Now the woman came further outside and put a hand on the man’s shoulder. The moon illuminated her- her petticoat, her jacket, her pleading smile. The man looked straight in front of him, shook his head and kept his hands firmly in his pockets. Then he spat and pushed the woman away, perhaps because she had said something else. Now their voices were louder, and it was possible to hear what they were saying.

‘So you’re not going to give me anything? You ... !’

‘Just get up there, you filthy slut!’

‘Cheek! Coming from a peasant like you!’

By way of reply the drunk clumsily picked up a stone. ‘If you don’t clear off this minute, I’ll give you a good hiding!’ and he prepared to throw it. Törless heard the woman making off up the stairs.

The man stood there for a while, indecisively holding the stone. He laughed; looked towards the sky, where the moon swam, wine-yellow between black clouds; then he stared at the dark undergrowth of the bushes, as though he was considering heading in that direction. Törless carefully drew back his foot; he could feel his heart beating in his throat. Finally the drunk seemed to have thought better of it. He dropped the stone. With a coarse, triumphant laugh he yelled a raucous obscenity up at the window, then slipped around the corner.

The two boys didn’t move. ‘Did you recognize her?’ whispered Beineberg; ‘It was Božena.’ Törless didn’t reply; he was listening to hear whether the drunk was coming back again. Then Beineberg pushed him forwards. They jumped quickly and carefully, dodging the light that fell in a wedge through the ground-floor windows, and they found themselves in the dark hallway of the house. A flight of wooden stairs led in narrow bends to the first floor. Here someone must have heard their steps on the clattering stairs, or their swords striking the woodwork — the door of the taproom was opened and someone came to check who was in the building, while the accordion suddenly fell silent and the hubbub of voices paused expectantly for a moment.

Startled, Törless pressed himself against the bend in the stairs, but he must have been seen in spite of the darkness, for he heard the barmaid’s mocking voice as the door was being closed, followed by yells of laughter.

The first-floor landing was in total darkness. Neither Törless nor Beineberg dared take a step forward, worried that they might knock something over and make a noise. In their excitement, their fingers fumbled hastily for the doorknob.

 

Božena had come as a peasant girl to the capital, where she went into service and later became a lady’s maid.

Everything had gone quite well for her at first. Her peasant manner, which she had not lost, any more than she had lost her broad, solid walk, assured her of the trust of her mistresses, who liked her cow-byre smell for its simplicity, and the amorous attentions of her masters, who liked it for its perfume. Perhaps out of caprice, or perhaps out of discontent and a vague longing for passion, she relinquished that comfortable life. She became a waitress, was taken sick, found lodging in an elegant house of ill repute and, as time passed and her dissolute life wore her down, found herself washed further and further out into the provinces.

Here, finally, where she had now lived for several years, not far from her home village, she helped in the inn by day and in the evening she read cheap novels, smoked cigarettes and received occasional visits from men.

She had not yet become ugly, exactly, but her face was strikingly free of charm, and she clearly made a special effort to stress this even more with her manner. She liked to show that she was very familiar with the elegance and manners of polite society, but was now beyond all that. She liked to say that she cared not a whit for it, as she cared nothing for herself, or for anything at all. For that reason, in spite of her degeneracy, she enjoyed a certain respect among the peasant boys of the area. Certainly, they spat when they spoke of her, and felt obliged to be coarse in their treatment of her, even more so than they were with other girls, but at root they were also very proud of that ‘damned whore’ who had emerged from their midst and seen so clearly through the world’s veneer. They came to see her — one by one, and on the sly, but time and again. This fact brought Božena a residue of pride and justification in her life. She took perhaps even greater satisfaction, though, in her visits from the young gentlemen from the institute.