Selected Stories

by Robert Walser

  Needless to say, I remain interested primarily in attics. I’m interested in so many things.

  Shall I soon apply politely for a job? This question, too, weighs enormously on my mind.

  In the house of some quite poor people I found a very nice room, but it could not, unfortunately, be heated. At once I declared myself agreeable to the view across the countryside afforded by the tiny window. The room could only be regarded as a sort of cubbyhole.

  While looking at this room I was also looking at the landlady. I wanted to find out if she might conceivably become more “intimately” interesting to me.

  Moreover, in the little window, standing at some distance on a hill, you could see a People’s Nutrition Building, in which questions of economics and management could be studied. In this elegant house a professor of literature and art once used to live. Somebody had told me this, and now I thought of it. A woman of my acquaintance works there, as a janitress; I met her when she was the keeper of a boardinghouse.

  “The table is a bit too small for me, you see I write rather a lot,” I said to the landlady, whose appearance I had scrutinized. I said goodbye to her and went away.

  Later I looked at a dark but warm room on a courtyard. To the woman who showed it to me, I said: “Perhaps I’ll come back. At the moment I’m pierced through with arrows.”

  “For heaven’s sake,” she asked, dismayed, “what kind of arrows?”

  “Cupid’s arrows,” I replied calmly, and most casually, as if these arrows were really no business of mine.

  “Yes, some women give no mercy,” she added. I answered: “It’s understandable, every woman’s first concern is herself.”

  Whereupon I left, and now this very peculiar question, in my opinion an important one, occupies my thoughts: “Of what does being cultivated consist?” And then this second question, a most important one, it too gives me no peace, the question, I mean, as to what the People means. How on earth shall I cope with these problems?

  And this doctor who, in an offhand sort of way, as it were, briefly “mothered” me. He gave me a book to read, which now graces my desk with its presence.

  And then “this beautiful woman,” who gazes at me in a shop, so intently, as if she wanted to tell me: “I know you; watch out!”

  She had such a beautiful, delicate face, also very delicate feet. The thing was this: I was just sitting there in the shop waiting for something. Of this woman I at once thought I had met her somewhere before, that she recognized me, and that she had a quite definite opinion of me. Of course, all this might have been a delusion of mine. One is so easily deluded about the objects of one’s interest.

  Early in the morning, one sees in our nicest of towns numerous pretty girls who are on the way to some occupation or other.

  It’s gradually becoming “serious,” my situation, I realize this.

  I’ve decided to write a novel, which will have to be psychological, of course. It will be concerned with vital questions.

  A schoolteacher, who is also an author, has written me two very attentive, intelligent letters.

  Oh, this rapidity in all my prolonged slownesses, and, on the other hand, this sloth again, in all my extensive industriousness.

  Is it really the case that I’m a kind of child of the people, who doesn’t yet understand even himself? That would be terrible.

  But I always float, like the price of gold, that’s to say, modestly put, I have confidence in myself. Others, alas, do not, not always, as, for instance, a very nice woman, to whom I also spoke while looking for a room.

  The room looked captivating, you know, so sunny, so bright. I told myself at once: “I’d like to live here.” The wash table was new and snow-white, and there was an inviting chaise longue, which I would have placed otherwise, probably.

  “The room is a real poem, dear esteemed lady,” said I to the person who wanted to rent it. “In spirit I have settled down here already.”

  She answered: “I must tell you, to my own regret and probably to yours as well, that I cannot make a decision at once. You are very demanding, aren’t you?”

  I replied: “Yes, I am.”

  “For that reason I must ask you to give me a little time for reflection. Telephone me, will you? Won’t you? Then I’ll tell you.”

  I took leave of that marvel of a room. How I laugh, when I think about it now! And about the woman who sought salvation in delay.

  As for me, I now live in a decent place, it’s almost refined. My surroundings satisfy me. One can live pretty well anywhere, I believe, and what’s more, somebody who knows and thinks well of me, a person of importance in the business line, has been asking after my modest self, and I believe, she will have obtained the information she wanted.

