He eagerly took up his
explanations
from the point where he had broken off.
Musil - Man Without Qualities - v2
"
Siegmund, who was the elder, resembled his sister, except that his face was unexpressive. If one looked at them side by side, the nose, mouth, and eyes in Clarisse's pallid face suggested cracks in parched soil, while the same features in Siegmund's face had the soft, slightly blurred contours of rolling grassland, although he was clean-shaven except for a small mustache. He had not shed his middle-class ap- pearance nearly as much as his sister, and it gave him an ingenuous naturalness even at the moment when he was so brazenly disposing of a philosopher's precious time. No one would have been surprised if thunder and lightning had burst from the plate of radishes at this imposition, but the great man took it amiably-which his admirers regarded as an event that would make a great anecdote-and blinked an assenting eye toward Siegmund like an eagle that tolerates a spar- row on the perch beside him.
Nonetheless, the sudden and insufficiently discharged tension made it impossible for Walter to contain himself any longer. He pushed back his plate, reddened like a little cloud at sunrise, and stated emphatically that no sane person who was neither a doctor nor an attendant had any business inside an insane asylum. On him, too, the sage bestowed a barely perceptible nod. Siegmund, who in the course of his life had appropriated quite a few opinions, articulated this assent with the hygienic words: "It is, no doubt, a revolting habit of the affluent middle class to see something demonic in mental cases and criminals. "
"But in that case," Walter exclaimed, "please tell me why you all want to help Clarisse do something you don't approve of and that can only make her more nervous than ever? "
His wife did not dignify this with an answer. She made an unpleas- ant face, whose expression was so remote from reality as to be fright- ening; two long, arrogant lines ran down alongside her nose, and her chin came to a hard point. Siegmund did not feel himself obliged or
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · go I
authorized to speak for the others, so Walter's question was followed by a short silence, until Meingast said quietly and equably: "Clarisse has suffered too strong an impression. It can't be left at that. "
"When? " Walter demanded.
"Just the other day-that evening at the window. "
Walter turned pale, because he was the only one who had not been
told before-Clarisse had evidently told Meingast and even her brother. Isn't that just like her! he thought.
And although it was not exactly called for, he suddenly had the feeling, across the plate of produce, that they were all about ten years younger. That was the time when Meingast-still the old, untrans- formed Meingast-was bowing out and Clarisse had opted for Wal- ter. Later she confessed to him that Meingast had still, even though he had already given her up, sometimes kissed and fondled her. The memory was like the large arc of a swing. Walter had been swung higher and higher: he succeeded in everything he did then, even though there were lots of downswings too. Yet even then Clarisse had been unable to speak with Walter when Meingast was present; he had often had to find out from others what she was thinking and doing. With him she froze up. "When you touch me, I freeze up! " she had said to him. "My body goes solemn-that's quite different from the way it is with Meingast! " And when he kissed her for the fust time she said to him: "I promised Mother never to do anything like this. " Later on, though, she adinitted to him that in those days Meingast was always secretly playing footsie with her under the din- ing room table. It was all Walter's doing! The richness of the inner development he had called forth in her had hindered her freedom of movement, as he explained it to himself.
Now he thought of the letters he and Clarisse had written to each other in those· days; he still l;>elieved that if one were to search through all of literature it would be hard to find anything to match them for passion and originality. . In those stormy days he would pun- ish Clarisse, when she was keeping company with Meingast, by run- ning off-and then he would write her a letter; and she wrote him letters, swearing that she was faithful, while candidly reporting that Meingast had kissed her once again on her knee, through her stock- ing. Walter had wanted to publish these letters as a book, and still thought, off and on, that he would do so someday. So far, unfortu-
902 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
nately, nothing had come of it except for a fateful misunderstanding with Clarisse's governess. One day Walter had said to her: "You'll see, soon I shall make up for everything! " He had only meant it in his sense: namely, how splendidly he would be justified in the family's eyes once publication of the letters brought him fame and success; for strictly speaking, things between him and Clarisse at that time were not what they should be. Clarisse's governess-a family heir- loom, pensioned off in the honorable guise of serving as an assistant mother, misunderstood him, however, in her sense, and a rumor promptly arose in the family that Walter was about to put himselfin a position to ask for Clarisse's hand in marriage; once the word was out, it led to very particular joys and restraints. "Real life" instantly awakened: Walter's father announced that he would no longer pay his son's bills unless Walter began to earn his keep. Walter's prospec- tive father-in-law invited him to his studio, where he spoke to him of the hardships and disillusionments awaiting the practitioner of pure, disinterested art, whether in the visual arts, music, or literature. And finally both Walter and Clarisse began to itch with the suddenly tan- gible thought of having their own house, children, openly sharing a bedroom: like a crack in the skin that cannot heal because one un- consciously keeps scratching at it. And so it came to pass that Walter, only a few weeks after his impulsive words, actually became engaged to Clarisse, which made both ofthem very happy but also very tense, because it was the beginning of that search for an established place in life that burdens life with all the problems ofWestern civilization, since the position Walter was sporadically seeking had to pass muster not only as to income but as to how it would affect six major aspects of his life: Clarisse, himself, their love life, literature, music, and painting. Actually, they had only recently emerged from the whirl- wind of complications unleashed as soon as he let his tongue run off with him in the elderly mademoiselle's company, when he accepted his present position in the Department of Works and Monuments and moved with Clarisse into this modest little house, where the rest was up to fate.
In his heart Walter felt it would be quite pleasant iffate were now to call it a day: though the end would not be precisely what the begin- ning had promised-but then, when apples are ripe they don't fall up the tree, but to the ground. That was what Walter was thinking, and
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 903
meanwhile, across the table from him, above the diametrically oppo- site end of the colorful tray of wholesome vegetarian food, his wife's small head hovered; Clarisse was trying to supplement Meingast's explanation with the utmost objectivity, indeed as objectively as Meingast himself: "I must do something to pulverize the shock. The shock was too much for me, Meingast says," she specified, and added on her own: "It was certainly no coincidence that that man stopped in the bushes right under my window. "
"Nonsense! " Walter waved this away as a sleeper waves off a fly. "It was just as much my window as yours! "
"Our window, then," Clarisse corrected herself, her thin-lipped smile so pointed that one could not decide whether it expressed bit- terness or scorn. 'We attracted him. But would you like me to tell you what that man was doing? He was stealing sexual pleasure! "
It made Walter's head ache, crammed full as it was of the past, and now the present was wedging itself in, leaving no clear difference between past and present. There were still bushes with their bright patches of foliage in Walter's head, with bicycle paths winding among them. Their adventurous long trips and walks could have hap- pened only this morning. Girls' skirts were swinging again just as they had in those years when ankles had been boldly exposed for the first time and the hems of white petticoats had frothed with the new movements of a sports-loving generation. In those days, Walter thought-to put it mildly-that what was going on between him and Clarisse was not all it should be, because what happened on these bike trips in the spring of the year they became engaged was in fact everything that can happen and leave a girl technically still a virgin. "Almost incredible, for such a nice girl! " Walter thought, reveling in his memories. Clarisse had called it "taking Meingast's sins upon ourselves"- h e had just gone abroad and was not yet known as Mein- gast. "It would be cowardly not to be sensual because he was! " was the way Clarisse phrased it, adding: "But with you and me I want it to be spiritual! " Walter did at times worry about the fact that these go- ings-on were too closely connected with the man who had been gone such a little while, but Clarisse replied: "People who aim at great- ness, as we do in art, for instance, can't be bothered with worrying about this and that. " Walter could remember the zeal with which they set about annihilating the past by repeating it in a new spirit,
904 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
and the relish with which they found out how to excuse illicit physical pleasures by magically attributing to them some transcendent pur- pose. At that time, Clarisse had been as energetic in her lustfulness as she was later in refusing herself to him, Walter admitted, letting his mind wander for a moment to dwell on the refractory thought that her breasts were still as taut today as they had been then. Every- one could see that, even through her clothes. Meingast happened to be staring at her breasts just then; perhaps he didn't realize it. "Her breasts are mute! " Walter declaimed inwardly with all the richness of association of a dream or a poem; and in almost the same way, while this was happening, the reality of the present forced itself through the padding of emotions:
"Come, Clarisse, tell us what you're thinking," he heard Meingast prompting her, like a doctor or a teacher, in that polite, formal tone he sometimes took with her since his return.
Walter also noticed that Clarisse was looking questioningly at Meingast.
"You were telling me about a certain Moosbrugger, that he was a carpenter. . . . "
Clarisse kept her eyes on him.
