Selected Stories

by Robert Walser

  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 any more. 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.

  [1918]

  The Street (1)

  I HAD taken some steps, useless they had been, and now I went out into the street, agitated, numb. At first it was like being sightless, and I thought nobody saw anybody any more, everybody had been blinded and life was at a standstill, everybody groping around in confusion.

  Because my nerves were so tense, I sensed things with exceptional sharpness. Façades rose up before me, cold. Heads and clothes rushed towards me and vanished like ghosts.

  A shiver passed through me; I hardly dared to walk on. One impression after another seized hold of me. I was swaying, everything was swaying. All the people walking here had plans in mind, business. A moment before, I too had had an end in view; but now, no plans at all, but I was searching for one again, and I hoped to find something.

  The crowds were seething with energy. Everybody thought himself out in front. Men, women floated by. All seemed to be making for the same goal. Where did they come from, where were they going?

  One of them was this, another that, a third nothing. Many were driven, lived without purpose, let themselves be flung every which way. Any sense for the good was set aside, not used; intelligence was groping in emptiness; fine faculties and plenty bore meager fruit.

  Evening had come; the street was like an apparition. Thousands walked here every day. There was no room anywhere else. Early in the morning they were brisk; at night, tired. Often they came to nothing. Actions rolled over one another; ability was often exasperated, to no end.

  As I was walking along thus, I met the gaze of a grandee’s coachman. Then I jumped onto a bus, rode on for a stretch, went into a restaurant to eat something, and then I went out again. Everywhere an even-measured going and flowing. Human understanding was taken for granted. Everyone knew, in an instant, pretty well everything about everyone else, but the interior life remained secret. Soul continuously renews itself.

  Wheels were grinding, voices became loud; yet the whole scene was oddly still.

  I wanted to speak with someone, but found no time; sought some fixed point, but found none. In the midst of the unrelenting forward thrust I felt the wish to stand still. The muchness and the motion were too much and too fast. Everyone withdrew from everyone. There was a running, as of something liquefied, a constant going forth, as of evaporation. Everything was schematic, ghostlike, even myself.

  Suddenly I saw an unspeakable heaviness in all the haste and hurry, and I told myself: “This hugger-mugger totality wants nothing and does nothing. They are entangled with one another, do not move, prisoners; they abandon themselves to opaque pressures but they themselves are the power that lies upon them and binds them, mind and limb.”

  As I was passing by, a woman’s eyes spoke to me: “Come with me. Quit the whirlpool, leave that farrago behind, join the only person who will make you strong. If you are loyal to me, you’ll be rich. In the turmoil you are poor.”

  I wanted to follow her call, but was swept away in the stream. The street was just too irresistible.

  Then I came into the open country, where everything was quiet. A train with red windows hurtled past, close by. In the distance the traffic’s billowing ceaseless subtle thunder was faintly to be heard.

  I walked along the edge of the forest and murmured a poem by Brentano. The moon was glancing through the branches.

  Suddenly I noticed a man standing not far off, quite motionless, and apparently watching for me.

  I walked around him, keeping him constantly in sight, which annoyed him; for he called out to me: “Why not come here and take a proper look at me? I am not what you think.”

  I went over to him. He was like anyone else, except that he looked strange, nothing more. Then I went back again to where the light was, and the street.

  [1919]

  Snowdrops

  I’VE just been writing a letter in which I announced that I had finished a novel with or without pain and distress, that the considerable manuscript was lying in my drawer ready to go, with the title already in position and packing paper at hand, for the work to be wrapped and sent in. Furthermore, I have purchased a new hat, which for the present I shall wear only on Sundays, or when a visitor comes to me.

  Recently a parson visited me. I found it nice and most proper that he did not look at all like a professional one. The parson told me of a lyrically gifted teacher. I intend to go before long on foot through the spring country to this person, who instructs the village schoolchildren and writes verse as well. I find it beautiful and natural that a teacher should concern himself with higher things and have experiences of the more profound sort. Yet on account of his profession he has to deal with something serious: with souls! Here I think of the wonderful Life of the Merry Schoolmaster, Maria Wuz, of Auenthal, a Kind of Idyll, by Jean Paul, a book, or booklet, that I have read with delight I know not how often and will probably read again and again. The main point is that now the spring is just beginning again. So here and there I’ll succeed in writing a pleasant-sounding line of springtime verse. It is wonderful that now one need not think at all of heating. Thick winter coats will soon have outplayed their role. Everybody will be glad if he can stand around and go about coatless. Thank God there are still things about which everyone is united and agrees nicely with one another.

