Authors: Robert Musil
Herr von Ketten watched his wife riding up the mountainside and could not bring himself to stop her. He felt no gratitude. Her action was something that neither bested his will nor yielded to it, but eluded him, luring him on into some other realm, making him ride after her in awkward silence, helpless as a lost soul.
Two days later he was again in the saddle. And eleven years later it was still the same. Too rashly attempted, the attack on Trent had failed, costing the nobles a third of their force at the very start, and with it more than half their boldness. Herr von Ketten, though wounded in the retreat, did not at once return home. For two days he lay hidden in a peasant's hut, and then he rode from castle to castle, trying to reawaken his allies' fighting-spirit. Having come too late to take part in their councils and preparations, after this setback he clung to the plan as a dog will cling to a bull's ear. He expounded to the other knights what lay in store for them if the Bishop's forces made a counter-attack before their own ranks were closed again; he urged on the faint-hearted and the miserly, squeezing money out of them, bringing up reinforcements, providing arms—and finally was chosen to be their captain in the field. At first his wounds still bled so profusely that he had to change the bandages twice a day; and, riding and counselling and trying to make up for his earlier absence, he gave no thought to his lovely Portuguese bride, who was surely anxious for him.
It was not until five days after he was wounded that he came to her, and then he remained only one day. She looked at him without asking questions, yet keenly, as one may follow the flight of an arrow, wondering if it will strike its mark.
He gathered his men together, down to the meanest lad on whom he could lay hands, manned the castle to withstand a siege, issued commands, and saw to everything. That day was all a shouting of men-at-arms, a neighing of horses, hauling of beams, clang of iron and stone. In the night he rode away. He was kind and tender as to some noble creature that one admires, but his gaze went straight ahead as if from under a helmet, even when he wore none. At their leave-taking the lady from Portugal, suddenly overwhelmed by a woman's feelings, pleaded to be allowed, at least now, to bathe his wounds and bind them up afresh. But he refused and took leave of her more hastily than was necessary, laughing as he did so. And then she also laughed.
The way the enemy fought out this campaign was violent wherever it could be so, as befitted the hard man of noble blood who wore the episcopal robes; but it was perhaps from these long womanish robes that he had also learnt to be supple, deceitful, and stubborn. Wealth and extensive possessions gradually proved what they could do, and ground was yielded only inch by inch, always only at the last moment, when rank and influence no longer sufficed to engage the help of allies. It was a way of fighting that avoided decisive action. As soon as resistance stiffened, there was a withdrawal; wherever it seemed to be slackening, there would be an onslaught. So it happened that sometimes a castle would be overrun and, if it had not been abandoned in time, all the inmates put to the sword. But at other times troops might be encamped in a district for weeks and nothing worse would happen than that some peasants' cow would be stolen or a few hens would have their necks twisted. The weeks lengthened into summer and winter, and the seasons revolved into years. Two powers were contending with each other, the one fierce and aggressive, but lacking in strength, the other resembling an indolent, soft, but dreadfully heavy body, made heavier still by the weight of time.
Herr von Ketten was well aware of all this. He had trouble in preventing the weakened, sullen forces of the knights from squandering the last of their strength in a sudden, hasty attack. He was always on the outlook for the exposed position, the turn of events, the unlikely constellation that only chance could bring about. So too his father had bided his time, and his father before him. And if one in his castle in the guise of a beautiful outlandish woman that he visited there in secret.
The first time he heard this Herr von Ketten neither frowned nor laughed: but his face became dark golden with joy. Often, when he sat by the camp-fire or at some peasant's hearth and the hard day behind him would seem to soften in the warmth, as rain-stiffened leather will grow soft again, he would think. He would think, at such times, of the Bishop of Trent, who slept on fresh linen, was surrounded by learned clerks, and had painters in his service, while he himself roamed like a wolf, circling round the enemy. He too could have that. He had installed a chaplain in his castle so that the needs of the spirit might be provided for, and a scrivener to read aloud, and a merry maid-in-waiting; a cook had been brought from a great distance, so that the castle's mistress need not hanker for the dishes she had known at home; wandering scholars and students would be given hospitality so that their conversation might afford some days of distraction; costly stuffs and tapestries came, so that the walls might be covered. Only he stayed away.