"Who else was a carpenter? The Savior! Wasn't that what you said? In fact, you even told me that you had written a letter about it to some influential person, didn't you? "
"Stop it! " Walter burst out. His head was spinning. But he had no sooner expressed his protest than it occurred to him that the letter was something else he had not heard about, and growing weak, he asked: "What letter? "
He got no answer from anyone. Meingast, passing over his ques- tion, said: "It's one ofthe most timely ideas. We're incapable ofliber- ating ourselves by our own efforts, no doubt about it; we call it democracy, but that's merely the political term for our psychological state, our 'you can do it this way, but you can also do it another way. ' Ours is the era of the ballot. Each year we determine our sexual ideal, the beauty queen, by ballot, and all we have done by making empirical science our intellectual ideal is to let the facts do the voting for us. We are living in an unphilosophical, dispirited age; it doesn't have the courage to decide what is valuable and what isn't, and de- mocracy means, expressed most succinctly: Do whatever is happen-
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 905
ing! Incidentally, this is one of the most disgraceful vicious circles in all the history of our race. "
While he spoke, the prophet had irritably cracked and peeled a nut, the pieces ofwhich he was now shoving into his mouth. Nobody had understood what he was saying. He broke off his speech in favor of a slow chewing motion of his jaws, in which the turned-up tip of his nose also participated, while the rest of his face remained asceti- cally still, but he did not take his eyes off Clarisse. They remained fixed somewhere in the region of her breast. The eyes of both the other men involuntarily left the master's face to follow his abstracted gaze. Clarisse felt a suction, as though these six eyes might lift her right out of her chair if they remained fastened on her much longer. But the master vigorously gulped down the last of his nut and went on with his lecture:
"Clarisse has found out that Christian legend has decreed that the Savior was a carpenter. That's not quite correct: his foster father was. Nor is she in the least justified in trying to make something of the fact that some criminal she's heard of happens to be a carpenter too. In- tellectually that's simply beneath criticism. Morally it is frivolous. But it shows courage! It really does! " Here Meingast paused, to let the force with which he had said "courage" take effect. Then he qui- etly continued: "She recently saw, as we did also, a psychopath ex- posing himself. She makes too much of it; there is in general far too much emphasis on sexuality these days. But Clarisse says: 'It is not by chance that this man stopped under my window. . . . ' Now, let us try to understand her rightly. She's wrong, for causally the incident is, of course, a coincidence. But what Clarisse is really saying is: If I regard everything as explained, then a person will never be able to change the world. She regards it as inexplicable that a murderer whose name, ifI am not mistaken, is Moosbrugger happens to be a carpen- ter; she regards it as inexplicable that an unknown sufferer from sex- ual disturbances should have stopped just under her window; and so she has fallen into the habit of regarding all sorts of other things that happen to her as inexplicable and . . . " Again Meingast kept his lis- teners waiting awhile; his voice had become reminiscent of a man with a resolve who is firmly but warily tiptoeing up to something, and now he pounced: "And so she will do something! " Meingast ended on a strong note.
go6 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
It gave Clarisse goose pimples.
"I repeat," Meingast said, "this is not subject to intellectual criti- cism. But. intellectuality is, as we know, only the expression or the tool of a life that has dried out, while the point Clarisse is making may arise from another sphere: that of the will. Clarisse may never be able to explain what is happening to her, but she may well be able to solve it, resolve it. So she is quite right to call it 'salvation'-she is instinctively using the right term for it. It would be easy for one of us to speak ofdelusional thinking, or to say that Clarisse is a person with weak nerves, but what would be the point? The world is currently so undeluded that it doesn't know when to hate or to love anything, and since we're all of two minds about everything, all of us are neuras- thenics and weaklings. In short," the prophet concluded abruptly, "although it is not easy for a philosopher to renounce insight, it is probably the great, growing insight of the twentieth century that this is what must be done. For me, in Geneva, it is today of greater spiri- tual importance that we have a French boxing coach than that the dissector Rousseau did his thinking there! "
Meingast could have continued talking, now that he had hit his stride: To begin with, the idea ofsalvation had always been anti-intel- lectual. "What the world today needs more than anything else is a strong, healthy delusion" was what he had been on the point of say- ing, but he had swallowed it in favor of the other ending. Second, there was the concomitant physical meaning implied in the etymol- ogy ofsalvation, its link with "salve" carrying an inference that deeds alone could save, or at least experiences involving the whole person, neck and crop. Third, he had been prepared to say that the overintel- lectualization of the male could under certain conditions bring woman to the fore as the instinctive leader in action, of which Cla- risse was one of the first examples. Finally, there were all the trans- formations of the salvation idea in the history of peoples, and the present movement from salvation as a purely religious concept, which had been dominant for centuries, toward the realization that salvation must be brought about by resoluteness of will and even, if necessary, by force. Saving the world by force happened to be his central idea at the moment.
Meanwhile, however, the suction of all those eyes on her was becoming more than Clarisse could stand, and she cut off the mas-
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 907
ter's discourse by turning to Siegmund, as the point of least resist- ance, saying to him rather too loudly:
"That's what I told you: we have to experience something our- selves to understand it. That's why we have to go to the asylum our- selves! "
Walter, who had been peeling a tangerine as a way of keeping steady, at this moment cut too deeply; an acid jet spurted into his eyes, making him start back and grope for his handkerchief. Sieg- mund, as always well dressed, first contemplated with an expert's concern the acid's effect on his brother-in-law's eye, then moved his gaze to that still life of respectability, the pigskin gloves and bowler hat resting on his knee. It was only when he could not shake off his sister's relentless stare, and no one spoke to save him the trouble, that he looked up with a grave nod and murmured serenely: "I have never doubted that we all belong in an asylum. "
Clarisse then turned to Meingast and said: "I've told you about the Parallel Campaign. That could be another tremendous opportunity and obligation for us to do away with all the 'you can do it this way . . . and another way' that is the great evil ofour century. "
The master waved this off with a smile.
Clarisse, overcome with a heady sense of her own importance, cried out obstinately and somewhat incoherently: "A woman who lets a man have his way with her when it's only going to weaken his mind is a sex murderer too! "
Here Meingast issued a gentle warning: "Let's keep this on a gen- eral plane! Incidentally, I can set your mind at rest on one point: As regards those absurd committee meetings where a dying democracy is trying to give birth to one more great mission, I've had my observ- ers and confidential agents for a long time now. "
Clarisse simply felt ice at the roots of her hair.
Walter made another vain stab at stemming developments. Defer- entially, he took his stand against Meingast, his tone very different from that which he might have used with Ulrich, for example: "What you say probably amounts to much the same thing I've been saying for a long time, that one ought to paint only in pure colors. It's high time to finish with the broken and blurred, with our concessions to the inane, to the fainthearted vision that no longer dares see that each thing has a true outline, true colors. I put it in pictorial terms,
go8 · THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
you in philosophic terms. But even though we share a point of view . . . "He suddenly became embarrassed, feeling that he could not talk openly in front ofthe others about why he dreaded Clarisse's involvement with the insane.
"No, I won't have Clarisse doing it! " he exclaimed. "It won't hap- pen with my consent. "
The master had listened amiably, and he answered Walter just as pleasantly as ifnot one ofthese emphatic words had reached his ear. "Incidentally, there's something Clarisse has expressed beautifully: She claimed that besides the 'sinful form' we inhabit, we all have an 'innocent form. ' We could take this in the lovely sense that, apart from the miserable world of experience, our mind has access to a glorious realm where in lucid moments we feel our image moved by dynamics of an infinitely different kind. How did you put it, Cla- risse? " he asked her in an encouraging tone. "Didn't you say that if you could stand up for this wretch without disgust, go into his cell and play the piano for him day and night, without tiring, you would draw his sins, as it were, out of him, take them upon yourself, and ascend with them? Naturally," he said, turning back to Walter, "this is to be taken not literally but as a subliminal process in the soul of the age, a process that here assumes the form ofa parable about this man, inspiring her will. . . . "
He was at this point uncertain whether to add something about Clarisse's relation to the history ofthe idea ofsalvation, or whether it might be more attractive to explain her mission ofleadership to her all over again in private. But Clarisse leapt from her chair like an overexcited child, raised her arm, with fist clenched, high above her head, and with a shyly ferocious smile cut short all further praise of herself with the shrill cry: "Onward to Moosbrugger! "
"But we still have nobody who can get us admitted . . . ," Sieg- mund was heard to say.
"I am not going along with this! " Walter said firmly.
"I cannot accept favors from a state where freedom and equality are to be had at every price and in every quality," Meingast declared.
"Then Ulrich must get us permission! " Clarisse exclaimed.
Meingast and Siegmund, having gone to enough trouble already, gladly agreed to a solution that relieved them, at least temporarily, of the responsibility, and even Walter finally had to give in, in spite of
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · gog
his protest, and take on the mission of going down to the nearby gro- cery to phone their chosen emissary.
This was the call that made Ulrich break off writing his letter to Agathe. Walter's voice took him by surprise, and so did his proposal. There was certainly room for a difference ofopinion about Clarisse's scheme, Walter freely conceded, but it could not be entirely dis- counted as a whim. Perhaps it was time to somehow make a start somewhere, it didn't matter so much where. Of course, it was only a coincidence that Moosbrugger was involved; but Clarisse was so startingly direct: her mind looked like those modem paintings in un- mixed primary colors, harsh and unwieldy, but ifone went along with it, often amazingly right. He couldn't really explain it all on the phone, but he hoped Ulrich wouldn't let him down. . . .
Ulrich was happy to drop what he was doing and agreed to come, although it was a disproportionately long way to go for the sake of talking with Clarisse for a mere fifteen minutes; for Clarisse had been invited for supper at her parents', along with Walter and Sieg- mund. On the way, Ulrich had time to wonder at his not having given a thought to Moosbrugger in so long and always having to be re- minded of him by Clarisse, though the man had been almost con- stantly on his mind before. Even in the darkness of late evening through which Ulrich had to walk from the last trolley stop to his friends' house, there was no room for such a haunting apparition; a void in which he had occurred had closed. Ulrich noted this with sat- isfaction and also with that faint self-questioning which is a conse- quence of changes whose extent is clearer than their cause. He was enjoying the sensation of cutting through the permeable darkness with the solider black of his own body, when Walter came uncer- tainly toward him, nervous at night in this lonely vicinity but anxious to say a few words to Ulrich before they joined the others.
He eagerly took up his explanations from the point where he had broken off. He appeared to be trying to defend himself, and Clarisse as well, from being misunderstood. Even when her notions seemed to be incoher- ent, he said, one could always detect behind them an element ofpa- thology that was part of the ferment of the times; it was her most curious faculty. She was like a dowsing rod pointing to hidden springs-in this case, the necessity of replacing modem man's pas- sive, merely intellectual, rational attitude with "values. " The form of
910 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
intelligence of the time had destroyed all finn ground, so it was only the will-indeed, if it couldn't be done otheiWise, then it was only violence--that could create a new hierarchy ofvalues in which a per- son could find beginning and end for his inner life. . . . He was re- peating, reluctantly and yet with enthusiasm, what he had heard from Meingast.
