Young Torless (8 page)

“I'm practising,” was the only excuse he gave, and he gave it with an affable laugh. It was also by way of practising that almost daily he would box in some out-of-the-way place, against a wall, 3 tree, or a table, to strengthen his arms and harden his hands with callouses.

Törless knew about all this, but he could understand it only up to a certain point. He had several times accompanied both Reiting and Beineberg on their singular paths. The fantastic element in it all did in fact appeal to him. And what he also liked was afterwards coming back into the daylight, walking among the other boys, and being back in the midst of their jollity, while he could still feel the excitements of solitude and the hallucinations of darkness trembling his eyes and ears. But when Beineberg or Reiting, for the sake of having someone to talk to about themselves, on such occasions expounded what impelled them to all this, his understanding failed. He even considered Reiting somewhat overstrung. For Reiting was particularly fond of talking about how his father, who had one day disappeared, had been a strangely unsettled person. His name was, as a matter of fact, supposed to be only an incognito, concealing that of a very exalted family. He expected that his mother would make him acquainted with far-reaching claims that be would in due course put forward; he had day-dreams of
coups d'etat
and high politics, and hence intended to be an officer.

Törless simply could not take such ambitions seriously. The centuries of revolutions seemed to him past and gone once and for all. Nevertheless Reiting was quite capable of putting his ideas into practice, though for the present only on a small scale. He was a tyrant, inexorable in his treatment of anyone who opposed him. His supporters changed from day to day, but he always managed to have the majority on his side. This was his great gift. A couple of years earlier he had waged a great war against Beineberg, which ended in the defeat of the latter. Finally Beineberg had been pretty well isolated, and this although in his judgment of people, his coolness and his capacity for arousing antipathy against those who incurred his disfavour, he was scarcely less formidable than his opponent. But he lacked Reiting's charm and winning ways. His composure and his unctuous philosophic pose filled almost everyone with mistrust. One could not help suspecting something excessive and unsavoury at the bottom of his personality. Nevertheless he had caused Reiting great difficulties, and Reiting's victory had been little more than a matter of luck. Since that time they found it profitable to combine forces.

Törless, by contrast, remained indifferent to these things. Hence also he had no skill in them. Nevertheless he too was enclosed in this world and every day could see for himself what it meant to play the leading part in a State-for in such a school each class constituted a small State in itself. Thus he had a certain diffident respect for his two friends. The urge he sometimes felt to emulate them, however, always remained a matter of dilettante experiment. Hence, and also because he was the younger, his relationship to them was that of a disciple or assistant. He enjoyed their protection, and they for their part would gladly listen to his advice. For Törless's mind was the most subtle. Once he was set on a trail, he was extremely ingenious in thinking of the most abstruse combinations. Nor was anyone else so exact as he in foreseeing the various possible reactions to be expected of a person in a given situation. Only when it was a matter of reaching a decision, of accepting one of these psychological possibilities as the definite probability and taking the risk of acting on it, did he fail, losing both interest and energy. Still, he enjoyed his role of secret chief of staff, and this all the more since it was practically the only thing that set him going, stirring him out of his state of deep inner boredom.

Sometimes, however, he did realise how much he was losing as a result of this psychological dependence. He was aware that everything he did was merely a game, merely something to help him over this time at school, this larval period of his existence. It was without relation to his real personality, which would emerge only later, at some time still a long way off in the future.

For when on certain occasions he saw how very seriously his two friends took these things, he felt quite unable to understand them.

He would have liked to make fun of them, but still he could not help being afraid that there might be more truth behind their fantastic notions than he was capable of admitting to himself. He felt 25 though torn between two worlds: one was the solid everyday world of respectable citizens, in which all that went on was well regulated and rational, and which he knew from home, and the other was a world of adventure, full of darkness, mystery, blood, and undreamt-of surprises. It seemed then as though one excluded the other. A mocking smile, which he would have liked to keep always on his lips, and a shudder that ran down his spine cut across each other. What came about then was an incandescent flickering of his thoughts....

Then he would yearn to feel something firm in himself at long last, to feel definite needs that would distinguish between good and bad, between what he could make use of and what was useless, and to know he himself was making the choice, even though wrongly-for even that would be better than being so excessively receptive that he simply soaked up everything. .

When he entered the little room this inner dichotomy had asserted itself in him again, as it always did here.

Meanwhile Reiting had begun telling what he had discovered. Basini had owed him money and had kept on promising to pay and putting it off, each time giving his word of honour that he was really going to pay the next time.

“Well, I didn't particularly mind that,” Reiting commented. “The longer it went on, the more he was in my power. I mean, after all, breaking one's word three or four times is no joke, is it? But in the end I needed my money myself. I pointed this out to him, and lie gave me his solemn oath. And of course didn't stick to it that time either. So then I told him I'd report him. He asked for two days' grace, as he was expecting supplies from his guardian. In the mean-time, however, I did some investigating into his circumstances. I wanted to find out if he was in anyone else's power as well. After all, one must know what one has to reckon with.

“I wasn't particularly pleased with what I discovered. He was in debt to Dschjusch and to several of the others as well. He'd paid back some of it, and of course out of the money he still owed me. It was the others he felt it most u
rgent to pay. That annoyed me. I
wasn't going to have him thinking l was the easy-going one of the lot. I could scarcely have put up with that. But I thought to myself: 'Let's just wait and see. Sooner or later there'll be an opportunity to knock
that
sort of idea out of his head.' Once he mentioned the actual amount he was expecting, sort of casually, you know, to put my mind at rest by showing me it was more than what he owed me. So I checked up with the others and found out that the total amount he owed was far more than what he said he was expecting. 'Aha,' I thought to myself, 'so now I suppose he'll try it on yet once again.'

