No More Learning

''
"These three offers were made to me spontaneously, so I had no reason to ask Leinsdorf; but I'm sure he wouldn't shrink from mak- ing a sacrifice. "
"Everyone's spoiling me," Ulrich commented, summing up with these words the amazing readiness of Arnheim, Tuzzi, and Stumm to plant a man of their own inside the Parallel Campaign at such low cost. "But perhaps it would be most advisable for me to take on your husband's clerk. "
"My dear friend-" Diotima said, still protesting, but she did not really know how to go on, which was probably why something quite tangled came out. Again she propped herself up on an elbow and said with feeling: "I reject adultery as too crude a solution of marital con- flicts-l've told you that! But even so, there's nothing so hard as being linked for life in a single destiny with a person one doesn't love enough! "
This was a most unnatural cry of nature. But Ulrich, unmoved, would not be shaken from his resolve. "No doubt Section Chief Tuzzi would like this way of having a hand in your operation; but so would the others," he pointed out. "All three are in love with you, and each of them has to reconcile this somehow with his duty. " How odd, he thought, that Diotima did not understand either the lan- guage of facts or that of the comments he made on them, and rising to take his leave, he added with even heavier irony: "The only one who loves you unselfishly is myself-because I have no duties of any kind and no commitments. But feelings without distraction are de- structive; you've meanwhile found that out for yourself, and you have
8go · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
always regarded me with a justifiable, even if only instinctive, mis- trust. "
Although Diotima did not know why, this was precisely and en- dearingly the reason that she was pleased to see Ulrich siding with her own house in this matter of the secretary, and she did not let go of the hand he offered her.
"And how does this fit in with your affair with 'that' woman? " she asked, playfully taking her cue from his remark-insofar as Diotima could be playful; the effect was rather that of a shot-putter playing with a feather.
Ulrich did not know whom she could mean.
"That judge's wife you introduced to me! "
"You noticed that, cousin? "
"Dr. Arnheim drew my attention to it. "
"Oh, did he? How flattering that he should think he can hurt my
standing with you in this fashion. But of course my relations with the lady are entirely innocent! " Ulrich stated, defending Bonadea's honor in the conventional fashion.
"She was in your house twice during your absence," Diotima said with a laugh. "The first time, we happened to be passing by, and we heard about the second time some other way. So there's no point in trying to be discreet. But on the other hand, I wish I could under- stand you! I simply can't! "
"How on earth could I explain this to you, of all people! "
"Try! " Diotima commanded. She had put on her expression of "of- ficial immorality," a sort of bespectacled look she donned whenever her mind commanded her to speak or hear things that were out of bounds for her soul as a lady. But Ulrich declined and repeated that his understanding of Bonadea could only be guesswork.
"All right," Diotima gave in, "even though your lady friend herself was not sparing with her hints! She seems to feel called upon to jus- tify some wrong or other in my eyes. But do speak of this, if you'd rather, as ifyou were merely guessing! "
Now Ulrich felt a thirst for knowledge, and he learned that Bona- dea had been to see Diotima several times, and not only in matters connected with the Parallel Campaign and her husband's position.
"I must admit I find her a beautiful woman," Diotima conceded, "and she is extraordinarily high-minded. I'm really upset that you're
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 8gz
always eliciting confidences from me but always withholding yours! " At this moment Ulrich's attitude was approximately "the devil take both of you! " He felt like giving Diotima a scare and paying Bonadea back for her intrusiveness, or else he was suddenly feeling the full distance between himself and the life in which he had been
indulging.
"All right," he told her, summoning up a gloomy expression: "The
woman is a nymphomaniac and I find that irresistible! "
Diotima lmew "academically" what nymphomania was. There was a pause, and then she drawled: "The poor woman! And you find that
attractive? "
"Isn't it idiotic? " Ulrich said.
