Young Torless (11 page)

Törless was startled-and it was strangely as if Reiting's fate affected him personally, were almost his own. He looked at Beineberg in dismay. Beineberg had narrowed his eyes to a mere slit, and to Törless he looked like a great, weird spider quietly lurking in its web. His last words rang in Törless's ears with the coldness and clarity of an ultimatum.

Törless had not been following, had only known: Beineberg is talking about his ideas again, and they have nothing at all to do with the matter in hand.. .And now all at once he did not know how it had reached this point.

The web, which had, after all, been begun somewhere far off in a realm of abstractions, as he vaguely remembered, seemed to have contracted suddenly and with miraculous speed. For all at once it was there, concrete, real, alive, and there was a head twitching in it-choking.

He was far from having any liking for Reiting, but he now recalled the agreeable, impudent, carefree way in which he set about all his intrigues, and in contrast Beineberg seemed infamous as he sat there, calm and grinning, pulling his many-threaded, grey, abominable web of thoughts tight around the other.

Involuntarily Törless burst out: “You mustn't turn it to account against him!” What impelled him to th
e exclamation was perhaps partly
his constant secret repugnance for Beineberg.

But after a few minutes' reflec
tion Beineberg said of his own a
ccord: “What good would it do, anyway? Where he is concerned it would really be a pity. From now on in any case he's no danger to me, and after all he's not so worthless that one should trip him up over a silly thing of this kind.” And so that aspect of the affair was settled. But Beineberg went on talking, now again turning his attention to Basini's fate.

“Do you still thing we ought to report Basini?”

But Törless gave no answer. Now he wanted Beineberg to go on talking, to hear his words sounding like the hollow echoing of footsteps over a vault; he wanted to savour the situation to the full.

Beineberg went on expounding his ideas. “I think for the present we'll keep him in our own hands and punish him ourselves. He certainly must be punished-if only for his presumption. All the school would do would be to send him home and write his uncle a long letter about it. Surely you know more or less how automatically that sort of thing works. Your Excellency, your nephew has so far forgotten himself. . - bad influence . . . restore him to our care - . - hope you will be successful . . - road towards improvement . . - for the present, however, impossible among the others... and so on and so forth. You don't suppose, do you, that such a case has any interest or value in their eyes?”

“And what sort of value can it have for us?”

“What sort of value? None for you, perhaps, for you're going to be a government official some day, or perhaps you'll write poems-all in all you don't need that kind of thing, and perhaps you're even frightened of it. But I picture my life rather differently.”

Now Törless really began to listen.

“For me Basini has some value-very great value indeed. Look, it's like this-you would simply let him go and would be quite satisfied with the thought that he was a bad person.” Here Törless suppressed a smile. “That's all it amounts to for you, because you have no talent or interest in training yourself by means of such a case. But
I
have that interest. Anyone with my road ahead of him must take quite a different view of human beings. That's why I want to save Basini up for myself-as something to learn from.”

“But how do you mean to punish him?”

Beineberg withheld his answer
for a moment, as though consid
ering the effect he expected it to have. Then he said, cautiously and with some hesitation: “You're wrong if you think I'm so very much concerned with the idea of punishment. Of course ultimately it will be possible to look at it as a punishment for him too. But to cut a long story short, I've got something different in mind, what I want to do with him is-well, let's call it tormenting him.”

Törless took good care to say nothing. He was still far from seeing the whole thing clearly, but he could feel that it was all working out as-inwardly-it must work out for him.

Beineberg, who could not gather what effect his words had had, continued: “You needn't be shocked, it's not as bad as all that. First of all, as I've already explained to you, there's no cause to consider Basini's feelings at all. Whether we decide to torment him or perhaps let him off depends solely on whether we feel the need of the one or the other. It depends on our own inner reasons. Have you got any? All that stuff about morality and society and the rest of it, which you brought up before, doesn't count at all, of course. I should be sorry to think you ever believed in it yourself. So I assume you to be indifferent. But however it may be, you can still withdraw from the whole affair if you don't want to take any risks.

“My own road, however, leads not back or around, but straight ahead and through the middle of it. It has to be like that. Reiting won't leave off either, for in his case too there's a special value in having a human being in the hollow of his hand so that he can use him for the purpose of training himself, learning to handle him like a tool. He wants to exercise power, and he would treat you lust the same as Basini if he ever happened to get the chance. But for me it's a matter of something more than that. It's almost a duty to myself. Now, how am I to make clear to you exactly what this difference is between him and me? You know how Reiting venerates Napoleon. Now contrast that with the fact that the sort of person who most appeals to me is more like a philosopher or a holy man in India. Reiting would sacrifice Basini and feel nothing but a certain Interest in the process. He would dissect him morally in order to find out what one has to expect from such operations. And, as I said before, it could be you or me just as well as Basini, and it would be all the same to him. On the other hand, I have this certain feeling, just as you have, that Basini is, after all, in the last resort a human being too. There's something in me too that is upset by any act of cruelty. But that's just the point! The point is the sacrifice! You see, there are two threads fastened to me too. The first is an obscure one that, in contrast with my clear conviction, ties me to the inaction that comes from pity. But there is the second, too, which leads straight to my soul, to the most profound inner knowledge, and links me to the universe. People like Basini, as I told you before, signify nothing-they are empty, accidental forms. True human beings are only those who can penetrate into themselves, cosmic beings that are capable of that meditation which reveals to them their relationship to the great universal process. These people do miracles with their eyes shut, because they know how to make use of the totality of forces in the universe, which are within them just as they are also outside them. But hitherto everyone who has followed up the second thread, has had to tear the first. I've read about appalling acts of penance done by illumine
d monks, and the means used by I
ndian ascetics are, I imagine, not entirely unknown to you either. All the cruel things that are done in this way have only one aim, to kill the miserable desires directed towards the external world, which, whether they are vanity or hunger, joy or pity, only take away something from the fire that everyone can kindle in himself.

