Robert Walser: Selected Stories

[1913]

ESTEEMED GENTLEMEN,

I am a poor, young, unemployed person in the business field, my name is Wenzel, I am seeking a suitable position, and I take the liberty of asking you, nicely and politely, if perhaps in your airy, bright, amiable rooms such a position might be free. I know that your good firm is large, proud, old, and rich, thus I may yield to the pleasing supposition that a nice, easy, pretty little place would be available, into which, as into a kind of warm cubbyhole, I can slip. I am excellently suited, you should know, to occupy just such a modest haven, for my nature is altogether delicate, and I am essentially a quiet, polite, and dreamy child, who is made to feel cheerful by people thinking of him that he does not ask for much, and allowing him to take possession of a very, very small patch of existence, where he can be useful in his own way and thus feel at ease. A quiet, sweet, small place in the shade has always been the tender substance of all my dreams, and if now the illusions I have about you grow so intense as to make me hope that my dream, young and old, might be transformed into delicious, vivid reality, then you have, in me, the most zealous and most loyal servitor, who will take it as a matter of conscience to discharge precisely and punctually all his duties. Large and difficult tasks I cannot perform, and obligations of a far-ranging sort are too strenuous for my mind. I am not particularly clever, and first and foremost I do not like to strain my intelligence overmuch. I am a dreamer rather than a thinker, a zero rather than a force, dim rather than sharp. Assuredly there exists in your extensive institution, which I imagine to be overflowing with main and subsidiary functions and offices, work of the kind that one can do as in a dream? — I am, to put it frankly, a Chinese; that is to say, a person who deems everything small and modest to be beautiful and pleasing, and to whom all that is big and exacting is fearsome and horrid. I know only the need to feel at my ease, so that each day I can thank God for life’s boon, with all its blessings. The passion to go far in the world is unknown to me. Africa with its deserts is to me not more foreign. Well, so now you know what sort of a person I am. — I write, as you see, a graceful and fluent hand, and you need not imagine me to be entirely without intelligence. My mind is clear, but it refuses to grasp things that are many, or too many by far, shunning them. I am sincere and honest, and I am aware that this signifies precious little in the world in which we live, so I shall be waiting, esteemed gentlemen, to see what it will be your pleasure to reply to your respectful servant, positively drowning in obedience,

Wenzel

[1914]

I THINK I’ve written this scene before, but I’ll write it once again. In a boat, midway upon the lake, sit a man and woman. High above in the dark sky stands the moon. The night is still and warm, just right for this dreamy love adventure. Is the man in the boat an abductor? Is the woman the happy, enchanted victim? This we don’t know; we see only how they both kiss each other. The dark mountain lies like a giant on the glistening water. On the shore lies a castle or country house with a lighted window. No noise, no sound. Everything is wrapped in a black, sweet silence. The stars tremble high above in the sky and also upward from far below out of the sky which lies on the surface of the water. The water is the friend of the moon, it has pulled it down to itself, and now they kiss, the water and the moon, like boyfriend and girlfriend. The beautiful moon has sunk into the water like a daring young prince into a flood of peril. He is reflected in the water like a beautiful affectionate soul reflected in another love-thirsty soul. It’s marvelous how the moon resembles the lover drowned in pleasure, and how the water resembles the happy mistress hugging and embracing her kingly love. In the boat, the man and woman are completely still. A long kiss holds them captive. The oars lie lazily on the water. Are they happy, will they be happy, the two here in the boat, the two who kiss one another, the two upon whom the moon shines, the two who are in love?

[1914]

Translated by Tom Whalen

I WALKED through the mountains today. The weather was damp, and the entire region was gray. But the road was soft and in places very clean. At first I had my coat on; soon, however, I pulled it off, folded it together, and laid it upon my arm. The walk on the wonderful road gave me more and ever more pleasure; first it went up and then descended again. The mountains were huge, they seemed to go around. The whole mountainous world appeared to me like an enormous theater. The road snuggled up splendidly to the mountainsides. Then I came down into a deep ravine, a river roared at my feet, a train rushed past me with magnificent white smoke. The road went through the ravine like a smooth white stream, and as I walked on, to me it was as if the narrow valley were bending and winding around itself. Gray clouds lay on the mountains as though that were their resting place. I met a young traveler with a rucksack on his back, who asked if I had seen two other young fellows. No, I said. Had I come here from very far? Yes, I said, and went farther on my way. Not a long time, and I saw and heard the two young wanderers pass by with music. A village was especially beautiful with humble dwellings set thickly under the white cliffs. I encountered a few carts, otherwise nothing, and I had seen some children on the highway. We don’t need to see anything out of the ordinary. We already see so much.

