Berlin Stories

by Robert Walser

  1908

  Aschinger

  A lager please! The tap man’s known me for ages. I gaze at the filled glass a moment, take it by the handle with two fingers, and casually carry it to one of the round tables supplied with forks, knives, rolls, vinegar, and oil. I place the sweating glass in an orderly fashion upon the felt coaster and consider whether or not to fetch myself something to eat. This food-thought propels me to the blue-and-white-striped cold-cuts damsel. I have this lady serve me a plate of assorted open-face sandwiches and, thus enriched, trot rather indolently back to my seat. Neither fork nor knife do I use, just the mustard spoon, with which I paint my sandwiches brown before inserting them so cozily into my mouth that it is perhaps tranquillity itself to witness this. Another lager please! At Aschinger, you quickly adopt a familiar food-and-drink tone of voice; after a certain amount of time there, a person can’t help talking just like Wassmann at the Deutsches Theater. Once you have your fist around your second or third glass of beer, you’re generally driven to engage in all manner of observations. It is imperative to note with precision how the Berliners eat. They stand up as they do so, but take their own sweet time about it. It’s a myth that in Berlin people only bustle, whizz, and trot about. People here have a nearly comical understanding of how to let time flow by; after all, they’re only human. It’s a sincere pleasure to watch people fishing for sausage-laden rolls and Italian salads. The payment is extracted mostly from vest pockets, almost always just a matter of small change. Now I’ve rolled myself a cigarette, which I light at the gas flame beneath its green glass shield. How well I know it, this glass, and the brass chain to pull on. Famished and satiated individuals are constantly swarming in and out. The dissatisfied quickly find satisfaction at the beer spring and the warm sausage tower, and the satiated dash out again into the mercantile air, each generally with a briefcase beneath his arm, a letter in his pocket, an assignment in his brain, firm plans in his skull, and in his open palm a watch that says the time has come. In the round tower at the center of the room reigns a young queen, the sovereign of the sausages and potato salad—she’s a bit bored up there in her quiver-like surrounds. An elegant lady enters and with two fingers skewers a roll spread with caviar; at once I bring myself to her notice, but in such a way as if being noticed were of no concern to me at all. Meanwhile I’ve found time to lay hands on another beer. The elegant lady is somewhat hesitant to bite into the caviar marvel; of course I immediately assume it to be on my account and none other that she is no longer fully in control of her masticatory senses. Delusions are so easy and so agreeable. Outside on the square is a racket no one really hears: a tumult of carriages, people, automobiles, newspaper hawkers, electric trams, handcarts, and bicycles that no one ever really sees either. It’s almost unseemly to think of wanting to hear and see all these things, you’re not new in town. The elegantly curved bodice that was just nibbling bread now quits the Aschinger. How much longer am I planning on sitting here anyhow? The tap boys are enjoying a calm moment, but not for long, for here they come rolling in again from out-of-doors to throw themselves thirstily upon the bubbling spring. Eaters observe others who are similarly working their jaws. While one person’s mouth is full, his eyes can simultaneously behold a neighbor occupied with popping it in. And they don’t even laugh; even I don’t. Since arriving in Berlin, I’ve lost the habit of finding humanity laughable. At this point, by the way, I myself request another edible wonder: a plank of bread bearing a sleeping sardine upon a bedsheet of butter, so enchanting a vision that I toss the whole spectacle down my open revolving stage of a gullet. Is such a thing laughable? By no means. Well, then. What isn’t laughable in me cannot be any more so in others, since it’s our duty to esteem others more highly than ourselves no matter what, a worldview splendidly in keeping with the earnestness with which I now contemplate the abrupt demise of my sardine pallet. A few of the people near me are conversing as they eat. The earnestness with which they do so is appealing. As long as you’re undertaking to do something, you might as well set about it matter-of-factly and with dignity. Dignity and self-confidence have a comforting effect, at least on me they do, and this is why I so like standing around in one of our local Aschingers where people drink, eat, talk, and think all at the same time. How many business ventures were dreamed up here? And best of all: You can remain standing here for hours on end, no one minds, and not one of all the people coming and going will give it a second thought. Anyone who takes pleasure in modesty will get on well here, he can live, no one’s stopping him. Anyone who does not insist on particularly heartfelt shows of warmth can still have a heart here, he is allowed that much.