Guessing this, Ulrich asked him impatiently: "Why are you talking so pompously? Is it that prophet ofyours? It used to be you couldn't have enough simplicity and naturalness! "
Walter put up with this for Clarisse's sake, lest his friend decline to help, but had there been just one ray oflight in that moonless gloom, the flash of his teeth would have been visible as he bared them in frustration. He said nothing, but his suppressed rage made him weak, and the presence of his muscular friend shielding him from the eerie loneliness of the place made him soft. Suddenly he said: "Imagine loving a woman and then meeting a man you admire and realizing that your wife admires and loves him, too, and that both of you feel, in love, jealousy, and admiration, this man's hopeless supe- riority-"
"''d rather not imagine it! " Ulrich should have heard him out, but he squared his shoulders with a laugh and interrupted him.
Walter shot him a venomous glance. He had meant to ask: 'What would you do in such a case? '' But it was the same game they had been playing since their school days. As they entered the dimly lit hall he said:
"Drop that act ofyours! You're not as conceited and thick-skinned as all that! " Then he had to run to catch up with Ulrich on the stairs, where he hastily whispered the rest ofwhat Ulrich needed to know.
'What has Walter been telling you? " Clarisse asked when they got upstairs.
"I can do it, all right," Ulrich said, going straight to the point, "but I don't think it would be sensible. "
"Did you hear that? His very first word was 'sensible,' " Clarisse called out to Meingast, laughing. She was rushing back and forth be- tween the clothes closet, the washstand, the mirror, and the half- open door between her room and the one where the men were. They could catch glimpses of her now and then: with a wet face and her hair hanging down; with her hair brushed up; still bare-legged; in
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 9 1 1
stocking feet; in her long-skirted dinner dress below with a dressing jacket above that looked like a white institutional uniform. She en- joyed this appearing and disappearing. Since she had got her way, all her feelings were submerged in an easy sensuality. 'Tm dancing on light-ropes! " she shouted into the room. The men smiled, but Sieg- mund glanced at his watch and dryly asked her to hurry up. He was treating the whole thing as a gymnastic exercise.
Then Clarisse glided on a "light-rope" to the far comer of her room, for a pin, and shut the drawer of her night table with a bang.
"I can change faster than a man," she called back to Siegmund in the other room, but suddenly paused over the double meaning of "change," which right now could mean for her both "dressing for dinner" and "being transformed by mysterious destinies. " She quickly finished dressing, stuck her head through the door, and gravely regarded her friends one after the other. Anyone who did not think of it as a game might have been alarmed that something in this solemn countenance had been extinguished that should have been part of a natural, healthy face. She bowed to her friends and said ceremonially: "So now I have put on my destiny! " But when she straightened up again she looked quite normal, even rather charm- ing, and her brother Siegmund cried: "Forward-march! Papa doesn't like people to be late for dinner! "
When the four ofthem walked to the streetcar-Meingast had dis- appeared before they left the house-Ulrich fell back a few steps with Siegmund and asked him whether he had not been a bit worried about his sister oflate. The glow of Siegmund's cigarette sketched a flatly rising arc in the darkness.
"No doubt she's abnormal," he replied. "But is Meingast normal? Or even Walter? Is playing the piano normal? It's an unusual state of excitement associated with tremors in the wrists and ankles. For a physician, there's no such thing as normal. Still, ifyou want my seri- ous opinion, my sister is somewhat overwrought, and I think it will pass once the great panjandrum has left. What do you make of him? " There was a hint of malice in "the great panjandrum. "
"He's a gasbag," Ulrich said.
"Isn't he, though! " Siegmund was delighted. "Repulsive, repulsive. "But his ideas are interesting, I wouldn't deny that altogether," he
added after a pause.
912
20
COUNT LEINSDORF HAS QUALMS ABOUT "CAPITAL AND CULTURE"
And so it happened that Ulrich again appeared before Count Leins- dorf.
He found His Grace, enveloped in tranquillity, dedication, solem- nity, and beauty, at his desk, reading a newspaper that was lying spread out over a high pile of documents. The Imperial Uege-Count sadly shook his head after once more expressing his condolences to Ulrich.
"Your father was one ofthe last true representatives ofcapital and culture," he said. "How well I remember the days when we both sat in the Bohemian Diet. He well deserved the confidence we always placed in him! "
Ulrich inquired out of politeness how the Parallel Campaign had fared in his absence.
'Well, because of that hullabaloo in the street outside my house that afternoon, which you observed, we've set up a Commission to Ascertain the Desires of the Concerned Sections of the Population in Reference to Administrative Reform," Count Leinsdorf told him. "The Prime Minister himself asked us to take this off his shoulders for the time being, because as a patriotic enterprise we enjoy, so to speak, the public's confidence. "
With a straight face Ulrich assured him that at any rate the Com- mission's name had been well chosen and was likely to have a certain effect.
"Yes, a good deal depends on finding the right words," His Grace said pensively, and suddenly asked: 'What do you make of this busi- ness of the municipal employees in Trieste? I should think it would be high time for the government to pull itself together and take a firm stand. " He made as if to hand over the paper he had folded up when Ulrich came in, but at the last moment chose to open it again and read aloud to his visitor, with vivid feeling, from a long-winded
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 913
article. "Can you imagine this sort of thing happening in any other country in the world? " he asked, when he had finished. "For years the Austrian city of Trieste has been hiring only Italians, subjects of the King of Italy, in its civil seiVice, to make a point that their alle- giance is to Italy, not to us. I was there once on His Majesty's birth- day: not a single flag in all Trieste except on the administration building, the tax office, the prison, and the roofs of a few barracks! But if you should have any business in some municipal office in Trieste on the King ofltaly's birthday, you wouldn't find a clerk any- where without a flower in his buttonhole! "
"But why has this been tolerated till now? " Ulrich inquired.
''Why shouldn't it be tolerated? " Count Leinsdorf said in a dis- gruntled tone. "Ifour government forces the city to discharge its for- eign staff, we will immediately be accused of Germanizing. That is just the reproach every government fears. Even His Majesty doesn't like it. After all, we're not Prussians! "
Ulrich seemed to remember that the coastal and port city of Trieste had been founded on Slavic soil by the imperialistic Venetian Republic and today embraced a large Slavic population, so that even if one were to view it as merely the private concern of its inhabi- tants-without regard to its also being the gateway to the Empire's eastern trade and in every way dependent on the Empire for its pros- perity-there was no getting around the fact that its large Slavic lower middle class passionately contested the favored Italian upper class's right to consider the city as its own property. Ulrich said as much to the Count.
"True enough," Count Leinsdorf instructed him, "but once the word is out that we're Germanizing, the Slovenes immediately side with the Italians, even though they have to take time off from tearing each other's hair out, and all the other minorities rally to support them as well! We've been through this often enough. In terms of practical politics, it's the Germans we have to regard as a threat to peace within the Empire, whether we want to or not. " This conclu- sion left Count Leinsdorf deep in thought for a while, for he had touched on the great political scheme that weighed on his mind, though it had not come clearly into focus for him until this moment. But suddenly he livened up again, and continued cheerfully: "Any- way, the others have been told offproperly this time. " With a tremor
914 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
of impatience, he replaced his pince-nez and again read aloud to Ul- rich with relish all those satisfying passages in the edict issued by His Imperial and Royal Majesty's Governor in Trieste.
" 'Repeated warnings issued by the governmental institutions of public safety to no avail . . . harm done to our people . . . In view of this obstinate resistance to the prescribed official orders, the Gover- nor of Trieste finds himself obliged to take steps toward enforcing the observance of the existing lawful regulations . . . ' " He inter- rupted himself to ask: "Spoken with dignity, don't you think? " He raised his head but immediately lowered it again, eager to get to the final bit, whose official urbane authority underlined his voice with great aesthetic satisfaction:
" 'Furthermore,' " he read, " 'it is reserved to the administration at any time to give careful and sympathetic consideration to each indi- vidual case of application for citizenship made by such public func- tionaries, insofar as these are officially deemed worthy ofexceptional regard through long years of public service and an unblemished rec- ord, and in such cases the Imperial and Royal Administration is in- clined to avoid immediate enforcement of these regulations, while reserving its right to enforce them at such time and in such circum- stances as it may think fit. ' Now, that's the tone our government should have taken all along! " Count Leinsdorfexclaimed.
"Don't you think, sir, on the basis of this last point, that in the last analysis this leaves things pretty much where they have always been? " Ulrich asked a little later, when the tail end ofthis long snake of an official sentence had finally vanished inside his ear.
"Yes, that's just it! " His Grace replied, twiddling his thumbs for a while, as he always did when some hard thinking was going on inside. Then he gave Ulrich a searching look and opened his heart to him.
"Do you remember how, when we were at the police exhibition, the Interior Minister announced that there was a new spirit of 'mu- tual support and strictness' in the offing? Well, I wouldn't expect them to immediately lock up all the troublemakers who were raising such a rumpus on my doorstep, but the Minister could at least have said a few dignified words of repudiation in Parliament! " His feelings were hurt.
"I assumed it was done during my absence," Ulrich cried with
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 915
feigned astonishment, aware that a genuine distress was roiling the mind of his benevolent friend.
"Not a thing was done! " His Grace said. Again he fixed his wor- ried, protuberant eyes on Ulrich's face with a searching look, and he opened his heart further: "But something will be done! " He straight- ened up and leaned back in his chair, shutting his eyes as he lapsed into silence.
