[1925]
Translated by Tom Whalen and Carol Gehrig
Vladimir
WE shall call him Vladimir, since it is a rare name and in point of fact he was unique. Those to whom he appeared foolish tried to win a glance, a word from him, which he rarely gave. In inferior clothes he behaved more sanguinely than in elegant ones, and was basically a good person who merely made the mistake of falsely attributing and affixing to himself faults which he did not have. He was hard primarily on himself. Isn’t that inexcusable?
Once he lived with a married couple and was impossible to drive away. “It is time that you left us alone,” was intimated to him; he seemed hardly able to imagine it, saw the woman smiling and the man turn pale. He was chivalry itself. Serving always gave him a lofty notion of the bliss of existence. He could not see pretty women burdened with small boxes, packages, and so on, without springing forth and expressing the wish to be helpful, at which he first always fought back the slightest fear of intruding.
From whence did Vladimir descend? Well, certainly from none other than his parents. It seems peculiar that he admits when down on his luck to having often been happy, when successful to having been morose, and that he says the driving force of his existence is his industriousness. No one ever saw such a satisfied and at the same time dissatisfied man. No one was quicker and in the very next instant more irresolute.
Once a girl promised to meet him at such and such a time and then kept him waiting. This came as a surprise to him. Another asserted, “It befits you to be swindled. Do you not have a peculiar predilection for jokes which border on disregard?”
“You are mistaken,” is all he answered.
He never bore a person a grudge, because “I, too, have often played unfairly with people.”
At the ladies’ café he was amused by the mimicry and expressions of the customers. By the way, he was no friend of too many diversions, as much as he valued them by way of exception. He thought about everything only to forget it in an instant, was a good reckoner because he did not permit his feelings to have power over his mind.
The women thought little of him, but not without always becoming interested in him again. They called him timid, but he likewise them. They played with and feared him.
To one lady, who flaunted her wealth before him in perhaps too clever a manner, he was most courteous, as one is when one feels for that person nothing. He found uncultured girls inspired by their need for instruction and on the other hand also such who have read everything and now wished to be almost ignorant. For injustices suffered he never avenged himself and perhaps avenged himself sufficiently in just this way. Those who did not treat him as he had wished, he let go, dropped; that is to say, he accustomed himself to not thinking about many unpleasant things. That’s how he protected his soul from confusion, his thoughts from unhealthy hardness.
Music put him in a tender mood, as it does most people. If he saw himself favored by a girl, it seemed as if she wished to hold him down, and he kept clear of her. He was as suspicious as a southerner, of himself as well as others; frequently jealous but never for long, because his self-respect quickly freed him from the persecution of envy, envy which to him seemed hardly awakened, unfounded, and of no substance.
Once he lost a friend, and said to himself, “He’s losing as much as I.” He worshipped a woman until she made one error, and it was no longer possible for him to pine for her. A rash remark from her had the result that he laughed at her, and he was happy about it. Feeling sorry for her, he no longer needed to be sorry for himself.
He stayed young and used his strength for the acquiring and exercise of attention to people who most needed not to be glanced over insensitively, the feeble and the aged. Do we speak too highly of him?
Sometimes he carries on like a gad-about-town, visits so-called vulgar dives. There are people around who rebuke him for it, but who would themselves gladly be mirthful, which their spheres so seldom allow. He has had imitators, but the original remains himself. Imitation, by the way, is quite natural.
Copies can also be appealing, but only from the original can great value come.
[1925]
Translated by Tom Whalen and Carol Gehrig
Parisian Newspapers
SINCE I have been reading the Parisian papers, from which the scent of power emanates, I have become so refined that I do not return greetings and, what’s more, this amazes me not at all. With Le Temps in my hand, I appear very elegant to myself. Furthermore, I will no longer even glance at righteous people. To me the Parisian papers are a substitute for the theater. Also, not even the finest restaurant will I honor with my feet, so subtle have I become. Gulps of beer no longer pass my lips. My ear approves only of the melodiousness of the French language. Once I adored a lady, a true lady; today I find her most clumsy, since Le Figaro has spoiled me. Did Le Matin not drive me half mad? While my colleagues write themselves sick in this modern time of crisis, I grow exuberant through my papers. A trip which I intended to take to Paris I consider completed, I become acquainted with France’s capital by way of reading. It is pleasing to be in good company. The papers of conquerors make the best society. German language products get no more blessings from me. I have forgotten how to speak German; I wonder if there is any harm in that?