“Reiting knows only the outward thread, but I follow the second. For the present he has got ahead of me in everybody else's eyes, for my road is slower and more uncertain. But I can overtake him with one stride, just as if he were a worm. You see, they say the universe is governed by mechanical laws that are unshakable. That's all wrong! That's only what the school-books say! The external world is stubborn, I dare say, and to some extent its so-called laws stand firm, but there have been people who succeeded in bending them to their will. It's written about in sacred books that have stood the test of time and of which most people know nothing. From these books I know there have been people who could move stones and air and water merely by means of their will, and whose prayers were stronger than any earthly power. But even these are only the external triumphs of the spirit. For him who
entirely
succeeds in beholding his own soul, physical life, which is only an accidental thing, dissolves. It is written in the books that such beings enter directly into a higher spiritual realm.”

Beineberg spoke with entire seriousness and with suppressed excitement. Törless still kept his eyes shut almost all the time; he could feel Beineberg's breath like something touching him and drew it into himself like a suffocating narcotic. And so Beineberg concluded his harangue: “Well, you can see what I am concerned with. What tells me to let Basini off is something of low, external origin. You can obey it if you like. For me it is a prejudice from which I have to cut myself loose as from everything else that would distract me from my inner way.

“The very fact that I find it hard to torture Basini-I mean, to humiliate him, debase him, and cast him away from me-is good. It requires a sacrifice. It will have a purifying effect. I owe it to myself to learn daily, with him as my material, that merely being human means nothing-it's a mockery, a mere external semblance.”

Törless did not understand all of it. But once again it seemed to him as though an invisible noose had suddenly been tightened into a palpable and fatal knot. Beineberg's final words went on echoing in his mind: “. . . a mocker
y, a mere external semblance.” I
t seemed to apply also to his own relation to Basini. Was it not in such fantasies that the queer fascination lay which Basini held for him? Was it not simply in the fact that he could not enter into Basini's mind and so always experienced him only in vague images? Just now, when he had tried to picture Basini to himself, had there not been behind his face a second one, blurred and shadowy and yet on a tangible likeness, though it was impossible to say what it was a likeness of?

So it came about that, instead of thinking over Beineberg's very odd intentions, being bemused as he was by these new and unfamiliar impressions, Törless was engaged in trying to become clear about himself. He remembered the afternoon before he had heard about Basini's offence. Come to think of it, these fantasies had been there even then. There had always been something that his thoughts could not get the better of, something that seemed at once so simple and so strange. There had been pictures in his mind that were not really pictures at all. It had been like that passing the cottages on the road back from the station, and also when he was sitting in
the cake
shop with Beineberg.

They were likenesses and yet at the same
time unlikenesses, unsurmountabl
e. And the toying with it all, this secret, entirely private perspective, had excited him.

And now a human being took possession of this. Now it was all embodied in a human being; it had
become real. Thus all the queer
ness of it attached itself to that human being. Thus it shifted out of the imagination into life itself and became a menace.

All this agitation had tired Törless; his thoughts were now but loosely linked together.

The only thing he could really hold on to was the thought that he must not let go of this Basini, that Basini was destined to play an important part in his life too, one that he already recognised, although as yet unclearly.

And yet, recalling Beineberg's words, he could not help shaking his head in amazement. Was it the same with him . . . ?

'It can't be that
he is after the same things as I
am, and yet it was he who found the right words for it...

Törless was dreaming rather than thinking. He was no longer capable of distinguishing his own inner problem from Beineberg's flights of fancy. In the end nothing remained but the one feeling:

a vast noose tightening, tightening round everything. .

No more was said between them. They put out the light and crept warily back to their dormitory.

T
he next days brought no decision. There was a great deal of school work, Reiting was careful not to find himself alone with either of them, and Beineberg too avoided any reopening of their last discussion.

So it happened, in the days that followed, that the thought of the affair went deeper into Törless, like a river forced underground, and set his imagination moving irrevocably in one particular direction.

This put a definite end to any intention of getting rid of Basini. Now for the first time Törless felt he was focused exclusively on himself, and was incapable of thinking of anything else. Bozena too had become a matter of indifference to him. What he had felt about her now became a mere fantastic memory; it had been replaced by something really serious.

Admittedly, this really serious matter seemed no less fantastic.

* *

Absorbed in his thoughts, Törless had gone for a walk alone in the park. It was noon, and in the light of the late autumn sun the lawns and paths shone as though with the wan gleam of memory. Since in his restlessness he felt no inclination to go far, he merely walked round the building and then threw himself down on the pale, rustling grass at the foot of an almost windowless sidewall. The sky above him was a vault-of that faded, ailing blue which is peculiar to autumn, and there were little white puffs of cloud scudding across it.

Lying flat on his back, he blinked, vaguely and dreamily, looking up between the tops of two trees in front of him, now almost leafless.