The Assistant

by Robert Walser

  And then he sat down at his desk again and began to make himself useful.

  At around ten o’clock Tobler arrived, in fine spirits, as Joseph noticed at once. Therefore it was permissible to infuse a certain buoyancy into his “Good morning, Herr Tobler” and relight his cheroot. And indeed the figure of his superior and the head of the firm was radiating a conspicuous delight. He appeared to have done some proper boozing the night before. Each of his gestures at this moment was saying: “All right, now I know what the snag is. From now on things will be taking a different turn in my business endeavors.”

  In the friendliest tone of voice, he inquired as to the direction Joseph’s Sunday amusements had taken, and as soon as Joseph said where he had been, he exclaimed:

  “Is that so? You went to the city? And how did you like it there after such a long absence? Not bad, eh? Oh yes, cities offer a great many things, but in the end one is always happy to come back home again. Am I right or am I not? But what I wanted to say to you was that you no longer—forgive me, but I couldn’t help noticing, ha, ha—you no longer have such terribly nice clothes on. So why don’t you go to my wife today and have her give you a suit of mine that still looks as good as new. Tell her the gray suit, and she’ll know which one you mean. There’s no need for you to be at all embarrassed, this is a suit I no longer wear anyhow. And surely we can come up with a couple of colored shirts with matching dickeys and cuffs, certainly a perfect fit for you. Don’t you think?”

  “I really have no need for any of these things,” Joseph replied.

  “Why no need? You can see for yourself how bitterly in need of them you are. Don’t make such a fuss when I give you something. Just accept it, and that’s that.”

  Tobler was indignant. Suddenly something occurred to him. He sat down on a chair beneath the mechanism for the sample Marksman’s Vending Machine and after half a minute said: “I know perfectly well what you are thinking. It is true, Marti, you have still not received any salary, and no doubt you’re thinking you will never receive any. Be patient. Others are having to be patient just now as well. Moreover, I hope you will not find it necessary to walk around with a sullen look on your face because of this. I for one certainly won’t tolerate any such behavior. A person who eats as well as you do here, and enjoys such splendid air as the air you’re breathing up here, has a long way to go before he arrives at grounds for complaint. You are alive! Just remember the state you were in when I hired you down in the city. You look like a prince. And surely you have reason to feel grateful to me.”

  Joseph replied (and it was later incomprehensible to him where he had found the cheek to express himself in such a way):

  “All well and good, Herr Tobler! But permit your subordinate to say to you that I find it highly disconcerting to be always reminded of the good food, the magnificent air, the pillows and the bed in which I sleep. Such remarks can spoil the air, the sleep and the food for a person almost entirely. What makes you consider yourself justified to constantly reproach me for enjoying my sojourn here and the amenities that are quite naturally connected with it? Am I a beggar or a worker? Please remain calm, Herr Tobler. Please, I am not making a scene here, I am quite simply explaining something for the sake of our mutual and necessary understanding. I would like to establish three things. First, I am grateful to you for all the things you have been ‘offering’ me; second, you know this perfectly well, for you’ve had every opportunity to observe this in my behavior; and third, I’ve been doing real work here, the proof of this claim being that neither my conscience nor your calculations have suggested our parting ways. As for the gift of clothing you have so kindly proposed, I have just this moment thought better of my refusal and would like to accept it with appropriate thanks. In all honesty, I could use some clothes and linens. You’ll have to forgive the tone of this speech, or else you’ll have no choice but to eject me from your household. This speech and this tone were necessary, for I feel the most sincere need to demonstrate to you that I am most certainly able to defend myself against—how shall I put it—unworthy treatment.”

  “Heaven and earth! Where did you get such a mouth? How utterly absurd. Have you taken leave of your senses, Joseph Marti?”

  Tobler found that the most practical thing to do at this point was burst into loud laughter. But the very next moment his forehead was drawn into deep folds:

  “So then show me, devil take it, that you are genuinely capable of accomplishing real work. Up till now I have seen only scant proof of this—a quick tongue is no accomplishment to speak of, do you understand? Where are the letters that still need to be answered?”

  “Here!” Joseph said meekly. He had once more become utterly timid. The letters were in the wrong place. Tobler picked up the entire letter-basket and hurled it to the floor in a wild gesture of fury, shouting:

  “And this is the one who keeps trying to rebel! Why don’t you stop being so sensitive and pay attention instead. Write this down.”

  And he dictated the following:

  To Herr Martin Grünen in Frauenberg.

  Your letter, in which you give notice of the termination of the loan of five thousand marks allocated to me for the realization of my Advertising Clock effective the first of the coming month, has reached me here, and in response to it—have you got all that?—I would like to point out the following:

  1. My current financial situation is such that it is utterly impossible for me to repay the sum in question on the day indicated by you.

  2. You are gravely mistaken if you believe you have a legal right to insist on so unexpectedly swift a repayment, as

  3. According to the arrangement made between us when the loan was finalized, as far as I recall, and as I can demonstrate if necessary in black and white—are you keeping up?—a repayment of the amount owed was to occur only after the enterprises involving the Advertising Clock had attained a certain profitable objective:

  4. This is not yet the case.

  5. The loan allocated to me cannot be viewed except in the particular context of the Advertising Clock undertaking, and accordingly the repayment of the former cannot be separated from the success of the latter.

