Berlin Stories

by Robert Walser

  In her five-room apartment there lived, all alone, a wealthy lady. I’m saying “lady,” but this woman didn’t deserve to be called a lady, the poor thing. She ran about all disheveled, and her neighbors referred to her as a Gypsy or witch. Her own person appeared to her to have no value, and she took no pleasure in life. Often she didn’t even bother to comb her hair or wash, and on top of this she wore shoddy old clothes, this is how greatly it pleased her to neglect herself. She was wealthy, she might have lived like a queen, but she had no taste for luxury, nor did she have the time. Rich as she was, she was the poorest of women. She had to pass her days and evenings all alone. Not a single person, with the possible exception of Emma, her former maid, kept her company. She was on bad terms with every one of her relatives. She might still get an occasional visit from Mrs. Snubnose, wife of the police commissioner, but otherwise no one came to call. She struck people as repugnant because she walked around looking like a beggar woman; they called her a skinflint, and indeed she was stingy. Stinginess had become a passion of hers. She had no children. And so stinginess became her child. Stinginess is an unattractive child, not a sweet one. Truly not. But a person does have to have something or other to hug and caress. As she sat alone like that in her joyless room in the still of night, this poor rich lady often found herself obliged to weep into her handkerchief. The tears she wept had more honorable intentions toward her than did anyone else. Otherwise this woman was universally hated and betrayed. The pain she felt within her soul was the single upright friend she had. Otherwise she had neither friend nor confidante, nor a son, nor a daughter. In vain did she long for a son who would have comforted her in his childish way. Her living room was not a room for living, it was an office, overloaded with business papers, and in her bedroom stood the iron safe filled with gold and jewels. Verily: a sinister and sad room for a woman to be sleeping in! I made the acquaintance of this woman and found her exceedingly interesting. I told her my life story, and she told me hers. Soon thereafter she died. She left behind several million. Her heirs came and threw themselves upon their inheritance. Poor millionairess! In the city where she lived, there are many, many poor little children who do not even have enough to eat. What a strange world this is we live in.

  1914 (?)

  A Homecoming in the Snow

  For several years I lived there, getting by as best I could. I was in no way lacking in stimuli, encouragement, and the like. At times, to be sure, I suffered greatly, engaged in arduous struggles, but nonetheless always believed there was something lovely about struggling. I would never have wanted things to be different. Everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve always found myself from time to time in serious quandaries. Startling quantities of good fortune were never something I longed to receive. Never did I wish to have it better than numerous others. At no time did I attempt to deny to myself that worries have an educational effect and that distress, being disagreeable, a hindrance, strengthens a person’s character.

  If I make so bold as to remark that during my time there I experienced for the most part no success at all with any of my at least at times ardently pursued endeavors, I am in no way maligning the region of which I speak, for I have no cause to do so. I am assuredly permitted to say that while the favor I found there gave me genuine pleasure, the failures I experienced were never able to sully or take away my sense of joyous equanimity. In the most pleasant way possible, industriousness was demanded of me, and it is only fitting that I openly acknowledge the intelligent, kind people I had the privilege of consorting with, who nobly and plainly drew my attention to matters of the utmost significance. I hope to be giving voice to something that is beyond all doubt universally comprehensible when I declare myself of the opinion that ingratitude is unattractive and at the same time idiotic—indeed it is a curse of the highest order. It was uncommonly satisfying for me—uplifting, even—that several people there, whose estimable images will remain forever fixed in my memory, thought me talented and therefore chose to reiterate their belief again and again that I might be capable of something, and that I was seen as possessing the drive to step out of my own being and onto the brightly lit stage to seek fulfillment in the joyful, magnanimous act of writing.

  Perhaps these people I’m remembering thought almost too highly of me in their kindness and amiability—by which, admittedly, I appear to be putting myself down all too vigorously, which would be neither natural nor fitting. Above all else, though, I would like to demonstrate how greatly I aspire to be able to recognize that there is no more desirable pleasure in life than reaping acknowledgment and saying yes to the various benevolent phenomena one has been permitted to see and experience. To comment in any way other than with the greatest meticulousness and reverence on the capitals and squares where the most various meanings and the best achievements of a nation come together from all surrounding regions as if for a grand national assembly must, no doubt, necessarily appear impossible to any cautious thinker.

  The thought that I was permitted to swim in such refreshing waters, to actively and convivially—should I be allowed to express myself thus—join in running upon such a racetrack, to live in such appealing and inspiring surrounds, under such powerfully invigorating, often even exhilarating circumstances, to pass a substantial part of my existence so gaily and for the most part so joyfully—this is a thought that should, in my opinion, always put me in a cheerful and also, for propriety’s sake, contented state of mind, for there is such a thing as propriety vis-à-vis Heaven and not just mankind, and this is something no person capable of forthright feeling and thought would ever leave entirely out of account.

