No More Learning

Don't ask! Clarisse commands.
Could Walter have any more doubts at this moment that her mind was
disturbed? The answer to this question will always be quite dependent on the circumstances. Clarisse looked impetuous and beautiful. The fire
From the Posthumous Papers · z6zg
in her eyes looked exactly like that of a healthy will. And so what her brother Siegmund had said of her, and had recently repeated when Wal- ter again asked him about it, took hold ofWalter: She is excessively ner- vous, you just have to grab her vigorously.
But for the moment it was Clarisse who was doing the vigorous grab- bing: She hopped around Walter incessantly, repeating: Come, come, come! Don't make me have to ask you!
The words seemed to fly around Walter's ears, they confused him. One might have said that he was laying back his ears and digging his feet into the ground the way a horse, a donkey, a calfdoes, with the obstinacy that is the weak creature's strength of will: but to him it represented itself in the form: Now you'll show her who's master!
"Just come along," Clarisse said, "then you'll see why! "
"No," exclaimed Walter. "You'll tell me right this instant what you're up to! "
"What I'm up to? I'm up to something weird. " She had meanwhile begun to gather up in the neighboring room what she needed to go out; now she pulled off her gardening gloves, held them in her hand for a moment, and with a sudden heave flung them among her husband's paint and brush jars. Something fell over, something rolled, something clattered. Clarisse observed the effect on Walter and burst out laughing. Walter got red in the face; he had no desire to hit her but was ashamed of this very lack Clarisse went on laughing and said: You've been crouching over these jars for a year and a day and haven't produced a thing. I'll show you how it's done. I've told you I'll bring out your genius. I'll make you restless, impatient, daring! " Suddenly she was quiet and said seriously: "It's weird, putting oneself on the same level as the in- sane, but it's resolving for genius! Do you believe that we'll ever amount to anything the way we've been going along? Among these jars that are all so nicely round and picture frames that are so nicely rectangular? And with music after supper! Why, then, were all gods and goddesses antisocial? "
Antisocial? Walter asked in astonishment.
If you must be precise: uncriminally antisocial. Because they weren't thieves or murderers. But humility, voluntary poverty, and chastity are also the expression of an antisocial mentality. And how otherwise could they have taught mankind how the world is to be improved but have denied the world for themselves?
Now Walter was so constituted that in spite ofhis initial astonishment he was capable offinding this assertion correct. It reminded him of the question: "Can you imagine Jesus as director ofa mine? " A question that would obviously have to be answered simply and naturally "no," if one
1620 · THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
could not just as well say "official of the Bureau for Monuments" in place of"mine director," andifone didn't feel the accompanying flash of a ridiculously warm spark of ambition. Obviously there was not only a contradiction but a more profound incompatibility separating two world systems between nurturing the middle class and nurturing the divine, but Walter, despite his already long-determined inclination to the mid- dle class, wanted both, or wanted, what is even worse, to renounce nei- ther, and Clarisse possessed what he had once already felt as "calling upon God," the decisiveness of a resolve that shows no consideration for anything. And so it happened that after she had spoken, he felt exactly as she had said, as if he were jammed up to his knees into the life he had created for himself, like a wedge in a block of wood, while she flitted about in front of him as the restless, impatient, daring one who was ex- perimenting with him. As a man of many talents, he knew that genius lay not so much in talent as in willpower. To the person being overtaken by paralysis, which he intuitively understood himself to be, it seemed related to the fermenting, the must, indeed even to the mere foam. He enviously recognized in her the improbable, the zigzag dots of varia- tions around the mean, the creature that at the edge of the crowd half goes along ahead of it and is half lost within it, which lies in the notion of genius. Clarisse was the only person in whom he loved this, who still linked him to it, and because her association with genius was patho- logical, his fear for her was also a fear for himself. This was how the desire not to listen to her, indeed to show her "the man," as Siegmund, the brother and physician, had advised him to do, arose out of his assent to the words with which she was persuading him and explaining her in- tention, and out of her powerful charm in pleasing him, which she exer- cised in an apparently natural way and without any awareness of contradiction.
