I have no special reason to; the whole business leaves me completely indifferent. I’m just annoyed by your exaggeration. What’s got into you? That kind of idealism, I mean. Holy enthusiasm for the school or for justice. You have no idea how tired and hackneyed it sounds. Either that or,’ and Reiting winked suspiciously over at Törless, ‘might you have some other reason why Basini should be thrown out and you just don’t want to show your colours? Some old revenge? Then tell us! Because if it’s good enough we might be able to make use of it.’

Törless turned to Beineberg, who merely grinned. Between utterances he drew on a long chibouk, sitting with his legs crossed in the oriental style, and, with his ears sticking out in the murky light, he resembled the grotesque figure of an idol. ‘You can do whatever you like as far as I’m concerned; I don’t care about the money, or about justice. In India they would drive a pointed bamboo through his guts; at least that would be fun. He’s stupid and cowardly, there’s nothing else wrong with him, and as long as I live I really couldn’t care what happens to people like that. They themselves are nothing, and we don’t know what’s going to happen to their souls. May Allah bestow his mercy on your judgement!’

Törless made no reply. After Reiting had contradicted him and Beineberg had refused to take sides, he had finished. He could manage no further resistance; he felt he no longer had any desire to stop the unknown event on the horizon.

So Reiting made a suggestion, which they accepted. They decided to keep Basini under surveillance for the time being, in a sense to become his guardians, and thus present him with an opportunity to extricate himself. His income and spending would be rigorously scrutinized, and his relations with the other boys would be contingent on the permission of the three.

This decision seemed to be quite correct and benevolent. This time Reiting didn’t describe it as ‘hackneyed and insipid’. Because although they didn’t admit it, they each felt that this should be only a kind of interim state. Reiting had been unhappy about passing up the opportunity to take the affair further because he enjoyed it, but on the other hand he wasn’t yet clear what fresh twist he should give it. And Törless was effectively paralysed by the mere idea of having to deal with Basini on a daily basis.

When he had uttered the word ‘thief’, things had for a moment become easier for him. It had been like an expulsion, a driving off of the things that were burrowing away within him.

But the questions that immediately reappeared could not be solved by that simple word. Now that it was no longer possible to avoid them they had become clearer.

Törless looked from Reiting to Beineberg, closed his eyes, repeated to himself the decision he had made, looked up once more ... He himself no longer knew - was it merely his imagination settling on things like an enormous distorting glass, or was it true, did everything really resemble the weird vision he saw before him? And was it only Beineberg and Reiting who knew nothing about these issues? Despite the fact that they were the ones who had, from the start, been at home in this world, which only now, all of a sudden, seemed so strange to him?

Törless was afraid of them. But he was only afraid the way one is afraid of a giant one knows to be blind and stupid ...

But one thing was resolved: He had come a long way from a quarter of an hour before. There was no turning back. He felt a faint curiosity about how things would turn out now that he was held prisoner against his will. Everything that stirred within him remained in darkness, but he already felt a desire to stare into the pattern of that darkness, to which the others were oblivious. A faint shiver mingled with that desire. As though a grey, overcast sky hung constantly over his life — with large clouds, monstrous, changing figures, and the question, repeated time and again: Are they monsters? Are they only clouds?

And that question was for him alone! A secret, something alien to the others, something forbidden ...

So it was that Basini began, for the first time, to approach the significance that he would later assume in Törless’s life.

 

The next day surveillance on Basini began.

Not entirely without ceremony. That morning they skipped gymnastics, held on a large lawn in the grounds.

Reiting delivered a kind of address, and not exactly a brief one.