No More Learning

Now, beyond this one need only imagine the effect of Maeterlinckian or Bergsonian philosophy ap- plied to questions about the price of coal or to cartel politics, to esti- mate how depressing Arnheim junior's presence could be to industrialists' conferences and directors' meetings in Paris or St. P~­ tersburg or Cape Town when he turned up as his father's ambassa- dor and had to be heard out from beginning to end. His resulting successes in business were as impressive as they were mysterious, and out of all this grew the well-known report of the man's towering stature and his lucky hand. ·
A good deal more could be said about Arnheim's successes. With diplomats, for instance, who handled the important but alien field of economics with the circumspection of men charge'd with the care of an unpredictable elephant, while Amheim treated it with the non-
chalance of a native keeper. With artists, for whom he hardly ever did anything, which did not prevent them. from seeing him as a Mae- cenas. And lastly with journalists, who should in all fairness have been the first to be mentioned, because it was they who through their admiration had first created Arnheim's image as a great man, though they did not realize how much he was their own creation; for someone had whispered in the~r ear and they consequently believed they could hear the grass of history growing. The basic pattern of his success was everywhere the same: Surrounded by the magic aura of his wealth and the legend of his importance, he always had to deal with people who towered over him in their own fields but who liked him as an outsider with a surprising knowledge of their subject and were daunted by his personally representing a link between their world and other worlds of which they had no idea. So it had come to seem quite natural for him to appear in a world of specialists as a whole man, and to have the effect ofa harmonious entity. At times he dreamed of a new Weimar or Florentine renaissance of industry and trade, a new prosperity under the leadership of strong personalities, each of whom would have to be capable of combining individual achievements in technology, science, and the arts, and able to guide them from the highest standpoint. He felt he had this capacity. He possessed the gift of never being superior in any specific, provable respect but, owing to some fluid, perpetually self-renewing equilib- rium, of still coming out on top in every situation. It was probably the fundamental talent of a politician, but Arnheim was also convinced that it was a profound mystery. He called it "the Mystery of the Whole. " For even the beauty of a person consists of almost nothing demonstrable, or any specific feature, but rather that ~agical some- thing that makes, even small defects useful, just as the profound goodness and love, the dignity and greatness, of a person are almost independent ofwhat he does, are indeed capable ofennobling every- thing he does. In this life, in some mysterious fashion, the whole al- ways takes precedence over its parts. While ordinary people may indeed be the sum oftheir virtues and faults, the great man is he who first bestows rank on his qualities. And if the secret of his success is that it cannot quite be explained as the result of his achievements and his qualities, then the presence of a force greater than its mani-
Pseudoreality Prevails · 2 0 7
208 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
festations is the mystery upon which all greatness in life rests. This is how Arnheim had phrased it in one ofhis books, and as he set down these words he ahnost felt that he had touched the hem of the super- natural, and this, too, he allowed to shine through in the text.
49
ANTAGONISM SPROUTS BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE NEW DIPLOMACY
His association with persons whose specialty was to have been born to the hereditary nobility constituted no exception. Arnheim so muted his own high distinction, so modestly laid claim only to a cer- tain intellectual nobility, which knows its own merits and limits, that beside him the bearers of the most venerable noble names seemed after a while to be bowed down under their burden like gnarled la- borers. It was Diotima who appreciated this most keenly. She recog- nized the Mystery of the Whole with th~eye of an artist who sees the dream ofhis life realized in an unswpassable way.
She was now wholly reconciled to her salon again. Arnheim warned her against putting too much emphasis on formal organiza- tion; crude material interests would take over, stifling the original pure intention; he preferred keeping the salon as it was.
Section Chief Tuzzi, on the other hand, expressed his misgivings that this would never get them beyond endless floods of talk.
He had crossed one leg over the other and clasped one knee with his heavily veined, lean, dark hands. Next to Amheim, who sat up- right in a flawlessly cut suit of some soft fabric, Tuzzi, with his trim little beard and southern eyes, looked like a Levantine pickpocket beside a Hanseatic merchant prince. It was an encounter between two kinds of distinction, and the Austrian, a mosaic of highly cul- tivated cosmopolitanism, with its casual dash, certainly did not re- gard itself as the lesser. Section ChiefTuzzi had an engaging manner
of asking how the Parallel Campaign was ·coming along, as though he was not supposed to know at first hand what was going on in his own house.
'W e would love to know as soon as possible what your plans are," he said with an amiable smile at his wife and Arnheim, as if to say that he was of course only an outsider in this matter. Then he explained that this joint enterprise of his wife's and Count Leinsdorf's was al- ready causing grave concern in official quarters. At his most recent briefing session with His Majesty, the Minister of Foreign Affairs had taken soundings as to what kind of public demonstrations in honor of the jubilee might be acceptable to His Majesty, namely, up to what point His Majesty might be graciously willing to countenance a plan anticipating the trend of the times by taking a lead in an inter- national peace program. Which was the only way, Tuzzi pointed out, to translate into political terms the idea of a Global Austria that had come up in His Grace's speech. But His Gracious Majesty, with his world-famous punctiliousness and reserve, Tuzzi went on, had in- stantly waved the suggestion aside, saying firmly: "Oh, I don't like being pushed into the limelight," and·now no one could say whether this meant His Majesty was definitely opposed to the idea or not.
