The Assistant

by Robert Walser

  “Everything might still take a turn for the better, Frau Tobler,” Joseph said. These words struck her in the face as if they were on fire. She cried out:

  “Don’t say that! Words like that are reprehensible. This is not the way one speaks to the wife of a businessman into whose books one is able to peer day after day. One should not wish to be gentle in such a manner, which piles weights upon the heart of a weak woman. How could things take a turn for the better? Why don’t you try using this execrable expression on the people besieging my husband? Once more you have made me unhappy. I shall go now and try to forget this.”

  She ran out of the room.

  The assistant thought: “So what was it this time? Does there have to be some sort of tempestuous scene every single evening or nearly? Now it is I who am annoyed, now she, now both of us, and now there is yet another explosion of Toblerian spleen. Now Silvi is screaming, now Leo is barking, now Dora is ill again. All that is lacking is for all of us to keel over backward one fine day, at noon or in the evening. Then good night, beautiful Tobler villa! But things have not yet come to this. Let us first await the arrival of the maternal money and then pay down at least a portion of our debts. The dressings-down I have received in this household are unrivaled by anything in my previous experience. Perhaps there is some good in it. By the way! Could it be that I am feeling frightened once more? Am I agitated? No, thank God, I am not. Tobler is no doubt planning to spend the night at the Sailing Ship again. This is apparently one of my professional duties: keeping his wife company here in the meantime. The poor thing! Why has she no better companion?”

  He put out the lamp and went to bed.

  The next day—the weather was once again more wet than cold, and the air hung down heavily—Frau Tobler could be seen descending the garden hill dressed in black silk, heading toward the train station. Tobler accompanied her part of the way, telling her to keep her spirits up and make sure not to catch a cold again in the drafty railroad car, and more things of that nature. From above, one could see a smile on the woman’s face and her handkerchief waving; this was meant for Dora, who was waving at her mother as well. How wet everything was. At this stage of winter, it really might have been drier and colder, one thought, and then the eyes following the movements of Frau Tobler lost sight of her: these were the eyes of Joseph, Pauline, Silvi, Dora, the boys and Leo. The dog was barking sadly to see his mistress go off like that.

  The entire scene resembled—if a person had wished to indulge his romantic imagination—the departure of a queen. Joseph, the vassal, would have had to weep bitterly at this point if he’d been one of those loyal subjects from days of yore sending a greeting to us moderns, while Pauline, the lady-in-waiting, would have let out a cry of sorrow had she been one of those women who in ancient times, as stories instruct us, served beautiful noble queens. And the dog would perhaps have been a dragon, and the children princes and princesses, and Herr Tobler one of those doughty knights who used always to be in attendance for this sort of sad farewell, back when there were still castles, fortresses, walled cities and tears of loyalty. But no. Here things were quite different.

  What was being embarked on here was not everlasting exile on some rocky desert isle, but rather a mere day trip by rail and a practical and somewhat disagreeable visit. Nor was there a queen present, unless one chose to see Frau Tobler as the sorrowful queen of the House of the Evening Star, which after all wouldn’t have been so terribly fanciful and odd. Nor was the figure of the melancholy hero represented; rather, it was only the engineer Tobler, modern in both his garb and sensibilities, escorting the lady on the first bit of her journey, not to comfort her exactly, but to share with her a few sensible words. And there was as little question of there being a particularly gloomy knave and vassal in attendance upon this scene as of an even more dumbfounded lady-in-waiting. Joseph and Pauline—it was these two persons standing there and none other, except for the children, of course, and they were the offspring neither of kings nor of princes but rather ordinary citizens, children such as could be found in any better household. Leo was no dragon. He might even have responded somewhat currishly to such outrageous Medieval assumptions. All in all, it was a twentieth-century tableau.

  It would soon be seen what they would have to reckon with, Herr Tobler opined as he returned to the office. As for himself, he would and must persevere. Any other thought was ridiculous. He would continue to maintain what he had always maintained, in fact now more than ever.

  And he busied himself with the Deep Hole Drilling Machine. The commerce department wrote a letter to the civil engineer Joël, who, it appeared, took a “massive” interest in this project. The children were playing and roughhousing in the office. Tobler chased them out. Later, he himself left the technical workroom and went down to the village on some errand concerning the vending machine.

