No More Learning

Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 999
"Even so, it does seem a fair assumption, after what you've been telling me. "
Clarisse was nonplussed. She had to think about it. She didn't know. "Me? But I'm not supposed to---I'm the one who must put a stop to it! " she said. "I can't permit it to happen! "
"You don't say? " The Master's laugh was vulgar. "You have to pre- vent yourself from feeling anything? Or prevent Walter from getting satisfaction? ''
Clarisse blushed. But now she understood more clearly what she had to say. "When you give in, everything gets swamped in lust," she replied seriously. "I won't let a man's lust leave him and become my lust. That's why I've attracted men ever since I was a little girl. There's something wrong with the lust of men. "
For various reasons Meingast preferred not to go into that.
"Do you have that much self-control? '' he asked.
'Well, yes and no," Clarisse said candidly. "But I told you, ifI let
him have his way, I'd be a sex murderer! " Warming to her subject, she went on: "My woman friends say they 'pass out' in the arms of a man. I don't know what that is. I've never passed out in a man's arms. But I do know what it's like to 'pass out' without being in a man's arms. You must know about that too; after all, you did say that the world is too devoid ofillusions . . . ! "
Meingast waved this offwith a gesture, as ifto say she had misun- derstood him. But now it was all too clear to her.
'When you say, for instance, that one must decide against the lesser value for the sake of the higher value," she cried, "it means that there's a life in an immense and boundless ecstasy! Not sexual ecstasy but the ecstasy of genius! Against which Walter would com- mit treason if I don't prevent him! "
Meingast shook his head. Denial filled him on hearing this altered and impassioned version of his words; it was a startled, almost fright- ened denial, but ofall the things it prompted him to say, he chose the most superficial: "But who knows whether he could do anything else? "
Clarisse stopped, as if rooted to the ground by a bolt of lightning. "He must! " she cried. "You yourself taught us that! "
"So I did," the Master granted reluctantly, trying in vain to get her
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to keep walking by setting an example. "But what do you really want? "
"There was nothing I wanted before you came, don't you see? " Clarisse said softly. "But it's such an awful life, to take nothing more than the little bit ofsexual pleasure out ofthe vast ocean ofthe possi- ble joys in life! So now I want something. "
"That's just what I am asking you about,'' Meingast prompted.
"One has to be here for a purpose. One has to be 'good' for some- thing. Otherwise everything is horribly confused," Clarisse an- swered.
"Is what you want connected with Moosbrugger? " Meingast probed.
"That's hard to say. We'll have to see what comes of it," Clarisse replied. Then she said thoughtfully: ''I'm going to abduct him. I'm going to create a scandal! " As she said this, her expression took on an air of mystery. ''I've been watching you! " she said suddenly. "You have strange people coming to see you. You invite them when you think we're not home. Boys and young men! You don't talk about what they want! " Meingast stared at her, speechless. "You're work- ing up to something,'' Clarisse went on, "you're getting something going! But I,'' she uttered in a forceful whisper, ''I'm also strong enough to have several different friends at the same time. I've gained a man's character and a man's responsibilities. living with Walter, I've learned masculine feelings! " Again her hand groped for Mein- gast's arm; it was evident she was unaware of what she was doing. Her fingers came out of her sleeve curved like claws. ''I'm two peo- ple in one,'' she whispered, "you must know that! But it's not easy. You're right that one mustn't be afraid to use force in a case like this! "
Meingast was still staring at her in embarrassment. He had never known her in such a state. The import of her words was incompre- hensible. For Clarisse herself at the moment, the concept of being two people in one was self-evident, but Meingast wondered whether she had guessed something of his secret life and was alluding to that. There was nothing much to guess at yet; he had only recently begun to perceive a shift in his feelings that accorded with his male-ori- ented philosophy, and begun to surround himself with young men who meant more to him than disciples. But that might have been
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why he had changed his residence and come here, where he felt safe from observation; he had never thought of such a possibility, and this little person, who had turned uncanny, was apparently capable of guessing what was going on in him. Somehow more and more of her arm was emerging from the sleeve of her dress without reducing the distance between the two bodies it connected, and this bare, skinny forearm, together with its attached hand, which was clutching Mein- gast, seemed at this moment to have such an unusual shape that ev- erything in the man's imagination that had hitherto been distinct became wildly muddled.