Such was Tuzzi's discreet way of being indiscreet about the little secrets of his profession, as only a man who knows how to keep the big secrets can be. He ended by saying that it was now up to the various embassies to sound out their respeGtive courts abroad, as we were not sure of our own ground but had to fmd some solid point of departure somewhere. Technically, after all, there were all sorts of given possibilities, from calling a general peace conference, to a sum- mit meeting for twenty sovereigns, all the way down to decorating the Peace Palace at The Hague with frescoes by Austrian artists, or a foundation for the benefit of the children and orphans of The Hague's domestic staff. At this point he asked Amheim what they were thinking about the jubilee year at the Prussian court. Amheim disclaimed having any information in this regard. He was repelled by this Austrian cynicism. He, who knew how to chat so elegantly, froze up in Tuzzi's company like a man who wants it clearly understood that affairs of state must be discussed with the utmost gravity and coolness. In this fashion two contrasting kinds of urbanity, two na- tional- and two life-styles, not without a touch of sexual rivairy, pre-
Pseudoreality Prevails · . 209
210 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
sented themselves to Diotima. But place a greyhound beside a pug, a willow beside a poplar, a glass of Wine on a freshly plowed field, a portrait in a saill;loat instead of in an art gallery-in short, place side by side two highbred and distinct forms of life, and a void will come into being between them; they will cancel each other out, with the effect of a quite malicious, bottomless absurdity. Diotima felt this with her eyes and ears without understanding it, but she was suffi- ciently alarmed to give a tum to the conversation by telling her hus- band firmly that she intended to achieve something spiritually great with the Parallel Campaign, and would allow only the needs of truly modem minds to influence its leadership;
Arnheim was grateful to her fo:r restoring the dignity of the con- cept, especially because he had to be on his guard, at times, against going under; he could no more afford to be facetious about the events that so nobly justified his being with Diotima than a drowning man can be about his life jacket. Yet he surprised himself by asking Diotima, his voice betraying some uncertainty, whom she would include, in that case, in the intellectual spearhead of the ParaUel
1
Campaign.
Diotima was of course quite unprepared to give a clear answer to
this question. The days she spent with Arnheim had given her such an abundance of suggestions and ideas that she had not yet got around to sorting them out, and while he had repeated to her more than once that the democracy of the eommittees mattered far less than strong personalities with a comprehensive view of things, all it meant to her was simply "You and 1"-though she was still far from deciding anything, or even from having the necessary insight. It was probably just this of which she was reminded by the pessimism in Arnheim's voice, because she answered: "Do we have anything at all nowadays that we can regard as truly important and great, something worth working for with all our might? "
"It is the mark of a time that has lost the inner certainty of health- ier times," Arnheim responded, "that it is hard for something to crys- tallize as the greatest and most important thing of all. "
Section ChiefTuzzi had lowered his eyes to a speck of dust on his trousers, so that one might interpret his smile as a sign of agreement. "And indeed, what should it be? " Arnheim went on tentatively.
"Religion? "
Section ChiefTuzzi now directed his smile upward; Arnheim had pronounced the word this time not quite so emphatically and on- skeptically as before in His Grace's presence, but with sonorous gravity nonetheless.
Diotima, defending herself against her husband's smile, threw in: 'Why not? Religion too! "
"Of course. But since we must come to a practical decision: Have you ever thought of appointing a bishop to the committee, who should come up with a modem goal for the campaign? God is pro- foundly unmodem: we simply cannot imagine him in tails, clean-
shaven, with neatly parted hair; our image of him is still patriarchal. And what is there apart from religion? The nation? The state? "
Diotima was pleased at this, because Tuzzi regarded the state as a masculine subject one did not discuss with women. But now he was silent, only his eyes still hinting that there might be something fur- ther to be said on that score.
"Science? '' Arnheim went on. "Culture? That leaves art. Truly, it is art that should first reflect the unity of existence and its inner order. But we know the picture art presents today. Fragmentation everywhere; extremes without connections. Stendhal, Balzac, and Flaubert have already created the epic of the new mechanized social and inner life, while the demonic substrata ofour lives have been laid bare by Dostoyevsky, Strindberg, and Freud. W e who live today have a deep sense that there is nothing left for us to do. "
Here Section ChiefTuzzi interjected that when he wanted to read something solid, he took down his Homer, or Peter Rosegger.
Arnheim took up the suggestion: "You should include the Bible. With the Bible, Homer, and Rosegger or Reuter, one can manage. And this takes us right to the heart of the problem. What if a new Homer should come along, would we, frankly, be at all capable of listening to him? I believe the answer is no. We don't ha~e him be- cause we don't need him! " Arnheim was now in the saddle and riding high. "If we needed him, we would have him! For in the final analy- sis, nothing· negative happens. in world history. What can it mean that we place everything that is truly great and essential in the past? Homer and Christ have never again been equaled, to say nothing of being surpassed; there is nothing more beautiful than the Song of Songs. The Gothic age and the Renaissance stand before modem
Pseudoreality Prevails · 2 1 1
212 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
times like mountain ranges at the entrance to a great plain, and where, today, are the great rulers? How short-winded even the deeds of Napoleon look beside those of the pharaohs, the work of Kant be- side that of the Buddha, that of Goethe beside Homer! But here we are, and we must li"ve for something. What does it all add up to? Nothing but-" But here Arnheim broke off and confessed that he was reluctant to put it into words, because he was forced to conclude that all we regard as great and important in life has nothing to dd' with the innermost force of our lives.
