"Just listen to all the
cackling
going on around him!
Musil - Man Without Qualities - v1
'By the way,' I said casually, 'how on earth do you go about finding the right book somewhere in this immense col- lection .
.
.
?
' I tried to say it as I imagined Oiotima might, and I dropped a few pennies' worth of admiration into my voice, and sure enough, he started to purr and fell all over himself with helpfulness, and what was the Herr General interested in finding out?
" 'Oh, all sorts of things,' I said, as if he were prying into state se- crets; I was playing for time.
" 'I only meant what subject or what author,' he asked. 'Is it mili- tary history? '
" 'Oh no,' I said, 'more on the lines ofthe history ofpeace. '
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" 'History as such? Or current pacifiSt literature? '
"No, I said, it wasn't that simple. 'Might there be, for instance, something like a compendium of all the great humanitarian ideas or anything like that? ' You remember how much research I've already got my people to do on those lines. He didn't say a word. 'Or a book on realizing the most important aims of all? ' I say to him.
"'Something in theological ethics? ' he suggests. .
" 'Theological ethics too,' I said, 'but it would have to include something about our old Austrian culture and a bit about Grill- parzer,' I specified. My eyes must have been blazing with such a thirst for knowledge that the fellow suddenly took fright, as if I was about to suck him dry altogether. I went on a little longer about needing a kind of timetable that would enable me to make connec- tions among all kinds of ideas in every direction-at which point he turns so polite it's absolutely unholy, and offers to take me into the catalog room and let me do. my own searching, even though it's against the rules, because it's only for the use of the librarians. So I actually found myselfinside the holy ofholies. It felt like being inside an enormous brain. Imagine being totally surrounded . by those shelves, full of "books in their compartments, ladders all" over the place, all those book stands and library tables piled high with catalogs and bibliographies, the concentrate of all knowledge, don't you know, and not one sensible book to read, ·only books about books. It positively reeked of brain phosphon. ts, and I felt that I must have really got somewhere. But of course a funny feeling . came over me when the man was going to leave me there on my own-1 felt both awestruck and uneasy as hell. Up the ladder he scoots, like a monkey, aiming straight at a book from below, fetches it down, and says: · 'Here it is, General, a bibljography of bibliographies for you'-you know about that? In short, the alphabetical list ofalphabetical lists of the titles ofall the books and papers ofthe last five years dealing with ethical problems, exclusive of moral theology and literature, or how~ ever he put it, and he tries to slip away. I barely had time to grab his lapel and hang on to him.
"'Just a moment, sir,' I cried, 'you can't leave me here without telling me your secret, how you manage to . . . · I'm afraid I let slip the word 'madhouse,' because that's how I suddenly felt about it. 'How do you find your way in this madhouse of books? ' He must have got
the wrong impression-it occurred to me later that crazy people are . given to calling others crazy-anyway, he just kept staring at my saber, and I could hardly keep hold of him. And then he gave me a real shock. When I didn't let go of him he suddenly pulled himself up, rearing up in those wobbly pants of his, and said in a slow, very emphatic way, as though the time had come to give away the ultimate secret: 'General,' he said, 'if you want to know how I know about
every book here, I can tell you: Because I never read any of them. ' "It was almost too much, I tell you! But when he saw how stunned I was, he explained himself. The secret of a good librarian is that he never reads anything more of the literature in his charge than the titles and the tables . of contents. 'Anyone who lets himself go and starts reading a book is lost as a librarian,' he explained. 'He's bound
to lose perspective. '
" 'So,' I said, trying to catch my breath, 'you never read a single
book? ' · • "'Never. Only the t! atalogs. '
"'But aren't you aPh. D. ? '
"'Certainly I am. I teach at the university, as a special lecturer in Ubrary Science. Library S~ience is a special field leading to a de- gree, you know,' he explained. 'How many systems do you suppose there are, General, for the arrangement and preservation of books, cataloging of titles, oorrecting misprints and misinfqrmation on title pages, and the like? '
"I must admit that when he left me there alone, after that, I felt like doing one of two things: bursting into tears, or lighting a ci~ rette--neither of which I was allowed to do there. But what do you think happened? As I'm standing there, totally at a loss, an old at- tendant who must have been watching us all along pads around me respectfully a few times, then he stops, looks me in the face, and starts speaking to me in a voice quite velvety, from either the dust on the books or the foretaste ofa tip: 'Is there anything in particular, sir, you are looking for? ' he asks me. I try to shake my head, but the old fellow goes on: 'We get lots of gentlemen from the Staff College in here. I f you'll just tell me, sir, what subject you're interested in at the moment, sir . . . Julius Caesar, Prince Eugene ofSavoy, Count Daun? Or is it something contemporary? Military statutes? The budget? ' I swear the man sounded so sensible and kneW so much about what
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was inside those books that I gave him a tip and asked him how he did it. And what do you think? He tells me again that the students at the Staff College come to him when they have a paper to write, 'And when I bring the books,' he goes on, 'they often cuss a bit, and gripe about all the nonsense they have to learn, and that's how the likes of us pick up all sorts of things. <;>r else it's the Deputy who has to draw up the budget for the Department of Education, and he asks me what material was used by the Deputy the year before. Or it might be the Bishop, who's been writing about certain types of beetles for the last fifteen years, or one of the university professors, who complains that he's been waiting three weeks to get a certain book, and we have to look for it on all the adjoinilig shelves, in case it's been misplaced, and then it turns out he's had it at home for the last two years. That's the way it's been, sir, for nigh on forty years; you develop an instinct for what people want, and what they read for it. '
· "'Well,' I said, 'be that as it may, my friend, it still isn't so simple for me to tell. you-what I'm looking for. '
"And what do you think he comes back with? He gives me a quiet look, and nods, and says: 'That happens all the time too, General, if I may say so. There was a lady who came in, not so long ago, who :;aid exactly the same thing to me. Perhaps you know her, sir, she's the wife of Section ChiefTuzzi, of the Foreign Office? '
"Now, what do you think ofthat? You could have knocked me over with a feather. And when the old fellow caught on, he just went and fetched all the books Diotima has on reserve there, so now, when I come to the library, it's practically like a secret mystical marriage; now and then I make a discreet pencil mark in the margin, or I write a word in, and I know she'll see it the very next day, and she won't have a clue who it is that's inside her own head, when she wonders what's going on. ''
The General paused blissfully. But then he pulled himself to- gether, his face took on a look of grim seriousness, and he continued: "Now brace yourself and give me your full attention, because I'm going to ask you something. We're all convinced-aren't we? -that we're living in the best-ordered times the world has ever seen. I know I once said in Diotima's presence that it's a prejudice, but it's a prejudice I naturally share. And now I have to face the fact that the
only people with a really reliable intellectual order are the library at- tendants, and I ask you-no, I don't ask you; after all, we've talked about this before, and naturally I've thought it over again in the light of my recent experiences. So let me put it this way: Suppose you're drinking brandy, right? A good thing to do in some circumstances. But you keep on, and on, and on, drinking brandy-are you with me? -and the first thing is, you get drunk; next, you get the d. t. 's; and finaily, you get conducted with military honors to your last rest- ing place, where the chaplain testifies to your unflinching devotion to duty and so on. Do you get the picture? Good, you've got it, nothing to it. So now let's take water. Imagine drinking water until you drown in it. Or imagine going on eating until your intestines are tied into knots. Or you go on taking drugs-quinine, arsenic, opium. What for? you ask. Well, my friend, I'm coming to the most extraordinary proposition: Take order. Or rather, start imagining a great idea, and then another still greater, and then another even greater than that one, and so on; and in the same style, try to increase the concept of order in your head. At first it's as neat and tidy as an old maid's room and as clean as a Horse Guards stable. Then it's as splendid as a bri- gade in battle formation. Next, it's crazy, like coming out of the ca- sino late at night and commanding the stars: 'Universe, 'tenshun, eyes right! ' Or let's put it this way: At first order is like a new recruit still falling over his own feet, and you straighten him out. Then it's like dreaming you've suddenly been promoted, over everybody's head, to Minister of War. Next, just imagine a total universal order embracing all mankind-in short, the perfect civilian state of order: that, I say, is death by freezing, it's rigor mortis, a moonscape, a geo- metric plague!
