No More Learning

The unexpected effect wa. S that Diotima's soul, temporarily unsupervised by the higher faculties, behaved like a truant schoolboy boisterously careening around until he is overcome by the sadness ofhis pointless liberty; and owing to this curious situation something briefly entered into her relations with her husband, despite the increasing distance between them, that bore a strange resemblance, if not to. a late springtime of love, then at least to a potpourri of all love's seasons.
The little Section Chief, with his pleasant aroma of tanned dry skin, was baffled by what was happening. He had noticed several times that his wife, when guests were present, seemed strangely. dreamy, withdrawn, remote, and highly nervous, truly nervous and yet far away at the same time; still, when they were alone again and he approached her, somewhat intimidated and disconcerted, to ask her about it, she would suddenly throw her arms around him with inexplicable exuberance, and the pair of lips she pressed on his fore- head were so hot they reminded him of the barber's curling irons on his mustache when they got too close to his skin. Such unscheduled affection was not to his taste, and he stealthily wiped away its traces when Diotima was not looking. But whenever he felt like taking her in his arms, or had actually done so, which made it even worse, she hotly accused him ofnever having loved her, ofonly pouncing on her like an animal. Now, from the days of his youth, a certain degree of touchiness and moodiness had of course formed part of his image of a desirable woman who would complement a man's nature, and the ineffable grace with which Diotima proffered a cup of tea, picked up a new book, or passed judgment on a problem that, in his opinion, she could not possibly understand, had always delighted him with its
formal perfection. It all affected him like perfect background music by which to dine, something he dearly loved; but then, Tuzzi was also sure that the detachment of music from dining (or from church ser- vices) and the endeavor to cultivate it for its own sake was a sign of middle-class presumption, even though he'knew that one should never say so; anyway, it was not the sort of thing he ever seriously concerned himself with. But what was he to do when Diotima hugged him one minute and the next denounced him as a man be- side whom a person with a soul of her own could never be free to fulfill herself? What could a man say in answer to exhortations that he give more thought to the oceanic depths of beauty within, instead of fastening on her body? All of a sudden he was supposed to see the difference between Eros, the free spirit of love unburdened by lust, and mechanical sex. It was all, of course, stuff she had read some- where, and comical at that, but when a woman lectures a man in this fashion as she is undressing in front ofhim! -Tuzzi thought-it be- comes downright insulting. For he could not fail to notice that Di- otima's underwear had evolved in the direction of a certain worldly frivolity. She had always dressed with care and deliberation, since her social position required her to be smart without dressing above her station. But within the gradations from respectable durability to filmy, frilly provocation she was now making concessions to beauty she would once have called unworthy of an intelligent woman. How- ever, when Giovanni (Tuizi's name was really Hans, but he had been stylishly rechristened in keeping with his surname) noticed, she blushed down to her shoulders and brought up Frau von Stein, who had made no concessions even to a Goethe! So now Section Chief Tuzzi was no longer free, when he felt that the time had come, to escape from those weighty concerns of state beyond the private sphere and fmd release in the very lap of his own household; he found himself instead at Diotima's mercy; instead of the former clear line between mental exertion at the office and physical relaxation at home, he was faced with a virtual return to the strenuous and slightly ridiculous union of mind and body appropriate to courtship, to carry-
ing on like a cock pheasant or some lovesick, versifying youth.
It is hardly too much to say that he found this utterly revolting at times, and that because of it his wife's public success at this time caused him physical pain. Diotima had public opinion on her side,
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something Section Chief Tuzzi respected so unconditionally that he shied away from asserting his authority or meeting her incomprehen- sible moods with sarcasm, lest he seem unappreciative. It began to dawn on him that being the husband of a distinguished woman was a painful affliction that had to be carefully hidden from the world, much like an accidental castration. He took great pains to show noth- ing ofwhat he felt, came and went inconspicuously, always in a cloud of amiable official impenetrability, whenever Diotima had visitors or meetings, dropping the occasional politely. helpful suggestion or comforting ironic remark, and seemed to lead his life in a separate but friendly adjoining world, always in accord with Diotima, even en- trusting her with a little mission now and then when they were alone, publicly encouraging Amheim's visits to his home; in whatever spare time he had from the weighty cares of office, he studied Amheim's publications, and hated men who published their writings as the cause of his troubles.
For this was the question to which the main question-why was Arnheim frequenting his house? -sometimes reduced itself: Why did Amheim write? Writing is a particular form of chatter, and Tuzzi couldn't stand men who chatter. They made him want to clench his jaws and spit through his teeth like a sailor. . There were exceptions, of course; that he granted. He knew some high-ranking civil servants who had written their memoirs after they retired, and others who sometimes wrote for the newspapers. As Tuzzi saw it, a civil servant wrote only when he was dissatisfied or when he was a Jew, because Tuzzi held that Jews were ambitious and dissatisfied. Then there were also men of achievement who had written books about their experiences, but only in their old age and in America or, at most, in England. Besides, Tuzzi was of course versed in literature and, like all diplomats, had a preference for memoirs, from which one could pick up witty remarks and insights into the workings of men's minds. Still, that such works were no longer being written must signify something, so perhaps his was an old-fashioned taste, not in keeping with an age of functionalism. Finally, people wrote because it was their profession. Tuzzi could accept this without reservation, so long as it brought in enough money, or fell into the after all recognized category of "poet. " He even felt quite honored to receive the leading men in this profession, in which he had hitherto included those writ-
ers supported by the Foreign Office's Save the Reptile Fund, but without giving it much thought he would also have counted the Iliad and the Sermon on the Mount, both of which he certainly revered, among those achievements we owe to a profession that may either be practiced independently or have to he subsidized. But why a man like Amheim, who had no need whatsoever to write at all, should write so much was a problem behind which Tuzzi, now more than ever, suspected something that persisted in eluding him.
