forced himself to display. For him, the best he had was departing with his friend. Knecht’s nature did not permit so passionate and above all so exclusive an attachment to a friend. If need be, he could get along without one and could direct his affections easily toward new objects and people. This parting was not a painful loss for him; but he knew his friend well enough to know what a shock and trial it meant for him, and he was concerned. He had given much thought to the nature of this friendship, and had once spoken about it with the Music Master. To a certain extent he had learned to objectify his own experience and feelings, and to regard them critically. In so doing he had become aware that it was not really, or at any rate not only, his friend’s great talent that attracted him to Tegularius. Rather, it was the association of this talent with such serious defects, such great fragility. And he realized that the single-mindedness of the love Tegularius offered him had not only its beautiful aspect, but also a dangerous attraction, for it tempted him to display his power over one weaker in strength though not in love. Therefore in this relationship he had made restraint and self-discipline his duty to the last. Fond though he was of Tegularius, the friendship would not have acquired so deep a meaning for him if it had not taught him something about the dominion he had over others weaker and less secure than himself. He learned that this power to influence others was part and parcel of the educator’s gift, and that it concealed dangers and imposed responsibility. Tegularius, after all, was only one of many. In the eyes of quite a few others Knecht read silent courtship.
At the same time, during the past year he had become far more conscious of the highly charged atmosphere in which he lived in the Glass Bead Game village. For there he was part of an officially nonexistent but very sharply defined circle, or class, the finest elite among the candidates and tutors of the Glass Bead Game. Now and then one or another of that group would be called upon to serve in an auxiliary capacity under the Magister or Archivist, or to help teach one of the Game courses; but they were never assigned to the lower or middle level of officialdom or the teaching corps. They provided the reserve for filling vacancies in leading posts. They knew one another thoroughly; they had almost no illusions about talents, characters, and achievements. And precisely because among these initiates and aspirants for the highest dignities each one was pre-eminent, each of the very first rank in performance, knowledge, and academic record — precisely for that reason those traits and nuances of character which predestined a candidate for leadership and success inevitably counted for a great deal and were closely observed. A dash more or less of graciousness, of suasion with younger men or with the authorities, of amiability, was of great importance in this group and could give its possessor a definitive edge over his rivals. Fritz Tegularius plainly belonged to this circle merely as an outsider; he was tolerated as a guest but kept at the periphery because he had no gift for rule. Just as plainly Knecht belonged to the innermost circle. What appealed to the young and made them his admirers was his wholesome vigor and still youthful charm which appeared to be resistant to passions, incorruptible and then again boyishly irresponsible — a kind of innocence, that is. And what commended him to his superiors was the reverse side of this innocence: his freedom from ambition and craving for success.
Of late, the effects of his personality had begun to dawn upon the young man. He became aware of his attraction for those below him, and gradually, belatedly, of how he affected those above him. And when he looked back from his new standpoint of awareness to his boyhood, he found both lines running through his life and shaping it. Classmates and younger boys had always courted him; superiors had taken benevolent note of him. There had been exceptions, such as Headmaster Zbinden; but on the other hand he had been recipient of such distinctions as the patronage of the Music Master, and latterly of Dubois and the Magister Ludi. It was all perfectly plain, in spite of which Knecht had never been willing to see it and accept it in its entirety. Obviously his fate was to enter the elite everywhere, to find admiring friends and highly placed patrons. It happened of its own accord, without his trying. Obviously he would not be allowed to settle down in the shadows at the base of the hierarchy; he must move steadily toward its apex, approach the bright light at the top. He would not be a subordinate or an independent scholar; he would be a master. That he grasped this later than others in a similar position gave him that indescribable extra magic, that note of innocence.
But why was it that he realized it so late, and so reluctantly? Because he had not sought it at all, and did not want it. He had no need to dominate, took no pleasure in commanding; he desired the contemplative far more than the active life, and would have been content to spend many years more, if not his whole life, as an obscure student, an inquiring and reverent pilgrim through the sanctuaries of the past, the cathedrals of music, the gardens and forests of mythology, languages and ideas. Now that he saw himself being pushed inexorably into the
The monastery of Mariafels, through the many centuries of its existence, had shared in the making and the suffering of the history of the West. It had experienced periods of flowering and decline, had passed through rebirths and new nadirs, and had been at various times and in assorted fields famous and brilliant. Once a center of Scholastic learning and the art of disputation, still possessing an enormous library of medieval theology, it had risen to new glory after periods of slackness and sluggishness. It then became famous for its music, its much-praised choir, and the Masses and oratorios composed and performed by the Fathers. From those days it still retained a fine musical tradition, half a dozen nut-brown chests full of music manuscripts, and the finest organ in the country. Then the monastery had entered a political era, which had likewise left behind a tradition and a certain skill. In times of war and barbarization Mariafels had several times become a little island of rationality where the better minds among the opposed parties cautiously sought each other out and groped their way toward reconciliation. And once — that was the last high point in its history — Mariafels had been the birthplace of a peace treaty which for a while met the longings of the exhausted nations. Afterward, when a new age began and Castalia was founded, the monastery took an attitude of wait-and-see, was in fact rather hostile, presumably on instructions from Rome. A request from the Board of Educators to grant hospitality to a scholar who wished to work for a time in the monastery’s Scholastic library was politely turned down, as was an invitation to send a representative to a conference of musicologists. Intercourse between Castalia and the monastery had first begun in the time of Abbot Pius, who in his latter years became keenly interested in the Glass Bead Game. Ever since then a friendly though not very lively relationship had developed. Books were exchanged, reciprocal hospitality granted. Knecht’s patron, the Music Master, had spent a few weeks in Mariafels during his younger years, copying music manuscripts and playing the famous organ. Knecht knew of this, and rejoiced at the prospect of staying in a place of which his venerated Master had occasionally spoken with pleasure.
The respect and politeness with which he was received went so far beyond his expectations that he felt rather embarrassed. This was, after all, the first time that Castalia had offered the monastery a Glass Bead Game player of high distinction for an indefinite period. Joseph had learned from Dubois that he was not to regard himself as an individual, especially during the early period of his stay, but solely as the representative of Castalia, and that he was to accept and respond both to courtesies and possible aloofness solely as an ambassador. That attitude helped him through his initial constraint.
He likewise soon overcame the feelings of strangeness, anxiety, and mild excitability which troubled his first few nights and kept him from sleeping. And since Abbot Gervasius displayed a good-natured and merry benevolence toward him, he quickly came to feel at ease in his new environment. The freshness and vigor of the landscape delighted him. The monastery was situated in rough, mountainous country, full of abrupt cliffs and pockets of rich pasture where handsome cattle grazed. He savored with deep pleasure the massiveness and size of the ancient buildings, in which the history of many centuries could be read. He enjoyed the beauty and simple comfort of his apartment, two rooms on the top floor of the guest wing. For recreation he went on exploratory walks through the fine little city-state with its two churches, cloisters, archives, library, Abbot’s apartment, and courtyards, with its extensive barns filled with thrifty livestock, its gurgling fountains, gigantic vaulted wine and fruit cellars, its two refectories, the famous chapter house, the well-tended gardens and the workshops of the lay brothers: cooper, cobbler, tailor, smith, and so on, all forming a small village around the largest courtyard. He was granted entry to the library; the organist showed him the great organ and allowed him to play on it; and he was strongly attracted to the chests in which an impressive number of unpublished and to some extent quite unknown music manuscripts of earlier ages awaited study.
The monks did not seem to be terribly impatient for him to begin his official functions. Not only days but
