Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories

by Robert Walser

  (1914)

  THE MORNING

  YESTERDAY I got up early and looked out the window. In the distance behind the forest, the sky glowed red. It was still before sunrise, the world cold and dark. The high mountains with their jagged peaks were magnificently silhouetted against the fiery dawn. I dressed quickly and went down to go out into the wonderful, fresh winter morning. The entire sky was filled with reddish clouds. In the village only a few steps away from our city, the lucent rosy street was full of schoolchildren hurrying to school. In the golden morning, glimmering with silver, how touching seemed the numerous young creatures in their diligence. Like a fresh wind, a strange youthful clarity swept through the alley. And indeed a morning wind also blew in and a few dead leaves began to dance over the street. The glow of the divine morning shimmered gloriously through the bare branches of the trees. I filled my lungs with the delicious air, a few houses shone greenishly, others radiated in sweet, pure pink, and the green of the meadows was so fresh. From out of the night and its darkness everything had arisen bright and unspeakably friendly. The faces of the people glowed matutinally. The eyes flashed and sparkled, and in the sky the stars shimmered with unearthly, all-consuming beauty. Radiance and wind everywhere. The wind swept along like the hope of youth, like a new, never before felt confidence. Everything moved, the wash flapped and fluttered, the train smoke flew up and was lost. I, too, lost myself. It was as if I were enchanted, as if born anew, and full of delight I looked up into the morning sky where the sacred, golden clouds floated. Melting into splendor and bliss they dissolved, and then the sun came out, day was here.

  (1914)

  AUTUMN AFTERNOON

  I REMEMBER a beautiful afternoon I once had. I walked over the country with the stump of a cigar snug in my mouth. Sunlight beamed over the green region. In the fields men, children, and women were working; on my left flowed a golden canal and on my right I had a view of farmland. I dawdled along. A bakery truck blasted past. It’s strange that I recall so clearly every detail as if it were a treasure. There must be a great strength within my memory, I’m so happy. Memories are life. Then I continued on past many considerably cheerful and prosperous farmhouses; a farm woman shushed her dog that had the idea of barking at the strange pedestrian passing by. It’s delightful to walk quietly and leisurely over the land and be greeted friendlily by solemn, sturdy country women. Such a greeting does one good, like the thought of immortality. A heaven opens when people are kind to one another. The afternoon and soon evening sun strew liquid love and fantasy gold over the road, and it glowed reddish. On everything was a touch of violet, but only a delicate, barely visible tint. A suggestion has nothing as thick as a finger to grip, but gropes around and hovers just above the visible and invisible totality as an ominous shimmer, tone, sensation. I went by a tavern without entering; I thought I might do that later. At a comfortable pace I strolled on, not unlike a calm, gentle pastor or teacher or messenger. Many a human eye looked upon me curiously in order to unriddle who I might be. In the wonderfully resounding countryside, everything became more and more beautiful. Each step led into another loveliness. It was as if I were writing, dreaming, fantasizing. A pale, beautiful, dark-eyed farm girl, whose face had been sweetly tanned by the sun, looked at me questioningly with the sparkling dark magic of her eyes and said good evening. I returned her greeting and went on into an orchard whose trees thickly dangled with the red and golden fruit of paradise. Through the dark green of the leaves the beautiful apples were wonderfully lit by the evening sun, and over the verdant fields rang the warm buoyant chiming of bells. Magnificent cows, brown, white, and black, lay and stood about in graceful groups scattered across lush meadows stretching down to a silver canal. I didn’t have eyes enough to look at all there was to see, nor ears enough to hear it all. Looking and hearing joined to make one pleasure, the entire wide green and golden landscape resounded—the bells, the fir forest, the animals, and the people. It was like a painting conjured up by one of the masters. The beech forest was brown and yellow; the green and the yellow and the red and the blue made music. Colors flowed into sound, and sound played with the divinely beautiful colors like boyfriends with sweet girlfriends, like gods with goddesses. I walked forward only slowly under the light blue and between the green and brown, and gradually it turned dark. Several shepherd boys came up to me wanting to know the time. Later, in the village, I went past an old, large, venerable rectory. Someone was singing and playing in the house. They were glorious sounds, at least so I imagined. How easy it is to imagine something beautiful on a quiet evening walk. An hour later it was night, the sky glittered black. Moon and stars came out.

  (1914)

  THE MAN

  ONCE I sat in a restaurant on the Viehmarktplatz. Sometimes sophisticated gentlemen sit there, but I don’t want to speak about sophisticated gentlemen. Sophisticated gentlemen are of little interest. They wish to be amused yet are themselves thoroughly unamusing. In the corner sat a man with a cheerful, kind, open gaze. His eyes rested as if on an unfathomable distance, in lands unrelated to earth. At once he began to play a kind of flute, and all those sitting in the elegant restaurant directed their gazes toward him and harkened to his music. Like a large, good-humored, sturdy child the man sat there with his merry eyes. After the flute concert was over, a clarinet was next in line, which he played and handled with the same virtuosity as the flute. He played very simple tunes, but nonetheless excellently. After that, he crowed like a rooster, barked like a dog, meowed like a cat, and mooed like a cow. Obviously he delighted in the various sounds he performed well, but the best was still to come, for now he pulled from a basket he had been keeping under the table a rat, mothering the creature like it was a good child. He gave the rat some of his beer to drink, clear evidence that rats gladly drink beer. In addition he put the animal, for which all reasonable people have a definite disgust, in his coat pocket, and finally he kissed it on its pointy mouth, all the while happily laughing to himself. Odd was this man with the thoughtful, lost look in his sparkling clear eyes. He was a lover of music and a friend to animals. Very strange he was. He made a deep, at least long-lasting impression on me. Not only that, he spoke French superbly.

