MAGISTER LUDI - THE GLASS BEAD GAME (Completed)

SIX - MAGISTER LUDI

KNECHT had DECIDED to postpone his final return to Waldzell until the spring, the time of the great public Glass Bead Game, the Ludus anniversarius or sollemnis. The era when annual Games lasted for weeks and were attended by dignitaries and representatives from all over the world — what we may call the great age in the memorable history of these Games — already belonged forever to the past. But these spring sessions, with the one solemn Game that usually lasted for ten days to two weeks, still remained the great festive event of the year for all of Castalia. It was a festival not without its high religious and moral importance, for it brought together the advocates of all the sometimes disparate tendencies of the Province in an act of symbolic harmony. It established a truce between the egotistic ambitions of the several disciplines, and recalled to mind the unity which embraced their variety. For believers it possessed the sacramental force of true consecration; for unbelievers it was at least a substitute for religion; and for both it was a bath in the pure springs of beauty. The Passions of Johann Sebastian Bach had once upon a time — not so much in the time they were written as in the century following their rediscovery — been in similar fashion a genuine consecratory act for some of the performers and audience, a form of worship and religious substitute for others, and for all together a solemn manifestation of art and of the Creator spiritus. Knecht had had scant difficulty obtaining the consent of both the monks and his home authorities for his decision. He could not quite determine the nature of his position after his reassignment to the little republic of the Vicus Lusorum, but he suspected that he would not long be left unoccupied and would soon be burdened and honored with some new office or mission. For the present he looked forward happily to returning home, to seeing his friends and participating in the approaching festival. He enjoyed his last days with Father Jacobus, and accepted with dignity and good humor the rather demonstrative kindnesses of the Abbot and monks when the time came for farewells. Then he left, feeling some sadness at parting from a place he had grown fond of and from a stage in his life he was now leaving behind, but also in a mood of festive anticipation, for although he lacked guidance and companions, he had, on his own initiative, scrupulously undertaken the whole series of meditation exercises prescribed as preparations for the festival Game. He had not been able to prevail on Father Jacobus to accept the Magister Ludi's formal invitation to attend the annual Game and accompany him, but this had not affected his good spirits; he understood the old anti-Castalian's reserved attitude, and he himself for the moment felt entirely relieved of all duties and restrictions and ready to surrender his whole mind to the impending ceremonies. Festivities have their own peculiar nature. A genuine festival cannot go entirely wrong, unless it is spoiled by the unfortunate intervention of higher powers. For the devout soul, even in a downpour a procession retains its sacral quality, and a burned feast does not depress him. For the Glass Bead Game player every annual Game is festive and in a sense hallowed. Nevertheless, as every one of us knows, there are some festivals and games in which everything goes right, and every element lifts up, animates, and exalts every other, just as there are theatrical and musical performances which without any clearly discernible cause seem to ascend miraculously to glorious climaxes and intensely felt experiences, whereas others, just as well prepared, remain no more than decent tries. Insofar as the achievement of intense experiences depends on the emotional state of the spectator, Joseph Knecht had the best imaginable preparation: he was troubled by no cares, returning from abroad loaded with honors, and looking forward with joyous anticipation to the coming event. Nevertheless, this time the Ludus sollemnis was not destined to be touched by that aura of the miraculous and so rise to a special degree of consecration and radiance. It turned out, in fact, a cheerless, distinctly unhappy, and something very close to an unsuccessful Game. Although many of the participants may have felt edified and exalted all the same, the real actors and organizers of the Game, as always in such cases, felt all the more inexorably that atmosphere of apathy, lack of grace and failure, of inhibition and bad luck which overshadowed this festival. Knecht, although he of course sensed it and found his high expectations somewhat dashed, was by no means among those who felt the fiasco most keenly. Even though the solemn act failed to reach the true peak of perfection and blessing, he was able, because he was not playing and bore no responsibility for it, to follow the ingeniously constructed Game appreciatively, as a devout spectator, to let the meditations quiver to a halt undisturbed, and with grateful devotion to share that experience so familiar to all guests at these Games: the sense of ceremony and sacrifice, of mystic union of the congregation at the feet of the divine, which could be conveyed even by a ceremony that, for the narrow circle of initiates, was regarded as a "failure." Nevertheless, he too was not altogether unaffected by the unlucky star that seemed to preside over this festival. The Game itself, to be sure, was irreproachable in plan and construction, like every one of Master Thomas's Games; in fact it was one of his cleanest, most direct, and impressive achievements. But its performance was specially ill-starred and has not yet been forgotten in the history of Waldzell. When Knecht arrived, a week before the opening of the great Game, he was received not by the Magister Ludi himself, but by his deputy Bertram, who welcomed him courteously but informed him rather curtly and distractedly that the venerable Master had recently fallen ill and that he, Bertram, was not sufficiently informed about Knecht's mission to receive his report. Would he therefore go to Hirsland to report his return to the directorate of the Order and await its commands. As he took his leave Knecht involuntarily betrayed, by tone or gesture, his surprise at the coolness and shortness of his reception. Bertram apologized. "Do forgive me if I have disappointed you, and please understand my situation," he said. "The Magister is ill, the annual Game is upon us, and everything is up in the air. I don't know whether the Magister will be able to conduct the Game or whether I shall have to leap into the breach." The revered Master's illness could not have come at a more difficult moment, he went on to say. He was ready as always to assume the Magister's official duties, but if in addition he had to prepare himself at such short notice to conduct the great Game, he was afraid it would prove a task beyond his powers. Knecht felt sorry for the man, who was so obviously depressed and thrown off balance; he was also sorry that the responsibility for the festival might now lie in the deputy's hands. Joseph had been away from Waldzell too long to know how well founded Bertram's