  1907

  Berlin W

  It seems that everyone here knows what is proper, and this produces a certain frostiness, and it furthermore seems that everyone here is able to stand his ground from within his own person, and this produces the equanimity that newcomers admire. Poverty appears to have been banished to the districts that border the open fields, or else packed away in the somber, dark interiors of tenements that are blocked from view by the stately residences facing the street as if by massive bodies. It seems as if humanity has stopped heaving sighs here and has begun once and for all to rejoice in its own existence and life. Appearances are deceiving, though: all this elegance and splendor are but a dream. But perhaps the squalor too is only illusory. As for the elegance of Berlin’s western districts, it would appear to be characterized by liveliness, though this liveliness is somewhat spoiled because it cannot be cultivated in peace. Everything here, by the way, is caught up in an endless process of cultivation and change. The men are just as modest as they are unchivalrous, and this is something one can feel quite happy about, for chivalry is always three-quarters inappropriate. Gallantry is exceptionally idiotic and impertinent. Accordingly, one seldom witnesses maudlin scenes hereabouts, and when some delicate adventure unfolds, you never even notice, which after all is what constitutes its gentility. Nowadays the world of men is a world of commerce, and a person who is obliged to earn money has little or no time for flamboyantly refined behavior. This explains the brusque tone of voice one often hears. Generally speaking, there is much to be amused by in Berlin West; here you find the most delightfully, sweetly laughable lives you might dream of. Take for example the dame arriviste, a feminine force of nature, naïve as a small child. I personally esteem her greatly because she is both so voluptuous and so droll. Or the “little girl from the Kurfürstendamm.” She resembles a chamois, and there is much in her that is sweet and good. And here we have the worldly graybeard. Only a very few specimens of this caliber, well versed in savoir vivre, are still sauntering about. The type is dying out, and I find this a tremendous pity. Recently I saw just such a gentleman, and he looked to me like a vision from a vanished age. And here we have something quite different: the rural homesteader who’s made good. He hasn’t yet divested himself of the habit of gaping as though he were astonished at himself and the good fortune he’s plopped down in. He behaves in much too decorous a way, as though he were afraid of revealing his origins. And then we have the very, very severe madam from the age of Bismarck. I am an admirer of severe faces and good manners that have left their mark on the very essence of a person. In general I am moved by age, both in buildings and human beings; by the same token, I find things that are fresh, new, and young no less enlivening; and there’s plenty of youthfulness to be found here, and the West does seem to me quite healthy. Must a certain portion of health preclude a certain portion of beauty? By no means! The lively, in the end, is the most beautiful. Well, hmm, perhaps I shall now do a bit of tail-wagging and scraping and flattering; for example with the following sentence: The local women are beautiful and charming! The gardens are tidy, the architecture errs perhaps on the side of the drastic, but what of it? After all, everyone these days is convinced that we are bunglers when it comes to the grandiose, stylish, and monumental, and probably this is because the desire is all too alive within us to possess or
produce style, grandeur, and monumentality. Desires are terrible things. Our era is most decidedly an era of sensitivity and righteousness, and this is in fact quite nice on our part. We have public welfare organizations, hospitals, homes for infants, and I like to imagine that this too is worth something. Why should we want everything? Just think of the shivers sent down spines by Fredrick the Great’s wars and his—Sanssouci. We have few contradictions; this demonstrates our longing for a clear conscience. But now I swerve rather badly from my theme. Is this permitted? There is a so-called Old West Berlin, a newer West (the area around the Gedächtniskirche), and a very new West. The middle one is perhaps the nicest. Certainly one finds the most and greatest elegance on Tauentzienstrasse; the Kurfürstendamm is delightful with its trees and calashes. With great regret I see that I have now bumped against the frame delimiting my essay, leaving me with the tragic conviction that many things I most definitely wished to point out have gone unsaid.