  I have seen snowdrops; in gardens and on the cart of a peasant woman who was driving to market. I wanted to buy a bouquet from her, but thought it not right for a robust man like me to ask for so tender a thing. They are sweet, these first shy announcers of something beloved by all the world. Everyone loves the thought that it will become spring.

  It is all a folk play, and the entry costs not a penny. Nature, the sky above us, is conducting no mean politics when it presents beauty to all, without discrimination, and nothing old and defective, but fresh and most tasty. Little snowdrops, of what do you speak? They speak still of winter, but also already of spring; they speak of the past, but also saucily and merrily of the new. They speak of the cold but also of something warmer; they speak of snow and at the same time of green, of burgeoning gro
wth. They speak of this and that; they say: Still in the shadows and on the hills lies a fair quantity of snow, but where the sun reaches, it has already melted away. Yet all sorts of hoarfrost may still come this way. April is not to be trusted. But what we wish will nevertheless win out. The warmth will assert itself everywhere.

  Snowdrops whisper all kinds of things. They bring back to mind Snow White, who in the mountains found a friendly welcome from the dwarfs. They remind one of roses because they are different. Everything always reminds one of its opposite.

  Just wait. The good will come. Goodness is always closer to us than we think. Patience brings roses. This old, good saying occurred to me when recently I saw snowdrops.

  [1919]

  Translated by Tom Whalen and Trudi Anderegg

  Winter

  IN winter the fog makes much of itself. Anyone walking in it cannot help but shiver. Only seldom does the sun honor us with its presence. Then one feels somewhat reprieved, as by the entrance of a beautiful woman who knows how to make herself delectable.

  Winter excels with cold. It is to be hoped that all rooms are heated, all overcoats worn. Furs and slippers increase in importance, fire in attraction, warmth in demand. Winter has long nights, short days, and bare trees. Not one green leaf appears now. But ice appears, on lakes and rivers, and in its wake something very pleasant; namely, skating. If snow falls, snowball fights are likely. These are a children’s pastime; an adult prefers to smoke cigars, sit at a table, and play cards, or else adults fancy serious conversation. Sledding might also be mentioned, by the way, an activity pleasing to many.

  Glorious sunny winter days there are. Footsteps clink over frozen ground. If there is snow, everything is soft, it’s as if you were walking on a carpet. Snowy landscapes have a beauty all their own. Everything looks festive, as for a ceremony. Christmastime is especially delightful for children. Then the Christmas tree shines brightly, or rather, the candles, which fill the room with a radiance devout and beautiful. How enchanting! The fir-tree branches are hung with delicacies. These are, in particular, chocolate angels, candy cippolatas, biscuits from Basel, walnuts wrapped in silver foil, red-cheeked apples. Around the tree the members of the family are gathered. The children recite poems they have learned by heart. Afterwards their parents show them their presents, and say to them something like: “Be as good a child as you have been till now,” and they kiss the children, whereupon the children kiss the parents, and perhaps all of them, amid such beautiful circumstances and deeply felt things, weep for a while and say thank you to each other in trembling voices, and hardly know why they are doing so, though they think it is right, and are happy. See how in the middle of winter love is radiant, brightness smiles, warmth shines, tenderness twinkles, and the glow of all that may be hoped for, all kindness, comes toward you.

  Snow does not fall lickety-split, but slowly, that is, bit by bit, which means flake by flake, down to the earth. Everything is flying around, as in Paris, where it does not snow as it does, for instance, in Moscow, from where Napoleon once began his retreat, because he thought it was advisable. It snows in London too, where Shakespeare once lived, who wrote The Winter’s Tale, a play glittering with merriment and gravity, in equal measure, in which a reunion occurs, attended by one of the characters, who stands by like a “conduit of many kings’ reigns,” as it says in the text.

  Isn’t snowfall an enchanting spectacle? To be snowed in, once in a while, certainly does no great harm. Years ago I experienced a snowstorm on the Friedrichstrasse in Berlin, and it is still vivid in my memory.

