Young Torless (24 page)

And then he remembered a letter he had received from home quite a long time before. It was the answer to one he had written to his parents, telling them, as well as he could, about his peculiar states of mind, though this was before he had been drawn into the sexual adventure. Once again it was a thoroughly prosaic answer, full of well-meant, worthy, boring moral reflections, and it contained the advice to get Basini to give himself up and thus put an end to the undignified and dangerous state of subservience he was in.

Later on Törless had read this letter again when Basini was lying naked beside him on the soft blankets in the lair. And it had given him special pleasure to savour these stolid, plain, sober words while reflecting that his parents, living as they did in that excessive brightness of everyday reality, were doubtless blind to the darkness in which his soul was now crouching, like some lithe and cat-like beast of prey.

But today it was with quite different feelings that he remembered that passage.

He felt himself being enfolded by a pleasant sense of relief, as though under the touch of a firm, kindly hand.
I
n this moment the decision was made. A thought had flashed upon him, and he seized hold of it without a qualm, as though under the guidance of his parents.

He lay awake until the three came back. Then he waited until he could tell, by the regularity of their breathing, that they were asleep. Now he hastily tore a page out of his note-book and, by the dim flicker of the night-light, he wrote in large, wavering letters:

“They're going to hand you over to the class tomorrow. You're in for something terrible. The only way out is to go straight to the Head and confess. He would get to hear about it all anyway, only you'd be beaten half to death first.

“Put it all on R. and B. Say nothing about me. You can see I'm trying to save you.”

He pushed this piece of paper into the sleeper's hand. Then, exhausted with excitement, he fell asleep too.

Beineberg and Reiting seemed willing to grant Törless respite for at least the whole of the next day.

But where Basini was concerned, things really got moving. Törless saw Beineberg and Reiting going up to this boy and that, and watched groups forming round them, and eager whisperings going on.

And still he did not know whether Basini had found his note or not, for he had no chance to speak to him, feeling as he did that he was himself under observation.

As a matter of fact, at first he had been afraid they were talking about him too. But by now, when he was actually confronted with the danger, he was so paralysed by its repulsiveness that he could not have brought himself to lift a finger to ward it off.

It was only later that he joined one of the groups, hesitantly and quite expecting that they would all instantly turn against him.

But nobody took any notice of him. For the present it was only Basini against whom the hunt was up.

The excitement grew. Törless could see it growing. Reiting and Beineberg had doubtless added various lies of their own to the whole story.

At first there were grins on all faces, then some grew serious, and here and there hostile glances were cast in Basini's direction. Finally the class-room grew dense with a silence that was charged with tension, with dark, hot, sinister urges.

It happened to be a free afternoon.

They all gathered at the back of the room, by the lockers. Then Basini was summoned.

Beineberg and Reiting took up positions one on each side of him, like warders.

The doors having been locked and sentries posted, the customary procedure of stripping was carried out, to the general amusement.

Reiting had in his hand a packet of letters from Basini's mother to her son, and he began to read aloud.

“My dear little lad…”

There was a general guffaw.

“As you know, with the meagre financial resources that I, as a widow, have at my disposal...”

Ribald laughter and lewd jokes burst from the crowd. Reiting was about to continue his reading, when suddenly somebody gave Basini a push. Another boy, against whom he stumbled, pushed him away again, half jokingly and half in indignation. A third pushed him on a little further. And suddenly Basini, naked as he was, his mouth agape with terror, was being bounced around the room like a ball, to the accompaniment of laughter, cat-calls, and blows-now to this side of the room, now to that-getting bruised and cut on the sharp corners of desks, falling on to his knees, which were beginning to bleed; and finally, streaked with blood and dust, with wildly staring, stupefied, glassy eyes, he collapsed on the floor and lay still, whereupon silence fell and everyone pressed forward to have a good look at him.

Törless shuddered. Now he had seen the terrible reality behind the threat Beineberg and Reiting had made.

And even now he still did not know what Basini was going to do.

Tomorrow night, it was resolved, Basini was to be tied to a bed and whipped with foils.

* * *

But to everyone's disconcerted surprise the headmaster came into the classroom early in the morning. He was accompanied by the form-master and two other members of the staff. Basini was removed from the class and taken to a separate room.

Meanwhile the headmaster delivered an angry speech on the subject of the brutal bullying that had come to light and announced that there was going to be a very strict investigation into the matter.

Basini had given himself up.

Someone must have warned him of what was still in store for him.

Nobody had any suspicions of Törless. He sat there quietly, sunk in his own thoughts, as though the whole thing did not concern him in the least.

Not even Reiting and Beineberg entertained the idea that he might be the traitor. They themselves had not taken their threats against him seriously; they had uttered them merely in order to intimidate him, in order to make him feel their superiority, and to some extent merely in the heat of the moment. Now, when their rage had passed off, they scarcely gave it another thought. What would in any case have prevented their treating Törless in a similar way was the fact of their being acquainted with his parents and having enjoyed their hospitality. This was so much a matter of course that it also prevented them from fearing any hostile act on his part.

Törless felt no remorse for what he had done. The furtive, cowardly quality about it did not count in comparison with the sense of complete liberation he now had. After all the agitation he had been through he now felt that everything within him was wonder-fully clear and spacious.

