Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories

by Robert Walser

  (1917)

  Translated with Annette Wiesner

  THE FORSAKEN ONE

  ICE-COLD wind howled and rushed through the gloomy streets. Merciless wind, and everything was dark, hopeless, and dismal. All good inspirations and all good thoughts were lost to me, and I myself was lost. Everything kind, gentle, and beautiful was hopelessly lost. The soul was lost. Everything cold and dead, and the world had died. All life, all love, and all good thoughts were as if devoured by the ominously roaring and raging wind that stormed through the hopeless, empty, and desolate streets like a voracious monster. Comfort and conviviality had vanished as if forever from the earth. Satisfaction and joy seemed no longer capable of existing. The long streets, full of hideous joylessness, full of abysmal emptiness, stretched out towards the immense, the nameless, the never-ending and inconceivable, and hopelessness and lovelessness seemed endless. No stars and no friendly moon were in the sky, the dreadful and horrid had become gaping reality, and the just, kind, gentle—ah, great God on high—was merely a pale, tired, nebulous dream, worthy only of a feeble smirk. And the people were poor, pale, sick, storm-driven slaves lashed into terror. No one trusted anyone anymore. Neighborly love and goodness had vanished, were lost, and the apartment houses were houses of horror and dread, abodes of appalling hate and devastating murder. I raged furiously along, hunted and driven by ferocious feelings of remorse, by the monstrously blazing conflagration of terrible reproaches. Everything was lost, I had not a single good thought left. Poor and wretched I was, as never before. Torn I was in my innermost being, as never before. Unhappy, poor, and wretched was I—oh, I say it once again—as never before. The storm wind ripped open my coat so that it towered high over my head, and in the gloomy midnight street, in all the gloom and darkness, I resembled terrible King Richard, the Wandering Jew, and the murderer Parricida. I had been cheated and was in turn a cheater, I had been lied to and in turn I lied. Mankind hated me and I hated, despised the haters and despisers. They had betrayed me, and in turn I committed deplorable treason upon the betrayers. I was pursued by an infinite longing for simplicity, for pure morality, for faith and love, for innocence and trust, until finally I came upon a dreary, dilapidated poorhouse and forced my way in.

  Although the house resembled a hideout for robbers and crooks, nonetheless I stepped confidently in without the least hesitation, for I had to tell myself I had nothing more to lose. My callous, iron-hard, despairing soul all too long had been prepared for everything wretched and horrendous. Not in my wildest dreams did I expect something good or beautiful any longer. Cold all around and cold in the center of my heart. I climbed up the pitiful, ravaged, dismal staircase; on a step a poor young girl huddled whose hair I brushed with my hand. The staircase in its keening, creaking, cracking dilapidation was terrifying, for it seemed to me, as I took a step, to be the last of all stairs, the stairs leading to annihilation, to desperation, to desperate suicide. In spite of this, I climbed up, and I remember that my pitiful heart beat as if it would burst from fear and that I hesitated after every little step to attend and listen with intense assiduity into all the emptiness and all the cruel, cold darkness, but not the slightest thing moved, turned, stirred in all the isolation and loneliness. Everything was dead quiet in the horrible house of poverty. Within the stomach of a slumbering monster it could not have been more silent and still.

  The apartment door at which I finally groped in the dark—and which I must especially refer to, for it wasn’t like just any door—was open! Normally doors are carefully locked, sometimes even, or rather more often, bolted in fear. This door had been carelessly left ajar, as if in the entire world, for all time to come, no truth or careful consideration or solicitude of any sort were worth anything anymore because of increasing indifference and heartlessness, and as if in human existence for all time to come everything, everything would matter not at all, and as if everything, everything was sick of life, tired, deadened, wicked, cold, and apathetic, and as if it didn’t matter if life still existed or if everything was dead, naked, and torn apart, and even further, as if each finer, more delicate trait had become a thing inconceivable, something completely insignificant and superfluous, and lastly as if the broken, trampled, and dehumanized human race was delighted about its demoralization, about its dismemberment and ruination. Ruins here and ruins there, but that doesn’t matter at all. For now everything, everything, everything is the same . . . Thus, approximately, spoke the desolate, weary, sorrowful door, which I did not have to open, since it was already open. Such a door does not hinder anyone from making their way into an apartment, and so I entered the hallway, step by step, extremely carefully and cautiously, and with each step listened intently.