  A bit later, the assistant, too, left and set off for the post office. While he was on his way there, two agricultural laborers shouted words of abuse at him. These farmhands addressed to the assistant the words they would have bellowed at his employer if they’d had the courage. Joseph reached the village without further incident and was walking down the wider road there when he encountered someone he would have more expected to find at the Red House Inn: Wirsich.

  “So you’re back again?”

  They shook hands. Wirsich was positively beaming, he looked as if something highly agreeable had just happened to him. He told Joseph that he had just been offered employment at the colonial merchants Bachmann & Co. He had done just as the assistant had advised: set out with a pocket full of nicely written letters of application in envelopes, going from business to business, and in fact he had been treated in a most hospitable way almost everywhere he went, but no one had had an opening for him until at last he’d inquired at Bachmann & Co., whereupon everything had been settled to his complete satisfaction. And now, for the first time in quite a long while, he felt he could once more see himself as an upstanding individual. In any case, he was in a position to say: “Hello there, friend, you can see that all is well with me.” Wouldn’t it be nice for the two of them to pop into the first public house they came to and quench their thirst?

  “Certainly, I’d love to. But listen, Wirsich, tell me, can you tolerate it?”

  “Naturally!” the other assured him. And so the two of them went into the nearby Restaurant Central, where each of them ordered a Schoppen, a glass of beer.

  “Because if you couldn’t, I’d rather not. It would be a shame, given your new position,” Joseph thought fitting to add.

  Wirsich, amused, made a dismissive gesture. He wouldn’t dream of drinking irrationally the way he used to, he said. He had now, he believed, broken that habit for good, and after all he wasn’t such a dissolute sort. And how were the Toblers?

  “Things are bad,” the assistant said and briefly described to him the waning fortunes of the House of Tobler. But Wirsich, he added, must take care not to divulge anything of what he’d told him, these were professional secrets and nobody’s business.

  Wirsich said:

  “So in fact I was right when I prophesied to that big-britches Tobler that he would be turned out of that swanky house and garden of his one of these days. He heard it from me that night, and now what I said is coming true. What he has done to others is now being done to him, and it serves him right. Are people of our sort not people too? Did we clerks come into the world lacking all trace of human feelings? One evening we simply find ourselves cast out of our home and livelihood, and meanwhile the person doing this believes he is acting righteously and mercifully. Forgive me, Marti, you are my successor and it is on account of my downfall that you enjoy what you yourself have said is an agreeable sojourn. Of course you cannot help it that you replaced me. What am I saying: it is through you that I was able to find my new position. Please pardon me. It’s just that anger can run away with a person who’s found himself thrust into the most desperate confusion and degradation for so
long. And because of what? Because of some mistake? Thunderation, I’m going to have to have another. Hey there, innkeeper, or better yet you, kind hostess, bring me another one of these Schoppen. You, Marti, will most assuredly take another as well.”

  “All right, but I would ask,” Joseph said, “that you stop these attacks on my employer. And that you lower your voice, if I may. My current superior is no big-britches. You must take back this indiscreet expression which, as I will readily admit, was only spoken in anger. Do it right now, otherwise we shall have to part ways. I did not provide you with confidential information regarding Tobler’s circumstances only to listen to this man being insulted afterward. As for the rest: Cheers! I am glad that things are going well for you.”

  “Indeed, it was spoken in anger,” Wirsich said by way of apology.

  Their disagreement, then, was over, Joseph remarked. The two of them then drank one more glass each, a “layer” to which a fourth was added. They would have continued in this way if the door had not just then flown open and Herr Tobler himself had not walked into the restaurant. He surveyed the two swillpot clerks with a censorious look that told them all they needed to know.

  As soon as Tobler had made his appearance, Joseph had immediately removed his hat, which before he had, in rather cavalier fashion, left sitting on his head. The laws of courtesy required this, and the look Tobler was giving him was no less exacting. He soon got to his feet, in any case, as his conversation with Wirsich had come to an end; he called to the innkeeper to prepare his bill and began to make his way toward the exit. A nod from the engineer, however, prompted him to approach his employer, who asked:

  “What’s that lout Wirsich doing here?”