"And that would be? " Tuzzi inquired. He had hardly any objection to the implication that most things were taken far too seriously. ·
"No one today knows the answer," Arnheim replied. "The prob- lem of civilization can be solved only by the heart. By the appearance ofanewtypeofman. Byaninnervisionandapurewill. Theintellect has achieved nothing but watering down the great past into liberal- ism. But perhaps we do not see far enough, perhaps we reckon on too small a scale; every moment may be that of a great historic turn- ing point! "
Diotima had been on the point of objecting that this would leave nothing for the Parallel Campaign to do. But in some peculiar way she found herself enthralled by Arnheim's somber visions. Perhaps there was a residue of "too much homework" in her that burdened her when she always had to read the newest books and talk about the newest pictures; pessimism toward art liberated her from all sorts of beauty she had not really liked at all, just as a pessimistic view of science eased her anxiety in the face of culture, the overabundance ofthe knowable and the influential. Thus Arnheim's despairingjudg- ment of the times came, as she suddenly realized, as a release. . And the thought flitted pleasantly through her heart that Arnheim's mel- ancholy somehow had something to do with herself. ·
so
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS. SECTION CHIEF TUZZI DECIDES TO INFORM HIMSELF ABOUT ARNHEIM
Diotima had guessed right. From the moment Amheim had noticed that the bosom of this enchanting woman who had read his books on the soul was lifted and moved by a force of an unmistakable kind, he had suffered a loss of nerve otherwise foreign to him. Putting it briefly and in his own terms, it was the faintheartedness ofthe moral- ist who suddenly and unexpectedly meets heaven on earth. To empa- thize with him, one need only imagine how it would be if we were surrounded by nothing but this quiet blue puddle with soft white wads of feathers floating in it.
The moral person as such is ridiculous and unpleasant, as we know by the odor of those poor, resigned people who have nothing they can call their own but their morality. Morality needs great tasks from which to derive its significance, which is why Amheim had always striven to complement his nature, which inclined to moralizing, by drawing on world events and history, and saturating his activities with ideology. That was his favorite concept: carrying ideas·into the spheres of p. ower and talking business only in connection with cul- tural questions. He liked to draw analogies from history in order to fill it with new life; the role of present-day finance seemed to him similar to that of the Catholic Church: a great influence b. ehind the scenes; unyielding yet yielding 'in its dealings with the ruling powers; and he sometimes saw himself functioning like a cardinal.
But on this occasion he had come to Austria more on a whim, and even though he never traveled wholly without a purpose, even on a whim, he could not quite remember how the. plan-incidentally, a plan of some scope-had originally entered his mind. The inspira- tion for this trip seemed to have come out of the blue; an instant resolve, and it may have been this small circumstance of freedom
213
214 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
about it that a trip to Bombay would hardly have made a less exotic impression on him than this out-of-the-way German-language me- tropolis in which he had landed. The thought, inconceivable in Prussia, of playing a leading role in the Parallel Campaign had done the rest and made him feel illogically fantastic, like a dream, whose absu;dity his practical good sense recognized but whose spell he was powerless to break. He could probably have accomplished the busi- ness purpose ofhis trip far more simply and directly, but he regarded it as a holiday from reason to keep coming back here, and for these excursions into fairyland he was punished by his business sense in that he smudged the black good-conduct mark he should have given himself into a gray blur over everything.
There was no repetition, at least, of that far-reaching contempla- tion in the dark as had happened in Tuzzi's presence, ifonly because Section Chief Tuzzi turned up only in passing, and Arnheim had to parcel out his words to all sorts of persons whom he found amazingly receptive in this beautiful country. In His Grace's presence he called criticism sterile and the present age godless, once more letting it be understood that redemption from so negative an existence could come only through the heart; for Diotima's sake he added that the German spirit, and perhaps the world as well, could be freed from the excesses of rationalism and petty bookkeeping only by the rich culture of its southern lands. Encircled by ladies, he spoke of the need to organize the inner resources of human tenderness, in order to save mankind from arms races and soullessness. To a circle of ac- tive professionals he expounded Holderlin's saying that there were no longer human beings in Germany but only professio~als, winding up with: "And no one can achieve anything in his profession without a sense of some overarching purpose, least of all the financier! "
People'listened to him gladly because it was so nice ~at a man with so many ideas also had money, and the circumstance that all those who spoke with him came away with the impression that an undertaking like the Parallel Campaign was a most dubious affair, riddled with the most explosive intellectual contradictions, also rein- forced in everyone the notion that no one else was as obviously cut out as he was for taking the helm in this adventure.
However, Section Chief Tuzzi would not have been, in his quiet way, one of his country's leading diplomats had he noticed nothing of
Arnheim's pervasive presence in his house; he simply could not make head or tail of it. He did not let on, because a diplomat never shows what he is thinking. Personally, and also in principle, so to speak, he found this outsider most irritating, and that he had blatandy chosen the salon of Tuzzi's wife as the scene of operations for some secret objective Tuzzi regarded as a challenge. Not for an instant did he believe Diotima's assurances that the nabob visited the Imperial City on the Danube so often because his mind felt most at home in its ancient culture. Tuzzi's problem was that he had no clue to help him solve this mystery, because in all his official experience he had never come across a person like Arnheim.
And since Diotima had announced ~at she intended to give Arn- heim a leading position in the Parallel Campaign, and had com- plained about His Grace's resistance to this idea, Tuzzi was seriously concerned. He did not think much of either the Parallel Campaign or Count Leinsdorf, but he regarded his wife's idea as politically so amazingly tactless that he was overcome with the feeling that all these years of patient husbandly training such as he flattered himself to have given her had collapsed like a house of cards. He had in fact used exacdy this figure of speech in thinking about it, even though Section Chief Tuzzi never indulged himself in figures of speech be- cause they are too literary and, socially, smell of poor taste; but this time he felt quite shaken by it.
Hqwever, Diotima strengthened her position again as things went on by her stubbornness, She had become gently aggressive and spoke of a new kind of person who could no longer passively leave the spiritual responsibility for the course of world events to the pro- fessional leaders. Then she spoke of feminine tact that could some- times be a visionary gift perhaps capable of penetrating distances beyond the daily routine of professionals. Finally, she said that Arn- heim was a European, a thinker known throughout Europe, that the conduct of affairs of state in Europe Was not sufficiendy European, not spiritual enough, and that the world would find no peace until it was as permeated by a universally Austrian spirit as the ancient Aus- trian culture that embraced all the peoples, with their different lan- guages, within the borders of the monarchy.