anxiety was. The worst thing that can happen to a deputy had already befallen the man: some time past he had forfeited the trust of the elite, so that he was truly in a very difficult position. With considerable concern, Knecht thought of the Magister Ludi, that great exponent of classical form and irony, the perfect Master and Castalian. He had looked forward eagerly to the Magister's receiving him, listening to his report, and reinstalling him in the small community of players, perhaps in some confidential post. It had been his desire to see the festival Game presided over by Master Thomas, to continue working under him and courting his recognition. Now it was painful and disappointing to find the Magister withdrawn into illness, and to be directed to other authorities. There was, however, some compensation in the respectful good will with which the secretary of the Order and Monsieur Dubois received him and heard him out. They treated him, in fact, as a colleague. During their first talk he discovered that for the present at any rate they had no intention of using him to promote the Roman project. They were going to respect his desire for a permanent return to the Game. For the moment they extended a friendly invitation to him to stay in the guesthouse of the Vicus Lusorum, attend the annual Game, and survey the situation. Together with his friend Tegularius, he devoted the days before the public ceremonies to the exercises in fasting and meditation. That was one of the reasons he was able to witness in so devout and grateful a spirit the strange Game which has left an unpleasant aftertaste in the memories of some. The position of the deputy Masters, also called "Shadows," is a very peculiar one — especially the deputies to the Music Master and the Glass Bead Game Master. Every Magister has a deputy who is not provided for him by the authorities. Rather, he himself chooses his deputy from the narrow circle of his own candidates. The Master himself bears the full responsibility for all the actions and decisions of his deputy. For a candidate it is therefore a great distinction and a sign of the highest trust when he is appointed deputy by his Magister. He is thereby recognized as the intimate associate and right hand of the all-powerful Magister. Whenever the Magister is prevented from performing his official duties, he sends the deputy in his stead. The deputy, however, is not entitled to act in all capacities. For example, when the Supreme Board votes, he may transmit only a yea or nay in the Master's name and is never permitted to deliver an address or present motions on his own. There are a variety of other precautionary restrictions on the deputies. While the appointment elevates the deputy to a very high and at times extremely exposed position, it is at a certain price. The deputy is set apart within the official hierarchy, and while he enjoys high honor and frequently may be entrusted with extremely important functions, his position deprives him of certain rights and opportunities which the other aspirants possess. There are two points in particular where this is revealed: the deputy does not bear the responsibility for his official acts, and he can rise no farther within the hierarchy. The law is unwritten, to be sure, but can be read throughout the history of Castalia: At the death or resignation of a Magister, his Shadow, who has represented him so often and whose whole existence seems to predestine him for the succession, has never advanced to fill the Master's place. It is as if custom were determined to show that a seemingly fluid and movable barrier is in fact insuperable. The barrier between Magister and deputy stands like a symbol for the barrier between the office and the individual. Thus, when a Castalian accepts the confidential post of deputy, he renounces the prospect of ever becoming a Magister himself, of ever really possessing the official robes and insignia that he wears so often in his representative role. At the same time he acquires the curiously ambiguous privilege of never incurring any blame for possible mistakes in his conduct of his office. The blame falls upon his Magister, who is answerable for his acts. A Magister sometimes becomes the victim of the deputy he has chosen and is forced to resign his office because of some glaring error committed by the deputy. The word "Shadow" originated in Waldzell to describe the Magister Ludi's deputy. It is splendidly apposite to his special position, his closeness amounting to quasi-identity with the Magister, and the make-believe insubstantiality of his official existence. For many years Master Thomas von der Trave had employed a Shadow named Bertram who seems to have been more lacking in luck than in talent or good will. He was an excellent Glass Bead Game player, of course. As a teacher he was at least adequate, and he was also a conscientious official, absolutely devoted to his Master. Nevertheless, in the course of the past few years, he had become distinctly unpopular. The "new generation," the younger members of the elite, were particularly hostile to him, and since he did not possess his Master's limpid, chivalric temperament, this antagonism affected his poise. The Magister did not let him go, but had for years shielded him from friction with the elite as much as possible, putting him in the public eye more and more rarely and employing him largely in the chanceries and the Archives. This blameless but disliked man, plainly not favored by fortune, now suddenly found himself at the head of the Vicus Lusorum due to his Master's illness. If it should turn out that he had to conduct the annual Game, he would occupy for the duration of the festival the most exposed position in the entire Province. He could only have coped with this great task if the majority of the Glass Bead Game players, or at any rate the tutors as a body, had supported him. Regrettably, that did not happen. This was why the Ludus sollemnis turned into a severe trial and very nearly a disaster for Waldzell. Not until the day before the Game was it officially announced that the Magister had fallen seriously ill and would be unable to conduct the Game. We do not know whether this postponement of the announcement had been dictated by the sick Magister, who might have hoped up to the last moment that he would be able to pull himself together and preside. Probably he was already too ill to cherish any such ideas, and his Shadow made the mistake of leaving Castalia in uncertainty about the situation in Waldzell up to the last moment. Granted, it is even disputable whether this delay was actually a mistake. Undoubtedly it was done with good intentions, in order not to discredit the festival from the start and discourage the admirers of Master Thomas from attending. And had everything turned out well, had there been a relation of confidence between the Waldzell community of players and Bertram, the Shadow might actually have become his representative and — this is really quite conceivable — the Magister's absence might have gone almost unnoticed. It is idle to speculate further about the matter; we have mentioned it only because we thought it necessary to suggest that Bertram was not such an absolute failure, let