So after a short pause Walter said rather roughly: "But now be reason- able, Clarisse, stop that nonsense and come over here! " Clarisse had meanwhile taken off her clothes and was in the process of drawing a cold bath. In her short panties and with her thin arms, she looked like a boy. She felt the stale warmth ofWalter's body close behind her and immedi- ately understood what he was after. She turned around and put her hand on his chest. But Walter reached out to grab her. With one hand he held her arm, and sought with the other to grasp her by the crotch and pull her to him. Clarisse tore at the embrace, and when that didn't help shoved her free hand into Walter's face, into his nose and mouth. His face turned red and the blood trembled in his eyes while he struggled
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 62 1
with Clarisse, but he did not want to let her see that she was hurting him. And when he threatened to suffocate, he had to strike her hand from his face. Quick as lightning she went at it again, and this time her nails tore two bleeding furrows in his skin. Clarisse was free.
They stood this way opposite each other. Neither of them tried to speak. Clarisse was startled by her cruelty, but she was beside herself. Some inteiVention from above had tom her out of herself; she was to- tally turned to the outside, a bush full of thorns. She was in ecstasy. None of the thoughts that had preoccupied her for weeks was any longer in her mind; she had even forgotten what she had just been talking about and what it was she wanted. Her whole self was gone, with the exception of what she needed to defend hersel£ She felt incredibly strong. Just then Walter again snatched at her, this time with all his strength. He had become angry and feared nothing in the whole world so much as becom- ing rational again. Clarisse struck at him. She was instantly ready to scratch again, to bite, to knee him in the groin or shove her elbow in his mouth, and it was not even anger or dislike that determined this, let alone any rational consideration; rather, in some wild way, this struggle made her like him, even though she was ready to kill him. She wanted to bathe in his blood. She did so with her nails and with the short glances, which, shocked, followed his efforts and the small red gutters that opened up on his face and hands. Walter cursed. He swore at her. Vul- gar words, which had no relation to his usual self, came from his mouth. Their pure, undiluted masculinity smelled like brandy, and the need for common, insulting speech suddenly revealed itself to be just as primeval as the need for tenderness. Apparently what was coming out was noth- ing but a grudge against all the higher ambition that had tortured and humiliated him for decades and was finally raising its head against him once more in Clarisse. Of course he had no time to think about this. But he still felt distinctly that he was not merely on the point of breaking her will because Siegmund had advised him that way, but was also doing it on account of the breaking and snapping itself. In some fashion the ri- diculously beautiful motions of a flamingo went through his mind. "We'll see what's left after a bulldog gets hold of itl" was his thought about the flamingo mind, but what he muttered half aloud between his teeth was: "Stupid goose! "
And Clarisse, too, was inspired by the one idea: "He can't be allowed to have his way! " She felt her strength still growing. Her clothes tore, Walter seized the shreds, she seized hold of the neck in front of her. Half naked, slippery as a wriggling fish, she struggled in her husband's arms. Walter, whose strength was not sufficient simply to overpower her, flung her to and fro and painfully sought to block her attacks. She had lost her
1622 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
shoe and kicked at him with her bare foot. They fell. They both ap- peared to have forgotten the goal of their struggle and its sexual origin, and were fighting only to assert their will. In this utmost, convulsive gathering of their selves they really disappeared. Their perceptions and thoughts gradually took on a totally indefinable texture, as in a blinding light. They almost felt amazement at still being alive I that their selves were still there.
