No More Learning

Ulrich did not pursue this. He knew that Hans Sepp held him in jealous contempt, yet he felt a certain sympathy for Gerda's peculiar friends. So he sat down among them and wen~ on: "We're undeni- ably making so much progress in the several branches of human ca- pability that we actually feel we can't keep up with it! Isn't it possible that this can also make us feel·that there is no progress? After all, progress is surely the product of all our joint efforts, so we can practi- cally predict that ari. y real progress is likely to be precisely what no- body wanted. "
Hans Sepp's dark shock of hair turned into a tremulous hom pointed at Ulrich. "There, now you've said it yourself: what nobody wanted! A lot of cackling back and forth, a hundred ways, but no way to go! Ideas, of course, but no soul! And·no character! The sentence leaps off the page, the word leaps from the sentence, the whole is no longer a whole, as Nietzsche has already said. Never mind that Nietz- sche's egomania is another minus value for existence! Can you tell me one single, solid, ultimate value from which you, for instance, take your bearings in life? " ·
"Just like that-on demand! " Fischel protested, but Ulrich asked Hans: "Is it really utterly impossible for you to live without some ulti- mate value? "
"Utterly," said Hans, "but I admit that I am bound to be unhappy as a result. " .
"The hell you say! " Ulrich_ laughed. "Everything we can do de- pends on our not being overly perfectionist, not waiting for the ulti- mate inspiration. That's what the Middle Ages did, and ignorant they stayed. "
"Did they, now? " Hans Sepp retorted. ''I'd say that we're the igno- rant ones. "
"But you must admit that our ignorance is manifestly of a very rich and varied sort? "
A drawling voice was heard muttering at the back: "Variety . . .
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knowledge . . . relative progress! All con~epts from the mechanistic outlook of an era corrupted by capitalism: There's hardly more to be said. . . . "
Leo Fischel was also muttering to himself; something to the effect that in his opinion Ulrich was being far too indulgent with these juve- nile misfits. He took cover behind the newspaper he unfolded.
But Ulrich was enjoying }timself. "Is the modem house, with its six rooms,. maid's bath, vacuum cleaner, and all that, progress, com~ pared with the old h~uses with their high ceilings, thick walls, and handsome archways, or not? "
"No! " Hans Sepp shouted. .
"Is the airplane progress, compared with the mail coach? "
"Yes! " Director Fischel shouted.
"The machine compared with handicrafts? "
"Handicrafts! " from Hans, and "Machine! " from Leo.
"It seems to m~," Ulrich said, ·~that every step forward· is also a
step backward. Progress always exists in only one particular sense. And since there's no sense in our life as a whole, neither is there such a thing as progress as a whole. "
. Leo Fischel lowered his paper. 'Would you say that it's better to be able to cross the Atlantic in six days rather than having to spend . six weeks on it? "
''I'd be inclined to say that it's definitely progress to have the choice. But our young Christians wouldn't agree to that, either. "
The ·circle offriends sat still, taut as a drawn bow. Ulrich had para- lyzed their tongues but not their fighting spirit. He went on evenly: "But you can also say the opposite: If our life makes progress in the particular instance, it also makes sense in the particular instance. But once it has made sense to offer up human sacrifice to the gods, say, or bum witches, or wear powdered wigs, then·that remains one-oflife's valid possibilities, even when more hygienic habits and more hu- mane customs represent progress. The trouble is that progress al- ways wants to do away with the old meamng. "
"Do you mean to say," Fischel asked, "that we should go back to human sacrifice after we have succeeded in putting such abominable acts of darkness behind us? "
. "Is it darkness, necessarily? " Hans Sepp replied in Ulrich's place. "When you devour an innocent rabbit, that's darkness, but when a
cannibal dines reverently and with religious rites on a stranger, we simply cannot know what goes on inside him. "
"There certainly must have been something to be said for the ages we have left behind," Ulrich agreed, "otherwise so many nice people would never have gone along with them. I wonder if we could tum that to account for ourselves, without sacrificing tQo much? And per- haps we are still sacrificing so many human beings today only be- cause we never clearly faced the pro~lem of the light way to overcome mankind's earlier answers. The way in which everything hangs together is extremely obscure and hard to express. "
"But to your way of thinking, the ideal aim must always be some sort of bottom line or balanced books, right? " Hans Sepp burst out, against Ulrich this time. "You believe in bourgeois'progress every bit as much as Director Fischel, you just manage to express it in the most twisted and perverted words you can find, so that you can't be pirined down. " Hans had been the spokesman for his friends. Ulrich turned to look at Gerda's face. He intended to pick up casually where he had left off, ignoring the fact that Fischel and the young men were as ready to pounce on him as on each other.