79
SOLIMAN IN LOVE
Soliman, the little black slave or African prince, as the case may be, had meanwhile managed to convince Rachel, Diotima's little maid or, alternatively, confidante, that they would have to keep a sharp eye on what went on in the house, in order to forestall a sinister plan of Arnheim's when the time came. Not that she was entirely convinced, but the two of them kept watch like conspirators, and always eaves- dropped when there were visitors. Soliman talked endlessly about couriers coming and going and mysterious visitors to his master at the hotel, and said he was prepared to give his oath as an African prince that he would get to the bottom of it. The African princely oath entailed Rachel's slipping her hand between the buttons of his jacket and shirt so she could lay it on his bare chest while he recited the vow, and his hand doing the same to her; this Rachel declined. All the same, little Rachel, who dressed and undressed her mistress and took her telephone calls, and through whose hands Diotima's black hair flowed every morning and evening while golden words from her mistress's lips flowed through her ears: this ambitious little creature. who had been living as though posed atop a pillar ever since the Parallel Campaign had started, trembling with adoration that flowed upward from her eyes to the goddess she served day after day,
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had for some time taken pleasure in spying on her, plain and simple. Through open doors from neighboring rooms or the crack of a slowly closing door or simply while lingering over some small task nearby, she tried to overhear everything said by Diotima and Am- heim, Tuzzi and Ulrich, and picked up glances, sighs, hand-kissings, words, laughter, gestures, like scraps of a tom-up document she could not fit together again. But most of all it was the little keyhole that opened up vistas which curiously, somehow, reminded Rachel of the long-forgotten time when she lost her virtue. That tiny open- ing let her gaze slip deep inside the room's interior, where people broken . up into sections flat as cardboard moved about, their voices no longer held within the fine borders of words but proliferating into meaningless sound; the awe, reverence, and admiration that bound Rachel to these people then came wildly undone, dissolving in ex- citement as when a lover suddenly penetrates, with all. his being, so deeply into the beloved that ~verythinggrows dark before her eyes, and behind the drawn curtain of her skin the light flares up. Little
Rachel crouched at the keyhole, her black dress tight over her knees, throat, and shoulders; Soliman cowered beside her in his live~, like hot chocolate in a dark-green cup; when he happened to lose his bal- ance he would steady himself against Rachel's shoulder, knee, or skirt with a quick movement of his hand, letting it rest there for an instant till he let go until only his fingertips still touched her; then these·, too, were slowly, caressingly, withdrawn. He couldn't help gig- gling, and then Rachel would lay her soft fingers on the swelling bol- sters of his lips.
Unlike Rachel, Soliman was not interested in the Council, and whenever he could dodged the chore of_helping her serve the guests. He preferred coming along on Amheim's private visits to Diotima. This meant waiting in the kitchen for Rachel to be free again, to the annoyance of the cook, who had so enjoyed his first visit, because he had since then apparently lost his tongue. Bu~ Rachel never had time to sit in the kitchen for long, and when she was gone again the cook, a single woman in her thirties, paid him little motherly attentions. He put up with that for a while, with an extremely haughty look on his chocolate face; then he would get up, like someone who has forgot- ten something or is looking for something, his eyes rolled up to the ceiling, his back to the door, walking backward as ifto see the ceilin~
better. The cook already knew this clumsy act was coming, as soon as he stood up and rolled his eyes, showing the whites; but she was too annoyed and jealous to let on that she noticed, until Soliman finally ceased bothering about his act, now reduced to a formula that took him to the threshold of the brightly lit kitchen, where he would hesi- tate with a most ingenuous expression on his face. The cook then made a point of not looking'in his direction. Soliman glided back- ward into the dark foyer, like a dark image in dark water, listening for another second, quite unnecessarily, and then suddenly tookto pur- suing Rachel with fantastic leaps throughout the strange house.
Section Chief Tuzzi was never at home, and Soliman was not wor- ried about Amheim and Diotima, knowing that they had ears oniy for each other. He had even tested this now and then, by knocking something over, without being noticed. He lorded it throughout the rooms like a stag in the forest. His blood pressed upward through his. head like antlers with eighteen dagger points. The tips of these ant- lers brushed walls and ceilings. The blinds were usually drawn in all the rooms not in use, to save the colors of the furnishings from being faded by the sunlight, and so Soliman rowed through this twilit world with wide movements of his arms, as . if through leafy undergrowth. He enjoyed making a dramatic dance of it. He was intent on vio- lence. This youngster, whom women tended to spoil out of curiosity, had never actually had intercourse with a woman but only picked up all the vices of European ·boys, and his cravings were as yet so unap- peased by experience, so unbridled and flaring in every direction, that his lust did not know whether it was supposed to be quenched by Rachel's blood or her kisses, or else by a freezing up of all the veins in his body the moment he set eyes on his beloved.
