Selected Stories (8 page)

Left of the country road here, a foundry full of workmen and industry causes a noticeable
disturbance. In recognition of this I am honestly ashamed to be merely out for a walk
while so many others drudge and labor. I drudge away perhaps of course at times, when
all these workmen have knocked off and are taking a rest. A fitter on his bicycle,
a friend of mine from 135/III Battalion of the militia, calls to me in passing: “It
looks to me you’re out for a walk again, working hours too!” I wave to him and laugh
and blithely admit that he is right, if he thinks I am out for a walk.

“They can all see that I am going for a walk,” I thought to myself, and I calmly walked
on, without the least annoyance at having been found out, for that would have been
silly.

In my bright yellow English suit, which I had received as a present, I really seemed
to myself, I must frankly admit, a great lord and grand seigneur, a marquis strolling
up and down his park, though it was only a semi-rural, semi-suburban, neat, modest,
nice little poor-quarter and country road I walked on, and on no account a noble park,
as I have been so arrogant as to suppose, a presumption I gently withdraw, because
all that is parklike is pure invention and does not fit here at all. Factories both
great and small and mechanical workshops lay scattered agreeably in green countryside.
Fat cozy farms meanwhile kindly offered their arms to knocking and hammering industry,
which always has something skinny and worn-out about it. Nut trees, cherry trees,
and plum trees gave the soft rounded road an attractive, entertaining, and delicate
character. A dog lay across the middle of the road which I found as a matter of fact
quite beautiful and loved. I loved in fact almost everything I saw as I proceeded,
and with a fiery love. Another pretty little dog scene and child scene was as follows.
A large but thoroughly comical, humorous, not at all dangerous fellow of a dog was
quietly watching a wee scrap of a boy who crouched on some porch steps and bawled
on account of the attention which the good-natured yet still somewhat terrifying-looking
animal chose to pay him, bawled miserably with fear, setting up a loud and childish
wail. I found the scene enchanting; but another childish scene in this country-road
theater I found almost more delightful and enchanting. Two very small children were
lying on the rather dusty road, as in a garden. One child said to the other: “Now
give me a nice little kiss.” The other child gave what was so pressingly demanded.
Then said the first: “All right, now you may get up.” So without a sweet little kiss
he would probably never have allowed the other what he now permitted it. “How well
this naive little scene goes with the lovely blue sky, which laughs down so divinely
upon the gay, nimble, and bright earth!” I said to myself. “Children are heavenly
because they are always in a kind of heaven. When they grow older and grow up, their
heaven vanishes and then they fall out of their childishness into the dry calculating
manner and tedious perceptions of adults. For the children of poor folk the country
road in summer is like a playroom. Where else can they go, seeing that the gardens
are selfishly closed to them? Woe to the automobiles blustering by, as they ride coldly
and maliciously into the children’s games, into the child’s heaven, so that small
innocent human beings are in danger of being crushed to a pulp. The terrible thought
that a child actually can be run over by such a clumsy triumphal car, I dare not think
it, otherwise my wrath will seduce me to coarse expressions, with which it is well
known nothing much ever gets done.”

To people sitting in a blustering dust-churning automobile I always present my austere
and angry face, and they do not deserve a better one. Then they believe that I am
a spy, a plainclothes policeman, delegated by high officials and authorities to spy
on the traffic, to note down the numbers of vehicles, and later to report them. I
always then look darkly at the wheels, at the car as a whole, but never at its occupants,
whom I despise, and this in no way personally, but purely on principle; for I do not
understand, and I never shall understand, how it can be a pleasure to hurtle past
all the images and objects which our beautiful earth displays, as if one had gone
mad and had to accelerate for fear of misery and despair. In fact, I love repose and
all that reposes. I love thrift and moderation and am in my inmost self, in God’s
name, unfriendly toward any agitation and haste. More than what is true I need not
say. And because of these words the driving of automobiles will certainly not be discontinued,
nor its evil air-polluting smell, which nobody for sure particularly loves or esteems.
It would be unnatural if someone’s nostrils were to love and inhale with relish that
which for all correct nostrils, at times, depending perhaps on the mood one is in,
outrages and evokes revulsion. Enough, and no harm meant. And now walk on. Oh, it
is heavenly and good and in simplicity most ancient to walk on foot, provided of course
one’s shoes or boots are in order.