But Clarisse no longer came out with what she had been just about to say, even though it was perfectly clear inside her. The double words were signs, scattered throughout the language like snapped- off twigs or leaves strewn on the ground, to mark a secret path. "Sex murder" and "changing" and even "quick" and many other words- perhaps all others-exhibited double meanings, one ofwhich was se- cret and private. But a double language means a double life. Ordinary language is evidently that of sin, the secret one that of the astral body. "Quick," for instance, in its sinful form mea. nt ordinary, everyday, tiring haste, while in its joyous form everything flew off it in joyful leaps and bounds. But then the joyous form can also be called the form of energy or of innocence, while the sinful form can be called all the names having to do with the depression, dullness, and irresolution of ordinary life. There were these amazing connec- tions between the self and things, so that something one did had an effect where one would never have expected it; and the less Clarisse could express all this, the more intensely the words kept coming in- side her, too fast for her to gather them in. But for quite some time she had been convinced of one thing: the duty, the privilege, the mis- sion of whatever it is we call conscience, illusion, will, is to find the vital form, the light form. This is the one where nothing is accidental, where there is no room for wavering, where happiness and compul- sion coincide. Other people have called this "living authentically" and spoken of the "intelligible character"; they have referred to in- stinct as innocence and to the intellect as sin. Clarisse could not think in these terms, but she had made the discovery that one could set something in motion, and then sometimes parts of the astral body would attach themselves to it of their own accord and in this fashion
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become embodied in it. For reasons primarily rooted in Walter's hy- persensitive inaction, but also because of heroic aspirations she never had the means of satisfying, she had been led to think that by taking forceful action one could set up a memorial to oneself in ad- vance, and the memorial would then draw one into itself. So she was not at all clear about what she intended to do with Moosbrugger, and could not answer Meingast's question.
Nor did she want to. While Walter had forbidden her to say that the Master was about to undergo another transformation, there was no doubt that his spirit was moving toward secret preparations for some action, she did not know what, but one which could be as mag- nificent as his spirit was. He was therefore bound to understand her, even ifhe pretended not to. The less she said, the more she showed him how much she knew. She also had a right to take hold of him, and he could not forbid it. Thus he accorded recognition to her un- dertaking and she entered into his and took part in it. This, too, was a kind of being-two-people-in-one, and so forceful that she could hardly grasp it. All her strength, more than she could know she had, was flowing through her arm in an inexhaustible stream from her to her mysterious friend, draining the very marrow from her bones and leaving her faint with sensations surpassing any of those from making love. She could do nothing but look at her hand, smiling, or alter- nately look into his face. Meingast, too, was doing nothing but gaze now at her, now at her hand.
All at once, something happened that at first took Clarisse by sur- prise and then threw her into a whirl of bacchantic ecstasy:
Meingast had been trying to keep a superior smile fixed on his face in order not to betray his uncertainty. But this uncertainty was grow- ing from moment to moment, constantly reborn from something ap- parently incomprehensible. For every act undertaken with doubts is preceded by a briefspan ofweakness, corresponding to the moments of remorse after the thing is done, though in the normal course of events it may barely be apparent. The convictions and vivid illusions that protect and justify the completed act have not yet been fully formed and are still wavering in the mounting tide of passion, vague and formless as they will probably be when they tremble and collapse afterward in the outgoing tide of passionate remorse. It was in just this state of his intentions that Meingast had been surprised. It was
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doubly painful for him because of the past and because of the regard in which he was now held by Walter and Clarisse, and then, every intense excitement changes the sense of one's image of reality so that it can rise to new heights. His own frightened state made Clarisse frightening to Meingast, and the failure of his efforts to get back to sober reality only increased his dismay. So instead of projecting su- perior strength, the smile on his face stiffened from one minute to the next; indeed, it became a sort of floating stiffness, which ended by floating away stiffiy, as i f on stilts. At this moment the Master was behaving no differently than a large dog facing some much smaller creature he does not dare to attack, like a caterpillar, toad, or snake; he reared up higher and higher on his long legs, drew back his lips and arched his back, and found himself suddenly swept away by the currents of discomfort from the place where they had their source, without being able to conceal his flight by any word or gesture.
