“I must admit,” Knecht said smilingly, “that you have described that episode remarkably well, splendidly. That is exactly how it was, and perhaps the lingering sense of insult and accusation in your voice was needed for you to bring it out as effectively as you did and to recall the scene to my mind with such perfect vividness. Also, although I’m afraid you still see the whole affair in somewhat the same light as you did then, and have not fully come to terms with it, you told your story with objective correctness — the story of two young men in a rather embarrassing situation in which both had to dissemble, and one of whom — that is, you — made the mistake of concealing the painfulness of the whole matter behind a gay exterior, instead of dropping the masquerade. It seems as if you were to this day blaming me more than yourself for the fruitlessness of that encounter, although it was absolutely up to you to have set its terms. Have you really failed to see that? But still you have described it very well, I must say. You’ve called back the whole sense of oppression and embarrassment over that weird evening. For a while I’ve felt as if I had to fight for composure again, and I’ve been ashamed for the two of us. No, your story is exactly right. It’s a pleasure to hear a story so well told.”
“Well now,” Plinio began, rather astonished, and with an offended and mistrustful note lingering in his voice, “it’s good that my story has amused at least one of us. If you want to know, it didn’t amuse me.”
“But you do see,” Knecht said, “how merrily we can now regard this story, which isn’t exactly to the credit of either of us? We can laugh at it.”
“Laugh? Why should we?”
“Because this story about the ex-Castalian Plinio who struggled to master the Glass Bead Game and worked so hard for his former friend’s appreciation is now past and over with for good, exactly like the story of the tutor Knecht who in spite of all his training in Castalian manners was a total duffer when it came to dealing with this Plinio who suddenly blew in on him, so that today after so many years that clumsy behavior can be held up to him as in a mirror. Once again, Plinio, you have an excellent memory and you’ve told the story well — I couldn’t have done it justice. It’s fortunate that the tale is over and done with and we can laugh at it.”
Designori was perplexed. He could not help feeling the warmth and pleasantness of the Magister’s good humor. It was obviously far removed from mockery. And he felt also that an intense seriousness lay behind this gaiety. But in telling his story he had too painfully relived the bitterness of that episode, and his narrative had been so much in the nature of a confession that he could not change key so readily.
“Perhaps you forget,” he said hesitantly, already half persuaded, “that what I related was not the same for me as it was for you, For you it was at most chagrin; for me it was defeat and collapse, and incidentally also the beginning of important changes in my life. When I left Waldzell that time, just as soon as the course ended, I resolved never to return here, and I was close to hating Castalia and all of you. I had lost my illusions and had realized that I would never again belong among you, perhaps had never belonged as much as I had imagined. It would not have taken much more to make me into a renegade and an outright enemy of everything Castalian.”
Knecht fixed him with a look at once cheerful and penetrating.
