier is supposed to show no emotion, clicked his heels from the bottom of his heart, so to speak, and said, snapping to attention: "At your ser- vice, Excellency, and thanks! "
If there are civilians of warlike temperament, why can't there be military men who love the arts of peace? Kakania had them in quan- tity. They painted, collected insects, started stamp albums, or stud- ied world history. Their isolation in all those . tiny garrisons, and the fact that regulations did not permit officers to publish their intellec- tual findings except with the approval of their superiors, tended to give their efforts the appearance of something peculiarly personal. Gen~ral Stumm, too, had gone in for such hobbies in his earlier years. . He had originally served with the cavalry, but his small hands and short legs were ill-suited to clutching and controlling so unrea- sonable a beast as a horse, and he so conspicuously lacked the quali- ties needed for giving military orders that his superiors used to say that if a squadron were positioned on the barracks square with their horses' heads rather than their tails, as usual, toward the stable wall, he would be incapable of getting them out through the gates. In re- venge, little Stumm grew a beard, dark brown and rounded; he was the only officer in the Emperor's cavalry with a full beard, but regu- lations did not specifically forbid it. . Aiid he took to collecting pock- etknives, in a scientific spirit. On his pay he could not afford a collection of weapons, but of knives, classified according to their make, possession of corkscrew and nail file, grade of steel, place of origin, the casing material and so on, he soon had a large number; in his room stood tall cabinets with many shallow drawers, all neatly labeled, which brought him a reputation for learning. He could also make verses, and even as a cadet at the military academy he had al-
ways got the best grades in religion and composition; and so one day the colonel called him into the office.
"You'll never make a passable cavalry officer," he said. "If I stuck a suckling babe on a horse and sent it to the front, he'd put up about as much of a show as you do. But it's a long time since the regiment has had anyone at staff college. Why don't you apply, Stumm? "
So Stumm had two glorious years at the staff college in the capital. While he again failed to show the intellectual keenness needed to ride a horse, he attended every military concert, visited the mu- seums, and collected theater programs. He decided to switch to a civilian career but did not know how to go about it. In the end, he was found neither suited nor de. finitely unfit for service on the gen- eral staff; he was regarded as clumsy and unambitious, but some- thing of a philosopher, so for the next two years he was tentatively assigned to the general staff in command of an infantry division, which ended in his belonging, as a captain of cavalry, to the large number of those who~ as the general staff's auxiliary reserve, never get away from the li~e unless something unusual happens. Captain Stumm now served with another regiment, where he passed for an expert in military theory as well. But it did not take his new superiors long to catch on that in practical matters he was a babe-in-the-sad- dle. His career was a martyrdom, all the way up to lieutenant colonel; but even as a major he no longer dreamed of anything but a long furlough on half pay until he could be put on the retired list as an acting colonel, with the title and the uniform but not the pension of a colonel. He was through with giving any thought to promotion, which in line regiments went by seniority, in excruciating slow mo- tion; through with those mornings when, with the sun still rising, a man comes in from the barracks quadrangle, chewed out from head to foot, in dusty boots, and goes into the mess hall to add some empty wine bottles to the long emptiness of the day ahead; through with the so-called social life, the regimental stories, and those regimental amazons who spend their lives at their uniformed husbands' sides, echoing their progress up the ladder of rank on a social scale of sil-
very precision, tones so fuexorably refined as to be only just within range of the human ear. And he was through with those nights when dust, wine, boredom, the expanses of fields crossed on horseback,
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and the tyranny of the endless talk about horses drove every officer, married and unmarried alike, to those parties behind drawn curtains where women were stood on their heads to have champagne poured into their petticoats, and they got the inevitable Jew of those godfor~ saken little Galician garrison towns, who was a one-man institution like some small weather-beaten country store, where'you could get everything from love to saddle soap on credit, with interest-to pro- cure girls trembling with awe, fear, and curiosity. His only self-indul- gence in those days was the studious enrichment of his collection of knives and corkscrews, . many of them brought personally to the crackbrained lieutenant colonel by the same Jew, who polished them on his sleeve before he placeqthem on the table, with a reverent look on his face as though they were-prehistoric relics.