  1910

  Tiergarten

  Strains of regimental music are drifting over from the zoological garden. You stroll along like this, unhurried as you please. Is it not Sunday, after all? How warm it is. Everyone seems astonished to find it suddenly so bright, so clear and warm, as if touched by a magic wand. Warmth alone can give things color. The world in all directions is like a smile, it’s enough to put you in a feminine frame of mind. How glad I would be (almost) to be carrying a baby in my arms, playing the role of a devotedly solicitous serving girl. What a tender mood this just-beginning, heart-beguiling spring inspires. I could practically be a mother, or so I imagine. In the spring, it seems, men and manly deeds suddenly become so superfluous, so foolish. No deeds now! Listen, linger, remain rooted to the spot. Be divinely touched by something slight. Gaze into this blissfully sweet, childhood-like green. Ah, Berlin and its Tiergarten are so lovely just now. The park is overrun with people. The people are dark moving spots in the delicate, fleeting sun-shimmer. Up above is the pale-blue sky that touches, dreamlike, the green that lies below. The people walk softly and indolently, as if they feared they might otherwise slip into a marching step and act coarsely. There are said to be people to whom it would never occur—or who might be too prim—to sit on a bench in the Tiergarten on a Sunday. Such people are robbing themselves of the most enchanting pleasure. I myself find the crowd on a Sunday in all its obvious, harmless Sunday pleasure-seeking more significant than any journey to Cairo or the Riviera. Hardness becomes obliging, rigidity dulcet, and all lines, all commonplaces blur dreamily together. A universal strolling like this is ineffably tender. The walkers lose themselves—now one by one, now in graceful, tightly knit clusters and groups—among the trees whose high branches are still breezily bare, and between the low bushes that constitute a breath of young, sweet green. The soft air trembles and quivers with buds that seem to sing, to dance, to hover. The image of the Tiergarten as a whole is like a painted picture, then like a dream, then like a circuitous, agreeable kiss. Everywhere one is lightly, comprehensibly enticed to gaze and linger. On a bench beside the shipping canal, two nannies are sitting in their imposing snow-white caps, white aprons, and bright red skirts. Walking, you find yourself satisfied; sitting, you are perfectly calm and gaze with composure into the eyes of the figures walking past. These include children, dogs being led on leashes, soldiers with their girls on their arms, beautiful women, coquettish ladies, men who live, step, and stroll all alone, entire families, bashful lovers. Veils are streaming in the air, green ones, blue ones, and yellow. Dark and light clothing passes in turn. The gentlemen are for the most part wearing those unavoidable, uninspiring stiff hillock hats of medium height upon their cone-shaped heads. You feel an urge to laugh while remaining solemn all the while. Everything is simultaneously droll and sacrosanct, and this makes you feel solemn like all the others. Everyone is displaying the same appropriate, mild solemnity. Is not the sky doing the same with its expression that appears to be saying: “How marvelous I feel”? Now, like friendly specters, wind-like shadows flit through the trees and across the sunlit white paths, and going where? No one knows. You can scarcely see it, that’s how delicate it is. Painters draw our attention to such tidbits. At a certain gentle distance, red-wheeled hackney cabs are rolling through the mild green fabric, as though a red ribbon were gliding through a bit of delicate female hair. Everything is emanating womanliness, everything is bright and balmy, everything is so wide, so transparent, so round, you turn your Sunday head in all directions to fully relish this Sunday world. It’s really the people that comprise it. Without the people, you wouldn’t see, notice, or experience the beauty of the Tiergarten. What’s the crowd like here? Well, it’s a mixed bag, all sorts of people tumbled in together, the elegant and the simple, the proud and the humble, the gay and the grim. I myself, by my very presence, add to the colorfulness of the scene and contribute to the mix. I’m certainly enough of a mixture myself. But where is the dream? Do let’s take one more look at it. Upon a roundly arched bridge many people are standing. You stand there yourself, leaning lightly and in the best of spirits against the railing to gaze down into the delicately blue, glimmering warm water where boats and skiffs, filled with people and adorned with little flags, drift quietly about as if drawn on by good premonitions. The ships and gondolas shimmer in the sunlight. Now a piece of dark velvet-green breaks from the brightness, it is a blouse. Ducks with colorful heads are swaying upon the ripples and quiverings of water that sometimes shimmers like bronze or enamel. How splendid it is the way the field of the water is so narrow and circumscribed and yet so packed with gliding pleasure boats and hats in all the colors of joy. Everywhere you look, a lady’s hat gleams and bursts from the bushes with red and blue and other pleasures for the eye. How simple it all is. And where should one go now? To a coffeehouse? Really? Can one really be so barbaric? Indeed, one can. Such things a person does! How lovely to be doing something that another person is doing as well. And how lovely the Tiergarten is. What resident of Berlin could fail to adore it?

  1911

  In the Electric Tram

  Riding the “electric” is an inexpensive pleasure. When the car arrives, you climb aboard, possibly after first politely ceding the right of way to an imposing gentlewoman, and then the car continues on. At once you notice that you have a rather musical disposition. The most delicate melodies are parading through your head. In no time you’ve elevated yourself to the position of a leading conductor or even composer. Yes, it’s really true: the human brain involuntarily starts composing songs in the electric tram, songs that in their involuntary nature and their rhythmic regularity are so very striking that it’s hard to resist thinking oneself a second Mozart.

  Meanwhile you have rolled yourself a cigarette, say, and inserted it with great care between your well-practiced lips. With such an apparatus in your mouth, it is impossible to feel utterly without cheer, even if your soul happens to be torn in twain by sufferings. But is this the case? Most certainly not. Just wanted to give a quick description of the magic that a smoking white object of this sort is capable of working, year in and year out, on the human psyche. And what next?

  Our car is constantly in motion. It is raining in the streets we glide through, and this constitutes one more added pleasantness. Some people find it frightfully agreeable to see that it is raining and at the same time be permitted to sense that they themselves are not getting wet. The image produced by a gray, wet street has something consoling and dreamy about it, and so you stand now upon the rear platform of the creaking car that is rumbling its way forward, and you gaze straight ahead. Gazing straight ahead is something done by almost all the people who sit or stand in the “electric.”