TEN
PREPARATIONS
NOW
THAT KNECHT had managed to break the ice, a vital association, revitalizing to
the two of them, began between himself and Designori. The latter, who for
long years had lived in resigned melancholia, had to admit that his friend was
right: what had drawn him back to the
In him Castalian
education seemed to have miscarried. At
least it had so far produced nothing but conflicts and disappointments for him,
and a profound loneliness difficult for a man of his sort to bear. It seemed, moreover, that since he had once
stumbled into the thorny path of maladjustment, he was driven to commit all
kinds of acts that increased his isolation and his difficulties. Thus while still a student he found himself
irreconcilably at odds with his family, in particular with his father.
Although not reckoned among actual
political leaders, his father like all the Designoris
had been a lifelong supporter of the conservative, pro-government party. He was hostile to all innovations, opposed to
the claims of the underprivileged to new rights and a fair share in the
economy. He was suspicious of men
without name or rank, devoted to the old order, and prepared to make sacrifices
for everything he regarded as legitimate and sacred. Without having any special religious vein, he
was friendly towards the Church. And
although he did not lack a sense of justice, benevolence, charity, and
helpfulness, he was obstinately and on principle opposed to the efforts of
tenant-farmers to better their lot. He
was wont to cite the programme and slogans of his party as a rationalization
for this harshness. In reality, what
motivated him was neither conviction nor insight, but blind loyalty to his
class and the traditions of his family.
This loyalty was in keeping with a deep chivalrousness and feeling for
chivalric honour, and an outspoken contempt for everything that pretended to be
modern, progressive, and contemporary.
It was a bitter blow to a man of this
sort when his son Plinio, while still in his student
days, joined a distinctly oppositional and modernistic party. In those days a youthful left wing of an old
middle-class liberal party had been formed, led by a man named Veraguth, a publicist, deputy, and forceful orator. He was a highly emotional populist and
libertarian with a tendency to become intoxicated by his own rhetoric. This man courted the students by giving
public lectures in university towns, and met with considerably success. Among other enthusiastic followers, he won
over Designori.
The young man, disappointed with the university and seeking something to
sustain him, some substitute for the Castalian
morality which had lost its hold on him, seeking some kind of new idealism and
programme, was carried away by Veraguth's
lectures. He admired the man's passion
and fighting spirit, his wit, his hortatory style, his good looks and fine
speech. Soon Plinio
joined a faction of students who had been converted by Veraguth's
lectures and were working for his party and aims.
When Plinio's
father learned of this, he set out at once for the university town. In a thundering rage, shouting at his son for
the first time in his life, he charged him with conspiracy, betrayal of his
father, his family, and the traditions of his house, and ordered him to undo
his error at once by severing all ties with Veraguth
and his party. This was certainly not
the right way to influence the young man, who saw his position turning into a
kind of martyrdom. Plinio
stood up to his father's thunder. He
hadn't attended the elite school for ten years and the university for several,
he declared, in order to give up his power of judgement. He was not going to let a clique of selfish
landowners prescribe his views on government, economics, and justice. In framing this reply, he profited by the
example of Veraguth, who modelled himself on the
great tribunes of the people in never speaking of his own or class interests,
but only of pure, absolute justice and humanity.
Plinio's
father burst into bitter laughter and suggested that his son at least finish
his studies before he meddled in grown-up affairs and fancied that he knew more
about human life and justice than venerable generations of noble families whose
degenerate scion he was and whom he was now traitorously stabbing in the
back. With every word the quarrel grew
more bitter and insulting, until the father suddenly stopped in icy shame, as
though a mirror had shown him his own face distorted with rage. In silence, he took his leave.
From then on, Plinio's
old pleasant and intimate relationship to his paternal home was never
restored. He remained loyal to his
faction and its neo-liberalism. What is
more, after completing his studies he became Veraguth's
disciple, assistant, and intimate associate, and a few years later his
son-in-law. Since Designori's
psychic equilibrium had been disturbed by his education in the elite schools,
or perhaps we should say by his difficulties in readjusting to the world and to
life back home, so that he was already beset by problems, these new
relationships threw him into an exposed, complex, and delicate situation. He gained something of indubitable value, a
kind of faith, political convictions, and membership in a party which satisfied
his youthful craving for justice and progressiveness. In Veraguth he
acquired a teacher, leader, and older friend whom at first he uncritically
admired and loved, and who moreover seemed to need him and appreciate him. He gained a direction and goal, work and a
mission in life. That was a good deal,
but it had to be dearly bought. To some
degree the young man came to terms with the loss of his natural position in his
father's family and among his peers; to some degree he managed to meet
expulsion from a privileged caste, and its subsequent hostility, with a sort of
relish in martyrdom. But there were some
things he could never get over, above all the gnawing sense that he had
inflicted pain on his beloved mother, had placed her in an uncomfortable
position between his father and himself, and by doing so had probably shortened
her life. She died soon after his
marriage. After her death Plinio scarcely ever visited his home, and when his father
died he sold the ancient family seat.