  First the pitiful, sorrowful staircase, then the door that was no less poor and pitiful, and now the close cold corridor that was just as poor, bleak, and pitiful as the staircase and door, and I myself straining to hear the imminent horror, whose appearance I expected because, I told myself, in such a place nothing but a horror was to be expected, and I stood there in the dreadful expectation of what was about to appear. I must say it took some courage to keep up even a little my dwindling, collapsing courage and to persevere in this desolation, to penetrate farther into this ruin and desolation. But then suddenly a sweet delicate gleam of light trembled towards me from a crack, and I thought I perceived from far, far away but at the same time very close a beautiful, sublime, gentle love song. I opened a door and emitted a cry of delight, of delightful surprise. In a bright, beautiful, warm room or chamber sat a woman, I knew her from an earlier time, and now from all sides resounded happy music of joy and comfort. It was as if the golden, clear concert rushed and rippled down from all the open blue skies, and all of a sudden forests, meadows, and fields seemed close to me, I saw all the beautiful, good, pleasing, dear colors, and the beautiful woman, who looked like an angel, smiled at me in a friendly and affectionate manner, as she caught sight of this pitiful, poor vagabond, this wanderer. Suddenly everything was good again, a sunny, sweet, blissful, youthful strength poured over my being, and at once I forgot every grief, and every misery, every doubt was gone. Yes, that was the wonderful, albeit dismal place, where I found again the splendid forsaken one, the place of loneliness where again I saw the beautiful forsaken one. It was she, the celestial outcast, the wonderful exile, the heavenly beautiful, lonely, and forsaken one. Obeying an uncontrollable impulse and congratulating myself on the beautiful gesture, I hastened to the woman who dwelled here in banishment and exile and knelt down before her, and the enchanting one gazed kindly upon me. She didn’t act aloof. I was good for her. I was right for her. She showed herself pleased by my presence, and this made me infinitely happy.

  (1917)

  Translated with Annette Wiesner

  DEAR LITTLE SWALLOW

  I SAW YOU early today from the window and now I’m writing to you, which perhaps is pointless, since it’s unlikely the letter will reach you, and in any case you’re unacquainted with reading. Also you’re not in the address book, but surely you live enchantingly in your hidden nest where you sleep and dream. Do you think me envious of your domestic life? Apropos: You always find enough food, don’t you? How are your youngsters doing? I don’t doubt that you are a good mother to them and are raising them suitably, that is, very soundly. To doubt this would be to offend you, and who would want to do that? Certainly not I.

  How nice it was to watch you. You tumbled with your cohorts in the silver light, the divine ocean of air, racing and dashing back and forth, climbing the air mountains to plunge straight down as if you had passed out and wanted to lie on the ground with smashed wings, which fortunately can’t be because you always maintained your balance and controlled your velocity. I needn’t have feared that in flight you would suddenly slam against a wall or chimney. As reckless as you seemed, you were also wonderfully alert. Now you were flying in circles, now straight ahead, now swerving, and I heard your little voice all the while, which so tenderly befits yo
ur way of life, which is more a faint crying than a singing. You speak simply as you can and must. But who could rival your speed, dancer, you who never tire or require feet? What we understand as being intentional you hardly are, but nonetheless you aim well and seem thoroughly happy and satisfied? Why the question mark? We who are stuck to the ground, who are bound by our fears, we clumsy people know nothing of winged existence.

  I hope you like it here with us and ask you please to wait as long as you can before you draw away, because when you leave, it will turn cold. But in the meantime you’re still here, and as long as that’s the case, we have summer.

  (1919)

  THE CHILDREN’S GAME

  ON A VERDANT spot up against an old tower a number of children had gathered to play a game. As if for no reason, all of them leapt into action, dissolved into groups and reformed, depending on what entertained them.

  One child above all distinguished itself in its strength, audacity, and skill. Intoxicated, however, by its successes, this child became overly boisterous, didn’t watch out, tripped over a branch, and fell, and as it lay there miserable, unable to move, it was forgotten.

  Another dexterous child took advantage of the mishap and stepped easily into the position now vacated, and the game went on without major disruption. No one sensed a loss. No one paid the poor thing any mind. Many hadn’t even noticed the accident. Each played its part and was interested simply in carrying on. All of them, or most, had only themselves in mind.

  One child, however, who was held in exceptionally low esteem, since it formed something of a fifth wheel, noticed what happened, and took this as an assignment giving it a chance to break out of its inaction. Quickly it went to the one who had fallen and helped it stand back up, complimenting and encouraging it enough to restore its hope.

  The lowest in rank was now tied to the highest, and together the two of them established the nicest friendship.

  The game broke up, but soon started again. Among them was a child who possessed everything one might desire, to the extent that it puffed itself up with pleasure and pride. Yet it wasn’t happy.

  Another child gave everything away; but as foolish as its behavior was, still it smiled happily and felt blessed by its poverty, which to it was more beautiful than the most precious possession.

  Not far away, in his little study, there sat a poet who saw what had happened, took up his pen, shook his head a few times, and wrote an essay about what he had witnessed, then gave it the above title.

