Törless sat there befuddled. The only thing to reach his consciousness, out of a general dull, whirring, droning sensation, was the ticking of his pocket-watch. It wagged along behind the lethargic body of the hours like a little tail. The room became blurred ... Surely Basini couldn’t still be writing ... ‘Ah, he probably doesn’t dare turn on the light,’ Törless thought to himself. But was he still in his seat? Törless had been gazing out into the bare, gloomy landscape and had to accustom his eyes to the darkness of the room. Yes, there, that motionless shadow, that’ll be him. Listen, he’s even sighing - once, twice ... Or is he asleep?

A servant came and lit the lamps. Basini started awake and rubbed his eyes. Then he took a book from his desk and looked as though he was trying to memorize something.

Törless’s lips burned to speak to him, and to avoid doing so he quickly left the room.

 

That night Törless came close to attacking Basini, such a murderous sensuality had awoken in him after the pain of the unthinking, dull-witted day. Fortunately sleep rescued him in time.

The next day passed, bringing nothing but the same barren quietness. The silence and expectancy left Törless overwrought - the constant attentiveness consumed all his mental powers, leaving him incapable of thought.

Crushed, disappointed, so dissatisfied with himself that he was prone to the most awful doubts, he went to bed early.

He had been lying for a long time in restless, feverish half-sleep, when he heard Basini coming.

Without stirring, he gazed after the dark figure walking past his bed; he heard the sound of clothes being undone; then the rustling of the covers being drawn over the body.

Törless held his breath, but he could hear nothing more. And yet he couldn’t shake off the feeling that Basini wasn’t sleeping, but listening just as hard to the darkness as he was.

Quarter-hours passed — hours. Interrupted here and there by the quiet sound of bodies stirring quietly in bed.

Törless was in a curious state that kept him awake. Yesterday his fever had been caused by sensual images in his imagination. Only right at the end had they taken a turn towards Basini. Under the relentless hand of sleep, which erased them, they had rebelled for one last time, and he had only a very dim memory of that. Today, though, from the start, there had been nothing but a compulsive desire to get up and walk over to Basini. It had been hardly bearable while he had had the feeling that Basini was awake and listening out for him. And only now, when Basini was probably asleep, was there a cruel thrill in the idea of falling on the sleeping boy as one might fall on one’s prey.

Törless already felt the movements of sitting up and getting out of bed twitching in all his muscles. But none the less he could not yet shake off his immobility.

‘What would I do with him?’ he wondered in his fear, almost out loud. And he had to admit that his cruelty and sensuality had no real object. He would have been confused if he actually had jumped on Basini. Surely he didn’t want to beat him up? God forbid! So how did he plan on using Basini to satisfy his sensual impulses? He felt an involuntary repulsion when he thought of the various vices to which young boys are prone. Laying himself bare like that before another human being? Never! ...

But as that revulsion grew, the impulse to walk over to Basini intensified as well. Finally Törless was utterly convinced of the senselessness of any such endeavour, but a physical compulsion seemed to pull him from bed as though he was tied to a rope. And while all the images fled from his mind and he kept saying to himself that it would probably be best to try and go to sleep now, he rose mechanically from his bed. Very slowly - feeling that the mental compulsion was painstakingly gaining ground against the resistance it encountered - he got up.