For a whole year, in that far country and on the journey, he had practised pretty speeches and flattery. For just as every well-made thing, be it steel or strong wine, horse or fountain, has a spirit of its own, so too the lords delle Catene had, and were not lacking in wit. But during that time he was far from his homeland and his essential being was something that he might ride towards for many weeks without reaching it. And even now he would sometimes unthinkingly make gallant speeches, but only so long as the horses were being rested in the stables. He would arrive late at night and ride away the next morning; or else he would be there from when the bell rang for Matins till the Angelus. He was as familiar to her as a thing long worn on one's person. When you laugh, that familiar thing also laughs—is shaken to and fro; when you walk, it goes with you; when your hand touches your own body, you feel the presence of that thing: but if you raise it up and contemplate it, it remains silent, it avoids your eyes. If he had ever remained longer, he would have had to be truly as he was. But he recalled that he had never said: I am this; or: I wish to be that. He had talked to her of hunting, of adventures and of things that he did. Nor had she ever done what young people so often do and asked him what he thought about this and about that, or said anything about what she would wish to be like when she was older; lively as she had been before, she had simply bloomed, silently, like a rose, and she had stood on the church steps ready to depart, as though on a mounting-block from which she would step into the saddle and ride into that other life.
He scarcely knew the two children she had borne him, but these two sons of his also loved him passionately—that remote father with whose fame their childish ears had rung since they could remember. It was a strange memory, that of the evening to which the second son owed his being. There she was, when he came home, in a soft light-grey robe patterned with dark grey flowers; her black hair was already plaited for the night, and her finely chiselled nose cast a sharp shadow into the smooth yellow of a book on which the lamplight shone, illumining the mysterious pictures it contained. It was like magic. Tranquilly the woman sat there, in her rich gown, the skirt flowing down in countless rippling folds—a figure rising out of itself and falling back into itself, like the water of a fountain. And is the water of a fountain anything that can be ransomed and redeemed, can it be set free by anything but magic or some miracle, and thus issue forth wholly out of its self-borne, swaying existence? Embracing the woman, might he not suddenly be brought up short by the force of some magical resistance? This was not so—but is tenderness not even more uncanny?
She looked at him, as he entered, like someone recognising an old cloak that one has not worn for a long time, has not even seen for a long time, and which remains a little strange, and yet one wraps it round oneself.
What intimate, familiar things, by contrast, did the strategies of war, and political cunning and anger and killing seem to him! An act is performed because some other act has preceded it. The Bishop relies on his gold pieces, and the captain on the nobility's powers of endurance. To command is a thing of clarity; such a life is day-bright, solid to the touch, and the thrust of a spear under an iron collar that has slipped is as simple as pointing one's finger at something and being able to say: This is.
this.
But the other thing is as alien as the moon.
Secretly Herr von Ketten loved this other thing. He took no delight in ordering his household or increasing his wealth. And although he had for years been fighting about possessions not his own, his desire was not a reaching out for the satisfaction of gain; it was a yearning from his very soul. It was in their brows that the Catene's power lay; but all that their power produced was voiceless actions. Every morning that he climbed into the saddle he again felt the happiness of not yielding, and this was the very soul of his soul. But when he dismounted at evening, often a sullen weariness of all the violence he had been living with would sink upon him, as though that day he had been straining all his resources lest, through no doing of his own, he should suddenly be radiant with some inner beauty for which he had no name. The Bishop, that slippered priest, could pray to God when Ketten pressed him hard. Ketten could only ride through standing corn, feel the horse's stubborn, billowing movement under him, and conjure up good will with blows of his iron gauntlet. But he was thankful that it should be so. He was glad that a man could live and cause others to die without that other thing. Thus one could deny and drive off something that crept towards the fire when one stared into the flames, something that was gone the moment one straightened up, stiff from dreaming, and turned round. Herr von Ketten sometimes became entangled in the long, intertwining threads of his thoughts when he remembered the Bishop to whom he was doing all this, and it seemed to him that only a miracle could straighten it all out.