[1914]

Translated by Tom Whalen

MY name is Helbling and I am telling my own story because it would probably not be written down by anybody else. With mankind become sophisticated, there can be nothing curious nowadays about a person, like me, sitting down and starting to write his own story. It is short, my story, for I am still young, and it will not be completed, for I shall probably go on living for a very long time. The striking thing about me is that I am a very ordinary person, almost exaggeratedly so. I am one of the multitude, and that is what I find so strange. I find the multitude strange and always wonder: “What on earth are they all doing, what are they up to?” I disappear, yes, disappear in the mass. When I hurry home at midday, as twelve o’clock strikes, from the bank where I am employed, they are all hurrying with me: this one is trying to overtake another, that one is taking longer strides than another; yet, still one thinks, “They will all reach home,” and they do reach home, for among them there is not a single extraordinary person who could happen not to find his way home. I am of medium build and therefore have occasion to be glad that I am neither remarkably short nor irrepressibly tall. I am — if I may use the proper word — moderate. When I eat my lunch, I always think I could eat just as well, or even better, at another place, where it might be jollier, and then I wonder where this might be, some place where livelier conversation goes with better food. I review in my mind all the parts of the town and all the places that I know, until I have located something which might perhaps be for me. In general, I have a high opinion of myself; in fact, I think only of myself, and my one concern is to do myself as proud as can be imagined. Because I come from a good family — my father is a respected businessman in a provincial town — I am quick to find all sorts of faults in things which seem to be coming my way and which I have to take upon myself: I mean, nothing is refined enough for me. I constantly feel that there is about me something delectable, sensitive, fragile, which must be spared, and I consider the others as being not nearly so delectable and refined. How can that be so? It is just as if one were not of coarse enough cut for this life. It is in any case an obstacle which hinders me from distinguishing myself, for, when I have a task to perform, let’s say, I always take thought for half an hour, sometimes for a whole one. I reflect and dream: “Should I tackle it, or should I still put off tackling it?” and in the meantime — I feel this — some of my colleagues will have been remarking that I am slothful, whereas in fact I am just too sensitive. Ah, how wrongly one is judged! A task always frightens me, causes me to brush my desk lid over with the flat of my hand, until I notice that I am being scornfully observed, or I twiddle at my cheeks, finger my throat, pass a hand over my eyes, rub my nose, and push the hair back from my forehead, as if my task lay in that, and not in the sheet of paper which lies before me, outspread, on the desk. Perhaps I have taken the wrong profession, and yet I confidently believe that in any profession I would be the same, do the same, and fail in the same way. I enjoy, as a result of my supposed slothfulness, little respect. People call me a dreamer and a lazybones. Oh, what a talent people have for giving the wrong labels! Of course, it is true: I do not particularly like work, because I always fancy that it occupies and attracts my intellect too little. And that is another thing. I do not know if I have intellect, and I can hardly claim to believe that I have, for often I have been convinced that I behave stupidly whenever I am given a task which requires understanding and acumen. This, in fact, flummoxes me and makes me wonder if I belong among the curious people who are clever only when they fancy themselves to be so, and cease to be clever as soon as they have to show that they really are. I have a quantity of clever, beautiful, and subtle thoughts; but as soon as I have to apply them, they fail me and desert me, and I am left standing there like an ignorant apprentice. Therefore, I do not like my work, because on the one hand it is not intellectual enough for me, and on the other it is all over my head the moment it gets the least bit intellectual. I am always thinking when I should not be, and I cannot do so when I am obliged to. For this double reason I also leave the office a few minutes before twelve and come back always a few minutes later than the others — which has given me rather a bad name. But it’s all the same to me, what they say about me, all unspeakably the same. For instance, I know quite well that they consider me a fool, but I feel that if they have a right to suppose this then I cannot prevent them from doing so. Also I do actually look foolish, my face, conduct, walk, voice, and