Clarisse especially was worked up to such a pitch that she felt insensi- tive to the pain inflicted on her, and when she came to herself again this intoxicated her in the conviction that the same spirits that had recently illuminated her were now standing by her in her mission and fighting on her side. So she was all the more horrified when she was forced to notice that with time she was growing fatigued. Walter was stronger and heavier than she; her muscles became numb and lax. There were pauses where his weight pressed her to the ground and she could not defend herself, and the succession of defensive maneuvers and ruthless attacks against sensitive face and body parts, during which she caught her breath, were succeeded more and more frequently by powerlessness and suffocating poundings of her heart. So that what Walter had antici- pated happened: nature conquered, Clarisse's body left her mind in the lurch and defended its will no longer. It seemed to her as if she were hearing within herselfthe cocks crowing on the Mount of Olives: incred- ibly, God was abandoning her world, something was about to happen that she could not divine. And at moments Walter was already ashamed ofhimself. Like a bolt oflightning, remorse struck him. It also seemed to him that Clarisse looked horribly distorted. But he had already risked so much that he no longer wanted to stop. To continue anesthetizing him- self, he used the excuse that the brutality he was exercising was his right as a husband. Suddenly Clarisse screamed. She made an effort to utter a long, shrill, monotone cry as she saw her will escaping, and in this final, desperate defense it was in her mind that with this cry and what re- mained of her will she could perhaps slip out of her body. But she no longer had much breath left; the cry did not last long and brought no one rushing in. She was left alone. Walter was alarmed at her cry but then angrily intensified his efforts. She felt nothing. She despised him. Fi- nally, she thought of an expedient: she counted as quickly and as loudly as she could: "One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five," over and over. Walter found it horrible, but it did not stop him.
And when they separated and straightened up, in a daze she said: "Just wait. I'll have my revenge! "
NEW IDEAS ABOUT THE CLARISSE-W ALTER-ULRICH COMPLEX
To make Clarisse human, use the problem of genius. Or instead of ge- nius, one can also say: the will to greatness, to goodness. A miserable Prometheus. Genius in that case about the same thing: a person who is an exception. The person who sees the errors, sees what is out ofjoint in the world, and has the will not to let the matter drop. In her case she doesn't have the strength.
This defines part of Walter's problem: what has to happen if the strength is lacking? -island, discussion.
The fact already that she always clung to older men!
The relation to her parents: here she learned to see the world as ex- ception to her. -[Part] I, or wherever her early history is recounted.
The whole development of her insanity would then fall-which makes Clarisse more human and motivates the conclusion-under the title: Struggle for Walter as struggle for genius.
In order not to have to speak of Ulrich: she gave him a name, from the beginning. The leader? The Buddha? The Great One? The Eternal One? The Mysterious One? The Redeemer? - Or several names? The Beloved? The Healthy One? The Great Friend?
Clarisse in Rome
Clarisse, however, could not bear to stay in Rome long. Even the square in front of the railway station, with its palm trees, its shops, and the prox- imity of big hotels, repelled her.
Nevertheless, she walked to the center of the city and checked into a small albergo. In the meantime her impression had changed. The eve- ning sky was orange almost to the zenith; the trees stood black and feath- ered before it. The air in the Ludovisi quarter, that unique, deliciously light mixture of sea and mountain air, refreshed her. She inhaled the acquaintance of a new strength. Prophecy of fascism. She began to no- tice the pretentious splendor of the elevated private gardens that rested
1624 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
on walls five to eight yards high above the heads ofordinary pedestrians, and the giant gates and high windows, which in this neighborhood were a feature even of the apartment buildings. Behind a park wall a donkey brayed. -How the donkeys bray here! Clarisse thought. -Differently from home. They don't go "hee-haw," they go "ya"! It was a metallic, persisting trumpet call. She thought she could tell at first glance that there were no philistines in this city. Or there were, but a whirling en- ergy threatened them. As she approached the center, everything was full of energy, rush, and noise: cars raced unexpectedly around comers and crossed the plazas on unpredictable paths; bicyclists cheerfully and at risk of their lives teemed their way through between them; from the bursting trams clusters of young men who were hying to ride hung like grapes, clinging to each other in bold and impossible positions. Clarisse felt that this was a city after her own temperament, she was experiencing such a place for the first time. At night she could not sleep because a small bar had placed its tables in the narrow alley under her windows; people sang popular songs into the early morning and after every verse screamed a cheerfully dissonant refrain. This completely electrified Cla- risse. Although it was still relatively early in the year, it was already quite warm, and Clarisse got diarrhea from the heat; it was an enchanting state, as light as elder pith, fledged, and fatiguingly exciting.