When he opened them again he began to explain in a calmer tone: "You see, my dear fellow, our Constitution of 1861 entrusted the un- disputed leadership in the new experimental governmental scheme to the German element in the population, and in particular to those within that element who represented capital and culture. That was a munificent gift ofHis Majesty's, a proofofhis generosity and his con- fidence, perhaps not quite in keeping with the times; for what has become of capital and culture since then? " Count Leinsdorf raised one hand and then dropped it in resignation on the other. "When His Majesty ascended the throne in 1848, at Olmiitz, that is to say, practi- cally in exile . . . ," he went on slowly, but suddenly becoming impa- tient or uncertain, he fished a fe~ notes out of his pocket with trembling fingers, struggled in some agitation to set his pince-nez firmly on his nose, and read aloud, his voice sometimes quavering with emotion, as he strained to decipher his own handwriting:
" '. . . he was surrounded by the uproar of the nationalities' wild urge for freedom. He succeeded in quenching the extreme manifes- tations of this upsurge. Finally, even if after granting some conces- sions to the demands of his peoples, he stood triumphant as the victor, and a gracious and magnanimous victor, moreover, who for- gave his subjects the errors of their ways and held out his hand to them with the offer of a peace honorable for them as well. Although the Constitution and the other liberties had been granted by him under the press of circumstances, it was nevertheless an act of His Majesty's free will, the fruit of his wisdom and compassion, and of hope in the progressive civilization ofhis peoples. But in recent years this model relationship between the Emperor and his peoples has been tarnished by the work of agitators, demagogues-' " Here Count Leinsdorf broke off reading his exposition of political history, in which evexy word had been scrupulously weighed and polished,
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and gazed pensively at the portrait of his ancestor the Grand Marshal and Knight of the Order of Maria Theresa, hanging on the wall fac- ing him. When Ulrich's expectant gaze finally drew his attention, he said: "That's as far as I've come.
"But you can see that I have been giving these problems a great deal of thought lately," he went on. "What I have just read to you is the beginning of the response which the Minister should have pre- sented to Parliament in the matter of the demonstration against me, if he had been doing his job! I've gradually worked it out for myself, and I don't mind telling you that I shall have occasion to present it to His Majesty as soon as I have finished it. You see, it was not without purpose that the Constitution of 1861 entrusted the leadership of our country to capital and culture. It was meant to secure our future. But where are capital and culture today? "
He seemed really put out with the Minister of the Interior, and to divert him Ulrich remarked innocently that one could at least say about capital that it was nowadays not only in the hands of the bank- ers but also in the time-tested hands ofthe landed aristocracy.
"I've nothing at all against thE: Jews," Count Leinsdorf assured Ul- rich out of the blue, as though Ulrich had said something that re- quired such a disclaimer. "They are intelligent, hardworking, and reliable. But it was a great mistake to give them those unsuitable names. Rosenberg and Rosenthal, for instance, are aristocratic names; Baer and W olf and all such creatures are originally heraldic beasts; Meyer derives from landed property; Silver and Gold are ar- morial colors. All those Jewish names," His Grace disclosed, to Ul- rich's surprise, "are nothing but the insolence of our bureaucrats aimed at our nobility. It was the noble families, not the Jews, who were the butt of these officials, which is why the Jews were given other names as well, like Abrahams, Jewison, or Schmucker. You can not infrequently observe this animus of our bureaucracy against the old nobility surfacing even today, ifyou know how to look for it," he said oracularly, with a gloomy, obstinate air, as though the struggle of the central administration against feudalism had not long since been overtaken by history and vanished completely from sight. In fact, there was nothing His Grace could resent so pureheartedly as the social privileges enjoyed by important bureaucrats by virtue of their position even when their names might be plain Fuchsenbauer or
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · gz 7
Schlosser. Count Leinsdorf was no diehard country Junker; he wanted to move with the times, and did not mind such a name when it was that of a Member of Parliament or even a cabinet minister or an influential private citizen, nor did he at all object to the political or economic influence of the middle class; what provoked him, with a passion that was the last vestige ofvenerable traditions, was the social status of high-ranking administrative officials with middle-class names. Ulrich wondered whether Leinsdorf's remarks might have been prompted by his own cousin's husband. It was not out of the question, but Count Leinsdorf continued talking and was, as always happened, soon lifted above all personal concerns by an idea that had apparently been working inside him for a long time.
"The whole so-called Jewish Question would disappear without a trace if the Jews would only make up their minds to speak Hebrew, go back to their old names, and wear Eastern dress," he explained. "Frankly, a Galician Jew who has just recently made his fortune in Vienna doesn't look right on the Esplanade at Ischl, wearing Tyro- lean costume with a chamois tuft on his hat. But put him in a long, flowing robe, as rich as you like so long as it covers his legs, and you'll see how admirably his face and his grand sweeping gestures go with his costume! All those things people tend to joke about would then be in their proper place-even the showy rings they like to wear. I am against assimilation the way the English nobility practice it; it's a tedious and uncertain process. But give the Jews back their true character and watch them become a veritable ornament, a genuine aristocracy of a rare and special kind among the nations gratefully thronging around His Majesty's throne-or, ifyou'd prefer to see it in everyday terms, imagine them strolling along on our Ringstrasse, the only place in the world where you can see, in the midst of West- ern European elegance at its fmest, a Mohammedan with his red fez, a Slovak in sheepskins, or a bare-legged Tyrolean! "
At this point Ulrich could not do otherwise than express his admi- ration for His Grace's acumen, which had now also enabled him to uncover the "real Jew. "
'Well, you know, the true Catholic faith teaches us to see things as they really are," Count Leinsdorf explained benevolently. "But you would never guess what it was that put me on the right track. It wasn't Arnheim-I'm not speaking ofthe Prussians right now. But I
gz8 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
have a banker, a man ofthe Mosaic faith, ofcourse, whom I've had to see regularly for years now, and at first his intonation always used to bother me a bit, so that I couldn't keep my mind on the business at hand. He speaks exactly as if he wanted me to think he was my uncle-I mean, as if he'd just got out of the saddle, or back from a day's grouse shooting; exactly the way our own kind of people talk, I must say. Well and good; but then, when he gets carried away, he can't keep it up and, to make no bones about it, slips into a kind of Yiddish singsong. It used to bother me considerably, as I believe I've told you already, because it always happened when some important business matter was at stake, so that I was always unconsciously primed for it, and it got so that I couldn't pay, attention to what he was talking about, or else I imagined I was listening to something important the whole time. But then I found a way around it: Every time he began to talk like that I imagined he was speaking Hebrew, and you ought to have heard how attractive it sounded then! Posi- tively enchanting-it is, after all, a liturgical language; such a melodi- ous chanting: I'm very musical, I should add. In short, from then on he had me lapping up the most complicated calculations of com- pound interest or discount positively as if he were at the piano! " As he said this, Count Leinsdorf had for some reason a melancholy smile.
Ulrich took the liberty of pointing out that the people so favored by His Grace's sympathetic interest would be more than likely to turn down his suggestion.
"Oh, of course they won't want to! " the Count said. "But they would have to be forced to for their own good. It would amount to a world mission for the Empire, and it's not a question ofwhether they want to or not. You see, many people at the beginning have had to be made to do what's best for them. But think, too, what it would mean if we ended up allied with a grateful Jewish State instead of with the Germans and Prussia! Seeing that our Trieste happens to be the Hamburg of the Mediterranean, as it were, apart from the fact that it would make us diplomatically invincible to have not only the Pope on our side but the Jews as well! "
Abruptly, he added: "You must remember that I have to concern myselfwith problems ofthe currency, too, these days. " And again he smiled in that strangely sad, absentminded way.
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It was astonishing that His Grace, who had repeatedly sent out ur- gent calls for Ulrich, did not discuss the problems of the day now that he had finally come, but lavished his ideas on him. Apparently ideas had come to him in abundance while he had had to do without his confidant, ideas as restless as bees that stream out for miles but are sure to return in their own good time, laden with honey.
"You might perhaps object," Count Leinsdorf resumed, although Ulrich had not said anything, "that I have on earlier occasions often expressed a decidedly low opinion of the financial world. I don't deny it: too much is too much, and we have too much finance in modern life. But that's precisely why we must deal with it! Look, culture has not been pulling its weight alongside capital-there you have the whole secret of developments since 1861. And that's why we must concern ourselves with capital. "
His Grace made an almost imperceptible pause, just long enough to let his listener know that now he was coming to the secret of capi- tal, but then went on in his gloomily confidential tone:
"You see, what's most important in a culture is what it forbids peo- ple: whatever doesn't belong is out. For instance, a well-bred man will never eat gravy with his knife, only God knows why; they don't teach you these things in school. That's so-called tact, it's based on a privileged class for culture to look up to, a cultural model; in short, if I may say so, an aristocracy. Granted that our aristocracy has notal- ways lived up to that ideal. That's exactly the point, the downright revolutionary experiment, of our 1861 Constitution: Capital and cul- ture were meant to make common cause with the aristocracy. Have they done so? Were they up to taking advantage ofthe great opportu- nity His Majesty had so graciously made available to them? I'm sure you'd never claim that the results of your cousin's great efforts that we see every week are in keeping with such hopes. " His voice grew more animated as he exclaimed: "You know, it's really most interest- ing, what sorts of things claim to be 'mind' these days! I was telling His Eminence the Cardinal about it recently, when we were out hunting in Miirzsteg-no, it was Miirzbruck, at the Hostnitz girl's wedding-and he laughed and clapped his hands together: 'Some- thing new every year,' he said. 'Now you can see how modest we are; we've been telling people the same old thing for almost two thousand years. ' And that's so true. The main thing about faith is that it keeps
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believing the same old thing, even ifit's heresy to say so. 'You know,' he said, 'I always go out hunting because my predecessor in the days of Leopold von Babanberg did too. But I never kill,' he said-he happens to be known for never firing a shot on the hunt-'because it goes against my grain, something tells me it's not in keeping with my cloth.