Clarisse did not let go of him. As he took his first, hesitant steps, her clinging might have been taken for ingenuous eagerness, but after that he was dragging her along with him while barely finding the necessaty words to explain that he was in a hurry to get back to his room and work. It was only in the front hall that he managed to shake her off completely; up till then he had been driven only by his urge to escape, paying no attention to what Clarisse was saying and choked by his caution not to attract the attention of Walter and Sieg- mund. Walter had actually been able to guess at the general pattern of what was going on. He could see that Clarisse was passionately demanding something that Meingast was refusing her, and jealousy bored into his breast like a double-threaded screw. For although he suffered agonies at the thought that Clarisse was offering her favors to their friend, he was even more furious at the insult of seeing her apparently disdained. If that feeling were taken to its logical conclu- sion, he would have to force Meingast to take Clarisse, only to be plunged into despair by the sweep of that same impulse. He felt deeply sad and heroically excited. It was insufferable, with Clarisse poised on the razor's edge of her destiny, that he should have to lis- ten to Siegmund asking whether the seedlings should be planted looselyinthesoilorifithadtobepattedfirmlyaroundthem. Hehad to say something, and felt like a piano in the fraction of a second between the moment when the ten-fingered crash of an incredible
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blow hits it and the cry of pain. Light was in his throat, words that would surely put a wholly new and different face on everything. Yet all he managed to say was something quite different from what he expected. "I won't have it! " he said, again and again, more to the garden than to Siegmund.
But it turned out that Siegmund, intent as he had seemed to be on the seedlings and on pushing the soil this way and that, had also no- ticed what was going on and even given it some thought. For now he rose to his feet, brushed the dirt from his knees, and gave his brother-in-law some advice.
"If you feel she's going too far, you'll have to give her something else to think about," he said in a tone that implied he had of course been thinking all this time, with a doctor's sense of responsibility, about everything Walter had confided in him.
"And how am I to do that? " Walter asked, disconcerted.
"Like any man! " Siegmund said. "All a woman's fuss and fury is to be cured in one place, to quote Mephistopheles more or less! "
Siegmund put up with a great deal from Walter. Life is full of such relationships, in which one partner keeps the upper hand and con- stantly suppresses the other, who never rebels. In fact, and in accord- ance with Siegmund's own convictions, this is the way normal, healthy life is. The world would probably have come to an end in the Bronze Age if everyone had stood up for himself to the last drop of his blood. Instead, the weaker have always moved away and looked around for neighbors they in their tum could push around; the ma- jority of human relationships follow this model to this day, and with time these things take care of themselves.
In his family circle, where Walter passed for a genius, Siegmund had always been treated as a bit of a blockhead; he had accepted it, and even today would have been the one who yielded and did hom- age wherever it was a matter of precedence in the family hierarchy. That old hierarchical structure had ceased to matter years ago, com- pared with the new status each of them had acquired, and precisely for that reason it could be left undisturbed. Siegmund not only had a very respectable practice as a physician-and the doctor's power, un- like that of the bureaucrat, is not imposed from above but is owed to his personal ability; people come to him for help and submit to him willingly-but also had a wealthy wife, who had presented him
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within a brief period with herself and three children, and to whom he was unfaithful with other women, not often but regularly, whenever it pleased him. So he was certainly in a position, if he chose, to give Walter confident and reliable advice.
At this moment Clarisse came back out of the house. She no lon- ger remembered what had been said during their tempestuous rush indoors. She realized that the Master had been trying to get away from her, but the memory ofit had lost its details, had folded up and closed. Something had happened! With this one notion in her head, Clarisse felt like someone emerging from a thunderstorm, still charged from head to toe with sensual energy. In front of her, a few yards beyond the bottom of the small flight of stone steps she had come out by, she saw a shiny blackbird with a flame-colored beak, dining on a fat caterpillar. There was an immense energy in the crea- ture, or in the two contrasting colors. One could not say that Clarisse was thinking anything about it; it was more like a response coming from behind and all around her. The blackbird was a sinful body in the act of committing violence. The caterpillar the sinful form of a butterfly. Fate had placed the two creatures in her path, as a sign that she must act. One could see how the blackbird assumed the caterpil- lar's sins through its flaming orange-red beak. Wasn't the bird a "black genie"? Just as the dove is the "white spirit"? Weren't these signs linked in a chain? The exhibitionist with the carpenter, with the Master's flight . . . ? Not one of these notions was clearly formed in her; they lodged invisibly in the walls of the house, summoned but still keeping their answer to themselves. But what Clarisse really felt as she stepped out on the stairs and saw the bird that was eating the caterpillar was an ineffable correspondence of inner and outer happenings.