Wherever Rachel might be hiding, he suddenly turned up, with a smile of triumph at his own cleverness. He would bar her way, re- specting the sanctity of neither the master's study nor Diotima's bed- room; he popped up from behind curtains, desk, closets, beds, making Rachel's heart stand still every time, in horror at such impu- dence, such a tempting of fate, whenever the dimness somewhere condensed into a black face in which two white rows of teeth gleamed. But the moment Soliman found himself face-to-face with Rachel in the flesh, he was instantly recalled to propriety. This girl was so much older than he, and so beautiful, like a fine shirt of his
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master's one couldn't bring oneself to soil the very first moment it came fresh from the laundry, and anyway she was so real that all his fantasies paled in her presence. She scolded him for carrying on like a little savage, and tried to teach him some respect for Diotima, Arn- heim, and the great honor of having a share in the. Parallel Cam- paign; Soliman, for his part, always had little presents for her, whether it was a flower plucked from his master's bouquet for Di- otima, a cigarette stolen at the hotel, or a handful of bonbons he had scooped up in passing from a bowl; he only pressed Rachel's fingers and, as he gave her his gift, laid her hand on his heart, which wa-; flaming inside his black body like a red torch in a dark night.
There was also the time Soliman had made his way right into Ra- chel's room, where she had been banished with her sewing on striCt orders from Diotima, who had been disturbed the previous day by some scuffling in the hall while Amheim was with her. Before enter- ing on her house arrest she had quickly looked around for him with- out finding him, but when she stepped sadly into her little room, there he was, seated on her bed with a radiant expression on his face. Rachel hesitated before shutting the door, but Soliman leapt up and did it for her. Then he rummaged in his pockets, pulled some- thing out, blew on it to clean it off, and approached the girl like a hot flatiron.
"Hold out your hand! " he ordered.
Rachel held it out to him. He had some twinkling shirt studs in his hand and tried to fit them into her cuff. Rachel thought they were glass.
"Diamonds! " he explained proudly.
The girl, sensing that something was wrong, hastily pulled her arm back. Not that she had any definite suspicion; the son of an African prince, ·even if he had been kidnapped, might still have a few gem- stones sewed secretly into his shirt; one never knew. Yet some in- stinct made her afraid of these buttons, as if Soliman were offering her poison, and suddenly all the flowers and candies he had already given her took on in retrospect a sinister air. She pressed her hands to her body ~d looked at him aghast. It was time to speak to him seriously; she was older than he and in service with a kind mistress. But all she could think of was old saws like "Honesty is the best pol-
icy" or "Give the Devil your little finger and he'll take your whole hand. " She turned pale; such sayings were not enough. It was the wisdom she had been raised on at home; it was upright, proper, and simple as old pots and pans, but there was not much you could do with it; such a saying was usually just one sentence, with a period at the end. At this moment she felt ashamed· of parading such child- hood maxims, as one feels ashamed of old, threadbare clothes. That the ancient clothes chest from some poor man's attic turns up, a hun- dred years later; as a decorative item in the salons of the rich was beyond her ken; like all respectable simple people, she admired a new chair made of wickerwork. She tried hard to come up with something she had learned in her new life, but of all the thrilling scenes of love and terror she remembered from the books Diotima had given her, none fitted the present case; all those fine words and feelings were tied to their contexts and would be as much use here as a key in the wrong lock. It was the same with the great pronounce- ments and admonitions she had from Diotima. Rachel felt a red mist swirling around her and was close to tears. At length she said hotly: "I don't steal from my mistress! "
"Why not? " Soliman flashed his teeth at her.
"I just don't. "
"I didn't either. This is mine! " Soliman shouted.
A good mistress takes care of the likes of us, Rachel felt. Love was
what she felt for Diotima. Boundless respect for Arnheim. Deep loathing for those mischievous and mutinous types who are called subversive elements by the good police. But she could not find the words for all this; like a huge farm wagon overloaded with ·hay and fruit, with its brakes out of order, this huge ballast of feelings went rolling out_of control inside her.
"It's mine! Take it! " Soliman repeated, grabbing for Rachel's hand again. She snatched her arm away, and as he tried to hang on to it, with his anger mounting as he sensed he would have to let go be- cause his boyish strength was no match for Rachel's resistance--she was pulling away from his grasp with the whole weight ofher body- he lost his head, bent over, and bit her ferociously in the arm.
Rachel gave a scream, but had to stifle it, and hit Soliman in the face.
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But by this time his eyes were brimming with tears; he threw him- self to his knees, pressed his lips to Rachel's dress, and cried so hard that Rachel felt the hot wetness coming through to her thighs.
There she stood, helpless in the clutch of the kneeling boy who had taken hold of her skirt and was digging his head into her body. She had never in her life known such a feeling, and gently stroked the soft wiry mop of his hair with her fingers.
8o
GETTING TO KNOW GENERAL STUMM, WHO TURNS UP UNACCOUNTABLY AT THE COUNCIL
Meanwhile the Council had been enriched by a remarkable addition: despite the rigorous weeding out of those ;lSked to attend, the Gen- eral had turned up one evening, thanking Diotima effusively for the honor of her invitation. A soldier had only a modest part to play in the council chamber, he averred, but to be allowed to be present at so eminent a gathering, even if only as a silent bystander, was a dream he had cherished since his youth. Diotima gazed around over his head in silence, looking for the guilty party: Arnheim was talking, as one statesman to another, with His Grace; Ulrich, looking unutter- ably bored, stared at the buffet as though he were counting the cakes on it; the. familiar scene presented a solid front without the slightest opening for the intrusion of such an unusual suspicion. Yet there was nothing Diotima was so sure ofas that she herselfhad not invited the General, unless she had taken to walking in her sleep or having fits of amnesia. It was an awkward moment. Here stood the little General, undoubtedly with an invitation in the breast pocket of his forget-me- not-blue uniform tunic, for a man in his position could not possibly be suspected of so outrageous a gamble as coming without being asked; on the other hand, there in the library stood Diotima's grace-· ful desk, with all the leftover printed invitations in a locked drawer to
which Diotima almost alone had access. Tuzzi? she briefly won- dered, but this, too, was unlikely. How the invitation and the General had come together remained something of a spiritualistic conun- drum, and since Diotima was inclined to believe in the supernatural where she personally was concerned, she felt a shiver go through her from head to foot. But she had no choice, in any case, other than to bid the General welcome.
