The Confusions of Young Master Törless (Alma Classics) Read online

  Whenever his parents came to visit now, as long as he was alone with them he was shy and said little. Every time he found a different excuse to avoid his mother’s affectionate embraces. If the truth were known he would have liked to return them, but felt ashamed, as if his classmates were watching.

  His parents just took this as the awkwardness of adolescence.

  In the afternoon the whole unruly gang appeared. They played cards, ate, drank, told jokes about the masters and smoked the cigarettes that Court Counsellor Törless had brought with him from the Imperial Capital.

  Such high spirits delighted and reassured his parents.

  They were unaware that for Törless there were times when things were very different here; and that recently these had become more frequent. At such moments, school life left him utterly indifferent. The cement that held his everyday cares and concerns together simply crumbled, and without this inner anchorage the different elements of his life fell apart.

  Often he would sit for hours on end, lost in dark, gloomy thoughts, as if hunched over himself.

  As on previous visits, his mother and father had stayed for two days. They had gone out for meals together, smoked, made a short local excursion; but now the express train was about to take his parents back to the capital.

  A faint tremor in the line announced its approach, and to Frau Törless’s ears the sound of the bell ringing on the station roof seemed as if it would never end.

  “Well then, my dear Beineberg, you’ll promise to keep an eye on my boy for me?” said Court Counsellor Törless, turning to young Baron Beineberg, a lanky, bony fellow with protruding ears, whose eyes were nonetheless expressive and intelligent.

  Hearing himself treated as a child, Törless’s face took on a disgruntled expression, while Beineberg gave a flattered and slightly gloating smirk that bore traces of malice.

  “Actually,” continued the Court Counsellor, turning to the others, “I might ask all of you to be so kind as to inform me straight away if anything should happen to my son.”

  Although he was used to being submitted to these displays of excessive concern every time they said goodbye, this last remark provoked an outburst of bored exasperation from Törless: “But Papa, whatever do you think could happen to me?”

  Meanwhile the others clicked their heels, holding their elegant rapiers smartly to their sides, and the Court Counsellor added: “You never know what might happen, and the thought that I would be informed immediately is a source of great reassurance to me; after all, you may not be in a position to write yourself.”

  The train drew into the station. Court Counsellor Törless embraced his son, Frau von Törless drew her veil closer to her face to hide her tears, one after the other his friends expressed their thanks, and then the conductor closed the door of the carriage.

  One last time Herr and Frau Törless looked at the tall, bleak rear façade of the main school building, the endless and imposing wall that surrounded the grounds, and then on either side only brownish-grey fields and the occasional fruit tree.

  In the meantime the boys had left the station and, walking in single file in two ranks on either side of the road to avoid the worst and most persistent dust, made their way into the town, hardly saying a word to each other.

  It was already past five o’clock, and the fields were taking on a chill and solemn appearance, as if heralding the approach of evening.

  Törless suddenly felt very unhappy.

  Perhaps it was because his parents had gone, or perhaps it was the dull, cheerless melancholy that hung over the surrounding countryside, blurring the outline of things only a short distance away with dark, lifeless colours.

  The same terrible indifference that had weighed on the landscape all afternoon was now creeping across the plain, while the mist that followed behind it seemed to cling to the ploughed fields and leaden-coloured beet crops like a trail of mucus.

  Without looking right or left, Törless could still feel it. One foot in front of the other he followed the path left in the dust by the boy ahead of him – and that was what he felt: that this was what he had to do, that a rigid, iron constraint was imprisoning him, forcing his whole life into this forward movement, step by step along this single straight line, along this narrow beaten track through the dust.

  When they stopped at a crossroads where the road was joined by another at a small, circular patch of beaten earth, and a rotten wooden signpost sprung up lopsidedly, the contrast between this straight line and the surroundings was so strong that to him it had the effect of a cry of despair.

  Then they set off again. He thought about his parents, about people he knew, about life. It was the time of day when one dressed for an evening reception or a trip to the theatre. Afterwards one went to a restaurant, listened to an orchestra, called in at the coffee house. One had an interesting encounter. An amorous adventure kept one’s hopes up till daybreak. And life kept on turning like a miraculous fairground wheel, forever bringing something new, unexpected…

  These thoughts made him sigh, and with every step that brought him closer to the restrictions of institutional life something deep down inside him knotted itself tighter and tighter together.

  The bell was already ringing in his ears. There was nothing he feared quite as much as the sound of this bell, which announced the end of the day as if with a sharp, irrevocable blow of a knife.

  No doubt his life would be uneventful, it would probably fade into the twilight of permanent apathy, but the ringing of this bell added its mocking voice to the emptiness, making him quiver with helpless rage at himself, at fate, at yet another day that was gone, dead and buried.

  You’re not permitted to live any more, for the next twelve hours you’re not allowed to live, for the next twelve hours you’re dead… that was what the bell was saying.