Among those who have made heavy
sacrifices for a position in life, a government post, a marriage, a profession,
there are some who contrive to love their position and affirm it the more on
the strength of these very sacrifices.
What they have suffered for constitutes their happiness and their
fulfilment. Designori's
case was different. Although he remained
loyal to his party and its leader, his political beliefs and work, his marriage
and his idealism, he began to doubt everything connected with these
things. His whole life had become
problematical to him. The political and
ideological fervour of youth subsided.
In the long run, the struggle to prove oneself right no more made for
gladness than had the trials undertaken out of defiance. Experience in professional life had its
sobering effect. Ultimately he wondered
whether he had become a follower of Veraguth out of a
sense of truth and justice or whether he had not been at least half seduced by
the man's gifts as a speaker and rabble-rouser, his charm and nimble wit in
public appearances, the sonority of his voice, his splendid virile laughter,
and the intelligence and beauty of his daughter.
More and more he began to doubt whether
old Designori with his class loyalty and his obduracy
towards the tenant-farmers had really held the baser view. He became uncertain whether good and bad,
right and wrong, had any absolute existence at all. Perhaps the voice of one's own conscience was
ultimately the only valid judge, and if that were so, then he, Plinio, was in the wrong.
For he was not happy, calm, and balanced; he was not confident and
secure. On the contrary, he was plagued
by uncertainty, doubts, and guilts. His marriage was not unhappy and mistaken in
any crude sense, but still it was fully of tensions, complications, and
resistances. It was perhaps the best
thing he possessed, but it did not give him that tranquillity, that happiness,
that innocence and good conscience he so badly missed. It required a great deal of circumspection
and self-control. It cost him much
effort. Moreover, his handsome and
gifted small son Tito very soon became a focal point of struggle and intrigue,
of courting and jealousy, until the boy, pampered and excessively loved by both
parents, inclined more and more to his mother's side and became her
partisan. That was the latest and, so it
seemed, the bitterest sorrow and loss in Designori's
life. It had not broken him; he had
assimilated it and found an attitude towards it, a dignified, but grave, worn,
and melancholy way of bearing it.
While Knecht
was gradually learning all this from his friend in the course of frequent
visits, he had also told him a great deal about his own experiences and
problems. He was careful not to let Plinio fall into the position of the one who has made his
confession only to regret it at a later hour or, with a change of mood, to wish
to take it all back. On the contrary, he
won Plinio's confidence by his own candour and
strengthened it by his own revelations.
In the course of time he showed his friend what his own life was like -
a seemingly simple, upright, regulated life within a carefully structured
hierarchic order, a career filled with success and recognition, but
nevertheless a hard and completely lonely life of many sacrifices. And although as an outsider there was much
that Plinio could not entirely grasp, he did
understand the main currents and basic emotions. Certainly he could understand Knecht's craving to reach out to the youth, to the younger
pupils unspoiled by miseducation, and sympathize with
his desire for some modest employment such as that of a Latin or music teacher
in a lower school, free of glamour and of the eternal obligation to play a
public role. It was wholly in the style
of Knecht's methods of teaching and psychotherapy
that he not only won over this patient by his frankness, but also planted the
thought in Plinio's mind that he could help his
friend, and thus spurred him really to do so.
For in fact Designori could be highly useful
to the Magister, not so much in helping him to solve
his main problem, but in satisfying his curiosity and thirst for knowledge
about innumerable details of life in the world.
We do not know why Knecht
undertook the difficult task of teaching his melancholy boyhood friend to smile
and laugh again, or whether any thought of a reciprocal service was
involved. Designori,
at any rate, who was certainly in a position to know, did not think so. He later said: "Whenever I try to fathom
how my friend Knecht managed to do anything with a
person as confirmedly unhappy as myself, I see more and more plainly that his
power was based on magic and, I must add, on a streak of roguishness. He was an arch-rogue, far more than his own
underlings realized, full of playfulness, wit, slyness, delighting in
magician's tricks, in guises, in surprising disappearances and appearances. I think that the very moment I first turned
up at the Castalian Board meeting he resolved to
snare me and exert his special sort of influence on me - that is, to awaken and
reform me. At any rate, he took pains to
win me over from the very first. Why he
did it, why he bothered with me, I cannot say.
I think men of his sort usually do things unconsciously, as a kind of
reflex. When they encounter someone in
distress they feel it as their task to respond to that appeal immediately. He found me distrustful and shy, by no means
ready to fall into his arms, let alone ask him for help.
"He found me, his once frank and
communicative friend, disillusioned and reticent; yet this very obstacle seemed
to stimulate him. He did not give up,
prickly though I was, and he finally achieved what he wanted. Among other things he made it seem that our
relationship was one of mutual aid, as though my strength were equal to his, my
worth to his, my need of help paralleled by an equal need on his part. In our very first long conversation he
implied that he had been waiting for something like my appearance, that he had
in fact been longing for it, and gradually he admitted me into his plan of
resigning his office and leaving the Province.