bearing. There is no doubt about it — to take one example — that my eyes have a rather silly expression, which easily misleads people and gives them a low opinion of my mind. My bearing is rather idiotic, rather vain, too; my voice sounds odd, as if I myself, the speaker, did not know that I was speaking, when I am speaking. There is something sleepy about me, something not-quite-woken-up, and I have already said that people notice this. I always smooth my hair down flat on my head, which heightens perhaps my effect of defiant and helpless stupidity. Then I just stand there, at the desk, and can goggle into the room or out of the window for half an hour. The pen with which I write, I hold in my inactive hand. I stand and shift my weight from one foot to the other, since no greater freedom of movement is permitted me, look at my colleagues, and do not understand at all why, in their eyes, which squint at me askance, I am a pitiful, irresponsible slacker, smile if someone gives me a look, and dream without a thought in my head. If only I could do that, dream! No, I have no idea what that is. I am always thinking that if I had a lot of money I would not work any more, and am as pleased as a child that I could think this, once the thought has come to an end. The salary which I earn seems to me too small, and I do not consider telling myself that I do not even earn that much by what I do, though I know that I do practically nothing. Curious, I have not the talent to be somewhat ashamed of myself. If someone, a superior for instance, rebukes me, I am intensely outraged, for it wounds me to be rebuked. I cannot bear it, though I tell myself that I have deserved reproof. I believe that I oppose the superior’s reprimand in order to prolong conversation with him a little, perhaps half an hour, for then another half hour will have passed, during which at least I shall not have been bored. If my colleagues believe that I am bored, they are right, of course, for I am, terribly. Nothing exciting happens! To be bored and to ponder how I can possibly break the boredom — that is what my real occupation is. I achieve so little that I think, concerning myself: “You achieve actually nothing!” Sometimes I have to yawn, quite unintentionally, opening my mouth, right up at the ceiling, and putting my hand up, slowly to cover the aperture. At once I find it opportune to twirl my mustache with my fingertips, and to drum on the desk, say, with the underside of one of my fingers, just as in a dream. Sometimes all this seems to me like an incomprehensible dream. Then I pity myself and could weep for myself. But, when the dreaminess passes, I should like to throw myself flat on the floor, collapse, hurt myself on the edge of the desk, so as to feel the time-killing pleasure of the pain. My soul is not entirely unpained at my situation, for sometimes I perceive, if I listen closely, a gentle plaintive note of accusation in it, like the voice of my still-living mother, who always thought well of me, the reverse of my father, who has stronger principles than she. But to me my soul is too dark and valueless a thing that I should treasure what it lets me perceive. I think nothing of its note. I think that one listens to the murmur of the soul only because of boredom. When I stand in the office, my limbs slowly turn to wood, which one longs to set fire to, so that it might burn: desk and man, one with time! Time, that always makes me think. It passes quickly, yet in all its quickness it seems suddenly to curl up, seems to break, and then it’s as if there were no time at all. Sometimes one hears it rustling, like a flock of startled birds, or, for instance, in a forest: there I am always hearing time rustle, and that does one good, for then one no longer needs to think. But mostly it is otherwise: so deathly still! Can that be a human life, not to feel that one is moving on, toward the end? My life till now seems to have been fairly empty, and the certainty that it will remain empty gives a feeling of endlessness, a feeling which tells one to go to sleep, and to do only the most unavoidable things. So that is just what I do: I only pretend to work industriously when I detect behind me the smelly breath of my boss, creeping up to surprise me in my slothfulness. The breath which streams from him is his betrayer. The good man always provides me with a little distraction, so I really like him quite a lot. But what causes me to respect my duty and instructions so little? I am a small, pale, timid, weak, elegant, silly little fellow, full of unworldly feelings, and would not be able to endure the rigor of life if things ever went against me. Can the thought of losing my job, if I go on like this, inspire no fear in me? As it seems, it cannot; yet again, as it seems, it can. I am a bit afraid and a bit not afraid, too. Perhaps I am too unintelligent to be afraid; yes, it almost seems that the childish defiance with which I justify myself before my fellow men is a sign of weak-mindedness. But, but: it suits marvelously my character, which always instructs me to act a little out of the ordinary, even if it is to my disadvantage. Thus, for instance, I bring, though it is not allowed, small books into the office, where I slit open the pages and read, without really enjoying the reading. But it makes it look like the elegant obstinacy of a man who is cultivated and wants to be more than the others. I do indeed always want to be more, and I have the zeal of a hunting dog when it comes to seeking distinction. If I read the book and a colleague comes up and asks the question, which is perhaps quite in order, “What are you reading, Helbling?”