"I discussed that with my library attendant. He suggested that I read Kant or somebody, all about the limits ofideas and perceptions. But frankly, I don't want to go on reading. I have a funny feeling that I now imderstand why those of us in the army, where we have the highest degree of order, also have to be prepared to lay down our lives at any moment. I can't exactly explain why. Somehow or other, order, once it reaches a certain stage, calls for bloodshed. And now I am honestly worried that your cousin is carrying all her efforts too far, to the point where she is likely to go and do something that might
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do her a lot of hann-and I'll be less able than ever to help her! Do you see what I mean? As for the arts and sciences and all they can offer in terms of great and admirable ideas, of course I have nothing but the greatest respect for all that; I wouldn't dream of saying any- thing against it. "
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- COUSINS IN CONFLICT
At about this time . Diotima turned to her cousin again. She did it at one of her evenings, coming like a tired dancer through the eddies swirling persistently, unremittingly, through. her rooms, to sit down beside him in a pool of quiet where he had parked himself on a little settee against the wall. It was a long time since she had done any- thing like it. She had avoided seeing him "off duty" ever since those drives in the country together, and as if because of them.
From heat or fatigue, her face looked slightly blotchy.
She propped her hands on the settee, said, "How are you? " and nothing more, even though there was clearly something more need- ing to be said, and stared straight ahead, with her head slightly bowed. She looked a bit groggy, to borrow a term from the boxing ring, not even bothering to smooth down her dress properly as she sat there, hunched over.
It made her cousin think of tousled hair and bare legs under a peasant skirt. Strip away the frosting, and what was left was a hand- some, sturdy creature, and he had to restrain himself from simply taking her hand in his fist, like a peasant. ·
"So Arnheim isn't making you happy," he said evenly.
Perhaps she should have put him in his place, but she felt strangely moved; after a while, she said: "His friendship makes me very happy. "
"I thought his friendship distresses you a little. "
"What nonsense! " Diotima pulled herself up and recovered her ladylike poise. "Do you know who really distresses me? " she asked, trying for an easy, chatty tone. "Your friend the General. What does that man want? Why does he keep coming here? Why is he always staring at me? "
"He's in love with you," her cousin replied.
Diotima gave a nervous laugh. She went on: "Do you realize that I shudder from head to foot when I set eyes on him? He makes me think of death. " ·
"An uncommonly life-loving figure of Death, if you look at him without prejudice. "
"Evidently I'm not unprejudiced. I don't know why, but I go into a panic every time he comes up to me and informs me that I make 'outstanding' ideas 'stand out' on an 'outstanQing occasion. ' He makes my skin crawl with an indescribable, incomprehensible, dreamlike fear. "
"Of him? ''
"Who else? The man's a hyena. "
Her cousin had to laugh. She went on with her scolding like a child
out ofcontrol. "H~goes creeping around, just waiting to see our best efforts come to nothing! "
"Which is probably exactly what you are so afraid of. Dear cousin, don't you remember that I foretold the collapse of your undertaking from the first? It can't be helped; you simply have to face it. "
Diotima looked at him haughtily. She remembered only too well, even to the words she had spoken to him the first time he came to see her, words that it now hurt her to think about. She had lectured him on what a privilege it was to call upon a whole nation, indeed upon the world, to take up its spiritual mission in the midst of its material- istic concerns. She had wanted nothing outworn, nothing of the old mind-sets, and yet the look she was now giving her cousin was more that of someone who had risen above all that, than of someone who had got above herself. She had considered a Year of the World, a universal rebirth, s9mething to crown all of Western culture; there
were times when she had come close, others when her goal seemed to recede from her grasp; she had gone through many ups and downs, and she had suffered. The last. few months had been like a long sea voyage, first lifted up by huge waves, then dropped into
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deep troughs, over and over again, so that by now she could hardly tell what had come first and what later. Now she was sitting here, after her immense efforts, glad that the bench she sat on was not moving, content to do nothing but perhaps watch the smoke curling upward from a man's pipe; so intensely did she feel this that she had, in fact, chosen the image hers~lf-an old man:S pipe smoke in the light of the sinking sun. She seemed to herself like someone with great frenzied battles behind him. In a weary tone, she said to her cousin: "I have been through such a great deal; I have changed, I'm afraid. "
"In my favor, I hope? " ,
Diotima shook her head and smiled without looking at him.
"In that case you should know that it's Amheim who's behind the
General, not me! " Ulrich said suddenly. ''You've been putting all the blame for bringing in the General on me, all along. But don't you remember what I told you the first time you called me on the carpet about it? "
Diotima remembered. "Keep him away," her cousin had said. But Arnheim had told her to make the General feel welcome. She felt something she could not put into words, as if she were sitting inside a cloud that was quickly rising above her eyes. But the next instant the settee again felt hard and solid under her body, and she said: "I don't know how this General came to us in the first place. I never invited him. And Dr. Arnheim, whom I asked about it, naturally knows noth- ing about it either. Something must have gone wrong. "
Her cousin was not very helpful. "I knew the General years ago, but this is the first time I've seen him in ages," he said. "Of course, he's probably spying her~ a-little for the War Office, but he's sincere about wanting to help you, to. o. And I have it from his own lips that Amheim makes quite a point of being attentive to him. "
"Because Arnheim takes an interest in everything! " Diotiina re- torted. "He advised me not to rebuff the General, because he be- lieves in the man's good faith and because he may be useful to us, in his influential position. "
Ulrich vehemently shook his head.
"Just listen to all the cackling going on around him! " he burst out so sharply that guests nearby turned their heads, to his hostess's embarrassment. "He can take i t -
he's rich! He has money, he agrees with evety one of them, and he knows that they're all acting as his unpaid press agents. "
"Why should he bother? " Diotima asked critically.