"But aren't you striving toward some goal yourself, Hans? " he asked doggedly.
"Something is striving. Inside me. Through me," Hans rapped out.
"And is it going to get there? " Leo Fischel indulged himself in sar- casm, thereby, as all but himself realized, going over to Ulrich's side.
"I wouldn't know," Hans answered gloomily.
"You should take your exams-that would be progress. " Fischel could not refrain from piling it on, so irritated was he, no less by his friend than by these callow youths.
At this moment the room seemed to explode. Frau Clementine cast an imploring look at her husband; Gerda tried to forestall Hans as he struggled for words, which finally came bursting out as yet an- other attack on Ulrich.
"You may be sure," he shouted, "that. basically even you don't have a single idea that Director Fischel couldn't come up with just as welll"
With this parting shot he rushed out of the room, followed by his cohorts, making their bows in angry haste. Director Fischel, blud- geoned by the looks he was getting from his wife, pretended to re-
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member his duties as a host and trudged grumpily into the foyer to speed his guests on their way. Clementine heaved a sigh of relief, now that the air was cleared, then she rose too, and Ulrich suddenly found himself alone with Gerda.
103
THE TEMPTATION
Gerda was visibly upset when they were left alone together. He took her hand; her ann started trembling, and she broke away from him.
"You have no idea what it means to Hans to have a goal," she said. "You make fun of all that; that's cheap enough. It seems to me your mind is more disgusting than ever! " She had been groping for the harshest possible word and was startled by what she had come up with. Ulrich tried to catch hold ofher hand again; she pulledlier arm close to her side. "That's no longer good enough for us! " She hurled her words with a fierce disdain, but her body swayed toward him.
"I know," Ulrich said sarc~tically. "Everything you people do must meet the highest standards. That's exactly what makes me be- have the way you've just described so amiably. You probably wouldn't believe how much it meant to me to talk to·you quite differ- ently back in the old days. "
"You were never any different! " Gerda answered quickly.
'Tve always been undecided," Ulrich said simply, searching her face. "Would you be interested in hearing about what's going on at my cousin's? "
Something now flickered in Gerda's eyes that was clearly distinct from her uneasiness at Ulrich's proximity: she was burning to find out all she could on that subject, for Hans's sake, and was trying to hide her eagerness. Ulrich perceived this with a certain satisfaction, and like an animal scenting danger, he instinctively changed course and began to talk of something else.
"Do you still remember my story about the moon? " he asked. "First I'd like to tell you something else like that. "
"More of your lies, I'm-sure! " she snapped.