  Joseph replied: “Oh, he’s found a job. It’s very close to here, at Bachmann & Co. Starting today. He’s very happy about it.” “Is he? And he’s still fond of drinking, too, eh? He’ll no doubt last a long time in his new job, that one! Very well. Have you gone to the post office yet?”

  “No, I’ll go now. Please forgive me, I was detained by my predecessor. I’ll go right away, and if you’d like me to bring the mail to you here …”

  Tobler declined this offer, and the assistant went on his way.

  Wirsich too had now gotten up, he paid his tab and marched hesitantly forward, uncertain whether or not he should greet his former employer, but then he did, and did so with a deep humble gesture and, in the process, bumped into a table, which nearly caused him to fall over. His respectful greeting received not the slightest hint of a response. Tobler wished to have “nothing more to do with this individual.” In the doorway, Wirsich stumbled a second time. Was this an ominous sign?

  Frau Tobler came home on the late-night express train. Herr Tobler, Pauline and Joseph were waiting for her at the station. The train arrived with a great snorting and clattering. All sorts of people crowded about the long, black, magnificent-looking monster. The woman got out, Joseph and Pauline leapt forward to relieve her of baskets and packages. Mother Tobler had laden her daughter-in-law with various gifts, they had been expecting this, which is why all three of them had gone to the station. Two baskets were filled partly with nuts, partly with apples. The packages held things for the woman herself and for the children.

  It could be read in the face of the woman alighting from the train that things had gone neither very well nor very poorly. Her face expressed weariness and calm. It looked as if one half of her face might have been smiling just a little. On the whole, she appeared to have given her husband, who had eagerly pelted her with questions, answers that pleased and satisfied him, for Tobler seemed inclined to head to the Sailing Ship for a bit. His wife said that she could tell where it was he was hankering to go, and these few words simultaneously granted him permission. He shouted to the departing group that he would be back at the Evening Star in an hour at the most, and then he vanished into the pub where he was a regular.

  The rest of them went home. The assistant found it an agreeable duty to carry the baskets, heavy as they were. At least this was “physical” work for a change. He walked with light steps behind the two women, the maid and the woman, utterly empty-headed. This was because of the baskets. “I was born to be an errand boy,” he thought.

  At home, they were besieged with questions that sprang from childish curiosity. And the packages and fruit baskets were set upon. Three children wanted to know what messages their grandmother had given their mother for them. Only the fourth was silent. Silvi remained sleepy and indifferent. Even the presents left her indifferent. “None of this is meant for me,” her expression said. Well, all the more reason for these things to have been meant for the other three. Soon, however, all of them, along with all their demands, questions and curiosity, were packed off to bed.

  “How tired I am,” Frau Tobler said.

  Pauline knelt on the floor at her feet and took her shoes off. She was sitting on the sofa. Joseph, who was standing beside them, thought: “I must admit I would have found it not at all disagreeable if it had been me to whom she’d said: Take my shoes off! I believe I would have bent down with great pleasure.”

  A glove fell from her grasp; at once he leapt to her side and picked it up for her. Smiling wanly, she thanked him and said:

  “How attentive you are! You weren’t always like this. Do you think my husband will be home soon? How are you, Joseph?”

  “Quite, quite well,” he replied. Pauline had left the room.

  He was still so young, that’s why he spoke like this and no doubt had to speak this way, the woman said. She felt so heavy-hearted.

  “Was it very trying?” he asked.

  “In part,” she replied. But this minor vexation had taken little toll on her. Today she found herself drawn to entertain many different trains of thought. What would Joseph say to a round of Jass? Yes? That was nice of him. Just now she had such an indescribable urge to play cards. It might make her feel better.

  The two of them sat down at the table and began to play. Pauline brought Frau Tobler something to eat and then left. “Perhaps this woman is inclined to feel light-headed and heavy-hearted all at once. That may well be,” the assistant thought. “Besides, what an idiot I am!”

  “She doesn’t really want to give me anything, the old woman,” Frau Tobler announced in the middle of their game.

  “Who? Oh yes, Mother Tobler! I can imagine. But she will have to!”