  (1914)

  THE GRAVE OF THE MOTHER

  ON A SUNDAY toward evening I walked to the cemetery that lay only a few steps from where I lived. Shortly before, it had rained, everything was still damp—the path, the trees. I entered the graveyard with its old, silent, holy graves and here I was embraced as if by sweet dear chaste arms, by a beautiful fresh green like I had never before encountered. Quietly I walked along the pebbled path. Everything was so still. No leaf moved, nothing stirred or budged. It was as if everything was listening. As if the green sensed the expanding circle of solemnity and had sunk into brooding over the old and forever-new puzzle about death and life, and hung and lay there in its damp, wondrous beauty. I had never seen anything like it. Magnificently I had been moved to see how the place of solemn death and silence was forever sweet, green, and warm. No one except me could be seen. Except for the green and the gravestones nothing was there. I hardly dared to breathe in all this soundlessness, and my steps struck me as impudent and untender in the midst of all the holy, solemn, and tender silence. Infinitely kind and lovely hung the rich green of an acacia over a grave near where I stood. It was the grave of my mother. Everything now seemed to whisper and murmur, to speak and expound. The living picture of the dear revered one with her face and noble expression rose softly and mysteriously out of the unfathomable depths of the green, silent grave. I stood there a long time. But not melancholy. Even I and you, all of us will come here once where everything, everything is still and comes to a close, and everything ends, and everything dissolves into silence.

  (1914)

  REMEMBER THIS

  REMEMBER how you rejoiced at the sweet, fresh green spring, how enchanted you were by the silver-white, sky-blue lake, how you greeted the mountains, how you found everything beautiful th
at encountered you and you encountered, how you were enfolded by a splendidly vast, undisturbed freedom, and how happy you were in its embrace, how joyfully you took things as they came, how you enjoyed each beautiful, bright, dear day, how on the warm nights the moon gazed upon you like a brother in whom you placed all your trust and faith, how the many hours glided imperceptibly by like a pleasure boat rocking on the water, as if the water had fallen in love with carrying and by so doing felt an unspeakable delight in bearing weight and in stillness; how constant and still the old mountain was and how white clouds like glowing flames from behind the mountains climbed into the sky, how kindly the people greeted you on the now day-lit, now night-darkened streets as if you were their friend, though to them you had to be totally unknown, how the villages with their cozy homes and abundant gardens, resplendent with sweet, luxuriant disorder lay there as if dreaming of primordial times, how the grass and grains ripened so benevolently and delectably; how the hill curved and how the lowlands gently went on, how in the forest you were welcomed by an unnameable cloister-like calm and silence, as if you were meant to think you were strolling through the realm of vastness and oblivion, and how the dear, delicate birds sang in the forest, so that when you heard their song you immediately had to stand still and listen, deeply moved, as if you were hearing the voice of eternity; how you were moved by a child in its mother’s arms, how you saw an old man on his deathbed, and how it was your father who lay there dead, who had passed on to the silent land—remember this, remember this. Forget, forget nothing, don’t forget the sweetness, don’t forget the severity. If indifference and unkindness take hold of your being, stir your memory and think of all the beautiful, all the burdensome things. Remember there is life and there is death, remember there are moments of bliss and there are graves. Do not be forgetful, but instead remember this.

  (1914)

  ON THE TERRACE

  IT WAS this or that time, I can’t say exactly when. I stood on a kind of terrace of rock and, leaning against the unadorned railing, looked down into the tender depths. Then it began to rain mildly, gently. The lake shifted colors, the sky appeared splendidly, softly agitated. I stepped under the roof of a summerhouse that stands on the rocks. Everything green quickly became dripping wet. Down on the street a few people stood under the dense foliage of the chestnut trees as if under wide umbrellas. This looked so strange; I don’t recall ever having seen anything quite like it. Not a single raindrop pushed its way through the densely layered mass of leaves. The lake was in part blue, in part dark gray. Such a pleasant, stormy, sweet rustling in the air. Everything was so soft and delicate. I could have stood there for hours reveling in the world. But at last I went on my way.