"Not if I can possibly help it. . . . You must remember, from the lectures you've attended, how people go about deciding whether something is a law or not? Either you start out with reasons for be- lieving that it is a law, as in physics or chemistry, and even though your observations never quite add up to the preCise results you're looking for, they come fairly close in some definite pattern, and you work it out from there. Or else, as happens so often in life, you have no such reasons and find yourself facing a phenomenon about which you can't quite tell whether it is a law or pure chance; that's where things acquire a human interest. Then you translate a series of obser- vations into a series offigures, which you divide into categories to see which numbers lie between this value and that, and the next, and so on; you arrange them in series where the frequency with which something happens shows or doesn't show a systematic increase or decrease, and you get either a stable series or a distribl)tive func- tion. You then calculate the degree of. aberration, the mean devi- ation, the degree of deviation from some arbitrary value, the central value, the normal value, the average value, the dispersion, and so forth, and with the help of all these concepts you study your given phenomenon. "
Ulrich laid all this out in so casual a tone that it would have been hard to tell whether he was only just working it out in his own mind or hypnotizing Gerda with a display of science for the fun of it. Gerda had moved away from him, leaning forward in an armchair with a furrow of concentration between her eyebrows as she looked down at the floor. To be spoken to in this matter-of-fact tone, an appeal to her intellect, put a damper on her rebelliousness, which she now felt fading away, together with the self-assurance it had given her. Her schooling had taken her through a few semesters at the university, skimming a vast body of new knowledge that could no longer be con- tained in the old framework of classic and humanistic studies. Such an education leaves many young people feeling powerless in facing a new time, a new world where the soil can no longer be worked with the old tools. She had no idea where Ulrich's line of reasoning was taking her. She believed him because she was in love with him, and
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doubted him because she was ten years younger than he and be- longed to a new generation keenly aware of its fresh energies; the two conflicting strands of feeling mingled hazily within her as she
. listened.
''Besides which, you see, we have data that are indistinguishable
from those that demonstrate a natural law, yet they have no such basis. Statistical series can sometimes have the same regularity that we associate with natural law. I'm sure you can think of examples you've heard in some sociology lecture, like the statistics about di- vorce in America, let's say. Or the ratio between male and female births, one of the most stable factors of the kind. Or the number of conscripts annually who try to evade their military service by some form of self-mutilation, also a relative constant, or the suicide statis- tics; even theft, rape, and bankruptcy occur, as far as I know, at more
·or less the same annual rate. . . . "
At this point Gerda's resistance tried to break through. "Are you
trying to explain progress to me? " she cried out, doing her best to sound sarcastic.
"But of course," Ulrich came back at her, without breaking stride. "It's called the law of large numbers, a bit nebulously. Meaning that one person may commit suicide for this reason and another for that reason, but when a great number is involved, then the accidental and the personal elements cancel each ·other out, and what's left . . . but that's just it: what is left? I ask you. Because you see, what'S left is what each one of us as laymen calls, simply, the average, which is a "something," but nobody really knows exactly what. Let me add that efforts have been made to find a logical and formal explanation for this law of large numbers, as an accepted fact, as it were. But there are also those who say that such regularity of phenomena which are not casually related to each other cannot be explained at all by con- ventional logic, and the point has been made, among others, that such phenomena must be analyzed not as individual instances but as involving some unknown laws of aggregates or collectives. I don't
want to bother you with the details, which I no longer have at my fingertips anyway, but I would certainly love to know, for myself, whether there are such laws of the collective phenomenon, or whether it is simply by some irony of nature that the particular in- stance arises from the happening of nothing in particular, and that
the ultimate meaning turns out to be something arrived at by taking the average ofwhat is basically meaningless. It would certainly make a radical differenc~ to our sense of ourselves if we knew the answer, one way or another! Whichever it turns out to be, any possibility of leading an ordered life depends on this law oflarge numbers. If there were no such law of averages, we might have a year with nothing at all happening, followed by one in which you could count on nothing for certain, famine alternating with oversupply, no births followed by too many, and we would all be fluttering to and fro between our heavenly and our hellish possibilities like little birds when someone suddenly comes up to their cage. "
"Is all this true? " Gerda asked hesitantly.