alone unworthy of his office, as public opinion in Waldzell regarded him at that time. He was far more a victim than a culprit. As happened every year, guests poured into Waldzell to attend the great Game. Many arrived unsuspectingly; others were deeply anxious about the Magister Ludi's health and had gloomy premonitions about the prospects of the festival. Waldzell and the nearby villages filled with people. Almost every one of the directors of the Order and the members of the Board of Educators were on hand. Travelers in holiday mood arrived from the remoter parts of the country and from abroad, crowding the guest houses. On the evening before the beginning of the Game, the ceremonies opened with the meditation hour. In response to the ringing of bells the whole of Waldzell, crowded with people as it was, subsided into a profound, reverent silence. Next morning came the first of the musical performances and announcement of the first movement of the Game, together with meditation on the two musical themes of this movement. Bertram, in the Magister Ludi's festival robes, displayed a stately and controlled demeanor, but he was very pale. As day followed day, he looked more and more strained, suffering and resigned, until during the last days he really resembled a shadow. By the second day of the Game the rumor spread that Magister Thomas's condition had worsened, and that his life was in danger. That evening there cropped up here and there, and especially among the initiates, those first contributions to the gradually developing legend about the sick Master and his Shadow. This legend, emanating from the innermost circle of the Vicus Lusorum, the tutors, maintained that the Master had been willing and would have been able to conduct the Game, but that he had sacrificed himself to his Shadow's ambition and assigned the solemn task to Bertram. But now, the legend continued, since Bertram did not seem equal to his lofty role, and since the Game was proving a disappointment, the sick man felt to blame for the failure of the Game and his Shadow's inadequacy, and was doing penance for the mistake. This, it was said, this and nothing else was the reason for the rapid deterioration of his condition and the rise in his fever. Naturally this was not the sole version of the legend, but it was the elite's version and indicated that the ambitious aspirants thought the situation appalling and were dead set against doing anything to improve it. Their reverence for the Master was balanced by their malice for his Shadow; they wanted Bertram to fail even if the Master himself had to suffer as well. By and by the story went the rounds that the Magister on his sickbed had begged his deputy and two seniors of the elite to keep the peace and not endanger the festival. The next day it was asserted that he had dictated his will and had named the man he desired for his successor. Moreover, names were whispered. These and other rumors circulated along with news of the Magister's steadily worsening condition, and from day to day spirits sagged in the festival hall as well as in the guest houses, although no one went so far as to abandon the festival and depart. Gloom hung over the entire performance all the while that it proceeded outwardly with formal propriety. Certainly there was little of that delight and uplift that everyone familiar with the annual festival expected; and when on the day before the end of the game Magister Thomas, the author of the festival Game, closed his eyes forever, not even the efforts of the authorities could prevent the news from spreading. Curiously, a good many participants felt relieved and liberated by this outcome. The Game students, and the elite in particular, were not permitted to don mourning before the end of the Ludus sollemnis, nor to make any break in the strictly prescribed sequence of the hours, with their alternation of performances and meditation exercises. Nevertheless, they unanimously went through the last act and day of the festival as if it were a funeral service for the revered deceased. They surrounded the exhausted, pale, and sleepless Bertram, who continued officiating with half-closed eyes, with a frigid atmosphere of isolation. Joseph Knecht had been kept in close contact with the elite by his friend Tegularius. As an old player, moreover, he was fully sensitive to all these currents and moods. But he did not allow them to affect him. From the fourth or fifth day on he actually forbade Fritz to bother him with news about the Magister's illness. He felt, and quite well understood, the tragic cloud that hung over the festival; he thought of the Master with sorrow and deep concern, and of the Shadow Bertram — condemned as it were to sharing the Magister's death — with growing disquiet and compassion. But he sternly resisted being influenced by any authentic or mythical account, practiced the strictest concentration, surrendered gladly to the exercises and the course of the beautifully structured game, and in spite of all the discords and dark clouds his experience of the festival was one of grave exaltation. At the end of the festival Bertram was spared the additional burden of having to receive congratulants and the Board in his capacity of vice-Magister. The traditional celebration for students of the Glass Bead Game was also cancelled. Immediately after the final musical performance of the festival, the Board announced the Magister's death, and the prescribed days of mourning began in the Vicus Lusorum. Joseph Knecht, still residing in the guest house, participated in the rites. The funeral of this fine man, whose memory is still held in high esteem, was celebrated with Castalia's customary simplicity. His Shadow, Bertram, who had summoned up his last reserves of strength in order to play his part to the end during the festival, understood his situation. He asked for a leave and went on a walking trip in the mountains. There was mourning throughout the Game village, and indeed everywhere in Waldzell. Possibly no one had enjoyed intimate, strikingly friendly relations with the deceased Magister; but the superiority and flawlessness of his aristocratic nature, together with his intelligence and his finely developed feeling for form, had made of him a regent and representative such as Castalia with its fundamentally democratic temper did not often produce. The Castalians had been proud of him. If he had seemed to hold himself aloof from the realms of passion, love, and friendship, that made him all the more the object for youth's craving to venerate. This dignity and sovereign gracefulness — which incidentally had earned him the half-affectionate nickname "His Excellency" — had in the course of years, despite strong opposition, won him a special position in the Supreme Council of the Order and in the sessions and work of the Board of Educators. Naturally, the question of his successor was hotly discussed, and nowhere so intensely as among the elite of the Glass Bead Game players. After the departure of the Shadow, whose overthrow these players had sought and achieved, the functions of the Magister's office were temporarily distributed by vote of the elite itself among three temporary deputies — only the internal functions in