"Because of his vanity. He's a monster of vanity. How can I make you see the full extent of it? I mean vanity in the biblical sense: all cymbals and sounding brass to hide a vacuum. A man is vain when he prides himself on having seen the moon rise over Asia on his left while on his right Europe fades away in the sunset-this is how he once described to me his crossing of the Sea of Marmara. The moon probably rises far more beautifully behind the flowerpot on the win- dowsill of a lovesick young girl than it does over Asia. "
Diotima was thinking about where they might go to talk without being overheard. "You find his popularity irritating," she said in a low voice as she led him away through the various rooms, all filled with guests, until she had deftly maneuvered him into the foyer. Here she resumed the conversation with: "Why are you so set against him? You make it so hard for me. "
"I make it hard for you? " Ulrich asked with raised eyebrows.
"How can I talk freely with you about everything, as long as you persist in this attitude? " They had come to a stop in the middle ofthe foyer.
"Please feel free to tell me anything, whatever it is," he said warmly. "You two are in love, I know that much. Will he marry you? " "He has asked me," Diotima replied without regard to their ex- posed position as they stood there. She was overcome by her feelings
and took no offense at her cousin's bluntness.
"And what about you? " he asked.
She blushed like a schoolgirl. "Oh, for me it's a heavy responsibil-
ity," she said hesitantly. "I can't let myself be rushed into doing something unfair. Arid where the really great things in life are con- cerned, it doesn't matter so much what one does. "
Ulrich was mystified by these words, since he knew nothing of the long nights in which Diotima had learned to overcome the voice of passion and attained that serene evenhandedness of the soul where love floats in the horizontal position of a seesaw equally weighted at both ends. But he sensed that for the moment it would be best to abandon the direct line or'straight talk, and took a diplomatic turn:
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'Tdbe glad to tell you aboutmy attitude to Arnheim, because in the circumstances I shouldn't want you to feel that I'm against him in any way. I think I understand Arnheim quite well. You must realize that whatever is happening in your house-let's call it a kind of synthe- sis-it is something he has already experienced many times before. Wherever you have intellectual ferment taking the form of convic- tions, it also appears almost immediately in the form of the opposing convictions. And where it is embodied in a so-called leading intellec- tual personality, then the moment that personality is not freely saluted on all sides, it feels as insecure as ifit were in a cardboard box tossed into the water. We have a tendency in this country to fall in love with noted personalities, like the drunks who throw their arms around a stranger's neck, only to push him away again after a while, for equally obscure reasons. So I have a vivid idea of what Arnheim must be feeling-a form of seasickness, . I'd say. And when he remembers in such circumstances what money can do if you know how to use it, he feels firm ground under his feet for the first time after a long sea voyage. He is bound to notice how each suggestion, proposal, wish, service, accomplishment, struggles to enter the orbit of wealth, which is in that sense an image of the mind itself. Idea'> striving for power tend to attach themselves to ideas that already have power. I hardly know how to put it to you; the mff:erence be- tween ideas that aim high and those that are merely ambitious is hard to pin down. But once the genuinely great, with its usual material poverty and purity of spirit, is displaced by the mere label of great- ness, all sorts of spurious candidates for the label push their way in-:- quite understandably-and then you also get the kind of greatness
that can be conferred by publicity and business acumen. And there you have your Arnheim in all his innpcence and guilt. "
"You're being very holy all of a sudden," Diotima said acidly.
"You're right, it's none of my business, but that way he has of ac- cepting the mixed effects ofinward and outward greatness and trying to make it all look like a model ofhumanitarianism could in fact exas- perate me to a frantic degree of holiness. "
"Oh, you are so wrong! " Diotima broke in. "You see hiin only as a blase rich man. But Arnheim sees wealth as an absolutely all-perva- sive responsibility. He devotes himself to his business as another
man might give himself over to a human being entrusted to his care. He deeply needs to make a real difference in the world. If he makes himself available to people, it is because, as he says, a man must keep moving if he wants to be moved. Or was it Goethe who said that? He once explained it to me at length. His point is that to do good, you must, to begin with, do something. Of course, l admit that I have also been known· to feel that he sometimes mixes too freely with all sorts of people. "
As they talked, they were walking back and forth in the empty foyer, with its mirrors and all the coats on the racks. Now Diotima stopped a. nd ptit her hand on her cousin's arm, saying:
"This man, ·so highly favored by fate in every way, has the modest notion that a man alone is no stronger than a sick person left on his own. Don't yoti agree with him there? To be alone is to fall prey to a thousand fantasies. " She dropped her eyes as though she were searching the floor for something, even as she felt her cousin's eyes on her lowered eyelids.
"Oh, I suppose I might be talking about myself. I have been so lonely oflate. But so are yo~! I can tell. You have an embittered look; you're not at all happy, are you? Everything you say shows that you're on bad terms with everything in your own life. You're jealous by na- ture, and you have a chip on your shoulder, you're against every- thing. I don't mind telling you that Amheim has complained to me that you refuse to be friends with him. "
"Has he actually told you that he wants us to be. friends? If so, he's lying! "
Diotima looked up at him and laughed. "There you go again, mak- ing a mountain out of a molehill. W e both want your friendship. Per- haps we do because you are just as you are. But I'd have to go back a bit to explain: Amheim came up with such examples as . . . " She hesi- tated, then thought better ofit. "No, that would take us too far afield. In brief, Amheim says that we have to make use of whatever means our times afford us. The thing is to act on the basis of two different attitudes, never quite revolutionary and never quite antirevolution- ary, never quite out of love or out of hate nor out of some particular inclination of our own, but always trying to develop every possibility one has. But that isn't being clever, as you see. it; it merely shows a
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simple, all-embracing character, someone with a gift for bringing dis- parate things together by seeing through their superficial differ- ences-the personality of a born leader! "
"And what has that to do with me? " Ulrich asked.
His challenge had the effect of tearing through her reminiscences of a long conversation about scholasticism, ~e Church, Goethe and Napoleon, and the whole fog of cultural ambiguities that had thick- ened around Diotima's head, and she suddenly saw herself clearly, sitting beside her cousin on the long shoe cupboard where, in the heat of argument, she had made him sit down with her; his back was stubbornly avoiding the coats hanging in rows behind them, which had badly mussed her hair. As she patted it in place, she replied:
"But you're his exact opposite! You'd like to re-create the whole world in your own image. You're always opposing everything with that passive resistance of yours, or whatever that horrid expression is. " She was delighted to tell him just what she thought, for once. But all this while she kept thinking that they had better not stay where they were, in case other guests started leaving or coming through the foyer for some reason.