  I think I still have it in me to make something of myself. And I’d like to add: an actress has written to me, saying how she arrived home in a troubled mood, thought of me, and the thought made her happy.

  [1925]

  The Little Tree

  I SEE it, even when I walk past, hardly noticing. It does not run away, stands quite still, cannot think, cannot desire anything, no, it can only grow, be, in space, and have leaves, which nobody touches, which are only to be looked at. Busy people hurry on past the shadow offered by the leaves.

  Have I never given anything to you? Yet it needs no happiness. Perhaps, if someone thinks it is beautiful, it is glad. Do you think so? What holy innocences speak from it. It knows of nothing; it is there for my pleasure, that only.

  Why can it not be sensitive to my love, when I say something to it, the good thing? But it apprehends nothing. It never sees me when I smile at the greeting it ignorantly gives.

  To die at this being’s feet, like that figure Courbet painted, who is taking leave forever.

  Surely I shall go on living, but what will become of you?

  [1925]

  Stork and Hedgehog

  HEDGEHOG: Aren’t I captivating? Tell me!

  STORK: For a long time I have loved you.

  HEDGEHOG: I’ll say nothing about that. I don’t talk to creatures that love me. Love is something so reckless, impudent! I’ll have no dealings with spendthrifts. Make a note of that. It’s my spines you’re in love with, isn’t it?

  STORK: Your mantle of spines suits you charmingly. You look adorable in it. A pity you’re so prudish. A hedgehog should not be so buttoned up about decent behavior.

  HEDGEHOG: You’re wrong, and I’ll tell you something. A stork can brag of many things, but a hedgehog can’t. You are flattered, you are an educational and family ideal. Whole communities look up to you with unfeigned respect. All the opinions that go with you are good ones. With me, it’s different. What use to me is your affection? Have you been smitten by my timorousness?

  STORK: Yes, I think so.

  HEDGEHOG: It suits me fine, don’t you think? I’m so nice and round in it, so appetizing. I have spines because I’m afraid. I am all flight and fear. Look at my little head, my little eyes, my little nose. I don’t fly, with majesty, like you. There’s not a tittle of elevation about me. My feet are incomprehensibility itself, but I am dainty, I look like some poor silly thing. I don’t strut about with wings, not likely. I don’t build, on church steeples, comfortable nests with the bright air wafting around them. I live in forests, only venture forth, softly, in the dark.

  STORK: You dear shy thing!

  HEDGEHOG: You take pity on me. But I have no pity. Pity is something grand. It doesn’t suit me. I am puny. My spines, what’s more, are mockery itself; they mock me.

  STORK: So you’re mocked by what seems called upon to shield you. I love you all the more for your forsakenness.

  HEDGEHOG: But I’m in enormously good spirits. You have no idea how splendidly one can live inside a covering that’s laughable. My well-being is unspeakably original. The assurance that I look pretty streams through me, it fairly does. You’re rather a comical one yourself.

  STORK: My dignity, you mean. But I can’t do anyth
ing about it. I appear somewhat stiff, solemn, but it’s precisely in this gravity of my manner that I myself vanish, do you understand?

  HEDGEHOG: I don’t allow myself to understand anything. Understanding would annoy me. Do you think I’d take the trouble to start looking into you? Deep thinking I leave to you and your kind. I’m sorry for you because you can’t put me out of your mind, but I find it funny that you make me feel sorry for you. So then I’m not really sorry for you at all. Look, I’m shaped like a hill and give an impression of lifelessness.

  STORK: That’s a huge advantage. I admire you, are you giggling at something?

  HEDGEHOG: Oh, only at the anxieties of such an intelligence as yours. To be cultivated and want to extract a smile from a hedgehog! Inner glee is all I feel. On the outside I would never laugh. I mind my good manners too much for that. Besides, I’ve been talking with you for too long. You love me. But me, feathered friend, me you fill with horror. Yet I only shrink from you because that happens to suit me. Shrinking, I find, is my pleasure.