the Vicus Lusorum, of course, not the official work in the Board of Educators. In keeping with tradition, the Board would not permit the Magistracy to remain vacant more than three weeks. In cases in which a dying or departing Magister left a clear, uncontested successor, the office was in fact filled immediately, after only a single plenary session of the Board. This time the process would probably take rather longer. During the period of mourning, Joseph Knecht occasionally talked with his friend about the festival game and its singularly troubled course. "This deputy, Bertram," Knecht said, "not only played his part tolerably well right up to the end — that is, tried to fill the role of a real Magister — but in my opinion did far more than that. He sacrificed himself to this Ludus sollemnis as his last and most solemn official act. You all were harsh — no, the word is cruel — to him. You could have saved the festival and saved Bertram, and you did not do so. I don't care to express an opinion about that conduct; I suppose you had your reasons. But now that poor Bertram has been eliminated and you have had your way, you should be generous. When he comes back you must meet him halfway and show that you have understood his sacrifice." Tegularius shook his head. "We did understand it," he said, "and have accepted it. You were fortunate in being able to participate in the Game as a guest; as such you probably did not follow the course of events so very closely. No, Joseph, we will not have any opportunity to act on whatever feelings for Bertram we may have. He knows that his sacrifice was necessary and will not attempt to undo it." Only now did Knecht fully understand him. He fell into a troubled silence. Now he realized that he had not experienced these festival days as a real Waldzeller and a comrade of the others, but in truth much more like a guest; and only now did he grasp the nature of Bertram's sacrifice. Hitherto Bertram had seemed to him an ambitious man who had been undone by a task beyond his powers and who henceforth must renounce further ambitious goals and try to forget that he had once been a Master's Shadow and the leader of an annual Game. Only now, hearing his friend's last words, had he understood — with shock — that Bertram had been fully condemned by his judges and would not return. They had allowed him to conduct the festival Game to its conclusion, and had co-operated just enough so that it would go off without a public scandal; but they had done so only to spare Waldzell, not Bertram. The fact was that the position of Shadow demanded more than the Magister's full confidence — Bertram had not lacked that. It depended to an equal degree on the confidence of the elite, and the unfortunate man had been unable to retain it. If he blundered, the hierarchy did not stand behind him to protect him, as it did behind his Master and model. And without the backing of such authority, he was at the mercy of his former comrades, the tutors. If they did not respect him, they became his judges. If they were unyielding, the Shadow was finished. Sure enough, Bertram did not return from his outing in the mountains, and after a while the story went round that he had fallen to his death from a cliff. The matter was discussed no further. Meanwhile, day after day high officials and directors of the Order and of the Board of Educators appeared in the Game village. Members of the elite and of the civil service were summoned for questioning. Now and then some of the matters discussed leaked out, but only within the elite itself. Joseph Knecht, too, was summoned and queried, once by two directors of the Order, once by the philological Magister, then by Monsieur Dubois, and again by two Magisters. Tegularius, who was also called in for several such consultations, was pleasantly excited and joked about this conclave atmosphere, as he called it. Joseph had already noticed during the festival how little of his former intimacy with the elite had remained, and during the period of the conclave he was made more painfully aware of it. It was not only that he lived in the guest house like a visitor, and that the superiors seemed to deal with him as an equal. The members of the elite themselves, the tutors as a body, no longer received him in a comradely fashion. They displayed a mocking politeness toward him, or at best a temporizing coolness. They had already begun to drift away from him when he received his appointment to Mariafels, and that was only right and natural. Once a man had taken the step from freedom to service, from the life of student or tutor to member of the hierarchy, he was no longer a comrade, but on the way to becoming a superior or boss. He no longer belonged to the elite, and he had to realize that for the time being they would assume a critical attitude toward him. That happened to everyone in his position. The difference was that he felt the aloofness and coolness with particular intensity at this time, partly because the elite, orphaned as it now was and about to receive a new Magister, defensively closed its ranks; partly because it had just so harshly demonstrated its ruthlessness in the case of the Shadow, Bertram. One evening Tegularius came running to the guest house in a state of extreme excitement. He found Joseph, drew him into an empty room, closed the door behind him, and burst out: "Joseph, Joseph! My God, I should have guessed it, I ought to have known, it was likely enough. . . Oh, I'm altogether beside myself and truly don't know whether I ought to be glad." And he, who was privy to all the sources of information in the Game village, babbled on: it was more than probable, already virtually certain, that Joseph Knecht would be elected Master of the Glass Bead Game. The director of the Archives, whom many had regarded as Master Thomas's predestined successor, had obviously been eliminated from the sifted group of prospects the day before yesterday. Of the three candidates from the elite whose names had hitherto headed the lists during the inquiries, none, apparently, enjoyed the special favor and recommendation of a Magister or of the directors of the Order. On the other hand, two directors of the Order as well as Monsieur Dubois were supporting Knecht. In addition to that, there was the weighty vote of the former Music Master, who to the certain knowledge of several persons had been consulted by several Masters. "Joseph, they're going to make you Magister!" Fritz exclaimed once more. Whereupon his friend placed his hand over his mouth. For a moment Joseph had been no less surprised and stirred by the possibility than Fritz, and it had seemed to him altogether impossible. But even while Tegularius was reporting the various opinions circulating in the Game village about the status and course of the "conclave," Knecht began to realize that his friend's guess was not likely to be wrong. Rather, in his heart he felt something akin to assent, a sense that he had known and expected this all along, that it was right and natural. And so he placed his hand on his excited friend's mouth, gave him an aloof, reproving look, as if he had suddenly been removed to a great distance, and said: "Don't talk so much, amice ; I don't want to hear this