He had wondered a little at the invitation himself, incidentally, late as it was in coming, since Diotima had regrettably given him not the slightest sign of such an intention on his two visits, and he had noticed that the address, obviously written by an underling, showed inaccuracies as to his rank and the style of salutation not to be ex- pected from a lady of Diotima's social position. But the General was an easygoing m~, not inclined to suspect anything out of the ordi- nary, let alone anything out of this world. He assumed that there had been some little slip-up, which was not going to stop him from enjoy- ing his success.
For Major General Stumm von Bordwehr, Chief of the War Min- istry's Department for Military Education and Cultural Affairs, was sincerely pleased with the official mission that had come his way. On the eve of the great inaugural meeting of the Parallel Campaign, the ChiefofAdministration had sent for him and said: "Stumm, old man, you're the scholarly type. We're going to write you a letter of intro- duction, and off you go. Just give it the once-over and tell us what they're up to. " No amount of protesting afterward did any good; the fact that he had not succeeded in gaining a foothold in the Parallel Campaign was a mark against him in his ille, which he had tried in vain to erase by his visits to Diotima. So he had hotfooted it to Ad- ministration when the invitation arrived after all, and daintily setting one foot before the other under his paunch, with a touch of noncha- lant impudence, but a little out of breath, he reported that his care- fully planned initiatives had led to the expected result, after all.
"There yo~ are, then," Lieutenant General Frost von Aufbruch said. "I always knew you'd make it. " He offered Stumm a chair and a cigarette, switched on the electric sign over the door that said "In Conference, No Admittance," then briefed Stumm on his mission, mainly a matter of reconnaissance and reporting back. "There's re- ally nothing special we're after, you see, so long as you just show up
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there as often as you can and let them see we're in the picture; not being on any of the committees is probably in order, at this point, b~t there's no reason we shouldn't be in on any plans to honor our Su- preme Commander and Sovereign with some spiritual sort of pres- ent on his birthday. That's why I picked you, personally, and proposed you to His Excellency the Minister for this detail; nobody can have any objection. So good luck to you, old man, and do a good job. " lieutenant General Frost von Aufbruch dismissed him with a friendly nod, and General Stumm von Bordwehr forgot that a soldier is supposed to show no emotion, clicked his heels from the bottom of his heart, so to speak, and said, snapping to attention: "At your ser- vice, Excellency, and thanks! "
If there are civilians of warlike temperament, why can't there be military men who love the arts of peace? Kakania had them in quan- tity. They painted, collected insects, started stamp albums, or stud- ied world history. Their isolation in all those . tiny garrisons, and the fact that regulations did not permit officers to publish their intellec- tual findings except with the approval of their superiors, tended to give their efforts the appearance of something peculiarly personal. Gen~ral Stumm, too, had gone in for such hobbies in his earlier years. . He had originally served with the cavalry, but his small hands and short legs were ill-suited to clutching and controlling so unrea- sonable a beast as a horse, and he so conspicuously lacked the quali- ties needed for giving military orders that his superiors used to say that if a squadron were positioned on the barracks square with their horses' heads rather than their tails, as usual, toward the stable wall, he would be incapable of getting them out through the gates. In re- venge, little Stumm grew a beard, dark brown and rounded; he was the only officer in the Emperor's cavalry with a full beard, but regu- lations did not specifically forbid it. . Aiid he took to collecting pock- etknives, in a scientific spirit. On his pay he could not afford a collection of weapons, but of knives, classified according to their make, possession of corkscrew and nail file, grade of steel, place of origin, the casing material and so on, he soon had a large number; in his room stood tall cabinets with many shallow drawers, all neatly labeled, which brought him a reputation for learning. He could also make verses, and even as a cadet at the military academy he had al-
ways got the best grades in religion and composition; and so one day the colonel called him into the office.