Clarisse ordered all the impressions Rome made on her under the color red. When she thought back to her experiences in the sanatorium they had changed from a watery green, a color belonging to the present, the color of the German woods, into this red, which had been the red of the processions in her imagination; but it must be said that Clarisse did not clearly remember the experiences that had driven her to make this journey, but had the clear feeling ofrunning from a green state into one that was glowing red. Unfortunately, it was quite impossible for Clarisse to hit upon the idea that she was suffering from mad delusions. For green states even have their composers, who set them to music; these days sounds are painted, poems form sensory spaces, thoughts are danced: this is a vague kind of associating that has become popular be- cause thinking has lost its authority; it's about one eighth sensible and seven eighths nonsensical, and Clarisse could still regard herself as being very cautious and deliberate. So it was with calm, anticipatory attentive- ness that she found herself on the way from a green state into a red one.
On an excursion through Rome's palaces she encountered the marvel- ous, totally red portrait of Innocent X by Velazquez; the sight shot through her like a bolt of lightning. Now she saw clearly that this burn- ing color of life, red, was at the same time the color of Christianity, which, in Nietzsche's phrase, had given classical Eros poison to drink,
From the Posthumous Papers · 1625
the color of ascesis and inculpation of the senses. -O h my friends- Clarisse thought-you will not catch me! Her heart beat as if she had recognized a mortal danger at the last moment. She had discovered the ambivalent countenance of this city. It was the city of the Pope, and she remembered that Nietzsche had attempted to live here and had fled. She went to the house where he had lived. She took in nothing. The house was "spiritually closed. " She walked home smiling, outwitting this city at every step. It was a double city. Here the dark pessimism of Chris- tianity flared up to cardinal red, and here the blackness of insanity had flowed into Nietzsche's red blood. But what she thought was not so im- portant to Clarisse; the main thing was the smiling ambivalence in every- thing she saw. She went past palaces, excavations, and museums; she had still seen only the least part of them, and her impressions had not sunk to the measure of reality; she had assumed that the most marvelous treasures of the world were here set up side by side, but they were laid out like a bait; she had to remove this beauty from its hook very, very carefully. And everything that is beautiful in youth depends on the things around which people circle having one aspect that is known only to oneself.
In some way or other, the idea had seized Clarisse that she had to take up the mission at which Nietzsche had failed here in a different way, by beginning with the north. Evening had come. Once more she looked out the window of her small room: in the bar below, the first guests were already beginning to shout and sing, and if you leaned your body way out-above their heads, like a northern gargoyle-and craned your neck, you could see the round serrated shape of a gray church standing like a tiara before the still-darker gray of the night.
From what remained of her money she bought a ticket that took her back to one of the small towns through which she had passed on her way down. An unerring feeling told her at the railway station that it was not the right place. She went on by the next train. In this way Clarisse trav- eled for three days and four nights. On the fourth morning she was trav- eling along a seacoast and found a place that held her fast. With no money, she went into the hotels. This fact, that she had no money, was quite sudden and very peculiar; she made a rather long speech to the people in the hotels, in order to get them to serve her, and they listened politely but without understanding; then she hit upon the idea, because Walter was not to know where she was staying, of appealing to Ulrich. she sent him a long telegram in German.