gossip. Go to your comrades." Tegularius, though he had meant to say a great deal more, fell silent at once. He turned pale under the gaze of this utter stranger, and went out. Later he remarked that at first he had felt Knecht's remarkable calm and iciness at this moment as if it were a blow and an insult, a slap in the face and a betrayal of their old friendship and intimacy, an almost incomprehensible overstressing and anticipation of his impending position as supreme head of the Glass Bead Game. Only as he was leaving — and he actually went out like a man who had been slapped — did the meaning of that unforgettable look dawn on him, that remote, royal, but likewise suffering look, and he realized that his friend was not proud of what had fallen to his lot, but that he was accepting it in humility. He had been reminded, he said, of Joseph Knecht's thoughtful expression and the note of deep compassion in his voice when, recently, he had inquired about Bertram and his sacrifice. It was as if he himself were now on the point of sacrificing and extinguishing himself like the Shadow. His expression had been at once proud and humble, exalted and submissive, lonely and resigned; it was as if Joseph Knecht's face had become an effigy of all the Masters of Castalia who had ever been. "Go to your comrades," he had said. Thus, in the very second he first heard of his new dignity, this incomprehensible man had fitted himself into it and saw the world from a new center, was no longer a comrade, would never be one again. Knecht might easily have guessed that this last and highest of his calls, the appointment as Magister Ludi, was coming, or at least he might have seen it as possible, or even probable. But this time, too, his promotion startled him. He might have guessed it, he afterward told himself, and he smiled at his zealous friend Tegularius, who to be sure had not expected the appointment from the start, but all the same had calculated and predicted it several days before the decision and announcement. There were in fact no objections to Joseph's election to the highest Board except perhaps his youth; most of his predecessors had entered on their high office at the age of forty-five to fifty, whereas Joseph was still barely forty. But there was no law against any such early appointment Now, when Fritz surprised his friend with the results of his surmises and observations, the observations of an experienced elite player who knew down to its smallest detail the complex apparatus of the small Waldzell community, Knecht had immediately realized that Fritz was right; he had instantly grasped the fact of his election and accepted his fate. But his first reaction to the news had been that rejection of his friend, the refusal to "hear this gossip." As soon as Fritz had left, stunned and very nearly insulted, Joseph went to a meditation room to order his thoughts. His meditation started from a memory that had assailed him with unusual force. In his vision he saw a bare room and a piano. Through the room fell the cool, blithe light of forenoon, and at the door of the room appeared a handsome, friendly man, an elderly man with graying hair and a lucid face full of kindness and dignity. Joseph himself was a small Latin school pupil who had waited in the room for the Music Master, partly frightened, partly overjoyed, and who now saw the venerated figure for the first time, the Master from the legendary Province of elite schools, and the Magister who had come to show him what music was, who then led him step by step into his Province, his realm, into the elite and the Order, and whose colleague and brother he had now become, while the old man had laid aside his magic wand, or his scepter, and had been transformed into an amiably taciturn, still kindly, still revered, but still mysterious elder whose look and example hovered over Joseph's life and who would always be a generation and several stages of life ahead of him, as well as immeasurably greater in dignity and also modesty, in mastership and in mystery, but would always remain his patron and model, gently compelling him to walk in his steps, as a rising and setting planet draws its brothers after it. As long as Knecht permitted the flow of inner images to come without direction, as they do, like dreams, in the initial stage of relaxation, there were two principal scenes which emerged from the stream and lingered, two pictures or symbols, two parables. In the first Knecht, as a boy, followed the Master along a variety of ways. The Music Master strode before him as his guide, and each time he turned around and showed his face he looked older, more tranquil and venerable, visibly approaching an ideal of timeless wisdom and dignity, while he, Joseph Knecht, devotedly and obediently walked along after his exemplar, but all the time remaining the selfsame boy, at which he alternately felt at one moment shame, at another a certain rejoicing, if not something close to defiant satisfaction. And the second picture was this: the scene in the piano room, the old man's entering where the boy waited, was repeated again and again, an infinite number of times; the Master and the boy followed each other as if drawn along the wires of some mechanism, until soon it could no longer be discerned which was coming and which going, which following and which leading, the old or the young man. Now it seemed to be the young man who showed honor and obedience to the old man, to authority and dignity; now again it was apparently the old man who was required to follow, serve, worship the figure of youth, of beginning, of mirth. And as he watched this at once senseless and significant dream circle, the dreamer felt alternately identical with the old man and the boy, now revering and now revered, now leading, now obeying; and in the course of these pendulum shifts there came a moment in which he was both, was simultaneously Master and small pupil; or rather he stood above both, was the instigator, conceiver, operator, and onlooker of the cycle, this futile spinning race between age and youth. With shifting sensations he alternately slowed the pace and speeded it to a frantic rush. Out of this process there evolved a new conception, more akin to a symbol than a dream, more insight than image: the conception or rather the insight that this meaningful and meaningless cycle of master and pupil, this courtship of wisdom by youth, of youth by wisdom, this endless, oscillating game was the symbol of Castalia. In fact it was the game of life in general, divided into old and young, day and night, yang and yin, and pouring on without end. Having arrived at this in his meditation, Joseph Knecht found his way from a world of images to tranquility, and after long absorption returned strengthened and serenely cheerful. When a few days later the directors of the Order summoned him, he went confidently. He received the fraternal greeting of the superiors, a brief clasping of hands and suggestion of an embrace, with composure and grave serenity. He was informed of his appointment as Magister Ludi, and commanded to appear at the festival hall on the day after the morrow for the investiture and swearing-in. This was the same hall in which, so short a while ago, the