79-80 Soliman and Strumm

In these two chapters we learn a little bit more, respectively, about Arheim's black servant and a general who suddenly attaches himself to the Parallel Campaign.

In chapter 79 Soliman continues his flirtation with and pseudo-courtship of Rachel, Diotima's servant.  Just as Diotima and Arnheim illustrate the aristocracy in love, Rachel and Soliman represent the lower classes. Here's the narrator's summary of Soliman's condition:

He enjoyed making a dramatic dance of it. He was intent on violence. This youngster, whom women tended to spoil out of curiosity, had never actually had intercourse with a woman but only picked up all the vices of the European boys, and his cravings were as yet so unappeased by experience, so unbridled and flaring in every direction, that his lust did not know whether it was supposed to be quenched by Rachel's blood or her kisses, or else by a freezing up of all the veins in his body the moment he set eyes on his beloved.

Soliman also routinely steals from his master. (And we vaguely remember a story of an earlier servant who stole from Arnheim.)  When he offers Rachel some of Arnheim's shirt studs, calling them "diamonds," she goes through her stock of conventional wisdom, but all she can say in reply is: "I don't steal from my mistress!"

Soliman declares that the "diamonds" are actually his and tries to force them on her. When she hits him, he kneels at her feet, crying.  As the chapter ends, Rachel stands "helpless in the clutch of the kneeling boy . . .  She had never in her life known such a feeling, and gently stroked the soft wiry mop of his hair with her fingers."

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In the next chapter, General Strumm arrives one evening, "thanking Diotima effusively for the honor of her invitation."  Unfortunately, Diotima is very certain that she had not invited him. This chapter gives us background regarding the general.  He has had a successful military career, even though he has repeated "failed to show the intellectual keenness needed to ride a horse."

In the end, he was found neither suited nor definitely unfit for service on the general staff; he was regarded as clumsy and unambitious, but something of a philosopher, so for the next two years he was tentatively assigned to the general staff in command of an infantry division, which ended in his belonging, as captain of cavalry, to the large number of those who, as the general staff's auxiliary reserve, never get away from the line unless something unusual happens.

Even his drinking was somehow unmilitary:

. . . his sense of bodily harmony had soon taught him to drink himself through the riotous state into the sleepy one, which suited him far better than the risks and disappointments of love. It was only later on, after he had married and soon had two children as well as their ambitious mother to support, that he fully appreciated how sensible his habits had been before he succumbed to the temptation to marry, . . .

The narrator also notes that General Strumm is hopelessly infatuated with Diotima.