Siegmund, who was the elder, resembled his sister, except that his face was unexpressive. If one looked at them side by side, the nose, mouth, and eyes in Clarisse's pallid face suggested cracks in parched soil, while the same features in Siegmund's face had the soft, slightly blurred contours of rolling grassland, although he was clean-shaven except for a small mustache. He had not shed his middle-class ap- pearance nearly as much as his sister, and it gave him an ingenuous naturalness even at the moment when he was so brazenly disposing of a philosopher's precious time. No one would have been surprised if thunder and lightning had burst from the plate of radishes at this imposition, but the great man took it amiably-which his admirers regarded as an event that would make a great anecdote-and blinked an assenting eye toward Siegmund like an eagle that tolerates a spar- row on the perch beside him.
Nonetheless, the sudden and insufficiently discharged tension made it impossible for Walter to contain himself any longer. He pushed back his plate, reddened like a little cloud at sunrise, and stated emphatically that no sane person who was neither a doctor nor an attendant had any business inside an insane asylum. On him, too, the sage bestowed a barely perceptible nod. Siegmund, who in the course of his life had appropriated quite a few opinions, articulated this assent with the hygienic words: "It is, no doubt, a revolting habit of the affluent middle class to see something demonic in mental cases and criminals. "
"But in that case," Walter exclaimed, "please tell me why you all want to help Clarisse do something you don't approve of and that can only make her more nervous than ever? "
His wife did not dignify this with an answer. She made an unpleas- ant face, whose expression was so remote from reality as to be fright- ening; two long, arrogant lines ran down alongside her nose, and her chin came to a hard point. Siegmund did not feel himself obliged or
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authorized to speak for the others, so Walter's question was followed by a short silence, until Meingast said quietly and equably: "Clarisse has suffered too strong an impression. It can't be left at that. "
"When? " Walter demanded.
"Just the other day-that evening at the window. "
Walter turned pale, because he was the only one who had not been
told before-Clarisse had evidently told Meingast and even her brother. Isn't that just like her! he thought.
And although it was not exactly called for, he suddenly had the feeling, across the plate of produce, that they were all about ten years younger. That was the time when Meingast-still the old, untrans- formed Meingast-was bowing out and Clarisse had opted for Wal- ter. Later she confessed to him that Meingast had still, even though he had already given her up, sometimes kissed and fondled her. The memory was like the large arc of a swing. Walter had been swung higher and higher: he succeeded in everything he did then, even though there were lots of downswings too. Yet even then Clarisse had been unable to speak with Walter when Meingast was present; he had often had to find out from others what she was thinking and doing. With him she froze up. "When you touch me, I freeze up! " she had said to him. "My body goes solemn-that's quite different from the way it is with Meingast! " And when he kissed her for the fust time she said to him: "I promised Mother never to do anything like this. " Later on, though, she adinitted to him that in those days Meingast was always secretly playing footsie with her under the din- ing room table. It was all Walter's doing! The richness of the inner development he had called forth in her had hindered her freedom of movement, as he explained it to himself.
Now he thought of the letters he and Clarisse had written to each other in those· days; he still l;>elieved that if one were to search through all of literature it would be hard to find anything to match them for passion and originality. . In those stormy days he would pun- ish Clarisse, when she was keeping company with Meingast, by run- ning off-and then he would write her a letter; and she wrote him letters, swearing that she was faithful, while candidly reporting that Meingast had kissed her once again on her knee, through her stock- ing. Walter had wanted to publish these letters as a book, and still thought, off and on, that he would do so someday. So far, unfortu-
902 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
nately, nothing had come of it except for a fateful misunderstanding with Clarisse's governess. One day Walter had said to her: "You'll see, soon I shall make up for everything! " He had only meant it in his sense: namely, how splendidly he would be justified in the family's eyes once publication of the letters brought him fame and success; for strictly speaking, things between him and Clarisse at that time were not what they should be. Clarisse's governess-a family heir- loom, pensioned off in the honorable guise of serving as an assistant mother, misunderstood him, however, in her sense, and a rumor promptly arose in the family that Walter was about to put himselfin a position to ask for Clarisse's hand in marriage; once the word was out, it led to very particular joys and restraints. "Real life" instantly awakened: Walter's father announced that he would no longer pay his son's bills unless Walter began to earn his keep. Walter's prospec- tive father-in-law invited him to his studio, where he spoke to him of the hardships and disillusionments awaiting the practitioner of pure, disinterested art, whether in the visual arts, music, or literature. And finally both Walter and Clarisse began to itch with the suddenly tan- gible thought of having their own house, children, openly sharing a bedroom: like a crack in the skin that cannot heal because one un- consciously keeps scratching at it. And so it came to pass that Walter, only a few weeks after his impulsive words, actually became engaged to Clarisse, which made both ofthem very happy but also very tense, because it was the beginning of that search for an established place in life that burdens life with all the problems ofWestern civilization, since the position Walter was sporadically seeking had to pass muster not only as to income but as to how it would affect six major aspects of his life: Clarisse, himself, their love life, literature, music, and painting. Actually, they had only recently emerged from the whirl- wind of complications unleashed as soon as he let his tongue run off with him in the elderly mademoiselle's company, when he accepted his present position in the Department of Works and Monuments and moved with Clarisse into this modest little house, where the rest was up to fate.
In his heart Walter felt it would be quite pleasant iffate were now to call it a day: though the end would not be precisely what the begin- ning had promised-but then, when apples are ripe they don't fall up the tree, but to the ground. That was what Walter was thinking, and
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 903
meanwhile, across the table from him, above the diametrically oppo- site end of the colorful tray of wholesome vegetarian food, his wife's small head hovered; Clarisse was trying to supplement Meingast's explanation with the utmost objectivity, indeed as objectively as Meingast himself: "I must do something to pulverize the shock. The shock was too much for me, Meingast says," she specified, and added on her own: "It was certainly no coincidence that that man stopped in the bushes right under my window. "
"Nonsense! " Walter waved this away as a sleeper waves off a fly. "It was just as much my window as yours! "
"Our window, then," Clarisse corrected herself, her thin-lipped smile so pointed that one could not decide whether it expressed bit- terness or scorn. 'We attracted him. But would you like me to tell you what that man was doing? He was stealing sexual pleasure! "
It made Walter's head ache, crammed full as it was of the past, and now the present was wedging itself in, leaving no clear difference between past and present. There were still bushes with their bright patches of foliage in Walter's head, with bicycle paths winding among them. Their adventurous long trips and walks could have hap- pened only this morning. Girls' skirts were swinging again just as they had in those years when ankles had been boldly exposed for the first time and the hems of white petticoats had frothed with the new movements of a sports-loving generation. In those days, Walter thought-to put it mildly-that what was going on between him and Clarisse was not all it should be, because what happened on these bike trips in the spring of the year they became engaged was in fact everything that can happen and leave a girl technically still a virgin. "Almost incredible, for such a nice girl! " Walter thought, reveling in his memories. Clarisse had called it "taking Meingast's sins upon ourselves"- h e had just gone abroad and was not yet known as Mein- gast. "It would be cowardly not to be sensual because he was! " was the way Clarisse phrased it, adding: "But with you and me I want it to be spiritual! " Walter did at times worry about the fact that these go- ings-on were too closely connected with the man who had been gone such a little while, but Clarisse replied: "People who aim at great- ness, as we do in art, for instance, can't be bothered with worrying about this and that. " Walter could remember the zeal with which they set about annihilating the past by repeating it in a new spirit,
904 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
and the relish with which they found out how to excuse illicit physical pleasures by magically attributing to them some transcendent pur- pose. At that time, Clarisse had been as energetic in her lustfulness as she was later in refusing herself to him, Walter admitted, letting his mind wander for a moment to dwell on the refractory thought that her breasts were still as taut today as they had been then. Every- one could see that, even through her clothes. Meingast happened to be staring at her breasts just then; perhaps he didn't realize it. "Her breasts are mute! " Walter declaimed inwardly with all the richness of association of a dream or a poem; and in almost the same way, while this was happening, the reality of the present forced itself through the padding of emotions:
"Come, Clarisse, tell us what you're thinking," he heard Meingast prompting her, like a doctor or a teacher, in that polite, formal tone he sometimes took with her since his return.
Walter also noticed that Clarisse was looking questioningly at Meingast.
"You were telling me about a certain Moosbrugger, that he was a carpenter. . . . "
Clarisse kept her eyes on him.
