The Assistant

by Robert Walser

  Today for the first time he noticed a scar on Frau Tobler’s neck beneath her ears, and asked her what it was from.

  She told him the scar was left over from an operation and that she would probably have to undergo a second operation in the same spot, since her illness had not yet been cured. She lamented: You shovel out so much money, just toss it down the ever-hungry jaws of the surgical arts, and then it turns out that no real healing has taken place. Yes, these individuals, the doctors and professors, she said, demand a small half-fortune for even the tiniest scalpel incision scarcely visible to the eyes of ordinary mortals, and for what? So that they can make some mistake or other, with the result that one is forced to go running back to them yet again, forced to undergo yet another course of treatment.

  Was she in pain, Joseph wanted to know.

  “In pain? Sometimes,” the woman said.

  Then she told Joseph about the operation. How she had been instructed to go into a large empty room in which nothing could be seen but a high bed or framework and four identically dressed nurses. Each of these nurses had looked exactly like the others, just as empty and unfeeling. Their faces resembled one another as closely as four stones of the same size and color. Then she was commanded, in a strangely harsh tone of voice, to climb up onto the bed-frame. She didn’t wish to exaggerate, but in all truth she had to say that these proceedings had filled her with horror. There was not a trace, not a snippet of friendliness anywhere around her; rather, everything had left her with an impression of severity and callousness. Not a hint of a gentle look, not the slightest inkling of a comforting or calming word. As if a bit of kind-heartedness might have poisoned, infected or even killed her. In her opinion, this was taking prudence and propriety too far. Then she had been put to sleep, and from then on she naturally hadn’t felt anything or known anything until it was over. And perhaps, she concluded her report, this was all as it had to be. Maybe she just perceived it as unnecessarily heartless. And a true doctor was perhaps not allowed to have a heart at all, who could say.

  She sighed and ran a hand through her hair.

  The thought, she went on, of having to—to lie down there a second time was abhorrent to her and distressing. And also for quite a different reason. Joseph could no doubt guess this easily enough. She found it difficult to bring up such matters with her husband now that their financial situation, as Joseph surely knew, was becoming ever more precarious. A woman could count herself lucky if she had no reason to require extraordinary expenses. Stupid money; how vile it was constantly to have to worry about such things. No, first—and here she smiled—she wanted to buy that new dress she’d been wanting a long time now before she’d give the doctors anything again. They could wait a while as far as she was concerned.

  Joseph thought: “The husband wants to keep the metal-smiths waiting, and his wife the doctors.”

  The first of August!

  An evening, a night and a day had passed without anything in particular. Now it was evening once more, the evening of the celebration. Already they were beginning to light the candles. From the distance, the soft thudding of guns fired in salute reached the ears of those assembled at the house. Tobler had provided several bottles of good wine. The mechanic working on the “Marksman’s Vending Machine” had come from the neighboring village to attend the festivities. The two parquet ladies were there as well. They were sitting in the summer house and had already opened the bottles of wine. Tobler was glowing with anticipatory pleasure at this night of celebration, glowing already, and the darker the sky and earth became, the more fiery was the peculiar gleam that shone in his ruddy face. Joseph was lighting the candles and lamps, he had to duck down under each of the bushes in search of possibly overlooked lanterns. From the village, a murmur of singing and shouts could be heard, as if that place, scarcely a kilometer distant, had become the scene of joyous revelry. More gunfire! This time the shots came thundering from the far shore of the lake. Tobler cried out: “Ah, they’re getting down to business!” He called Joseph to him to give him “something to drink” along with some more copious pointers regarding the electrical illumination of the large national emblem. Tonight the clerk was a clerk in the service of the great, holy fatherland.