"You'll never make a passable cavalry officer," he said. "If I stuck a suckling babe on a horse and sent it to the front, he'd put up about as much of a show as you do. But it's a long time since the regiment has had anyone at staff college. Why don't you apply, Stumm? "
So Stumm had two glorious years at the staff college in the capital. While he again failed to show the intellectual keenness needed to ride a horse, he attended every military concert, visited the mu- seums, and collected theater programs. He decided to switch to a civilian career but did not know how to go about it. In the end, he was found neither suited nor de. finitely unfit for service on the gen- eral staff; he was regarded as clumsy and unambitious, but some- thing of a philosopher, so for the next two years he was tentatively assigned to the general staff in command of an infantry division, which ended in his belonging, as a captain of cavalry, to the large number of those who~ as the general staff's auxiliary reserve, never get away from the li~e unless something unusual happens. Captain Stumm now served with another regiment, where he passed for an expert in military theory as well. But it did not take his new superiors long to catch on that in practical matters he was a babe-in-the-sad- dle. His career was a martyrdom, all the way up to lieutenant colonel; but even as a major he no longer dreamed of anything but a long furlough on half pay until he could be put on the retired list as an acting colonel, with the title and the uniform but not the pension of a colonel. He was through with giving any thought to promotion, which in line regiments went by seniority, in excruciating slow mo- tion; through with those mornings when, with the sun still rising, a man comes in from the barracks quadrangle, chewed out from head to foot, in dusty boots, and goes into the mess hall to add some empty wine bottles to the long emptiness of the day ahead; through with the so-called social life, the regimental stories, and those regimental amazons who spend their lives at their uniformed husbands' sides, echoing their progress up the ladder of rank on a social scale of sil-
very precision, tones so fuexorably refined as to be only just within range of the human ear. And he was through with those nights when dust, wine, boredom, the expanses of fields crossed on horseback,
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and the tyranny of the endless talk about horses drove every officer, married and unmarried alike, to those parties behind drawn curtains where women were stood on their heads to have champagne poured into their petticoats, and they got the inevitable Jew of those godfor~ saken little Galician garrison towns, who was a one-man institution like some small weather-beaten country store, where'you could get everything from love to saddle soap on credit, with interest-to pro- cure girls trembling with awe, fear, and curiosity. His only self-indul- gence in those days was the studious enrichment of his collection of knives and corkscrews, . many of them brought personally to the crackbrained lieutenant colonel by the same Jew, who polished them on his sleeve before he placeqthem on the table, with a reverent look on his face as though they were-prehistoric relics.
The unexpected breakthrough came when a fellow alumnus from the staff college remembered Stumm and proposed his transfer to the War Office, where the Department ofEducation was looking for an assistant to its chief; they wanted someone with an outstanding grasp ofthe civilian world. Two years later Stumm, by now advanced to colonel, had been entrusted with running the department. Now that he was mounted on a desk chair instead of the beast sacred to the cavalry, he was a different man. He made major general and could be fairly certain of making it to lieutenant general. He had of course shaved offhis beard long ago, but now, with advancing age, he was growing a forehead, and his tendency to tubbiness gave him the look of a well-rounded man in every sense of the term. He even be- came happy, and happiness can do wonders for a man's latent possi- bilities. He had been meant for a life at the top, and it showed in every way. Be it the sight ofa stylishly dressed woman, the showy bad taste of the latest Viennese architecture, the outspread colors of a great produce market, be it the grayish-brown asphalt air of the streets, that mild atmospheric asphalt full of miasmas, smells, and fragrances, or the noise that broke apart for a few seconds to let out one specific sound, be it the endless variety of the civilian world, even those little white restaurant tables that are so incredibly individ- ual although they undeniably all look alike: he took a delight in them all that was like the jingling of spurs in his head. His was a happiness such as civilians find only in taking a train ride into the country, knowing that they will pass a day green, happy, and overarched by
something or other. This feeling included a sense of his own signifi- cance, that of the War Office, of culture, of the meaningfulness of everyone else, and was so intense that Stumm had not once, since his arrival, thought ofvisiting the museums or going to the theater again. It was the sort of feeling of which one is hardly ever fully aware, though it permeates everything, from the general's gold braid to the voices of the carillons, and is itself a kind of music without which the dance of life would instantly come to a dead stop.
What the devil, he had certainly made his way! So Stumm thought as he now stood here, his cup brimming over, in these rooms, a part of this brilliant assemblage of great minds. Here he was, at last! The only uniform, where all else was steeped in intellect! And there was something more to fill him with amazement. Imagine the sky-blue sphere of the earth, slightly brightened by the forget-me-not blue of Stumm's military tunic, filled to bursting with happiness, with signifi- cance, with the mysterious brain-phosphorus of inward illumination, and at the very center ofthis sphere the General's heart, upon which was poised, like the Virgin Mary upon the serpent's head, a goddess of a woman whose smile is interwoven with everything and is in fact the mysterious magnetic center of all things: then you have, more or less, the impression Diotima made on Stumm von Bordwehr from the moment her image first filled his widening eyes. Actually, Gen- eral Stumm cared as little for women as he did for horses. His rather short, plump legs had never felt quite at home on horseback, and when he'd had to talk horses too, even when off duty, he used to dream of nights that he had ridden himself sore, down to the bone, and couldn't dismount; in the same fashion his comfort-loving nature had always disposed him against sexual athleticism, and the daily grind of his duties was sufficiently fatiguing to leave him with no need for letting off excess steam at night. Not that he had been a spoilsport in his day, but when he had to spend his evenings not with his knife collection but with his fellow officers, he usually resorted to a wise expedient; his sense of bodily harmony had soon taught him to drink himself through the riotous state into the sleepy one, which suited him far better than the risks and disappointments of love. It
was only later on, after he had married and soon had two children as well as their ambitious mother to support, that he fully appreciated how sensible his habits had been before he succumbed to the temp-
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tation to marry, lured into it no doubt by the somewhat unmilitary aura attaching to the notion of a married warrior. Since then he had developed a vivid ideal of woman outside rparriage, something that had evidently been germinating in his unconscious long before and consisted in a mild infatuation with the kind of woman by whom he felt intimidated, so that there was no ·question of having to exert him- self in any form of courtship.