  Having attracted all sorts of notice and acquired the justification to circulate casually among persons worthy of respect by no means assured me, however, of a proper, innocuous income. While laboring with as much vigor as I could muster, I committed errors. Wrestling with ignorance and inability, I came to know my limits and was forced to realize that many things could not be as swiftly accomplished as I would have liked to imagine. Enervation and exhaustion set in. My strength failed me on more than one important occasion. Instead of contenting myself with the lucrative, I ran after unattainable goals, which wasted a great deal of time as well as good courage. Exertions carried out in vain rendered me effectively ill. I destroyed much that I had created with great effort. The more earnestly I longed and strived to put myself on a firm footing, the more clearly I saw myself teetering on the brink. I believe I have never deceived myself particularly in matters of this sort, and since I felt a compulsion to attain a certain tidiness of affairs with regard to my own person, above all to be at one with myself again, I resolved to carefully detach myself from an existence in which I could not place my trust and to return. It seemed to me advisable to bite into insight, which is well known to have a bitter taste. To be sure, I felt and saw the eyes of a beautiful woman looking questioningly at me. This tie, and other ones as well, now had to be shaken off. Slowly I made my way home. Later, I thought, I would be freshly serviceable once more.

  On my way home, which struck me as splendid, it was snowing in thick, warm, large flakes. It seemed to me as if I heard homeland-like sounds ringing out from afar. My steps were brisk despite the deep snow through which I was assiduously wading. With every step I took, my shaken trust grew firmer again, which filled me with joy the way a child rejoices. All former things bloomed fragrantly and youthfully in my direction, like roses. It almost appeared to me as if the earth were singing a sweet Christmas melody that was at the same time a melody of spring.

  In the darkness a gray, tall figure was suddenly standing there on the road before me. It was a man. How gigantic he seemed to me. “What are you doing standing here?” I asked him. “I am rooted here. What business is it of yours?” he replied.

  Leaving behind me this man whom I did not know, who after all surely knew what it was his duty to do, I went on. At times it seemed to me I had wings, though I was working my way forward laboriously enough. Courage and optimism
enlivened me on my difficult path, for I was able to tell myself I was heading in the right direction. Almost never did I look forward to the future, even though I was making a humble retreat. Yet at the same time I by no means considered myself crushed, rather I had a notion to call myself a conqueror, which then made me laugh. I was not wearing a coat. I considered the snow itself a splendidly warm coat.

  Soon I would hear the language of my parents, brothers, and sisters being spoken once more, and I would set foot again upon the dear soil of my native land.

  1917

  This is a New York Review Book

  Published by The New York Review of Books

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  Copyright © 2006 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main

  Translation and introduction copyright © 2012 by Susan Bernofsky

  All rights reserved.

  Originally published by Suhrkamp Verlag in German as Robert Walser: Berlin gibt immer den Ton an

  The following stories have previously appeared in the present translation in slightly different form: “Frau Scheer” in M Review/Habit; “Kutsch,” “Cowshed,” and “Do You Know Meier?” in Agni; “Full” in Asymptote; “In the Electric Tram” and“Fabulous” in Green Mountains Review; “Good Morning, Giantess!,” “Market,” “Aschinger,” and “Mountain Halls” in Masquerade and Other Stories, pp. 23–25, 30–36, © 1990 by The Johns Hopkins University Press, reprinted with permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press; “The Park” in The Review of Contemporary Fiction: Robert Walser (Spring, 1992); ”Flower Days,” “Frau Wilke,” and “The Little Berliner” from Selected Stories by Robert Walser, translated by Christopher Middleton and others, with an introduction by Susan Sontag, translation and compilation © 1982 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc., reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. and Carcanet Press Ltd.

  Cover image: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Nollendorfplatz, Berlin, 1912; courtesy Stadtmuseum, Berlin

  Cover design: Katy Homans

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Walser, Robert, 1878–1956.

  Berlin stories / by Robert Walser ; translated and with an introduction by Susan Bernofsky ; edited by Jochen Greven.

  p. cm. — (New York review books classics)

  ISBN 978-1-59017-454-8 (alk. paper)

  1. Berlin (Germany)—Fiction. I. Bernofsky, Susan. II. Greven, Jochen. III. Title.

  PT2647.A64A2 2011

  833'.912—dc22

  2011013388

  eISBN 978-1-59017-473-9

  v1.0

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