He always made me aware of how much he counted on my advice, my
assistance, my secrecy, since aside from me he had not a single friend in the
world outside, and no experience at all with the world. I admit that I liked to feel this, and that
it contributed a good deal towards my trusting him completely and my putting myself more or less at his mercy. I believed him absolutely. But later, in the course of time, the whole
thing began to seem totally dubious and improbable, and I would have been unable
to say whether and to what extent he really expected something from me, and
whether his way of capturing me was innocent or politic, naive or sly, sincere
or contrived and a kind of game. He was
so far superior to me, and did me so much good, that I would never have
ventured to look deeper into the matter.
In any case, nowadays I regard the fiction that his situation was
similar to mine, and he just as dependent on my sympathy and aid as I on his,
as merely a form of politeness, an engaging and pleasant web of suggestion that
he wove around me. Only that to this day
I cannot say to what extent his game with me was conscious, preconceived, and
deliberate, to what extent it was in spite of everything naive and a pure
product of his nature. For Magister Joseph was certainly a great artist. On the one hand his urge to educate, to
influence, to heal and help and develop the personalities of others, was so
strong that he scarcely scrupled about the means he used; on the other hand it
was impossible for him to undertake even the smallest task without devoting
himself totally to it. But one thing is
certain: that at the time he took me under his wing like a friend and like a
great physician and guide. He did not
let go of me once he held me, and ultimately he awakened me and cured me as far
as that was possible. And the remarkable
thing, so utterly typical of him, was that while he pretended to be asking me
to help him escape from his office, and while he listened calmly and often with
actual approval to my crude and simple-minded jibes at Castalia, and while he
himself was struggling to free himself from Castalia, he actually lured and
guided me back there. He persuaded me to
return to meditation. He schooled and
reshaped me by means of Castalian music and
contemplation, Castalian serenity, Castalian fortitude.
He made me, who in spite of my longing for your way had become so
utterly un-Castalian and anti-Castalian,
into one of your sort again; he transformed my unrequited love for you into a
requited love."
Such were Designori's
comments, and no doubt he had reason for his admiring gratitude. It may not be too difficult to teach boys and
young men the lifestyle of the Order, with the aid of our tried and true
methods. It was surely a difficult task
in the case of a man who was already approaching his fiftieth year, even if
this man were himself full of good will.
Not that Designori ever became anything like a
model Castalian.
But Knecht succeeded fully in what he had set
out to do; in lifting the bitter weight of unhappiness, in leading Designori's touchy, vulnerable soul back to something like
harmony and serenity, and in replacing a number of his bad habits by good
ones. Naturally the Magister
Ludi could not himself undertake all the detailed
work that was involved. He enlisted the
apparatus and energies of Waldzell and the Order on
behalf of this honoured guest. For a
while he even dispatched a meditation master from Hirsland,
the seat of the Order's directorate, to stay a while with Designori
and supervise his exercises. But the
whole plan and direction of the cure remained in Knecht's
hand.
It was in his eighth year as Magister that he at last yielded to his friend's repeated
invitations and visited him at his home in the capital. With permission from the directorate of the
Order, with whose President, Alexander, he had close and affectionate
relations, he devoted a holiday to his visit.
Although he expected a great deal of it, he had been putting it off for
a whole year, partly because he first wished to be sure of his friend, partly,
no doubt, out of a natural timidity.
This was, after all, his first step into the world from which his friend
Plinio had brought his stony sadness, the world which
held so many important secrets for him.
He found the modern house which his
friend had exchanged for the old Designori townhouse
presided over by a stately, highly intelligent, and reserved lady. She, however, was dominated by her handsome,
cheeky, and rather ill-behaved son, who seemed to be the centre of everything
here and who had apparently taken over from his mother a supercilious and
rather insulting attitude towards his father.
Initially rather cool and suspicious of
everything Castalian, both mother and son soon came
under the spell of the Magister, whose office gave
him, in their eyes, an almost mythical aura of mystery and consecration. Nevertheless, the atmosphere during this
first visit was stiff and forced. Knecht remained rather quiet, observing and awaiting
events. The lady of the house received
him with formal politeness and inner distaste, as if he were a high officer of
some enemy army being quartered on her.
Tito, the son, was the least constrained of the three; probably he had
often enough looked on in amusement on similar situations. No doubt he had also profited by them. His father seemed to be only playing the part
of master of the house. Between him and
his wife the prevailing tone was one of gentle, cautious, rather anxious
politeness, as if each of them were walking on tiptoe. This tone was maintained far more easily and
naturally by the wife than by her husband.
As for the son, Plinio was always making
overtures of comradeship to the boy which were at
times taken up for selfish reasons, at other times impudently rebuffed.