"You ought to know it yourself. "
"Of course I do, as far as the details go! But what I don't know is
whether this is what you meant before, when they were all arguing. What you were saying about progress simply sounded like a deliber- ate provocation. "
"That's what you·always think about me. But what do we really know about the nature of our progress? Not a thing. There are all sorts of possibilities for the way things might tum out, and I simply mentioned just one more. "
"How things might tum out! That's always the way with you; it would never occur to you to wonder how things should be. "
"You and·your friends-always jumping the gun. There's always got to be a supreme goal, an ideal, a program-an absolute. Yet in the end, all that ever comes of it is a compromise, some common denominator. Isn't it tiring and ridiculous to be always reaching for the heights and always ending up settling for some mediocre result? "
It was essentially the same conversation he had had with Diotima, with only superficial differences. Nor did it make much difference which woman happened to . be sitting there facing him; a body, intra-· duced into a given magnetic field, invariably sets certain processes in motion. Ulrich studied Gerda, who was not answering his last ques- tion. There she sat, a skinny girl, with a little furrow of resentment between her eyes. Another hollow, vertical furrow could be seen in the V of her low-cut blouse. Her arms and legs were long and deli- cate. She suggested a limp springtime, aglow with a premature sum- mer heat, together with the full impact ofthe willfulness locked in so
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young a body. He felt a strange mixture of aversion and detachment at the thought that he was closer to a decision than he had realized and that this young girl was destined to play a part ill it. Willy-nilly he suddenly found himself telling her his impressions of the so-called younger generation in the Parallel Campaign, ending with words that took Gerda by surprise:
"These younger people are also very radical, and I'm not popular with them either. But I pay them back in the same coin, because I, too, am radical in my own way, and I can put up with any kind of disorder more easily than the intellectual kind. I like to see ideas not onlydeveloped but brought together. I want not only the oscillation but also the density of an idea. This is what you, my indispensable friend, criticize as my tendency to describe only what might be, in- stead of what ought to be. Well, I do know the difference. This is probably the most anachronistic attitude one can have nowadays, when intellectual rigor and the emotional life are at the farthest re- move from each other, but our precision in technology has unfortu- nately advanced to such a point that it seems to regard the imprecision of life as its proper complement. Why won't you under- stand? The chances are you're incapable of understanding ~e. and it's perverse of me to try to confuse a mind so well attuned to the times.
Still, Gerda, I sometimes honestly wonder whether I might be wrong, after all. Possibly the very people I can't stand are carrying out what I once hoped to accomplish myself. They may be doing it all wrong, not using their heads, one running-this way and the other that way, each spouting an idea that he regards as the only possible idea in the world; each one of them feels tremendously clever, and they all agree in regarding our times as cursed ·with sterility. But suppose it's the other way around, and every one of them is stupid, but all of them together are pregnant with the future? Everyone of our truths seems to be born split into two opposing falsehoods, and this, too, can be a way of arriving at a result that transcends the merely per- sonal. In that case the final balance, the sum total of all the experi- ments, no longer rests with the individual, who becomes unbearably one-sided, but with the experimental collective. In short, I ask you to make allowances for an old man whose loneliness sometimes drives him to excess. "
"You've certainly given me a lot to think about," Gerda said
grimly. ''Why don't you write a book? That way, you might be able to help yourself and us, too. "
"Why on earth should I feel called upon to write a book? " Ulrich objected. "I was born of my mother, after all, not an inkwell. "
G~rda was wondering whether a book by Ulrich would really help anyone. Like all the young people in her circle, she overrated the power of the printed word. A total silence had fallen in the apartment since they had stopped talking, as if the elder Fischels had left the house in the wake of their indignant guests. And Gerda sensed the force emanating from the more powerful male body beside her, as she always did, contrary to all her resolutions, when they were alone to- gether; the effort to resist made her tremble. Ulrich noticed it; he stood up, laid his hand on Gerda's frail shoulder, and said to her: "Look at it this way, Gerda. Suppose the moral sphere works more or less like the physical, as suggested by the kinetic theory of gases: ev- erything whirling around at random, each element doing what it will, but as soon as you work out rationally what is least likely to result from all this, that's precisely the result you get! Such correspondences, strange as they are, do exist. So suppose we also assume that there is a certain number ofideas circulating in our day,'resulting in some aver- age value that keeps shifting, very slowly and automatically-it's what we call progress, or the historical situation. What matters most about this, however, is that our personal, individual share in all this makes no difference; whether we individually move to the right or to the left, whether we think and act on a high or a low level, in an unpredictable m:: a calculated fashion, a new or an old style, does not affect this aver- age term, which is all that. God and the world care about. "
As he spoke he tried to put his arm around her, though it was pal- pably costing him an effort.