1626 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Clarisse-Island
That Clarisse appealed to Ulrich was not only due to her needing money and wanting to keep her whereabouts concealed from Walter. Involved as well was an "I mean you," a grasping with rays offeeling across moun- tains and far distances. Clarisse had come to the conviction that she was in love with Ulrich. That was not quite so simple as such a thing can be. She explained the horrible scene between the two of them that had upset her so, and everything that preceded it, by saying that at the time it had been too soon for Ulrich; it was only now that he was in the right spot in the system of her imaginings (but that is love, when a person finds himself in the right spot in the system of our imaginings), and the energy of the whole was streaming toward him in a way that was un- heard of. Wherever his name fell, the earth melted. When she uttered it her tongue was like a wisp of sun in a mild rain. Clarisse explored her new surroundings. They consisted of a small island pitched close to the mainland, bearing an old fort left half open, and a gigantic sandbank that pushed out from this island farther into the sea and that with its trees and bushes formed a large empty second island, belonging to Clarisse alone when she had herself rowed over there. It seemed people did not have much confidence in its stability, for although there was an old hut on it in which to store nets and other fishing gear, this hut, too, was abandoned and decayed, and there were no other signs of settlement or division of possessions. Wind, waves, white sand, sharp grasses, and all sorts ofsmall animals lived here freely together; the resonance ofwater, earth, and sky was as empty and loud as tin banging on tin.
The inhabited island behind it boasted high, fortified walls overgrown with green; cannons that did not intimidate but, wrapped in sailcloth, looked astonishingly like prehistoric animals; moats, near which were unbelievably large rats; and in the midst of the rats running around in broad daylight there was a small tavern shaped like a cube, with a four- sided pyramid for a roof, under shaggy trees.
There Clarisse had taken a room for herself and Ulrich. The house was also the canteen for the fort, and all day long dark-blue soldiers with yellow stripes on their sleeves stood around nearby. One did not have the feeling ofpeople going about life but rather felt an oppression, which emptied the heart, as ifbefore a deportation or something similar. The young men too, strolling with ri- fles on their arms in front of the cannons wrapped in sails, reinforced this impression: who had put them there? Where, at what distance, was the brain of this madness that expressed itself in a joyless, pedantic au- tomatism preserved in catatonic rigidity?
From the Posthumous Papers · 1627
It was the right island for Ulrich and Clarisse, and Ulrich baptized it the "Island of Health," because every fit of madness seemed bright against its dark background. He had received Clarisse's telegram in the night when he came home and was crossing his garden. In the light of a lamp on the white wall of his house he had tom open the dispatch and read it, because he thought it came from Agathe. It was already the end of May. But the May night was like a belated March night; the stars looked down sharply, withdrawn to their heights, icily crisp out of the unilluminated, infinitely remote canopy of the sky. The telegram's sen- tences were long and confused, but held together by a rhythm of excite- ment. When Clarisse turned her back on the small military middle of her island, loneliness stretched before her like the desert of the anchor- ite. Connected with this idea of retiring from the world was an overloud, unchanging emotional tone full of covetous horror, something like the final purification and trial on the path ofthe "great one. " The adultery to which she had condemned herself would have to be consummated on this island as on a cross, for a cross on which she had to lay herself was what the empty sand over there across the waves, trodden by no one, seemed to her to be. Something ofall this came through in the telegram. Ulrich guessed that the great disorder had now really overtaken Clarisse, but that was precisely what suited him.
In their small inn they had a room that contained barely the most in- dispensable furniture, but a chandelier of Venetian glass hung from the center of the ceiling, and large mirrors in broad glass frames that were painted with flowers hung on the walls. In the mornings they went over to the Island of Health, which hovered in the air like a mirage, and from there they looked back on the inhabited island, which, with its cannons, embrasures, serrations, and little houses and trees, lay there like a round, perfect, exiled word that has lost the connection to its discourse.
Island I
Clarisse arrives while Agathe and Ulrich are still together. Stays 1-3 days in the hotel, during which time she seeks and finds her island. This is when she tells the Moosbrugger story. Invites Ulrich to the island (or Ulrich and Agathe) and Ulrich comes over. Spends half a day with her. Her hut, etc.
So it apparently goes not as far as intercourse but only to Clarisse's readiness. This is the way to utilize the material from the old coitus scene.
1628 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
Something like:
Island II
(I) Agathe has left only a few lines in a note. Contents?
(II) Shortly thereafter Walter arrives toward evening. Ulrich spontane- ously: Did you see Agathe? That did not happen. But that Agathe had been there until just now calms his jealousy. Walter, somewhat paunchy belly.