She had never before dared to stand up so resolutely against her husband's authority, but Section Chief Tuzzi was temporarily reas-
Pseudoreality Prevails · 2 I 5
216 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
sured by it, because he had never regarded his wife's strivings as higher in significance than problems with her dressmaker, was de- lighted when she was admired by others, and could now take a less alarming view of her current goings-on, much as if a woman who loved color had for once chosen too gaudy a ribbon. So he confined himself to going over again, with grave courtesy, all the reasons why in a man's world decisions on Austrian affairs could not be publicly entrusted to a Prussian, even though he could see that there might be some advantage in being on friendly terms with a man in so unique a position. He assured Diotima that she would be misunder- standing his scruples if she inferred from them that he was not pleased to see Arnheim in her company as often as possible. Privately he hoped that this would give him the opportunity, sooner or later, to set a trap for the outsider.
Only when Tuzzi had to stand by and see Arnheim sweeping from success to success everywhere did he come back to the idea that she seemed overinvolved with this man-only to fmd again that she did not respect his wishes as of old but argued with him and declared his misgivings chimerical. He decided as a man not to struggle against the dialectics of a woman but to bide his time and wait for circum- stances to prove him right in the end. But then something happened to give him a powerful incentive.
One night, something like the sound of very distant weeping aroused him from his sleep. It barely disturbed him at first; he si. mply did not understand what it was. But from time to time the spiritual distance lessened by a jump, until suddenly the menacing distur- bance was quite close to his ears, and he started so violently out ofhis sleep that he sat bolt upright in bed. Diotima lay on her side facing away from him and gave no sign ofbeing awake, but something made him feel that she was. He whispered her name once, then again, and tenderly tried to tum her white shoulder to him. But as he turned her around and her face rose above her shoulder in the dark, it looked at him angrily, expressed defiance, and had been crying. Un- fortunately, Tuzzi's sound sleep was reclaiming him and dragging him relentlessly back into his pillows, while Diotima's face hovered above him as a painfully bright distortion he could make no sense of. "Whatsamatter? " he muttered in the soft bass of returning uncon- sciousness, and received a clear, irritable, unwelcome answer that
stamped itself on his ear, fell into his drowsiness, and lay there like a sparkling coin in the water.
"You toss about so much in your sleep, no one can sleep next to you! " Diotima had said harshly and distinctly; his ear had taken it in, but he,had already slipped back into sleep without being able to utter a word in his own defense.
He merely felt that he was the victim of a grave injustice. Quiet, restful sleep was in his opinion one ofa diplomat's chiefvirtues, for it was a condition ofall success. It was a point on which he was acutely sensitive, and Diotima's remark was a serious challenge to his very existence. He realized that something in her had changed. While it never occurred to him even in his sleep to suspect his wife of any tangible infidelity, he never doubted for a moment that the personal discomfort inflicted on him must be connected with Arnheim. He slept on angrily, as it were, till morning and awakened with the finn resolve to find out all he could about this disturbing person.
THE HOUSE OF FISCHEL
Director Fischel ofthe Lloyd Bank was that bank director, or, more properly, managerwith the title ofdirector, who had somehow unac- countably forgotten to acknowledge Count Leinsdorf's invitation and had thereafter not been invited again. And even that first invita- tion he had owed only to the connections of his wife, Clementine. Clementine Fischel's family were old civil service. Her father had been Accountant General, her grandfather had been a senior official in the finance department, and three of her brothers held high posi- tions in various ministries. Twenty-four years ago she had married Leo Fischel, for two reasons: first, because families high in the civil service sometimes have more children than means; but second, for a romantic reason, because compared with the relentlessly thrifty
Pseudoreality Prevails · 2 1 7
218 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
tightness of her parental home, banking seemed a liberal-minded, modem profession, and in the nineteenth century a cultivated per- son did not judge another person's value according to. whether he was a Jew or a Catholic; indeed, as matters stood then, she almost felt there was something particularly refined in rising above the crude anti-Semitic prejudice of the common people.
Later the poor woman was destined to see a nationalist spirit well- ing up all over Europe, and with it a surge ofJew-baiting, transform- ing her husband in her very arms, as it were, from a respected free spirit into a corrosive spawn of an alien race. In the beginning she had resisted this transformation with all the indignation of a "mag- nanimous heart," but as the years passed she was worn down by the naively cruel and steadily growing hostility and intimidated by the general prejudice. In time, as 'the differences between herself and her husband gradually became acrimonious-when, for reasons he · would never quite go into, he never rose above the rank of manager and lost all prospects of ever being appointed a bank director-she came to justify to herself, with a shrug, many things that wounded her by remembering that Leo's character was; after all, alien to her own, though toward outsiders she never abandoned the principles of her youth.
Their differences, however, were basically nothing more than a lack of understanding; as in many marriages, a natural misfortune, as it were, surfaced as soon as the couple ceased to be rapturously happy. Ever since Leo's career had hesitantly ground to a halt at what was in effect a stockbroker's desk, Clementine was no longer able to excuse certain of his peculiarities by taking into account that he was not ensconced in the glassy calm of a ministerial office but was sitting at the "roaring loom of time"-and who knows whether she had not married him just on account of this quotation from Goe- · the? His side-whiskers, which, with the pince-nez riding the middle of his nose, had once reminded her of an English lord with mutton- chops, now suggested a stockbroker, and some of his mannerisms of gesture and turns of phrase became positively insufferable to her. At first Clementine tried to improve her husband, but she ran into terri- ble snags as it became apparent that nowhere in the world was there a standard by which to judge whether muttonchop whiskers rightly
suggested a lord or a broker, or at what point on the nose a pince- nez, combined with a wave of the hand, expressed enthusiasm o·r cynicism. Besides, Leo Fischel was simply not the man to let himself be improved. He dismissed as social tomfoolery the faultfinding that tried to tum him into the Christian-Teutonic beau ideal of a high ministry official, and rejected her ~guments as unworthy of a rea- sonable man; for the more his wife took offense at certain details, the more he stressed the great guidelines of reason. And so the Fischel household was gradually transformed into the battleground of two contending philosophies of life.
