Young Torless (7 page)

But that was the very thing Törless could not understand. The patient plans that for the adult imperceptibly link the days into months and years were still beyond his ken. And so too was that blunting of perception which makes it cease to be anything of a problem when yet another day draws to its close. His life was focused on each single day. For him each night meant a void, a grave, extinction. The capacity to lay oneself down to die at the end of every day, without thinking anything of it, was something he had not yet acquired.

That was why he had always supposed there was something behind it that they were keeping from him. The nights seemed to him like dark gateways to mysterious joys that were kept a secret from him, so that his life remained empty and unhappy.

He recalled the peculiar ring of his mother's laughter and how, as he had observed on one of those evenings, she had clung more tightly, as though jokingly, to her husband's arm. There seemed to be no doubt. There must be a gate leading hither even out of the world of those calm and irreproachable beings. And now, since he knew, he could think of it only with that special smile of his, expressing the malicious mistrust against which he struggled in vain ...

Meanwhile Bozena had gone on talking. Törless began to listen with half an ear. She was talking about somebody who also came almost every Sunday. “Let me see now, what's his name? He's in your class.”

“Reiting?”

“What does he look like?”

“He's about as tall as him over there,” Bozena said with a jerk of her head in Törless's direction, “only his head is a bit too big.”

“Oh, Basini?”

“Yes, that's right, that's what he said his name was. He's really comical. And quite the fine gentleman, drinks nothing but wine.

But he's stupid. It costs him a pretty penny, and he never does anything but tell me stories. He boasts about the love-affairs he says he has at home. What does he get out of it? I can see quite plainly it's the first time in his life he's been with a woman. You're only a young lad too, but you've got a nerve. But he's clumsy and frightened of it, and that's why he spins his long-winded stories about how to treat women if you're a sensualist-yes, that's what he calls himself. He says women don't deserve anything else. How do the like of you know that so soon, I wonder?”

By way of answer Beineberg grinned at her mockingly.

“Oh all right, laugh if you like!” Bozena flung at him in amusement. “One time I asked him if he wouldn't be ashamed for his mother to know. 'Mother? Mother?' he said. 'What's that? There's no such thing now. I left that at home, before I came to see you. - -

Yes, you may well prick up your big ears, that's what you boys are like! Good little sons you are, you fine young gentlemen! It almost makes me sorry for your mothers!”

At these words Törless recalled his former notion of himself, realizing how he was leaving everything behind him and betraying the image of his parents. And now he had to admit to himself that ~n this he was not even doing something unique and terrible; it was really quite commonplace. He was ashamed. But the other thought were there again too. They do it too! They betray you! You have secret accomplices! Perhaps it is somehow different with them, but this one thing must be the same: a secret, frightful joy. Something ~n which one can drown oneself and all one's fear of the monotony of the days. - - Perhaps indeed they know more? - . - something quite extraordinary? For in the daytime they are so calm . . - Arid that laughter of his mother's? . . - as though she were going, with quiet steps, to shut all the doors -

In this conflict there came a moment when Törless abandoned himself, letting the tempest rage over his suffocating heart.

And at that very moment Bozena got up and came over to him.

“Why is our little boy not talking? Miserable, eh?”

Beineberg whispered something and smiled spitefully.

“Homesick, eh? Mamma's gone away, has she? And the moment she's gone the naughty boy comes running to the like of me'.”

Bozena dug her fingers caressingly into his hair.

“Come on, don't be silly. Give me a kiss, that's right. You fine gentry are only made of flesh and blood, after all, the same as everyone else,” and she bent his head back.

Törless wanted to say something, to pull himself together and utter some crude joke, for he felt that everything now depended on his being able to speak some indifferent word that would not betray him. But he could not utter a sound. With a stony smile he gazed into the depraved face, the blank eyes looking down into his own, and then the outer world began to shrink, to withdraw further and further.. . . For a moment there loomed before him the image of the peasant who had picked up the stone, and it seemed to jeer at him. Then he was quite alone.

“I say,” Reiting whispered, “I've got him.” Who?”

“The chap who's been stealing from the lockers!”

Törless had just come in, together with Beineberg. It was only a short time till supper, and the usher on duty had already left. Groups of chattering boys had formed between the green baize tables, and the whole large room hummed and whirred with warm life. It was the usual classroom with whitewashed walls, a big black crucifix, and portraits of the Emperor and Empress on each side of the blackboard. Beside the large iron stove, which was not yet lighted, the boys sat-some of them on the platform, some of them on overturned chairs-among them those who had been at the railway station that afternoon to see Törless's parents off. Apart
from
Reiting they were the tall Hofmeier and Dschjusch, a little Polish count who was known by this nickname.

Törless felt a certain curiosity.

The lockers, which were at the back of the room, were long cupboards subdivided into compartments that could be locked, and in them the boys kept their letters, books, money, and all their little pet possessions.

For some time now various boys had been complaining that they had missed small sums of money, but none of them had anything definite to go on.

Beineberg was the first to be able to say with certainty that the previous week he had been robbed of a considerable sum of money. But only Reiting and Törless knew of it.

They suspected the servants.

“Go on, tell us!” Törless urged.

But Reiting made a swift sign to him. “Sssh! Later. Nobody knows anything about it yet.”

“Servant?” Törless whispered.

“Well, give us some idea, anyway. Who?”

