Berlin Stories

by Robert Walser

  1914

  Frau Wilke

  One day, when I was looking for a suitable room, I entered a curious house just outside the city and close to the city tramway, an elegant, oldish, and seemingly rather neglected house, whose exterior had a singularity which at once captivated me.

  On the staircase, which I slowly mounted, and which was wide and bright, were smells and sounds as of bygone elegance.

  What they call former beauty is extraordinarily attractive to some people. Ruins are rather touching. Before the residues of noble things our pensive, sensitive inward selves involuntarily bow. The remnants of what was once distinguished, refined, and brilliant infuse us with compassion, but simultaneously also with respect. Bygone days and old decrepitude, how enchanting you are!

  On the door I read the name “Frau Wilke.”

  Here I gently and cautiously rang the bell. But when I realized that it was no use ringing, since nobody answered, I knocked, and then somebody approached.

  Very guardedly and very slowly somebody opened the door. A gaunt, thin, tall woman stood before me, and asked in a low voice: “What is it you want?”

  Her voice had a curiously dry and hoarse sound.

  “May I see the room?”

  “Yes, of course. Please come in.”

  The woman led me down a strangely dark corridor to the room, whose appearance immediately charmed and delighted me. Its shape was, as it were, refined and noble, a little narrow perhaps, yet proportionately tall. Not without a sort of irresolution, I asked the price, which was extremely moderate, so I took the room without more ado.

  It made me glad to have done this, for a strange state of mind had much afflicted me for some time past, so I was unusually tired and longed to rest. Weary of all groping endeavor, depressed and out of sorts as I was, any acceptable security would have satisfied me, and the peace of a small resting place could not have been other than wholly welcome.

  “What are you?” the lady asked.

  “A poet!” I replied.

  She went away without a word.

  An earl, I think, might live here, I said to myself as I carefully examined my new home. This charming room, I said, proceeding with my soliloquy, unquestionably possesses a great advantage: it is very remote. It’s quiet as a cavern here. Definitely: here I really feel I am concealed. My inmost want seems to have been gratified. The room, as I see it, or think I see it, is, so to speak, half dark. Dark brightness and bright darkness are floating everywhere. That is most commendable. Let’s look around! Please don’t put yourself out, sir! There’s no hurry at all. Take just as much time as you like. The wallpaper seems, in parts, to be hanging in sad, mournful shreds from the wall. So it is! But that is precisely what pleases me, for I do like a certain degree of raggedness and neglect. The shreds can go on hanging; I’ll not let them be removed at any price, for I am completely satisfied with them being there. I am much inclined to believe that a baron once lived here. Officers perhaps drank champagne here. The curtain by the window is tall and slender, it looks old and dusty; but being so prettily draped, it betokens good taste and reveals a delicate sensibility. Outside in the garden, close to the window, stands a birch tree. Here in summer the green will come laughing into the room, on the dear gentle branches all sorts of singing birds will gather, for their delight as well as for mine. This distinguished old writing table is wonderful, handed surely down from a past age of subtle feeling. Probably I shall write essays at it, sketches, studies, little stories, or even long stories, and send these, with urgent requests for quick and friendly publication, to all sorts of stern and highly reputable editors of papers and periodicals like, for example, The Peking Daily News, or Mercure de France, whence, for sure, prosperity and success must come.

  The bed seems to be all right. In this case I will and must dispense with painstaking scrutiny. Then I saw, and here remark, a truly strange and ghostly hatstand, and the mirror there over the basin will tell me faithfully every day how I look. I hope the image it will give me to see will always be a flattering one. The couch is old, consequently pleasant and appropriate. New furniture easily disturbs one, because novelty is always importunate, always obstructs us. A Dutch and a Swiss landscape hang, as I observe to my glad satisfaction, modestly on the wall. Without a doubt, I shall look time and again at these two pictures most attentively. Regarding the air in this chamber, I would nevertheless deem it credible, or rather postulate at once with certitude almost, that for some time here no thought has been given to regular and, it seems, wholly requisite ventilation. I do declare that there is a smell of decay about the place. To inhale stale air provides a certain peculiar pleasure. In any case, I can leave the window open for days and weeks on end; then the right and good will stream into the room.

  “You must get up earlier. I cannot allow you to stay in bed so long,” Frau Wilke said to me. Beyond this, she did not say much.

  This was because I spent entire days lying in bed.