  “Precisely!” she replied. The two of them laughed. “How light-headed this all sounds,” thought the bookkeeper and chief correspondent of the C. Tobler Technical Office. The business! After all, he was in fact a mature, sedate individual. There the two of them were, once more sitting one beside the other: she, the “incomprehensible woman,” and he, the “peculiar individual.” Joseph couldn’t help laughing aloud. She asked what was the matter.

  “Oh, nothing. Foolishness.”

  She remarked, sounding more serious now, that she hoped he wasn’t allowing himself jokes at her expense. To this he replied that he was the commercial clerk of the House of Tobler, whereupon she said that she indeed hoped he most distinctly felt himself to be just that. He threw the cards he’d been holding in his hand down on the table, trembling, and declared that a serious and respectable clerk was not in the habit of playing cards all night long. Having risen to his feet, he now made for the door, expecting she would call him back. She let him go.

  Instead of going up to his room, he went down to the office, lit the lamp that was to be found there, sat down at his table and wrote to the head of the Municipal Employment Referral Office as follows:

  Dear Sir!

  I should like to request as politely as possible that you kindly keep me in mind as an applicant for any appropriate position that should happen to come available. I am not inclined to take a chance on possibly winding up back on the street. The state of affairs up here, sir, is becoming ever more precarious. Just in case! Sending you my most respectful regards,

  Your genuinely devoted servant, Joseph
Marti.

  He had scarcely finished enclosing this letter in its envelope and addressing it when he heard footsteps coming from the garden. Half a minute later, Herr Tobler and two other gentlemen, apparently regulars from the Sailing Ship, came into the office, speaking loudly and laughing, and, it appeared, filled with drunken high spirits.

  What was Joseph doing working at such an hour of the night? Tobler asked in an unsteady voice. At least he had, it seemed, a truly industrious and self-sacrificing assistant, he went on to remark, turning with a laugh to his Jass partners. But now Joseph should go on and call it a night, for tomorrow morning would be a day as well. Then he went to the door that lead to the interior of the house and shouted at the top of his lungs: Pauline!

  “Herr Tobler?” came the answer from up above.

  “Bring a couple of bottles of the Rhenish wine down to the office for us. And be quick about it.”

  There was scarcely any need for Joseph to take leave of the gentlemen; he said a brief goodnight and went upstairs. The others no longer even heard or noticed him, for they now were occupied with quite different matters. They lay sprawled half on the floor, half on the drafting table, not taking particular heed of what they were sitting on. The chairs were being used as footstools, and sleepy, jolly heads were coming into intimate contact with Tobler’s hand-drawn sketches. Tobler, lurching back and forth, filled his pipe, and when at last the wine arrived, he set about the business of filling the glasses with a great deal of effort and gracelessness, whereupon a drinking commenced that was half mixed with snores and joined with enormous yawns. The engineer now all at once decided to use the small quantity of good sense he still had at his disposal to explain the inventions of the Tobler firm to these gentlemen and comrades, but his explanations met only with laughter and with no understanding whatsoever. The serious nature of the masculine world-view now lay on the floor in a glass of wine that had been dropped and had broken and spilled its contents. Masculine and human rationality was now bawling and jeering and babbling so loudly that the walls of the house were nearly shaking. And now, as the crowning touch to this setting of the stage, Tobler had the not terribly considerate idea of shouting for his wife to come down to the office, so that he could introduce her, as he said, to his good friends from the village. She came downstairs, but only stuck her head through the door she had timidly opened and then vanished again, repelled by—as she herself told her husband the next day—the distasteful and scurrilous scene that had opened before her eyes, and which a Dutch artist specializing in tableaus of debauchery could not have painted any more convincingly or repulsively than what she’d witnessed here in reality and truth. The revelry by no means came to an end with the woman’s disappearance; on the contrary, it continued to flame and simmer and burn until early the next morning, with the arrival of that exhaustion, that overwhelming fatigue that in the end always pounces upon the napes of even the most stalwart drinkers so as to bend them over and lay them out cold beneath tables and chairs. This is just what occurred, and this rambunctious party spent the night, hideously snoring, in the technical workshop, until Pauline arrived to light a fire in the stove. Day had come. The good fellows woke up. The two Bärenswilers ambled back down to their hamlet and home, while Herr Tobler went upstairs to his and his wife’s room to sleep off the tempest and intoxication.