  Recently I dreamed I flew over a round, fragile sheet of ice, as thin and transparent as a windowpane, and curving up and down like glassy waves. Beneath the ice, spring flowers were growing. As if raised up by a spirit, I floated back and forth and was pleased by the effortless motion. In the middle of the lake was an island on which stood a temple which turned out to be a tavern. I went in, ordered coffee and cakes, and ate and drank and afterward smoked a cigarette. When I left and resumed my exercise, the mirror broke and I sank into the depths, among the flowers, which admitted me with a friendly welcome.

  How nice it is that spring follows winter, every time.

  [1919]

  The She-Owl

  A SHE-OWL in a ruined wall said to herself: What a horrifying existence. Anyone else would be dismayed, but me, I am patient. I lower my eyes, huddle. Everything in me and on me hangs down like gray veils, but above me, too, the stars glitter; this knowledge fortifies me. Bushy plumage covers me: by day I sleep, at night I’m awake. I need no mirror to discover how I look: feeling tells me. I can easily think of my peculiar face.

  People say I’m ugly. If they only knew what smiles I feel in my soul, they’d not run from me in fright any more. Yet they don’t see into the interior, they stop at the body, the clothes. Once I was young and pretty, I might say, but that makes it sound as if I pine for the past, and that is not my way. The she-owl, who once practiced growing big, endures the course and change of time tranquilly, she finds herself in every present moment.

  They say to me: “Philosophy.” Yet the death that comes be-foretimes cancels the later one. Death is nothing new to the she-owl, she knows it already. It looks as if I’m a lady of learning, wear glasses, and somebody is so interested in me that he pays me a visit now and then. He finds me Harmonious. He tells me I’m somebody who doesn’t disappoint him. Of course, I have never bewitched him either. He studies me profoundly, strokes my wings, brings me candy sometimes, with which to delight, so he believes, the most serious of females, and he’s making no mistake. I am reading a poet whose finesse makes him fit to be digested by owls. There’s something sweet in his ways, something veiled, undefinable, which is to say, he suits me well. Once I was charming, I laughed and twittered jokes into the blue of day, I turned many young men’s heads. Now things look different, the shoes I wear have holes in them, I’m old, I sit and say nothing.

  [1921]

  Knocking

  I AM completely beat, this head hurts me.

  Yesterday, the day before yesterday, the day before the day before yesterday, my landlady knocked.

  “May I know why you are knocking?” I asked her.

  This timid question was turned down with the response: “You are pretentious.”

  Subtle questions are perceived as impertinent.

  One should always make a lot of noise.

  Knocking is a true pleasure, listening to it less so. Knockers don’t hear their knocking; i.e., they hear it, but it doesn’t disturb them. Each thump has something agreeable for the originator. I know that from my own experience. One believes oneself brave when making a racket.

  There’s that knocking again.

  Apparently it’s a rug being worked on. I envy all those who, thrashing, exercise harmlessly.

  An instructor once took several students over his knee and spanked them thoroughly, to impress upon them that bars exist only for adults. I also was among the group beneficially beaten.

  Anyone who wants to hang a picture on the wall must first pound in a nail. To this end, one must knock.

  “Your knocking disturbs me.”

  “That doesn’t concern me.”

  “Good, then I shall compliantly see to the removal of this irritation.”

  “It won’t hurt you.”

  A polite conversation, don’t you agree?

  Knocking, knocking! I’d like to stop up my ears.

  Also, I once dusted as a servant the Persian carpets for the household of a count. The sound of it echoed through the magnificent landscape.

  Clothes, mattresses, etc., are beaten.

  So a modern city is full of knocking. Anyone who worries over something inevitable seems a simpleton.

  “Go ahead, knock as much as you like.”

  “Is that meant ironically?”

  “Yes, a little.”