  How the sonorous voice of Herr Tobler rang out on this great evening. Soon the sputtering, hissing rockets were zooming up into the sky, or else a squib exploded. Entire glowing snakes, guided by the hand of the assiduous assistant, sprang up into the dark air—truly, it was starting to look like a tale from the Thousand and One Nights. Once more, bam, a shot in the distance. Down in the village, they were shooting as well. Tobler shouted down: “Well? Are you trying to catch up? You’re always the last in line. That’s just how you are, you barroom slugs!” He roared with laughter, brandishing a full glass of shimmering golden wine in his hand. His relatively small eyes were sparkling as if wanting to shoot off fireworks themselves.

  Again and again, one rocket after the other, one sparkler and fiery snake after the other. The way Joseph was standing there, he resembled a heroic artilleryman in the heat of battle. He had assumed the noble-romantic bearing and stance of a fighter apparently resolved to give the last bit of his blood in the name of honor. This had happened without intention on his part, it was quite involuntary. At such moments, human beings can imagine for themselves all sorts of things, the image of something good and exalted and exceptional arrives of its own accord. All that is needed is a little wine and the thunderclap of gunfire, and already the illusion of the extraordinary has been spun tightly enough to let one go on dreaming an entire long, peaceful, humble night. Joseph’s heart, like that of his master, was aflame with pleasure at the evening’s festivities.

  “Shoot, you lousy bastards!”

  These words, shouted by Tobler in the direction of the village, were addressed to those few individuals who always permitted themselves a certain derisive tone when he began to speak of his inventions over a beer. His choice of words and the shout were meant to show these “milksops”—they received this title in yet another brief speech—how utterly he despised them.

  “But Carl!”

  Frau Tobler couldn’t suppress a resounding laugh.

  How intoxicatingly beautiful it was now. In the distant invisible mountains, hovering as if in midair, high up in the heavens, bonfires were ignited and burned. Horns, too, sounding huge and robust, now rang out from high up and far away, slowly expelling their metal breath and drawing it out for a long time. This was beautiful, and everything that had ears was listening. Yes, if the mountains themselves were beginning to resound and speak, the tiny hisses and pops of the hasty little rockets must soon fall silent. Mountain fires burn quietly but for a long time, whereas the fizzling and spluttering of nearby fireworks can create quite a sensation for a brief moment but then soon vanishes without a trace.

  Tobler was exceptionally pleased with the impression made by the large illuminated emblem with its bold red and white. For this reason he sent for another few bottles of wine and seemed never to tire of pouring it into various glasses. “Confound it,” he exclaimed loudly, “on a day like this you’ve got to drain the cup dry!”

  And so there was an assiduous clinking of glasses, and the sounds of chiming glass combined with the laughter ringing out at the various foolish stunts being hastily dreamed up and carried out. Cheeks were gleaming just as brightly as the looks in people’s eyes. Naturally Frau Tobler had had the children put to bed long ago. A cork was secretly painted with red enamel and suddenly placed upon the nose of the old lady from the parquet factory in such a way that it remained stuck there. At this sight, Tobler was in danger of laughing himself sick, he had to hold his cheeks with both hands, as they were threatening to explode.

  Finally the celebration jingled and grinned its way to an end with the last glass of wine raised to the lips of the revelers. The desire to play pranks began to ebb, it was quickly tumbling head over heels into slumber. The women all rose from their seats and went home, wh
ile the men lingered for another half hour in the summer house, gradually becoming earnest again.