deceased Master's deputy had completed the dismal ceremonies as if he were a sacrificial beast decked out with gold. The day before the investiture was to be devoted to a careful study, accompanied by ritual meditations, of the formula of the oath and the "breviary for the Magister" under the guidance and supervision of two superiors. This time they were the Chancellor of the Order and the Magister Mathematicae, and during the noon rest of this very strenuous day Joseph vividly recalled his admission to the Order and how the Music Master had talked with him beforehand. This time, to be sure, the rite of admission did not lead him, as it yearly did hundreds of others, through a wide gate into a large community. Rather, he was passing through the eye of the needle into the highest and narrowest circle, that of the Masters. Later he confessed to the former Music Master that on that day of intensive self-examination one thought had given him trouble, one altogether ridiculous notion. He had, he said, feared the moment in which one of the Masters would point out to him how unusually young he was to be receiving the highest dignity. He had seriously had to fight this fear, this childishly vain thought, and to fight as well the impulse to answer, if there should be some allusion to his age: "Why not then wait until I am older? I have never aspired to this elevation, you know." But further self-examination showed him that unconsciously the thought of his appointment, and the desire for it, could not after all have been so far from his mind. And, he went on to tell the Music Master, he had admitted this to himself, had recognized the vanity of his thought and rejected it; moreover, neither on that day nor at any other time did any of his colleagues remind him of his age. The election of the new Master was, however, all the more animatedly discussed and criticized among those who had hitherto been Knecht's fellow aspirants. He had no downright adversaries, but he had had rivals, among them some who were of riper years than he. The members of this circle were not at all minded to approve the choice without a trial of strength, or at least without subjecting the new Master to extremely exacting and critical scrutiny. Almost in every case a new Magister's inauguration and early period in office is a kind of purgatory. The investiture of a Master is not a public ceremony. Aside from the Board of Educators and the directorate of the Order, the only participants are the senior pupils, the candidates, and the officials of the faculty which is receiving a new Magister. At the ceremony in the festival hall, the Master of the Glass Bead Game had to take the oath of office, to receive from the authorities the insignia of his office, consisting of certain keys and seals, and to be clad by the Speaker of the Order in the festive robe which the Magister wears at all the major ceremonies, especially while celebrating the annual Game. Such an act lacks the splash and mild intoxication of public festivities; it is by nature ceremonious and rather sober. On the other hand, the mere presence of all the members of the two highest authorities confers an uncommon dignity upon it. The small republic of Glass Bead Game players is receiving a new lord and master, who will preside over it and speak for its interests within the Board. That is a rare and important event, and although the younger students may not fully grasp its significance and be conscious only of the ritual, all the other participants are fully aware of just how important it is. They are sufficiently integrated with their community, so substantially akin to it, that they experience the event as if it were part and parcel of themselves. This time the festive rejoicing was overshadowed by mourning for the previous Master, by the unhappy temper of the annual Game, and by the tragedy of the deputy, Bertram. The investiture was performed by the Speaker of the Order and the Chief Archivist of the Game. Together, they held the robe high and then placed it over the shoulders of the new Glass Bead Game Master. The brief festival oration was spoken by the Magister Grammaticae, the Master of classical philology in Keuperheim. A representative of the elite of Waldzell handed over the keys and seal, and the aged former Music Master in person stood near the organ. He had come to see his protege invested, and to give him a glad surprise by his unexpected presence, perhaps also to offer a helpful bit of advice. The old man would have liked to provide the music for the ceremony with his own hands, but he could no longer risk such exertions and therefore left the playing to the organist of the Game Village, but stood behind him turning the pages. He looked at Joseph with a beatific smile, saw him receive the robes and keys, and heard him first repeat the oath and then deliver his extemporaneous inaugural address to his future associates, officials, and students. Never before had this boy Joseph seemed to him as dear and pleasing as he was today, when he had almost ceased to be Joseph and was beginning to be no more than the wearer of robes and the keeper of an office, a jewel in a crown, a pillar in the structure of the hierarchy. But he was able to speak with his boy Joseph alone for only a few minutes. He conferred his serenely cheerful smile upon him, and admonished: "Make sure you manage the next three or four weeks well; a great deal will be asked of you. Always think of the Whole, and always remember that missing out on some detail does not count for much now. You must devote your entire attention to the elite; don't think of anything else. Two men will be sent to help initiate you. One of them is the yoga specialist Alexander. I have instructed him myself. Pay close attention to him; he knows his business. What you need is an unshakable confidence that the superiors were right in making you one of their own. Trust them, trust the people who have been sent to help you, and blindly trust your own strength. But be on your guard against the elite; that is what they expect. You will win out, Joseph, I know." The new Magister was familiar with most of the functions of his office, for he had already assisted in the performance of them on various occasions, both in lowly and responsible capacities. The most important were the Game courses, stretching from courses for schoolboys and beginners, holidayers and guests, to the practice sessions, lectures, and seminars for the elite. Every newly appointed Magister could feel himself equal to all but the last of these tasks, whereas the new functions which had previously lain outside his scope caused him far more concern and effort. Such was the case with Joseph also. He would have liked to turn first of all, with undivided zeal, to these new duties, the properly magisterial duties: sitting on the Supreme Council of Education, working with the Council of Magisters and the directorate of the Order, representing the Vicus Lusorum in dealings with all the authorities. He was all afire to familiarize himself with these new tasks and to strip them of the menace of the unknown. He wished that he could initially set aside several weeks for a careful study of the constitution, the formalities, the minutes of