  STORK: Do you despise me?

  HEDGEHOG: My spines tell me I should. Otherwise, you’d impress me. But you’re also much too long-leggity, big-beaked, too proud, too beautiful for me.

  STORK: Would that your inconspicuousness could be the death of me.

  The hedgehog tucks himself entirely into his mantle, still peering out a little. Sees the good stork trembling with his inclination, swathed in his slendernesses. But he speaks no more. Finds speech from now on pointless; simply crouches there still, unspeakably odd and incomprehensible. The stork stands transfixed. Hedgehoggish helplessness invades him. Deep down, the hedgehog is a complete child, and, loving what is solitary, the kindly stork is now himself strange and solitary. He thinks that he too is tricked out with spines. Night has fallen in the forest; the enchanted stork stands on one leg, plunged in a lofty sorrow of love.

  The hedgehog ignores him.

  Apparently the hedgehog is asleep.

  But that is not so. The hedgehog is waiting to see if the stork will sob. This is giving the stork some trouble, it seems, but there’s a fair outlook that he will manage it.

  What a nocturnal comedy.

  I could recount much else about the relationship of the stork to the hedgehog, but I mean to be moderate. The stork’s situation vis-à-vis this scrap of deplorability seems deplorable. Why, too, does he allow himself to be moved so foolishly? Now tears are running down his ordinarily so judicious beak. Didn’t I tell him it would be like this?

  Is the hedgehog pleased about it?

  That remains a secret. The nature of secrets is to be not explainable. The unexplainable is interesting. What is interesting is pleasing.

  Stork! How art thou fallen!

  Yet, on the other hand, you did fall for the dear and actually not insignificant hedgehog. What a privilege!

  Have you ever seen a stork weep? You haven’t? Well, that makes it so much the more curious.

  In the stillness of night he weeps, not just buckets, but Niagaras. Grief for his adored hedgehog becomes for him a lasting need.

  What’s more, there’s heroism in his yielding like this. A stork sometimes gets bored. Then off he goes and makes a hero of himself.

  Dawn comes and still he stands there, in his never sufficiently commended agony. What patience.

  To think that he has neglected, all this time, to bring children. Lord, the loss!

  How the stork would have loved to kiss, with his beak, the spines of the hedgehog. What a kissing that would have been! We shudder at the thought of it.

  [1925]

  A Contribution

  TO THE CELEBRATION OF CONRAD FERDINAND MEYER

  FLYING along streets that were swept almost to a shine, a journalist jotted into his unremittingly active global brain: Fliers are flying in the blue above my head, which has no hat on it, something I find beautiful and, at the same time, healthy. I see a raw-materials truck and am astonished at my talent to perceive the way a cavalier handles his umbrella, which once belonged to the Duchess of Capulia. An official I identify by the fact that, in the sunshine, he conceals his hands in his trousers pockets. Some people do not dare to greet you, because they think it possible you might not return their courtesy. An acquaintance of mine had expected me to display the weakness of greeting him first. I refrained from doing so, however, with an almost magnificent alacrity. He thereby sacrificed the assurance of his conduct toward me, which conveyed to me that he held me in esteem but did not want to advertise it. As for me, it is this way: when I meet a person whom I respect, I remove from my mouth, four meters before the encounter, the Stumpen, which is what we call a cigar hereabouts, I doff my cap and bow so subtly and inconspicuously that there can be no possible doubt as to my showing esteem, interpolation, every bit of it, and now I suddenly hear a gentleman say to his neighbor: “There goes one of those people who are inclined to be not normal.” A lady cyclist was carrying a string bag full of vegetables and fruits. A girl was wearing red high shoes, in impressive contrast to her white-stockinged leg. In front of a hotel restaurant, where a governess is sitting whom I am interested in, not that I have no interests in other quarters, stands a wagon loaded with a big barrel, which might contain nectar. A soft autumnal shimmer lies upon every street and housefront. Hills on which vineyards are planted and evenings by lake shores arise before my lively mind’s eye, together with little dance halls in oak forests on islands. Perhaps I shall lodge for three or four days in a country room with furniture of the rococo period. Yet I doubt if I shall go there before completing, as I must, the present assignment. “Quatre-vingt-quatre” now rings in my ears. I lot of French is spoken in our city. In front of the municipal theater, a singer is arguing with an actor. A little child smiles at me, but, with children, one need not emphasize their smallness, because all children are small, although, here and there, big ones exist, perhaps more big ones than one is inclined to suppose.

