Robert Walser - Selected Stories

[1927]

WHAT an irreparable error it would be, if to the high pile of errors that during my lifetime have slipped from me, as if hatched from eggs of misconception, I were to add that of declaring this house somewhere on a hilltop to be a palace, seeming as it did more like a villa or pavilion, a neat little convalescent home, where, as a lackey, for I could not have figured there as anything loftier or better, I performed tasks that were in my opinion of preeminent quality, although I cannot but realize that my manner of speaking is rather long-winded.

Even if I saw that my employer — I do not know if I should be saying this — sometimes indulged her habit of pressing together her unspeakably thin lips, still she was for me the world’s most beautiful woman, while it would never have occurred to me to extol her as a miracle of rare proportions, to which reality did give me every imaginable reason.

The mountain ridge upon which one looked across from one of the surely very numerous windows had a very pleasant face, by which I would like to have intimated that it was a joy to devote to it a proper measure of the attention it well deserved. Oh, the freedom, the finesse, of which it was, from afar, seeming to be at once both far and near, a perfect expression! I thought I could touch the mountain with my hands; in any event, its stoninesses had the effect of a face that responded, in content as in form, to each and every demand.

Days and days went by before I could somewhat orient myself as to what sort of business the delightfully located house, ringed around as it was, so to speak, with little dancings, might be based upon. What very remarkable purpose did it serve? More than once, this was my question.

Unbelievably diffuse festivities spreading out for as long as one could wish over fabulously beautiful gardens and lasting from first light, each time so graceful it was like a goddess awakening, far into the dusk and longer still, to the edge of night, were lavished in the countryside in which this estate stood, proud as a temple and yet modest in every way, on all who wished to have a share in a healthy and thus worthwhile experience, some of whom had been invited by word of mouth, some in writing.

That the meadows, enlivened here and there most charmingly by trees, were of a green to the intensity of which even the most intense grumblers, and to the gaiety of which even the most innate peeves, could raise little if any objection, is almost certain to be as good as obvious.

The house was thronged with well-disciplined girls, vying with one another as regards their proper tasks, which is probably the best and most civil thing to be said about human apparitions clad generally in aprons and equipped with feathered dust absorbers.

From time to time I heard my beautiful and doubtless much beleaguered employer exclaim in quite a loud voice: “Don’t put me on edge!” To what species of earth dweller did she say this? Naturally for me it could only remain for a long time an inscrutable riddle, whose insolubility was like a sumptuous garment, of which I became, so to speak, enamored.

One thing I may and must mention with due care. In the garden which, bordered to the south perhaps by a stream that propelled itself with extraordinary gentleness along its course, and extending northward into a most motley hilliness, there was, like a bouquet of flowers, a multitude of delicious nooks, which really did appear like friendly little faces, and where, at one’s pleasure, that is to say, most freely, one could lark about, take a rest, make a little love — saying which reminds me that kind fate, of which I have undertaken never to complain, since that would not, in my opinion, be appropriate, once led me into a theater to share the spectacle of a play which simultaneously delighted me and left me somewhat dissatisfied. Might I confess to finding that it is exquisite to be of two minds regarding works of art? To find fault with something that I welcome on the whole, how nice I find this is!

As regards the blossoming trees in the garden, I allow myself the liberty of using the epithet “enchanting,” and of the owner, the person, that is to say, who was entitled to claim, with regard to all the beauty I have described, “You are mine,” it will be desirable to mention, with a sort of horrified dismay in the voice with which I say it, the fact that he was a pimp, whom the most substantial connections seemingly contrived to make undetectable.

How winning his appearance was, and how fetchingly he knew how to move about always in the most decorous society, standing out and striding around as one of the most artful seducers of the century, and who, one day, as the air was just beginning to shade into vesperal violet, was walking in my company on steep paths down the mountain, accordingly as an individual whose overcoat I obediently carried, and who suddenly, before my very eyes, in the middle of an old walkway, sank into an abyss that opened at his feet, sank with all his elegant sinuosities, confusing inexplicabilities, like a figure on a stage, simply vanishing.

A woman of the middle class who saw the drama, too, exclaimed in a shrill voice: “Serves him right!” Never shall I forget the curt, bolt-upright way in which this original, i.e., completely singular member of human society, dropped into the downrightest sawn-offness.

Ready, set — and that was the end of him. Mantled in thought, I returned to the house. The estimable gentleman’s overcoat was a showpiece of the garment industry.

“She was spellbound by him,” I believed myself entitled to whisper, thinking the light that had dawned on me not too bright, and first smoking a subtly fragrant cigarette.

It was one of his.

[1927]

THERE are not many things that I want to say on the subject of masters and workers. The problem cuts deeply into conditions at the present time, which appear positively to seethe with beings who are workers and who sometimes disregard this particular fact. Don’t we sometimes dream with our eyes open, see blindly, feel without feeling, listen without hearing, and don’t we often, when walking, stand still? What a succession of quiet, solid, honorable questions!

Approach, you real barons, that I may discern the lineaments of veritable master types! Masters, to me, are quite a priceless rarity, and a master is, in my view, a man who is touched now and again by the curious need to forget that he is a master. Whereas the workers are distinguished by the way they please to fancy themselves masters, the masters on occasion look down upon them, envying in an understandable sort of way the gaieties and frivolities of the workers; for it seems to me an indubitable fact that the masters are the lonely ones, insofar as they are perpetually in the right and therefore crave to learn what it tastes and smells like to be in the wrong, a thing they cannot know. The masters can behave as they please; not the workers, who consequently never cease longing for command, which they lack, though it could be said to the contrary that the masters are often fed to the teeth with their directordom, would rather be serving and obeying than issuing decrees, the activity in which they see their lives most monotonously absorbed.

“How I’d love one day to get a really good ticking-off!”—it’s a wish that could easily occur, in my opinion, to this or that master, whereas the workers know nothing of suchlike wishes, which are never fulfilled. It’s not only wealth that makes a master; likewise, on the other hand, a worker doesn’t need to be a poor downtrodden wretch. A master, I’m convinced, is what he is much more because it is he who answers requests, just as a worker is what he thinks he is because it is from his lips that requests ring out. The worker waits; the master keeps people waiting. Yet waiting can sometimes be just as pleasant, or even more so, than keeping waiting, which requires strength. A person waiting can afford the sweet luxury of being in no way responsible; while he waits, he can think of his wife, his children, his mistress, and so on; of course, the person who keeps people waiting can do this too, if it gives him any pleasure. But it can happen that the nondescript who is waiting absolutely refuses to get off his mind, and naturally that’s a burden.