  *

  The village of Bärenswil, the community housing the Tobler settlement, lies a good three-quarters of an hour by train from the canton’s metropolitan capital. Like all the villages in the region, this town is situated in the most delightful surroundings and boasts a considerable number of stately aristocratic or public buildings, many from the rococo period. There are also notable factories here, such as silk manufacturers and ribbon weaving plants, which themselves have reached a considerable age. Industry and trade first set their more or less primitive wheels and fan belts in motion here approximately one hundred and fifty years ago, and they have been able to enjoy a continuously good reputation to this day, not only nationally but worldwide. The merchants and factory owners, however, did not merely remain trapped, stuck in the task of earning money. No, over the many years, and under the many different fashions of the day, they expended a great deal of money as well, and it is still plain to see that, in a word, they most certainly knew how to live. In various periods and various styles, they had all sorts of attractive villa-like buildings erected whose unobtrusive but charming forms can even today be admired and secretly coveted by the chance visitor. These newly prosperous individuals no doubt did a masterful job of residing within their little castles and homes with both consequence and taste: one cannot help but imagine these edifices as the site of the most beautiful and wholesome domesticity. But now the descendents of these old genteel merchant families are continuing to build in a dignified style. They like to tuck their houses away inside old gardens already distinguished by prodigious growth, for an appreciation of both distinctiveness and simplicity was given to them and passed on through the transmission of the ancestral blood. On the other hand, we can also see a great many indigent and miserable structures in Bärenswil or Bärensweil, which are home to the working classes; and even this other side, the opposite of wealth and delicate beauty, has a long-standing and natural tradition. In a manner every bit as solid and long and well-established as the affluent and tasteful villa the squalid hovel can go on existing; squalor will never die out as long as splendor and refined worldly living are still to be found.

  Yes, Bärenswil is a pretty and pensive little village. Its alleyways and streets resemble garden paths. Looking upon it, one beholds not only urban but also small-town and rural characteristics. If you should happen to see a proud woman on horseback with a retinue, you needn’t be dumbstruck with foolish astonishment; just have a look at the factory smokestacks and consider the money being made here, and also consider that money, as everyone knows, is capable of anything. Even coaches with rigorously uniformed footmen are not merely the stuff of legend hereabouts. Nor are they necessarily the property of countesses or baronesses either, for now and then it might appear fitting for the wife of a factory owner to travel in style, all the more so as the proud tradition of industry and trade is quite clearly represented among the landed and town-house-dwelling gentry.

  “A charming little hole in the wall” is how some cultivated stranger might describe the town. Herr Tobler, on the other hand, had no longer said anything of the sort for quite some time, indeed, he cursed the “filthy hole,” for the one and only reason that several of the Bärenswilers with whom he was in the habit of spending evenings at the “Sailboat” were not entirely convinced of the healthy foundation underlying his technical enterprises.

  He would show them. Their eyes would be popping out of their heads one of these days, as he had begun to say fairly often now.

  But why had Tobler moved here in the first place? What was it that had inspired him to choose this region as his domicile? The following somewhat unclear account seeks to address these questions. Only three years before, Tobler had been a low-level employee, an assistant engineer in a large machine factory. Then one day he had inherited a goodly sum of money and begun to concoct a plan to go into business for himself. A still relatively young and hot-blooded man like this tends to be somewhat hasty in matters of all sorts, including in the execution of secret plans, which is just as it should be. One evening, night or morn, Tobler read a notice in the newspaper announcing that the Evening Star Villa, for this was its name, had been put up for sale. Glorious lakeshore location, beautiful, majestic garden, excellent rail connection to the not terribly distant capital: Devil take it, he thought, that’s the very thing! He set to work right away and purchased the property. As a freelance, independent inventor and businessman, he could live anywhere he pleased, he wasn’t bound to any one spot.

  A home of his own! This was the single driving force that had led Tobler to Bärenswil. Let a home be located where it may, just so it’s a home of one’s own. Tobler wanted to be his own lord and master, able to do and act just as he pleased, and this is what he became.

  The morning after the night of celebration, Joseph had a look at the “Marksman’s Vending Machine” down in the office, since this invention, after all, merited his attention. To this end he took up a sheet of paper upon which one could read and see the detailed description of this machine with its sketches and the instructions for its production. So what was the story of this second Tobler brainchild? The first he now knew almost by heart, and so it was high time, Joseph reasoned, to occupy himself with new material. And he was surprised how quickly he was able to familiarize himself with the inner and outer workings of this second invention.