“And, sure enough, he came along to me, all confidentially, and asked me to give him a little more time, as the others were pressing him so hard. But this time I was dead cold with him. 'Beg off from the others,' I said to him, 'I'm not in the habit of taking a back seat.' So he said: 'I know you better, I trust you more.' 'You'll bring me the money tomorrow,' I said to him, 'or you'll have to comply with my terms. That's my last word.' 'What terms?' he wanted to know. Oh, you should have heard him! As if he were prepared to sell his soul. 'What terms? Oho! You'll have to act as my vassal in all my enterprises.' 'Oh, if that's all, I'll do that all right, I'm
glad
to be on your side.' 'Oh no, not just when
you
happen to like it. You'll have to do everything I tell you to do-in blind obedience!' So now he squinted at me in a way that was half grinning and half embarrassed. He didn't know how far he ought to go, what he was letting himself in for, or how serious I was. Probably he would have promised me anything, but of course he couldn't help being afraid I was only putting him to the test. So in the end he got very red and said, 'I'll bring you the money.' I was getting my fun out of him, he'd turned out to be a fellow like that and I'd never taken any notice of him before, among the fifty others. I mean, he never sort of counted at all, did he? And now suddenly he'd come so close to me that I could see right into him, down to the last detail. I knew for a certainty the fellow was ready to sell himself-and without making much fuss about it, only so long as he could keep people from finding out. It was a real surprise, and there's no nicer sight than that: when a fellow is suddenly laid bare before you, and suddenly his way of living, which you've never troubled to notice before, is exposed to your gaze like the worm-holes you see when a piece of timber splits open.

“Right enough, the next day he brought me the money. And that wasn't all, either. He actually invited me to have a drink with him down town. He ordered wine, cake, and cigarettes, and pressed it all on me-out of 'gratitude', because I'd been so patient. The only thing about it I didn't like was how awfully innocent and friendly he acted. Just as if there'd never been an offensive word said between us. I said as much. But that only made him more cordial than ever. It was as if he wanted to wriggle out of my grip and get on equal terms with me again. He behaved as if it were all over and done with, and every other word he uttered was to assure me of his friendship. Only there was something in his eyes that was a sort of clutching at me as though he were afraid of losing this feeling of intimacy he had artificially worked up. In the end I was revolted by him. I thought to myself: 'Does he really think I'm going to put up with this?' and I began to think how I could take him down a peg or two. What I wanted was something that would really get under his skin. So then it struck me Beineberg had told me that morning that some of his money had been stolen. It lust occurred to me by the way. But it kept coming back into my mind. And it made me feel quite tight about the throat. 'It
would
turn out wonderfully handy,' I thought to myself, and in a casual way I asked him how much money he had left. When he told me, I added it up and got the right answer. I laughed and asked him: 'Who on earth was so stupid as to lend you money again after all this?' 'Hofmeier,' he said.

“I simply shook with joy. The fact is, Hofmeier had come to me two hours before that, asking me to lend
him
some money. So what had shot into my head a few minutes ago suddenly turned out to be true. Just the way you think to yourself, merely as a joke: 'Now that house over there ought to go on fire,' and the next moment there are flames shooting out of it, yards high. .

“I quickly ran over all the possibilities in my mind once again. Admittedly there wasn't any way of making dead certain, but my instinct was good enough for me. So I leaned over towards him and said in the most amiable way you can imagine, just as if I were gently driving a little thin, pointed stick into his brain: 'Look here, my dear Basini, why do you insist on trying to deceive me?' At that his eyes seemed to swim in his head with fear. And I went on: 'I dare say there are plenty of people you can take in, but I don't happen to be the right person. You know, don't you, that Beineberg . . .' He didn't turn red or white, it was as if he were waiting for some misunderstanding to be cleared up. 'Well, to cut a long story short,' I said, 'the money from which you've paid me back what you owed me is the money you took out of Beineberg's locker last night.”

“I leaned back to study the effect it had on him. He went as red as a tomato. He began spluttering and slavering, as though choked by his own words. Finally he managed to get it out. There were torrents of reproaches and accusations against me. He wanted to know how I could dare to make such an assertion and what faintest justification there was for such an abominable conjecture. He said I was only trying to pick a quarrel with him because he was the weaker and that I was only doing it out of annoyance because now that he had paid his debts he was out of my power, and that he would appeal to the class-the ushers-the Head-and that God would bear witness to his innocence, and so on and on ad infinitum. I really began to be quite worried that I had done him wrong and hurt his feelings for nothing, he looked so sweet with his face all red. He looked just like a tormented, defenceless little animal, you know. Still, I couldn't bring myself to let it go at that quite so easily. So I kept up a jeering smile-almost only out of embarrassment, actually-as I went on listening to his talk. Now and then I wagged my head and said calmly: 'Yes, but I
know
you did.'

“After a while then he quieted down. I kept on smiling. I felt as though simply by smiling at him like that I could make a thief of him, even if he weren't one already. 'And as for putting it right again,' I thought to myself, 'there's always plenty of time for that later.'

“And then after a while, when he had kept on glancing at me furtively, he suddenly got quite white. A queer change came over his face. The innocent and delightful look that had beautified him vanished out of his face, so to speak together with the colour. It turned quite green, cheesy, and puffy. I've only seen anything like it once before-once in the street when I came along just as they were arresting a murderer.
He'd
been going around among people too, without anyone's noticing anything queer about him. But when the policeman put his hand on his shoulder, he was suddenly changed into a different person. His face altered and his eyes popped with