[1925]
Translated by Tom Whalen and Carol Gehrig
The Monkey
TENDERLY yet in some degree hardheartedly should this tale be tackled, which declares that it occurred to a monkey one afternoon to drop into a coffeehouse and idle away the time of day there. Upon his decidedly not unintelligent head he was wearing a hard hat, or it may even have been a slouch hat, and on his hands the most elegant gloves that were ever displayed in a fashion shop for gentlemen. His suit was superb. With one or two curiously executed, featherweight, really remarkable, though slightly revealing leaps he arrived in the tearoom, through which rustled, like whisperings of foliage, an enticing music. The monkey was at a loss regarding where he should sit, in a modest corner, or slap in the middle. He chose the latter since it dawned on him that monkeys, if they behave with decorum, may after all appear in public. Melancholically but also glad, unperturbed and at the same time bashfully, he looked about him, discovering many a pretty maid’s little face, with lips as of cherry juice and with cheeks as of pure whipped or clotted cream. Beautiful eyes and mellifluous melodies were striving for mastery, and I faint with narrative pride and wonder to report that the monkey, speaking the vernacular, asked the waitress who served him whether he might be permitted to scratch? “Of course, if you want to,” she kindly replied, and our cavalier, if he merits the title, made such extensive use of her permission that ladies present partly laughed, partly looked aside so as not to have to join the others in looking at what he made so bold as to do. When an evidently charming woman sat down at his table, he began immediately to entertain her with great wit; he spoke about the weather, and then about books. “What an extraordinary person!” she mused, as he tossed his gloves into the air and deftly caught them again. He curled his lips into an enchanting grimace when he smoked. His cigarette provided a most lively contrast with his austere complexion.
Preziosa was the name of the young lady who now entered the room, like a romance, or a ballade, accompanied by a pomelo of an aunt, and from this moment there was no more peace for the monkey, who had never known before what it is to love. He knew it now. Suddenly all the nonsense was swept out of his head. With resolute step he approached his heart’s elect and desired her to become his wife; he knew a trick or two to show her what sort of a person he was! The young lady said: “You shall come home with us. I must say you are hardly suitable for a husband. If you behave well, you will receive every day a tap on the nose. You are radiant! I’ll allow you that. You will see to it that I do not get bored.” So saying, she rose up so proudly that a roar of laughter came over the monkey, whereupon she boxed his ears.
When they got home, the Jewess sat down, having dismis
sed her aunt with a gesture, upon an expensive golden-footed sofa, and asked the monkey, who was standing before her in picturesque pose, to tell her who he was, to which this quintessence of monkeyhood answered:
“I once wrote poems on the Zürichberg; these I now submit in print to the object of my devotions. Though your eyes attempt to crush me to the floor, which is impossible, for the sight of you raises me continually up again, formerly indeed I often went into the forest to my lady friends, the pines, looked up at their crests, lay full length on the moss, till I grew weary from my sprightliness, and melancholy from gladness—”
“You lazy thing!” interjected Preziosa.
The family friend, for as such he already ventured to consider himself, continued, and said: “Once I left a dentist’s bill unpaid, believing I would nevertheless succeed in life, and I sat at the feet of women of higher society, who accorded me a quantum of benevolence. Then you might also be informed that in autumn I picked windfall apples, gathered flowers in spring, and for a season lived where a poet named Keller grew up, of whom you will probably not have heard, although you ought to have done—”
“Impudence!” the young lady cried. “It would give me the greatest of pleasure to dismiss you, only to grieve you; still, I’ll be merciful. But if you are ever ungallant again, you will have breathed in my presence for the last time, long for me as you may. Now, proceed.”
He began again, and said: “I never gave much to women, and so they value me. Also in you, miss, I detect an admiration for the simplest loon ever to utter indiscretions to ladies merely to make them angry and afterwards content again. I arrived as ambassador in Constantinople—”
“No lies, Mr. Braggart!”