She conveyed it in some curious way to Walter. The impression he received instantly corresponded with what he had called "invoking God"; there was no mistaking it this time. He could not make out what was going on inside Clarisse, she was too far away, but there was something in her bearing that was not happenstance, as she stood facing the world into which the little flight of stairs descended like steps leading down to a swimming pool. It was something exalted. It was not the attitude of ordinary life. And suddenly he understood; this was what Clarisse meant when she said: "It's not by chance that
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this man is under my window! " Gazing at his wife, he himself felt how the pressure of strange forces came flooding in to fill appear- ances. In the fact that he was standing here and Clarisse there, at such an angle to him that he had to tum his eyes away from the direc- tion they had automatically taken, along the length of the garden, in order to see her clearly-even in this simple juxtaposition, the mute emphasis of life suddenly outweighed natural contingency. Out of the fullness of images thrusting themselves upon the eye something geometrically linear and extraordinary reared up. This must be how it could happen that Clarisse found a meaning in almost empty cor- relations, such as the circumstance of one man stopping under her window while another was a carpenter. Events seemed to have a way of arranging themselves that was different from the usual pattern, as elements in some strange entity that revealed them in unexpected aspects, and because it brought these aspects out from their obscure hiding places, it justified Clarisse's claim that it was she herself who was attracting events toward herself. It was hard to express this with- out sounding fanciful, but then it occurred to Walter that it came closest to something he knew very well-what happens when you paint a picture. A painting, too, has its own inexplicable way of ex- cluding every color or line not in accord with its basic form, style, and palette of colors, while on the other hand it extracts from the painter's hand whatever it needs, thanks to the laws of genius, which are not the same as the usual laws of nature. At this point he no lon- ger had in him any of that easy, healthy self-assurance which scruti- nizes life's excrescences for anything that might come in handy and which he had been extolling only a little while ago; what he felt was more the misery of a little boy too timid to join in a game.
But Siegmund was not the man to let go of something so easily once he had taken it up. "Clarisse is high-strung," he declared. "She's always been ready to run her head through a wall, and now she's got it stuck in one. You'll have to get a good grip on her, even if she resists you. "
"You doctors don't have a clue about human psychology! " Walter cried. He looked for a second point of attack and found it. "You talk of'signs,' "he went on, his irritation overlaid by his pleasure in being able to speak about Clarisse, "and you carefully examine when signs indicate a disorder and when they don't, but I tell you this: the true
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human condition is the one in which everything is a sign! But every- thing! You may be able to look truth in the eye, but truth will never look you in the eye; this divine, uncertain feeling is something you'll never know! "
"You're obviously both crazy," Siegmund remarked dryly.
"Yes, of course we are! " Walter cried out. "You're not a creative man, after all; you've never learned what it means to 'express one- self,' which means first of all, for an artist, to understand something. The expression we impart to things is what develops our ability to perceive them aright. I can only understand what I want, or someone else wants, by carrying it out! This is our living experience, as distinct from your dead experience! Of course you'll say it's paradoxical, a confusion of cause and effect; you and your medical causality!
"
But Siegmund did not say this; he merely reiterated doggedly: "It will definitely be for her own good ifyou won't put up with too much. Excitable people need a certain amount of strictness. "
"And when I play the piano at the open window," Walter asked, as if he had not heard his brother-in-law's warning, "what am I doing? People are passing by, some of them young girls, perhaps anyone who feels like it stops to listen; I play for young lovers and lonely old people. Clever people, stupid people. I'm not giving them something to think about. What I'm playing isn't rational information. I'm giv- ing them myself. I sit invisible in my room and give them signs: just a few notes, and it's their life, and it's my life. You could certainly call this crazy too . . . ! " Suddenly he fell silent. That feeling: "Oh, I could tell all of you a thing or two! "-that basic ambitious urge of every inhabitant of earth who feels the need to communicate something but has no more than an average creative capacity-had fallen to pieces. Every time Walter sat in the soft emptiness of the room be- hind his open window and released his music into the air with the proud awareness of the artist giving happiness to unknown thou- sands, this feeling was like an open umbrella, and the instant he stopped playing, it was like a sloppily closed one. All the airiness was gone, it was as if everything that had happened had not happened, and all he could say was that art had lost its connection to the people and everything was no good. He thought of this and felt dejected. He tried to fight it off. After all, Clarisse had said: music must be played "through to the end. " Clarisse had said: 'W e understand something
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only as long as we ourselves are part ofit! " But Clarisse had also said: "That's why we have to go to the madhouse ourselves! " Walter's "inner umbrella" flapped halfway closed in irregular stormy gusts.