"Who else was a carpenter? The Savior! Wasn't that what you said? In fact, you even told me that you had written a letter about it to some influential person, didn't you? "
"Stop it! " Walter burst out. His head was spinning. But he had no sooner expressed his protest than it occurred to him that the letter was something else he had not heard about, and growing weak, he asked: "What letter? "
He got no answer from anyone. Meingast, passing over his ques- tion, said: "It's one ofthe most timely ideas. We're incapable ofliber- ating ourselves by our own efforts, no doubt about it; we call it democracy, but that's merely the political term for our psychological state, our 'you can do it this way, but you can also do it another way. ' Ours is the era of the ballot. Each year we determine our sexual ideal, the beauty queen, by ballot, and all we have done by making empirical science our intellectual ideal is to let the facts do the voting for us. We are living in an unphilosophical, dispirited age; it doesn't have the courage to decide what is valuable and what isn't, and de- mocracy means, expressed most succinctly: Do whatever is happen-
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 905
ing! Incidentally, this is one of the most disgraceful vicious circles in all the history of our race. "
While he spoke, the prophet had irritably cracked and peeled a nut, the pieces ofwhich he was now shoving into his mouth. Nobody had understood what he was saying. He broke off his speech in favor of a slow chewing motion of his jaws, in which the turned-up tip of his nose also participated, while the rest of his face remained asceti- cally still, but he did not take his eyes off Clarisse. They remained fixed somewhere in the region of her breast. The eyes of both the other men involuntarily left the master's face to follow his abstracted gaze. Clarisse felt a suction, as though these six eyes might lift her right out of her chair if they remained fastened on her much longer. But the master vigorously gulped down the last of his nut and went on with his lecture:
"Clarisse has found out that Christian legend has decreed that the Savior was a carpenter. That's not quite correct: his foster father was. Nor is she in the least justified in trying to make something of the fact that some criminal she's heard of happens to be a carpenter too. In- tellectually that's simply beneath criticism. Morally it is frivolous. But it shows courage! It really does! " Here Meingast paused, to let the force with which he had said "courage" take effect. Then he qui- etly continued: "She recently saw, as we did also, a psychopath ex- posing himself. She makes too much of it; there is in general far too much emphasis on sexuality these days. But Clarisse says: 'It is not by chance that this man stopped under my window. . . . ' Now, let us try to understand her rightly. She's wrong, for causally the incident is, of course, a coincidence. But what Clarisse is really saying is: If I regard everything as explained, then a person will never be able to change the world. She regards it as inexplicable that a murderer whose name, ifI am not mistaken, is Moosbrugger happens to be a carpen- ter; she regards it as inexplicable that an unknown sufferer from sex- ual disturbances should have stopped just under her window; and so she has fallen into the habit of regarding all sorts of other things that happen to her as inexplicable and . . . " Again Meingast kept his lis- teners waiting awhile; his voice had become reminiscent of a man with a resolve who is firmly but warily tiptoeing up to something, and now he pounced: "And so she will do something! " Meingast ended on a strong note.
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It gave Clarisse goose pimples.
"I repeat," Meingast said, "this is not subject to intellectual criti- cism. But. intellectuality is, as we know, only the expression or the tool of a life that has dried out, while the point Clarisse is making may arise from another sphere: that of the will. Clarisse may never be able to explain what is happening to her, but she may well be able to solve it, resolve it. So she is quite right to call it 'salvation'-she is instinctively using the right term for it. It would be easy for one of us to speak ofdelusional thinking, or to say that Clarisse is a person with weak nerves, but what would be the point? The world is currently so undeluded that it doesn't know when to hate or to love anything, and since we're all of two minds about everything, all of us are neuras- thenics and weaklings. In short," the prophet concluded abruptly, "although it is not easy for a philosopher to renounce insight, it is probably the great, growing insight of the twentieth century that this is what must be done. For me, in Geneva, it is today of greater spiri- tual importance that we have a French boxing coach than that the dissector Rousseau did his thinking there! "
Meingast could have continued talking, now that he had hit his stride: To begin with, the idea ofsalvation had always been anti-intel- lectual. "What the world today needs more than anything else is a strong, healthy delusion" was what he had been on the point of say- ing, but he had swallowed it in favor of the other ending. Second, there was the concomitant physical meaning implied in the etymol- ogy ofsalvation, its link with "salve" carrying an inference that deeds alone could save, or at least experiences involving the whole person, neck and crop. Third, he had been prepared to say that the overintel- lectualization of the male could under certain conditions bring woman to the fore as the instinctive leader in action, of which Cla- risse was one of the first examples. Finally, there were all the trans- formations of the salvation idea in the history of peoples, and the present movement from salvation as a purely religious concept, which had been dominant for centuries, toward the realization that salvation must be brought about by resoluteness of will and even, if necessary, by force. Saving the world by force happened to be his central idea at the moment.
Meanwhile, however, the suction of all those eyes on her was becoming more than Clarisse could stand, and she cut off the mas-
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 907
ter's discourse by turning to Siegmund, as the point of least resist- ance, saying to him rather too loudly:
"That's what I told you: we have to experience something our- selves to understand it. That's why we have to go to the asylum our- selves! "
Walter, who had been peeling a tangerine as a way of keeping steady, at this moment cut too deeply; an acid jet spurted into his eyes, making him start back and grope for his handkerchief. Sieg- mund, as always well dressed, first contemplated with an expert's concern the acid's effect on his brother-in-law's eye, then moved his gaze to that still life of respectability, the pigskin gloves and bowler hat resting on his knee. It was only when he could not shake off his sister's relentless stare, and no one spoke to save him the trouble, that he looked up with a grave nod and murmured serenely: "I have never doubted that we all belong in an asylum. "
Clarisse then turned to Meingast and said: "I've told you about the Parallel Campaign. That could be another tremendous opportunity and obligation for us to do away with all the 'you can do it this way . . . and another way' that is the great evil ofour century. "
The master waved this off with a smile.
Clarisse, overcome with a heady sense of her own importance, cried out obstinately and somewhat incoherently: "A woman who lets a man have his way with her when it's only going to weaken his mind is a sex murderer too! "
Here Meingast issued a gentle warning: "Let's keep this on a gen- eral plane! Incidentally, I can set your mind at rest on one point: As regards those absurd committee meetings where a dying democracy is trying to give birth to one more great mission, I've had my observ- ers and confidential agents for a long time now. "
Clarisse simply felt ice at the roots of her hair.
Walter made another vain stab at stemming developments. Defer- entially, he took his stand against Meingast, his tone very different from that which he might have used with Ulrich, for example: "What you say probably amounts to much the same thing I've been saying for a long time, that one ought to paint only in pure colors. It's high time to finish with the broken and blurred, with our concessions to the inane, to the fainthearted vision that no longer dares see that each thing has a true outline, true colors. I put it in pictorial terms,
go8 · THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
you in philosophic terms. But even though we share a point of view . . . "He suddenly became embarrassed, feeling that he could not talk openly in front ofthe others about why he dreaded Clarisse's involvement with the insane.
"No, I won't have Clarisse doing it! " he exclaimed. "It won't hap- pen with my consent. "
The master had listened amiably, and he answered Walter just as pleasantly as ifnot one ofthese emphatic words had reached his ear. "Incidentally, there's something Clarisse has expressed beautifully: She claimed that besides the 'sinful form' we inhabit, we all have an 'innocent form. ' We could take this in the lovely sense that, apart from the miserable world of experience, our mind has access to a glorious realm where in lucid moments we feel our image moved by dynamics of an infinitely different kind. How did you put it, Cla- risse? " he asked her in an encouraging tone. "Didn't you say that if you could stand up for this wretch without disgust, go into his cell and play the piano for him day and night, without tiring, you would draw his sins, as it were, out of him, take them upon yourself, and ascend with them? Naturally," he said, turning back to Walter, "this is to be taken not literally but as a subliminal process in the soul of the age, a process that here assumes the form ofa parable about this man, inspiring her will. . . . "
He was at this point uncertain whether to add something about Clarisse's relation to the history ofthe idea ofsalvation, or whether it might be more attractive to explain her mission ofleadership to her all over again in private. But Clarisse leapt from her chair like an overexcited child, raised her arm, with fist clenched, high above her head, and with a shyly ferocious smile cut short all further praise of herself with the shrill cry: "Onward to Moosbrugger! "
"But we still have nobody who can get us admitted . . . ," Sieg- mund was heard to say.
"I am not going along with this! " Walter said firmly.
"I cannot accept favors from a state where freedom and equality are to be had at every price and in every quality," Meingast declared.
"Then Ulrich must get us permission! " Clarisse exclaimed.
Meingast and Siegmund, having gone to enough trouble already, gladly agreed to a solution that relieved them, at least temporarily, of the responsibility, and even Walter finally had to give in, in spite of
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · gog
his protest, and take on the mission of going down to the nearby gro- cery to phone their chosen emissary.
This was the call that made Ulrich break off writing his letter to Agathe. Walter's voice took him by surprise, and so did his proposal. There was certainly room for a difference ofopinion about Clarisse's scheme, Walter freely conceded, but it could not be entirely dis- counted as a whim. Perhaps it was time to somehow make a start somewhere, it didn't matter so much where. Of course, it was only a coincidence that Moosbrugger was involved; but Clarisse was so startingly direct: her mind looked like those modem paintings in un- mixed primary colors, harsh and unwieldy, but ifone went along with it, often amazingly right. He couldn't really explain it all on the phone, but he hoped Ulrich wouldn't let him down. . . .
Ulrich was happy to drop what he was doing and agreed to come, although it was a disproportionately long way to go for the sake of talking with Clarisse for a mere fifteen minutes; for Clarisse had been invited for supper at her parents', along with Walter and Sieg- mund. On the way, Ulrich had time to wonder at his not having given a thought to Moosbrugger in so long and always having to be re- minded of him by Clarisse, though the man had been almost con- stantly on his mind before. Even in the darkness of late evening through which Ulrich had to walk from the last trolley stop to his friends' house, there was no room for such a haunting apparition; a void in which he had occurred had closed. Ulrich noted this with sat- isfaction and also with that faint self-questioning which is a conse- quence of changes whose extent is clearer than their cause. He was enjoying the sensation of cutting through the permeable darkness with the solider black of his own body, when Walter came uncer- tainly toward him, nervous at night in this lonely vicinity but anxious to say a few words to Ulrich before they joined the others.
He eagerly took up his explanations from the point where he had broken off. He appeared to be trying to defend himself, and Clarisse as well, from being misunderstood. Even when her notions seemed to be incoher- ent, he said, one could always detect behind them an element ofpa- thology that was part of the ferment of the times; it was her most curious faculty. She was like a dowsing rod pointing to hidden springs-in this case, the necessity of replacing modem man's pas- sive, merely intellectual, rational attitude with "values. " The form of
910 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
intelligence of the time had destroyed all finn ground, so it was only the will-indeed, if it couldn't be done otheiWise, then it was only violence--that could create a new hierarchy ofvalues in which a per- son could find beginning and end for his inner life. . . . He was re- peating, reluctantly and yet with enthusiasm, what he had heard from Meingast.
