The Walk

by Robert Walser

  Father apparently spends a lot of money. He has receipts and expenses, he lives, he strives after gains, he lets live. He even leans a bit toward extravagance and waste. He’s constantly in motion. At our house there is much said about success and failure. Whoever eats with us and associates with us has attained some form of smaller or greater success in the world. What is the world? A rumour, a topic of conversation? In any case, my father stands in the very middle of this topic of conversation. Perhaps he even directs it, within certain bounds. Papa’s aim, at all events, is to wield power. He attempts to develop, to assert both himself and those people in whom he has an interest. His principle is: he in whom I have no interest damages himself. As a result of this view, Father is always permeated with a healthy sense of his human worth and can step forth, firm and certain, as is fitting. Whoever grants himself no importance feels no qualms about perpetrating bad deeds. What am I talking about? Did I hear Father say that?

  Have I the benefit of a good upbringing? I refuse even to doubt it. I have been brought up as a metropolitan lady should be brought up, with familiarity and, at the same time, with a certain measured severity, which permits and, at the same time, commands me to accustom myself to tact. The man who is to marry me must be rich, or he must have substantial prospects of an assured prosperity. Poor? I couldn’t be poor. It is impossible for me and for creatures like me to suffer pecuniary need. That would be stupid. In other respects, I shall be certain to give simplicity preference in my mode of living. I do not like outward display. Simplicity must be a luxury. It must shimmer with propriety in every respect, and such refinements of life, brought to perfection, cost money. The amenities are expensive. How energetically I’m talking now! Isn’t it a bit imprudent? Shall I love? What is love? What sorts of strange and wonderful things must yet await me if I find myself so unknowing about things that I’m still too young to understand. What experiences shall I have?

  1914

  Translated by Harriett Watts

  Nervous

  I am a little worn out, raddled, squashed, downtrodden, shot full of holes. Mortars have mortared me to bits. I am a little crumbly, decaying, yes, yes. I am sinking and drying up a little. I am a bit scalded and scorched, yes, yes. That’s what it does to you. That’s life. I am not old, not in the least, certainly I am not eighty, by no means, but I am not sixteen any more either. Quite definitely I am a bit old and used up. That’s what it does to you. I am decaying a little, and I am crumbling, peeling a little. That’s life. Am I a little bit over the hill? Hmm! Maybe. But that doesn’t make me eighty, not by a long way. I am very tough, I can vouch for that. I am no longer young, but I am not old yet, definitely not. I am aging, fading a little, but that doesn’t matter; I am not yet altogether old, though I am probably a little nervous and over the hill. It’s natural that one should crumble a bit with the passage of time, but that doesn’t matter. I am not very nervous, to be sure, I just have a few grouches. Sometimes I am a bit weird and grouchy, but that doesn’t mean I am altogether lost, I hope. I don’t propose to hope that I am lost, for I repeat, I am uncommonly hard and tough. I am holding out and holding on. I am fairly fearless. But nervous I am, a little, undoubtedly I am, very probably I am, possibly I am a little nervous. I hope that I am a little nervous. No, I don’t hope so, one doesn’t hope for such things, but I am afraid so, yes, afraid so. Fear is more appropriate here than hope, no doubt about it. But I certainly am not fear-stricken, that I might be nervous, quite definitely not. I have grouches, but I am not afraid of the grouches. They inspire me with no fear at all. “You are nervous,” someone might tell me, and I would reply cold-bloodedly, “My dear sir, I know that quite well, I know that I am a little worn out and nervous.” And I would smile, very nobly and coolly, while saying this, which would perhaps annoy the other person a little. A person who refrains from getting annoyed is not yet lost. If I do not get annoyed about my nerves, then undoubtedly I still have good nerves, it’s clear as daylight, and illuminating. It dawns on me that I have grouches, that I am a little nervous, but it dawns on me in equal measure that I am cold-blooded, which makes me uncommonly glad, and that I am blithe in spirit, although I am aging a little, crumbling and fading, which is quite natural and something I therefore understand very well. “You are nervous,” someone might come up to me and say. “Yes, I am uncommonly nervous,” would be my reply, and secretly I would laugh at the big lie. “We are all a little nervous,” I would perhaps say, and laugh at the big truth. If a person can still laugh, he is not yet entirely nervous; if a person can accept a truth, he is not yet entirely nervous; anyone who can keep calm when he hears of some distress is not yet entirely nervous. Or if someone came up to me and said: “Oh, you are totally nervous,” then quite simply I would reply in nice polite terms: “Oh, I am totally nervous, I know I am.” And the matter would be closed. Grouches, grouches, one must have them, and one must have the courage to live with them. That’s the nicest way to live. Nobody should be afraid of his little bit of weirdness. Fear is altogether foolish. “You are very nervous!”

