Yesterday Basini had been exactly as he was; a trapdoor had opened, and Basini had fallen. Exactly as Reiting described: a sudden alteration, and the person was someone else ...

And again that was somehow linked with Božena. His thoughts had blasphemed. He had been confused by a rotten, sweet smell rising from them. And that profound humiliation, that self-abandonment, that state of being covered by the pale, heavy, poisonous leaves of shame that had passed through his dreams like a disembodied, distant reflection, had suddenly become reality for Basini.

So was it something that really had to be reckoned with, something one had to guard against, something that might suddenly leap out of the silent mirrors of thought?

But in that case everything else was possible too. In that case Reiting and Beineberg were possible. This little room was possible ... Then it was also possible that a portal led from the bright, daytime world which had hitherto been the only one he knew, and into another world that was gloomy, surging, passionate, naked, annihilating. That between those whose lives move in an orderly manner from office to family and back, as though in a solid and transparent building of glass and iron, and the others, those who have been cast down, the blood-stained, the debauched and the filthy, who wander a confusion of passageways echoing with roaring voices, there is not a bridge, but it is rather that their boundaries abut, secret and close, and ready to be crossed at any moment ...

And one question alone remains: how is it possible? What happens in such moments? What shoots screaming into the air, what is suddenly extinguished?

Those were the questions that this event brought to Törless’s mind. They rose up indistinctly, lips sealed, disguised by a dull, vague feeling ... a weakness, an anxiety.

But some of their words echoed in Törless as though from afar, scrappy and random, and filled him with anxious foreboding.

Reiting’s question came at that moment.

Straight away Törless began to speak. He was obeying a sudden urge, a feeling of dismay. It seemed to him that something crucial was about to happen, and he was afraid of that approaching event, he wanted to avoid it, to gain some grace ... He spoke, but immediately he felt that he had nothing relevant to say, that his words had no inner substance and were not his true opinion ...

He said, ‘Basini is a thief.’ And the hard, definite sound of the word made him feel so good that he repeated it twice. ‘... a thief. And thieves are punished - everywhere, throughout the whole world. He must be reported, removed from the institute! Let him mend his ways somewhere else, he’s no longer one of us!’

But Reiting said with a look of unpleasant consternation: ‘No, why should we take it to the limit straight away?’

‘Why? Don’t you think it’s obvious?’

‘Far from it. You’re acting as though the fire and brimstone were just around the corner, ready to engulf us all if we kept Basini among us for a moment longer. Things aren’t as bad as all that.’

‘How can you say that? Here you’ve got someone who’s stolen, who’s then offered himself to you as a maid, as a slave, and you’re telling me you’re going to go on from day to day sitting down with him, eating with him, sleeping with him? I can’t understand that. After all, we’re being educated together because we belong to the same society. Wouldn’t you care if you were eventually to find yourself standing next to him in your regiment, or working in the same ministry, if he were to socialize with the same families as you - if he were even to court your own sister -?’ ‘Come on, you’re exaggerating now!’ laughed Reiting. ‘You’re acting as though we belong to a lifelong brotherhood. Do you think we’re always going to bear a seal around our necks: “Educated at the Seminary in W. Bears certain privileges and obligations”? Later on, each one of us is going to go his own way, and each of us will become whatever it is that he’s qualified to do, because it isn’t as though there’s just a single society. So I don’t think we should concern ourselves too much about the future. And where the present is concerned, I think I said that we should remain classmates with Basini. We’ll find some way of ensuring that there’s a distance between us. We’re holding Basini in the palm of our hands, we can do whatever we like with him, you can spit at him twice a day as far as I’m concerned: as long as he puts up with that, what do we have in common with him? And if he refuses, we can still show him who’s in charge ... You just have to drop the idea that anything connects us with Basini apart from the pleasure we get from the fact that he’s vile!’

Although Törless wasn’t at all convinced of his case, he eagerly continued: ‘Listen, Reiting, why are you so keen on taking Basini’s side?’

‘Am I taking his side? I really don’t know.