Siegmund said: "Excitable people need a certain amount of guid- ance, for their own good. You yourself said you wouldn't put up with it anymore. Professionally and personally, I can only give you the same advice: Show her that you're a man. I know she balks at that, but she'll come around. " Siegmund was like a dependable machine tirelessly reiterating the "answer" he had come up with.
Walter, in a "stormy gust," replied: "This medical exaggeration of a well-adjusted sex life is old hat! When I make music or paint or think, I am affecting both an immediate and a distant audience, with- out depriving the ones ofwhat I give to the others. On the contrary! Take it from me, there's probably no sphere of life in which onere- mains justified in living only for oneself, thinking of life as a private matter! Not even marriage! "
But the heavier pressure was on Siegmund's side, and Walter sailed before the wind across to Clarisse, of whom he had not lost sight during this conversation. He did not relish anyone's being able to say of him that he was not a man; he turned his back on this sug- gestion by letting it drive him over to Clarisse. And halfway there he felt the certainty, between nervously bared teeth, that he would have to begin with the question: ''What do you mean, talking about signs? "
But Clarisse saw him coming. She had already seen him wavering while he was still standing there. Then his feet were pulled from the ground and bore him toward her. She participated in this with wild elation. The blackbird, startled, flew off, hastily taking its caterpillar with it. The way was now clear for her power of attraction. Yet she suddenly thought better of it and eluded the encounter for the time being by slowly slipping along the side of the house into the open, not turning away from Walter but moving faster than he, hesitant as he was, could move out of the realm of telepathic effect into that of statement and response.
AGATHE IS QUICKLY DISCOVERED AS A SOCIAL ASSET BY GENERAL STUMM
Since Agathe had joined forces with him, Ulrich's relations with the extensive social circle of the Tuzzis had been making great demands on his time. For although it was late in the year the winter's busy social season was not yet over, and the least he could do in return for the great show of sympathy he had received upon his father's death was not hide Agathe away, even though their being in mourning re- lieved them of having to attend large affairs. Had Ulrich chosen to take full advantage of it, their mourning would actually have allowed them to avoid attending all social functions for a long time, so that he could have dropped out of a circle of acquaintances that he had fallen into only through curious circumstances. However, since Agathe had put her life into his charge Ulrich acted against his own inclination, and assigned to a part of himself labeled with the tradi- tional concept "duties of an elder brother" many decisions that his whole person was undecided about, even when he did not actually disapprove of them. The first of these duties of an elder brother was to see that Agathe's flight from her husband's house should end only in the house of a better husband.
"If things continue this way," he would say, whenever they touched on the subject of what arrangements needed to be made in setting up house together, "you will soon be getting some offers of marriage, or at least of love," and if Agathe planned something for more than a few weeks ahead he would say: "By that time everything will be different. " This would have wounded her even more had she not perceived the conflict in her brother, so that for the present she refrained from making an issue of it when he chose to widen their social circle to the limit. And so after Agathe's arrival they became far more involved in social obligations than Ulrich would have been on his own.
Their constant appearances together, when for a long time Ulrich
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had always been seen alone and without ever uttering a word about a sister, caused no slight sensation. One day General Stumm von Bard- wehr had shown up at Ulrich's with his orderly, his briefcase, and his loaf of bread, and started to sniff the air suspiciously. Then Stumm discovered a lady's stocking hanging over a chair, and said reproach- fully: "Oh, you young fellows! "
"My sister," Ulrich declared.
"Oh, come on-you haven't got a sister! " the General protested. "Here we are, tormented by the most serious problems, and you're hiding out with a little playmate! "
Just then Agathe came in, and the General lost his composure. He saw the family resemblance, and could tell by the casual air with which Agathe wandered in that Ulrich had told the truth, yet he could not shake off the feeling that he was looking at one of Ulrich's girlfriends, who incomprehensibly and misleadingly happened to look like him.
"I really don't know what came over me, dear lady," he told Di- otima later, "but I couldn't have been more amazed if he'd suddenly stood before me as a cadet again! " For at the sight of Agathe, to whom he was instantly attracted, Stumm had been overcome by that stupor he had learned to recognize as a sign of being deeply moved. His tender plumpness and sensitive nature inclined the General to hasty retreat from such a tricky situation, and despite all Ulrich's ef- forts to make him stay, he did not learn much more about the serious problems that had brought the educated General to him.