Diotima wanted to lmow "the details"-would he explain this "la-
mentable phenomenon" and enable her to understand it in "human terms"? He did so without exactly going into detail, but she was nev- ertheless overcome by a feeling of satisfaction that doubtless rested on that well-lmown gratitude to God that she was not like the other woman; but at its apex this feeling faded into dismay and curiosity, which was not to be without influence on her subsequent relations with Ulrich. Pensively she said: "But it must be simply awful to em- brace a person who doesn't mean anything to you! "
"You think so? " her cousin asked candidly. At this insinuation Diotima felt hurt and indignant to the marrow, but she could not let herself show it; she contented herself with letting go of his hand and sinking back into her pillows with a dismissive gesture. "You never should have told me this! " she said from where she lay. "You treated that poor woman very badly just now, and you've been most indiscreet! "
''I'm never indiscreet! " Ulrich objected, and could not help laugh- ing at his cousin. "You're really being unfair. You are the first woman to whom I've ever confided anything about another woman, and it was you who made me do it! "
Diotima was flattered. She wanted to say something of the same kind, to the effect that without a spiritual transformation one cheated oneself of the best in life; but she could not come out with it because it suddenly seemed too personal. Finally, something from one of the books surrounding her prompted her to answer noncommittally, from within the protection of her official persona: "Like all men,"
892 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
she chided him, "you make the mistake of treating your love partner not as an equal but merely as a complement to yourself, and then you're disappointed. Has it never occurred to you that the only way to a transcendent, harmonious eroticism may lie through stricter self-discipline? "
Ulrich's jaw nearly dropped, but he answered in spontaneous self- defense: "Do you know that Section Chief Tuzzi has already grilled me today on the possibilities of the origin and training of the soul? "
Diotima sat up straight: "What? Tuzzi talks with you about soul? " she asked in amazement.
"Of course he does; he's trying to find out what it is," Ulrich as- sured her, but he could not be induced to stay any longer. He merely promised to betray a confidence some other time and tell her all about that too.
PROBLEMS OF A MORALIST WITH A LETTER TO WRITE
With this visit to Diotima the restless state Ulrich had been in since his return came to an end. On the afternoon of the very next day he sat down at his desk, and in doing so felt at home again, and began writing a letter to Agathe.
It was clear to him-as simple and clear as a windless day some- times is-that her rash scheme was extremely dangerous. What had happened so far could still be taken as a risky prank, of no concern to anyone but themselves, but that depended entirely on its being re- scinded before it acquired connections with reality, and the danger was growing with every passing day. Ulrich had written this much when he stopped, uneasy at the thought of entrusting to the mails a letter in which this was so openly discussed. He told himself that it would be better in every way to take the next train back, in place of
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 893
the letter; but of course this made no sense to him either, since he had let days go by without doing anything about it. He knew he would not go.
He realized that there was something behind this tantamount to a choice: he simply felt like letting things take their course and seeing what came of this incident. So his problem was just how far he actu- ally, definitely could want to risk it, and all sorts of wide-ranging thoughts went through his mind.
It occurred to him right at the start, for instance, that whenever he had taken a "moral" stance so far, he had always been psychologically worse off than when he was doing or thinking something that might usually be considered "immoral. " This is a common occurrence, for in situations that are in conflict with their surroundings these ideas and actions develop all their energies, while in the mere doing of what is right and proper they understandably behave as if they were paying taxes. This suggests that all evil is carried out with zest and imagination, while good is distinguished by an unmistakable dreari- ness and dearth of feeling. Ulrich recalled that his sister had ex- pressed this moral dilemma quite casually by asking him whether being good was no longer a good thing. It ought to be difficult and breathtaking, she had maintained, and wondered why, nevertheless, moral people were almost always bores.
