And Törless could only imagine that Kant had solved the problems of philosophy once and for all, and that since that time those problems had been merely a pointless occupation, just as he believed that there was no point in writing poetry after Schiller and Goethe.

At home those books were kept in the cupboard with the green glass panes in Papa’s study, and Törless knew that the cupboard was never opened except to be shown to a visitor. It was like the sanctum of a deity which one approaches unwillingly, a deity which one worships only because one is happy that, because it exists, there are certain things that one need no longer worry about.

That skewed relationship towards philosophy and literature would later have an unfortunate influence on Törless’s further development, and one which would bring him many unhappy hours. It was because it diverted his ambition from its proper objects, and, robbed of his goal, he sought a new one, that he came under the defining and brutal influence of his companions. His tendencies returned only occasionally and shamefacedly, and each time they did so they left behind an awareness that he was doing something ludicrous and pointless. But the inclinations were so strong that he was unable to free himself from them entirely, and this constant struggle robbed his being of its clear outlines and its upright posture.

Today, however, that relationship seemed to have entered a new phase. The ideas about which he had been vainly seeking enlightenment were no longer the rootless associations of a playful imagination. Instead they churned him up, they wouldn’t let him go, and he felt with his whole body that an element of his life pulsed away behind them. This was something quite new for Törless. There was a determination within him that he had never known before. It was almost dreamlike, mysterious. It must have been quietly developing under his recent influences, and now all of a sudden it was knocking imperiously. He felt like a mother who feels, for the first time, the peremptory motions of her unborn child.

It was a wonderfully pleasurable afternoon.

From his trunk Törless fetched all the poetic experiments he had stored there. He sat down with them by the stove, and stayed all alone, unseen behind the massive screen. He flicked through one volume after another, then tore each one very slowly into very small pieces and threw them all, one by one, into the fire, each time relishing the tender emotion of farewell.

He was trying to throw all his earlier baggage behind him, as though — unencumbered — he would from now on have to devote all his attention to the steps that would carry him onwards.

Finally he stood up and walked over to join the others. He felt free of all anxious sidelong glances. What he had done had occurred entirely instinctively; nothing offered him any certainty that he might really be someone new from now on, nothing but the mere existence of that impulse. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said to himself, ‘tomorrow I shall carefully revise everything, and I shall acquire clarity.’

He walked around the classroom, between the desks, looked into the open school books, at the fingers hurrying busily back and forth over the dazzling white as they wrote, each carrying its little brown shadow behind it - he watched it all like someone who has suddenly woken up, with eyes to which everything seems of grave significance.

 

But the very next day brought a terrible disappointment. In the morning Törless had actually bought the cheap edition of the volume he had seen in his teacher’s room, and he used his first break-time to start reading it. But filled as it was with parentheses and footnotes, he couldn’t understand a word, and when he conscientiously followed the sentences with his eyes, he felt as though an old, bony hand was twisting his brain out of his head.

By the time he stopped, exhausted, after about half an hour, he had only reached the second page, and there was sweat on his brow.

But then he clenched his teeth and read another page until break-time was over.

But in the evening he didn’t want to touch the book again. Fear? Nausea? - he wasn’t sure. Only one thing was a source of raging torment: that the teacher, that person who didn’t look in any way special, had had the book lying open in his room, as though it was a daily source of entertainment.

It was in that mood that Beineberg found him.

‘So, Törless, how were things with the maths teacher yesterday?’ They were sitting alone in a window-niche, and had pushed in front of it the broad clothes-stands, with all the coats hanging on them, so that all that reached them from the class was a hum that rose and fell and the reflection of the lamps on the ceiling. Törless played distractedly with a coat hanging in front of him.

‘Are you asleep? He must have given you an answer of some kind? I can imagine, by the way, that he must have been pretty confused.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, he won’t have been prepared for such a stupid question.’

‘It wasn’t a stupid question; I still haven’t sorted it out.’

‘I don’t mean that in a nasty way; but it will have been stupid for him. They learn their subjects off by heart the way the vicar learns his catechism, and if you ask them something slightly in the wrong order they always get confused.’

‘Oh, he wasn’t confused about the answer. He didn’t even let me finish, he had it to hand so quickly.’

‘And how did he explain the matter?’

‘Actually he didn’t. He said I wouldn’t be able to understand it yet, it was all about logical necessities, which only become clear to someone who has gone into these things more deeply.’

‘That’s exactly what’s fraudulent about it! They can’t tell their stories to someone who’s entirely reasonable. He can’t do it until he’s ground himself down for ten years! Until then he has calculated on the basis of these principles a thousand times, and erected great constructions that are always correct down to the smallest detail; then he simply believes in them, the way a Catholic believes in revelation; it has always maintained itself with such fine solidity ... so is there any trick involved in proving anything to such a person? On the contrary, no one could persuade him that his construction might well be standing, but the individual bricks vanish into thin air when you try to touch them!’

Törless felt disagreeably affected by Beineberg’s exaggeration.

‘It’s probably not as bad as you imagine. I’ve never doubted that mathematics was right - that’s what its success teaches us, after all — but I did think it was strange that it sometimes runs so contrary to the understanding; and perhaps it merely appears to do so.’

‘Now, you can wait those ten years, maybe by then your understanding will have been properly prepared ... But I’ve been thinking about it too since we last talked about it, and I’m quite convinced that there’s a snag to it. And by the way, you used to talk about it quite differently from the way you do today.’

‘Oh, no.