Agathe by Robert Musil

Author:Robert Musil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2019-12-17T00:00:00+00:00

*Bonadea is Ulrich’s on-again, off-again mistress, who is obsessed with Ulrich and by whom Ulrich is bored.

16

AGATHE IS REALLY HERE

That evening a telegram arrived, and the next afternoon, Agathe.

Ulrich’s sister came with only a few suitcases, just the way she had envisioned leaving everything behind. Not that the quantity of her bags was wholly in keeping with the injunction: Throw everything you have into the fire, including your shoes. When Ulrich heard of this resolution, he laughed: there were even two hatboxes that had escaped the fire.

Agathe’s forehead assumed its charming expression of piqued dignity and futile rumination over the offense.

Whether Ulrich was right in finding fault with the incomplete expression of a vast and transporting emotion remained uncertain, for Agathe did not raise this question; the unavoidable gaiety and disorder aroused by her arrival whirled in her eyes and ears like the swaying undulations of dancers around a brass band: she was very cheerful and felt slightly disappointed, even though she had not expected anything definite and had even deliberately abstained from all expectations during her trip. It was only when she remembered the previous night, when she had not had any sleep, that she suddenly became very tired. She didn’t mind that Ulrich had to confess after a while that when he received the news of her arrival, it had been too late to postpone an appointment he had for that afternoon; he promised to be back in an hour and, with an elaborate fussiness that made them both laugh, prepared a bed for his sister on the divan in his study.

When Agathe woke up, the hour was long over, and Ulrich was nowhere to be seen. The room was sunk in deep dusk light and was so unfamiliar that the thought of now being in the midst of the new life she had been looking forward to frightened her. As far as she could make out, the walls were lined with books just as her father’s had been, and the tables were covered with papers. She curiously opened a door and entered the adjacent room: there she encountered wardrobes, a shoe tree, a boxing ball, barbells, a Swedish ladder. She walked on and found more books. She came to the bathroom, with its cologne, aromatic essences, brushes, and combs, then to her brother’s bed, to the hall with its hunting decor. Her path was marked by the flaring up and dying down of gaslight, but as chance would have it, Ulrich noticed nothing of this, even though he was already in the house; he had put off waking her in order to let her have a longer rest, and now he ran into her on the landing as he came up from the rarely used basement kitchen. He had gone there in search of refreshment for her, since on this day of unforeseen demands the house lacked even the most basic help. Now that they were standing side by side, Agathe felt the jumble of impressions she

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.