He did not join in the excited conversations all round him about what was going to happen. He went quietly through the day's routine, keeping to himself.

When evening came and the lamps were lit, he sat down in his place, in front of him the copy-book in which he had made those hasty notes some time ago.

But he did not read them for long. He smoothed the pages with his hand, and it seemed to him that there was a faint fragrance rising from them, like the scent of lavender that clings to old letters.

He was overcome by that tenderness mingled with melancholy which we always feel about a part of our life that irrevocably belongs to the past, when a delicate, pale shadow rises up out of that realm as though with withered flowers in its hands, and in its features we discover a forgotten likeness to ourselves.

And this mournful, faint shadow, this wan fragrance, seemed to be dissolving in a broad, full, warm stream-in life itself, which now lay open before him.

One phase of development was at an end; the soul had formed another annual ring, as a young tree does. And this feeling, as yet wordless, but overwhelming, in itself made up for all that had happened.

Now Törless began leafing through his old notes. The sentences in which he had clumsily recorded what was going on-that manifold amazement and bewilderment in the encounter with life-grew vivid again, and seemed to stir, and began to form a picture. It all lay before him like a brightly lit path on which he could see the imprints of his own hesitant footsteps. But something still seemed to be missing. It was not a new idea that he needed. Yet somehow the whole thing would not quite come to life for him.

He still felt unsure of himself. And now there came the fear of having to stand in front of his teachers the next day and justify himself. And how was he to do it? How could he explain to them? How could he make them understand that dark, mysterious way which he had gone? Supposing they asked him why he had maltreated Basini, surely he could not answer: 'Because I was interested in something going on in my own mind, something I don't know much about even now, in spite of everything-something that makes all that I think about the whole thing seem quite unimportant.'

It was only a small matter, a single step between him and the termination of this phase in his mental development, but it appalled him, as though it were a monstrous abyss that lay ahead.

And even before nightfall Törless was in a state of feverish, panic-stricken excitement.

The next day, when the boys were called up one by one for questioning, Törless was not to be found.

He had been last seen in the evening, sitting over a copy-book, apparently reading.

He was searched for throughout the building. Beineberg slipped away up to the lair to make sure that he was not there.

Finally it became evident that he had run away from school, and the police of the whole district were called upon to look out for him and asked to handle him, if he was found, with all possible discretion.

Meanwhile the enquiry began.

Reiting and Beineberg, who believed that Törless had run away out of fear of their threat of implicating him, felt themselves under an obligation to avert all suspicion from him, and they said everything they could in his favour.

They shifted all the blame on to Basini, and one by one the whole class bore witness to the fact that Basini was a thieving, low character who had responded to the most well-meaning attempts at reforming him only by repeating his offences again and again. Reiting solemnly declared that they realised they had acted wrongly, but that it had only been done because they were sorry for Basini and felt that one of their number should not be delivered up to punishment before every means of benevolent guidance had been tried. And once again the whole form asseverated that the ill-treatment of Basini had been nothing but a spontaneous outbreak, since Basini had rewarded the noble sentiments of those who felt mercifully towards him with the most outrageous and vile derision.

In short, it was a well-rehearsed farce, brilliantly stage-managed by Reiting, and the highest possible moral tone was assumed in putting forward excuses that would find favour in the masters' eyes.

Basini preserved a stupefied silence, no matter what was said. He was still paralysed with terror from his experiences of two days earlier, and the solitary confinement in which he was kept, together with the quiet and matter-of-fact course of the investigation, was in itself a tremendous relief to him. All he wished for was that it might be over soon. Besides, Reiting and Beineberg had not failed to threaten him with the most atrocious revenge if he should dare to say anything against them.

Then Törless was brought in. He had been picked up, dead tired and very hungry, in the next town.

His flight now seemed to be the only mysterious element in the whole affair. But the situation was in his favour. Beineberg and Reiting had done their work well, talking about the nervy state he had been in recently and about his moral sensitiveness, which made him feel it was positively a crime that he, who had known about the whole matter all along, had not immediately gone and reported it, and by this omission had become partly responsible for the catastrophe.

As a result there was now a certain measure of sentimental benevolence in the masters' attitude to Törless, and his class-mates did not fail to prepare him for this.

Nevertheless, he was dreadfully agitated, and the fear of not being able to make himself intelligible almost exhatisted him.

For reasons of discretion, since there was still a certain anxiety about possible revelations, the enquiry was being conducted in the headmaster's lodgings. Apart from the headmaster himself, those present were the form-master, the chaplain, and the mathematics master, to whom, as the youngest member of the staff, it fell to keep the minutes.

When Törless was asked why he had run away, he remained silent.

There was a general sympathetic wagging of heads.

“Well, yes,” the headmaster said, “I think we know all that is necessary about that. But now tell us what induced you to conceal Basini's offence.”

It would have been easy for Törless to produce some lies now. But his nervousness had passed off and he was in fact tempted to talk about himself and to try out his ideas on them.

“I don't know exactly, sir. When I heard about it for the first time, it struck me as something quite monstrous-simply unimaginable.”

The chaplain looked complacent and gave Törless an encouraging nod.

“I-I couldn't help thinking about Basini's soul. . .

The chaplain beamed. The mathematics master polished his spectacles, replaced them, and narrowed his eyes.