“—and one day at the railway terminus caught sight of a lady-in-waiting, that is to say, another person saw her, I was sitting next to him in the carriage, he reported to me the observation which I now dish up to you, though only figuratively, for there’s no dish, howbeit I long for a loaded one, because I have developed an appetite in presenting to you a specimen of my powers of rhetoric.”
“Go into the kitchen and serve supper. Meanwhile, I shall read your verses.”
He did as he was told, went into the kitchen, but could not find it. Did he go into it without even having set eyes on it? There must have been a slight slip of the pen.
He went back to Preziosa, who had fallen asleep over his poems, who lay there like a picture in an Oriental fairy tale. One of her hands hung down like a cluster of grapes. He wanted to tell her how he had gone into the kitchen without having found where it was, how gradually, gradually he had grown silent, but an irrefragable impulse had driven him back to the lady he had abandoned. He stood before the sleeper, knelt at the shrine of loveliness, and touched the hand that seemed to him like a Jesukin, too beautiful to hold, with his breath alone.
While he was making his reverences—which one would hardly have expected of him—her eyes opened. She had a lot of questions to ask him, but she only said: “You do not seem to me to be a proper monkey at all. Tell me, are you a royalist?”
“Why should I be that?”
“Because you are so patient, and you spoke of ladies-in-waiting.”
“I only want to be polite.”
“It appears that is just what you are.”
The next day she wanted him to tell her how to find happiness. He gave her the most astonishing answer. “Come, I’ll dictate you a letter,” she said. While he was writing, she glanced over his shoulder to see if he was taking it all faithfully down. Phew! How nimbly he wrote, listening with the most pointed attention to every syllable she spoke. We leave them to their correspondence.
In the birdcage pranced a cockatoo.
Preziosa was thinking of something.
[1925]
Dostoevsky’s “Idiot”
THE contents of Dostoevsky’s Idiot pursue me. Lapdogs interest me greatly. I’m not searching for someone as lively as an Aglaya. Unfortunately, she would, of course, take someone else. Marie remains unforgettable to me. One morning did I not stop and stand affectionately before a jackass? Who will introduce me to a General Epanchin’s wife? Valets have wondered about me already, too. It is still questionable whether or not I write as nicely as the offspring of the house of Myshkin and whether or not I have inherited millions. It would be splendid to be taken into the confidence of a beautiful woman. Why haven’t I yet seen a merchant’s house like that of Rogozhin? Why don’t I suffer from convulsive seizures? The idiot was thin, made only a poor impression. A good lad, at whose feet the demimondaine knelt one evening. I definitely expect something similar. I know two or three Kolyas. Wouldn’t an Ivolgin also have to be seen? I’d be capable of knocking down a vase: to doubt this would be to underrate oneself. To make a speech is as difficult as it is easy; it depends on inspiration. I’ve often encountered people who are never satisfied with themselves. Often enough a person is not well because he tries too hard to be pleased with himself. Thereafter I’d arrive in the Schneider Institute. For the time being, Nastasia would have to be pacified. I’m by no means idiotic, but am receptive to every reasonable thing; I’m sorry I’m not the hero of a novel. I’m not up to playing such a part, I just read a lot sometimes.
[1925]
Translated by Tom Whelan and Carol Gehrig
Am I Demanding?
PEOPLE draw my attention to novels by important authors.
I receive letters from publishers.
Society women are mindful of me.
I have genteel manners; of course I suddenly discard them, and then later recover them.
Sometimes I do think I’m odd.
Doctors ask me, in all sympathy, if it’s really true that nobody cares for me, as if they thought it very incorrect.
Soon even I’ll be believing I’ve been neglected. Yet there’s no harm in that, none at all. On the contrary, because of it, I have “lived” that much more intensely.
Every noon, at lunch, I read “my” newspaper. This fact asks to be mentioned. Is there anything else out there asking for a friendly announcement from me?
Could I have “forgotten all sorts of things”?
Once more I’ve changed my domicile. When shall I get around to reading a French book again? I’m longing to do so.
What does “being cultivated” mean? What are all these questions I’m asking myself?
I like looking for a room and that sort of thing. You can look into houses which you would otherwise not look into.
Thus, for instance, while searching for a suitable working space and living room, I arrived inside a house from the baroque period. Old pictures were hanging in the corridors.
Selected Stories Page 13