Young Torless (21 page)

And so to such people the things that make demands only on their moral correctitude are of the utmost indifference. This was why in his later life Törless never felt remorse for what had happened at that time. His tastes had become so acutely and one-sidedly focused on matters purely of the mind that, supposing he had been told a very similar story about some rake's debaucheries, it would certainly never have occurred to him to direct his indignation against the acts themselves. He would have despised such a person not for being a debauchee, but for being nothing more than that; not for his licentiousness, but for the psychological condition that made him do those things; for being stupid, or because his intellect lacked any emotional counter-weight-that is to say, despising him always only for the picture he presented of something miserable, deprived, and feeble. And he would have despised him in exactly the same way whether his vice lay in sexual debauchery, or in uncontrolled and excessive cigarette-smoking, or in drinking.

And as is the case with all people who are exclusively concerned with heightening their mental faculties, the mere presence of voluptuous and unbridled urges did not count for much with him. It was a pet notion of his that the capacity for enjoyment, and creative talent, and in fact the whole more highly developed side of the inner life, was a piece of jewellery on which one could easily injure oneself. He regarded it as inevitable that a person with a rich and varied inner life experienced moments of which other people must know nothing, and memories that he kept in secret drawers. And all he himself expected of such a person was the ability to make exquisite use of them afterwards.

And so, when somebody whom he once told the story of his youth asked him whether the memory of that episode did not sometimes make him feel uncomfortable, he answered, with a smile: “Of course I don't deny that it was a degrading affair. And why not? The degradation passed off. And yet it left something behind-that small admixture of a toxic substance which is needed to rid the soul of its over-confident, complacent healthiness, and to give it instead a sort of health that is more acute, and subtler, and wiser.

“And anyway, would you try to count the hours of degradation that leave their brand-marks on the soul after every great passion? You need only think of the hours of deliberate humiliation in love-those rapt hours when lovers bend down as though leaning over a deep well, or one lays his ear on the other's heart, listening for the sound of impatient claws as the restless great cats scratch on their prison walls. And only in order to feel their own trembling! Only in order to feel terrified at their loneliness up there above those dark, corroding depths! Only-in their dread of being alone with those sinister forces-to take refuge wholly in each other!

“Just look young married couples straight in the eyes. What those eyes say is: So that's what you think, is it?-oh, but you've no notion how deep we can sink! What those eyes express is lighthearted mockery of anyone who knows nothing of so much that they know, and the affectionate pride of those who have gone together through all the circles of hell.

“And just as such lovers go that way together, so I at that time went through all those things, but on my own.”

* * *

Nevertheless, even if that was Törless's view of it later on, at this time, when he was still exposed to the storm of solitary, yearning feelings, he was far from always being confident that everything would turn out all right in the end. The enigmas that had been tormenting him only a short time ago were still having a vague after-effect, which went on vibrating in the background of his experiences, like a deep note resounding from afar. These were the very things he did not want to think of now.

But at times he remembered it all. And then he would be overwhelmed with utter despair, and was at the mercy of a quite different, weary, hopeless sense of shame.

Yet he could not account for this either.

The reason for it lay in the particular conditions of life at this school. Here youthful, upsurging energies were held captive behind grey walls and, having no other outlet, they filled the imagination with random wanton fancies that caused more than one boy to lose his head.

A certain degree of debauchery was even considered manly, dashing, a bold gesture of taking for oneself the pleasures one was still forbidden. And it seemed all the manlier when compared with the wretchedly respectable appearance of most of the masters. For then the admonishing word 'morality' became ludicrously associated with narrow shoulders, a little paunch, thin legs, and eyes roaming as harmlessly behind their spectacles as the silly sheep at pasture, as though life were nothing but a flowery meadow of solemn edification.

And, finally, at school one still had no knowledge of life and no notion of all those degrees of beastliness and corruption, down to the level of the diseased and the grotesque, which are what primarily fills the adult with revulsion when he hears of such things.

All these inhibiting factors, which are far more effective than we can really appreciate, were lacking in him. It was his very naivety that had plunged him into vice.

For the moral force of resistance, that sensitive faculty of the spirit which he was later to rate so high, was not yet developed in him either. However, there were already signs of its growth. True, Törless went astray, seeing as yet only the shadows cast ahead into his consciousness by something still unrecognised, and mistaking them for reality: but he had a task to
fulfill
where he himself was concerned, a spiritual task-even if he was still not equipped to undertake it.

All he knew was that he had been following something as yet undefined along a road that led deep into his inner being; and in doing so he had grown tired. He had got into the way of hoping for extraordinary, mysterious discoveries, and that habit had brought him into the narrow, winding passages of sensuality. It was all the result not of perversity, but of a psychological situation in which he had lost his sense of direction.

And this disloyalty to something in himself that was serious and worth striving for was the very thing that filled him with a vague sense of guilt. An indefinable hidden disgust never quite left him, and an indistinct dread pursued him like one who in the dark no longer knows whether he is still walking along his chosen road or has lost it, not knowing where.

Then he would endeavour not to think of anything at all. He drifted through life, dumb and bemused and oblivious of all his earlier questionings. The subtle enjoyment that lay in his acts of degradation became ever rarer.

It had not yet left him entirely; but still, at the end of this period Törless did not even try to oppose when further decisions were taken regarding Basini's fate.

This happened some days later, when the three of them were together in the cubby-hole. Beineberg was very grave.

Reiting spoke first: “Beineberg and I think things can't go on as they have been going in the matter of Basini. He's got used to being at our beck and call. It doesn't make him miserable any more. He's become as impudently familiar as a servant. So it's time to go a step further with him. Do you agree?”

