‘Doesn’t he feel anything?’ he wondered. But Beineberg bent down to pick up the lamp. Törless held his arm back. ‘Isn’t that like an eye?’ he said, pointing to the beam of light flowing over the floor.

‘Are you getting poetic now?’

‘No. But don’t you say yourself that the eyes have a special explanation of their own? They emanate — you just have to think of those hypnotic ideas you love so much - amongst other things they emanate a power that would have no place in a physics lesson - and it’s certainly also the case that you can often tell much more about a person from his eyes than from his words ...’

‘And? — So?’

‘I see this light as being like an eye. Through to a strange world. I feel as though I’m supposed to guess something from it. But I can’t. I’d like to absorb it into me ...’

‘So - you are starting to get poetic.’

‘No, I’m serious. I’m quite desperate. Take a close look, and you’ll feel it too. A need to splash about in that pool — on all fours, creeping into the dusty corners, as though you could guess it that way...’

‘My dear boy, that’s nonsense, sentimentality. You want to leave that kind of thing alone.’

Beineberg bent all the way down and put the lamp back in its place. But Törless felt a malicious pleasure. He felt that in a sense he was absorbing these events more fully than his companions were.

Now he waited for Basini to reappear, and felt, with a secret shudder, that his scalp was once again being stretched by delicate claws.

He already knew very clearly that something had been saved up for him, something that admonished him again and again, at ever shorter intervals; a sensation that was incomprehensible to the others, but was clearly very important for his life.

He didn’t know what his burst of sensuality had to do with it, but he remembered that it had always been present when events had begun to seem strange to him alone, and tormented him because he knew of no reason why that should be.

And he intended to give the matter some serious thought at the next opportunity. For the time being he abandoned himself entirely to the exciting shudder that preceded Basini’s reappearance.

Beineberg had set up the lamp, and once again its beams cut a circle into the darkness, like an empty frame.

And all of a sudden Basini’s face was in it again; just as it had been the first time; with the same rigidly fixed, sweet smile; as though nothing had happened in the meantime, except that over his upper lip, his mouth and his chin slow drops of blood marked out a red path like a twisting worm.

 

‘Sit down over there!’ Reiting pointed to the massive wooden beam. Basini obeyed. Reiting began to speak. ‘You probably thought you’d wriggled out of this one, didn’t you? You thought I’d help you? Well, you were wrong. I was just trying to see how low you would go.’

Basini made a dismissive gesture. Reiting threatened to jump on him again. Then Basini said, ‘I beg you, for God’s sake, I had no other choice.’

‘Shut up!’ shouted Reiting. ‘We’ve had enough of your excuses! We now know once and for all what your situation is, and we’re going to act accordingly ...’

There was a short silence. Then, all of a sudden, Törless said quietly, almost kindly, ‘Say: I’m a thief.’

Basini made big, almost terrified eyes; Beineberg laughed comfortably.

But Basini said nothing. Then Beineberg gave him a poke in the ribs and shouted at him:

‘Don’t you hear? You’re to say that you’re a thief! Say it right now!’

Once again there was a short, barely noticeable silence. Then Basini said quietly, in a single breath and with the most innocuous emphasis he could muster: ‘I’m a thief.’

Beineberg laughed delightedly over at Törless. ‘That was a good idea of yours, little one,’ and to Basini: ‘And right now you’re going to say: I’m a beast, a thieving beast, your thieving, swinish beast!’

And Basini said it, without hesitation, his eyes closed.

But Törless had already leaned back in the dark again. He was repelled by the scene, and ashamed that he had let the others have his idea.

 

During maths class Torless had suddenly had an idea.

Over the past few days he had been following his lessons with special interest, thinking, ‘If this is really a preparation for life, as they say it is, then it must contain a trace of whatever it is that I’m searching for.’

He had been thinking specifically in terms of mathematics, still pondering the notion of infinity.

And sure enough, in the middle of the lesson, it had burned its way swiftly into his mind. Straight after class he sat down with Beineberg, the only person he could talk to about this kind of thing.

‘Did you understand all that?’

‘What?’

‘All that stuff about imaginary numbers?’

‘Yes. It’s not all that difficult.