  Over lunch I read, in a newspaper favored by liberal thinkers, about a railway accident. I recall precisely that I ate lunch only three hours ago. A poem is pursuing me; I shall have the energy to write it down. When girls want to be noticed they start to make arrangements with their hair; this can be perceived as a subtle challenge to spend one’s time voluntarily falling in love, but time is expensive, it wants to be used up to the full. People without energy like to talk about energy. For my part I am convinced that I have a quiet will of my own. Ah, how distinctive she was, this servant girl leading a little boy by the hand! Once I blew, to a nursemaid who stood for a superior style of life, a kiss. The movement of her head told me: “Save yourself the trouble.” Often one is in somewhat too good a mood. The houses today had such a beauty, a restraint, just standing there, I can hardly find words for it. A poet, one of those disturbers of genteel little drawing rooms, took his lady, whom he idolized, by her tiny gloved hand and asked how she had liked the verses which he had been quite understandably saucy enough to send her. She answered, with a blush: “I was very glad, but please, meanwhile, let me go.” For the simplicity of such language the poet appeared to have no perfect understanding such as she would have desired. I drew his attention to the reprehensibility, or impropriety, which, I said, seemed to me inherent in his behavior. While her molester was looking at me, the noble creature fled.

  A city notable mumbled something in his beard; the beard was absent, but the expression is favored by many. Some turns of speech occur to us of their own accord. In a book-shop window shone, resplendent, the editions of a great poet. I refer to Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, the centenary of whose birth is being celebrated by the civilized world, which one might also call the impatient or rushing world. Civilization still seems to be an unfinished task. We shall always be vain about it, but never proud of it, and we shall never say that we have nothing more to learn, and we shall remember not only at the centenaries of famous poets the responsibilities which civilization lays upon us, and first and foremost when being civilized is our concern we
shall not brag about it. To be sure, only the person who is always trying to be civilized is a civilized person, a person who is quite simply trying to be civilized, because that, if the truth were told, is not by any means so easy.

  [1925]

  A Sort of Speech

  THIS deputy, how he pursued in metropolitan suburbs his irresponsibilities garnished all in green, afterwards casting deeply troubled glances at the ceiling, a consolation.

  Certainly he’ll have been a splendid father. We are the last who doubt the opulence of his somewhat pear-mellow noble intentions.

  In the days of his youth he nodded with casual patience at the poets when they were introduced to him in his opera box.

  As for his wife, her first mistake was to follow him zealously on the paths of his trespasses, thereby inviting him, deviously, to believe that he was very much loved by her.

  Second, she was too involved with her brother, who could never be satisfied, on his solitary climbings, as morning breezes lisped around him, with mere medium heights.

  So she was more of a sister than a wife and almost an egoist rather than a performer of her really very lovely duties. Above all, she was a beauty and never as long as she lived got over the idea.

  Now to the sons, who carried jewelry caskets through woodlands by night, as if that were essential to them and their world.

  One of them dreamed only of disappearing entirely from sight. Often he must have read exciting stories. As a person, he was, in addition, nothing to speak of. So we shall dismiss him.

  The second settled, as a recluse, in a villa which enshrouding ivy had rendered almost invisible.

  The beard of this country-house dweller grew longer by the hour, until it extended out of the window, whereat he saw his life’s task completed—a belief we gladly allow him.

  The third found reason to become inconceivably incautious on account of a soprano, all naturally behind the wonderfully shaped back of his mother, who had a way of saying: “My sons displease me.”