"You're always so hypercritical," she went on. "I don't recall you ever having a good word to say about anything, except to praise ev- erything that's intolerable nowadays, out ofsheer contrariness. EVery time one tries to hold on to a feeling or an intuition in the midst of this desert of our godless age, one can count on your fervent defense ofspecialization, disorder, all the negative side oflife. " So saying, she stood up and gave him to understand, with a smile, that they must fin~a better place to sit. It was either rejoining the others or finding a hiding place where they could go on with their talk. The Tuzzis' bedroom could be entered even from here; through a door covered with wallpaper, but Diotima felt it was too intimate a place to take her cousin, especially as every time the apartment was rearranged for a reception there was no telling how much of a mess the bedroom had been left in. So there was no refuge left but one ofthe two maids' rooms. The thought that it would be a funny mixture of taking liber- ties and ofher housewifely duty to subject Rachel's room, where she never set foot, to an impromptu inspection decided her. As they went there, and even as she apologized for taking him there, and
once they were inside the little room, she intently went on talking to Ulrich:
"I get the feeling that you are always out to undermine Arnheim, every chance you get. Your opposition hurts him. He is an outstand- ing contemporary, which is why he is and needs to be in touch with present-day realities. While you are always on the point of taking a leap into the impossible. He is all affirmation and perfect balance; you are, frankly, asocial. He strives for unity, intent to his fingertips upon achieving some clear decision; you oppose him with nothing but your formless outlook. He has a feeling for everything that has taken a long time to become what it is;. and you? What about you? You act as though the world were about to begin tomorrow. Why don't you an- swerme? Fromtheveryfirstday,whenItoldyouwehadbeengivena chance to do something truly great, your attitude ha5 been the same. And when I see this chance as a predestined moment that has brought us all together for a purpose, waiting, as it were, with an unspoken question in our eyes, for an answer, you carry on like a brat who wants only to disrupt everything. " She was choosing her words with care to gloss over their awkward situation in the maid's room, fortifying her position by giving her cousin the most elaborate scolding.
"If that's how I am, how can I possibly be of any use to you? " Ul- rich asked. He had sat down on Rachel's little iron bedstead, an arm's length from Diotima, facing him on the little wicker chair. The an- swer she gave him was admirable.
"If you ever saw me doing something horrible, something really awful," she said unexpectedly, ''I'm sure you'd be an angel about it. " She was startled to hear herselfsay it. She had only meant to point up his love of contradiction by joking that he could be expected to be most kind and considerate when she least deserved it; but a spring had suddenly bubbled up in her unco~scious, making her say things that sounded rather silly, and. yet it was amazing how they seemed to apply to her and her relationship to this cousin of hers!
Ulrich sensed it. He looked at her without speaking; then, after a pause, he responded with a question: "Are you very much . . . are you madly in love with him? " ·
Diotima looked at the floor. "What an absurd way to put it! I'm not a schoolgirl with a crush, you know. "
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But her. cousin would not be put off. "I am asking you this for a reason: I am wondering whether you have already come to know that longing that we all have-including even the most detestable crea- tures among tonight's guests next door-to strip off our clothes, put our arms around each other's shoulders, and sing instead of talking; then you would have to go from one of us to the other and kiss him like a sister on the lips. If this is a bit much, I might let them wear nightshirts. "
Diotima answered at random: "What lovely ideas you indulge in. "
"But don~tyou see, I have known what it feels like, myself, though it was a long time ago. And there have been very respectable persons who claimed that this was precisely the way life should be on earth. "
"Then it's your own fault ·if you dmi't act accordingly;: Diotima interrupted. "Besides, there's no need to make it look so ridiculous. " She had remembered that her adventure with Amheim eluded clas- sification and made one long for a life without social differences, where action, soul, mind, and body would all be one.
Ulrich did not answer. . He offered his cousin a cigarette. She ac- cepted it. & the cramped little room filled with smoke, Diotima wondered what Rachel would think when she sniffed the evidence of this intrusion. Should they open the Window? Or should she explain to the little servant in the morning? Oddly enough, it was precisely the thought of Rachel that decided her to stay; she had been on the point of putting an end to this ihcreasingly awkward tete-~-tete, but the sense of her intellectual superiority and the cigarette smoke that would mystify her maid somehow coalesced into something she was rather enjoying.
Ulrich was watchj. ng her. He was surprised at himself for having spoken to her as he did, but he went on with it~ he felt a need for companionship. 'Tll tell you," he resumed, "under what conditions I might be so seraphic-seraphic . is probably not too grand a term for not merely enduring another person but feeling that person if I may put it like this-under his psychological loincloth, without a shudder. "
"Unless the other is a woman," Diotima said, in view of her cousin's dubiaus reputation in the family.
"Not eve~ excepting that. "
"You're right. What I call loving the hu. man being in a woman is a
great rarity. " Diotima felt that Ulrich had been, for some time now, expressing views closer to her own, and yet there was always some- thing amiss and whatever he said never came quite close enough.
"Seriously now," he said stubbornly, leaning forward, his forearm resting on his muscular thighs, his gloomy gaze fixed on the floor. "We still say, nowadays, I love this woman, and I hate this man, in- stead ofsaying I find that person attractive or repellent. It would be a step closer to the truth to say that it is I, myself, who arouses in the other the capacity for attracting or repelling me, and even more ac- curate to say that the other somehow brings out in me the requisite qualities, and so on. We can never know where it begins; the whole thing is a functional interdependence, like the one between two bouncing balls or two electric circuits. We've known all that for a long time now, but we still prefer to regard ourselves ·as the cause, the primal cause, in the magnetic fields of emotion around us; even when someone admits that he is merely imitating someone else, he makes it sound like an active achievement ofhis own. And this is why I ask you again whether you have ever been uncontrollably in love, or furious, . or desperate. Because it is at such times that you can see clearly, ifyou are at all perceptive, that in such an overwrought state we behave no differently from a bee on a windowpane or an amoeba in poisoned water: we are. caught in a storm of movement, we dash offblindly in every direction at once, we beat our brains out against brick walls, until, by some lucky chance, we find an opening to free- dom, which we promptly attribute, as s. oon as our consciousness has crystallized again, to a calculated plan of action. "
"I must say," Diotima objected, "that this is a dismal and demean- ing view of emotions that have the power to decide a person's whole life. "
"Are you thinking of the boring old argument about whether or not we are masters of our own fate? " Ulrich replied, with a quick glance upward. "If everything is determined by a cause, then no one is responsible for anything, and so on? I must confess that I've never given as much as fifteen minutes of thought to that question in my whole life. It belongs to a period that became obsolete while nobody was looking. It comes from theology, and apart from jurists, who still have a lot of theology and the smell of burning heretics in their nos- trils, the only people who still think in terms of causation are those
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members of your family who are likely to say: 'You are the cause of my sleepless nights' or 'The sudden drop in the price of wheat was the cause of his misfortune. ' "
Diotima drew herself up. "Why are you always talking about crimi- nals? Crime seems to hold a special fascination for you. What do you suppose that means? "
"Oh no," her cousin said. "It doesn't mean a thing. A certain de- gree of excitement, at ~ost. Our ordinary state is an averaging out of all the crimes ofwhich we are capable. But now that the word 'theol- ogy' has come up, let me ask you something. . . . "
"Whether I've ever been madly in love or jealous, again? "
"No. Think about this: I f God has ordained whatever happens and always knows what will happen, how can a human being commit a sin? It's an old question, but it's still as good as new. What kind of trickster God would it be who sets us up to commit offenses against him, with his own prior knowledge and consent? He doesn't merely know in advance what we are likely to do: there are plenty of exam- ples of such resigned love; oh no, he mak~s us do wrong! That's the situation in which we find ourselves today, with respectJo each other. The self is losing its status as a sovereign making its own laws.