In short, the three lived together in a
sultry atmosphere of effort, guiltiness, and sternly repressed impulses, filled
with fear of friction and eruptions, in a state of perpetual tension. The style of behaviour and speech, like the
style of the whole house, was a little too careful and deliberate, as though a
solid wall had to be built against eventual breaches and assaults. Knecht also noted
that a great deal of Plinio's regained serenity had
vanished from his face again. Though in Waldzell or in the guesthouse of the Order in Hirsland he was by now almost free of gloom, in his own
house he still stood in the shadows, and provoked as much criticism as pity.
The house was a fine one. It bespoke wealth and luxurious tastes. In each room the furnishings were of the
right proportions for the space; each was tuned to a pleasant harmony of two or
three colours, with here and there a valuable work of art. Knecht looked about
him with pleasure; but in the end all these delights to the eye struck him as a
shade too handsome, too perfect, and too well thought out. There was no sense of growth, of movement, of
renewal. He sensed that this beauty of
the house and its belongings was also meant as a kind of spell, a defensive
gesture, and that these rooms, pictures, vases, and flowers enclosed and
accompanied a life of vain longing for harmony and beauty which could be
attained only in the form of tending such well co-ordinated surroundings.
It was in the period after this visit,
with its somewhat unedifying impressions, that Knecht
sent a meditation teacher to his friend's home.
After having spent a single day in the curiously taut and charged
atmosphere of this house, the Magister understood
much that he had not wished to know but needed to learn for his friend's
sake. Nor was this first visit the
last. He came again, several times, and
on some of these occasions the talk turned to education and the difficulties
with young Tito. In these conversations
Tito's mother took a lively part. The Magister gradually won the confidence and liking of this
highly intelligent and sceptical woman.
Once, when he said half-jokingly that it was a pity her boy had not been
sent to Castalia early, while there was still time for him to be educated
there, she took the remark seriously as if it were a reproof, and came to her
own defence. She doubted, she said,
whether Tito would have been admitted; he was gifted enough, certainly, but
hard to handle, and she would never have wished to impose her own ideas on the
boy. After all, a similar attempt in the
case of his father had not worked out well.
Besides, neither she nor her husband had ever thought to claim the old Designori family privilege for their son, since they had
broken with Plinio's father and the whole tradition
of the ancient house. Finally, she
added, with a painful smile, that in any case she would not have been able to
part with her child, since he was all that made her life worth living.
Knecht gave a
great deal of thought to this last remark, which obviously had been made
without reflection. So her house, in
which everything was so distinguished, elegant, and harmonious, so her husband,
her politics, her party, the heritage of the father she had once adored - so
all this was not enough to give meaning to her life. Only her child could make it worth
living. And she would rather allow this
child to grow up under the harmful conditions that prevailed in this house than
be separated from him for his own good.
For so sensible and seemingly so cool and intellectual a woman, this was
an astonishing confession. Knecht could not help her as directly as he had her
husband, nor did he have the slightest intention of trying. But as a result of his rare visits and of the
fact that Plinio was under his influence, some
moderation and a reminder of better ways were introduced into the warped and
wrong-headed family situation. The Magister himself, however, as he gained increasing
influence and authority in the Designori household
with each succeeding visit, found himself more and more puzzled by the life of
these worldly people. Unfortunately we
know very little about his visits in the capital and the things he saw and
experienced there, so that we must content ourselves with the matters we have
already indicated.
Knecht had not
hitherto approached the President of the Order in Hirsland
any more closely than his official functions demanded. He probably saw him only at those plenary
sessions of the Board of Educators which took place in Hirsland,
and even then the President generally performed only the more formal and
ornamental duties, the reception and congé of his
colleagues, with the principal work of conducting the session being left to the
Speaker. The previous President, who at
the time of Knecht's assuming office was already an
old man, had been highly respected by the Magister Ludi, but had made not a single gesture towards lessening
the distance between them. For Knecht, he was scarcely a human being, no longer had any
personality; he hovered, a high priest, a symbol of dignity and composure,
silent summit and crowning glory, above the entire hierarchy. This venerable man had recently died, and the
Order had elected Alexander its new President.
Alexander was the same Meditation Master
whom the heads of the Order had assigned to our Joseph Knecht
years ago, during the early period of his magistracy. Ever since, the Magister
had retained an affectionate gratitude for this exemplary representative of the
spirit of hierarchy. And Alexander
himself, during the time he daily watched over the Magister
Ludi and became virtually his father confessor, had
seen enough of his personality and conduct to come to love him. Both grew aware of the hitherto latent
friendship from the moment that Alexander became Knecht's
colleague and President of the Order.
Henceforth they saw each other frequently and had work to do
together. It was true that this
friendship lacked a foundation in everyday, commonplace tasks, just as it
lacked shared experiences in youth. It
was rather the mutual sympathy of the colleagues at the summit of their
respective vocations, who expressed their friendliness by a
slightly greater warmth in greetings and leave-takings, by the deftness
of their mutual comprehension, at most by a few minutes of chatting during
brief breaks at the sitting of the Board.