Director Fischel of the Uoyd Bank enjoyed philosophizing, but only for ten minutes a day. He enjoyed thinking that human life had a solid rational basis and that it paid off intellectually; he imagined this on the pattern ofthe harmonious hierarchy ofa great bank and noted with satisfaction the daily signs of progress he read about in the papers.
This faith in the immutable guidelines of reason and progress had for a long time· enabled him to dismiss his wife's carpings with a shrug or a cutting retort. But since misfortune had decreed that in the course of this marriage the mood of the times would shift away from the old principles ofliberalism that had favored Leo Fischel- the great guiding ideals of tolerance, the dignity of man, and free trade-and reason and progress in the Western world would be dis- placed by racial theories and street slogans, he eould not remain un- touched by it either. He started by flatly denying the existence of these changes, just as Count Leinsdorf was accustomed to deny the existence of certain "unpleasant political manifestations" and waited for them to disappear of their own accord. Such waiting is the first, almost imperceptible degree of the torture of exasperation that life inflicts on men of principle. The second degree is usually called, and was therefore also called by Fischel, "poison. " This poison is the ap- pearance, drop by drop, of new views on morals, art, politics, the family, newspapers, books, and social life, already accompanied by the helpless feeling that there is no turning back and by indignant denials, which cannot avoid a certain acknowledgment of the thing denied. Nor was Director Fischel spared the third and final degree, when the isolated showers and sprinklings of the New tum into a
Pseudoreality PreVails · 2 1 9
220 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
steady, drenching rain. In time this becomes one ofthe most horrible torments that a man who has only ten minutes a day to spare for phi- losophy can experience.
Leo came to know on how many points people can have differ- ences of opinion. The. drive to be right, a need almost synonymous with human dignity, began to. celebrate excesses in the Fischel household. For millennia this drive has produced thousands of admi- rable philosophies, works ofart, books, deeds, and partisan alliances, and when this admirable, but also fanatical and monstrous, innate human drive has to make do with ten minutes on practical philoso- phy or a debate on the basic principles of the household, it cannot fail to burst, like a drop of molten lead, into innumerable sharp splin- ters that inflict the most painful wounds. It burst over the question of whether a maid was to be given notice or not, and whether tooth- picks belonged on the table or not; but whatever made it burst, it had the capacity to reconstitute itself immediately into two infinitely de- tailed opposing vi·ews of the world.
This was all very well by day, since Director Fischel was in his of- fice then, but at night he was only human, and this gravely worsened the relations between him and Clementine. Things today are so com- plicated that a person can really keep fully informed only in one field, basically, which in .
his case was stocks and bonds, and so he was in- clined at night to be of a generally yielding disposition. Clementine, on the contrary, remained sharp and unyielding, raised as she had been in a strict civil-service household with its constant emphasis on duty. Besides, her class consciousness would not permit them sepa- rate bedrooms, "-'hich would have made their already inadequate apartment even smaller: But a shared bedroom, with the lights out, puts a man in the situation of an actor having to play before an invisi- ble house the rewarding but by now worn-out role of a hero imper- sonating a growling lion. For years now, Leo's dark auditorium had not let slip the faintest hint of applause, nor yet the smallest sign of disapproval, and this was surely enough to shatter the strongest nerves. In the morning at breakfast, which the couple took together in accordance with time-honored tradition, Clementine was stiff as a frozen corpse and Leo twitchy with nerves. Even their daughter, Gerda, noticed something of this every time and had come to imag-
ine married life with dread and bitter loathing, as a catfight in the dark of night.
Gerda was twenty-three, and the favorite bone of contention of both her progenitors. Leo Fischel thought it was time to start think- ing of a good match for her. But Gerda said, "You're old-fashioned, Papa," and had chosen her friends in a swarm of Christian national- ists her own age, none of whom offered the slightest prospect of being able to support a wife; instead, they despised capitalism and maintained that no Jew had yet proved capable of serving as a great symbol of humanity. Leo Fischel called them anti-Semitic louts and would have forbidden them the house, but Gerda said, "You don't understand, Papa, they only mean it symbolically"; and nervous and anemic as she was, Gerda immediately got upset if she was not han- dled with care. So Fischel suffered her friends: society, as once Odysseus had had to suffer Penelope's suitors in his house, for Gerda was the ray of sunshine in his life. But he did not suffer in silence, because that was not in his nature. He thought he knew all about morality and great ideas himself, and held forth on them at every opportunity in order to exert a good influence on Gerda. Every time he did so Gerda answered: "Yes, Papa, you would be absolutely right if the whole thing did not have to be looked at from a wholly different point of view from the one you still cling to! "
What did Clementine do when Gerda talked like this? Not a thing. She made a resigned face and kept her own counsel, but Leo could be sure that behind his back she would be on Gerda's side-as if she knew what symbols wereJ Leo Fischel had always had every reason to assume that his good Jewish head was superior to his wife's, and noth- ing outraged him so much as to observe that she was using Gerda's craziness to her own advantage. Why should he, of all people, sud- denly no longer be capable of keeping up with the times? They were in this together! Then he remembered last night. This was no longer sniping at a man's self-esteem, it was digging it up by the roots! At night a man has only his nightshirt on, and right underneath that is his character. No expertise, no professional shrewdness, can protect him. Here a man stakes his whole life, nothing less. So what did it mean that Clementine, whenever the conversation turned to Christian- Germanic ideaS, made a face as if he were fresh from the jungle?