Would the esteemed ladies and gentlemen, patrons and patronesses and circles of readers,
while they benevolently tolerate and condone this perhaps somewhat too solemn and
high-strutting style, now be so kind as to allow me duly to draw their attention to
two particularly significant persons, forms, or figures, namely firstly, or better,
first, to an alleged retired actress, and secondly to the most youthful presumed budding
cantatrice? I hold these two people to be considerably weighty and therefore I believed
it wise to announce and advertise them properly in advance, before they enter and
figure in reality, so that an odor of significance and fame may run before these two
gentle creatures, and they may be received and observed on their appearance with all
distinction, due regard, and loving concern, such as one should, in my diminutive
opinion, almost compulsorily accord to such beings. Then at about half past twelve
the writer will, as is known, in reward for his many labors, eat, carouse, and dine
in the palazzo, or house, of Frau Aebi. Till then, however, he will have to cover
a considerable stretch of his road, and write a fair quantity of lines. But one realizes
to be sure to satiety that he loves to walk as well as he loves to write; the latter
of course perhaps just a shade less than the former.

In front of a very attractive house I saw, very close to the beautiful road, a woman
seated on a bench, and hardly had I glimpsed her when I plucked up the courage to
speak, addressing her, in the most polite and courteous terms possible, as follows:

“Forgive me, a person utterly unknown to you, if at the sight of you the eager and
assuredly saucy question forces itself to my lips, whether you have not perhaps been
formerly an actress? For in fact you seem very much indeed like a once great, indulged,
celebrated actress and stage artist. Certainly you quite rightly wonder at my so amazingly
rash address and obstreperous inquiry; but you have such a beautiful face, such a
pleasant, charming, and, I must add, interesting appearance, present such a beautiful,
noble, fine aspect, look so candidly, majestically, and calmly out of your eyes upon
me and upon the world in general, that I could not possibly have compelled myself
to pass you by without daring to say something civil and flattering to you, which
I hope you will not hold against me, although I am afraid that I deserve correction
and admonishment on account of my frivolity. When I saw you I thought for a moment
that you must have been an actress, and today, I mused, you sit here beside the simple,
though at the same time beautiful, road, in front of the pretty little shop, whose
owner you appear to me to be. You have perhaps before today never been so unceremoniously
addressed. Your friendly and moreover graceful aspect, your hospitable, beautiful
appearance, your equanimity, your fine figure, and this noble, cheerful air in your
advancing years (this I trust you will allow me to observe) have encouraged me to
engage with you in intimate conversation on the open road. This fine day also, delighting
me as it does with its freedom and gaiety, has kindled in me a joyousness, in consequence
of which I have perhaps gone too far with the unknown lady. You smile! Then you are
in no way angered by the unconstrained quality of my utterance. I think it, if I may
say so, well and good when from time to time two persons who are unacquainted freely
and harmlessly converse, for which converse we inhabitants of this wandering curious
planet, which is a puzzle to us, do, when all is said and done, possess mouth and
tongue and linguistic capacity, which last is as a matter of fact both curious and
fair. In any case, the moment I saw you, I liked you profoundly; but now I must reverently
ask your pardon, and I would ask you to rest assured that you inspire me with the
warmest feelings of respect. Can this full confession that I was very glad when I
saw you cause you to be angry with me?”

“It is far rather a pleasure for me,” said the beautiful woman happily. “But, in reference
to your supposition, I must prepare you for a disappointment. I have never been an
actress.”