"No! " Stumm blamed himself. "Nothing is so important as to jus- tify my disturbing you like this. "
"But you haven't disturbed us at all," Ulrich assured him with a smile. "What's there to be disturbed? "
"No, of course not," Stumm assured him, now completely con- fi! sed. "Ofcourse not, in a sense. But all the same . . . look, why don't I come back another time? "
"You might at least tell me what brought you here, before you dash off again," Ulrich demanded.
"Nothing, not a thing! A trifle! " the General cried in his eagerness to take to his heels. "I think the Great Event is about to start! "
"A horse! A horse! Take ship for France! " Ulrich threw in in fun.
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Agathe looked at him in surprise.
"I do apologize," the General said, turning to her. "You can't have any idea what this is all about. "
"The Parallel Campaign has found its crowning idea! " Ulrich filled her in.
"No, I never said that," the General demurred. "All I meant was that the great event everyone was waiting for is now on its way. "
"I see," Ulrich said. 'Well, it's been on its way from the start. "
"No, not quite like this," the General earnestly assured him. "There is now a quite definite nobody-knows-what in the air. There's soon to be a decisive gathering at your cousin's. Frau Drangsal-"
'Who's she? " Ulrich had never heard of her.
"That only shows how much you've been out of touch," the Gen- eral said reproachfully, and turned immediately to Agathe to mend matters. "Frau Drangsal is the lady who has taken the poet Feuer- maul under her wing. I suppose," he said, turning his round body back again to the silent Ulrich, "you don't know him either? "
"Yes, I do. The lyric poet. "
'Writes verses," the General said, mistrustfully avoiding the unac- customed word.
"Good verse, in fact. And all sorts of plays. "
"I don't know about plays. And I haven't got my notes with me. But he's the one who says: Man is good. In short, Frau Drangsal is backing the hypothesis that man is good, and they say it is a great European idea and that Feuermaul has a great future. She was mar- ried to a man who was a world-famous doctor, and she means to make Feuermaul world-famous too. Anyway, there's a danger that your cousin may lose the leadership to Frau Drangsal, whose salon has also been attracting all the celebrities. "
The General mopped the sweat from his brow, though Ulrich did not find the prospect at all alarming.
"You smprise me! " Stumm scolded him. "As an admirer of your cousin like everyone else, how can you say such things? Don't you agree, dear lady," he appealed to Agathe, "that your brother is being incredibly disloyal and ungrateful toward an inspiring woman? "
''I've never met my cousin," Agathe admitted.
"Oh! " said Stumm, and in words that turned a chivalrous intention
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into a rather backhanded compliment which involved an obscure concession to Agathe, he added: "Though she hasn't been at her best lately! "
Neither Ulrich nor Agathe had anything to say to this, so the Gen- eral felt he had to elucidate. "And you know why, too," he said mean- ingfully to Ulrich. He disapproved of Diotima's current absorption in sexology, which was distracting her mind from the Parallel Cam- paign, and he was worried because her relationship with Arnheim was not improving, but he did not know how far he might go in speaking of such matters in the presence of Agathe, whose expres- sion was now growing steadily cooler. But Ulrich answered calmly: "I suppose you're not making any progress with your oil affair if our Diotima no longer has her old influence on Arnheim? "
Stumm made a pathetically pleading gesture, as if to stop Ulrich from making a joke not fit for a lady's ear, but at the same time threw him a sharp glance ofwarning. He even found the energy, despite his weight, to bounce to his feet like a young man, and tugged his tunic straight. Enough ofhis original suspicion about Agathe's background lingered to keep him from exposing the secrets of the War Ministry in her presence. It was only when Ulrich had escorted him out to the hall that he clutched his arm and whispered hoarsely, through a smile: "For God's sake, man, don't talk open treason! " and enjoined Ulrich from uttering a word about the oil fields in front of any third person, even one's own sister. "Oh, all right," Ulrich promised. "But she's my twin sister. "
"Not even in front of a twin sister! " the General asseverated, still so incredulous about the sister that he could take the addition of "twin" in stride. "Give me your word! "
"But it's no use making me promise such a thing. " Ulrich was even more outrageous. 'We're Siamese twins, don't you see? " Stumm fi- nally caught on that Ulrich, whose manner was never to give a straight answer to anything, was making fun of him. "Your jokes used to be better," he protested, "than to suggest the unappetizing notion that such a delightful person, even if she's ten times your sister, is fused together with you! " But this had reawakened his lively mistrust of the reclusiveness in which he had found Ulrich, and so he ap- pended a few more questions to find out what he had been up to. Has the new secretary turned up yet? Have you been to see Di-
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otima? Have you kept your promise to visit Leinsdorf? Have you found out how things are between your cousin and Arnheim? Since the plump skeptic was ofcourse already informed on all these points, he was merely testing Ulrich's truthfulness, and was satisfied with the result.