Gerda was furious. "You always begin by philosophizing," she cried out, "and it always turns into the usual rooster's cock-a-doodle- doo! " Her face was aflame, with flecks ofcolor in it. . Her lips seemed to be sweating, but there was something attractive about her indigna- tion. ''What you make of it is precisely what we don't want! "
N~w Ulrich could not resist the temptation to ask her, in a low voice: "Is possession so deadly? "
"I don't want to talk about that," Gerda retorted in an equally low tone.
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"It's all the same, whether it's a person you own or a thing. I know that," Ulrich went on. "Gerda, I understand you and Hans better than you think. So what is it that you and Hans want? Tell me. "
"Nothing! That's just it," Gerda exclaimed triumphantly. ''There's no way to state it. Papa also keeps on saying: 'You must make clear to yourselfwhat it is you actually want. Then you will see what nonsense it is. ' Well, everything is nonsense when you make it clear to yourself. To be sensible is never to get beyond the commonplace. I know you'll have some~ingto say about that, you and your sensible way of thinking. " '
Ulrich shook his head. "And what about this demonstration against Count Leinsdorf? " he asked gently, as though he were not changing the subject.
"Oh, so yo1,1 spy on us! " Gerda exclaimed.
"Call it spying if you like, I don't mind; but tell me about it, Gerda. ''
Gerda showed some embarrassment. "Nothing special. Just some sort of demonstration by the Young Germans-marching past his residence, yelling 'Shamel' and things like that. The Parallel Cam- paign is a shame! " '
"In what way? "
Gerda shrugged.
"Do sit down again," Ulrich pleaded. ''You're making far too much
of it. Let's have a quiet talk about it, shall we? ''
Gerda obeyed.
"Now listen to me, and tell me ifyou think I'm on the right track.
You say that possession kills. You're thinking of money, to begin with, and ofyour parents. I agree that they're dead souls. . . . "
Gerda looked offended.
"Very well, let's not talk about money but of 'having' in other ways. Take the man who 'has' himself in hand; the man who 'has' his con- victions; the man· who lets himself be 'had' by another person or by his own passions or merely his own habits or successes; the man who wants to conquer something, the man who wants anything at all: you reject all that? You want to be nomads, nomads forever on the move, as Hans once called it, if I remember. Moving on toward some other meaning, or state of being? Am I right so far? "
"All you're saying is quite right, in an awful sort of way; the intelli- gence doing a good imitation ofthe soul. "
"And intelligence is implicated in all that 'having', isn't it? The in- telligence is what measures, weighs, classifies, and collects every- thing, like an old banker. But what about all the things I talked with you about today that have quite a lot to do with our soUls? "
"A cold kind ofsoul. "
"You're absolutely right, Gerda. Now all I have to do is to tell you why I'm taking the part of the cold souls or even the bankers. "
"Because you're a coward. " Ulrich noticed that as she spoke she bared her teeth like a terrified little animal.