" 'Oh, all sorts of things,' I said, as if he were prying into state se- crets; I was playing for time.
" 'I only meant what subject or what author,' he asked. 'Is it mili- tary history? '
" 'Oh no,' I said, 'more on the lines ofthe history ofpeace. '
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" 'History as such? Or current pacifiSt literature? '
"No, I said, it wasn't that simple. 'Might there be, for instance, something like a compendium of all the great humanitarian ideas or anything like that? ' You remember how much research I've already got my people to do on those lines. He didn't say a word. 'Or a book on realizing the most important aims of all? ' I say to him.
"'Something in theological ethics? ' he suggests. .
" 'Theological ethics too,' I said, 'but it would have to include something about our old Austrian culture and a bit about Grill- parzer,' I specified. My eyes must have been blazing with such a thirst for knowledge that the fellow suddenly took fright, as if I was about to suck him dry altogether. I went on a little longer about needing a kind of timetable that would enable me to make connec- tions among all kinds of ideas in every direction-at which point he turns so polite it's absolutely unholy, and offers to take me into the catalog room and let me do. my own searching, even though it's against the rules, because it's only for the use of the librarians. So I actually found myselfinside the holy ofholies. It felt like being inside an enormous brain. Imagine being totally surrounded . by those shelves, full of "books in their compartments, ladders all" over the place, all those book stands and library tables piled high with catalogs and bibliographies, the concentrate of all knowledge, don't you know, and not one sensible book to read, ·only books about books. It positively reeked of brain phosphon. ts, and I felt that I must have really got somewhere. But of course a funny feeling . came over me when the man was going to leave me there on my own-1 felt both awestruck and uneasy as hell. Up the ladder he scoots, like a monkey, aiming straight at a book from below, fetches it down, and says: · 'Here it is, General, a bibljography of bibliographies for you'-you know about that? In short, the alphabetical list ofalphabetical lists of the titles ofall the books and papers ofthe last five years dealing with ethical problems, exclusive of moral theology and literature, or how~ ever he put it, and he tries to slip away. I barely had time to grab his lapel and hang on to him.
"'Just a moment, sir,' I cried, 'you can't leave me here without telling me your secret, how you manage to . . . · I'm afraid I let slip the word 'madhouse,' because that's how I suddenly felt about it. 'How do you find your way in this madhouse of books? ' He must have got
the wrong impression-it occurred to me later that crazy people are . given to calling others crazy-anyway, he just kept staring at my saber, and I could hardly keep hold of him. And then he gave me a real shock. When I didn't let go of him he suddenly pulled himself up, rearing up in those wobbly pants of his, and said in a slow, very emphatic way, as though the time had come to give away the ultimate secret: 'General,' he said, 'if you want to know how I know about
every book here, I can tell you: Because I never read any of them. ' "It was almost too much, I tell you! But when he saw how stunned I was, he explained himself. The secret of a good librarian is that he never reads anything more of the literature in his charge than the titles and the tables . of contents. 'Anyone who lets himself go and starts reading a book is lost as a librarian,' he explained. 'He's bound
to lose perspective. '
" 'So,' I said, trying to catch my breath, 'you never read a single
book? ' · • "'Never. Only the t! atalogs. '
"'But aren't you aPh. D. ? '
"'Certainly I am. I teach at the university, as a special lecturer in Ubrary Science. Library S~ience is a special field leading to a de- gree, you know,' he explained. 'How many systems do you suppose there are, General, for the arrangement and preservation of books, cataloging of titles, oorrecting misprints and misinfqrmation on title pages, and the like? '
"I must admit that when he left me there alone, after that, I felt like doing one of two things: bursting into tears, or lighting a ci~ rette--neither of which I was allowed to do there. But what do you think happened? As I'm standing there, totally at a loss, an old at- tendant who must have been watching us all along pads around me respectfully a few times, then he stops, looks me in the face, and starts speaking to me in a voice quite velvety, from either the dust on the books or the foretaste ofa tip: 'Is there anything in particular, sir, you are looking for? ' he asks me. I try to shake my head, but the old fellow goes on: 'We get lots of gentlemen from the Staff College in here. I f you'll just tell me, sir, what subject you're interested in at the moment, sir . . . Julius Caesar, Prince Eugene ofSavoy, Count Daun? Or is it something contemporary? Military statutes? The budget? ' I swear the man sounded so sensible and kneW so much about what
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was inside those books that I gave him a tip and asked him how he did it. And what do you think? He tells me again that the students at the Staff College come to him when they have a paper to write, 'And when I bring the books,' he goes on, 'they often cuss a bit, and gripe about all the nonsense they have to learn, and that's how the likes of us pick up all sorts of things. <;>r else it's the Deputy who has to draw up the budget for the Department of Education, and he asks me what material was used by the Deputy the year before. Or it might be the Bishop, who's been writing about certain types of beetles for the last fifteen years, or one of the university professors, who complains that he's been waiting three weeks to get a certain book, and we have to look for it on all the adjoinilig shelves, in case it's been misplaced, and then it turns out he's had it at home for the last two years. That's the way it's been, sir, for nigh on forty years; you develop an instinct for what people want, and what they read for it. '
· "'Well,' I said, 'be that as it may, my friend, it still isn't so simple for me to tell. you-what I'm looking for. '
"And what do you think he comes back with? He gives me a quiet look, and nods, and says: 'That happens all the time too, General, if I may say so. There was a lady who came in, not so long ago, who :;aid exactly the same thing to me. Perhaps you know her, sir, she's the wife of Section ChiefTuzzi, of the Foreign Office? '
"Now, what do you think ofthat? You could have knocked me over with a feather. And when the old fellow caught on, he just went and fetched all the books Diotima has on reserve there, so now, when I come to the library, it's practically like a secret mystical marriage; now and then I make a discreet pencil mark in the margin, or I write a word in, and I know she'll see it the very next day, and she won't have a clue who it is that's inside her own head, when she wonders what's going on. ''
The General paused blissfully. But then he pulled himself to- gether, his face took on a look of grim seriousness, and he continued: "Now brace yourself and give me your full attention, because I'm going to ask you something. We're all convinced-aren't we? -that we're living in the best-ordered times the world has ever seen. I know I once said in Diotima's presence that it's a prejudice, but it's a prejudice I naturally share. And now I have to face the fact that the
only people with a really reliable intellectual order are the library at- tendants, and I ask you-no, I don't ask you; after all, we've talked about this before, and naturally I've thought it over again in the light of my recent experiences. So let me put it this way: Suppose you're drinking brandy, right? A good thing to do in some circumstances. But you keep on, and on, and on, drinking brandy-are you with me? -and the first thing is, you get drunk; next, you get the d. t. 's; and finaily, you get conducted with military honors to your last rest- ing place, where the chaplain testifies to your unflinching devotion to duty and so on. Do you get the picture? Good, you've got it, nothing to it. So now let's take water. Imagine drinking water until you drown in it. Or imagine going on eating until your intestines are tied into knots. Or you go on taking drugs-quinine, arsenic, opium. What for? you ask. Well, my friend, I'm coming to the most extraordinary proposition: Take order. Or rather, start imagining a great idea, and then another still greater, and then another even greater than that one, and so on; and in the same style, try to increase the concept of order in your head. At first it's as neat and tidy as an old maid's room and as clean as a Horse Guards stable. Then it's as splendid as a bri- gade in battle formation. Next, it's crazy, like coming out of the ca- sino late at night and commanding the stars: 'Universe, 'tenshun, eyes right! ' Or let's put it this way: At first order is like a new recruit still falling over his own feet, and you straighten him out. Then it's like dreaming you've suddenly been promoted, over everybody's head, to Minister of War. Next, just imagine a total universal order embracing all mankind-in short, the perfect civilian state of order: that, I say, is death by freezing, it's rigor mortis, a moonscape, a geo- metric plague!