  “Yes, come by all means and calmly tell me so! Thank you!”

  That, or something like it, is what I’d say, having my gentle and courteous bit of fun. Let man be courteous, warm, and kind, and if someone tells him he’s totally nervous, still there’s no need at all for him to believe it.

  1916

  The Walk

  I have to report that one fine morning, I do not know any more for sure what time it was, as the desire to take a walk came over me, I put my hat on my head, left my writing room, or room of phantoms, and ran down the stairs to hurry out into the street. I might add that on the stairs I encountered a woman who looked like a Spaniard, a Peruvian, or a Creole. She presented to the eye a certain pallid, faded majesty. But I must strictly forbid myself a delay of even two seconds with this Brazilian lady, or whatever she might be; for I may waste neither space nor time. As far as I can remember as I write this down, I found myself, as I walked into the open, bright, and cheerful street, in a romantically adventurous state of mind, which pleased me profoundly. The morning world spread out before my eyes appeared as beautiful to me as if I saw it for the first time. Everything I saw made upon me a delightful impression of friendliness, of goodliness, and of youth. I quickly forgot that up in my room I had only just a moment before been brooding gloomily over a blank sheet of paper. All sorrow, all pain, and all grave thoughts were as vanished, although I vividly sensed a certain seriousness, a tone, still before me and behind me. I was tense with eager expectation of whatever might encounter me or cross my way on my walk. My steps were measured and calm, and, as far as I know, I presented, as I went on my way, a fairly dignified appearance. My feelings I like to conceal from the eyes of my fellow men, of course without any fearful strain to do so – such strain I would consider a great error, and a mighty stupidity. I had not yet gone twenty or thirty steps over a broad and crowded square, when Professor Meili, a foremost authority, brushed by me. Incontrovertible power in person, serious, ceremonial, and majestical, Professor Meili trod his way; in his hand he held an unbendable scientific walking stick, which infused me with dread, reverence, and esteem. Professor Meili’s nose was a stem, imperative, sharp eagle- or hawk-nose, and his mouth was juridically clamped tight and squeezed shut. The famous scholar’s gait was like an iron law; world history and the afterglow of long-gone heroic deeds flashed out of Professor Meili’s adamant eyes, secreted behind his bushy brows. His hat was like an irremovable ruler. Secret rulers are the most proud and most implacable. Yet, on the whole, Professor Meili carried himself with a tenderness, as if he needed in no way whatsoever to make apparent what quantities of power and gravity he personified, and his figure appeared to me, in spite of all its severity and adamance, sympathetic, because I permitted myself the thought that men who do not smile in a sweet and beautiful way are honourable and trustworthy. As is well known, there are rascals who play at being kind and good, but who have a terrible talent for
smiling obligingly and politely, over the crimes which they commit.