"In that case, do me a favor and don't be late for this crucial ses- sion," he pleaded while buttoning up his greatcoat, slightly out of breath from mastering the traversal through the sleeves. 'T il call you again beforehand and fetch you in my carriage, agreed? "
"And when will this boredom take place? " Ulrich asked, not ex- actly with enthusiasm.
"In a couple ofweeks or so, I think," the General said. 'We want to bring the rival party to Diotima's, but we want Arnheim to be there too, and he's still abroad. " With one finger he tapped the golden sword knot dangling from his coat pocket. 'Without him, it's not much fun for us, as you can understand. But believe me"-he sighed-"there's nothing I personally desire more than that our spir- itual leadership should stay with your cousin; it would be horrible for me, if I had to adapt to an entirely new situation! "
Thus it was this visit that brought Ulrich, now accompanied by his sister, back into the fold he had deserted when he was still alone. He would have had to resume his social obligations even if he had not wanted to, as he could not possibly stay in hiding with Agathe a day longer and expect Stumm to keep to himself a discovery so ripe for gossip. When "the Siamese" called on Diotima, she had apparently already heard of this curious and dubious epithet, if she was not yet charmed with it. For the divine Diotima, famed for the distinguished and remarkable people always to be met under her roof, had at first taken Agathe's unheralded debut very badly; a kinswoman who might not be a social success could be far more damaging to her own position than a male cousin, and she knew just as little about this new cousin as she had previously known about Ulrich, which in itself caused the all-knowing Diotima some annoyance when she had to admit her ignorance to the General. So she had decided to refer to Agathe as "the orphan sister," partly to help reconcile herself to the situation and partly to prepare wider circles for it. It was in this spirit that she received the cousins.
She was agreeably surprised by the socially impeccable manners
1014 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
Agathe was able to produce, while Agathe, mindful of her good edu- cation in a pious boarding school and always ready, with a mixture of irony and wonder, to take life as it came-an attitude she deplored to Ulrich-from the first managed almost unconsciously to win the gra- cious sympathies of the stupendous young woman whose ambition for "greatness" left Agathe quite cold and indifferent. She marveled at Diotima with the same guilelessness with which she would have marveled at a gigantic power station in whose mysterious function of spreading light one did not meddle. Once Diotima had been won over, especially as she could soon see that Agathe was generally liked, she laid herself out to extend Agathe's social success, which shear- ranged to throw greater credit on herself. The "orphan sister" aroused much sympathetic interest, which among Diotima's inti- mates began on a note of frank amazement that nobody had ever heard of her before, and in wider circles was transformed into that vague pleasure at everything new and surprising which is shared by princes and the press alike.
And so it happened that Diotima, with her dilettante's knack for choosing instinctively, among several options, that which was both the worst and the most promising ofpublic success, made the move that assured Ulrich and Agathe of their permanent place in the memory ofthat distinguished circle by promptly passing on the de- lightful story-as she now suddenly found it to be-that the cousins, reunited under romantic circumstances after an almost lifelong sepa- ration, called themselves Siamese twins, even though they had been blindly fated thus far to be almost the opposite. It would be hard to say why Diotima first, and then everyone else, was so taken with this circumstance, and why it made the "twins" ' resolve to live together appear both extraordinary and natural; such was Diotima's gift for leadership; and this outcome-for both things happened-proved that she still exerted her gentle sway despite all her rivals' maneu- vers. Amheim, when he heard of it on his return from abroad, deliv- ered an elaborate address to a select circle, rounding it off with a homage to aristocratic-popular forces. Somehow the rumor arose that Agathe had taken refuge with her brother from an unhappy mar- riage with a celebrated foreign savant. And since the arbiters of good form at that time had the landowners' antipathy to divorce and made do with adultery, many older persons perceived Agathe's choice in
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 1 5
that double halo of the higher life composed of willpower and piety which Count Leinsdorf, who looked upon the "twins" with special favor, at one point characterized with the words: "Our theaters are always treating us to displays of the most awful excesses of passion. Now here's a story the Burgtheater could use as a good example! "
Diotima, in whose presence this was uttered, responded: "It's become fashionable for many people to say that man is good. But anyone who knows, as I have learned in my studies, the confusions of our sex life will know how rare such examples are! "
Did she mean to qualify His Grace's praise or reinforce it? She had not yet forgiven Ulrich what she called his lack of confidence in her, since he had not given her advance notice of his sister's arrival; but she was proud of the success in which she had a part, and this entered into her reply.
