The Walk (8 page)

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.

Add I would, can, and I hope may (since nothing new and
shrewd strikes me at the moment), that I carried in my pocket a polite, a delicious invitation from Frau Aebi. The invitation card humbly requested me, and encouraged me, to be so good as to appear punctually at half past twelve for a modest lunch. I firmly intended to obey the summons and to emerge promptly at the time stated in the presence of the estimable person in question.

Since, dear kind reader, you give yourself the trouble to march attentively along with the writer and inventor of these lines, out forthwith into the bright and friendly morning world, not hurrying, but rather quite at ease, with level head, smoothly, discreetly, and calmly, now we both arrive in front of the above-mentioned bakery with the gold inscription, where we feel inclined to stop, horrified, to stand mournfully aghast at the gross ostentation and at the sad disfigurement of sweet rusticity which is intimately connected with it.

Spontaneously I exclaimed: “Pretty indignant, by God, should any honourable man be, when brought face to face with such golden inscriptional barbarities, which impress upon the landscape where we stand the seal of self-seeking, money-grubbing, and a miserable, utterly blatant coarsening of the soul. Does a simple, sincere master baker really require to appear so huge, with his foolish gold and silver proclamations to beam forth and shine, bright as a prince or a dressy, dubious lady? Let him bake and knead his bread in all honour and in reasonable modesty. What sort of a world of swindle are we beginning, or have already begun, to live in, when the municipality, the neighbours, and public opinion not only tolerate but unhappily, it is clear, even applaud that which injures every good sense, every sense of reason and good office, every sense of beauty and probity, that which is morbidly puffed up, offers a ridiculous tawdry show of itself, that which screams out over a hundred yards' distance and more into the good honest
air: ‘I am such and such. I have so and so much money, and I dare make so bold as to make an unpleasant impression. Of course I am a bumpkin and a blockhead with my hideous ostentation, and a tasteless fellow; but there's nobody can forbid me to be bumpkinish and blockheaded.' Do golden, far-shining loathsomely glittering letters stand in any acceptable, honourably justified relation, in any healthy affinitive proportion to … bread? Not in the least! But loathsome boasting and swaggering began in some corner, in some nook of the world, at some time or other, advanced step by step like a lamentable and disastrous flood, bearing garbage, filth, and foolishness along with them, spreading these throughout the world, and they have affected also my respectable baker, spoiled his earlier good taste, and undermined his inborn decency. I would give much, I would give my left arm, or left leg, if by such a sacrifice I could help recall the fine old sense of sincerity, the old sufficiency, and restore to country and to people the respectability and modesty which have been plentifully lost, to the sorrow of all men who seek honesty. To the devil with every miserable desire to seem more than one is. It is a veritable catastrophe, which spreads over the earth danger of war, death, misery, hate, and injury, and puts upon all that exists an abominable mask of malice and ugliness. I would not have a simple workman a lord, nor a simple woman her ladyship. But everything nowadays is out to dazzle and glitter, to be new and exquisite and beautiful, be lord and lady, and so becomes horrible. But in time perhaps things will change again. I would like to hope so.”

Now, as will soon be learned, I shall on account of this haughty bearing, this domineering attitude, take myself to task. In what manner will also soon be shown. It would not be good if I were to criticize others mercilessly, but set about myself only most tenderly and treat myself as indulgently as possible. A critic who goes about
it in this way is no true critic, and writers should not practice any abuse of writing. I hope that this sentence pleases all and sundry, inspires satisfaction, and meets with warm applause.

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 labour. 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.