previous sessions of the Board, and so on. He knew, of course, that information and instruction on these matters were readily available to him. He need only turn to Monsieur Dubois and to the specialist on magisterial forms and traditions, the Speaker of the Order. Although not a Magister himself, and therefore ranked below the Masters, the Speaker held the chair in all sessions of the Board and took care that the traditional rules of order were observed. In this he somewhat resembled the master of ceremonies at a sovereign's court. Joseph would only too gladly have asked this prudent, experienced, inscrutably courteous man, whose hands had just solemnly decked him with the robes of office, for a few private lessons, if only the Speaker had lived in Waldzell instead of Hirsland, half a day's journey away. How gladly, too, Joseph would have fled to Monteport for a while to be instructed in these matters by the former Music Master. But such recourses were out of the question; it was not for a Magister to harbor any such private desires, as if he were still a student. Instead, he had to start off by attending to those very functions which he fancied would give him little trouble, and to concentrate his whole mind on them. During Bertram's festival Game he had observed a Magister forsaken by his own community, the elite, fighting and as it were suffocating in airless space. He had sensed something then, and his presentiment had been confirmed by the old Music Master's words on the day of his investiture. Now he faced it every minute of his official day, and every moment he could spare for reflection on his situation: that he must above all concern himself with the elite and the tutorship, with the highest stages of the Glass Bead Game studies, with the seminar practice sessions, and with personal intercourse with the tutors. He could leave the Archives to the archivists, the beginners' courses to the present set of teachers, the mail to his secretaries, and would not be neglecting any serious matters. But he did not dare leave the elite to themselves for a moment. He had to keep after them, impose himself on them, and make himself indispensable to them. He had to convince them of the merit of his abilities and the purity of his will; he had to conquer them, court them, win them, match wits with every candidate among them who showed a disposition to challenge him — and there was no lack of such candidates. In this struggle he was aided by a number of factors which he had earlier considered drawbacks, in particular his long absence from Waldzell and the elite, who therefore looked upon him as something of a homo novus. Even his friendship with Tegularius proved useful. For Tegularius, that brilliant, sickly outsider, obviously did not have to be considered a rival for office, and seemed so little career-minded himself that any preference shown him by the new Magister would not be seen as an affront to other candidates. Nevertheless it was something of a task for Knecht to probe and penetrate this highest, most vital, restive, and sensitive stratum in the world of the Glass Bead Game, and master it as a rider masters a thoroughbred horse. For in every Castalian institute, not only that of the Glass Bead Game, the elite group of candidates, also called tutors — men who have completed their formal education but are still engaged in free studies and have not yet been appointed to serve on the Board of Educators or the Order — constitute the most precious stock in Castalian society, the true reserve and promise for the future. Everywhere, not only in the Game Village, this dashing select band of the younger generation tends to resist and criticize new teachers and superiors, accords a new head the bare minimum of politeness and subordination, and must be convinced, overpowered, and won over on a purely personal basis. The superior must devote his whole being to courting them before they will acknowledge him and submit to his leadership. Knecht took up his task without timidity, but he was nevertheless astonished at its difficulties; and while he solved them and gradually won the arduous, consuming battle, those other duties which he had been inclined to worry about receded of their own accord and seemed to demand less of his attention. He confessed to a colleague that he had participated in the first plenary session of the Board — to which he traveled by the fastest express and returned in the same way — almost in a dream and afterward had no time to give another thought to it, so completely did his current task claim all his energies. In fact, even during the conference itself, although the subject interested him and although he had looked forward to it with some uneasiness, since this was his first appearance as a member of the Board, he several times caught himself thinking not of his colleagues here and the deliberations in progress, but of Waldzell. He saw himself rather in that blue room in the Archives where he was currently giving a seminar in dialectics every third day, with only five participants. Every hour of that bred far greater tension and demanded a greater output of energy than all the rest of his official duties, which were also not easy and which he could not evade or postpone. For as the former Music Master had informed him, the Board provided him with a timekeeper and coach who supervised the course of his day hour by hour, advising him about his schedule and guarding him against too much concentration on any one thing, as well as against total overstrain. Knecht was grateful to him, and even more grateful to Alexander, the man deputized by the directorate of the Order, who enjoyed a great reputation as master of the art of meditation. Alexander saw to it that Joseph, even though he was working to the utmost limit of his strength, practiced the "little" or "brief" meditation exercise three times daily, and that he abided strictly by the prescribed course and number of minutes for each such exercise. Before his evening meditation he and his aides, the coach and the meditation master, were supposed to review each official day, noting what had been well done or ill done, feeling his own pulse, as meditation teachers call this practice, that is, recognizing and measuring one's own momentary situation, state of health, the distribution of one's energies, one's hopes and cares — in a word, seeing oneself and one's daily work objectively and carrying nothing unresolved on into the night and the next day. While the tutors observed the prodigious labors of their Magister with an interest partly sympathetic, partly aggressive, missing no opportunity to set him new tests of strength, patience, and quick-wittedness, trying one moment to inspire, the next to block his work, an uncomfortable void had come into being around Tegularius. He understood, of course, that Knecht could not spare any attention, any time, any thought or sympathy for him right now. But he could not harden himself sufficiently, could not resign himself to being so neglected. It was all the more painful to him because he not only seemed to have lost his friend from one day to the next, but also found himself the object of some suspicion on the part of his associates, and was scarcely spoken