Ulrich takes him to Clarisse. Clarisse is sitting somewhere on the beach. Ulrich hadn't been paying attention to her. Walter feels profound solidarity with the ill and abandoned.
They enter the fishermen's hut. It looks as if the three of them had lived there. They arrange things for the three of them. Walter doesn't say anything about it; acts as if it is a self-explanatory matter of being chaperon.
(III) How does Clarisse take this? - That also depends on what came before (Island I), which is still undetermined.
Idea: She confesses. If there had been intercourse with Ulrich, that way; but more probably (because of Agathe's proximity) coitus is only to be reduced to hints, a half seduction of Ulrich by Clarisse. So nothing took place, and it also makes the scene stronger if she confesses made- up sins and Ulrich listens. Usable as climax: suddenly or by degrees, the powerful sexual arousal turns into the mystic emotion of transfigured union with God, which is almost unimaginable.
Walter doubtless does not believe, Ulrich makes him a sign, but still there is something credible in it, as if its not being true were merely accidental.
(IV) In order to leave Clarisse alone while she gets undressed, they go outside, then toward the beach. Walter says, because he is jealous: it is madness to doubt a person's faithfulness. There are situations in which one is quite properly uncertain. In the half-light he looks at Ulrich from the side. But you must have the courage to let yourself be deceived. That is the way a bullet must sometimes heal over without being removed. Out of this deception that you encapsulate within yourself something
From the Posthumous Papers · 1629
great can arise. It's a matter not only of faithfulness between man and wife but also of other values.
He did not say: greatness, but that's what he was probably thinking. He seemed important to himself, and above all manly, because he wasn't making a scene and forcing Ulrich to confess the truth. Somehow he was grateful to fate for this great trial. Transitionally or combined with:
(V) They sit down by the edge of the melancholy of the evening sea. She was the star of my life! Walter said.
But Ulrich starts at contact with the word faithfulness. He's not nearly
as magnanimous as Walter.
(VI) Walter now picks up on star of my life, develops it.
Now it is sinking into night; what is to become of me? At this moment he has this sense of self-importance they had when they were young. He steps outside himself: I am at a critical juncture. You have no idea what I've had to fight through and suffer this past year. In the last analysis my whole life has been a battle. Fought like a madman I fought day and night with a dagger in my fist. But does it mean anything? I think I have now come so far as really to be the man I wanted to be; but is there any sense in it? Do you believe that the way things are today, we could really
carry out anything at all ofwhat we desired as young people?
Ulrich sat there in a dark-blue wool fisherman's sweater; he had lost weight, which only emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and the muscular power of his arms, which, leaning forward, he had rested on his knees-and he wanted most of all to howl at this crepuscular com- radeship. He replied gloomily: Don't talk to me about your victories. You were beaten and finally you want to throw up without being embar- rassed. You're now in your early thirties, and at forty everyone is through. At fifty everyone sees himself contented in life and soon after that will have all his troubles behind him. The only people who have it good are the ones who seek refuge in conformity! That's the wisdom of life! The best part is reserved for those who are defeated! And nothing is
worse than being alone!
He was dejected. His crassness did not prevent Walter from notic-
ing it.
1630 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
[Visit to the madhouse]
What met her eyes was, in any event, peculiar enough: a game of cards.
Moosbrugger, in dark everyday clothes, was sitting at a table with three men, one ofwhom was wearing a doctor's white smock, the second a business suit, and the third the rather threadbare cassock of a priest; aside from these four figures around the table, and their wooden chairs, the room was empty, except for the three high windows that looked out over the garden. The four men looked up as Clarisse came toward them, and Friedenthal performed the introductions. Clarisse made the ac- quaintance of a young intern at the clinic, his mentor, and a doctor who had come to visit, from whom she found out that he had been one of the experts who had declared Moosbrugger sane at his court hearings. The four were playing three-man games, so that one was always sitting watching the others play. The sight of a cozy, ordinary game of cards dashed, for the moment, all Clarisse's ideas. She had been prepared for something horrifying, even if only that she would have been led end- lessly farther through such half-empty rooms in order finally to be mys- teriously informed that Moosbrugger was once again not to be seen; and after everything she had been through in the last few weeks, and espe- cially today, all she could feel now was an extraordinary sense of oppres- sion. She did not grasp that this card game had been arranged with the others by Dr. Friedenthal in order that Moosbrugger could be obseiVed at leisure; it seemed to her like devils playing with a soul in an ignoble fashion, and she thought she was in empty, icy tracts ofhell. To her hor- ror, Moosbrugger stood up straight and gallantly came up to her; Frie- denthal introduced him too, and Moosbrugger took her unsteady hand in his paw and made a quick, silent bow, like a big adolescent.