At this I felt moved to say: “Not long ago I came into this region out of cold, forlorn,
and narrow circumstances, inwardly sick, completely without faith, without confidence
or trust, without any finer sort of hope, a stranger to the world and to myself, and
hostile to both. Timidity and mistrust took me prisoner and accompanied my every step.
Then, little by little, I lost my ignoble, ugly prejudices. Here I breathed again
more quiet and free—and became again a better, warmer, and happier man. The terrors
which filled my soul I saw gradually vanish; misery and emptiness in my heart and
my hopefulness were slowly transformed into gay content and into a pleasant, lively
sympathy, which I learned to feel anew. I was dead, and now it is as if someone had
raised me up and set me on my way. Where I thought I must meet with much that is repulsive,
hard, and disquieting, I encounter charm and goodness, I find all that is docile,
familiar, and good.”

“So much the better,” said the woman, and her face and voice were kind.

As the moment seemed to have come to conclude this conversation, somewhat truculently
begun, and to withdraw, I presented my compliments to the woman whom I had taken for
an actress, but who was now unfortunately a great and famous actress no longer, as
she herself had found it necessary to protest, with, I should add, an exquisite and
very scrupulous courtesy, bowed to her and quietly, as if nothing had ever happened,
walked on my way.

A modest question: An elegant milliner’s under green trees, does this perhaps by now
arouse exceptional interest and evoke possibly a little if any applause?

I firmly believe it does, and so I dare to communicate the most humble observation,
that as I walked and marched along on the most beautiful of roads a somewhat foolish,
juvenile, and loud shout of joy burst from my throat, a throat which did not itself
consider this, or anything like it, possible. What did I see and discover that was
new, astounding, and beautiful? Oh, quite simply the above-mentioned milliner’s and
fashion salon. Paris and St. Petersburg, Bucharest and Milan, London and Berlin, all
that is elegant, naughty, and metropolitan, drew close to me, emerged before me, to
fascinate and to enchant me. But in the capitals of the world one misses the green
and luscious embellishments of trees, the embellishment and beneficence of friendly
fields and many delicate little leaves and, last but not least, the sweet fragrance
of flowers, and this I had here. “All this,” so I proposed to myself as I stood there,
“I shall certainly soon write down in a piece or sort of fantasy, which I shall entitle
“The Walk.” Especially this ladies’ hat shop may not be omitted. Otherwise, a most
picturesque charm would be missing from the piece, and this lack I shall know as well
to avoid as to circumvent and render impossible.” The feathers, ribbons, artificial
fruits and flowers on the nice quaint hats were to me almost as attractive and homely
as nature herself, who, with her natural green, with her natural colors, framed and
so delicately enclosed the artificial colors and fantastic shapes of fashion that
the milliner’s might have been simply a delightful painting. I rely here, as I said,
on the most subtle understanding of the reader, of whom I am honestly afraid. This
miserable and cowardly confession is understandable. It is the same with all the more
courageous authors.

God! what did I see, likewise under leaves, but a bewitching, dainty, delightful butcher
shop, with rose-red pork, beef, and lamb displayed. The butcher was bustling about
inside, where his customers stood also. This butcher shop is certainly as well worth
a shout as the shop with the hats. Third, a grocer’s might merit a quiet mention.
To all sorts of public houses I come later, which is, I think, quite soon enough.
With public houses, doubtless one cannot begin late enough in the day, because they
produce consequences which everybody knows, knows indeed to satiety. Even the most
virtuous person cannot dispute the fact that he is never master of certain improprieties.
Luckily, however, one is of course—human, and as such easily pardonable. One simply
appeals to the weakness of the system.

Here once again I must take fresh bearings. I assume that I can effect the reorganization
and regrouping of forces as well as any field marshal surveying all circumstances
and drawing all contingencies and reverses into the net of his, it will be permitted
me to say, genius for computation. In the daily papers at present an industrious person
can read such things every day, and he notes such expressions as “flank attack.” I
have recently come to the conclusion that the art and direction of war is almost as
difficult, and requires almost as much patience, as the art of writing, the converse
being also true. Writers also, like generals, often make the most laborious preparations
before they dare march to the attack and give battle, or, in other words, fling their
produce, or a book, into the book market, an action which serves as a challenge and
thus vigorously stimulates very forceful counterattacks. Books attract discussions,
and these sometimes end in such a fury that the book must die and its writer despair
of it all.