Robert Walser - Berlin Stories

Yet, after standing there dumbly for a time, I was gratified and grew calm. Life took me by the shoulder and its wonderful gaze rested on mine. The world was as living as ever and beautiful as at the most beautiful times. I quietly left the room and went out into the street.

1915

Translated by Christopher Middleton

My knowledge of this woman’s life remains sketchy. Frau Scheer was out of the ordinary, and talented in the extreme. Statements she made in my presence served to indicate then as now that she had spent her youth gaily and happily in the provinces. When she spoke of her childhood, there was always an indescribable, bittersweet rapture in her gaze. Her words summoned up a pretty, tidy little town surrounded by forest, fields, and green meadows. It made her happy to be permitted to speak of these bygone days, and if it was my humble person who provided the occasion for this quiet happiness, I shall make so bold as to consider this a modest achievement on my part, as for a time there was no one old Frau Scheer saw more of than the author of these lines, who for several reasons took a pronounced interest in this eccentric, aging woman. I was the one to whom she told things, this poor, isolated female all alone in the world, I who with great pleasure lent his ear, listening attentively to her words. I was gripped by the peculiar fate of this — millionairess. Frau Scheer was a millionaire several times over. What poor creatures we human beings are, so variously deceived. This millionairess, this wealthy Frau Scheer, thanked me most touchingly and was glad when I announced my desire to come into her room in the evening and sit with her beside the lamp for a little while. Frau Scheer was ugly; the passions of a turbulent business career, sorrows, a sea of troubles and grueling worries, haste and the pursuit of commercial successes, the torments of raging jealousy and ongoing toils had imprinted upon her face the mark of the repugnant and repulsive. Nonetheless I easily succeeded in discovering in this face a beauty that had not yet been fully extinguished, and in the evening, with the yellow sheen of the lamplight streaming over her features, old Frau Scheer became oddly lovely, and the way she then spoke and sat there was both captivating and moving. As I learned just before her death from a personage who was close to her, she is supposed to have said once that she would have been able to acquire a fortune of twenty million if Heaven had given her a different husband.

I have a photograph of Frau Scheer in which she is shown as a young woman and looks utterly charming. She married a happy-go-lucky, good-natured man who wished to enjoy his days upon this earth. His wife then manifested a truly demonic talent for speculating with fortune. She arrived in the capital during the great Gründerzeit period of industrial expansion, and here she found ample opportunity to develop her ingenious capabilities. In no time, she and her husband became rich. The money that now flowed into the pockets of this pleasure-seeking man drove him to carry on in the most hair-raising fashion. He surrounded himself with friends and pursued a dissolute lifestyle. He was a simple, good, innocuous man for whom the purpose of these riches was to squander them. This is much the way Asian and African princes comport themselves when they arrive in European cities. There are two sorts of people in the world: those who expend money on sensual debaucheries, and those who have a peculiar love of money and therefore manage it in the most faithful, cautious way. Frau Scheer was born to manage funds, while her husband was born to waste and squander them. Some cannot seem to value money, while others fail to value pleasure — and the life Scheer was leading verged on the monstrous. When it was getting on to evening, he would fill all his pockets with hundred- and thousand-mark banknotes, and thus excellently equipped he would betake himself off, as one says, and when this man — who was easily made drunk — had been plundered by dissolute women, villainous waiters, and other sorts of robbers and knaves, they would deposit him in a hackney cab to be driven slumberously home, and when his wife, this indefatigable businesswoman, saw her husband arriving in this state, docking wretchedly in the harbor of their marriage, in full knowledge of the fact that this miserable, base junket had once again cost enormous sums, she was seized with fury at the man’s cloddishness, she felt soiled and offended, and all her limbs trembled with indignation, disgust, pain, and horror.

I am in no way capable of judging whether there is any truth to the rumor that came to me shortly before Frau Scheer’s death from the mouth of the aforementioned personage who numbered among her friends, a rumor that sought to convince me that my unfortunate Frau Scheer had given some thought to arranging to have her imprudent husband murdered. According to this rumor, as the mischief being wrought by this frivolous man was becoming ever more serious, Frau Scheer entered into apparently quite close relations with a strange, romantic, exalted individual, a physician, meaning to avail herself of this overwrought dreamer and visionary as what we might refer to as a willing, chivalrously eager tool, so to speak, of revenge and retribution. Certainly the aggrieved woman had great and justified cause for her honest, deeply felt wrath; certainly she herself, as I had ample opportunity to observe, possessed an easily swayed, sensitive character and was ruled by a volatile temper, and yet I did and do not believe in the above so horrific and lugubrious claim. Frau Scheer was at the same time gentle, she had a visible streak of sweet kindness, and — despite everything, and then despite everything all over again — she did love, respect, and esteem her husband. Perhaps that harebrained adventurer, that dark midnight doctor had indeed once made her a sinister offer of this sort; but she most assuredly would have rejected it, admonishing her friend — if in fact she ever had one — to behave in a proper, sensible way. I do not doubt this for a moment, although I do concede that Frau Scheer was a peculiar and, as said before, utterly out-of-the-ordinary human being. Meanwhile Scheer fell ill, and it wasn’t long before he died at what was by no means an advanced age but rather, relatively speaking, the prime of life, and Frau Scheer was left alone.

From this point until her own passing, the woman who is the object of this “study” led a life that could not possibly have been spent any more miserably, restlessly, and tormentedly by any other person. No beggar woman ever had so poor, lamentable, and shabby an existence. No poor worker or worker’s wife ever led such a poor, sad life of woe as did this exceedingly wealthy woman, and if ever in this world, which is a mystery and will always remain one, there lived a hero or heroine of everyday life, this Frau Scheer was a heroine. She fought an unheard-of battle and suffered and endured unheard-of adversity. A single glance into her apartment revealed everything she endured. Was Frau Scheer mad? Often when I saw her chasing about or speaking, walking, or writing in such haste, making phone calls, running about and carrying on, this admittedly somewhat bold and audacious thought did occur to me. Obstinacy often comes awfully close to madness. Frau Scheer could have built herself a palace, a wonderful summer and a winter residence and dwelt there like a baroness, countess, or princess, but the human heart is a curious thing, and the heart of our peculiar lady was devoted entirely to her business ventures, and she had no interest in all the pleasures, splendors, and beauties of the world. Frau Scheer was shockingly tightfisted; stinginess and the earning of money were like two dear sons to her — she saw in them the best and the most precious of what the world had to offer. Yes, I must confess that this woman struck me as infinitely fascinating: I sympathized with her. Sympathies are strange things; sometimes they can scarcely be explained. I found this millionairess sympathetic although she was so ugly; her sorrow and misery cast a romantic spell that made her appear beautiful.