  6. One might wonder to begin with whether a demand for repayment on such short notice is permissible in a case such as ours. The main point is that the borrowed funds are tied up in the aforementioned enterprise and subject to the risks entailed in it.

  Esteemed sir, it is my hope, now that I have explained my position to you, that you will seriously reconsider this matter. Please consider the predicament in which I find myself, and you will surely not have the heart to wish ruin upon a businessman who is struggling and resisting with all the strength at his disposal against sinking into the depths that loom beneath him. If you wish to get your money back, do not pressure me. The Advertising Clock shall prove its worth! In the hope of having sufficiently convinced you, I remain yours respectfully—

  “Give it to me!” And Tobler signed his name, whereby he remained lost in the apparently absent-minded contemplation of the signed letter for a full minute.

  Meanwhile the assistant was devoting himself to thoughts of his own. He thought: That’s just what he’s like, this Herr Tobler. First he assumes an arrogant, threatening position, and then suddenly starts to cower and beg that one “reconsider” etc. Herr Grünen will not “have the heart,” Herr Tobler thinks. But what if he does? This letter is composed in a manner which suggests that its author is on the brink of despair. At first it sounds supercilious, then significant, then weighty, then boastful, then bitingly scornful, then all at once timid, then furious, then entreating, then suddenly gruff, then puffed up for one more attempt at an arrogant tone: the clock shall prove its worth! Who’s going to demonstrate that? Oh, a sharp creditor like this Grünen from Frauenberg will only sneer when he reads this maudlin letter.

  He ventured to suggest meekly to his superior that the letter’s tone struck him as not quite right. This was a spark in the tinderbox.

/>   Tobler leapt abruptly to his feet: Was it Joseph’s business to stand there talking rot? If he couldn’t restrain himself from making comments, he should not first wait half an hour after a matter was concluded to open his mouth—and then he should see to it that his remarks were not as idiotic as the one he had just allowed himself to utter.

  “Idiotic!” Tobler shouted, seized his hat and walked out the door.

  Joseph copied the letter with the copy press, folded it up, placed it in an envelope that had already been addressed, sealed it and put a stamp on it.

  A few hundred circulars had just arrived from the printing shop. Joseph began to fold these circulars precisely to fit the size of their envelopes so that they could be sent out in all directions. This leaflet contained, along with a price list, in an attractive typeface and adorned with illustrative plates, the precise description of a small steam apparatus, another of Tobler’s inventions. It was of crucial importance that this steam-holding tank be advertised to all the many factories and mechanical workshops scattered about the countryside in the vicinity of Bärenswil as well as elsewhere in the region; this, one hoped, would result in a lovely profit.

  The assistant went on folding these papers until noon—work that he found to have something downright festive and thought-provoking about it—and then he went to lunch. During the meal, everyone was silent, with the exception of Dora, who was unable to hold her charming tongue. The boys displayed some naughty behavior. Frau Tobler bemoaned the long school holidays, which she clearly saw as the cause of this general running-wild on the part of young people everywhere, declaring how happy she was that the new school year was about to begin, since now, thank God, a new phase was in the offing for these scallywags. The teacher’s authority and cane would perhaps succeed in achieving what had proven impossible for their mother: instilling in her sons courteous and considerate behavior. How very good it was that autumn was approaching. During these long beautiful summer days, young people suffered such boredom that they no longer knew where to find even one more opportunity to get up to something bad and foolish.

  The word “autumn” pierced Joseph’s soul. Beautiful autumn! A moment later, having finished his lunch, he got up and told Frau Tobler that he needed money to buy stamps. His request appeared to make a disagreeable impression on her, for she replied that she supposed that now she was to be responsible for such matters as well. She heaved a sigh and gave the assistant what he asked for with a rather peevish expression (though she was also, it appeared, somewhat flattered). So it was she, the wife, to whom people had to come to obtain and receive money for stamps. Joseph in turn was acting slightly insulted.

  After all, he was the employee of a man, not the assistant of a woman. How irksome it was, having to beg from a skirt two-mark coins. Observing his inappropriate wrath, Frau Tobler contented herself with glancing at him condescendingly.

  He started off to the post office. In the garden, several workers and laborers were occupied with shoveling up the dirt and piling it in an enormous heap. The earth was wet, it had rained not long before.

  “And now an underground fairy grotto on top of everything else! What is Tobler thinking?” grumbled Joseph as he reached the main road. The sharp odor of schnapps was streaming out the open door of the Rose Tavern, which lay nearby. It was here that Wirsich had drunk up what he had saved from his salary and wages. From here he had gone reeling off into “another world,” leaving the best part of himself behind at the Rose, lying beneath the table. When the assistant reached the village, he dropped in—a newly acquired habit of his—at the Sailing Ship restaurant, and who was sitting there at the round regulars’ table? Tobler!

  So there they were, the two of them, master and servant—and where? In a public house.