He smiled contentedly, spinning this thought out with the realiza- tion that Agathe and he were as one in their particular opposition to Hagauer, which could be roughly characterized as that of people who were bad in a good way to a man who was good in a bad way. Leaving out of account the broad middle of life's spectrum, which is, reasonably enough, occupied by people whose minds have not been troubled by the general terms good and evil since they let go of their mother's apron strings, there remain the two extremes where pur- poseful moral efforts are still made. Today these are left to just such bad/good and good/bad people, the first kind never having seen good fly or heard it sing, thus expecting their fellowmen to enthuse with them about a moral landscape where stuffed birds perch on dummy trees, while the second kind, the good/bad mortals, exasperated by their competitors, industriously show a penchant for evil, at least in theory, as if they were convinced that only wrongdoing, which is emotionally not quite as threadbare as doing good, still twitches with
894 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
a bit of moral vitality. And so Ulrich's world-not, of course, that he was fully aware ofthis-had at that time the option ofletting itselfbe ruined by either its lame morality or its lively immoralists, and to this day it probably does not know which of those two choices it finally embraced with stunning success, unless that majority who can never spare the time to concern themselves with morality in general did pay attention to one case in particular because they had lost confi- dence in their own situation and, as a result, had of course lost a number ofother things as well. For bad/bad people, who can so eas- ily be blamed for everything, were even then as rare as they are today, and the good/good ones represent a mission as far removed as a distant nebula. Still, it was precisely of them that Ulrich was think- ing, while everything else he appeared to be thinking about left him cold.
And he gave his thoughts an even more general and impersonal form by setting the relationship that exists between the demands "Do! " and "Don't! " in the place of good and evil. For as long as a particular morality is in the ascendant-and this is just as valid for the spirit of "Love thy neighbor" as it is for a horde of V andals- "Don't! " is still only the negative and natural corollary of "Do! " Doing and leaving undone are red hot, and the flaws they contain don't count because they are the flaws of heroes and martyrs. In this condition good and evil are identical with the happiness and unhap- piness of the whole person. But as soon as the contested system has achieved dominance and spread itself out, and its fulfillment no lon- ger faces any special hurdles, the relationship between imperative and taboo perforce passes through a decisive phase where duty is not born anew and alive each day but is leached and drained and cut up into ifs and buts, ready to serve all sorts of uses. Here a process be- gins, in the further course of which virtue and vice, because of their common root in the same rules, laws, exceptions, and limitations, come to look more and more alike, until that curious and ultimately unbearable self-contradiction arises which was Ulrich's point of de- parture: namely, that the distinction between good and evil loses all meaning when weighed against the pleasure of a pure, deep, spon- taneous mode of action, a pleasure that can leap like a spark from permissible as well as from forbidden activities. Indeed, whoever takes an unbiased view is likely to find that the negative aspect of
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 895
morality is more highly charged with this tension than the positive: While it seems relatively natural that certain actions called "bad" must not be allowed to happen, actions such as taking what belongs to others or overindulgence in sensual gratification, or, if they are committed, at least ought not to be committed, the corresponding affirmative moral traditions, such as unlimited generosity in giving or the urge to mortify the flesh, have already almost entirely disap- peared; and where they are still practiced they are practiced by fools, cranks, or bloodless prigs. In such a condition, where virtue is de- crepit and moral conduct consists chiefly in the restraint of immoral conduct, it can easily happen that immoral conduct appears to be not only more spontaneous and vital than its opposite, but actually more moral, if one may use the term not in the sense oflaw and justice but with regard to whatever passion may still be aroused by matters of conscience. But could anything possibly be more perverse than to incline inwardly toward evil because, with all one has left of a soul, one is seeking good?
Ulrich had never felt this perversity more keenly than at this mo- ment, when the rising arc his reflections had followed led him back to Agathe again. Her innate readiness to act in the good/bad m o d e - to resort once more to the term they had coined in passing-as so notably exemplified in her tampering with their father's will, of- fended the same innate readiness in his own nature, which had merely taken on an abstract theoretical form, something like a priest's admiration of the Devil, while as a person he was not only able to lead his life more or less according to the rules but even, as he could see, did not wish to be disturbed in so doing. With as much melancholy satisfaction as ironic clear-sightedness, he noted that all his theoretical preoccupation ·with evil basically amounted to this, that he wanted to protect the bad things that happened from the bad people who undertook them, and he was suddenly overcome by a longing for goodness, like a man who has been wasting his time in foreign parts dreaming ofcoming home one day and going straight to the well in his native village for a drink of water. If he had not been caught up in this comparison, he might have noticed that his whole effort to see Agathe as a morally confused person, such as the present age produces in profusion, was only a pretext to screen out a prospect that frightened him a good deal more. For his sister's con-
8g6 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
duct, which certainly did not pass muster objectively, exerted a re- markable fascination as soon as one dreamed along with it; for then all the controversies and indecisions vanished, and one was left with the impression of a passionate, affinnative virtue lusting for action, which could easily seem, compared with its lifeless daily counterpart, to be some kind of ancient vice.
