a cold shiver ran through him ... there was that painful comparison. What might the two of them have been feeling? Love? No, the idea was now occurring to him for the first time. Love was something quite different. Not something for grown-ups and adults; let alone for his parents. Sitting by the open window at night and feeling abandoned, feeling different from the grown-ups, feeling misunderstood by every laugh and every mocking look, being unable to explain to anyone what one meant, and longing for someone who might understand ... that is love! But you have to be young and lonely for that. With them it must have been something else; something peaceful and serene. Mama was simply singing in the evening in the dark garden and being cheerful ...

But that was precisely what Törless didn’t understand. The patient plans with which, for an adult, the days join up into months and years without his so much as noticing, those were still something alien to him. And so was that blunt insensitivity which doesn’t even mind that another day is coming to an end. His life was geared towards each new day. Every night was for him a void, a grave, an extinction ... He had not yet learned the ability to lie down to die each day without a thought.

For that reason he had always suspected that there was something in the background that was being kept from him. Nights seemed to him to be dark portals to mysterious delights which had been kept secret from him, leaving his life empty and sad.

He remembered something he had observed on one of those evenings — a peculiar laugh of his mother’s as she pressed herself, as if joking, closer to her husband’s arm. It seemed to rule out any doubt. And there must be a door leading here from the world of those calm and unimpeachable people. And now that he knew he could only think about it with that particular smile, expressing a malicious mistrust that he tried in vain to resist ...

In the meantime Božena went on talking. Törless listened half attentively. She was talking about someone else who came almost every Sunday ... ‘What can his name be? He’s in your year.’

‘Reiting?’

‘No.’

‘What does he look like?’

‘He’s about the same height as that one there,’ Božena pointed to Törless, ‘but his head’s a bit too big.’

‘Ah, Basini?’

‘Yes, yes, that’s what he called himself. He’s very odd. And very classy; he only drinks wine. But he’s thick. It costs him a lot of money, and all he ever does is tell me stories. He goes on about the love affairs he claims he has at home; what good does that do him? I can tell this is the first time in his life that he’s been with a woman. You’re just a boy, too, but you’re cheeky; but he’s awkward and nervous, and that’s why he talks on and on at me about how you’ve got to treat women if you’re a sensualist - that’s the word he uses. He says it’s all women are fit for; what would you lot know about that?’

Beineberg gave her a mocking grin in reply.

‘Just you laugh!’ Božena barked at him, amused, ‘I once asked him if he wouldn’t be ashamed if his mother could see him. “Mother? ... Mother? ...” he said.