Constitutionally, the President, who was
also called Master of the Order, was in no way superior to his colleagues, the
other Magisters.
But he had acquired an indefinable superiority due to the tradition that
the Master of the Order presided over the meetings of the Supreme Board. And as the Order had grown more meditative
and monastic during the last several decades, his authority had increased -
although only within the hierarchy and the Province, not outside it. Within the Board of Educators, the President
of the Order and the Master of the Glass Bead Game had more and more become the
twin exponents and representatives of the Castalian
spirit. As against the ancient
disciplines handed down from pre-Castalian eras -
such as grammar, astronomy, mathematics, or music - the Glass Bead Game and
discipline of the mind through meditation had become the truly characteristic
values of Castalia. It was therefore of
some significance that the two present leaders in these fields stood in a
friendly relationship to each other. For
each it was a vindication of his own worth, for each an extra dash of warmth
and satisfaction in his life; for both it was an additional spur to the
fulfilment of their task of embodying in their own persons the deepest values,
the sacral energies of the Castalian world.
To Knecht,
therefore, this meant one more tie, one more counterpoise to his growing urge
to renounce everything and achieve a breakthrough into a new and different
sphere of life. Nevertheless, this urge
developed inexorably. Ever since he
himself had become fully aware of it - that may have been in the sixth or
seventh year of his magistracy - it had grown steadily stronger. Subscribing as he did to the idea of
"awakening", he had unfalteringly received it into his conscious life
and thinking. We believe we may say that
from that time on the thought of his coming departure from his office and from
the Province was familiar to him. Sometimes it seemed like a prisoner's belief
in eventual freedom, sometimes like knowledge of impending death as it must
appear to a man gravely ill.
During his first frank conversation with
Plinio, he had for the first time expressed the thing
in words. Perhaps he had done so only in
order to win over his friend and persuade him to open his heart; but perhaps
also he had intended, by this initial act of communication, to turn this new
awakening of hi, this new attitude towards life, in an outward direction. That is, by letting someone into his secret
he was taking a first step towards making it a reality. In his further conversations with Designori, Knecht's desire to
shed his present mode of life sooner or later, to undertake the leap into a new
life, assumed the status of a decision.
Meanwhile, he carefully built on his friendship with Plinio,
who by now was bound to him not only by his former admiration, but also by the
gratitude of a cured patient. In that
friendship Knecht now possessed a bridge to the
outside world and to its life so laden with enigmas.
It need not surprise us that the Magister waited so long before allowing his friend Tegularius a glimpse of his secret and of his plan for
breaking away. Although he had shaped
each of his friendships with kindness and with regard for the good of the
other, he had always managed to keep a clear, independent view of these
relationships, and to direct their course.
Now, with the re-entry of Plinio into his
life, a rival to Fritz had appeared, a new-old friend with claims upon Knecht's interest and emotions. Knecht could
scarcely have been surprised that Tegularius reacted
with signs of violent jealousy. For a
while, until he had completely won over Designori,
the Magister may well have found Fritz's
sulky withdrawal a welcome relief. But
in the long run another consideration took a larger place in his thoughts. How could he reconcile a person like Tegularius to his desire to slip away from Waldzell and out of his magistracy? Once Knecht left Waldzell, he would be lost to this friend forever. To take Fritz along on the narrow and
perilous path that lay before him was unthinkable, even if Fritz should
unexpectedly manifest the desire and the courage for the enterprise.
Knecht waited,
considered, and hesitated for a very long time before initiating Fritz into his
plans. But he finally did so, after his
decision to leave had long been settled.
It would have been totally unlike him to keep his friend in the dark,
and more or less behind his back prepare steps whose consequences would deeply
affect him as well. If possible Knecht wanted to make him, like Plinio,
not only an initiate, but also a real or imaginary aide, since activity makes
every situation more bearable.
Knecht had, of
course, long ago made his friend privy to his ideas about the doom threatening
the Castalian organization, as far as he cared to
communicate these ideas and Tegularius to receive
them. After he resolved to tell Fritz of
his intentions, the Magister used these ideas as his
link. Contrary to his expectations, and
to his great relief, Fritz did not take a tragic view of the plan. Rather, the notion that a Magister
might fling his post back at the Board, shake the dust of Castalia from his
feet, and seek out a life that suited his tastes, seemed to please Fritz. The idea actually amused him. Individualist and enemy of all
standardization that he was, Tegularius invariably
sided with the individual against authority.
If there were prospect of fighting, taunting, outwitting the powers of
officialdom, he was always for it.
His reaction gave Knecht
a valuable clue as to how to go on. With
an easier conscience, and laughing inwardly, the Magister
promptly entered into his friend's attitude.
He did not disabuse Fritz of his notion that the whole thing was a kind
of coup de main against bureaucracy, and assigned him the part of an
accomplice, collaborator, and conspirator.