  I was in a bad way. Decrepitude surrounded me. I lay there as if in heaviness of heart; I neither knew nor could find myself anymore. All my once lucid and gay thoughts floated in obscure confusion and disarray. My mind lay as if broken in fragments before my grieving eyes. The world of thought and of feeling was jumbled and chaotic. Everything dead, empty, and hopeless to the heart. No soul, no joy anymore, and only faintly could I remember that there were times when I was happy and brave, kind and confident, full of faith and joy. The pity of it all! Before and behind me, and all around me, not the slightest prospect anymore.

  Yet I promised Frau Wilke to get up earlier, and in fact I did then also begin to work hard.

  Often I walked in the neighboring forest of fir and pine, whose beauties, wonderful winter solitudes, seemed to protect me from the onset of despair. Ineffably kind voices spoke down to me from the trees: “You must not come to the dark conclusion that everything in the world is hard, false, and wicked. But come often to us; the forest likes you. In its company you will find health and good spirits again, and entertain more lofty and beautiful thoughts.”

  Into society, that is, where the big world forgathers, I never went. I had no business there, because I had no success. People who have no success with people have no business with people.

  Poor Frau Wilke, soon afterwards you died.

  Whoever has been poor and lonely himself understands other poor and lonely people all the better. At least we should learn to understand our fellow beings, for we are powerless to stop their misery, their ignominy, their suffering, their weakness, and their death.

  One day Frau Wilke whispered, as she stretched out her hand and arm to me: “Hold my hand. It’s like ice.”

  I took her poor, old, thin hand in mine. It was cold as ice.

  Frau Wilke crept about her home now like a ghost. Nobody visited her. For days she sat alone in her unheated room.

  To be alone: icy, iron terror, foretaste of the grave, forerunner of unpitying death. Oh, whoever has been himself alone can never find another’s loneliness strange.

  I began to realize that Frau Wilke had nothing to eat. The lady who owned the house, and later took Frau Wilke’s rooms, allowing me to stay in mine, brought, of course in pity for her forsaken state, every midday and evening a cup of broth, but not for long, and so Frau Wilke faded away. She lay there, no longer moving: and soon she was taken to the city hospital, where, after three days, she died.

  One afternoon soon after her death, I entered her empty room, into which the good evening sun was shining, gladdening it with rose-bright, gay and soft colors. There I saw on the bed the things which the poor lady had till recently worn, her dress, her hat, her sunshade, and her umbrella, and, on the floor, her small delicate boots. The strange sight of them made me unspeakably sad, and my peculiar state of mind made it seem to me almost that I had died myself, and life in all its fullness, which had often appeared so huge and beautiful, was thin and poor to the point of breaking. All things past, all things vanishing away, were more
close to me than ever. For a long time I looked at Frau Wilke’s possessions, which now had lost their mistress and lost all purpose, and at the golden room, glorified by the smile of the evening sun, while I stood there motionless, not understanding anything anymore.

  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

  Frau Scheer

  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.

  The way I made her acquaintance is quite simple. One day I joined a bizarre household to live as the tenant of a certain Frau Wilke, who died soon thereafter. The owner of the building—in fact my Frau Scheer—sent word to me that she was happy to allow
me to go on living in my room. This news was welcome, since I was virtually in love with my little chamber, which was situated in a charmingly out-of-the-way corner. And so Frau Scheer became my new landlady. At the time, my own finances were in so sorry a state they could not possibly have been any worse; as a result of this, I was quiet, moody, and withdrawn, and thus at the beginning I paid no attention at all to this in her own way highly significant woman. I sometimes saw her when I peered out my lovely window, walking up and down in the garden in bizarre, gypsylike attire, her hair disheveled, and I was honestly astonished at the sight of this carelessly clad female figure. As for the rest I took no notice of her whatever, wicked fellow that I was, even though, as it later dawned on me, the woman had no doubt wished to keep me in her apartment above all for the sake of having some human being near her. Loneliness, what a fearsome wild beast you are! But what sort of heedful attentiveness might I have bestowed on this woman at a time when I was occupied exclusively with paltry, naked thoughts of how I might possibly manage to improve my own lot even a little. In those days I myself resembled a half-starved beast of prey casting about with wildly flaming eyes for a suitable opportunity to hunt down some quarry to improve its precarious position. Venture into that savage metropolis, dear reader, and you will see for yourself how abruptly glamour and good fortune alternate there with deprivation and worry, and how people undermine each other’s subsistence, as each does his best to cast down the other’s successes and tread upon them so as to make success his own.