—that annoys me, because in this case it is proper to show an annoyance which drives the importunate questioner away. I act uncommonly important when I read, look all around to see if people are noticing how cleverly someone there is improving his mind and wits; I slit open page after page at splendid leisure, do not even read any more but satisfy myself with having assumed the posture of a person immersed in a book. That is how I am: harebrained, and all for effect. I am vain, but my satisfaction with my vanity costs remarkably little. My clothes are of coarse appearance, but I vary them zealously, for it pleases me to show my colleagues that I own several suits and have some taste in my choice of colors. I like to wear green, because it reminds me of the forests, and I wear yellow on windy, airy days because yellow is right for wind and dancing. I could be in error here, perhaps, for people point out how often every day I am in error. One ends up believing that one is a simpleton. But what difference does it make whether one is a ninny or a person worthy of esteem, since the rain falls equally on donkeys and respectable men. And then the sun! I am happy in the sun, when twelve has struck, to be walking home, and when it rains I spread the luxuriant bellying umbrella over myself, so that my hat, which I greatly treasure, shall not get wet. I treat my hat very carefully, and it always seems to me that if I can still touch my hat in my usual gentle manner, then I am still an altogether lucky person. It gives me particular pleasure to put it, when a working day is over, cautiously on my head. That is, for me, always, my favorite end to every day. My life does indeed consist of mere trivialities. I am always telling myself that, and that seems so strange to me. I have never found it right to get enthusiastic about big ideals concerning humanity, for my disposition is more critical than enthusiastic, on which I congratulate myself. I am a person who feels degraded when he meets an ideal man, with long hair, sandals on his naked legs, apron of skin around his loins, and flowers in his hair. I smile, with embarrassment, in such cases. To laugh aloud, the thing one would certainly most like to do, is impossible, also it is in fact more a cause for annoyance than for laughter, living among people who regard a smooth head of hair like mine with distaste. I like to be annoyed, so I always get annoyed at the least provocation. I often make sarcastic remarks and yet certainly have little need to be malicious toward others, since I know quite well what it means to be grieved by the scorn of others. But that is just it: I observe nothing, learn nothing, and behave just as on the day I left school. There’s a good deal of the schoolboy in me, and it will probably remain my constant companion through life. There are said to be people who have no capacity for betterment and no talent for learning from the behavior of others. No, I do not learn, for I find it beneath my dignity to surrender to the urge for education. Besides, I am already educated enough to carry a walking stick in my hand with some grace, and to knot a necktie, and to grasp a spoon with my right hand, and to say, when asked, “Thank you, it was very nice yesterday evening.” What more can education make of me? Honestly: I think education would be coming to quite the wrong person. I go for money and comfortable status, that’s my urge for education. I seem to be terribly superior to a miner, even if he, if he so wished, could whisk me, with the forefinger of his left hand, into a hole in the earth, where I would get dirty. Strength and beauty among poor people and in modest dress make no impression on me. I always think, when I see a person like that, how well-off people like us are, with our superior position in the world, compared with such a work-raddled fool, and no compassion steals into my heart. Where should I keep a heart? I have forgotten that I have one. Certainly it is sad, but how should I find it proper to feel sorrow? One feels sorrow only when one has lost money, or when one’s new hat does not fit well, or when one’s holdings on the stock exchange drop, and even then one has to ask