It would be necessary to work out a petition from the Magister to the Board, he said - an exposition of all the
reasons that prompted him to resign his office.
The preparation of this petition was to be chiefly Tegularius's
task. Above all he must assimilate Knecht's historical view of the origins, development, and
present state of Castalia, then gather historical materials with which Knecht's desires and proposals could be documented. That this would lead him into a field he had
hitherto rejected and scorned, the field of history, seemed not to disturb Tegularius at all, and Knecht
quickly taught him the necessary procedures.
Soon Tegularius had immersed himself in his
new assignment with the eagerness and tenacity he always had for odd and
solitary enterprises. This obstinate
individualist took a fierce delight in these studies which would place him in a
position to challenge the bigwigs and the hierarchy in general, and show them
their shortcomings.
Joseph Knecht
took no such pleasure in these endeavours, nor had he any faith in their
outcome. He was determined to free
himself from the fetters of his present situation, leaving himself unencumbered
for tasks which he felt were awaiting him.
But he fully realized that he could not overpower the Board by rational
arguments, nor delegate Tegularius any part of the
real work that had to be done.
Nevertheless, he was very glad to know that Fritz was occupied and
diverted for the short while that they would still be living in proximity to
each other. The next time he saw Plinio Designori he was able to
report: "Friend Tegularius is now busy, and
compensated for what he thinks he has lost because of your reappearance on the
scene. His jealous is almost cured, and
working on something for me and against my colleagues is doing him good. He is almost happy. But don't imagine, Plinio,
that I count on anything concrete coming out of this project, aside from the
benefit to himself.
It is most unlikely that our highest authority will grant this petition
of mine. In fact, it's out of the
question. At best they will reply with a
mild reprimand. What dooms my request is
the nature of our hierarchy itself. A
Board that would release its Magister Ludi in response to a petition, no matter how persuasively
argued, and would assign him to work outside Castalia, wouldn't be to my liking
at all. Besides, there is the character
of our present Master of the Order.
Master Alexander is a man whom nothing can bend. No, I shall have to fight this battle out
alone. But let us allow Tegularius to exercise his mind for the present. All we lose by that is a little time, so well
arranged that my departure will cause no harm to Waldzell. But meanwhile you must find me some place to
live on the outside, and some employment, no matter how modest; if necessary I
shall be content with a position as a music teacher, say. It need only be a beginning, a
springboard."
Designori said
he thought something could be found, and when the time came his house was at
his friend's disposal for as long as he liked.
But Knecht would not accept that.
"No," he said, "I
wouldn't do as a guest; I must have some work.
Besides, my staying more than a few days in your house, lovely as it is,
would only add to the tensions and troubles there. I have great confidence in you, and your
wife, too, nowadays treats me in a friendly way, but all this would look
entirely different as soon as I ceased to be a visitor and Magister
Ludi, and became a refugee and permanent guest."
"Surely you're being a little too
literal-minded about it," Plinio said. "Once you've made your break and are
living in the capital, you'll soon be offered a suitable post, at least a
professorship at the university - you can count on that as a certainty. But such things take time, as you know, and
of course I can only begin working on your behalf after you have won your
freedom."
"Of course," the Master
said. "Until then my decision must
remain secret. I cannot offer myself to
your authorities before my own authority here has been informed and has made
its decision; that goes without saying.
But for the present, you know, I am not at all seeking a public
appointment. My wants are few, probably
fewer than you can imagine. I need a
little room and my daily bread, but above all work to do, some task as a
teacher; I need one or a few pupils to whom I can be near and whom I can
influence. A university post is the last
thing on my mind. I would be just as
glad - no, I would by far prefer - to work with a boy as a private tutor, or
something of the sort. What I am seeking
and what I need is a simple, natural task, a person who needs me. Appointment at a university would from the
start mean my fitting into a traditional, sanctified, and mechanized
bureaucracy, and what I crave is just the opposite of that."
Hesitantly, Designori
brought up the project that had been on his mind for some time.
"I do have something to
propose," he said, "and hope you will at
least think it over. If you can possibly
accept it, you would be doing me a service too.
Since that first day I visited you here you have given me a great deal
of help. You've also come to know my household
and know how things stand there. My
situation isn't good, but it is better than it has been for years. The thorniest problem is the relationship
between me and my son. He is spoiled and
impudent; he's made himself a privileged position in our house - as you know,
this was virtually pressed on him while he was still a child and courted by
both his mother and myself. Since then
he's decidedly gone over to his mother's side, and gradually whatever authority
I might have had over him has been adroitly taken out of my hands. I have resigned myself to that, as I have to
so much else in my botched life. But now
that I have recovered somewhat, thanks to you, I've regained hope. You can see what I am driving at. I would think it a piece of great good
fortune if Tito, who is having difficulties in school anyhow, were to have a
tutor who would take him in hand. It's a
selfish request, I know, and I have no idea whether the task appeals to you at
all. But you've encouraged me to make
the suggestion, at least."