to. That was hardly surprising. For although Tegularius could not seriously stand in the way of the ambitious climbers, he was known as one of the new Magister's partisans and favorites. Knecht could easily have grasped all this. To be sure, the responsibilities of the moment involved his laying aside all private, personal affairs for a while, including this friendship. But, as he later admitted to his friend, he did not actually do this wittingly and willingly, but quite simply because he had forgotten Fritz. He had so thoroughly converted himself into an instrument that such personal matters as friendship vanished into the realm of the impossible. If on occasion, as for example in that seminar he held for the five foremost Glass Bead Game players, Fritz's face and figure appeared before him, he did not see Tegularius as a friend or personality, but as a member of the elite, a student, candidate, and tutor, a part of his work, a soldier in the regiment whom he had to train so that he could march on to victory with it. A shudder had gone through Fritz when the Magister for the first time addressed him in that way. From Knecht's look, it was clear that this remoteness and objectivity were not pretense, but uncannily genuine, and that the man before him who treated him with this matter-of-fact courtesy, accompanied by intense intellectual alertness, was no longer his friend Joseph, was entirely a teacher and examiner, entirely Master of the Glass Bead Game, enveloped and isolated by the gravity and austerity of his office as if by a shining glaze which had been poured over him in the heat of the fire, and had cooled and hardened. During these hectic weeks a minor incident connected with Tegularius occurred. Sleepless and under severe psychological strain, he was guilty during the seminar of a discourtesy, a minor outburst, not toward the Magister but toward a colleague whose mocking tone had grated on his nerves. Knecht noticed, noticed also the delinquent's overwrought state. He reproved him wordlessly, merely by a gesture of his finger, but afterward sent his meditation master to him to calm the troubled soul. Tegularius, after weeks of deprivation, took this concern as a first sign of reviving friendship, for he assumed that it was an attention directed toward himself as a person, and willingly submitted to the cure. In reality Knecht had scarcely been aware of the object of his solicitude. He had acted solely as the Magister, had observed irritability and a lack of self-control in one of his tutors, and had reacted to it as an educator, without for a moment regarding this tutor as a person or relating him to himself. When, months later, his friend reminded him of this scene and testified how overjoyed and comforted he had been by this sign of good will, Joseph Knecht said nothing. He had completely forgotten the affair, but did not disabuse his friend. At last he attained his goal. The battle was won. It had been a great labor to subdue this elite, to drill them until they were weary, to tame the ambitious, win over the undecided, impress the arrogant. But now the work was done; the candidates at the Game Village had acknowledged him their Master and submitted to him. Suddenly everything went smoothly, as if only a drop of oil had been needed. The coach drew up a last agenda with Knecht, expressed the Board's appreciation, and vanished. Alexander, the meditation master, likewise departed. Instead of a morning massage, Knecht resumed his customary walks. As yet he could not even begin to think of anything like studying or even reading; but now he was able to play a little music some days, in the evening before going to sleep. The next time he attended a meeting of the Board, Knecht distinctly sensed, although the matter was never so much as mentioned, that he was now regarded by his colleagues as tested and proved. He was their equal. After the intensity of the struggle to prove himself, he was now overcome once more by a sense of awakening, of cooling and sobering. He saw himself in the innermost heart of Castalia, sat in the highest rank of the hierarchy, and discovered with strange sobriety and almost with disappointment that even this very thin air was breathable, but that he who now breathed it as though he had never known anything different was altogether changed. That was the consequence of this harsh period of trial. It had burned him out as no other service, no other effort, had previously done. The elite's acknowledgment of him as their sovereign was marked this time by a special gesture. When Knecht sensed the end of their resistance, the confidence and consent of the tutors, and knew that he had successfully put the hardest task behind him, he realized that the moment had come for him to choose a "Shadow." In point of fact he would never more sorely need someone to relieve him of burdens than right now, after the victory was won, when he found himself suddenly released into relative freedom after an almost superhuman trial of strength. Many a Magister in the past had collapsed just at this point in his path. Knecht now renounced his right to choose among the candidates and asked the tutors as a body to select a Shadow for him. Still under the impact of Bertram's fate, the elite took this conciliatory gesture very seriously, and after several meetings and secret polls, made their choice, providing the Magister with one of their best men, a deputy who until Knecht's appointment had been regarded as one of the most promising candidates for the office of Magister. He had survived the worst. Now there was time for walks and music again. After a while he could once more think of reading. Friendship with Tegularius, occasional correspondence with Ferromonte, would be possible. Now and then he would be able to take half a day off, perhaps sometimes permit himself to go away for a short vacation. But all these amenities would benefit another man, not the previous Joseph who had thought himself a keen Glass Bead Game player and a tolerably good Castalian, but who had nevertheless had no inkling of the innermost nature of the Castalian system. Hitherto he had lived in so innocuously selfish, so puerilely playful, so inconceivably private and irresponsible a way. Once he recalled the tart reproof he had incurred from Master Thomas after he had expressed the desire to go on studying freely for a while longer: "You say a while, but how long is that? You are still speaking the language of students, Joseph Knecht." That had been only a few years ago. He had listened with admiration, with profound reverence, along with a mild horror of this man's impersonal perfection and discipline, and he had felt Castalia reaching out for himself as well, seeking to draw him close in order, perhaps, to make of him just such a Thomas some day, a Master, a sovereign and servant, a perfect instrument. And now he stood on the spot where Master Thomas had stood, and when he spoke with one of his tutors, one of those clever, sophisticated players and scholars, one of those diligent and arrogant princes, he looked across to him into a different world of alien beauty, a strange world that had once been his, exactly as Magister Thomas had gazed into his own strange student world.