The unexpected breakthrough came when a fellow alumnus from the staff college remembered Stumm and proposed his transfer to the War Office, where the Department ofEducation was looking for an assistant to its chief; they wanted someone with an outstanding grasp ofthe civilian world. Two years later Stumm, by now advanced to colonel, had been entrusted with running the department. Now that he was mounted on a desk chair instead of the beast sacred to the cavalry, he was a different man. He made major general and could be fairly certain of making it to lieutenant general. He had of course shaved offhis beard long ago, but now, with advancing age, he was growing a forehead, and his tendency to tubbiness gave him the look of a well-rounded man in every sense of the term. He even be- came happy, and happiness can do wonders for a man's latent possi- bilities. He had been meant for a life at the top, and it showed in every way. Be it the sight ofa stylishly dressed woman, the showy bad taste of the latest Viennese architecture, the outspread colors of a great produce market, be it the grayish-brown asphalt air of the streets, that mild atmospheric asphalt full of miasmas, smells, and fragrances, or the noise that broke apart for a few seconds to let out one specific sound, be it the endless variety of the civilian world, even those little white restaurant tables that are so incredibly individ- ual although they undeniably all look alike: he took a delight in them all that was like the jingling of spurs in his head. His was a happiness such as civilians find only in taking a train ride into the country, knowing that they will pass a day green, happy, and overarched by
something or other. This feeling included a sense of his own signifi- cance, that of the War Office, of culture, of the meaningfulness of everyone else, and was so intense that Stumm had not once, since his arrival, thought ofvisiting the museums or going to the theater again. It was the sort of feeling of which one is hardly ever fully aware, though it permeates everything, from the general's gold braid to the voices of the carillons, and is itself a kind of music without which the dance of life would instantly come to a dead stop.
What the devil, he had certainly made his way! So Stumm thought as he now stood here, his cup brimming over, in these rooms, a part of this brilliant assemblage of great minds. Here he was, at last! The only uniform, where all else was steeped in intellect! And there was something more to fill him with amazement. Imagine the sky-blue sphere of the earth, slightly brightened by the forget-me-not blue of Stumm's military tunic, filled to bursting with happiness, with signifi- cance, with the mysterious brain-phosphorus of inward illumination, and at the very center ofthis sphere the General's heart, upon which was poised, like the Virgin Mary upon the serpent's head, a goddess of a woman whose smile is interwoven with everything and is in fact the mysterious magnetic center of all things: then you have, more or less, the impression Diotima made on Stumm von Bordwehr from the moment her image first filled his widening eyes. Actually, Gen- eral Stumm cared as little for women as he did for horses. His rather short, plump legs had never felt quite at home on horseback, and when he'd had to talk horses too, even when off duty, he used to dream of nights that he had ridden himself sore, down to the bone, and couldn't dismount; in the same fashion his comfort-loving nature had always disposed him against sexual athleticism, and the daily grind of his duties was sufficiently fatiguing to leave him with no need for letting off excess steam at night. Not that he had been a spoilsport in his day, but when he had to spend his evenings not with his knife collection but with his fellow officers, he usually resorted to a wise expedient; his sense of bodily harmony had soon taught him to drink himself through the riotous state into the sleepy one, which suited him far better than the risks and disappointments of love. It
was only later on, after he had married and soon had two children as well as their ambitious mother to support, that he fully appreciated how sensible his habits had been before he succumbed to the temp-
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tation to marry, lured into it no doubt by the somewhat unmilitary aura attaching to the notion of a married warrior. Since then he had developed a vivid ideal of woman outside rparriage, something that had evidently been germinating in his unconscious long before and consisted in a mild infatuation with the kind of woman by whom he felt intimidated, so that there was no ·question of having to exert him- self in any form of courtship. When he looked over the pictures of women he had clipped from popular periodicals in his bachelor days-never more than a sideline among his activities as a collec- tor-they all had in common that daunting quality, though he had not realized it at the time; and he had· never known such overwhelm- ing adoration until his ftrst meeting with Diotima. Quite apart from the impact of her beauty, he had looked up her name in his encyclo- pedia as soon as he heard that she was a second Diotima, and though he still did not quite understand what a Diotima might' be, he gath- ered it had something to do with that great sphere of civilian culture ofwhich he still knew far too little, sad to say, despite his offtcial posi- tion, and the world's intellectual superiority fused with· this woman's physical grace. Nowadays, when relations between the sexes have
become so simplified, it is probably necessary to point out that this is likely to be the most sublime experience a man can have. General Stumm felt that his arms were too short to embrace Diotima's lofty· voluptuousness, while at the same time his mind felt the same about the world and its culture, so that he experienced everything that came his way in a state of gently pervasive infatuation, just as his rounded body took on something of the suspended roundness of the globe itself.