His wife would summon the old steward and roam through the forest with him when she was not sitting gazing at the pictures in her books. Forest opens up before one, but its soul withdraws. She would press through the undergrowth, clamber over boulders, come upon tracks and spoors, and catch glimpses of animals, but she never came home having had more than such small adventures, difficulties overcome, curiosities satisfied, things from which all the life vanished as soon as one emerged from the forest. And that green
fata morgana
of which she had heard tell before she came to this country—as soon as one was no longer entering into it, it closed again behind one's back.
Rather indolently, meanwhile, she kept some order in the castle. As for her sons, neither of whom had ever seen the sea—were they really her children? At times it seemed to her they were young wolves. Once she was brought a wolf-cub that had been taken in the forest. And she looked after him too. He and the great hounds treated each other with uneasy tolerance, letting each other be without exchanging any sign. When the wolf-cub crossed the castle yard, they would stand up and watch him pass, but they neither barked nor growled. And even if he cast a sidelong glance at them, he would keep straight on, scarcely slackening his pace, only a little more stiff-legged, lest he should show any fear. He followed his mistress everywhere. He gave no sign of affection or of familiarity, merely turning his intense gaze to her often —but his gaze said nothing. She loved this wolf for his sinewiness, his brown coat, and the silent ferocity and intensity of his gaze, which reminded her of Herr von Ketten.
At last the moment came for which a man must wait. The Bishop fell ill and died, and the cathedral chapter was without leadership. Ketten sold his goods and chattels, mortgaged his land, and employed all his means to equip a small army entirely his own. Then he negotiated. Faced with the choice between having to continue the old struggle against newly armed forces and coming to terms, the chapter decided for the latter; and it was inevitable that Ketten, the last captain remaining, strong and menacing, in the field, should make advantageous terms for himself, while the cathedral chapter extorted what compensation it could from weaker and more hesitant foes.
So there was an end to what, by the fourth generation, had become like the wall of a room, a wall one sees facing one every morning at breakfast and does not really see at all. All at once this wall was not there. Hitherto everything had been as in the lives of all foregoing Kettens, and all that remained to be done in this Ketten's life was to round things out and set them in order, an artisan's aim in life, no goal for a great lord.
And then, as he was riding home, a fly stung him.
His hand at once began to swell, and he became very tired. He dismounted at the tavern in a small, poverty-stricken village, and, sitting at the greasy wooden table, he laid his head down on it, overcome by drowsiness. When he woke, at evening, he was in a fever. He would nevertheless have ridden on if he had been in haste; but he was not in haste now. In the morning, when he tried to mount, he was so dizzy that he slipped and fell. The swelling had already spread up his arm to his shoulder. Having forced his armour on, he had to be unbuckled again, and while he was standing there, letting it be done, he was shaken by such a fit of shivering as he had never known. His muscles twitched and jerked so that his hands would not obey him, and the half-unbuckled pieces of armour clattered like a loose roof-gutter in a gale. He felt this was unworthy of him, and laughed, with grimly set face, at his clattering; but his legs were weak as a child's. He sent a messenger to his wife, another to a surgeon, and yet another to a famous physician.
The surgeon, who was the first to arrive, prescribed hot compresses of healing herbs and asked for permission to use the knife. Ketten, who was now much more impatient to reach home, bade him cut—until he had half as many fresh wounds again as he had old ones. How strange it was to let pain be inflicted on one and not defend oneself! For two days he lay wrapped from head to toe in the healing herbal compresses, and then had himself carried home. The journey took three days, but this kill-or-cure treatment, which might indeed have caused his death by exhausting his remaining strength, seemed to have halted the malady : when they arrived, he lay in a high fever from the poison in his blood, but the infection had not spread further.