"I discussed that with my library attendant. He suggested that I read Kant or somebody, all about the limits ofideas and perceptions. But frankly, I don't want to go on reading. I have a funny feeling that I now imderstand why those of us in the army, where we have the highest degree of order, also have to be prepared to lay down our lives at any moment. I can't exactly explain why. Somehow or other, order, once it reaches a certain stage, calls for bloodshed. And now I am honestly worried that your cousin is carrying all her efforts too far, to the point where she is likely to go and do something that might
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do her a lot of hann-and I'll be less able than ever to help her! Do you see what I mean? As for the arts and sciences and all they can offer in terms of great and admirable ideas, of course I have nothing but the greatest respect for all that; I wouldn't dream of saying any- thing against it. "
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At about this time . Diotima turned to her cousin again. She did it at one of her evenings, coming like a tired dancer through the eddies swirling persistently, unremittingly, through. her rooms, to sit down beside him in a pool of quiet where he had parked himself on a little settee against the wall. It was a long time since she had done any- thing like it. She had avoided seeing him "off duty" ever since those drives in the country together, and as if because of them.
From heat or fatigue, her face looked slightly blotchy.
She propped her hands on the settee, said, "How are you? " and nothing more, even though there was clearly something more need- ing to be said, and stared straight ahead, with her head slightly bowed. She looked a bit groggy, to borrow a term from the boxing ring, not even bothering to smooth down her dress properly as she sat there, hunched over.
It made her cousin think of tousled hair and bare legs under a peasant skirt. Strip away the frosting, and what was left was a hand- some, sturdy creature, and he had to restrain himself from simply taking her hand in his fist, like a peasant. ·
"So Arnheim isn't making you happy," he said evenly.
Perhaps she should have put him in his place, but she felt strangely moved; after a while, she said: "His friendship makes me very happy. "
"I thought his friendship distresses you a little. "
"What nonsense! " Diotima pulled herself up and recovered her ladylike poise. "Do you know who really distresses me? " she asked, trying for an easy, chatty tone. "Your friend the General. What does that man want? Why does he keep coming here? Why is he always staring at me? "
"He's in love with you," her cousin replied.
Diotima gave a nervous laugh. She went on: "Do you realize that I shudder from head to foot when I set eyes on him? He makes me think of death. " ·
"An uncommonly life-loving figure of Death, if you look at him without prejudice. "
"Evidently I'm not unprejudiced. I don't know why, but I go into a panic every time he comes up to me and informs me that I make 'outstanding' ideas 'stand out' on an 'outstanQing occasion. ' He makes my skin crawl with an indescribable, incomprehensible, dreamlike fear. "
"Of him? ''
"Who else? The man's a hyena. "
Her cousin had to laugh. She went on with her scolding like a child
out ofcontrol. "H~goes creeping around, just waiting to see our best efforts come to nothing! "
"Which is probably exactly what you are so afraid of. Dear cousin, don't you remember that I foretold the collapse of your undertaking from the first? It can't be helped; you simply have to face it. "
Diotima looked at him haughtily. She remembered only too well, even to the words she had spoken to him the first time he came to see her, words that it now hurt her to think about. She had lectured him on what a privilege it was to call upon a whole nation, indeed upon the world, to take up its spiritual mission in the midst of its material- istic concerns. She had wanted nothing outworn, nothing of the old mind-sets, and yet the look she was now giving her cousin was more that of someone who had risen above all that, than of someone who had got above herself. She had considered a Year of the World, a universal rebirth, s9mething to crown all of Western culture; there
were times when she had come close, others when her goal seemed to recede from her grasp; she had gone through many ups and downs, and she had suffered. The last. few months had been like a long sea voyage, first lifted up by huge waves, then dropped into
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deep troughs, over and over again, so that by now she could hardly tell what had come first and what later. Now she was sitting here, after her immense efforts, glad that the bench she sat on was not moving, content to do nothing but perhaps watch the smoke curling upward from a man's pipe; so intensely did she feel this that she had, in fact, chosen the image hers~lf-an old man:S pipe smoke in the light of the sinking sun. She seemed to herself like someone with great frenzied battles behind him. In a weary tone, she said to her cousin: "I have been through such a great deal; I have changed, I'm afraid. "
"In my favor, I hope? " ,
Diotima shook her head and smiled without looking at him.
"In that case you should know that it's Amheim who's behind the
General, not me! " Ulrich said suddenly. ''You've been putting all the blame for bringing in the General on me, all along. But don't you remember what I told you the first time you called me on the carpet about it? "
Diotima remembered. "Keep him away," her cousin had said. But Arnheim had told her to make the General feel welcome. She felt something she could not put into words, as if she were sitting inside a cloud that was quickly rising above her eyes. But the next instant the settee again felt hard and solid under her body, and she said: "I don't know how this General came to us in the first place. I never invited him. And Dr. Arnheim, whom I asked about it, naturally knows noth- ing about it either. Something must have gone wrong. "
Her cousin was not very helpful. "I knew the General years ago, but this is the first time I've seen him in ages," he said. "Of course, he's probably spying her~ a-little for the War Office, but he's sincere about wanting to help you, to. o. And I have it from his own lips that Amheim makes quite a point of being attentive to him. "
"Because Arnheim takes an interest in everything! " Diotiina re- torted. "He advised me not to rebuff the General, because he be- lieves in the man's good faith and because he may be useful to us, in his influential position. "
Ulrich vehemently shook his head.
"Just listen to all the cackling going on around him! " he burst out so sharply that guests nearby turned their heads, to his hostess's embarrassment. "He can take i t -
he's rich! He has money, he agrees with evety one of them, and he knows that they're all acting as his unpaid press agents. "
"Why should he bother? " Diotima asked critically.