Knecht smiled
and extended his hand.
"Thank you, Plinio. No proposal could be more welcome to me. The only thing lacking is your wife's
consent. Furthermore, the two of you
must be prepared to leave your son entirely to me for the time being. If I am to do anything with him, the daily
influence of his home must be excluded.
You must talk to your wife and persuade her to accept this
condition. Go at it cautiously; give
yourselves time."
"Do you really think you can do
something with Tito?" Designori asked.
"Oh yes, why not? He has good blood and high endowments from
both parents. What is missing is the
harmony of these forces. My task will be
to awaken in him the desire for this harmony, or rather to strengthen it and
ultimately to make him conscious of it.
I shall be happy to try."
Thus Joseph Knecht
had his two friends occupied with his affair, each in a different way. While Designori in
the capital presented the new plan to his wife and tried to couch it in terms
acceptable to her, Tegularius sat in a carrel in the
library at Waldzell following up Knecht's
leads and gathering material for the petition.
The Magister had put out good bait in the
reading matter he had prescribed. Fritz Tegularius, the fierce despiser of history, sank his teeth
into the history of the warring epoch, and became thoroughly infatuated with
it. With his enthusiasm for any pastime,
he ferreted out more and more anecdotes from that epoch in the dark prehistory
of the Order. Soon he had collected such
copious notes that when he presented them to his friend, Knecht
could only use a tenth of them.
During this period Knecht
made several visits to the capital.
Because a sound, integrated personality often finds easy access to
troubled and difficult people, Designori's wife came
to trust him more and more. Soon she
consented to her husband's plan. Tito
himself, on one of these visits, boldly informed the Magister
that he no longer wished to be addressed with the familiar pronoun, as if he
were a child, since everyone nowadays, including his teacher, used the polite
pronoun to him. Knecht
thanked him with perfect courtesy and apologized. In his Province, he explained, the teachers
used the familiar form to all students, even those who were quite grown
up. After dinner he invited the boy to
go for a walk with him and show him something of the city.
In the course of the walk Tito guided
him down a stately street in the old part of the city, where the centuries-old
houses of wealthy patrician families stood in an almost unbroken row. Tito paused in front of one of these
substantial, tall, and narrow buildings and pointed to a shield over the
doorway. "Do you know what that
is?" he asked. When Knecht said he did not, he explained: "Those are the Designori arms, and this is our old house. It belonged to the family for three hundred
years. But we are living in our
meaningless, commonplace house just because after grandfather's death my father
took it into his head to sell this marvellous old mansion and build himself a
fashionable place that by now isn't so modern any more. Can you understand anyone's acting like
that?"
"Are you very sorry about the old
house?" Knecht asked.
"Very sorry," Tito said
passionately, and repeated his question: "Can you understand anyone's
acting like that?"
"Things become understandable if
you look at them in the right light," the Magister
said. "An old house is a fine
thing, and if the two had stood side by side and your father
were choosing between them, he probably would have kept the old
one. Certainly, old houses are beautiful
and distinguished, especially so handsome a one as this. But it is also a beautiful thing to build
one's own house, and when an ambitious young man has the choice of comfortably
and submissively settling into a finished nest, or building an entirely new
one, one can well see that he may decide to build. As I know your father - and I knew him when
he was a spirited fellow just about as old as you are - the sale of the house
probably hurt no one more than himself. He had had a painful conflict with his father
and his family, and it seems his education in our Castalia was not altogether
the right thing for him. At any rate it
could not deter him from several impatient acts of passion. Probably the sale of the house was one of
those acts. He meant it as a thrust at
tradition, a declaration of war upon his family, his father, the whole of his
past and his dependency. At least that
is one way to see it. But man is a
strange creature, and so another idea does not appear altogether improbable to
me, the idea that by selling this old house your father wanted primarily to
hurt himself rather than the family. To be sure, he was angry at the family; they
had sent him to our elite schools, had given him our kind of education, only to
confront him on his return with tasks, demands, and claims he could not
handle. But I would rather go no further
in psychological analysis. In any case
the story of this sale shows how telling the conflict between fathers and sons
can be - this hatred, this love turned to hate.
In forceful and gifted personalities this conflict rarely fails to
develop - world history is full of examples.
Incidentally, I could very well imagine a later young Designori who would make it his mission in life to regain
possession of the house for the family at all costs."
"Well," Tito exclaimed,
"wouldn't you think he was right?"
"I would not like to judge
him. If a later Designori
recalls the greatness of his family and the obligations that such greatness
imposes, if he serves the city, the country, the nation, justice, and welfare
with all his energies and in the process grows so strong that he can recover
the house, then he will be a worthy person and we would want to take our hats
off to him. But if he knows no other
goal in life besides this house business, then he is merely obsessed, a
fanatic, a man surrendering to a passion, and in all probability someone who
never grasped the meaning of such youthful conflicts with a father and so went
on shouldering their load long after he became a man. We can understand and even pity him, but he
will not increase the fame of his lineage.