Pseudoreality Prevails · 2 2 1
222 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Now, man is a being who can stand mistrust as little as tissue paper can the rain. Since Clementine had ceased to find Leo attractive she found him unbearable, and since Leo began to feel that Clementine doubted him he saw at every tum a conspiracy in his own house. At the same time Clementine and Leo deluded themselves, like every- one whose mind has been formed by the prevailing customs and lit- erature, that their passions, . characters, destinies, and actions made them dependent on each other. In truth, ofcourse, more than halfof life consists not of actions but of formulas, of opinions we make our own, of on-the-one-hands and on-the-other-hands, and of all the piled-up impersonality of everything one has heard and knowS. The fate of this husband and wife depended mostly on a murky, persist- ent, confused structuring of ideas that were not even their own but belonged to public opinion and shifted with it, without their being able to defend themselves against it. Compared with this depen- dence their personal dependence on each other represented only a tiny fraction, a wildly overestimated residue. And while they deluded themselves that they had their own private lives, and questioned each other's character and will, the agonizing difficulty lay in the unreality of their conflict, which they covered with every possible peevishness.
It was Leo Fischel's bad luck that he neither played cards nor found pleasure in taking out pretty girls, but, worn out by his work, suffered from a marked craving for family life, whereas his wife, who had nothing to do day or night but be the bosom ofthe family, was no longer subject to any 'romantic illusions about that. There were times when Leo Fischel felt he was suffocating, attacked by nothing he could put his finger ~nfrom all sides at once. He was a hardworking small cell in the body politic, doing its duty with a will, but receiving from all sides poisoned juices. And so, though it far exceeded his need for philosophy, the aging man, left in the lurch by his life-part- ner and seeing no grounds for abandoning the rational fashion of his youth, began to sense the profound emptiness of emotional life, its formlessness which is eternally changing its forms, its slow but re- lentless overturning that pulls everything with it.
It was on one such morning, his head occupied with family prob- lems, that Fischel had forgotten to answer His Grace's invitation, and on many subsequent mornings he had to listen to accounts of what
was going on in Section Chief Tuzzi's wife's circle, which made it appear most regrettable not to have seized such a chance for Gerda to enter the best society. Fischel's conscience was none too clear, since his own general manager and the chief executive of the Na- tional Bank attended those gatherings, but as everyone knows, a man will defend himself most violently against reproaches the more strongly he is tom between guilt and innocence. But every time Fischel tried, with all the superiority of a practical man, to make fun of these patriotic goings-on, he was advised that a financier who was abreast of the times, such as Paul Amheim, evidently thought other- wise. It was amazing how much C. lementine, and even Gerda-who normally, of course, took the opposite line from her mother's-had found out about this man, and as the stock exchange, too, was buzz- ing with all sorts of stories about him, Fischel felt driven onto the defensive, unable to keep up with them or to come out and say about so eminent a businessman that he was not to be taken seriously.
But when Fischel was on the defensive he adopted a suitably bear- ish stance, in this instance keeping up an impenetrable silence in the face of all allusions to the Tuzzi household, Amheim, the Parallel Campaign, and his own failure. He tried to find out where and how long Amheim was staying in town, and furtively hoped for an event that would at one blow expose the hollow pretense of it all and bring down his family's high rating of those stocks with a crash.
52
SECTION C:EUEF TUZZI FINDS A BLIND SPOT IN THE WORKINGS OF HIS MINISTRY
After he had decided to find out all about Amheim, Section Chief Tuzzi soon made the satisfying discovery of a large blind spot in the workings of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and of the Imperial House, which were his special concern: it had not been designed to
Pseudoreality Prevails · . 2. 23
224 • THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
deal with persons like Amheim. Other than memoirs, Tuzzi read no literary works but the Bible, Homer, and Rosegger, priding himself that this saved him from dissipating his mental forces. But that not a single man was to be found in the whole Foreign Ministry who had read a book of Aniheim's he recognized as an error.
Section Chief Tuzzi had the right to summon the heads of other departments to his own office, but on the morning after that night disturbed by tears, he had gone himself to see the chief of the press department, impelled by a feeling that the occasion which led him to seek a discussion did not warrant full official status. The chief of the press department admited Section ChiefTuzzi for knowing so many personal details about Amheim, admitted that he, too, had fre- quently heard the name mentioned, but promptly warded off any in- timation that the man . could possibly be found in any of his departmental files, since Arnheim had not, as far as he recalled, ever been the object of official consideration and since the processing of news material could not, of course, be extended to cover the public expressions of private individuals. Tuzzi conceded that this was as it should be, but pointed out that these days the borderline between the official and the private status of persons and events was not al- ways clearly definable, which the chief of the press department found a most acute observation, whereupon the two section chiefs agreed that they had before them a most intrigui~g flaw in the system.
It was clearly a morning on which Europe was enjoying a little peace and quiet, because the two officials sent for the head clerk and instructed him to start a file headedAmheim, Dr. Paul, though there was as yet nothing in it. Mter the head clerk came the chiefflle clerk and the clerk in charge ofnews clippings, both ofwhom were able to state on the spot, all aglow with efficiency, that no Amheim was to be found in their files. Finally the press secretaries were called in, whose job it was to go through the newspapers every day and lay their clippings before the various chiefs. When asked about Amheim they all made serious faces, and testified that he was indeed men- tioned often and most favorably in the·papers they read, but that they could not say what his writings were about because his activities-as they could immediately affirm-were not included within the sphere of their official concern with the news. Thus the flawless functi_oning
of the Foreign Ministry's apparatus was demonstrated whenever one touched a button, and all these officials left the room with the sense of having made the best show of their reliability.
"It's exactly as I told you;" the chief of the press department said to Tuzzi with satisfaction. "Nobody know~ a thing. "
The two section chiefs had listened to the reports with smiling dig- nity, sitting-as,if embalmed forever by their surroundings, like flies in amber-in luxurious leather armchairs, on the deep-pile red car- pet, framed by the tall windows draped in dark red in that white-and-· gold room dating from the time of Maria Theresa, and acknowledged that the blind spot in the system, which they now had at least spotted, would be hard to cure.