It was this infatuation that brought Stumm von Bordwehr, soon after Diotima had dismissed him from her presence, irresistibly back to her. He planted himselfclose to the object ofhis admiration, espe- cially as he knew no one else among those present, and listened in on her conversations with the other guests, He would have loved to take notes, for he would hardly have believed the sovereign ease with which she handled such intellectual riches,like someone toying with a string of priceless pearls, had his own ears not borne witness to her skill as she welcomed, one after another, such a variety of celebrities. . It was only when she had given him a look after ungraciously turning away from him several times, that he realized the unseemliness of a
general's eavesdropping on his hostess in that fashion, and backed away. He made a few lonely tours of the overcrowded premises, drank a glass ofwine, and was just about to find a decorative place to stand against a wall when he noticed Ulrich, whom he had seen once before, at the first meeting, and his memory lit up; Ulrich had been a bright, restless lieutenant in one of the two squadrons General Stumm had once gently led as a lieutenant colonel.
"A man of my own sort," Stumm thought. "And to think how young he still is, to have made it to so high a position! " He made a beeline for Ulrich, and after they had shaken hands and compared notes for a while, Stumm indicated the assembled company and said: "An incredible opportunity for me to learn about the most important problems in the civilian world. "
"You'll be amazed, General," Ulrich said.
The General, who needed an ally, warmly shook his hand. "You were a lieutenant in the Ninth Uhlans," he said significantly, "and someday that will tum out to have been a great honor for us, even if the others don't yet realize it as I do. "
COUNT LEINSDORF'S VIEWS OF REALPOLITIK. ULRICH FOSTERS ORGANIZATIONS
While the Council did not yet give the slightest sign of coming up with any answers, the Parallel Campaign was making great strides at the Palais Leinsdorf: it was there that the threads of reality meshed. Ulrich came twice a week.
He had never dreamed that such numbers of organizations ex- isted. Organizations for field sports and water sports, temperance clubs and drinking clubs, were heard from-in short, organizations and counterorganizations of every kind. They worked to promote the interests of their members and to hamper those of the others. Every-
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one in the world seemed to belong to at least one organization. Ul- rich in his amazement said:
"Your Grace, this goes far beyond what we, in our innocence, have always regarded as natural manifestations of the social instinct. We're faced with the monstrous fact that in the kind of state we have invented, with its law and order, everybody is also a member of a gang. . . . "
But Count Leinsdorf was in favor of organizations. "Remember," he said, "that no good has ever come of ideological politics; we must go in for practical polities. I won't deny that I even regard the far too intellectual concerns of your cousin's circle as potentially dangerous! "
"Could you give me some guidelines, sir? " Ulrich asked. ·
Count Leinsdorf looked at him, wondering whether the inex- perienced young man was ready for so daring a disclosure. But then he decided to risk it.
'Well now, you see," he began cautiously, 'Til tell you something that may be new to you, because you are young: realpolitik means not doing the very thing you would love to do; however, you can win people over by letting them have their way in little things! "
His listener's eyes popped; Count Leinsdorfsmiled complacently.