"So be it," he replied. "But surely you believe me capable, ifnoth- ing else, of being man enough to escape by, if necessary, climbing a lightning rod or down the tiniest foothold on a wall, if I were not so sure that every attempt at breaking out only leads back to Papa. "
Gerda had refused to enter into this conversation with Ulrich ever since their last talk on a similar subject. The feelings he was talking about were hers and Hans's alone, and she dreaded, even more than Ulrich's sarcasm, his coming over to her side, which merely left her at his mercy before she could tell whether he meant what he said or was just acting the Devil quoting scripture. From the moment, ear- lier on, when she had been taken by surprise at the sadness in his words-she was now enduring the consequences of having so briefly let down her guard-she had been visibly engaged in a violent inner struggle. But Ulrich was in a similar fix himself. He was far from tak- ing a perverse pleruiure in his power over the girl; he simply did not take Gerda seriously, and since this involved a certain element ofdis- like, he generally expressed himself freely to her, without regard for her feelings. But for some time now, the more·zestfully he took the world's part against her, the more he felt curiously inclined to con- fide in her, to let her see him as he really was, withou~ deceit or mak- ing himself look good, and wanting to see her true inner self as naked as a garden slug. He now looked at her thoughtfully and said: "I feel like letting my eyes rest between your cheeks like clouds in the sky. I don't really know how clouds feel in the sky, but then, I know as much as anybody about those moments when God seizes us like a glove and slowly turns us inside out on his fingers. You and your
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friends make it too easy for yourselves. You sense the negative side of the world we all live in, and you loudly proclaim that the positive world belongs to your parents and elders, and the world ofthe shad- owy negative to you, the new generation. I don't exactly relish play- ing the spy for your parents, my dear Gerda, but I put it to you that in choosing between the banker and an angel, the more realistic charac- ter of the banker's profession counts for something too. "
"Would you like some tea? " Gerda said sharply. "What can I do to make you comfortable here? I want you to see me at my best as the perfect daughter of the house. " She had pulled herself together again.
"Then suppose you marry Hans? "
"But I don't want to marry him! "
"You must have some plan or other-you can't go on living forever
on your opposition to your parents. "
"One of these days I shall leave home, make myself independent,
and he and I will remain friends. "
"Please, Gerda, let's suppose that you and Hans will be married or
something like it; it can hardly be avoided if things keep going the way they are. And now try to imagine yourself brushing your teeth in the morning, and Hans making out the income tax return, in an otheiWorldly state of mind. "
"DoIhavetoknowthat? " ·
"Your Papa would say so, if he had any notion of otheiWorldly states of mind; most people on life's voyage, I'm sorry to say, know very well how to stow their uncommon experiences so deep in the hold of their ship that they never perceive them at all. But let me ask a simpler question: Will you be expecting Hans to be faithful to you? Marital fidelity is part and parcel of the ownership complex, you know. You would have to accept Hans's fmding inspiration in an- other woman. Indeed, according to your principles, you would have to see it as an enrichment ofyour own life. "
"Don't suppose for a minute that we never discuss these questions ourselves," Gerda replied. ''You can't become a new human being overnight; but it is very bourgeois to consider this an argument against . making the effort. "
"What your father wants is actually something quite different from
what you think. He doesn't even claim to know more about all that than you and Hans; he merely says that he can't understand what you're up to. But he does know that power is a very sensible thing. He believes there's more sense in it than in you and him and Hans all rolled into one. What if he were to offer Hans enough money to let him finish his course and get his degree, without having to worry? And ifhe promised him, after a fair trial period, not that the marriage would take place, but at least that he would not stand in its way on principle? Ori only one condition: namely, that until the end of the trial period you two stop seeing each other, or keeping in touch, even to the extent you do now? "
"So this is what you're lending yourself to, is it? "
"I merely want to help you understand your father. He is a sinister deity who wields uncanny powers. He thinks he can make Hans see things his way by using money. In his opinion, a Hans with a limited monthly income couldn't possibly go on exceeding every limit of foolishness. But your father may be a dreamer, in his own way. I ad- mire him, just as I admire compromises, averages, dry facts, dead numbers. I don't believe in the Devil, but if I did I should think of him as the trainer who drives Heaven to break its own records. Any- way, I promised him to keep at you until there was nothing left of your fantasies-only reality. "
Ulrich was far from saying all this with a clear conscience. Gerda stood facing him as if in flames, the anger in her eyes overlaid with tears. All at once, a way had been opened up for her and Hans. But had Ulrich betrayed her, or did he want to help them? She had no idea, but whichever it was, it was likely to make her as unhappy as it made her happy. In her confusion she mistrusted him, and yet she felt with. a passion that there was a sacred bond between them, if only he would admit it.