“Well, I don't even know yet what you mean to do with him.”

“Yes, it isn't so easy to work that out. We must humiliate him still more and make him knuckle under completely. I should like to see how far it can go. The question is only how to do it. Of course I have one or two rather nice ideas about it. For instance, we could give him a flogging and make him sing psalms of thanksgiving at the same time . . . it would be a song well worth hearing, I think-every note covered with gooseflesh, so to speak. We could make him bring us the filthiest things in his mouth, like a dog. Or we could take him along to Bozena's and make him read his mother's letters aloud while Bozena provided the suitable kind of jokes to go with it. But there's plenty of time to think about all that. We can turn it over in our minds, polish it up, and keep on adding new refinements. Without the appropriate details it's still a bit of a bore, for the present. Perhaps we'll hand him right over to the class to deal with. That would be the most sensible thing to do. If each one of so many contributes even a little, it'll be enough to tear him to pieces. And anyway, I have a liking for these mass movements. Nobody means to contribute anything spectacular, and yet the waves keep rising higher and higher, until they break over everyone's head.

You chaps just wait and see, nobody will lift a finger, but all the same there'll be a terrific upheaval. Instigating a thing like that gives me really quite particular pleasure.”

“But what do you mean to do first of all?”

“As I said, I should like to save
that
up for later. For the time being I should be content with softening him up again in every respect, either by threats or by beating him.”

“What for?” Törless asked before he could stop himself.

They looked each other straight in the eye.

“Oh, don't go and play the innocent!” Reiting said. “You know perfectly well what I'm talking about.”

Törless said nothing. How much had Reiting found out? Or was he only taking a shot in the dark?

“Don't tell me you've forgotten what Beineberg told you that time-about what Basini will lend himself to.”

Törless drew a breath of relief.

“Well, there's nothing to look so amazed about. You gaped just the same that time, too, but it's not as if it were anything so very frightful. Incidentally, Beineberg does the same with Basini-he's told me so himself.” And Reiting looked across at Beineberg with an ironical grimace. That was very much his way: he had no scruple about giving somebody else away in public.

Beineberg did not respond at all. He remained sitting in his thoughtful attitude, scarcely glancing up.

“Well, aren't you going to come out with your idea?” Reiting said to Beineberg, and then, turning to Törless, he went on: “The fact is he has a crazy notion he wants to try out on Basini, and he's set on doing it before we do anything else. I must say it's quite an amusing one, too.”

Beineberg remained grave. He now looked hard at Törless and said: “You remember what we talked about that time behind the coats?”

“Yes.”

“I never got talkin
g about it again, because after
all there's no point in just talking. But I've often thought about it-I assure you, often. And what Reiting has just been telling you is true too. I've done the same with Basini as he has. In fact, perhaps a bit more. And that was because, as I told you that time, I believe sex may perhaps be the right gateway. It was a sort of experiment. I didn't see any other way to get to what I was looking for. But there's no sense in this random sort of going on. I've been thinking about it-for nights on end-trying to work out how one could put something systematic in the place of it.

“Now I think I've got it, and we shall make the experiment. Now you will see too how wrong you were that time. All our knowledge of the universe is doubtful. Everything really works differently. At that time we discovered this, so to speak, from the reverse side, in looking for points where the perfectly natural explanation falls over its own feet. But now I trust I am able to demonstrate the positive side-the other side!”

Reiting set out the tea-cups. As he did so, he nudged Törless cheerfully. “Now pay attention. It's a pretty smart thing he's thought up!”

But Beineberg made a quick movement and extinguished the lamp. In the darkness there was only the flame of the spirit-stove, casting flickering bluish gleams on their faces.

“I put the lamp out, Törless, because it is better to talk about such things in the dark. And you, Reiting, can go to sleep for all I care, if you're too stupid to understand profounder things.”

Reiting laughed as if he were amused.

“Well,” Beineberg began, “you remember our conversation. At that time you yourself had discovered that little peculiarity in mathematics, that example of the fact that our thinking has no even, solid, safe basis, but goes along, as it were, over holes in the ground-shutting its eyes, ceasing to exist for a moment, and yet arriving safely at the other side. Really we ought to have despaired long ago, for in all fields our knowledge is streaked with such crevasses-nothing but fragments drifting in a fathomless ocean.

“But we do not despair. We go on feeling as safe as if we were on firm ground. If we didn't have this solid feeling of certainty, we would kill ourselves in desperation about the wretchedness of our intellect. This feeling is with us continually, holding us together, and at every moment protectively taking our intellect into its arms like a small child. As soon as we have become aware of this, we cannot go on denying the existence of the soul. As soon as we analyse our mental life and recognise the inadequacy of the intellect, we feel all this very clearly. We feel it-do you understand? For if it were not for this feeling, we should collapse like empty sacks.

“Only we have forgotten to pay attention to this feeling. But it is one of the oldest feelings there is. Even thousands of years ago peoples living thousands of miles apart from each other knew of it. Once one has begun to take an interest in these things, one can no longer deny them. But I don't want to talk you into believing what I believe. I'm only going to tell you the bare essentials, so that you won't be quite unprepared. The facts themselves will provide the proof.

“Now, assuming that the soul exists, it follows as a matter of course-doesn't it?-that we cannot have any deeper longing than to restore the lost contact with it, become familiar with it again, learn to make better use of its powers again, and gain for ourselves a share in the supernatural forces that are dormant in its depths.