Guessing this, Ulrich asked him impatiently: "Why are you talking so pompously? Is it that prophet ofyours? It used to be you couldn't have enough simplicity and naturalness! "
Walter put up with this for Clarisse's sake, lest his friend decline to help, but had there been just one ray oflight in that moonless gloom, the flash of his teeth would have been visible as he bared them in frustration. He said nothing, but his suppressed rage made him weak, and the presence of his muscular friend shielding him from the eerie loneliness of the place made him soft. Suddenly he said: "Imagine loving a woman and then meeting a man you admire and realizing that your wife admires and loves him, too, and that both of you feel, in love, jealousy, and admiration, this man's hopeless supe- riority-"
"''d rather not imagine it! " Ulrich should have heard him out, but he squared his shoulders with a laugh and interrupted him.
Walter shot him a venomous glance. He had meant to ask: 'What would you do in such a case? '' But it was the same game they had been playing since their school days. As they entered the dimly lit hall he said:
"Drop that act ofyours! You're not as conceited and thick-skinned as all that! " Then he had to run to catch up with Ulrich on the stairs, where he hastily whispered the rest ofwhat Ulrich needed to know.
'What has Walter been telling you? " Clarisse asked when they got upstairs.
"I can do it, all right," Ulrich said, going straight to the point, "but I don't think it would be sensible. "
"Did you hear that? His very first word was 'sensible,' " Clarisse called out to Meingast, laughing. She was rushing back and forth be- tween the clothes closet, the washstand, the mirror, and the half- open door between her room and the one where the men were. They could catch glimpses of her now and then: with a wet face and her hair hanging down; with her hair brushed up; still bare-legged; in
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 9 1 1
stocking feet; in her long-skirted dinner dress below with a dressing jacket above that looked like a white institutional uniform. She en- joyed this appearing and disappearing. Since she had got her way, all her feelings were submerged in an easy sensuality. 'Tm dancing on light-ropes! " she shouted into the room. The men smiled, but Sieg- mund glanced at his watch and dryly asked her to hurry up. He was treating the whole thing as a gymnastic exercise.
Then Clarisse glided on a "light-rope" to the far comer of her room, for a pin, and shut the drawer of her night table with a bang.
"I can change faster than a man," she called back to Siegmund in the other room, but suddenly paused over the double meaning of "change," which right now could mean for her both "dressing for dinner" and "being transformed by mysterious destinies. " She quickly finished dressing, stuck her head through the door, and gravely regarded her friends one after the other. Anyone who did not think of it as a game might have been alarmed that something in this solemn countenance had been extinguished that should have been part of a natural, healthy face. She bowed to her friends and said ceremonially: "So now I have put on my destiny! " But when she straightened up again she looked quite normal, even rather charm- ing, and her brother Siegmund cried: "Forward-march! Papa doesn't like people to be late for dinner! "
When the four ofthem walked to the streetcar-Meingast had dis- appeared before they left the house-Ulrich fell back a few steps with Siegmund and asked him whether he had not been a bit worried about his sister oflate. The glow of Siegmund's cigarette sketched a flatly rising arc in the darkness.
"No doubt she's abnormal," he replied. "But is Meingast normal? Or even Walter? Is playing the piano normal? It's an unusual state of excitement associated with tremors in the wrists and ankles. For a physician, there's no such thing as normal. Still, ifyou want my seri- ous opinion, my sister is somewhat overwrought, and I think it will pass once the great panjandrum has left. What do you make of him? " There was a hint of malice in "the great panjandrum. "
"He's a gasbag," Ulrich said.
"Isn't he, though! " Siegmund was delighted. "Repulsive, repulsive. "But his ideas are interesting, I wouldn't deny that altogether," he
added after a pause.
912
20
COUNT LEINSDORF HAS QUALMS ABOUT "CAPITAL AND CULTURE"
And so it happened that Ulrich again appeared before Count Leins- dorf.
He found His Grace, enveloped in tranquillity, dedication, solem- nity, and beauty, at his desk, reading a newspaper that was lying spread out over a high pile of documents. The Imperial Uege-Count sadly shook his head after once more expressing his condolences to Ulrich.
"Your father was one ofthe last true representatives ofcapital and culture," he said. "How well I remember the days when we both sat in the Bohemian Diet. He well deserved the confidence we always placed in him! "
Ulrich inquired out of politeness how the Parallel Campaign had fared in his absence.
'Well, because of that hullabaloo in the street outside my house that afternoon, which you observed, we've set up a Commission to Ascertain the Desires of the Concerned Sections of the Population in Reference to Administrative Reform," Count Leinsdorf told him. "The Prime Minister himself asked us to take this off his shoulders for the time being, because as a patriotic enterprise we enjoy, so to speak, the public's confidence. "
With a straight face Ulrich assured him that at any rate the Com- mission's name had been well chosen and was likely to have a certain effect.
"Yes, a good deal depends on finding the right words," His Grace said pensively, and suddenly asked: 'What do you make of this busi- ness of the municipal employees in Trieste? I should think it would be high time for the government to pull itself together and take a firm stand. " He made as if to hand over the paper he had folded up when Ulrich came in, but at the last moment chose to open it again and read aloud to his visitor, with vivid feeling, from a long-winded
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 913
article. "Can you imagine this sort of thing happening in any other country in the world? " he asked, when he had finished. "For years the Austrian city of Trieste has been hiring only Italians, subjects of the King of Italy, in its civil seiVice, to make a point that their alle- giance is to Italy, not to us. I was there once on His Majesty's birth- day: not a single flag in all Trieste except on the administration building, the tax office, the prison, and the roofs of a few barracks! But if you should have any business in some municipal office in Trieste on the King ofltaly's birthday, you wouldn't find a clerk any- where without a flower in his buttonhole! "
"But why has this been tolerated till now? " Ulrich inquired.
''Why shouldn't it be tolerated? " Count Leinsdorf said in a dis- gruntled tone. "Ifour government forces the city to discharge its for- eign staff, we will immediately be accused of Germanizing. That is just the reproach every government fears. Even His Majesty doesn't like it. After all, we're not Prussians! "
Ulrich seemed to remember that the coastal and port city of Trieste had been founded on Slavic soil by the imperialistic Venetian Republic and today embraced a large Slavic population, so that even if one were to view it as merely the private concern of its inhabi- tants-without regard to its also being the gateway to the Empire's eastern trade and in every way dependent on the Empire for its pros- perity-there was no getting around the fact that its large Slavic lower middle class passionately contested the favored Italian upper class's right to consider the city as its own property. Ulrich said as much to the Count.
"True enough," Count Leinsdorf instructed him, "but once the word is out that we're Germanizing, the Slovenes immediately side with the Italians, even though they have to take time off from tearing each other's hair out, and all the other minorities rally to support them as well! We've been through this often enough. In terms of practical politics, it's the Germans we have to regard as a threat to peace within the Empire, whether we want to or not. " This conclu- sion left Count Leinsdorf deep in thought for a while, for he had touched on the great political scheme that weighed on his mind, though it had not come clearly into focus for him until this moment. But suddenly he livened up again, and continued cheerfully: "Any- way, the others have been told offproperly this time. " With a tremor
914 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
of impatience, he replaced his pince-nez and again read aloud to Ul- rich with relish all those satisfying passages in the edict issued by His Imperial and Royal Majesty's Governor in Trieste.
" 'Repeated warnings issued by the governmental institutions of public safety to no avail . . . harm done to our people . . . In view of this obstinate resistance to the prescribed official orders, the Gover- nor of Trieste finds himself obliged to take steps toward enforcing the observance of the existing lawful regulations . . . ' " He inter- rupted himself to ask: "Spoken with dignity, don't you think? " He raised his head but immediately lowered it again, eager to get to the final bit, whose official urbane authority underlined his voice with great aesthetic satisfaction:
" 'Furthermore,' " he read, " 'it is reserved to the administration at any time to give careful and sympathetic consideration to each indi- vidual case of application for citizenship made by such public func- tionaries, insofar as these are officially deemed worthy ofexceptional regard through long years of public service and an unblemished rec- ord, and in such cases the Imperial and Royal Administration is in- clined to avoid immediate enforcement of these regulations, while reserving its right to enforce them at such time and in such circum- stances as it may think fit. ' Now, that's the tone our government should have taken all along! " Count Leinsdorfexclaimed.
"Don't you think, sir, on the basis of this last point, that in the last analysis this leaves things pretty much where they have always been? " Ulrich asked a little later, when the tail end ofthis long snake of an official sentence had finally vanished inside his ear.
"Yes, that's just it! " His Grace replied, twiddling his thumbs for a while, as he always did when some hard thinking was going on inside. Then he gave Ulrich a searching look and opened his heart to him.
"Do you remember how, when we were at the police exhibition, the Interior Minister announced that there was a new spirit of 'mu- tual support and strictness' in the offing? Well, I wouldn't expect them to immediately lock up all the troublemakers who were raising such a rumpus on my doorstep, but the Minister could at least have said a few dignified words of repudiation in Parliament! " His feelings were hurt.
"I assumed it was done during my absence," Ulrich cried with
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 915
feigned astonishment, aware that a genuine distress was roiling the mind of his benevolent friend.
"Not a thing was done! " His Grace said. Again he fixed his wor- ried, protuberant eyes on Ulrich's face with a searching look, and he opened his heart further: "But something will be done! " He straight- ened up and leaned back in his chair, shutting his eyes as he lapsed into silence.