. z8
Too MUCH GAIETY
Agathe proved naturally adept at making use of the advantages social life offered, and her brother was pleased to see her moving with so much poise in these demanding social circles. The years she had spent as the wife of a secondary-school principal in the provinces seemed to have fallen from her without leaving a trace. For the pres- ent, however, Ulrich summed it all up with a shrug, saying: "Our high nobility find it amusing that we should be called the Siamese twins. They've always gone in more for menageries than, say, for art. "
By tacit agreement they treated all that was happening as a mere interlude. There was much that needed changing or rearranging in their household, as they had seen from the very first day; but they did nothing about it, because they shied away from another discussion whose limits could not be foreseen. Ulrich had given up his bedroom to Agathe and settled himself in the dressing room, with the bath-
1016 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
room between them, and had gradually given up most of his closet space to her. He declined her offer of sympathy for these hardships with an allusion to Saint Lawrence and his grille; and anyway it did not occur to Agathe that she might be interfering with her brother's bachelor life, because he assured her that he was very happy and be- cause she could have only the vaguest idea of the degrees of happi- ness he might have enjoyed previously. She had come to like this house with its unconventional arrangements, its useless extravagance of anterooms and reception rooms around the few habitable rooms, which were now overcrowded; there was about it something of the elaborate civilities of a bygone age left defenseless against the self- indulgent and churlish high-handedness of the present. Sometimes the mute protest of the handsome rooms against the disorderly inva- sion seemed mournful, like broken, tangled strings hanging from the exquisitely carved frame of an old instrument. Agathe now saw that her brother had not really chosen this secluded house without inter- est or feeling, as he pretended, and from its ancient walls emerged a language of passion that was not quite mute, but yet not quite audi- ble. But neither she nor Ulrich admitted to anything more than en- joying its casualness. They lived in some disarray, had their meals sent in from a hotel, and derived from everything a sort ofwild fun that comes with eating a meal more awkwardly on the grass at a pic- nic than one would have had to do at one's table.
In these circumstances they also did not have the right domestic help. The well-trained servant Ulrich had taken on temporarily when he moved in-an old man about to retire and only waiting for some technicality to be settled first----could not be expected to do more than the minimum Ulrich expected of him; the part of lady's maid fell to Ulrich himself, since the room where a regular. maid might be lodged was, like everything else, still in the realm of good intentions, and a few efforts in that direction had not brought good results. In- stead, Ulrich was making great strides as a squire arming his lady knight to set forth on her social conquests. In addition, Agathe had done some shopping to supplement her wardrobe, and her acquisi- tions were strewn all over the house, which was nowhere equipped for the demands of a lady. She had acquired the habit of using the entire house as a dressing room, so that Ulrich willy-nilly took part in her new purchases. The doors between rooms were left open, his
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 0 1 7
gymnastic apparatus seJVed as clotheshorse and coatrack, and he would be called away from his desk for conferences like Cincinnatus from his plow. This interference with his latent but at least potential will to work was something he put up with not merely because he thought it would pass but because he enjoyed it; it was something new and made him feel young again. His sister's vivacity, idle as it might appear to be, crackled in his loneliness like a small fire in a long-unused stove. Bright waves of charming gaiety, dark waves of warm trustfulness, filled the space in which he lived, taking from it the nature of a space in which he up till then had moved only at the dictates of his own will. But what was most amazing about this inex- haustible fountain of another presence was that the sum of the countless trifles ofwhich it consisted added up to a non-sum that was of a quite different kind: his impatience with wasting his time, that unquenchable feeling that had never left him since he could remem- ber, no matter what he had taken up that was supposed to be great and important, was to his astonishment totally gone, and for the first time he loved his day-to-day life without thinking.
He even overdid it a little, gasping in delight when Agathe, with the seriousness women feel in these matters, offered for his admira- tion the thousand charming things she had been buying.