  Certainly it is customary for a person filled with rage to down a quick drink so as to cool and extinguish the hot temper burning in his breast, and of course equally natural is the thirst of a subordinate who’s had to “beg” for postage money, leaving him in a fairly foul humor. Disgruntlement can be alleviated by “tipping one back.” And certainly one has to—and is allowed to—do just this, but it was all the same a rather curious feeling that came over both men upon finding their liquid intentions thus exposed there in the Sailing Ship, and the two exchanged a brief but meaningful glance.

  “Well, it looks as if you’re feeling thirsty, too,” Herr Tobler said in a friendly but grave tone to the one who had just entered. The latter replied:

  “Yes I am, and why not?”

  Herr Tobler always waited at the Sailing Ship for trains that were arriving and departing. Today, too, he was “just waiting for his train.” The restaurant was right next to the train station. But Tobler missed his trains rather often nonetheless; one might, if one were an innkeeper, almost suspect him of missing them on purpose. Whenever this happened, he was in the habit of grumbling: “Now that idiotic train has left without me yet again.”

  Joseph finished his drink and left. His employer shouted after him, in such a way that all the other guests could hear: “Write to the clockmaker, what’s his name again, and tell him to get started assembling the clocks for the Utzwil-Staefener Railroad right away. The letter has to go out today. The rest I assume you know.”

  Joseph felt a little bit ashamed of his “loquacious superior,” as he secretly referred to him; he nodded and slipped out the door.

  He went to the bookbinder’s and the stationer’s and had each of them give him a large number of useful objects for the office and drawing table—all to be placed “on the tab.”

  Such a sweet little accounts book, no end of things could be written down in it. One simply took possession of the goods and allowed the tab to grow.

  The owner of the stationery shop made so bold as to inquire when and if he would be able to collect a certain sum.

  “Oh, some time soon,” Joseph casually remarked.

  “It is quite proper, the way I am acting,” he thought, “you have to speak to people in a casual tone of voice, and then they will be utterly trusting. When you give no sign of taking a matter particularly seriously, it appears that seriousness is not yet called for. If I had replied to this man’s question in earnest, he would have begun to feel suspicious, and tomorrow morning we would have found him standing in the office with his receipts in his hands. I serve my master’s interests when I continue to divert gentle stirrings of suspicion from his person.”

  While entertaining this train of thought, he seemed to be unhurriedly inspecting a collection of picture postcards. Leaving the shop now, he gave a friendly smile and was smiled at in just as friendly a manner by the shop owner.

  When he arrived home, he once more busied himself with folding the circulars. For each individual circular, he employed four hand motions. He daydreamed as he worked. This task practically demanded that one engage in the most leisurely reflections. From time to time, he took an intoxicating drag on the stem of his cheroot. Right in front of the desk and office window, Frau Tobler was seated on a bench that had been placed there; she was sewing and holding a conversation in a singsong voice with her beloved Dora. Joseph thought:

  “How good this child has it!”

  “Are you intending to mail off this entire mountain of circulars?” Frau Tobler asked. She added: “By the way, it’s time for coffee. Come outside. The coffee is on the table already.”

  In the summer house during this snack, the employee felt compelled by the friendliness with which Frau Tobler was treating him to volunteer that he regretted having behaved so impudently toward her.

  What did he mean? she wanted to know, adding that she didn’t understand.

  “Well, I mean, what I said about Wirsich!”

  She replied that she had long since forgotten the entire incident. Her memory in such matters was inexact, thank goodness. Had there been anything more to it? Surely nothing important. But in any case she was happy to hear Joseph confessing that he was sorry to have offended her. He should be easy i
n his mind, she said, but above all he must always make an effort to do his best in all matters related to her husband’s business, that was the main thing.

  Ah, sometimes she wished, these days more than ever, that she herself was endowed with good business sense, so that she could help her husband. The very thought of having to move away, having to leave behind the house she’d become so fond of, hav — ing — to …

  There were tears in her eyes.

  “I shall make an effort!” He almost shouted these words.

  “Then all’s well,” she said and tried to smile.

  “You can’t just give up hope like that—”

  She wasn’t giving up hope, she said. She was levelheaded enough when it came to all these worrisome things. Yesterday Tobler reproached her bitterly—and, it appeared to her, unjustly—for taking his entire difficult situation too lightly; she found it necessary to respond to these accusations with silence. What could a weak and unpracticed woman do in these circumstances? Ought she perhaps to spend the livelong day wailing with a despondent face? What would be the use? To any reasonably sensible woman such a thing wouldn’t even occur—and it wouldn’t befit her, she’d deem such conduct more dangerous than fitting. Frau Tobler, on the contrary, was always of good cheer: she even went so far as to praise herself secretly for her comportment. Yes, that’s what she did, even if there wasn’t a single creature anywhere in the world capable of recognizing this accomplishment. As for the rest, she knew who she was, and felt obliged, even if just for her own private reason alone, not to let the joyous and dignified courage with which she looked life in the face begin to ebb. At the same time, she was quite aware of what a difficult time her husband was going through.