  I catch a glimpse of a bookseller and of a book shop; likewise soon, as I guess and observe, a bakery with braggart gold lettering comes in for mention and regard. But first I have a priest, or parson, to record. A bicycling town chemist cycles with kind and weighty face close by the walker, namely, myself, similarly, a regimental or staff doctor. An unassuming pedestrian should not remain unconsidered, or unrecorded; for he asks me politely to mention him. This is a bric-à-brac vendor and rag collector who has become rich. Young boys and girls race around in the sunlight, free and unrestrained. “Let them be unrestrained as they are,” I mused. “Age one day will terrify and bridle them. Only too soon, alas!” A dog refreshes itself in the water of a fountain. Swallows, it seems to me, twitter in the blue air. One or two elegant ladies in astonishingly short skirts and astoundingly fine high-coloured bootees make themselves, I hope, certainly as conspicuous as anything else. Two summer or straw hats catch my eye. The thing about the straw hats is this: it is that I suddenly see two hats in the bright, gentle air, and under the hats stand two fairly prosperous-looking gentlemen, who seem to be bidding each other good morning by means of an elegant, courteous doffing and waving of hats. The hats at this occasion are evidently more important than their wearers and owners. Nevertheless, the writer is very humbly asked to be wary of such definitely superfluous mockery and fooling. He is called upon to behave with sobriety, and it is hoped that he understands this, once and for all.

  As now an extremely splendid, abundant book shop came pleasantly under my eye, and I felt the impulse and desire to bestow upon it a short and fleeting visit, I did not hesitate to step in, with an obvious good grace, while I permitted myself of course to consider that in me appeared far rather an inspector, or bookkeeper, a collector of information, and a sensitive connoisseur, than a favourite and welcome, wealthy book buyer and good client. In courteous, thoroughly circumspect tones, and choosing understandably only the finest turns of speech, I inquired after the latest and best in the field of belles-lettres. “May I,” I asked with diffidence, “take a moment to acquaint myself with, and taste the qualities of, the most sterling and serious, and at the same time of course also the most read and most quickly acknowledged and purchased, reading matter? You would pledge me in high degree to unusual gratitude were you to be so extremely kind as to lay generously before me that book which, as certainly nobody can know so precisely as only you yourself, has found the highest place in the estimation of the reading public, as well as that of the dreaded and thence doubtless flatteringly circumvented critics, and which furthermore has made them merry. You cannot conceive how keen I am to learn at once which of all these books or works of the pen piled high and put on show here is the favourite book in question, the sight of which in all probability, as I must most energetically suppose, will make me at once a joyous and enthusiastic purchaser. My longing to see the favourite author of the cultivated world and his admired, thunderously applauded masterpiece, and, as I said, probably also at once to buy the same, aches and ripples through my every limb. May I most politely ask you to show me this most successful book, so that this desire, which has seized my entire being, may acknowledge itself gratified, and cease to trouble me?” “Certainly,” said the bookseller. He vanished out of eyeshot like an arrow, to return the next instant to his anxious and interested client, bearing indeed the most bought and read book of real enduring value in his hand. This delicious fruit of the spirit he carried carefully and solemnly, as if carrying a relic charged with sanctifying magic. His face was enraptured; his manner radiated the deepest awe; and with that smile on his lips which only believers and those who are inspirited to the deepest core can smile, he laid before me in the most winning way that which he had brought.

  I considered the book, and asked: “Could you swear that this is the most widely distributed book of the year?”

  “Without a doubt!”

  “Could you insist that this is the book which one has to have read?”

  “Unconditionally.”

  “Is this book also definitely good?”

  “What an utterly superfluous and inadmissible question.”

  “Thank you very much,” said I cold-bloodedly, left the book, which had been most absolutely widely distributed because it had unconditionally to have been read, as I chose, where it was, and softly withdrew, without wasting another word. “Uncultivated and ignorant man!” shouted the bookseller after me, for he was most justifiably and deeply vexed. But I let him have his say, and walked at my ease on my way, which, to be accurate, as I shall at once discuss and expound more closely, led into the next stately banking establishment.