  As the group of young men came to the first houses, which were low shacks, Törless’s dark, brooding thoughts left him. As if his interest had suddenly been aroused he shot curious glances into the smoke-filled rooms of the grimy little buildings as they walked past.

  On most of the doorsteps stood women wearing smocks and coarsely woven shirts, with large dirty feet and bare brown arms.

  The younger, more strapping ones hurled vulgar witticisms in some Slavic dialect. They nudged each other and giggled at the “young gentlemen”; now and then one of them let out a shriek as her breasts were stroked rather too brazenly in passing, or responded to a slap on the thigh with a laugh and a curse. Many of them just watched with grave, angry expressions as the boys strode past; and if the peasant husband happened to appear he gave an awkward grin, half uneasy, half good-natured.

  Törless didn’t join in with his companions’ displays of precocious masculinity.

  This was no doubt due in part to the shyness in sexual matters that is characteristic of only children, but mostly to the particular nature of his sensuality, which was more covert, more powerful and of a darker complexion than that of his friends, less inclined to speak its name.

  While the others treated the women with deliberate effrontery, probably more in an attempt to show form than out of actual desire, Törless was troubled and tormented by what was genuine shamelessness.

  He threw such burning glances through the small windows and along the narrow, twisting passageways of the houses that it was as if a fine net were constantly dancing before his eyes.

  Half-naked children were rolling around in the muck in the yards; now and then a woman’s skirt rucked up as she was working, exposing her calves, or an ample bosom strained the seams of a bodice. And, as if all this were taking place in a quite different atmosphere, where an overpowering bestiality reigned, from the doors of the houses poured waves of stagnant air that Törless gulped down avidly.

  It made him think of old paintings that he had seen in museums without really understanding them. He was waiting for something, just as he had stared at those paintings and waited for something, something that never happened. Suc
h as… what? Something extraordinary and unheard of; an incredible sight that he couldn’t begin to imagine; something of a sensual nature, terrifying and bestial, which would seize him in its claws, tear his eyes out, so to speak; an experience that in some as yet obscure way was connected with these women’s grimy smocks, their rough hands, with… with him being defiled by the filth in the yards… No, no! And again all he could feel was the fiery net in front of his eyes; it couldn’t be expressed in words, words made it seem more terrible than it really was; it was something mute, unspoken, a choking sensation in the throat, a passing thought, and only when it was put into words did it take shape; and even then it only bore a distant resemblance to it, like in an enormous enlargement in which not only can everything be seen in minute detail but also things that aren’t there… which was still something to be ashamed of.

  “Is the little boy homesick then?” von Reiting suddenly asked sarcastically. He was tall, two years older than Törless, and hadn’t failed to notice his silence and sombre expression. Törless just gave a forced, self-conscious smile; it was as if the spiteful Reiting had read his mind.

  He didn’t reply. In the meantime they came to the church square of the little town, which was paved with cobblestones in the shape of cats’ heads. Here they went their separate ways.

  Törless and Beineberg didn’t want to go back yet, but the others hadn’t been given leave to be out after lock-up, and headed off towards the school.

  2

  THE TWO OF THEM went into the patisserie. They sat at a small, round table next to a window that looked onto the garden, beneath a gas lamp whose flame hissed faintly inside the opaque glass sphere of its shade.

  They made themselves comfortable, drank one glass of schnapps after another and smoked, in between eating the occasional cake and savouring the pleasure of being the only customers, except for a solitary man sitting over a glass of wine in the far room. Apart from that everything was quiet; even the corpulent proprietor, a woman of a certain age, seemed to be asleep behind the counter.

  His mind elsewhere, Törless gazed out of the window at the empty garden, where darkness was gradually falling.

  Beineberg was talking. About India, as usual. His father, who was a general, had served there with the British Army. He had not only brought back small carved wooden objects, fabrics and mass-produced idols – as most Europeans did – but also something of the mysterious and fantastical shades of esoteric Buddhism. He had passed on what he had learnt, as well as what he had discovered from subsequent reading, to his son, although he was only a boy at the time.

  He was a particular kind of reader. A cavalry officer and no great lover of books, he held literature and philosophy in equal contempt. If he did read, he didn’t want to waste time pondering over opinions or academic debates: when he opened a book he expected it to be a gateway to higher wisdom. They had to be books the mere possession of which was the sign of belonging to a secret society, a guarantee of divine revelation. He only found this in the works of Hindu philosophy, which to him weren’t simply books, but the revelations he sought; seminal works, like the alchemistic and magical writings of the Middle Ages.

  It was with these that this hale and hearty man, scrupulous in the performance of his duties as well as riding all three of his horses almost every day, liked to shut himself away of an evening.

  He would select a passage at random and reflect on it, in the hope that it might be that very night that it would reveal its innermost meaning to him. And never was he disappointed, although he was often forced to admit that he had yet to penetrate beyond the antechamber of the Temple.

