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.