"Because of his vanity. He's a monster of vanity. How can I make you see the full extent of it? I mean vanity in the biblical sense: all cymbals and sounding brass to hide a vacuum. A man is vain when he prides himself on having seen the moon rise over Asia on his left while on his right Europe fades away in the sunset-this is how he once described to me his crossing of the Sea of Marmara. The moon probably rises far more beautifully behind the flowerpot on the win- dowsill of a lovesick young girl than it does over Asia. "
Diotima was thinking about where they might go to talk without being overheard. "You find his popularity irritating," she said in a low voice as she led him away through the various rooms, all filled with guests, until she had deftly maneuvered him into the foyer. Here she resumed the conversation with: "Why are you so set against him? You make it so hard for me. "
"I make it hard for you? " Ulrich asked with raised eyebrows.
"How can I talk freely with you about everything, as long as you persist in this attitude? " They had come to a stop in the middle ofthe foyer.
"Please feel free to tell me anything, whatever it is," he said warmly. "You two are in love, I know that much. Will he marry you? " "He has asked me," Diotima replied without regard to their ex- posed position as they stood there. She was overcome by her feelings
and took no offense at her cousin's bluntness.
"And what about you? " he asked.
She blushed like a schoolgirl. "Oh, for me it's a heavy responsibil-
ity," she said hesitantly. "I can't let myself be rushed into doing something unfair. Arid where the really great things in life are con- cerned, it doesn't matter so much what one does. "
Ulrich was mystified by these words, since he knew nothing of the long nights in which Diotima had learned to overcome the voice of passion and attained that serene evenhandedness of the soul where love floats in the horizontal position of a seesaw equally weighted at both ends. But he sensed that for the moment it would be best to abandon the direct line or'straight talk, and took a diplomatic turn:
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'Tdbe glad to tell you aboutmy attitude to Arnheim, because in the circumstances I shouldn't want you to feel that I'm against him in any way. I think I understand Arnheim quite well. You must realize that whatever is happening in your house-let's call it a kind of synthe- sis-it is something he has already experienced many times before. Wherever you have intellectual ferment taking the form of convic- tions, it also appears almost immediately in the form of the opposing convictions. And where it is embodied in a so-called leading intellec- tual personality, then the moment that personality is not freely saluted on all sides, it feels as insecure as ifit were in a cardboard box tossed into the water. We have a tendency in this country to fall in love with noted personalities, like the drunks who throw their arms around a stranger's neck, only to push him away again after a while, for equally obscure reasons. So I have a vivid idea of what Arnheim must be feeling-a form of seasickness, . I'd say. And when he remembers in such circumstances what money can do if you know how to use it, he feels firm ground under his feet for the first time after a long sea voyage. He is bound to notice how each suggestion, proposal, wish, service, accomplishment, struggles to enter the orbit of wealth, which is in that sense an image of the mind itself. Idea'> striving for power tend to attach themselves to ideas that already have power. I hardly know how to put it to you; the mff:erence be- tween ideas that aim high and those that are merely ambitious is hard to pin down. But once the genuinely great, with its usual material poverty and purity of spirit, is displaced by the mere label of great- ness, all sorts of spurious candidates for the label push their way in-:- quite understandably-and then you also get the kind of greatness
that can be conferred by publicity and business acumen. And there you have your Arnheim in all his innpcence and guilt. "
"You're being very holy all of a sudden," Diotima said acidly.
"You're right, it's none of my business, but that way he has of ac- cepting the mixed effects ofinward and outward greatness and trying to make it all look like a model ofhumanitarianism could in fact exas- perate me to a frantic degree of holiness. "
"Oh, you are so wrong! " Diotima broke in. "You see hiin only as a blase rich man. But Arnheim sees wealth as an absolutely all-perva- sive responsibility. He devotes himself to his business as another
man might give himself over to a human being entrusted to his care. He deeply needs to make a real difference in the world. If he makes himself available to people, it is because, as he says, a man must keep moving if he wants to be moved. Or was it Goethe who said that? He once explained it to me at length. His point is that to do good, you must, to begin with, do something. Of course, l admit that I have also been known· to feel that he sometimes mixes too freely with all sorts of people. "
As they talked, they were walking back and forth in the empty foyer, with its mirrors and all the coats on the racks. Now Diotima stopped a. nd ptit her hand on her cousin's arm, saying:
"This man, ·so highly favored by fate in every way, has the modest notion that a man alone is no stronger than a sick person left on his own. Don't yoti agree with him there? To be alone is to fall prey to a thousand fantasies. " She dropped her eyes as though she were searching the floor for something, even as she felt her cousin's eyes on her lowered eyelids.
"Oh, I suppose I might be talking about myself. I have been so lonely oflate. But so are yo~! I can tell. You have an embittered look; you're not at all happy, are you? Everything you say shows that you're on bad terms with everything in your own life. You're jealous by na- ture, and you have a chip on your shoulder, you're against every- thing. I don't mind telling you that Amheim has complained to me that you refuse to be friends with him. "
"Has he actually told you that he wants us to be. friends? If so, he's lying! "
Diotima looked up at him and laughed. "There you go again, mak- ing a mountain out of a molehill. W e both want your friendship. Per- haps we do because you are just as you are. But I'd have to go back a bit to explain: Amheim came up with such examples as . . . " She hesi- tated, then thought better ofit. "No, that would take us too far afield. In brief, Amheim says that we have to make use of whatever means our times afford us. The thing is to act on the basis of two different attitudes, never quite revolutionary and never quite antirevolution- ary, never quite out of love or out of hate nor out of some particular inclination of our own, but always trying to develop every possibility one has. But that isn't being clever, as you see. it; it merely shows a
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simple, all-embracing character, someone with a gift for bringing dis- parate things together by seeing through their superficial differ- ences-the personality of a born leader! "
"And what has that to do with me? " Ulrich asked.
His challenge had the effect of tearing through her reminiscences of a long conversation about scholasticism, ~e Church, Goethe and Napoleon, and the whole fog of cultural ambiguities that had thick- ened around Diotima's head, and she suddenly saw herself clearly, sitting beside her cousin on the long shoe cupboard where, in the heat of argument, she had made him sit down with her; his back was stubbornly avoiding the coats hanging in rows behind them, which had badly mussed her hair. As she patted it in place, she replied:
"But you're his exact opposite! You'd like to re-create the whole world in your own image. You're always opposing everything with that passive resistance of yours, or whatever that horrid expression is. " She was delighted to tell him just what she thought, for once. But all this while she kept thinking that they had better not stay where they were, in case other guests started leaving or coming through the foyer for some reason.