"In this department," its chiefsaid with satisfaction, "we deal with every public utterance, but a borderline must be drawn somewhere around the term 'public. ' I can guarantee that every 'Hear, hear' shouted by some deputy at one of this year's regional council meet- ings can be located in our files within ten minutes, and every such interjection made in the last ten years, as far as it concerns foreign affairs, within h~fan hour at most. The same applies to every politi- cal newspaper article; my men do painstaking work. :Sut those are tangible, so to speak responsible, utterances, in connection with well-defined conditions, powers, and concepts. However, if I have to decide, from a purely professional point of view, under which head- ing the clerk who compiles the excerpts or the catalog is to file some personal effusion by-let's see, whom could we use as an example? "
Tuzzi helpfully gave him the name of one of the latest writers to frequent Diotima's salon. The chief of the press department glanced up at him uneasily, as if he were hard of hearing.
"All right, him, let's say-but where do we draw the line between what to note and what to pass over? We've even had political poems. Does this mean that every versifier-or perhaps only authors who write for our Burgtheater . . . ? "
Both laughed.
"How is one to deduce what these people mean, even if they were Schiller and Goethe? Of course there's always a higher meaning in it, but for all practical purposes they contradict themselves with every second word they say. "
By this time the two men had become aware that they were run-
Pseudoreality Prevails · 2 2 5
226 · THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
ning the risk of becoming involved in something "impossible," a word with the added nuance of something socially ridiculous, to which diplomats are so keenly sensitive. ·
"Ofcourse we can't bring a whole staffofliterary and drama critics into the ministry," Tuzzi said with a smile, "but on the other hand, once we've become aware of it, there's no denying that such people are not without influence on world opinion and consequently do af- fect·politics. "
"It isn't done in any Foreign Office in the world," the press chief said helpfully.
"Agreed. But drop after drop will hollow out stone. " Tuzzi found that this proverb sexved nicely to express a certain danger. "Shouldn't we try to set up a way of handling this? "
"I don't know. I have qualms," the other section chief said.
"So do I, of course! " Tuzzi replied. As the conversation neared its end he felt ill at ease, as ifhis tongue were coated, uncertain whether he had been talking nonsense or whether it would turn out after all to be another instance of that perspicacity for which he was celebrated. The press chief was equally undecided, and so they ended by assur- ing each other that they would have another talk on the subject later.
The press chief issued insf? uctions to order Arnheim's complete works for the ministry library, by way of concluding the matter, and Tuzzi went to a political department, where he requested a detailed report on the man Arnheim from the Austrian Embassy in Berlin. This was the only thing left for him to do at the ·moment, and until the report arrived his only source of information about Arnheim was his wife, a source he now felt strongly disinclined to use. He recalled Voltaire's saying that people use words only to hide their thoughts and use thoughts only to justify the wrongs they have done. Cer- tainly, that is what diplomacy had always been. But that a person spoke and wrote as much as Arnheim did, to hide his . real intentions behind words, was something new; it made Tuzzi uneasy, and he would have to get to the bottom of it.
53
MOOSBRUGGER IS MOVED TO ANOTHER PRISON
The killer of a prostitute, Christian Moosbrugger, had been forgot- ten a few days after the newspapers stopped printing the reports of his trial, and the public had turned to other things for excitement. Only a circle of experts still took an interest in him. His lawyer had entered a plea to have the trial invalidated, demanded a new psychi-. atric examination, and taken other steps as well: the execution was indefinitely postponed and Moosbrugger moved to another prison.
The preca. utions with which this was done flattered him: loaded guns, many people, arms and legs in irons. They were paying atten- tion to him, they were afraid of him, and Moosbrugger loved it. When he climbed into the prison van, he glanced around for admira- tion and tried to catch the surprised gaze of the passersby. Cold Wind, blowing down the street, played with his curly hair; the air drained him. Two seconds; then a guard shoved his behind into the van.
Moosbrugger was vain. He did not like to be pushed like that; he was afraid that the . guards would punch him, shout or laugh at him. The fettered giant did not dare to look at any of his escort and slid to the front of the van of his own accord.
But he was not afraid of death. Life is full of things that must be endured, and that certainly hurt more than being hanged, and whether a man has a few years more or less to live really doesn't mat- ter. The passive pride of a man who has been locked up for long stretches would not let him fear his punishment; but in any case, he did not cling to life. What was there in life that he should love? Surely not the spring breeze, or the open road, or the sun? They only make a man tired, hot, and dusty. No one loves life who really knows it. "If I could say to someone," Moosbrugger thought, " 'Yesterday I had some terrific roast pork at the comer restaurant! ' that might be something. " But one cou,ld do without even that. What would have
227
228 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
pleased him was something that could satisfy his ambition, which had always come up against nothing but stupid insults.
An uneven jolting ran from the wheels through the bench into his body. Behind the bars in the door the cobblestones were running backward; heavy wagons were left behind; at times, men, women, or children stumbled diagonally across the bars; a distant cab was gain- ing on them, growing, coming closer, beginning to spray out life as an anvil throws off sparks; the horses' heads seemed to be about to push through the door; then the clatter of hooves and the soft sound of rubber-tired wheels ran on past behind the wall of the van. Moos- brugger slowly turned his head back to stare again at the ceiling where it met the van's side in front ofhim. The noises outside roared, blared, were stretched like a canvas over which now and then flitted the shadow of something happening. Moosbrugger took the ride as a change, without paying much attention to its meaning. Between two dark, inert stretches in prison a quarter of an hour's opaque, white, foaming time was shooting by. This was how he had always experi- enced his freedom. Not really pretty. "That business about the last meal," he thought, "the prison chaplain," the hangmen, the quarter hour before it's all over, won't be too different. It will bounce along on wheels too; I'll be kept busy all the time·, like now, trying to keep from sliding off this bench at every jolt, and I won't be seeing or hearing much of anything with all those people hopping around me. It's the best thing that can happen: finally I'll get some peace. "
A man who has liberated himself frof! l wanting to live feels im- mensely superior. Moosbrugger remembered the superintendent who had been his first interrogator at the police station. A real gent, who spoke in a low voice.