When he opened them again he began to explain in a calmer tone: "You see, my dear fellow, our Constitution of 1861 entrusted the un- disputed leadership in the new experimental governmental scheme to the German element in the population, and in particular to those within that element who represented capital and culture. That was a munificent gift ofHis Majesty's, a proofofhis generosity and his con- fidence, perhaps not quite in keeping with the times; for what has become of capital and culture since then? " Count Leinsdorf raised one hand and then dropped it in resignation on the other. "When His Majesty ascended the throne in 1848, at Olmiitz, that is to say, practi- cally in exile . . . ," he went on slowly, but suddenly becoming impa- tient or uncertain, he fished a fe~ notes out of his pocket with trembling fingers, struggled in some agitation to set his pince-nez firmly on his nose, and read aloud, his voice sometimes quavering with emotion, as he strained to decipher his own handwriting:
" '. . . he was surrounded by the uproar of the nationalities' wild urge for freedom. He succeeded in quenching the extreme manifes- tations of this upsurge. Finally, even if after granting some conces- sions to the demands of his peoples, he stood triumphant as the victor, and a gracious and magnanimous victor, moreover, who for- gave his subjects the errors of their ways and held out his hand to them with the offer of a peace honorable for them as well. Although the Constitution and the other liberties had been granted by him under the press of circumstances, it was nevertheless an act of His Majesty's free will, the fruit of his wisdom and compassion, and of hope in the progressive civilization ofhis peoples. But in recent years this model relationship between the Emperor and his peoples has been tarnished by the work of agitators, demagogues-' " Here Count Leinsdorf broke off reading his exposition of political history, in which evexy word had been scrupulously weighed and polished,
916 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
and gazed pensively at the portrait of his ancestor the Grand Marshal and Knight of the Order of Maria Theresa, hanging on the wall fac- ing him. When Ulrich's expectant gaze finally drew his attention, he said: "That's as far as I've come.
"But you can see that I have been giving these problems a great deal of thought lately," he went on. "What I have just read to you is the beginning of the response which the Minister should have pre- sented to Parliament in the matter of the demonstration against me, if he had been doing his job! I've gradually worked it out for myself, and I don't mind telling you that I shall have occasion to present it to His Majesty as soon as I have finished it. You see, it was not without purpose that the Constitution of 1861 entrusted the leadership of our country to capital and culture. It was meant to secure our future. But where are capital and culture today? "
He seemed really put out with the Minister of the Interior, and to divert him Ulrich remarked innocently that one could at least say about capital that it was nowadays not only in the hands of the bank- ers but also in the time-tested hands ofthe landed aristocracy.
"I've nothing at all against thE: Jews," Count Leinsdorf assured Ul- rich out of the blue, as though Ulrich had said something that re- quired such a disclaimer. "They are intelligent, hardworking, and reliable. But it was a great mistake to give them those unsuitable names. Rosenberg and Rosenthal, for instance, are aristocratic names; Baer and W olf and all such creatures are originally heraldic beasts; Meyer derives from landed property; Silver and Gold are ar- morial colors. All those Jewish names," His Grace disclosed, to Ul- rich's surprise, "are nothing but the insolence of our bureaucrats aimed at our nobility. It was the noble families, not the Jews, who were the butt of these officials, which is why the Jews were given other names as well, like Abrahams, Jewison, or Schmucker. You can not infrequently observe this animus of our bureaucracy against the old nobility surfacing even today, ifyou know how to look for it," he said oracularly, with a gloomy, obstinate air, as though the struggle of the central administration against feudalism had not long since been overtaken by history and vanished completely from sight. In fact, there was nothing His Grace could resent so pureheartedly as the social privileges enjoyed by important bureaucrats by virtue of their position even when their names might be plain Fuchsenbauer or
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · gz 7
Schlosser. Count Leinsdorf was no diehard country Junker; he wanted to move with the times, and did not mind such a name when it was that of a Member of Parliament or even a cabinet minister or an influential private citizen, nor did he at all object to the political or economic influence of the middle class; what provoked him, with a passion that was the last vestige ofvenerable traditions, was the social status of high-ranking administrative officials with middle-class names. Ulrich wondered whether Leinsdorf's remarks might have been prompted by his own cousin's husband. It was not out of the question, but Count Leinsdorf continued talking and was, as always happened, soon lifted above all personal concerns by an idea that had apparently been working inside him for a long time.
"The whole so-called Jewish Question would disappear without a trace if the Jews would only make up their minds to speak Hebrew, go back to their old names, and wear Eastern dress," he explained. "Frankly, a Galician Jew who has just recently made his fortune in Vienna doesn't look right on the Esplanade at Ischl, wearing Tyro- lean costume with a chamois tuft on his hat. But put him in a long, flowing robe, as rich as you like so long as it covers his legs, and you'll see how admirably his face and his grand sweeping gestures go with his costume! All those things people tend to joke about would then be in their proper place-even the showy rings they like to wear. I am against assimilation the way the English nobility practice it; it's a tedious and uncertain process. But give the Jews back their true character and watch them become a veritable ornament, a genuine aristocracy of a rare and special kind among the nations gratefully thronging around His Majesty's throne-or, ifyou'd prefer to see it in everyday terms, imagine them strolling along on our Ringstrasse, the only place in the world where you can see, in the midst of West- ern European elegance at its fmest, a Mohammedan with his red fez, a Slovak in sheepskins, or a bare-legged Tyrolean! "
At this point Ulrich could not do otherwise than express his admi- ration for His Grace's acumen, which had now also enabled him to uncover the "real Jew. "
'Well, you know, the true Catholic faith teaches us to see things as they really are," Count Leinsdorf explained benevolently. "But you would never guess what it was that put me on the right track. It wasn't Arnheim-I'm not speaking ofthe Prussians right now. But I
gz8 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
have a banker, a man ofthe Mosaic faith, ofcourse, whom I've had to see regularly for years now, and at first his intonation always used to bother me a bit, so that I couldn't keep my mind on the business at hand. He speaks exactly as if he wanted me to think he was my uncle-I mean, as if he'd just got out of the saddle, or back from a day's grouse shooting; exactly the way our own kind of people talk, I must say. Well and good; but then, when he gets carried away, he can't keep it up and, to make no bones about it, slips into a kind of Yiddish singsong. It used to bother me considerably, as I believe I've told you already, because it always happened when some important business matter was at stake, so that I was always unconsciously primed for it, and it got so that I couldn't pay, attention to what he was talking about, or else I imagined I was listening to something important the whole time. But then I found a way around it: Every time he began to talk like that I imagined he was speaking Hebrew, and you ought to have heard how attractive it sounded then! Posi- tively enchanting-it is, after all, a liturgical language; such a melodi- ous chanting: I'm very musical, I should add. In short, from then on he had me lapping up the most complicated calculations of com- pound interest or discount positively as if he were at the piano! " As he said this, Count Leinsdorf had for some reason a melancholy smile.
Ulrich took the liberty of pointing out that the people so favored by His Grace's sympathetic interest would be more than likely to turn down his suggestion.
"Oh, of course they won't want to! " the Count said. "But they would have to be forced to for their own good. It would amount to a world mission for the Empire, and it's not a question ofwhether they want to or not. You see, many people at the beginning have had to be made to do what's best for them. But think, too, what it would mean if we ended up allied with a grateful Jewish State instead of with the Germans and Prussia! Seeing that our Trieste happens to be the Hamburg of the Mediterranean, as it were, apart from the fact that it would make us diplomatically invincible to have not only the Pope on our side but the Jews as well! "
Abruptly, he added: "You must remember that I have to concern myselfwith problems ofthe currency, too, these days. " And again he smiled in that strangely sad, absentminded way.
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 919
It was astonishing that His Grace, who had repeatedly sent out ur- gent calls for Ulrich, did not discuss the problems of the day now that he had finally come, but lavished his ideas on him. Apparently ideas had come to him in abundance while he had had to do without his confidant, ideas as restless as bees that stream out for miles but are sure to return in their own good time, laden with honey.
"You might perhaps object," Count Leinsdorf resumed, although Ulrich had not said anything, "that I have on earlier occasions often expressed a decidedly low opinion of the financial world. I don't deny it: too much is too much, and we have too much finance in modern life. But that's precisely why we must deal with it! Look, culture has not been pulling its weight alongside capital-there you have the whole secret of developments since 1861. And that's why we must concern ourselves with capital. "
His Grace made an almost imperceptible pause, just long enough to let his listener know that now he was coming to the secret of capi- tal, but then went on in his gloomily confidential tone:
"You see, what's most important in a culture is what it forbids peo- ple: whatever doesn't belong is out. For instance, a well-bred man will never eat gravy with his knife, only God knows why; they don't teach you these things in school. That's so-called tact, it's based on a privileged class for culture to look up to, a cultural model; in short, if I may say so, an aristocracy. Granted that our aristocracy has notal- ways lived up to that ideal. That's exactly the point, the downright revolutionary experiment, of our 1861 Constitution: Capital and cul- ture were meant to make common cause with the aristocracy. Have they done so? Were they up to taking advantage ofthe great opportu- nity His Majesty had so graciously made available to them? I'm sure you'd never claim that the results of your cousin's great efforts that we see every week are in keeping with such hopes. " His voice grew more animated as he exclaimed: "You know, it's really most interest- ing, what sorts of things claim to be 'mind' these days! I was telling His Eminence the Cardinal about it recently, when we were out hunting in Miirzsteg-no, it was Miirzbruck, at the Hostnitz girl's wedding-and he laughed and clapped his hands together: 'Some- thing new every year,' he said. 'Now you can see how modest we are; we've been telling people the same old thing for almost two thousand years. ' And that's so true. The main thing about faith is that it keeps
920 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
believing the same old thing, even ifit's heresy to say so. 'You know,' he said, 'I always go out hunting because my predecessor in the days of Leopold von Babanberg did too. But I never kill,' he said-he happens to be known for never firing a shot on the hunt-'because it goes against my grain, something tells me it's not in keeping with my cloth.