After that was done, Friedenthal asked that they please not disturb themselves and explained that the lady had come from Chicago to study the organization of the clinic and would certainly find that there was no other place in the world where the guests were treated so well.
"Spades were played, not diamonds, Herr Moosbruggerl" said the physician, who had been obseiVing his protege reflectively. In truth, Moosbrugger had enjoyed Friedenthal's referring to him, in the pres- ence of these strangers, as a guest of the clinic and not as a patient. Sa- voring this made him misread the cards, but because of the game he overlooked the reproach with a magnanimous smile. Ordinarily he played more carefully than a hawk. It was his ambition to lose to his learned opponents only through the luck of the cards, never by playing
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 631
worse than they did. But this time he also, after a while, allowed himself to count his tricks in English, which he could do up to thirty even if it interfered with his game, and he had understood that Clarisse came from America. Indeed, a little later he put his cards down entirely, pressed his fists against the table, leaned his strong back so broadly back- ward that the wood embracing it creaked, and began an involved story about his time in prison. "Take my word for it, gentlemen-" he began, because he knew from experience: if you want to get anywhere with women you have to act as if you aren't even aware of their existence, at least in the beginning; that had brought him success with them every time.
The young asylum physician listened to Moosbrugger's bombastic story with a smile; in the priest's face regret struggled with cheerfulness, while the visiting doctor, who was playing, and who had almost brought Moosbrugger to the gallows, encouraged him from time to time with sarcastic interruptions. The giant's proud but ordinarily basically decent manner of conducting himself had made him a comfortable presence to them. What he said made sense, even if not always in exactly the right places; the spiritual counselor in particular had come to like him sinfully well. When he reminded himself of the brutal crimes of which this man of lamblike piety was capable, he mentally crossed himself in fright, as if he had surprised himself in some reprehensible negligence, humbled himself before the inscrutability of God, and said to himself that such a vexed and complicated affair was best left to God's will. That this will was being manipulated by the two doctors like two levers working against each other, without its being for the moment apparent which was the stronger, was not unbeknownst to the man of the cloth.
A cheerful antagonism prevailed between the two doctors. When Moosbrugger lost the thread of his story for a moment he was inter- rupted by the older man, the visitor, Dr. Pfeifer, with the words: "Enough talking, Moosbrugger, back to the cards, otherwise the Herr Intern will arrive at his diagnosis too soon! " Moosbrugger immediately replied with subservient eagerness: "Ifyou want to play, Doctor, we can play again! " Clarisse heard this with astonishment. But the younger of the two doctors smiled, unmoved. It was an open secret that he was try- ing to arrive at an unassailable clinical picture of Moosbrugger's inability to be held accountable for his actions. This doctor was blond and looked ordinary and unsentimental, and the traces of fraternity dueling scars did not exactly make his face any more cultured; but the self-confidence of youth made him advocate the clinical view of Moosbrugger's guilt, and his requisite punishment, with a zeal that scorned the customary detachment. He would not have been able to say precisely in what this
1632 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
clinical view consisted. It was just different. In this view, for example, an ordinazy bout of intoxication is a genuine mental disorder that heals by itself; and that Moosbrugger was in part an honorable man, in part a sex murderer, signified, as this view had it, competing drives, for which it was a matter of course that he had to reach a decision according to whether the stronger or the more sustained drive was uppermost at the moment. If others wanted to call that free will or a good or evil moral decision, that was their affair. ''Whose deal? " he asked.