When he looked over the pictures of women he had clipped from popular periodicals in his bachelor days-never more than a sideline among his activities as a collec- tor-they all had in common that daunting quality, though he had not realized it at the time; and he had· never known such overwhelm- ing adoration until his ftrst meeting with Diotima. Quite apart from the impact of her beauty, he had looked up her name in his encyclo- pedia as soon as he heard that she was a second Diotima, and though he still did not quite understand what a Diotima might' be, he gath- ered it had something to do with that great sphere of civilian culture ofwhich he still knew far too little, sad to say, despite his offtcial posi- tion, and the world's intellectual superiority fused with· this woman's physical grace. Nowadays, when relations between the sexes have
become so simplified, it is probably necessary to point out that this is likely to be the most sublime experience a man can have. General Stumm felt that his arms were too short to embrace Diotima's lofty· voluptuousness, while at the same time his mind felt the same about the world and its culture, so that he experienced everything that came his way in a state of gently pervasive infatuation, just as his rounded body took on something of the suspended roundness of the globe itself.
It was this infatuation that brought Stumm von Bordwehr, soon after Diotima had dismissed him from her presence, irresistibly back to her. He planted himselfclose to the object ofhis admiration, espe- cially as he knew no one else among those present, and listened in on her conversations with the other guests, He would have loved to take notes, for he would hardly have believed the sovereign ease with which she handled such intellectual riches,like someone toying with a string of priceless pearls, had his own ears not borne witness to her skill as she welcomed, one after another, such a variety of celebrities. . It was only when she had given him a look after ungraciously turning away from him several times, that he realized the unseemliness of a
general's eavesdropping on his hostess in that fashion, and backed away. He made a few lonely tours of the overcrowded premises, drank a glass ofwine, and was just about to find a decorative place to stand against a wall when he noticed Ulrich, whom he had seen once before, at the first meeting, and his memory lit up; Ulrich had been a bright, restless lieutenant in one of the two squadrons General Stumm had once gently led as a lieutenant colonel.
"A man of my own sort," Stumm thought. "And to think how young he still is, to have made it to so high a position! " He made a beeline for Ulrich, and after they had shaken hands and compared notes for a while, Stumm indicated the assembled company and said: "An incredible opportunity for me to learn about the most important problems in the civilian world. "
"You'll be amazed, General," Ulrich said.
The General, who needed an ally, warmly shook his hand. "You were a lieutenant in the Ninth Uhlans," he said significantly, "and someday that will tum out to have been a great honor for us, even if the others don't yet realize it as I do. "
COUNT LEINSDORF'S VIEWS OF REALPOLITIK. ULRICH FOSTERS ORGANIZATIONS
While the Council did not yet give the slightest sign of coming up with any answers, the Parallel Campaign was making great strides at the Palais Leinsdorf: it was there that the threads of reality meshed. Ulrich came twice a week.
He had never dreamed that such numbers of organizations ex- isted. Organizations for field sports and water sports, temperance clubs and drinking clubs, were heard from-in short, organizations and counterorganizations of every kind. They worked to promote the interests of their members and to hamper those of the others. Every-
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one in the world seemed to belong to at least one organization. Ul- rich in his amazement said:
"Your Grace, this goes far beyond what we, in our innocence, have always regarded as natural manifestations of the social instinct. We're faced with the monstrous fact that in the kind of state we have invented, with its law and order, everybody is also a member of a gang. . . . "
But Count Leinsdorf was in favor of organizations. "Remember," he said, "that no good has ever come of ideological politics; we must go in for practical polities. I won't deny that I even regard the far too intellectual concerns of your cousin's circle as potentially dangerous! "
"Could you give me some guidelines, sir? " Ulrich asked. ·
Count Leinsdorf looked at him, wondering whether the inex- perienced young man was ready for so daring a disclosure. But then he decided to risk it.
'Well now, you see," he began cautiously, 'Til tell you something that may be new to you, because you are young: realpolitik means not doing the very thing you would love to do; however, you can win people over by letting them have their way in little things! "
His listener's eyes popped; Count Leinsdorfsmiled complacently.
"So you see," he explained, "all I am saying is that in practice, poli- tics must be guided not by the power of an idea but always by some actual need. Of course everyone would like to make the great ideas come true, that goes without saying. So one should never·do what one would like to do. Kant was the first to say so. " .
"Really! " Ulrich exclaimed in amazement. "But one must aim at something, surely? "
"Aim? Bismarck wanted to make the King of Prussia great; that was his aim. He didn't know from the start that to achieve it, he would have to make war on Austria and France, and that he would found the German Empire. "
"Is Your Grace suggesting that we should aim at a great and pow- erful Austria and nothing e~e? "
'W e still have four years to go. In four years all sorts of things can happen. You can put a people on its feet, but it must do its own walk- ing. Do you see what I mean? Put it on its feet-that's what we must
do. But a people's feet are its firm institutions, its political parties, its organizations, and so on, and not a lot of talk. "
"Your Grace! Even if it doesn't exactly sound like it, you have just uttered a truly democratic ideal"
'Well, it may be aristocratic too, even though my fellow peers don't see eye-to-eye with me on this. Old Hennenstein and Tiirck- heim told me they expected nothing but a filthy mess to come of all this. So we must watch our step. We must start building on a small scale, so be very nice to the people who come to us. "
Consequently Ulrich for some time after this turned no one away. One man who came to him talked a great deal about stamp collect- ing. To begin with, he said, it made for international understanding; second, it satisfied the need for property and position on which soci- ety was unquestionably based; third, it not only called for considera- ble knowledge but also required decisions on a level that it was not too much to call artistic. Ulrich looked the man over, with his care- worn and rather shabby appearance; but the man caught the ques- tion in Ulrich's glance and countered it by saying that stamps were also commercially valuable, a factor not to be underrated; millions were made in trading them; the great stamp auctions attracted deal- ers and collectors from all over the world. It was one way to get rich. But as for himself, he was an idealist; he was putting together a spe- cial collection for which there was no commercial interest as yet. All he asked was that a great stamp exhibition be held in the Jubilee Year, when he could be depended upon to bring his specialty to pub- lic attention.