"You're always so hypercritical," she went on. "I don't recall you ever having a good word to say about anything, except to praise ev- erything that's intolerable nowadays, out ofsheer contrariness. EVery time one tries to hold on to a feeling or an intuition in the midst of this desert of our godless age, one can count on your fervent defense ofspecialization, disorder, all the negative side oflife. " So saying, she stood up and gave him to understand, with a smile, that they must fin~a better place to sit. It was either rejoining the others or finding a hiding place where they could go on with their talk. The Tuzzis' bedroom could be entered even from here; through a door covered with wallpaper, but Diotima felt it was too intimate a place to take her cousin, especially as every time the apartment was rearranged for a reception there was no telling how much of a mess the bedroom had been left in. So there was no refuge left but one ofthe two maids' rooms. The thought that it would be a funny mixture of taking liber- ties and ofher housewifely duty to subject Rachel's room, where she never set foot, to an impromptu inspection decided her. As they went there, and even as she apologized for taking him there, and
once they were inside the little room, she intently went on talking to Ulrich:
"I get the feeling that you are always out to undermine Arnheim, every chance you get. Your opposition hurts him. He is an outstand- ing contemporary, which is why he is and needs to be in touch with present-day realities. While you are always on the point of taking a leap into the impossible. He is all affirmation and perfect balance; you are, frankly, asocial. He strives for unity, intent to his fingertips upon achieving some clear decision; you oppose him with nothing but your formless outlook. He has a feeling for everything that has taken a long time to become what it is;. and you? What about you? You act as though the world were about to begin tomorrow. Why don't you an- swerme? Fromtheveryfirstday,whenItoldyouwehadbeengivena chance to do something truly great, your attitude ha5 been the same. And when I see this chance as a predestined moment that has brought us all together for a purpose, waiting, as it were, with an unspoken question in our eyes, for an answer, you carry on like a brat who wants only to disrupt everything. " She was choosing her words with care to gloss over their awkward situation in the maid's room, fortifying her position by giving her cousin the most elaborate scolding.
"If that's how I am, how can I possibly be of any use to you? " Ul- rich asked. He had sat down on Rachel's little iron bedstead, an arm's length from Diotima, facing him on the little wicker chair. The an- swer she gave him was admirable.
"If you ever saw me doing something horrible, something really awful," she said unexpectedly, ''I'm sure you'd be an angel about it. " She was startled to hear herselfsay it. She had only meant to point up his love of contradiction by joking that he could be expected to be most kind and considerate when she least deserved it; but a spring had suddenly bubbled up in her unco~scious, making her say things that sounded rather silly, and. yet it was amazing how they seemed to apply to her and her relationship to this cousin of hers!
Ulrich sensed it. He looked at her without speaking; then, after a pause, he responded with a question: "Are you very much . . . are you madly in love with him? " ·
Diotima looked at the floor. "What an absurd way to put it! I'm not a schoolgirl with a crush, you know. "
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But her. cousin would not be put off. "I am asking you this for a reason: I am wondering whether you have already come to know that longing that we all have-including even the most detestable crea- tures among tonight's guests next door-to strip off our clothes, put our arms around each other's shoulders, and sing instead of talking; then you would have to go from one of us to the other and kiss him like a sister on the lips. If this is a bit much, I might let them wear nightshirts. "
Diotima answered at random: "What lovely ideas you indulge in. "
"But don~tyou see, I have known what it feels like, myself, though it was a long time ago. And there have been very respectable persons who claimed that this was precisely the way life should be on earth. "
"Then it's your own fault ·if you dmi't act accordingly;: Diotima interrupted. "Besides, there's no need to make it look so ridiculous. " She had remembered that her adventure with Amheim eluded clas- sification and made one long for a life without social differences, where action, soul, mind, and body would all be one.
Ulrich did not answer. . He offered his cousin a cigarette. She ac- cepted it. & the cramped little room filled with smoke, Diotima wondered what Rachel would think when she sniffed the evidence of this intrusion. Should they open the Window? Or should she explain to the little servant in the morning? Oddly enough, it was precisely the thought of Rachel that decided her to stay; she had been on the point of putting an end to this ihcreasingly awkward tete-~-tete, but the sense of her intellectual superiority and the cigarette smoke that would mystify her maid somehow coalesced into something she was rather enjoying.
Ulrich was watchj. ng her. He was surprised at himself for having spoken to her as he did, but he went on with it~ he felt a need for companionship. 'Tll tell you," he resumed, "under what conditions I might be so seraphic-seraphic . is probably not too grand a term for not merely enduring another person but feeling that person if I may put it like this-under his psychological loincloth, without a shudder. "
"Unless the other is a woman," Diotima said, in view of her cousin's dubiaus reputation in the family.
"Not eve~ excepting that. "
"You're right. What I call loving the hu. man being in a woman is a
great rarity. " Diotima felt that Ulrich had been, for some time now, expressing views closer to her own, and yet there was always some- thing amiss and whatever he said never came quite close enough.
"Seriously now," he said stubbornly, leaning forward, his forearm resting on his muscular thighs, his gloomy gaze fixed on the floor. "We still say, nowadays, I love this woman, and I hate this man, in- stead ofsaying I find that person attractive or repellent. It would be a step closer to the truth to say that it is I, myself, who arouses in the other the capacity for attracting or repelling me, and even more ac- curate to say that the other somehow brings out in me the requisite qualities, and so on. We can never know where it begins; the whole thing is a functional interdependence, like the one between two bouncing balls or two electric circuits. We've known all that for a long time now, but we still prefer to regard ourselves ·as the cause, the primal cause, in the magnetic fields of emotion around us; even when someone admits that he is merely imitating someone else, he makes it sound like an active achievement ofhis own. And this is why I ask you again whether you have ever been uncontrollably in love, or furious, . or desperate. Because it is at such times that you can see clearly, ifyou are at all perceptive, that in such an overwrought state we behave no differently from a bee on a windowpane or an amoeba in poisoned water: we are. caught in a storm of movement, we dash offblindly in every direction at once, we beat our brains out against brick walls, until, by some lucky chance, we find an opening to free- dom, which we promptly attribute, as s. oon as our consciousness has crystallized again, to a calculated plan of action. "
"I must say," Diotima objected, "that this is a dismal and demean- ing view of emotions that have the power to decide a person's whole life. "
"Are you thinking of the boring old argument about whether or not we are masters of our own fate? " Ulrich replied, with a quick glance upward. "If everything is determined by a cause, then no one is responsible for anything, and so on? I must confess that I've never given as much as fifteen minutes of thought to that question in my whole life. It belongs to a period that became obsolete while nobody was looking. It comes from theology, and apart from jurists, who still have a lot of theology and the smell of burning heretics in their nos- trils, the only people who still think in terms of causation are those
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516 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
members of your family who are likely to say: 'You are the cause of my sleepless nights' or 'The sudden drop in the price of wheat was the cause of his misfortune. ' "
Diotima drew herself up. "Why are you always talking about crimi- nals? Crime seems to hold a special fascination for you. What do you suppose that means? "
"Oh no," her cousin said. "It doesn't mean a thing. A certain de- gree of excitement, at ~ost. Our ordinary state is an averaging out of all the crimes ofwhich we are capable. But now that the word 'theol- ogy' has come up, let me ask you something. . . . "
"Whether I've ever been madly in love or jealous, again? "
"No. Think about this: I f God has ordained whatever happens and always knows what will happen, how can a human being commit a sin? It's an old question, but it's still as good as new. What kind of trickster God would it be who sets us up to commit offenses against him, with his own prior knowledge and consent? He doesn't merely know in advance what we are likely to do: there are plenty of exam- ples of such resigned love; oh no, he mak~s us do wrong! That's the situation in which we find ourselves today, with respectJo each other. The self is losing its status as a sovereign making its own laws.