  The very place I wished to inquire at and receive reliable information about certain securities. “To hop into a money institute, just in passing,” I mused, or said to myself, “in order to manage one’s financial affairs, and to produce questions, which one utters in no more than a whisper, is pleasant, and looks uncommonly good.”

  “It is good and wonderfully convenient that you come to us in person,” the responsible official at the counter said to me, in a very friendly tone, and he proceeded with an almost knavish, at any rate very charming and gay smile, as follows:

  “It is, as I said, good that you have come. Only today we were about to communicate to you in writing what can now be communicated to you orally, namely something which will be for you without a doubt a gladdening piece of information, that we are instructed by a society, or circle, of what are evidently well-disposed, good-natured, philanthropic ladies, not to place to your debit but, on the contrary, and this will doubtless be fundamentally more welcome to you, to credit your account with

  One Thousand Francs,

  a transaction which we hereby confirm, and of which you, if you would be so good, will at once take mental or any other form of note which may suit you. We assume that this information pleases you; for upon us you make, we must confess, an impression such as tells us, if we may permit ourselves to say so, with almost excessive clarity, that you very definitely need alleviation of an equable and delicate nature. The money is at your disposal with effect from today. One can see that this very minute a great joy suffuses your features. Your eyes are shining; your mouth this minute has about it a trace of laughter, and this perhaps for the first time in many years, for pressing daily troubles of a hideous kind have forbidden you laughter, and you have been perhaps during recent times mostly in a sorrowful mood, since all sorts of evil and sad thoughts darkened your brow. Now rub your hands for joy, rub them! and be glad that some noble and kind benefactresses, moved by the sublime thought that to dam up a man’s grief is beautiful, and to allay his distress is good, conceived the idea that a poor and unsuccessful poet (for you are this, are you not?) might require assistance. On the fact that certain persons were found whose will was to condescend to remember you, and on this occasion of evidence that not all people regard with indifference the existence of a poet held repeatedly in contempt, we congratulate you.”

  “The sum of money so unexpectedly bestowed upon me, issuing from such tender and indulgent fairy or ladies’ hands,” I said, “I would like to leave without more ado in your charge, where it will surely be best preserved, since you have at your disposal the necessary fireproof and thief-tight safes, to keep your treasures from destruction, or from any abolition whatsoever. Besides, you pay interest. May I ask for a receipt? I assume that I have the liberty to withdraw, at any time according to my need or desire, from the large sum small sums. I would like to remark that I am thrifty. I shall know how to manage the gift like a steady and methodical man; that is, most cautiously. And I shall have, in a considerate and polite letter, to express my gratitude to my kind donators, which I think I shall do as soon as tomorrow morning so that it does not get forgotten through procrastination. The assumption, which you just now voiced so frankly, that I might be poor, could however rest upon a basis of acute and accurate observation. But it
suffices entirely that I myself know what I know, and that it is I myself who am best informed about my own person. Appearances often deceive, good sir, and the delivery of a judgment upon a man is best left to the man in question. Nobody can know as well as I do this person who has seen and experienced all sorts of things. Often I wandered, of course, perplexed in a mist and in a thousand vacillations and dilemmas, and often I felt myself woefully forsaken. Yet I believe that it is a fine thing to struggle for life. It is not with pleasures and with joys that a man grows proud. Proud and gay in the roots of his soul he becomes only through trial bravely undergone, and through suffering patiently endured. Still, on this point, one does not like to waste words. What honest man was never in his life without sustenance? And what human being has ever seen as the years pass his hopes, plans, and dreams completely undestroyed? Where is the soul whose longings and daring aspirations, whose sweet and lofty imaginings of happiness have been fulfilled without that soul’s having had to deduct a discount?”

  Receipt for one thousand francs was handed out, or in, to me, whereupon the steady creditor and accounted competitor, namely no other than myself, was entitled to bid good day and to withdraw. My heart glad that this capital sum should fall to me, magically, as from a blue sky, I ran out of the high and beautiful vestibule into the open air, to continue my walk.