Robert Walser: Selected Stories

Yet, if the world went all my way, as is fortunately not yet the case, to my great gratification (for what then should I do, poor man that I am!), trousers would be significantly tighter, so that against the soft, rounded flesh of the leg their material would press very closely, or, to phrase it with more elegance, nestle. For me that would be fashion’s triumph, and I would die of delight, or at least hit the floor in a swoon, if ever such a transformation occurred in the domain where ladies’ clothing is the question. All the same, it seems to me that this is the limit to which we have come, and, as for us discarded and regrettable lords of creation, we are entitled to anticipate excitedly what is still to come. I imagine that something is to come. A change is now on the way, no question; we men have obviously lost the edge, so the women are taking it over, and indeed, they have already begun, in trousers which still provisionally, to be sure, resemble skirts, to trample around before our very eyes. Knickerbockers! There’s something Asiatic about them, something Turkish, something, I must confess, without charm. Turks’ trousers and Turks’ turbans possess little charm for me. But still I think we may have in store for us a flowering and perfection of trousers. Trousers are still not quite trousers enough. The way they now are, they signify mere silliness. They are essentially too reticent, too embarrassed. O womenfolk, listen, you must: If you really want to impress us men, be more saucy, brazen, and complete in your trouserish, trouserly, and trouserful demands! Sweet ladies! Surely on the streets and in the city squares they will trouser around one day quite differently.

To resume: it is a shame that skirts should now propose to disappear, and that our cultural feelings should be outraged. What’s this? one asks. Has Paris run out of midriff ideas? As regards ideas, Paris seems to have become poverty-stricken. It’s a terrible shame, the demise of that wondrous Paris of the Senses and of the Dreams. Paris is no more. For that is the whole point. The trouser fashion knows nothing of the midriff. If ever there was something about a woman that was beautiful and captivating to the senses, it was the midriff, uniquely; and precisely this most delicious feature is now absent. To trousers, unconditionally, a midriff must appertain. Something must go through me like a knife, and what’s more, it must expand upward and downward. There must be tension in it. At present, women no longer have backs. The wonderful, tumescent, as it were smoothed, back of woman has vanished. This is deplorable. Form! Women no longer have a healthy will to form; they no longer desire to display anything, and the desistence of this desire is the plainest proof that they are in rebellion, that they despise us lords and masters. Anybody whom I try and strive to please is felt by me to be my master. It is too obvious. Of such and similar matters consists the secret of the trouser-skirt: rebellion, dissent, compromise, and insistence on a position to be held. Oh, deplorable, a pitiful situation. Men, men, what a disgraceful defeat you have suffered.

Yet — just a whisper in your ear: into that defeat the woman is also dragged, the trouseress, and this great umbrageous defeat of both sexes means — a lessening of mutual attraction! The women want to make themselves miserable by compelling men to see them as comrades, as trouser-buddies. That’s how it is, and it is very sad, the heart informs us. What’s more, trouser-dom impinges closely upon the problem of the political activation of women. In trousers the poor dears can stride much more comfortably to the voting booth. They are deceived, ah, the poor dears, if only they knew how heartrendingly boring it is to have the vote. They want to assassinate themselves. So be it. For a chivalrous man there’s nothing left to do but bury his head desperately in his hands and wish that the blow might fall upon him. This is the quintessence and the consequence of trousers. Frightful!

[1911]

The Man with the Pumpkin Head

ONCE there was a man and on his shoulders he had, instead of a head, a hollow pumpkin. This was no great help to him. Yet he still wanted to be Number One. That’s the sort of person he was. For a tongue he had an oak leaf hanging from his mouth, and his teeth were cut out with a knife. Instead of eyes, he had just two round holes. Back of the holes, two candle stumps flickered. Those were his eyes. They didn’t help him see far. And yet he said his eyes were better than anyone’s, the braggart. On his pumpkin head he wore a tall hat; used to take it off when anyone spoke to him, he was so polite. Once this man went for a walk. But the wind blew so hard that his eyes went out. He wanted to light them up again, but he had no matches. He started to cry with his candle ends, because he couldn’t find his way home. So now he sat there, held his pumpkin head between his hands, and wanted to die. But dying didn’t come to him so easily. First there had to come a June bug, which ate the oak leaf from his mouth; there had to come a bird, which pecked a hole in his pumpkin skull; there had to come a child, who took away the two candle stumps. Then he could die. The bug is still eating the leaf, the bird is pecking still, and the child is playing with the candle stumps.