After him came a man with the following story: On his walks through the streets-though it was even more exciting when one rode a trolley-he had for years been in the habit of counting the number of straight strokes in the big block letters of the shop signs (there were three strokes in an A, for instance, and four in an M) and dividing the sum tqtal by the number ofletters counted. His average so far had been consistently two and a half strokes to a letter, but this was obviously not invariable, since it could change with every new street. Now, deviations from the norm could be quite distressing, while there was greatsatisfaction every time the numbers came out right-an effect quite like the catharsis said to be achieved while
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watching classical tragedy on the stage. If you considered the letters themselves, however-anyone could check this out-divisibility by three was a rare bit of luck, which is why most inscriptions tended to leave you with a noticeable sense of frustration, except for those con- sisting of several letters each composed of four strokes, as in M, E, W, for instance, which could be depended upon to leave one feeling remarkably happy. So what to do? the visitor asked. Simply this, an order issued by the Public Health Office favoring four-stroke letter series in shop signs and discouraging as far as possible the use of one- stroke letters, such as 0, S, I, C, which, lead to poor and therefore depressing results.
Ulrich looked the man over and took care to keep a distance be- tween them; yet he did not really look like a mental case, but was a well-dressed person in his thirties with an intelligent and amiable ex- pression. He went on calmly explaining that mental arithmetic was an indispensable skill in every line ofwork, that to teach by means of games was in keeping with modem educational methods, that statis- tics had often revealed deep connections between things long before these could be explained, that everyone knew the damage done by an education based on book learning alone, and, in conclusion, that the excitement his findings had aroused in all those who had chosen to repeat his experiments spoke for itself. If the Public Health Office could be induced to adopt his disrovery, other countries would soon follow suit, and the Jubilee-Year could turn out to be a blessing for all mankind.
Ulrich advised all these people to organize: "You still have almost four years' time, and ifyou succeed, His Grace will be sure to '! ! Se all his influence on your behalf. "
Most of them, however, were already organized, which of course changed matters. It was relatively simple when a soccer club wanted an honorary professorship for its outside right, to demonstrate the importance of modem physical culture; one coul<! always promise to take the matter under consideration. But it was hard in such cases as the following: A man in his fifties presented himself as a senior exec- utive in a government department; his forehead shone with the light of martyrdom when he identified himself as the founder and presi- dent of the Oehl Shorthand Association, hoping to draw the atten-
tion of the great patriotic campaign's Secretary to the Oehl short- hand system.
Oehl shorthand was an Austrian system, he 'Went on to explain, which was all you needed to know to understand why it was not widely adopted or encouraged. Was the Secretary himself a practic- ing stenographer, by any chance? No? Then he was perhaps not aware of the advantages of any stenographic system: the saving in time, in mental energy. Did he have any idea what a tremendous waste of mental effort was entailed by all those curlicues and prolixi- ties, the imprecision and the bewildering repetition of similar parts, and the confusion that arose between truly expressive, significant graphic components and merely ritualistic and· arbitrarily idiosyn- cratic flouri,shes of the pen?
Ulrich was amazed to meet a man so implacably determined to stamp out ordinary, presumably harmless, handwriting. When it came to saving mental effort, shorthand was a vital necessity for a rapidly growing world that had to get things done quickly. But even from a moral standpoint the question of Short or Long was crucial. The long-eared script, as the senior official bitterly"tenned it because of the senseless loops it was full of, encouraged tendencies to im- precision, arbitrariness, and wastefulness, especially the waste of time, while shorthand inculcated precision, willpower, manliness. Shorthand, he said, taught people to do what was necessary and to avoid what was unnecessary and irrelevant. Surely there was a lesson in practical morality here, of the greatest possible significance espe- cially for any Austrian. And then there was the aesthetic side of it. Wasn't prolixity rightly considered an ugly quality? Had not the great classical authors rightly declared economy of means to be an essen- tial element of beauty? But even regarding it from the public-health angle, the senior executive official went on, it was most important to shorten the time spent sitting hunched over one's desk. Mter having in this fashion illuminated the subject of shorthand from various other scientific-scholarly angles as well, to his listener's. edification, the visitor finally began to dilate upon the Oehl system's immense superiority over all other systems of shorthand. He showed that from every one ofthe points ofview under consideration, all other systems ofshorthand were a mere betrayal ofthe veryprinciple ofshorthand.
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He then unfolded the story of his own personal martyrdom to the cause. There were all the older, more powerful systems, which had had time to ally themselves with all sorts of vested interests. All the trade schools were teaching the Vogelbauch system and stood pat against any change, backed up, in accordance with the laws ofinertia, by the business community. The newspapers, which obviously profit enormously from the advertisements of the trade schools, would not hear of any proposals for reform. And the Education Office? What a sad joke that was, according to Herr Oehl. Five years ago, when shorthand was first made a required subject in the secondary schools, the Office of Education had set up a committee of advisers on the system to be chosen; the committee was naturally packed with repre-
sentatives of the trade schools and the business community and with government stenographers, who were of course hand in glove with the press, and that was that! It was all too obvious that the Vogel- bauch system was slated to win! The Oehl Shorthand Association had issued a warning and a protest against such criminal indifference to the public interest. But its delegates could no longer get anyone at the Education Office to see them!