"So you see," he explained, "all I am saying is that in practice, poli- tics must be guided not by the power of an idea but always by some actual need. Of course everyone would like to make the great ideas come true, that goes without saying. So one should never·do what one would like to do. Kant was the first to say so. " .
"Really! " Ulrich exclaimed in amazement. "But one must aim at something, surely? "
"Aim? Bismarck wanted to make the King of Prussia great; that was his aim. He didn't know from the start that to achieve it, he would have to make war on Austria and France, and that he would found the German Empire. "
"Is Your Grace suggesting that we should aim at a great and pow- erful Austria and nothing e~e? "
'W e still have four years to go. In four years all sorts of things can happen. You can put a people on its feet, but it must do its own walk- ing. Do you see what I mean? Put it on its feet-that's what we must
do. But a people's feet are its firm institutions, its political parties, its organizations, and so on, and not a lot of talk. "
"Your Grace! Even if it doesn't exactly sound like it, you have just uttered a truly democratic ideal"
'Well, it may be aristocratic too, even though my fellow peers don't see eye-to-eye with me on this. Old Hennenstein and Tiirck- heim told me they expected nothing but a filthy mess to come of all this. So we must watch our step. We must start building on a small scale, so be very nice to the people who come to us. "
Consequently Ulrich for some time after this turned no one away. One man who came to him talked a great deal about stamp collect- ing. To begin with, he said, it made for international understanding; second, it satisfied the need for property and position on which soci- ety was unquestionably based; third, it not only called for considera- ble knowledge but also required decisions on a level that it was not too much to call artistic. Ulrich looked the man over, with his care- worn and rather shabby appearance; but the man caught the ques- tion in Ulrich's glance and countered it by saying that stamps were also commercially valuable, a factor not to be underrated; millions were made in trading them; the great stamp auctions attracted deal- ers and collectors from all over the world. It was one way to get rich. But as for himself, he was an idealist; he was putting together a spe- cial collection for which there was no commercial interest as yet. All he asked was that a great stamp exhibition be held in the Jubilee Year, when he could be depended upon to bring his specialty to pub- lic attention.
After him came a man with the following story: On his walks through the streets-though it was even more exciting when one rode a trolley-he had for years been in the habit of counting the number of straight strokes in the big block letters of the shop signs (there were three strokes in an A, for instance, and four in an M) and dividing the sum tqtal by the number ofletters counted. His average so far had been consistently two and a half strokes to a letter, but this was obviously not invariable, since it could change with every new street. Now, deviations from the norm could be quite distressing, while there was greatsatisfaction every time the numbers came out right-an effect quite like the catharsis said to be achieved while
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watching classical tragedy on the stage. If you considered the letters themselves, however-anyone could check this out-divisibility by three was a rare bit of luck, which is why most inscriptions tended to leave you with a noticeable sense of frustration, except for those con- sisting of several letters each composed of four strokes, as in M, E, W, for instance, which could be depended upon to leave one feeling remarkably happy. So what to do? the visitor asked. Simply this, an order issued by the Public Health Office favoring four-stroke letter series in shop signs and discouraging as far as possible the use of one- stroke letters, such as 0, S, I, C, which, lead to poor and therefore depressing results.
Ulrich looked the man over and took care to keep a distance be- tween them; yet he did not really look like a mental case, but was a well-dressed person in his thirties with an intelligent and amiable ex- pression. He went on calmly explaining that mental arithmetic was an indispensable skill in every line ofwork, that to teach by means of games was in keeping with modem educational methods, that statis- tics had often revealed deep connections between things long before these could be explained, that everyone knew the damage done by an education based on book learning alone, and, in conclusion, that the excitement his findings had aroused in all those who had chosen to repeat his experiments spoke for itself. If the Public Health Office could be induced to adopt his disrovery, other countries would soon follow suit, and the Jubilee-Year could turn out to be a blessing for all mankind.
Ulrich advised all these people to organize: "You still have almost four years' time, and ifyou succeed, His Grace will be sure to '!