He now added: "Your father of course harbors a secret hope that I may use the opportunity to win you for myself and change your mind altogether. "
"That's out of the question! " Gerda forced herself to say.
"As far as you and I are concerned, I suppose· that is out of the question," Ulrich said gently. "But we can't go on like this, either. I've already gone too far. " He tried to smile, but felt extreme self-
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loathing as he did. so. He really wanted none of this. He sensed the irresolution in her and despised himself for the cruelty it aroused in him.
At that very instant Gerda stared at him with horrified eyes. Sud- denly she was beautiful, like a fire one has approached t<;>o closely; almost without form, only a warmth th~tparalyzes the will.
"You must come to see me," he suggested. 'W e can't speak freely here. " Male ruthlessness shone out of his eyes in a blaze of empty light. .
"No," Gerda said defensively. But she averted her eyes, and Ul- rich sadly saw-as though by turning away she had again presented herself to his scrutiny-the body of this young girl, neither beautiful nor ugly, breathing hard. He gave a deep and wholly sincere sigh.
104
RACHEL AND SOLIMAN ON THE WARPATH
In the Tuzzi household, charged as it was with a high mission as a gathering place of ideas, there was a light-footed, quick, ardent, on- German creature in service. The little lady's maid, Rachel, was like a chambermaid in Mozart. She opened the front door and stood ready with arms half outstretched to receive the visitor's overcoat. At such times Ulrich sometimes wondered whether she had any idea of his connection with the Tuzzis and tried to catch her eye, but Rachel either turned her eyes away or let them meet his blankly, like two blind little patches of black velvet. He seemed to rememher her eyes meeting his with quite a different expression at their first encounter, and several times noticed another pair of eyes, like two big white snails, aiming at Rachel from a dark comer of the entrance hall, Soli- man's eyes, but whether this boy might be the reason for Rachel's reserve was an open question, because Rachel responded as little to that gaie as to Ulrich's, and quietly withdrew as soon as she had an- nounced the visitor.
The truth was more romantic than curiosity could suppose. Ever since Solim. an had succeeded, with his willful innuendos against Am- heim, in lending that radiant presence a shadowy aura of obscure machinations, tarnishing even Rachel's childlike admiration for Di- otima, all her passionate need to outdo herselfin correct and devoted service had concentrated on Ulrich. Convinced by Soliman that a strict watch had to be kept on everything that went on in the house, she had become a zealous eavesdropper at keyholes, and while wait- ing on the guests had overheard more than one private conversation between Section ChiefTuzzi and his wife; nor had Ulrich's position midway between Diotima and Amheim, as a man they both dis- trusted and desired, escaped her notice, and this corresponded en- tirely to her own feeling, wavering between rebellion and remorse, for her unsuspecting mistress. Now she also realized'that she had known for a long time that Ulrich wanted something from her. It never entered her mind that he might find her attractive. Driven from home as she had been, and longing to prove to her family back in Galicia how great a success she could make of herself despite all that, she naturally dreamed of striking it lucky, something like an un- expected inheritance, the discovery that she was of noble birth, a chance to save the life of a prince . . . but the simple possibility that a gentleman who came to her mistress's house as a visitor might take a liking to her and want her to be his lover or even his wife would never have occurred to her. And so she simply held herself ready to do Ul- rich some great service. It was she and Soliman who had sent the General an invitation when they learned that he was a friend of Ul- rich's, though there was no denying they also did it to get things mov- ing; considering what they thought they knew, a general certainly seemed the right person to tum the trick. Rachel, in her obscure,
elfin sympathy with Ulrich, inevitably developed an overwhelming identification with him, as she secretly watched every movement of his lips, his eyes, his fingers, as if these were actors to whom she was bound with the passion of someone who sees her own insignificant self brought by them onto a vast stage. The more she realized that this mutual involvement constricted her breathing like a tight dress when crouching at a keyhole, the more depraved she felt for not re- sisting with greater firmness Soliman's simultaneous dark pursuit of her; this was the reason, ofwhich Ulrich had no inkling, why she met
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542 • THE MAN WITH0UT 9UALITIES
his curiosity about her with that subseiVient passion for acting the well-trained, model maidseiVant. .
