Robert Walser - Berlin Stories

You find yourself being shoved this way and that, half lifted up, carried along and rocked. An immense crowd has assembled all around this roaring, hissing, flickering fire catastrophe. Will lives be lost? people wonder. Soon all are finding the throng as familiar as an intimate friendship with a dear, admirable person. Now and again hot fiery winds blow across people’s faces, new flurries of sparks rise in the air, a splendid sight. And still it burns, and so and so many people are taking in the spectacle of the flames. One or the other is about to leave, but once again his eye is drawn back to the fire, irresistibly. If you now stand up high on your toes, you can see constables on horseback. “We were just expecting you,” some young fellow remarks. Others laugh. Everyone is standing head to head, breath beside breath, feeling beside feeling, curiosity beside curiosity, body to body, and each of them still finds himself compelled to go on reading this suspenseful nature story. Automobiles in the midst of the pressing crowd. “Let’s go stand somewhere else. This corner gives me the creeps.” Words of this sort are heard. Suddenly a majestic flaming figure bursts forth from a glowing gap in the conflagration, a veritable fiery giant, and thrusts itself far out into the night air, taking the form of gently falling rain, as though something beautiful and huge was just there and now is dying out.

More and more people keep arriving as others leave. Those departing throw themselves amusingly into the wake of the puffing, tootling cars, which helpfully bore a path through the malleable throng, making their departure possible. The electric trams are stuffed to bursting because of all the many people taking refuge in the cars. Other inquisitive faces peer out the windows of nearby buildings. And now even the elegant nocturnal party set is sending out its envoys, both female and male, bedded in hackney cabs and furs, and still the fire continues to rage. The fire’s wrath is not so easily placated, not even with streams of water, even the most sustained. You see the team of firefighters, admiring the daredevil positions they assume, yet cannot help expecting at every moment to see them succumb to smoke and flames. Now a general jostling ensues: policemen up front are pushing back the crowd! It’s difficult to keep your footing, and in the first uncertainty of your new position you grasp, as if to steady yourself, the nearest available hand, which happens to be the delightful hand of a girl, but then, like it or not, this property must be let go of.

Is this a great calamity? Thanks to the vigilance and valor of the fire department, the extent of the loss has been reduced, but an old, memorable, venerable building has been lost, and this is loss enough. Enough charming sites from ancient times have been snatched from us by everyday life and its raucous demands, and now the fire too is helping to thin out Berlin’s statues and historical monuments. But the populace is not terribly concerned with all that “old rubbish.” A postman standing there among the crowd remarks that it’s good to have room for new things. In Berlin, he adds, things are getting too cramped anyhow — it’s terrible how it blocks the flow of traffic. A person has to head for Charlottenburg — now there’s a proper region where you can find wide, lovely, bright streets, etc.

My companion is now urging me on, he’s cold, and both of us are meanwhile convinced that we are hungry for a nice supper. We leave, but keep turning around to look back again. The yellow, red, glowing entity behind us is still alive, displaying frightful vitality, still speaking this same fierce, furious language, still feeling the same indestructible incendiary sentiments. But my companion declares it’s getting tedious to watch the flames for so long. I concede the point. It is one of my possibly bad habits that I am constantly conceding points to my fellow man.

1908

How nice it is to stand about in train stations and in a leisurely fashion observe the travelers who are arriving and going off again. Many a poor, destitute devil enjoys this pastime, for it is an amusement that costs nothing at all. Nor does it require any formalities or rules; you merely stand there, your hands possibly in your trouser pockets, a cigarette or cigar stump in your mouth, almost indecorously, and yet without attracting any particular notice, and in this way you may enjoy the liveliest and loveliest spectacle in the world, for this is a train station. Train stations in the countryside can be downright ravishing with their gardens and the little stands of trees that tend to be situated beside such buildings, but in the train stations of royal seats and capitals there’s more going on, and all this mobility is sometimes far more beautiful than all beautiful, peaceful landscapes. For the unemployed and all the various sorts of idlers that today’s industrial, artistic, and commercial life and activity at times sets out on the street, train stations and the sight of the departing and arriving trains are ideal. The ne’er-do-well has plenty of time at his disposal, and as a result he observes practically everything, he walks slowly up and down the smooth platforms, measuring out steps of noble elegance, and lets his eyes wander everywhere. What a great massing and intermingling! At the ticket windows there are often veritable public assemblies and imperiously demanding mobs, as though we found ourselves in a year of passionate revolution. Everyone wants to receive his ticket as quickly as possible, but usually he has failed to sort out the exact change in advance as admonished by the station’s solicitous management. The idler is better off: he need not run and need not fear that the express train will pull out right under his nose. “I was just about to get on when, so help me God, that black devil of a train took off right past my hat.” This is the sort of thing uttered by travelers with boarding intentions, but not by the person whose aim it is to blithely, quietly observe. What a pushing, pressing, shoving, racing mayhem! Ah, here’s an important train pulling in, and you stand there watching how they throw their arms about each other’s necks, how kisses are distributed left and right, how hats are waved about, how the charming heads of women blush, how hands and arms are held out to receive, how eyes light up, how servants awaiting their masters stand to attention as they catch sight of them and then swiftly relieve them of their little suitcases, packages, and all sorts of silly items.

After two or three minutes the hubbub generally dies down, and the idler takes up position somewhere else. There is always something happening everywhere in a train station, he’s quite aware of this, and so he is not at all concerned he might have cause to suffer tedium. Not a bit of it. He goes into the third-, fourth-, sixth-, or, as far as he cares, fourteenth-class restaurant, where there are always people sitting about on the benches or chairs or at tables. He’s already accustomed to the unsavory odors to be found in such establishments, and so nothing could possibly shrink or incinerate his pleasure. The twine he’s used to bind his enjoyment to this spectacle holds firm, and now perhaps he drinks a glass of beer and converses with an honest traveling journeyman who’s sitting on his suitcase as though he were afraid someone might come along and rob him of all he owns. From time to time the loiterer might venture into the first- and second-class waiting rooms so as to pay a visit, if only a brief and rather conspicuous one, to the elegance and luxury that has settled itself here in lordly comfort. Sometimes he’s chased off by a stern official wearing a railway uniform, but this does him no harm, after all, he has once again beheld something beautiful with his eyes! If he is well-dressed, he might secretly sit down here among the aristocracy and the bankers’ guild and order a cognac which he will drink intelligently and with pensive dignity while striking up a conversation with a pretty waitress clad in a folksy Oberland costume. “Express train departing for Milan in four minutes,” a by all appearances courteous employee announces; our man rises to his feet, pays his tab, and strolls casually out to have a look at this Milan departure. What excellent grooming, what ensembles! Many of the ladies boarding the train wear white veils on their hats, and their cavaliers assist them with greater or lesser degrees of skill as they get in. The train chugs off, a few handkerchiefs are waved about like little flags, the ne’er-do-well is himself departing in his thoughts, in other words he imagines sitting in an empty compartment, reading a newspaper.