Reiting turned away from the others and said in a low voice: “B.” No one else had heard anything of this whispered conversation. Törless was thunderstruck at what he had learnt. B.? That could only be Basini. And surely that wasn't possible! His mother was a wealthy woman, and his guardian an 'Excellency'. Törless could not bring himself to believe it, and yet time and again the story Bozena had told came to his mind.

He could scarcely wait for the moment when the others went in to supper. Beineberg and Reiting remained behind, on the pretext of having had so much to eat that afternoon.

Reiting suggested that it would be better to go 'upstairs' and talk about it there.

They went out into the corridor, which stretched endlessly in each direction outside the classroom. The flickering gaslight lit it only in patches, and their footsteps echoed from recess to recess, however lightly they walked.

About fifty yards from the door there was a staircase leading up to the second floor, where the natural science 'specimen room was, and other collections that were used in teaching. There were also a large number of empty rooms.

From there on the stairs became narrow and went up, in short flights at right-angles to each other, to the attics. And-as old buildings are often whimsical in plan, with an abundance of nooks and crannies and unmotivated steps-this staircase actually went a considerable way above the level of the attics, so that on the other side of the heavy, iron, locked door, which blocked the way further, it was necessary to go down again, by a flight of wooden steps, in order to reach the floor of the attic.

What this meant was that on this side of the attic door was waste space some yards high, reaching up into the rafters. In this place, which hardly anybody ever entered, old stage-scenery had been stored, dating from school theatricals in the remote past.

Even at brightest noon the daylight on this staircase was reduced

to a twilight, which was choked with dust, for this way into the attic, lying as it did in a remote wing of the enormous building, was almost never used.

From the top landing Beineberg swung himself over the bannister and, still holding on to the bars, let himself drop between the pieces of scenery. Reiting and Törless followed him. There they got a footing on a crate that had been specially dragged along for that purpose, and from there jumped to the floor.

Even if the eye of someone standing on the stairs had become accustomed to the darkness, that person could not possibly have seen anything there but an irregular and indistinct jumble of variously shaped pieces of stage-scenery all piled up together.

But when Beineberg shifted one of these pieces of scenery slightly to one side, a narrow tunnel opened up before the boys.

They hid the crate that had aided them in their descent, and entered the tunnel.

Here it became completely dark, and one had to know one's way very well in order to make progress. Now and then one of the big pieces of canvas scenery rustled, when they brushed against it; there was a scurrying on the floors as of startled mice; and their nostrils were filled with a musty smell as though from long-unopened trunks.

The three boys, who knew the way well, nevertheless went along very cautiously, step for step, careful to avoid tripping on any of the ropes pulled tight across the floor as traps and alarm-signals.

It was some time before they reached a little door on their right, only a short distance from the wall separating this place from the attic.

When Beineberg opened this door they found themselves in a narrow room under the top landing. It looked fantastic enough in the light of a small, flickering oil-lamp, which Beineberg had lit.

The ceiling was horizontal only where it was directly under the landing, and even here only just high enough for one to be able to stand upright. Towards the back it sloped away, following the line of the stairs, until it ended in an acute angle. The thin partition wall at the opposite side of the room divided the attic from the staircase, and the third wall was formed by the brickwork on which the stairs rested. It was only the fourth wall, in which the door was, that seemed to have been added specially. Doubtless it had been built with the intention of making a small room here to keep tools in, unless perhaps it owed its existence only to a whim on the part of the architect, in whom this dark nook had inspired the medieval notion of walling it up to make a hiding-place.

However that might be, apart from these three boys there was doubtless scarcely anyone in the whole school who knew of its existence, and still less anyone who thought of putting it to any use.

And so they had been free to furnish it entirely according to their own fantastic notions.

The walls were completely draped with some blood-red bunting that Reiting and Beineberg had purloined from one of the store-rooms, and the floor was covered with a double layer of thick woolly horse-blanket, of the kind that was used in the dormitories as an extra blanket in winter. In the front part of the room stood some low boxes, covered with material, which served as seats; at the back, in the acute angle formed by the sloping ceiling and the floor, a sort of bed had been made, large enough for three or four people, and this part could be darkened by the drawing of a curtain, separating it from the rest of the room.

On the wall by the door hung a loaded revolver.

Törless did not like this room. True, the constriction and isolation it afforded appealed to him; it was like being deep inside a mountain, and the smell of the dusty old stage-scenery gave rise to all sorts of vague sensations in him. But the concealment, those trip-ropes to give the alert, and this revolver, which was meant to provide the utmost illusion of defiance and secrecy, struck him as ridiculous. It was as though they were trying to pretend they were leading the life of bandits.

Actually the only reason why Törless joined in was that he did not want to lag behind the other two. Beineberg and Reiting themselves took the whole thing very seriously indeed. Törless knew that. He also knew that Beineberg had skeleton keys that would open the doors of all the cellars and attics in the school building, and that he often slipped away from lessons for several hours in order to sit somewhere-high up in the rafters of the roof, or underground in one of the many semiruinous, labyrinthine vaults-by the light of a little lamp, which he always carried about with him, reading adventure stories or thinking his thoughts about supernatural things.

He knew similar things of Reiting, who also had his hidden retreats, where he kept secret diaries; and these diaries were filled with audacious plans for the future and with exact records of the staging, and course of the numerous intrigues that he instituted among the other boys. For Reiting knew no greater pleasure than to set people against each other, subduing one with the aid of each other and revelling in favours and flatteries obtained by extortion, in which he could still sense the resistance of his victim's hate.