  [1923]

  Translated by Tom Whalen and Carol Gehrig

  Titus

&nb
sp; DOESN’T it sound like sheer swank to bring to these lips, Titus narrated, that my mother was a princess, and that bandits kidnapped me in order to make me one of them? I say that only for the sake of ornamentation, so that you won’t be bored with me from the very beginning. If someone asked me about my birthplace, I would declare it was Goslar, though with that I would be telling a juicy lie. Never was I spoiled by my mother, for which I should be only too pleased. Goslar, so I read some time ago, is enchanting in its spring raiment, and since I tend to be a trusting soul, I readily accepted the assertion. While with the robbers, I learned to wash, sew, cook, and play Chopin, but I would like to request that you not take this statement too strictly. It seems to me like I am properly fantasizing here, for which I should be granted indulgence. Should the poet not be allowed to play as freely upon the instrument of his imagination as, for example, a musician on the piano? As a lieutenant I had a servant who spoiled me. I came to a city, went through the streets, and searched and found an appropriate job, obtained room and board with a family, whose head was as surly as his wife was indulgent. I taught both their boys the art of cigarette rolling and learned English in the company of a young woman. Tall and pale, like a breathed-upon rose from romanticism, sat, kindheartedness in her eyes, a waitress in her room; she made me, with two words which she did not begrudge me, happy, even though I did not yet rightly know the meaning of bliss. A third tenant, a widow, got so familiar with me that the grumbly one announced that he could not sanction such flirtations in his dwelling. Peace is a difficult problem. I took to writing only to give it up little by little. To the east of an enormous shopping district, I met in a bar a dark-eyed girl enveloped in yellow. Doesn’t that, however, sound like rummaging up memories and couldn’t it easily have the effect of sentimentality in print? For a mediocre type like me it was the same as for those whose main experience is to pass many people by without making contact with them. I am unusual perhaps only in that I lost terribly much time and perceived this fact with pleasure. Instead of older, I grew younger. That I became a bit duller is something I definitely take pride in. I am proud and narrow-minded and I tugged about on my nose so persistently it obtained a charming form, prayed constantly to the dear Lord for a childish appearance, which I also succeeded in getting. My heart is a snake’s nest, it’s no wonder whenever I raise my eyes pleadingly to people who for that reason think me docile, but what kind of sentence-disfiguring improprieties are these! He who does not have the good intention to tell a lie is hopelessly lost. Honesty is seldom respectable. I have a confession to make, I carry about a love that partly troubles me, but that also gives me wings. Required by a cooperative for the promotion of poetry to deliver a new manuscript, I hied, wagged, and ran my way into every coffeehouse where a lady seemed condescending enough to allow me to look up to her. Since then I am both the palest and most ruddy devotee. It’s just a pity that Solomonian songs of love have already been written and exist in the books at hand; how gladly would I steal through the servant’s entrance into the palaces of literature and serve with rapture. Yesterday I went to the country, which was dressed in a kind of early-spring gold, took off my hat to sweet Mama Nature, sat down on a small bench, and cried. In the multiple branching network of the methods of rejuvenescence, tears are, to my experience, a not unimportant point of intersection. People no longer let their fingernails grow. The opposite kind thinks about marriage. Hair must be washed every week. The waves amused themselves at my feet, and throughout the valley, which consisted of gentle hills gently following one another, there was a serenity like that cast in the face of a man who has remained good, who has lived for years without life turning him to disfavor. The oldness and youthfulness of the earth are wonderful. With your permission, I shall speak and sing about a small dancing brook falling down a wall of rock, sparkling silver, laughing and divinely beautiful, solemn and merry as it splashed on the rocks, broke away as a small contribution to the colossus ocean, where in thousand-fathom depths innocent monsters swim eternally around wet and hidden trees, luxury liners decorate the surface, and I shall talk about soft shadows on the meadow, small houses on the incline, and a youth lying down. It would be dreadful if the reader just yawned! With a languishing soul and with eyes opened wide like circles from yearning, I went into a peaceful garden where the sun faintly shone through, listened to the orchestra giving a sympathetic concert here, whereby I apparently behaved bizarrely because out of pity a girl fell over in a death of daggerlike piercing regrets; whoever thinks this possible will be happy for the rest of his life. I let people who take to me build on the structure of their friendship as long as they wish; they never become bothered by me because I notice them not at all. Many incautiously take me to be uncivilized. My most exalted is so beautiful and I worship her with such a holy respect that I attach myself to another and therewith must seize the opportunity to recover from the strain of sleepless nights, to relate to the successor how dear the past one was, to tell her, “I love you just as much.”