  So around this wiry, weather-beaten man hung a form of solemn secret. The belief that every evening he might find himself on the threshold of an earth-shattering discovery gave him an air of secretive superiority. Far from dreamy, his gaze was calm and steadfast. The habit of reading books where not a single word could be replaced without distorting the hidden meaning, the careful, respectful weighing-up of the primary and alternative meanings of every phrase, helped shape this expression.

  From time to time, however, he would drift off into the half-light of blissful melancholia. This happened whenever his thoughts turned to the esoteric cult which was once bound to the original version of the texts he had in front of him, to the miracles they had inspired and the thousands of people who had been moved by them, thousands of people who, although separated from him by vast distances, seemed like his brothers, whereas those around him, whom he knew intimately, aroused nothing but his contempt. At moments like this he was disheartened. The thought that he was condemned to live out his life far from the source of these sacred energies, that his efforts might fail in the face of adverse circumstances, left him depressed. Yet if he sat over his books in this wretched state for a while, his mood would undergo a curious change. His wouldn’t feel any less melancholy: quite the reverse, he would become more and more miserable, but it ceased to weigh on him. He no longer felt abandoned at his post, and yet within this nostalgia lay a subtle pleasure, the pride of doing something different, of serving a misunderstood deity. And for a fleeting moment something not unlike spiritual ecstasy would light up his eyes.

  Beineberg talked himself hoarse. He was a larger, distorted version of his father, and had inherited all his traits; but what for the older man had perhaps at first been only a whim, maintained and refined purely for its outlandishness, in the son had developed into extravagant hopes. Each of his father’s idiosyncrasies, which at heart might only have ever been the last refuge of individuality that everyone has to try to create – if only in the choice of clothes – in order to set oneself apart from other people, in him had become a firm belief that by means of exceptional psychological powers he would one day achieve a position of dominance.

  Törless was all too familiar with this topic. It just washed over him.

  He had half turned away from the window and was watching Beineberg roll a cigarette. Once again he felt the odd sense of revulsion for his friend that sometimes seized hold of him. The slender, dark-skinned hands that were slipping the tobacco into the paper so smoothly and carefully were actually quite beautiful. The slim fingers, the attractively domed, oval nails had a certain distinction. As did the dark-brown eyes, and the lean, lissom body. Admittedly his ears stuck out slightly, he had a small, irregularly shaped face and the proportions of his head were reminiscent of a bat. And yet when he compared these individual details, Törless had the distinct impression that they weren’t flaws at all, but a perfect example of what made him feel so strangely unsettled.

  A lean body – Beineberg’s ideal was the steely-slim legs of the Homeric athletes – had a completely different effect on Törless. Up till now he had never attempted to account for this, and as he sat there no adequate comparison sprang to mind. He would have liked to look Beineberg in the eye, but his friend would have noticed, and he would have had to get involved in some discussion or other. But it was precisely because he was seeing him partly in the flesh and partly in his mind’s eye that the difference occurred to him. If he tried to picture this body without clothes it was impossible to retain the image of unruffled slenderness, and instead saw restless, writhing movements, distorted limbs and crooked spines like those found in depictions of martyrs or the grotesque parades of fairground performers.

  The hands, too, which he ought to have associated with elegant gestures, he could only imagine fidgeting and fumbling. And it was precisely these, Beineberg’s best feature, which were the focus of his greatest revulsion. There was something obscene about them. Yes, that was the correct description. He also couldn’t help finding something obscene in the disjointed movements that this body made. Yet in a sense it was in the hands that this sensation was concentrated, from where it transmitted a form of premonition of impending physical contact that made Törless’s flesh creep. He found this notion astonishing and rather frightening. It was the second time that day that something to do with sex had, without wa
rning and for no apparent reason, found its way into his thoughts.

  Beineberg picked up a newspaper, and Törless was now able to study him more closely.

  But when it came to it there was nothing to see that might even partly justify this unexpected association of ideas.

  And yet despite the fact that his anxiety was unfounded, it only grew more intense. It was barely ten minutes since they had been sitting here in silence, and already he felt his revulsion reaching a peak. For the first time it seemed that a fundamental, defining mood might be appearing in his relationship with Beineberg; it was as if an ever-present, lively mistrust had suddenly risen to the surface of their consciousness.

  The atmosphere became more and more strained. Törless longed to hurl insults at Beineberg, but couldn’t find the right words. A kind of shame made him increasingly agitated, as if something had happened between them. Restlessly he began drumming his fingers on the table.

  Eventually, in order to free himself from this peculiar condition, he turned and looked out of the window again.

  Beineberg glanced up from his paper; then he read a few more lines, put it down and yawned.

  No sooner was the silence broken than the pressure that Törless had been under was released. The moment was quickly submerged, washed away by trivia. It had been an alarm signal, now replaced by the same old indifference…

  “How much longer have we got?” he asked.

  “Two and a half hours.”

  Törless shrugged and then shuddered. Again he felt the cold, dead hand of imprisonment reaching out towards him. The timetable, the everyday relationships with his friends. Soon even his aversion for Beineberg, which for a moment had seemed to open up new horizons, would no longer exist.

  “What’s for supper?”