if that is sorrow or not, and on closer inspection it is not, it is only a fleeting regret, which vanishes like the wind. It is, no, how can I put it now — it is marvelously strange to have no feelings in this way, not to know at all what an emotion is. Feelings which concern one’s own person, everyone has these, and they are at root despicable ones, presumptuous ones if they relate to humanity as a whole. But feelings for particular people? Of course, one sometimes would like to ask oneself about this, one feels something like a slight longing to become a good, compliant person, but when could one manage it? Perhaps at seven in the morning, or some other time? Already on Friday, and right through the Saturday following, I am wondering what to do on Sunday, since on Sunday something always has to be done. I seldom go for a walk alone. Usually I join a group of young people, the way one does; it is quite simple, one simply goes along with them, though one knows that one is rather a boring companion. I take the steamer, for example, across the lake, or go on foot, into the forest, or travel by train to more distant, beautiful spots. Often I accompany girls to a dance, and I have found that the girls like me. I have a white face, beautiful hands, an elegant, fluttering dinner jacket, gloves, rings on my fingers, a cane with silver mountings, clean polished shoes, and a tender Sunday sort of bearing, such a remarkable voice, and about my mouth a peevish trait, which I myself have no words to describe, but which seems to endear me to the girls. When I speak, it is as if a man of some gravity were speaking. Pomposity appeals, there’s no doubt about that. As for my dancing, it is like that of a person who has only just taken, and enjoyed, lessons: jaunty, delicate, punctual, precise, but too fast and insipid. There is precision and buoyancy in my dancing, but unfortunately no grace. How could I be capable of grace? But I love to dance, passionately. When I dance I forget that I am Helbling, for I am nothing but a happy floating-in-the-air. Thoughts of the office, with its manifold agonies, would not intrude on me at all. Around me are flushed faces; perfume and brightness of girls’ clothes, girls’ eyes gaze at me; I am flying: can one imagine oneself happier? Now I have got it: once in the cycle of the week I can be happy. One of the girls whom I always accompany is my fiancée, but she treats me badly, worse than the other ones do. She is not even — and I do certainly notice it — faithful to me, hardly loves me, I suppose, and I, do I love her? I have many faults, which I have candidly disclosed, but here all my faults and inadequacies seem to be forgiven me: I love her. It is my joy, that I may love her and often despair because of her. She gets me to carry her gloves and pink silk sunshade when it is summer; and in winter I am allowed to trot after her in the deep snow, carrying her skates. I do not understand love, but feel it. Good and evil are nothing compared with love, which knows nothing other than or outside of love. How should I express it: worthless and empty as I otherwise am, not everything is lost, for I really am capable of faithful love, although I could have ample scope for infidelity. I go with her in the sunshine, under the blue sky, in a boat, which I row forward, and keep on smiling at her, while she seems to be bored. Yes, I am a very boring person. Her mother has a small, seedy, rather ill-reputed workingman’s bar, where I can spend whole Sundays on end, sitting, saying nothing, smiling at her. Sometimes, too, her face comes down to mine so as to let me press a kiss on her mouth. She has a sweet, sweet face. On her cheek there is the scar of an old scratch, which makes her mouth twist a little, but sweetly. She has very small eyes, which twinkle at you craftily as if to say: “I’ll show you a thing or two!” Often she sits beside me on the shabby, hard sofa, and whispers in my ear that it really is lovely to be engaged. I seldom know what to say to her, for I am always afraid that it would not be opportune; so I am just silent and yet want badly to say something to her. Once she extended to my lips her small, fragrant ear: Hadn’t I got anything to say, something that could only be whispered? I said, trembling, that I did not think so, and then she boxed my ears and laughed as well, but not in a friendly way, no, coldly. She does not get on well with her mother and her little sister, and will not let me be kind to her sister. Her mother has a nose that is red from drinking, and she is a lively little woman, who likes to sit at the table with the men. But my fiancée sits with the men, too. Once she said to me, in a quiet voice: “I’m not chaste any more”; her tone was quite natural, and I had no objection to make. What could I possibly have had to say? With other girls I am brisk, and am even witty in my speech; but with her I sit dumbly and look at