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Despising each other, both men subconsciously need and complement each other. Wirthof, while continually humiliating the half-Jew, needs Kazakh to listen to his incredible ideas (including a theory that the earth might well have jam for its core). He uses Kazakh as a hypnotist to cure his frequent headaches, as an entree to the rich society of Vienna's Jews, and as a conspirator in the seduction of the Baroness Leonie Koeppler—the wife of a rich Jewish industrialist and a close friend of Kazakh's. Though Kazakh finds Wirthofs demands ludicrous or despicable, he is always compelled to comply, hating himself for doing so and continually wondering at his reasons:
"He was so pale and demanding, his needs, however outrageous, were so compelling, and his assumption that they would be met so unshakable, that, indeed, it seemed to me he could not be refused. Whatever he demanded was the absolute minimum life could afford him; to be satisfied with less was inconceivable; he would rather die."
Empty Vehicle. Perhaps it is Wirthofs willingness to give up his life, while Kazakh believes only in his own survival, that so compels Kazakh to yield in every instance, even though the result is the betrayal of everything he wants or would normally honor. Why, for example, does Kazakh help Wirthof to seduce the baroness, when he desires her himself and when the seduction is a betrayal of his friend the baron? That unanswered question hounds Kazakh to the very end, particularly because the love affair determines much of Kazakh's and Wirthofs future.
Wirthofs career as the favored adjutant to a powerful SS officer named Ludenscheid is ruined because of the romance. While negotiating for the Baron Koeppler's life after his arrest by Lüdenscheid, Kazakh becomes trapped in an agreement to cure Lüdenscheid of chronic constipation through hypnosis. As a result of this deal—two Jews freed for every bowel movement Kazakh induces—Kazakh becomes obsessed with killing Lüdenscheid.
Despite this obsession, Kazakh is paralyzed, Hamlet-like, by his own rationalizations and instinct for survival. It is Wirthof who, with all of his illusions destroyed, is again the man of action. He assassinates Lüdenscheid, thereby pre-empting Kazakh's opportunity to determine his own destiny by means of one violent but necessary act. Wirthof is summarily executed for the murder. Kazakh survives—or has he become merely an empty vehicle for the glittering spiritual survival of Wirthof? After all, Kazakh is much like John Marcher in Henry James' The Beast in the Jungle, who so feared the monstrous fate predicted for him that he lived a ludicrously overprotected life. Only on his deathbed did he discover that the monstrous fate that he perpetually tried to escape was to have nothing happen in his vacant life.
Confused Fragmentation. Kazakh muses of himself: "Your life has been a quest for life, and what did you ever find that was not another form of dying?" In the end, he can no longer remember, in his confused fragmentation, what of his life belonged to him and what belonged to Wirthof. "Was that Wirthofs dream, or mine?" he asks. "Where are you to find yourself, Kazakh? Since you were so infrequently yourself, since you have deposited yourself all over the place."