Ulrich was not the man to indulge himself lightly in such exalta- tions of his feelings, least of all with this letter to write, so he redi- rected his mind into general reflections. These would have been incomplete had he not remembered how easily and often, in the times he had lived through, the longing for some duty rooted in com- pleteness had led to first one virtue, then another, being singled out from among the available supply, to be made the focus of noisy glorification. National, Christian, humanistic virtues had all taken their tum; once, it was the virtue of chromium steel, another time, the virtue of kindness; then it was individuality, and then fellowship; today it is the fraction of a second, and yesterday it was historical equilibrium. The changing moods of public life basically depend on the exchange of one such ideal for another: it had always left Ulrich unmoved, and only made him feel that he was standing on the side- lines. Even now all it meant for him was a filling in of the general picture, for only incomplete insight can lead one to believe that one can get at life's moral inexplicability, whose complications have become overwhelming, by means of one of the interpretations al- ready embedded within it. Such efforts merely resemble the move- ments of a sick person restlessly changing his position, while the paralysis that felled him progresses inexorably. Ulrich was convinced that the state of affairs that gave rise to these efforts was inescapable and characterized the level from which every civilization goes into decline, because no civilization has so far been capable of replacing its lost inner elasticity. He was also convinced that the same thing that had happened to every past moral system would happen to every future one. For the slackening of moral energy has nothing to do with the province ofthe Commandments or the keeping ofthem: it is independent of their distinctions; it cannot be affected by any outer discipline but is an entirely inner process, synonymous with the weakening ofthe significance ofall actions and offaith in the unity of responsibility for them.
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 897
And so Ulrich's thoughts, without his having intended it, found their way back to the idea he had ironically characterized to Count Leinsdorf as the "General Secretariat for Precision and Soul," and although he had never spoken of it other than flippantly and in jest, he now realized that all his adult life he had consistently behaved as though such a General Secretariat lay within the realm of possibility. Perhaps, he could say by way ofexcuse, every thoughtful person har- bors in himself some such idea of order, just as grown men may still wear next to their skin the picture of a saint that their mother hung around their necks when they were small. And this image of order, which no one dares either to take seriously or to put away, must be more or less something like this: On one hand, it vaguely stands for the longing for some law of right living, a natural, iron law that allows no exceptions and excludes no objections: that is, as liberating as in- toxication and sober as the truth. On the other hand, however, it evinces the conviction that one will never behold such a law with one's own eyes, never think it out with one's own thoughts, that no one person's mission or power can bring it about but only an effort by everyone-unless it is only a delusion.
Ulrich hesitated for an instant. He was doubtless a believing per- son who just didn't believe in anything. Even in his greatest dedica- tion to science he had never managed to forget that people's goodness and beauty come from what they believe, not from what they know. But faith had always been bound up with knowledge, even if that knowledge was illusory, ever since those primordial days of its magic beginnings. That ancient knowledge has long since rot- ted away, dragging belief down with it into the same decay, so that today the connection must be established anew. Not, of course, by raising faith "to the level of knowledge," but by still in some way making it take flight from that height. The art oftranscending knowl- edge must again be practiced. And since no one man can do this, all men must tum their minds to it, whatever else their minds might be on. When Ulrich at this moment thought about the ten-year plan, or the hundred- or thousand-year plan that mankind would have to de- vise in order to work toward a goal it can have no way ofknowing, he soon realized that this was what he had long imagined, under all sorts of names, as the truly experimental life. For what he meant by the term "faith" was not so much that stunted desire to know, the credu-
8g8 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
lous ignorance that is what most people take it to be, but rather a lmowledgeable intuition, something that is neither lmowledge nor fantasy, but is·not faith either; it is just that "something else" which eludes all these concepts.