her and follow each of her movements with my eyes. Each time I sit there until the bar has to close, or even longer, till she packs me off home. When the daughter is not there, the mother comes to sit at my table and tries to make me think of her. I fend it off with a hand and I smile. The mother hates her daughter, and it is obvious that they hate each other, for each obstructs the other’s intentions. Each wants a husband and each grudges the husband to the other. When I am sitting, evenings, on the sofa, all the people who come to the bar notice that I am the bridegroom-to-be, and everyone has a friendly word for me, but I really could not care. Beside me, the little sister, who is still at school, reads in her books, or she does big tall letters in her writing book, and always she passes it across to me, so that I can look at what she has done. I have never taken any notice, normally, of such little creatures, and now all at once I understand how interesting every little growing creature is. It is because of my love for the other one. An honest love makes one better and more alert. In winter she tells me: “It will be lovely in spring when we can walk together along the garden paths”; and in spring she tells me: “It is boring with you.” She wants to live in a big town when she is married, because she wants to get something out of life. The theaters and fancy-dress balls, beautiful costumes, wine, laughing conversation, gay exciting people, that is what she loves, that is what she longs for. I long for it too, as a matter of fact, but how it can all be done, I do not know. I told her: “Perhaps by next winter I shall have lost my job.” She looked at me them, open-eyed, and asked: “Why?” What sort of answer should I have given her? I certainly cannot with a single stroke show her what sort of person I am. She would despise me. Till now, she has always thought of me as a man of some ability, a man, of course a rather odd and boring one, but still a man with a position in the world. If I now tell her: “You are wrong, my position is very shaky indeed,” she would have no reason to want my company any more, seeing all her hopes of me destroyed. I let it go, I am a master in letting things slide, as they say. Perhaps, if I were a dancing instructor, owner of a restaurant, or a theater director, or had some other profession connected with the entertainment of people, then I might have some luck, for I am that sort of person, jaunty, afloat, leg-flinging, light, buoyant, quiet, always making a bow and having a tender emotion, who would do well as a landlord, stage manager, or tailor, or something. Whenever I have a chance to make a bow, I am happy. That helps one, does it not, to give a deep look? I even bow where it is not usual to do so, or when only toadies and imbeciles do, so much in love am I with the procedure. For serious man’s work I have not the intellect or the sense, neither ear nor eye nor mind. Nothing in the world could be further from me. I want to make a profit, but it has got to cost me no more than the twinkling of an eye, at most the lazy extending of a hand. Normally, unwillingness to work is not quite natural in men, but it fits me, it suits me, even if this is a sorry garb which suits me so perfectly, and even if the garb’s cut is pitiable: why shouldn’t I say, “It suits me,” when anyone can see for himself that it does, to a T. Unwillingness to work! But I don’t want to say any more about it. I am always thinking, too, that it is the fault of the climate, the damp lake air, which prevents me from getting to work, and now, with this knowledge pressing upon me, I am looking for a job in the south, or in the mountains. I could direct a hotel, or manage a factory, or run the counter at a smallish bank. A sunny, open landscape should be able to develop talents in me which till now have been dormant. A greengrocery would not be bad. In any case, I am a person who always believes that great inward gains come through external change. Another climate would produce, also, a different menu for lunch, and perhaps this is what the matter is. Could it really be that I am ill? So much is wrong; I am deficient, actually, in everything. Could it be that I am an unlucky person? Could it be a sort of sickness to concern oneself always, as I do, with such questions? Anyway, it is not quite normal. Today I was ten minutes late again at the bank. I cannot get there on time any more as the others do. I ought really to be quite alone in the world, me, Helbling, and not a single living being besides me. No sun, no culture, me, naked on a high rock, no storms, not even a wave, no water, no wind, no streets, no benches, no money, no time, and no breath. Then, at least, I should not be afraid any more. No more fear and no more questions, and I should not be late any more, either. I could imagine that I was lying in bed, everlastingly in bed! Perhaps that would be the best thing.