It developed that it was his turn to cut and deal the cards. While he was doing this, Dr. Pfeifer turned to Clarisse to ask what interest had brought his "esteemed colleague" here. Dr. Friedenthal raised his hand to ward off the question and advised: "For heaven's sake, don't mention anything about psychiatry: there's no word in the German language this doctor wants to hear less! " This was true, and had the advantage of al- lowing the unauthorized visitor to appear to the others to be a doctor without Friedenthal having to say so expressly. He smiled contentedly. Dr. Pfeifer left off the banter with a flattered grin. He was a somewhat older little man, whose skull was flat on top and sloped out and down at the back and was festooned with wisps of unkempt hair and beard. The nails on his fingers were oily from cigarettes and cigars, and retained around the edges a narrow rim of dirt, although in medical fashion they appeared to be cut quite short. This could now be clearly seen because in the meantime the players had picked up their cards and were care- fully sorting them. "I pass," Moosbrugger declared; "I play," Dr. Pfeifer; "Good," the young doctor; this time the cleric was looking on. The game was languid and ran its uneventful course.
Clarisse, who was standing to one side next to Friedenthal, hidden slightly behind him, raised her mouth to his ear and, indicating Moos- brugger with her glance, whispered: "All he ever had was ersatz women! "
"Shh, for heaven's sake! " Friedenthal whispered back imploringly, and to cover the indiscretion stepped up to the table and asked aloud: ''Who's winning? " ''I'm losing," Pfeifer declared. "Moosbrugger was lying in wait! Our young colleague won't take any advice from me; there's no way I can convince him that it's a fatal error for doctors to believe sick criminals belong in their hospitals. " Moosbrugger grinned. Pfeifer went on joking and picked up the skirmishing with Friedenthal where it had broken off; there was no point going on with the game any- way. "You yourself," he pleaded ironically, "ought to be telling a young Hippocrates like this, when the occasion arises, that trying to cure evil people medically is a utopia and, moreover, nonsense, for evil is not only
From the Posthumous Papers · 1633
present in the world but also indispensable for its continuation. W e need bad people; we can't declare them all sick. "
. . You're out of tricks," the calm young doctor said, and put down his cards. This time the cleric, looking on, smiled. Clarisse thought she had understood something. She became warm. But Pfeifer looked loath- some. . . It's a nonsensical utopia," he joked. She was at a loss. Presum- ably it was only the undignified game of devils playing for a soul. Pfeifer had lit a fresh cigar, and Moosbrugger was dealing the cards. For the first time he looked over at Clarisse for a moment, and then he was asked for his response to the others' bids.
This time the intern was odd man out. He seemed to have been wait- ing for the opportunity, and very slowly pulled his thoughts together in words. . . For a scientist," he said, . . there is nothing that does not have its basis in a law ofnature. So ifa person commits a crime without any ratio- nal external motive, it must mean he has an inner one. And that's what I have to be on the lookout for. But it's not subtle enough for Dr. Pfeifer. " That was all he said. He had turned red, and looked around with amiable annoyance. The cleric and Dr. Friedenthal laughed; Moosbrugger laughed the same way they did and threw a lightning glance at Clarisse. Clarisse said suddenly: . . A person can also have unusual rational mo- tives! " The intern looked at her. Pfeifer agreed: . . Our colleague is quite right. And you are really betraying a criminal nature just by assuming that there are also rational motives for a crime! " . . Oh, nonsense! " the younger man retorted. . . You know exactly what I'm talking about. " And again to Clarisse: 'Tm speaking as a doctor. Splitting words may have a place in philosophy or somewhere else, but I find it repulsive! "
Whenever he was entrusted with preparing a faculty report, he was known for getting angry and upset at the concessions he was expected to make to an unmedical way of thinking and at the unnatural questions to which he was expected to respond. Justice is not a scientific concept any more than the concepts derived from it are, and the doctor associates quite different ideas than does the lawyer with . . deserving of punish- ment," . . free will," . .