It is fine when an old family remains affectionately attached to its
residence, but rejuvenation and new greatness spring solely from sons who serve
greater goals than the aims of the family."
Although on this walk Tito listened
attentively and quite willingly to his father's guest, on other occasions he
exhibited dislike and fresh defiance. In
this man, whom his otherwise discordant parents both seemed to hold in high
esteem, Tito sensed a power which threatened his own pampered freedom, so that
at times he treated Knecht with outright
rudeness. Each time, however, he would
be sorry and try to make up for such breaches, for it offended his self-esteem
to have shown weakness in the face of the serene courtesy that surrounded the Magister like a coat of shining armour. Secretly, too, in his inexperienced and
rather unruly heart, he sensed that this was a man he might love and revere.
He felt this particularly one half-hour
when he came upon Knecht alone, waiting for his
father, who was busy with affairs. At
Tito entered the room he saw their guest sitting still, with eyes half closed,
in a statuesque pose, radiating such tranquillity and peace in his meditation
that the boy instinctively checked his stride and began to tiptoe out of the
room again. But at the point the Magister opened his eyes, gave him a friendly greeting,
rose, indicated the piano in the room, and asked whether he liked music.
Tito said he did, although he had not
had music lessons for quite some time and had left off practising because he
was not doing so well in school and those drill-masters who called themselves
teachers were always keeping after him.
Still and all he'd always enjoyed listening to music. Knecht opened the
piano, sat down at it, found it was tuned, and played an andante movement of
Scarlatti's which he had recently used as the basis for a Glass Bead Game
exercise. Then he stopped, and seeing
the boy rapt and attentive, began outlining more or less what took place in
such an exercise. He dissected the
music, giving examples of some of the analytical methods that could be used and
the ways the music could be translated into the hieroglyphs of the Game.
For the first time Tito saw the Magister not as a guest, not as a learned celebrity whom he
resented as a danger to his own self-esteem.
Rather, he saw him at his work, a man who had acquired a subtle,
exacting art and practised it with a masterly hand. Tito could only dimly sense the meaning of
that art, but it seemed to be deserving of full devotion and to call forth all
the powers of an integrated personality.
That this man thought him grown-up and intelligent enough to be
interested in these complicated matters also gave him greater assurance. He grew quiet, and during this half-hour he
began to divine the sources of this remarkable man's cheerfulness and unruffled
calm.
During this last period Knecht's official activities were almost as strenuous as
they had been in the difficult time after his assumption of office. He was determined to leave all the areas
under his control in exemplary condition.
Moreover, he achieved this aim, although he failed in his further aim of
making his own person appear dispensable, or at least easily replaceable. That is almost always the case with the
highest offices in our Province. The Magister hovers rather like a supreme ornament, a gleaming
insignia, above the complex affairs of his domain. He comes and goes rapidly, flitting amiably
by, says a few words, nods an assent, suggests an assignment by a gesture, and
is already gone, already talking to the next subordinate. He plays on his official apparatus like a
musician on his instrument, seems to expend no force and scarcely any thought,
yet everything runs as it should. But
every official in this apparatus knows what it means when the Magister is away or ill, what it means to find a substitute
for him even for a few hours or a day.
Knecht spent
his time rushing once more through the whole principality of the Vicus Lusorum, checking
everything and especially taking pains to secretly groom his Shadow for the
task the man would soon confront, that of representing
him in all earnest. But all the while he
could observe that at heart he had already liberated himself from all this, had
moved far away from it. The preciosity of this well-arranged little world no longer
enraptured him. He saw Waldzell and his magisterial function as something that
already virtually lay behind him, a region he had passed through, which had
given him a great deal and taught him much, but which could no longer tempt him
to new accomplishments, to a fresh outpouring of energy. More and more, during this period of slowly
breaking loose and bidding farewell, he came to see the real reason for his
alienation and desire to escape. It was
probably not, he thought, his knowledge of the dangers to Castalia and his
anxiety about her future, but simply that a hitherto idle and empty part of his
self, of his heart and soul, was now demanding the right to fulfil itself.
At this time he once again carefully
studied the Constitution and Statutes of the Order. His escape from the Province would not, he
saw, be so hard to accomplish, so nearly impossible as he had initially
imagined. He did have the right to
resign his office on grounds of conscience, and even to leave the Order. The Order's vow was not a lifetime matter,
although members had claimed this freedom seldom, and
a member of the highest Board never.
What made the step seem so difficult to him was not so much the
strictness of the law but the hierarchic spirit itself, the loyalty within his
own heart. Of course he was not planning
to skip out; he was preparing a circumstantial petition for release, and that
dear fellow Tegularius was working day and night at
it. But he had no confidence in the
success of this petition. He would
receive soothing assurances, admonishments, would perhaps be offered a vacation
in Mariafels, where Father Jacobus
had recently died, or perhaps in