"Look here, Mr. Moosbrugger," he had said, "I beseech you: grant me success! " And Moosbrugger had replied, 'Well, ifsuccess means that much to you, let's draw up a statement. "
The judge, later on, was skeptical, but the superintendent had confirmed it in court. "Even if you don't care about relieving your conscience on your own account, please give me the personal satis- faction that you are doing it for my sake. " The superintendent had repeated this before the whole court, even the presiding judge had looked pleased, and Moosbrugger had risen to his feet:
"My deep respect to His Honor the superintendent for making
this statement! " he had loudly proclaimed, then added, with a grace- ful bow: "Although the superintendent's last words to me were W e will probably never see each other again,' it is an honor and a privi- lege to see you, the superintendent, again today. "
A smile of self-approval transformed Moosbrugger's face, and he forgot the guards sitting opposite him, flung to and fro like himselfby the jolting van.
54
IN CONVERSATION WITH WALTER AND CLARISSE, ULRICH TURNS OUT TO BE REACTIONARY
Clarisse said to Ulrich: "Something must be done for Moosbrugger; this murderer is musical! "
Ulrich had finally, on a free afternoon, paid them a visit to make up for the one so fatefully prevented by his arrest.
Clarisse was clutching at his lapel; Walter stood-beside her with a look on his face that was not quite sincere.
'What do you mean, musical? " Ulrich asked with a smile.
Clarisse looked merrily shamefaced. Unintentionally. As ifshe had to clap a tight comic grin on her face to hold back the embarrassment oozing from every pore. She let go of his lapel.
"Oh,'nothing special," she said. "You seem to have become an in- fluential man! " It was not always easy to make her out.
Walter had already made a start, and then stopped again. Here, outside the city, there was still some snow on the ground; white fields and between them, like dark water, black earth. The sun washed over everything equitably. Clarisse wore an orange jacket and a blue wool cap. The three of them were out for a walk, and Ulrich, in the midst of nature's desolate disarray, had to explain Amheim's writings to her. These dealt with algebraic series, benzol rings, the materialist as
Pseudoreality Prevails · 2 2 9
230 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
well as the universalist philosophy of history, bridge supports, the ev- olution of music, the essence of the automobile, Hata 6o6, the theory of relativity, Bohr's atomic theory, autogeneous welding, the flora of the Himalayas, psychoanalysis, individual psychology, experimental psychology, physiological psychology, . social psychology, and all the other achievements that prevent a time so greatly enriched by them from turning out good, wholesome, integral human beings. How- ever, Amheim dealt with all these subjects in his writing in the most soothing fashion, assuring his readers that whatever they did not un- derstand represented only an excess of sterile intellect, while the truth was always simplicity itself, like human dignity an~that instinct for transcendent realities within reach of everyone who lived simply and was in league with the stars.
"Plenty of people are saying thi~ kind of thing nowadays," Ulrich explained, "but Arnheim is the one whom people believe because they see him as a big, rich man who really knows whatever it is he is talking about, who has actually been to the Himalayas, owns automo- biles, and can wear as many benzol rings as he likes. "
Clarisse, prompted by a vague notion of carnelian rings, wanted to know what benzol rings looked like.
"You're a dear girl, Clarisse, all the same! " Ulrich said.
Walter came to her defense. "Thank heaven she doesn't have to understand all that chemical gobbledygook. " But then he proceeded to defend the works of Amheim, which he had read. He would not claim that Amheim was the best one could imagine, but he was still the best the present age had produced; this was a new spirit! Scien- tifically sound, yet. also capable of going beyond technical knowl- edge.
Thus their walk came to an end. The result for all of them was wet feet, an irritated brain-as though the thin, bare branches on the trees, sparkling in the winter sun; had turned to splinters stuck in the retina-a vulgar craving for hot coffee, and the feeling of human for- lornness.
Steaming snow rose from their shoes; Clarisse enjoyed the mess they were making on the floor, and Walter kept his femininely sensu- ous lips pursed the whole time, because he was itching to start an argument. Ulrich told them about the Parallel Campaign. When Amheim's name cropped up again the argument began.
"I'll tell you what I hold against him," Ulrich persisted. "Scientific man is an entirely inescapable thing these days; we can't not want to know! And at no time has the difference between the expert's experi- ence and that of the layman been as great as it is now. Everyone can see this in the ability of a masseur or apianist. No one would send a horse to the races these days without special preparation. It is only on the problems of being human that everyone feels called upon to pro- nounce judgment, and there's an ancient prejudice to the effect that one is born and dies a human being. But even if I· know that five thousand years ago women wrote the same love letters, word for word, that they write today, I can't read such letters any longer with- out wondering whether it isn't ever going to change! "
Clarisse seemed inclined to agree. Walter, however, smiled like a fakir preparing not to bat an eyelash while someone runs a hatpin through his cheeks.
"Meaning only, presumably, that until further notice you refuse to be a human being? " he broke in.
"More or less. It has an unpleasant feeling of dilettantism about it. "
"But I'll grant you something quite different," Ulrich went on after some thought. "The experts never finish anything. Not only are they not finished today, but they are incapable of conceiving an end to their activities. Even incapable, perhaps, of wishing for one. Can you imagine that man will still have a soul, for instance, once he has learned to understand it and control it biologically and psychologi- cally? Yet this is precisely the condition we are aiming for! That's the trouble.