  (1915)

  THE LITTLE SHEEP

  I REMEMBER once on a walk, one that led me across open country, I saw and heard two kinds of children, country and city. The play, even if only a little play, captivated me and gave me a thing or two to think about. A few small boys from the country were driving with their switches a few little sheep down the road into town. City lads of a tender age were standing alongside the path, and when they saw the country troop coming up, they called in naïve delight, “Oh, the sweet little sheep!” and ran to the animals to look at them more closely and pet them. All at once I was struck by the huge difference between these two kinds of children. The country boys had only pitiless sheep-driving on their minds, while the city kids saw only the touching beauty and charm of the poor animals. The scene moved me deeply and as I walked home I resolved not to lose this memory.

  (1915)

  SPRING

  ONCE LAST spring, shortly before lunch and setting off for town, I stood halfway up the mountain where one enjoys a beautiful view of the country. The damp earth was fragrant with spring; I had just stepped out of the fir forest and now stood unmoving next to a shrub or bush on whose thorny branches perched a small bird with its beak wide open like a pair of scissors about to cut something. Apparently the delicate little fellow on the branch was trying to practice its singing, endeavoring to loosen its throat. Everything around me was so beautiful, so sweet, so friendly. A delicate, joyous presentiment, an exultation, a not yet released delight, a still unheard and not yet liberated jubilation made itself felt and heard everywhere. I saw spring in the tiny open beak of the bird, and as I walked on a few steps, because it was already ringing twelve down below, I saw the sweet, dear, heavenly spring in a different, altogether different form. A poor old woman, crushed and bent with years, sat on a little wall and gazed quietly before her as if sunk in deep reverie, so soft was the air, so mild the kind sun. The ancient little mother sat there sunning herself. “Spring has returned” sang through the air, here and everywhere.

  (1915)

  A LITTLE EXPEDITION

  RECENTLY I went again into a region of the country through which I have often wandered. A village lies by a beautiful river; it takes its name apparently from the bridge that I’m sure was built there in the most ancient of times. I came down from the hill to the river and now walked beside it with the sun at my back. On the riverbank various countrypeople were busy with various kinds of work. I gazed calmly at them, as well as at their good-natured activity. Left and right I looked about and saw green country, and through the green country serenely and calmly and peacefully flowed the good river whose water delicately glistened. The green was of different shades; it seemed to resound like music and at other places to smile as if with a beautiful mouth. Still elsewhere it spoke an earnest though not somber language. Heaven and earth lay so near each other. I looked upon everything attentively, now at a field, now at a farmhouse, now at a person. The day was clear and tender. I walked over a narrow bridge to the other bank, now walked toward the evening sun that played wondrously about the entire region. Now beautiful golden figures moved past me, figures I saw and then again did not see. An evening-sun feeling accompanied me along the river that swam in a golden melancholy rapture. All the high-and low-lying houses were tinged golden, and all the green meadows had a heavenly, deep luster. Here and there the shadows were long and of the deepest, richest tones. Quietly there was a singing in the air as when a person deeply moved by the sunset and by the pensive beauty of evening sings his song of farewell. Now the land became a song and the song intolerably beautiful. Silently some people came towards me on the bank; I bid them good evening, as did they me. On a beautiful evening in the open country, people naturally greet one another. Later still I saw a woman hauling behind her a bundle of wood. She gazed upon me kindly with intelligent eyes. Her face was so delicate, her figure so proud. I would have liked to stand near her, talk with her and ask about her life. In her poverty she was so beautiful, so noble with her bundle of wood. Thoughtfully, near blissfully, I walked home.

  (1915)

  Translated with Annette Wiesner

  ASH, NEEDLE, PENCIL, AND MATCH

  ONCE I wrote a treatise on ash, for which I received not a little applause. In it I brought to light a variety of curiosities, among them the observation that ash possesses no resistance worth mentioning. In fact it’s possible to say something meaningful about this uninteresting substance only by deeper penetration; for example, if you blow on ash, it doesn’t in the least refuse instantly to disintegrate. Ash is modesty, insignificance, and worthlessness personified, and best of all, it’s filled with the conviction that it’s good for nothing. Can one be more unstable, weaker, more wretched than ash? Not very easily. Is there anything more yielding and tolerant? Not likely. Ash has no character and is more removed from any kind of wood than depression is from exuberance. Where there is ash, there is really nothing at all. Put your foot in ash, and you hardly feel you’ve stepped on anything. Yes, yes, that’s the way it is, and I doubt I’m very much mistaken if I dare to say that we need only open our eyes and look around carefully to see valuable things, if we look at them closely enough and with a certain degree of attention.

  Take the needle, for example, which as we know is just as pointy
as useful, and which doesn’t tolerate being dealt with roughly, because as tiny as it is, it still seems to know its true value. Regarding the little pencil, what makes it so remarkable, as we have every reason to know, is that as it’s sharpened and sharpened, eventually there’s nothing to sharpen anymore, whereupon we throw it away, now that it’s useless through merciless use, and it occurs to no one, even from afar, to offer a word of acknowledgment or thanks for its many services. The pencil’s brother is called the blue pencil, and as has often been told, the two unfortunate pencils love each other like brothers, since they’ve struck up a delicate and intimate friendship for life. That’s three, then, as one in general can surely say, very strange, remarkable, and sympathetic objects, which, one just as much as the other, would possibly, that is, in the right situation, be suitable for a special lecture.