Ulrich took cases of this kind to His Grace. "Oehl? " Count Leins- dorf said. "An official, you say? " His Grace rubbed his nose for a long time but came to no decision. "Perhaps you should see his head of department and find out if there's anything to what he says," he mused after a while, but he was feeling creative and canceled this suggestion. "No, ! 'II tell you what we'll do: we'll draw up a memoran- dum. Let's find out what they have to say for themselves. " And he added confidentially, to give Ulrich an insight into the deeper work- ings of things: 'With any of these things, you can never tell whether
·they are nonsense or not," he said. "But you see, my dear feiiow, you can always depend on something important coming of the fact that somebody attaches importance to it. Take the case of Dr. Amheim, that darling of all the newspapers. The newspapers could just as eas-
. ily pursue some other hare. But given that they pursue him, that makes Amheim important. You said, didn't you, that this man Oehl has an organization behind him? Not that it proves anything, of course, but on the other hand, as I said, we must keep up with the times, and when a good many people are for something, the chances are that something will come of it. "
82
CLARISSE CALLS FOR AN ULRICH YEAR
There was really no reason for Ulrich to pay Clarisse a visit other than his having to give her a good talking-to about the letter she had written to Count Leinsdorf; when she had come to see him a few days earlier, he had forgotten all about it. On his way there, however, it occurred to him that Walter was defmitely jealous of him and would be upset about the visit when he heard of it. But there was nothing Walter could do about it. The majority of men find them- selves in this funny situation if they happen to be jealous: they cannot keep an eye on their women until after office hours.
The time of day Ulrich had chosen to go there made it unlikely that he would find Walter at home. It was quite early in the after- noon. He had phoned to say he was coming. The snowy whiteness of the landscape outside shone so intensely into the room that it was as though there were no curtains at all on the windows. In this
. merciless light that glittered off every object stood Clarisse, greet- ing Ulrich with a laugh from the center of the room. On the side toward the window, the minimal curvature of her boyish body flashed in vivid colors, while the side in shadow was a bluish-brown mist from which her forehead, nose, and chin jutted out like snowy ridges whose edges are blurred by wind and sun. The . impression she gave was less that of a human being than of the meeting of ice and light in the spectral solitude of an Alpine winter. Ulrich caught some of the spell she must cast on Walter at times, and his mixed feelings for his boyhood friend briefly gave way to an insight into the image two people presented to each other, whose life he per- haps knew hardly at all.
"I don't know whether you told Walter anything about the letter you wrote to Count Leinsdorf," he began, "but I've come to speak to you alone, and to warn you never to do that kind of thing again. " Clarisse pushed two chairs together and made him sit down.
"Don't tell Walter," she asked him, "but tell me what you have
382 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
against it. You mean the Nietzsche Year? What did your Count say to that? "
'What do you suppose he could have said? The way you tied it in with Moosbrugger was utterly crazy. And even without that he'd probably have thrown your letter away. "
"Oh, really? " Clarisse was very disappointed. Then she said: "Luckily, you have some say in it tool"
"But don't you see, you're simply out of your mind! "
Clarisse smiled, accepting this as a compliment. She laid her hand on his arm and asked him: "But an Austrian Year is nonsense, isn't it? "
"Of course it is. "
"But a Nietzsche Year would be a fine thing. Why should it be wrong to want something just because we happen to like the idea ourselves? "
"And what exactly is your idea of a Niemche Year? "
"That's your affair. "
"Very funny. "
"Not at all. Why does it seem funny to you to try to put into prac-
tice something you take seriously as an intellectual matter? Tell me that. "
''I'll be glad to," Ulrich said, freeing his arm from her hand. "After. all, Nietzsche isn't the issue; it could just as well be Christ or Buddha. " ,
"Or you. Why not get to work on an Ulrich Year! " She said this with the same casual air as when she had urged him to free Moos- brugger. This tirp. e, however, his attention had not strayed, and he was looking at her face while he listened to her words. All he saw was Clarisse's usual smile, that funl! y little grimace that was the unin- tended result of the ment;U effort she was making.
"Oh well," he thought, "she doesn't mean any harm. "
But Clarisse drew closer to him again. 'Why don't you make it You Year? You might just be in a position to do it now. Only -don't say anything to Walter about it-I've told you that already-nor about my Moosbrugger letter. Not a word, ever, that I've talked to you about it. But I assure you, this murderer is musical, even though he can't actually compose. Haven't you ever noticed that every human being is the center of a cosmic sphere? When the person moves, the
sphere moves with him. That's the way to make music, without think- ing about it, simple as the cosmic sphere around you. . . . "
"And you feel that I should work on something of that sort for a year of my own, do you? " ·
"No," Clarisse answered, playing it safe. Her fine lips seemed about to say something but held their peace, and the flame blazed silently from her eyes. It was hard to say what it was that emanated from her at such moments. One felt scorched, as if one had come too close to something red hot. Now she smiled, but it was a smile that curled on her lips like an ash left behind in the wake of the burned- out flare from her eyes.
"Still, that is the sort of thing I could do, if I had to," Ulrich went on, "but I'mafraid you think I should make a coup d'etat? "
Clarisse thought it over. "Let's say a Buddha Year, then," she said evasively. "I don't know what Buddha stood for, or only vaguely, but let's accept it, and if we think it matters, then we should do some- thing about it. It either deserves our faith in it or it doesn't! "
"Fine.