He made a few attempts to take his notes further, but the written words remained dead, a series of sullen, long-familiar question marks, and the moment in which he had seen through them into a vault lit by quivering candle flames would not be reawakened.

So he resolved to seek out, time and again and as often as possible, the situations that held that curious significance for him; and his eye came to rest with particular frequency upon Basini, when the boy, thinking himself unobserved, walked innocently among the others. ‘At some point,’ Törless thought to himself, ‘it will come back to life, and then perhaps it will be more intense and clear than it was before.’ And he was greatly calmed by the thought that where such matters were concerned one was in a dark room, and that when one’s fingers had lost their place the only thing to do was to go on fumbling randomly, again and again, along the dark wall.

But at night this thought grew rather faint. Then Törless felt rather ashamed that he had passed over his original resolution to look in the book his teacher had shown him for the explanation that it might contain. Then he lay there quietly and listened across to Basini, whose violated body breathed peacefully like all the others. He lay quietly, like a huntsman in his hide, feeling that he was biding his time and his reward would surely come. But just as the idea of the book had sprung to mind, a fine-toothed doubt gnawed away at his tranquillity, a sense that he was wasting his time, a hesitant admission that he had suffered a defeat.

As soon as that vague feeling asserted itself, his attention lost the comfortable feeling that comes from watching the progress of a scientific experiment. Then Basini seemed to exude a physical influence, a fascination, like that which comes when one is sleeping near a woman and could at any moment pull the covers from her. A tingle in the brain prompted by the awareness that one need only stretch out one’s hand, the same thing that often drives young couples to engage in debaucheries that far exceed their sensual needs.

 

According to the intensity of the reflection that his endeavours might strike him as ludicrous if he knew everything that Kant knew, everything that his mathematics master or anyone who had completed his studies knew - according to the intensity of that emotional shock, his sensual urges grew weaker or stronger, keeping his eyes hot and open despite the general silence as everyone around him slept. Indeed, sometimes those urges blazed up in him so powerfully that they suffocated all other thoughts. At such times, he yielded, half willingly, half desperately, to their temptations. As he did so he felt only what is felt by all of those people who never incline to a crazed and debauched sensuality, one that tears the soul apart, tears it apart with voluptuous purpose, so much as they do when they have suffered a failure that has shaken the balance of their self-confidence.

Then, after midnight, as he quietly drifted into unquiet sleep, he thought he was aware of someone from the area around Reiting’s or Beineberg’s bed picking up his coat and walking over to Basini. Then he thought he heard them leaving the dormitory ... But it could equally well have been his imagination.

 

Two holidays were coming up; as they fell on a Monday and a Tuesday, the headmaster gave the pupils the Saturday off, and they had four days’ holiday. For Törless, however, this was not enough time to make the long journey home, so he had hoped at least that his parents would visit him, but urgent business kept his father in the ministry, and his mother was unwell, and did not feel up to the exertions of the journey on her own.

Only when Törless received the letter in which his parents told him they were not coming, adding many tender consolations, did he feel happy with the arrangement. He would almost have thought it disruptive - at least it would have confused him terribly - to have had to face his parents at that moment.

Many pupils received invitations to nearby estates. Even Jusch, whose parents had a lovely farm a day’s journey from the little town, took a holiday, and Beineberg, Reiting and Hofmeier went with him. Jusch had also invited Basini, but Reiting had ordered him to turn down the invitation. Törless claimed not to know whether his parents were coming or not; he didn’t feel at all in the mood for innocently cheerful festivities and entertainments.

By Saturday afternoon the great building was silent and almost deserted.

When Törless walked along the corridors, they echoed from one end to the other; no one paid him any attention, because most of the teachers had gone away, on a shooting-party or somewhere else. It was only over meals, now served in a small room near the deserted refectory, that the few remaining pupils saw one another. Leaving the table, they dispersed once more among the various corridors and rooms, and the silence of the building swallowed them up. In between they led a life to which no one paid any more attention than they did to the spiders and millipedes in the cellar and the attic.

Apart from a few boys in the sickbay, the only members of Törless’s class who had stayed behind were himself and Basini. When they were saying their goodbyes, Törless and Reiting had exchanged some furtive words on the subject of Basini. Reiting was worried that Basini might use the opportunity to seek protection from one of the teachers, and he particularly asked Törless to keep a close eye on him.

But Törless’s attention would have been focused on Basini anyway.

The hubbub of arriving cars, of servants carrying cases, the jocular farewells of the pupils leaving the school, had barely passed before the awareness of being alone with Basini took overwhelming possession of Törless.

That was after the first midday meal. Basini was sitting at his desk at the front of the room, writing a letter. Törless had sat down in a corner at the very back, and was trying to read.

It was the first time that Törless had returned to his volume of Kant, and he had carefully planned the situation so that it would be like this. Basini was sitting at the front, Törless was sitting at the back, with his eyes fixed on him, boring through him. And this was how he planned to read, immersing himself further in Basini after each page. This was the way; this was how he had to find the truth, without losing his grip on life, living, complicated, ambiguous life...

But it didn’t work, as always, when he thought something through too carefully in advance. It wasn’t spontaneous enough, and his mood soon lapsed into a stubborn, gluey boredom that clung to each of his repeated and over-deliberate efforts.

Törless furiously threw the book on the floor. Basini looked around with a start, but then immediately went on hastily writing.

The hours crept on like this towards dusk.