  (1919)

  THE PHILOSOPHER

  HE’S CONSTANTLY watching and waiting, stands as still as a portrait, gropes for things gossamer-thin. He’s been doing this for years and seems intent on continuing in this way. This is regrettable, almost scandalous. He’s always seeking and finding something and then, because it’s far too flimsy, losing it all again. In any case, he exercises a patience verging on the stupendous.

  What an existence! In bucking up he’s indefatigable. He struggles hard, which, however, is precisely what he seems to want to do. I hardly understand how the desire again and again comes to him to cling to his acerbity and abide the bitterness and ingratitude. What he does will never be appreciated; he knows this himself, by the way. He seems to find his self-sacrifice entrancing. You want to be angry with him and give him a few kicks just to scare him out of his contemplativeness.

  He’s always sitting and thinking, it’s ridiculous how he imprisons himself. He seems to be a writer but to require frighteningly little paper and conspicuously little ink, in fact he mostly sticks to cogitating and his excessive studying. It’s quite certain he makes no progress and will not amount to anything, though he appears capable enough.

  Now and then he looks very serious, then he laughs again; I can attest that he’s polite and friendly. Some consider him unique among his peers. He lives, yet it’s as if he’s dead. Whoever woke him up probably would deserve a reward. He has a crooked but in no way unpretty smile, sleeps and while doing so is more alive than most.

  His suit is threadbare but clean. He walks in crude shoes and wears a clunky hat, partly from inclination, partly because he’s not well-off. Neglectful he is not, if anything he’s overly diligent and cautious and thus gives the impression of poverty and pedantry. Saving has become for him a habit.

  For hours he paces back and forth in the parlor, even though the fun in this should have vanished long ago. His way of life makes him appear older than he really is and seem to be an enemy of the world, which is definitely not the case. Sometimes I considered him a bit reckless. A sort of strange childishness inhabited him. Obviously he always keeps some of his smartness in reserve for himself. How often the clever have shown themselves unclever and the unsagacious most sagacious. Despite all his philosophy there probably resided in him a well-tested practical person.

  The world doesn’t stand still and neither should our opinions stay the same. In any case, we always need to exercise caution before passing judgment. Does he disdain women? Apparently, but that hasn’t been in the least confirmed.

  His orderliness was almost a bit too much. In his parlor no trace of ingenious disorder can be found, which is why I fear he often forgets the room’s true function. He gladly putters about with little objects, would have preferred at times to work as a craftsman instead of sitting still.

  In addition, he enjoys taking walks in the fresh air too much. So he sits in his confined space, yet essentially isn’t a homebody. He plays the part of a lollygagger while wanting to be busy and make good use of the day, to create something evident, to strive to do something lucrative.

  Doesn’t he intentionally affect a bourgeois manner, as if worried that the zest for life might seduce him from his writing desk?

  Beyond the windowpane life flies past. He stands up, looks out upon the stormy lake, accuses himself of dawdling, of only listening. Glittering sunlight and cheerful smoke over the rooftops. Every tree rustling. The river rushing, the people on the street.

  What all he could achieve. With his convictions, the strength of his character, his goodness of soul, his sense of justice, and his ideas, how vigorously could he help and effect change by engaging directly with the people, be a part of progress, step onto the stage.

  A pity that his long reflections made him lose so many things.

  (1919)

  PAGE FROM A DIARY (I)

  RECENTLY I retraced the footsteps of my childhood; it has such a fresh face. I climbed up the mountain and paid a short visit to a few scenes from the old days. I remembered a so-called castle to which we attached great importance. After searching for a while, I found it and was delighted to see that it still looked as it had years ago. Here I found the same oak trees, the same thick shrubbery, the same rocks, the same scent of greenery. Here we used to play our children’s games. Once I let myself be defeated on purpose because it seemed so nice to see my opponent triumph and to afford him the chance to believe himself strong.

  I walked down into the city where a big market day was in progress and vendors vociferously offered their wares; I moved through the swarm into a narrow back alley lined with handicraft stalls. After a few steps I saw the house I grew up in. How small I seemed when looking at the tiny courtyard where my father used to staple his boxes. In a shed with a tile roof we used to play hide-and-seek; the boxes smelled so appetizing. Everything looked as it had before, even the neighbor’s little garden, where a pretty little girl used to appear, and opposite it was a pottery shop and also a square of tall buildings.

  Isn’t it pointless to retrace the places we saw as children? Other people live there now; the former youngsters have now grown to this or that age. I myself must have been kicked out of the most beautiful Palais des Illusions a hundred times since, but always tried to storm heaven again, often, so to speak, breaking my leg, but always getting back on my feet by being wary of idleness and by keeping busy.