Ulrich wondered in vain why this creature who seemed to be made for tender love play was so chaste that she might be almost a case of that rebellious frigidity not uncommonly found among some fine-boned women. He changed his mind, however, and was even a bit disappointed when he came upon a surprising scene one day. Arnheim had just arrived and gone in to see Diotima; Soliman was squatting on his haunches in the foyer, and Rachel had slipped away again as usual. Ulrich took advantage of the momentary stir caused by Arnheim's arrival to return to the hall for the handkerchief in his overcoat pocket. The light was out again, and Soliman did not realize that Ulrich, in the shadow of the doorway, had not returned to the reception room. Soliman got to his feet stealthily and, with great care, produced a large flower from under his jacket, a lovely white calla lily, wltich he contemplated for a while, then he set off on tiptoe past the kitchen door. Ulrich quietly followed him until Soliman stopped at Rachel's door, pressed the flower to his lips, and fixed it to the handle by twisting the stem around twice and squeezing its end into the keyhole.
It had not been easy to extract this lily from the bouquet on the way over with Arnheim and hide it for Rachel, and Rachel fully ap- preciated such attentions. Getting caught and fired would have meant Death and Judgment Day as far as Rachel was concerned, ·so it was naturally a great nuisance to have to watch out for Soliman all the time, wherever she might be, nor did she like being suddenly pinched in the leg without daring to cry out whenever she passed some hiding place where he might be lying in wait for her. Still, the fact that somebody was taking terrible chances just to be attentive to her, to spy devotedly on her every step and put her character to the test under the most difficult circumstances, could hardly fail to make an impression. The little ape was rushing her quite needlessly and dangerously, and yet, against all her principles and at odds with her crumpled dreams of great things in store, she sometimes felt a guilty craving to make the most of this Mrican king's son whose thick lips were waiting at every tum to seiVe her, the seiVing maid, as ifmade for her alone.
One day, Soliman asked her right out if she was game. Amheim
had gone to the mountains with Diotima and some friends for two days and had left Soliman behind. It was the cook's day off, and Sec- tion Chief Tuzzi was taking his meals at a restaurant. Rachel had told Soliman about the cigarette stubs she had found in her room, and Diotima's unspoken question what would the little maid make of it was answered by Rachel's and Soliman's agreeing that something seemed to be afoot in the Council, something that called for the two of them to take some action of their own. When Soliman asked her if she was game, he announced that he meant to take the documents proving hls noble birth from where Arnheim had locked them up. Rachel did not believe in these documents, but life amid so many tempting mysteries had given her a craving for something to happen. They decided that she would keep on her maid's . cap and frilled apron when Soliman fetched her and took her to Arnheim's hotel, as ifshe had been sent on an errand there by her employers. When they stepped out on the street, such a smoldering heat rose up from be- hind the lacy bib of her apron that it almost blurred her vision, but Soliman boldly stopped a cab; he had plenty of money these days, when Arnheim was so often absentminded. This stiffened Rachel's spine too, and she stepped into the carriage in the sight of all the world as if·she were charged and employed to ride in style with little black boys. The midmorning streets, with the well-dressed idlers to whom they belonged, flew by, and again Rachel's heart was thump- ing as if she were a thief. She tried to lean back properly, as she had seen Diotima do, but could not keep her body from bouncing up and down in.