“He found me, his once frank and communicative friend, disillusioned and reticent; yet this very obstacle seemed to stimulate him. He did not give up, prickly though I was, and he finally achieved what he wanted. Among other things he made it seem that our relationship was one of mutual aid, as though my strength were equal to his, my worth to his, my need of help paralleled by an equal need on his part. In our very first long conversation he implied that he had been waiting for something like my appearance, that he had in fact been longing for it, and gradually he admitted me into his plan of resigning his office and leaving the Province. He always made me aware of how much he counted on my advice, my assistance, my secrecy, since aside from me he had not a single friend in the world outside, and no experience at all with that world. I admit that I liked to feel this, and that it contributed a good deal toward my trusting him completely and my putting myself more or less at his mercy. I believed him absolutely. But later, in the course of time, the whole thing began to seem totally dubious and improbable, and I would have been unable to say whether and to what extent he really expected something from me, and whether his way of capturing me was innocent or politic, naive or sly, sincere or contrived and a kind of game. He was so far superior to me, and did me so much good, that I would never have ventured to look deeper into the matter. In any case, nowadays I regard the fiction that his situation was similar to mine, and he just as dependent on my sympathy and aid as I on his, as merely a form of politeness, an engaging and pleasant web of suggestion that he wove around me. Only that to this day I cannot say to what extent his game with me was conscious, preconceived, and deliberate, to what extent it was in spite of everything naive and a pure product of his nature. For Magister Joseph was certainly a great artist. On the one hand his urge to educate, to influence, to heal and help and develop the personalities of others, was so strong that he scarcely scrupled about the means he used; on the other hand it was impossible for him to undertake even the smallest task without devoting himself totally to it. But one thing is certain: that at the time he took me under his wing like a friend and like a great physician and guide. He did not let go of me once he held me, and ultimately he awakened me and cured me as far as that was possible. And the remarkable thing, so utterly typical of him, was that while he pretended to be asking me to help him escape from his office, and while he listened calmly and often with actual approval to my crude and simple-minded jibes at Castalia, and while he himself was struggling to free himself from Castalia, he actually lured and guided me back there. He persuaded me to return to meditation. He schooled and reshaped me by means of Castalian music and contemplation, Castalian serenity, Castalian fortitude. He made me, who in spite of my longing for your way had become so utterly un-Castalian and anti-Castalian, into one of your sort again; he transformed my unrequited love for you into a requited love.”
Such were Designori’s comments, and no doubt he had reason for his admiring gratitude. It may not be too difficult to teach boys and young men the lifestyle of the Order, with the aid of our tried and true methods. It was surely a difficult task in the case of a man who was already approaching his fiftieth year, even if this man were himself full of good will. Not that Designori ever became anything like a model Castalian. But Knecht succeeded fully in what he had set out to do: in lifting the bitter weight of unhappiness, in leading Designori’s touchy, vulnerable soul back to something like harmony and serenity, and in replacing a number of his bad habits by good ones. Naturally the Magister Ludi could not himself undertake all the detailed work that was involved. He enlisted the apparatus and energies of Waldzell and the Order in behalf of this honored guest. For a while he even dispatched a meditation master from Hirsland, the seat of the Order’s directorate, to stay a while with Designori and supervise his exercises. But the whole plan and direction of the cure remained in Knecht’s hand.
It was in his eighth year as Magister that he at last yielded to his friend’s repeated invitations and visited him at his home in the capital. With permission from the directorate of the Order, with whose President, Alexander, he had close and affectionate relations, he devoted a holiday to his visit. Although he expected a great deal of it, he had been putting it off for a whole year, partly because he first wished to be sure of his friend, partly, no doubt, out of a natural timidity. This was, after all, his first step into that world from which his friend Plinio had brought his stony sadness, the world which held so many important secrets for him.