He suddenly pulled the letter toward him, but immediately pushed it away again.
The stem glow on his face went out, and his dangerous favorite idea struck him as ridiculous. As though with one glance through a suddenly opened window, he felt what was really around him: can- nons and business deals. The notion that people who lived in this fashion could ever join in a planned navigation of their spiritual des- tiny was simply inconceivable, and Ulrich had to admit that historical development had never come about by means of any such coherent combination of ideas as the mind of the individual may just manage in a pinch; the course of history was always wasteful and dissipated, as if it had been flung on the table by the fist of some low-life gam- bler. He actually felt a little ashamed. Everything he had thought during the last hour was suspiciously reminiscent of a certain "In- quiry for the Drafting of a Guiding Resolution to Ascertain the Desires of the Concerned Sections of the Population"; even the fact that he was moralizing at all, this thinking theoretically that surveyed Nature by candlelight, seemed completely unnatural, while the sim- ple man, accustomed to the clarity of the sun, goes straight for the next item, unbothered by any problem beyond the very definite one of whether he can risk this move and make it work.
At this point Ulrich's thoughts flowed back again from these gen- eral considerations to himself, and he felt what his sister meant to him. It was to her he had revealed that curious and unlimited, in- credible, and unforgettable state of mind in which everything is an affinnation: the condition in which one is incapable of any spiritual movement except a moral one, therefore the only state in which there exists a morality without interruption, even though it may only consist in all actions floating ungrounded within it. And all Agathe had done was to stretch out her hand toward it. She was the person who stretched out her hand and made Ulrich's reflections give way to the bodies and forms of the real world. All his thoughts now ap- peared to him a mere delaying and transition. He decided to "take a chance" on what might come of Agathe's idea, and at this moment he
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 8gg
could not care less that the mysterious promise it held out had started with what was commonly viewed as a reprehensible act. One could only wait and see whether the morality of "rising or sinking" would show itself as applicable here as the simple morality of honesty. He remembered his sister's passionate question as to whether he himself believed what he was saying, but he could affirm this even now as little as he could then. He admitted to himself that he was waiting for Agathe to be able to answer this question.
The phone rang shrilly, and Walter was suddenly rushing at him with flustered explanations and hasty snatches of words. Ulrich lis- tened indifferently but readily, and when he put down the receiver and straightened up he still felt the ringing of its bell, now finally stopping. Depth and darkness came flooding back into his surround- ings to soothe him, though he could not have said whether it hap- pened as sounds or colors; it was a deepening of all his senses. Smiling, he picked up the sheet of paper on which he had begun writing to his sister and, before he left the room, slowly tore it into tiny pieces.
19
ONW ARD TO MOOSBRUGGER
Meanwhile Walter, Clarisse, and the prophet Meingast were sitting around a platter loaded with radishes, tangerines, almonds, big Turk- ish prunes, and cream cheese, consuming this delicious and whole- some supper. The prophet, again wearing only his wool cardigan over his rather bony torso, made a point now and again of praising the natural refreshments offered to him, while Clarisse's brother, Siegmund, sat apart, with his hat and gloves on, reporting on yet an- other conversation he had "cultivated" with Dr. Friedenthal, the as- sistant medical officer at the psychiatric clinic, to make arrangements for his "completely crazy" sister Clarisse to see Moosbrugger.
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"Friedenthal insists that he can do it only with a permit from the District Court," he wound up dispassionately, "and the District Court is not satisfied with the application I obtained for all of you from the Final Hour Welfare Society but requires a recommenda- tion from the Embassy, because we lied, unfortunately, about Cla- risse's being a foreigner. So there's nothing else to be done: Tomorrow Dr. Meingast will have to go to the Swiss Embassy! "
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,
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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,
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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
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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
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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.