The Maid

A RICH lady had a maid and this maid had to look after her child. The child was as delicate as a moonbeam, pure as freshly fallen snow, and as lovable as the sun. The maid loved the child as much as she loved the moon, the sun, almost as much as her own dear God Himself. But one day the child got lost, nobody knew how, and so the maid went looking for it, looked for it everywhere in the world, in all the cities and countries, even Persia. Over there in Persia the maid came one night to a broad dark tower, it stood by a broad dark river. But high up in the tower a red light was burning, and the faithful maid asked this light: Can you tell me where my child is? It got lost and for ten years I have been looking for it. Then go on looking for another ten years, said the light, and it went out. So the maid looked for the child another ten years, in all the parts and on all the bypaths of the earth, even in France. In France there is a great and splendid city, called Paris, and to this city she came. One evening she stood by the entrance to a beautiful garden, wept, because she could not find the child, and took out her red handkerchief to wipe her eyes. Then suddenly the garden opened and her child came out. She saw it and died of joy. Why did she die? Did that do her any good? Yet she was old now and could not endure so much any more. The child is now a grand and beautiful lady. If you should ever meet her, give her my best regards.

[1913]

THE three people, the captain, a gentleman, and a young girl, climb into the basket, the anchoring cords are loosed, and the strange house flies, slowly, as if it had first to ponder something, upward. “Bon voyage,” shout the people gathered below, waving hats and handkerchiefs. It is ten o’clock in the evening. The captain pulls a map from a case and asks the gentleman if he would like to do the map reading. The map can be read, comparisons made, everything to be seen can be clearly seen. Everything has an almost brownish clarity. The beautiful moonlit night seems to gather the splendid balloon into invisible arms, gently and quietly the roundish flying body ascends, and now, hardly so that one might notice, subtle winds propel it northward. The map-reading gentleman tosses, from time to time, as directed by the captain, a handful of ballast into the depth below. There are five sacks of sand on board, and they must be used sparingly. How beautiful it is, the round, pale, dark depth below. The moonlight, tender and evocative, picks the rivers out, silver. One can see houses down there, so small, like innocuous toys. The forests seem to be chanting somber and ancient songs, but this chanting strikes one as being more like a noble silent knowledge. The earth’s image has the features of a huge sleeping man, at least that is what the youthful girl dreams; she lets her bewitching hand hang indolently over the rim of the basket. Obeying a whim, the cavalier is wearing a medieval plumed hat, but is otherwise dressed in a modern way. How quiet the earth is! One can see everything distinctly, the particular people in the village streets, the church spires; tired after a long day’s work, the laborers trampling across the farmyard; the ghostly railroad streaking by, the dazzling long, white turnpike. Human sorrow, familiar or unknown, seems to send murmurs up from below. The loneliness of remote regions has a special tone, such that one believes one ought to understand and even see this special thing that slips away from thought. Wondrously now the three people are dazzled as they see in the glory of its colors the luminous course of the Elbe. The nocturnal river draws from the girl a low cry of longing. What might she be thinking of? From a posy she has brought along with her she pulls a dark rose, in full bloom, and throws it into the sparkling water. How sadly her eyes shine as she does so! It is as if the young woman had just now forever shed a painful conflict. It is a very painful thing, having to part company with what torments you. And how mute the world is! Far off, the lights of a major town are glittering; the canny captain pronounces its name. Beautiful, enticing depth! Countless areas of field and forest are now behind them, it is midnight. Somewhere on the solid ground now a thief prowls, hunting for swag, there is a burglary, and all these people down there, in their beds, this great sleep slept by millions. An entire earth is dreaming now, and a people rests from its labors. The girl smiles. And how warm it is, as if one were sitting in a room, just like home, with mother, aunt, sister, brother, or with one’s lover, lamplit, and reading from a beautiful but rather monotonous long story. The girl wants to sleep; looking at things has made her quite tired now. The two men standing in the basket gaze silently but resolutely into the night. Remarkably white, polished-looking, plateaus alternate with gardens and small wildernesses of bush. One peers down into regions where one’s feet would never, never have trod, because in certain regions, indeed in most, one has no purpose whatever. How big and unknown to us the earth is, thinks the feather-hatted gentleman. Yes, your own country does finally become intelligible from up here, looking down. You feel how unexplored and powerful it is. Two provinces they have now crossed, and the dawn is coming. Below in the villages human life wakens again. “What’s the name of this place?” the leader shouts downward. A boy’s clear voice replies. And still the two men are gazing; now, too, the girl is awake again. Colors appear and things become more distinct. One sees lakes inside their drawn contours, wondrously secluded among forests; one glimpses ruins of old bastions towering up through old foliage; hills rise almost imperceptibly, one sees swans trembling and pale on waters, and the human voices become pleasantly audible, and onward one flies, onward, and finally the glorious sun appears, and, attracted by this proud star, the balloon soars upward into a magical dizzy height. The girl shrieks with fear. The men laugh.