  The Marksman’s Vending Machine proved to be a thing similar to the vending machines for candy that travelers encounter in train stations and all sorts of public gathering spots, except that the Marksman’s Vending Machine dispensed not a little slab of chocolate, peppermint or the like, but rather a pack of live ammunition. The idea itself, then, was not entirely new: it was a concept that had been honed and refined, and cleverly translated to a quite different realm. In addition, Tobler’s “Marksman” was significantly larger than most vending machines, it was a tall, sturdy structure of one meter eighty in height, and three-quarters of a meter across. The girth of the machine was that of a perhaps hundred year old tree. There was a slit approximately at eye level for tossing in coins or inserting the tokens that would be available for purchase. After inserting the money, you had to wait for a moment, then you pulled a lever located at a convenient height and simply reached down to retrieve the packet of bullets just deposited in an open cup. The entire thing was practical and simple. The inner construction was based on three interconnecting levers along with a sloping chute for the delivery of the bullets that were stored piled up in a sort of chimney in uniform packages of thirty, corresponding to the national standard issue; when you pulled the lever with its easily accessible handle, one of the packets stored in the chimney tumbled out with the utmost elegance, and then the machine went on working, which is to say that it remained still until a second marksman came along and prodded it once again to perform the operation described above, and then a third. But there was more! This vending machine had the additional virtue of being connected to the sphere of advertising, in that a circular opening located on the upper part of the machine displayed a new segment of a neatly painted advertising disk each time a coin was introduced or the handle of the lever pulled. This advertising method consisted quite simply of a ring of variously colored paper that interacted most closely and functionally with the entire system of levers in such a way that when a packet of bullets tumbled down the chute, it nudged a new advertisement into its exact location immediately behind the circular opening by causing the paper ring to rotate by one notch. This strip or ring was divided into “fields,” and occupying and utilizing these fields cost money—and this money would brilliantly cover the costs of manufacturing the machine. “The Marksman’s Vending Machine will be installed for use at the many shooting festivals held throughout the nation. As for the advertisers, one should, as in the case of the Advertising Clock, seek to obtain orders from only first-class firms. If it can be assumed that all of th
e fields of the ring will be filled with advertisements, and that can certainly be assumed, then Tobler (Joseph was so caught up in his train of thought that he started talking to himself) will earn a goodly sum of money, for the money brought in by the advertisements would greatly exceed the fabrication costs. For companies that reserve fields in several, let us say ten machines, a considerable discount will naturally apply.”

  A messenger from the Bärenswil Savings Bank came into the office.

  “A bill, naturally,” Joseph thought. He got up from his seat, accepted the document, looked at it from all sides, gave it a little shake, inspected it painstakingly, made a simultaneously thoughtful and important face, then told the messenger that it was all right, someone would come by.

  The man retook possession of the bill and left. Joseph immediately picked up his pen to request, by letter, that the issuer of the bill be patient for another month.

  How easily the words flowed. Also the bank would have to be telephoned right away. Dealing with these matters was becoming, it was to be hoped, fairly routine: Joseph just planted himself firmly and fixed his eyes on the sum that was owing, then he simply gazed at the messenger with a calm, indeed even somewhat stern expression. How the man was overcome with respect! People who wanted to extract money from Tobler would, in future, have to be dispatched quite differently, far more vigorously. This was Joseph’s duty, dictated by his wish to spare Tobler any unnecessary unpleasantness. Under no circumstances should his employer be reminded of these repulsive bagatelles. Tobler was occupied with quite different things, and only the most crucial matters should vie for his attention. This is why, after all, Tobler had acquired a clerk, so that this with any luck intelligent and ingenious fellow would spare him all petty annoyances, would take up his post beside the door to intercept uninvited, starched individuals bearing bills and energetically send them on their way. Well, that’s just what Joseph was doing. But to reward himself he was now smoking, yet again, one of the new cheroots that had just been sent up from the village.