Robert Walser - Selected Stories

And then “this beautiful woman,” who gazes at me in a shop, so intently, as if she wanted to tell me: “I know you; watch out!”

She had such a beautiful, delicate face, also very delicate feet. The thing was this: I was just sitting there in the shop waiting for something. Of this woman I at once thought I had met her somewhere before, that she recognized me, and that she had a quite definite opinion of me. Of course, all this might have been a delusion of mine. One is so easily deluded about the objects of one’s interest.

Early in the morning, one sees in our nicest of towns numerous pretty girls who are on the way to some occupation or other.

It’s gradually becoming “serious,” my situation, I realize this.

I’ve decided to write a novel, which will have to be psychological, of course. It will be concerned with vital questions.

A schoolteacher, who is also an author, has written me two very attentive, intelligent letters.

Oh, this rapidity in all my prolonged slownesses, and, on the other hand, this sloth again, in all my extensive industriousness.

Is it really the case that I’m a kind of child of the people, who doesn’t yet understand even himself? That would be terrible.

But I always float, like the price of gold, that’s to say, modestly put, I have confidence in myself. Others, alas, do not, not always, as, for instance, a very nice woman, to whom I also spoke while looking for a room.

The room looked captivating, you know, so sunny, so bright. I told myself at once: “I’d like to live here.” The wash table was new and snow-white, and there was an inviting chaise longue, which I would have placed otherwise, probably.

“The room is a real poem, dear esteemed lady,” said I to the person who wanted to rent it. “In spirit I have settled down here already.”

She answered: “I must tell you, to my own regret and probably to yours as well, that I cannot make a decision at once. You are very demanding, aren’t you?”

I replied: “Yes, I am.”

“For that reason I must ask you to give me a little time for reflection. Telephone me, will you? Won’t you? Then I’ll tell you.”

I took leave of that marvel of a room. How I laugh, when I think about it now! And about the woman who sought salvation in delay.

As for me, I now live in a decent place, it’s almost refined. My surroundings satisfy me. One can live pretty well anywhere, I believe, and what’s more, somebody who knows and thinks well of me, a person of importance in the business line, has been asking after my modest self, and I believe, she will have obtained the information she wanted.

I think I still have it in me to make something of myself. And I’d like to add: an actress has written to me, saying how she arrived home in a troubled mood, thought of me, and the thought made her happy.

[1925]

I SEE it, even when I walk past, hardly noticing. It does not run away, stands quite still, cannot think, cannot desire anything, no, it can only grow, be, in space, and have leaves, which nobody touches, which are only to be looked at. Busy people hurry on past the shadow offered by the leaves.

Have I never given anything to you? Yet it needs no happiness. Perhaps, if someone thinks it is beautiful, it is glad. Do you think so? What holy innocences speak from it. It knows of nothing; it is there for my pleasure, that only.

Why can it not be sensitive to my love, when I say something to it, the good thing? But it apprehends nothing. It never sees me when I smile at the greeting it ignorantly gives.

To die at this being’s feet, like that figure Courbet painted, who is taking leave forever.

Surely I shall go on living, but what will become of you?

[1925]

HEDGEHOG: Aren’t I captivating? Tell me!

STORK: For a long time I have loved you.

HEDGEHOG: I’ll say nothing about that. I don’t talk to creatures that love me. Love is something so reckless, impudent! I’ll have no dealings with spendthrifts. Make a note of that. It’s my spines you’re in love with, isn’t it?

STORK: Your mantle of spines suits you charmingly. You look adorable in it. A pity you’re so prudish. A hedgehog should not be so buttoned up about decent behavior.

HEDGEHOG: You’re wrong, and I’ll tell you something. A stork can brag of many things, but a hedgehog can’t. You are flattered, you are an educational and family ideal. Whole communities look up to you with unfeigned respect. All the opinions that go with you are good ones. With me, it’s different. What use to me is your affection? Have you been smitten by my timorousness?

STORK: Yes, I think so.

HEDGEHOG: It suits me fine, don’t you think? I’m so nice and round in it, so appetizing. I have spines because I’m afraid. I am all flight and fear. Look at my little head, my little eyes, my little nose. I don’t fly, with majesty, like you. There’s not a tittle of elevation about me. My feet are incomprehensibility itself, but I am dainty, I look like some poor silly thing. I don’t strut about with wings, not likely. I don’t build, on church steeples, comfortable nests with the bright air wafting around them. I live in forests, only venture forth, softly, in the dark.

STORK: You dear shy thing!

HEDGEHOG: You take pity on me. But I have no pity. Pity is something grand. It doesn’t suit me. I am puny. My spines, what’s more, are mockery itself; they mock me.

STORK: So you’re mocked by what seems called upon to shield you. I love you all the more for your forsakenness.

HEDGEHOG: But I’m in enormously good spirits. You have no idea how splendidly one can live inside a covering that’s laughable. My well-being is unspeakably original. The assurance that I look pretty streams through me, it fairly does. You’re rather a comical one yourself.

STORK: My dignity, you mean. But I can’t do anything about it. I appear somewhat stiff, solemn, but it’s precisely in this gravity of my manner that I myself vanish, do you understand?

HEDGEHOG: I don’t allow myself to understand anything. Understanding would annoy me. Do you think I’d take the trouble to start looking into you? Deep thinking I leave to you and your kind. I’m sorry for you because you can’t put me out of your mind, but I find it funny that you make me feel sorry for you. So then I’m not really sorry for you at all. Look, I’m shaped like a hill and give an impression of lifelessness.

STORK: That’s a huge advantage. I admire you, are you giggling at something?

HEDGEHOG: Oh, only at the anxieties of such an intelligence as yours. To be cultivated and want to extract a smile from a hedgehog! Inner glee is all I feel. On the outside I would never laugh. I mind my good manners too much for that. Besides, I’ve been talking with you for too long. You love me. But me, feathered friend, me you fill with horror. Yet I only shrink from you because that happens to suit me. Shrinking, I find, is my pleasure.

STORK: Do you despise me?

HEDGEHOG: My spines tell me I should. Otherwise, you’d impress me. But you’re also much too long-leggity, big-beaked, too proud, too beautiful for me.

STORK: Would that your inconspicuousness could be the death of me.

The hedgehog tucks himself entirely into his mantle, still peering out a little. Sees the good stork trembling with his inclination, swathed in his slendernesses. But he speaks no more. Finds speech from now on pointless; simply crouches there still, unspeakably odd and incomprehensible. The stork stands transfixed. Hedgehoggish helplessness invades him. Deep down, the hedgehog is a complete child, and, loving what is solitary, the kindly stork is now himself strange and solitary. He thinks that he too is tricked out with spines. Night has fallen in the forest; the enchanted stork stands on one leg, plunged in a lofty sorrow of love.