The Assistant Read online

  Robert Walser

  * * *

  THE ASSISTANT

  Translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky

  Contents

  The Assistant

  Afterword

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  THE ASSISTANT

  Robert Walser was born in 1878 in the Swiss canton of Bern, the seventh of eight children. He left school at fourteen and led a wandering, precarious existence while producing poems, essays, stories, and three novels: The Tanners (1906), The Assistant (1908), and Jakob von Gunten (1909).

  After a suicide attempt in 1929 Walser’s depression was misdiagnosed as schizophrenia and in 1933 he entered an asylum in Herisau, where he remained for the rest of his life. There he occupied his time with chores like gluing paper bags and sorting beans. He remained in full possession of his faculties but, after 1932, he did not write. ‘I’m not here to write, I’m here to be mad,’ he told a visitor. Robert Walser died of a heart attack on Christmas Day, 1956. He had been walking in the snow not far from the asylum where he had been living for 23 years.

  Susan Bernofsky is the translator of books by Robert Walser, Gregor von Rezzori, Yoko Tawada, and others. Her translations have appeared in numerous literary journals. She is the author of Foreign Words: Translator-Authors in the Age of Goethe, and is the recipient of a PEN Translation grant and a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. She is also the recipient of the 2006 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for Outstanding Translation for her translation of Jenny Erpenbeck’s The Old Child & Other Stories (New Directions). She lives with her husband in New York.

  One morning at eight o’clock a young man stood at the door of a solitary and, it appeared, attractive house. It was raining. “It almost surprises me,” the one standing there thought, “that I’m carrying an umbrella.” In earlier years he had never possessed such a thing. The hand extending down at his side held a brown suitcase, one of the very cheapest. Before the eyes of this man who, it seemed, had just come from a journey, was an enamel sign on which could be read: C. Tobler, Technical Office. He waited a moment longer, as if reflecting on some no doubt quite irrelevant matter, then pressed the button of the electric doorbell, whereupon a person, a housemaid by all appearances, came to let him in.

  “I’m the new clerk,” said Joseph, for this was his name. The maid instructed him to come inside and go right down there—she pointed the way—into the office. Her employer would appear presently.

  Joseph descended a flight of stairs that seemed to have been made more for chickens than for people, and then, turning to the right, found himself in the inventor’s office. After he had waited a while, the door opened. Hearing the firm tread upon the wooden steps and seeing the door being thrust open like that, the one waiting there had at once recognized the boss. The man’s appearance only served to confirm the certainty that had preceded it: he was in fact none other than Tobler, master of the house, the engineer Tobler. His face bore a look of astonishment, and he seemed out of sorts, which indeed he was.

  “Why is it,” he asked, fixing Joseph with a punitive glare, “that you’re already here today? You weren’t supposed to arrive until Wednesday. I haven’t finished making arrangements. What were you in such a hurry for, eh?”

  For Joseph, that sloppy “eh” at the end of the sentence had a contemptuous ring to it. A stump of a word like that doesn’t exactly sound like a friendly caress, after all. He replied that the Employment Referral Office had indicated to him that he was to begin work on Monday morning, that is, today. If this information was in error, he hoped to be forgiven, as the misunderstanding was beyond his control.

  “Just look how polite I’m being!” the young man thought and secretly couldn’t help smiling at his own behavior.

  Tobler did not seem inclined to grant forgiveness right away. He continued to belabor the topic, which caused his already quite ruddy face to turn even more red. He “didn’t understand” this and that, certain things “surprised” him, and so forth. Eventually his shock over the error began to subside, and he remarked to Joseph without looking at him that he might as well stay.

  “I can’t very well send you packing now, can I?” To this he added, “Are you hungry?” Joseph replied imperturbably that he was. He immediately felt surprised at the serenity of his response. “As recently as half a year ago,” he thought quickly, “the formidableness of such a query would have made me quake in my boots, no doubt about it!”

  “Come with me,” the engineer said. With these words, he led his newly acquired clerk up to the dining room, which was on the ground floor. The office itself was located below ground, in the basement. In the living and dining room, the boss spoke the following words:

  “Sit down. Wherever you like, it doesn’t matter. And eat until you’ve had your fill. Here’s the bread. Cut yourself as much as you’d like. There’s no need to hold back. Go ahead and pour yourself several cups—there’s plenty of coffee. And here is butter. The butter, as you see, is here to be eaten. And here’s some jam, should you happen to be a jam-lover. Would you like some fried potatoes as well?”

  “Oh yes, why not, with pleasure,” Joseph made so bold as to reply. Whereupon Herr Tobler called Pauline, the maid, and instructed her to go and prepare the desired item as quickly as possible. When breakfast was over, approximately the following exchange took place between the two men down in the workroom, amidst the drawing boards and compasses and pencils lying about:

  As his employee, Tobler declared in a gruff tone of voice, Joseph must keep his wits about him. A machine was of no use to him. If Joseph planned to go about his work aimlessly and mindlessly, with his head in the clouds, he should kindly say so at once, so that it would be clear from the start what could be expected of him. He, Tobler, required intelligence and self-sufficiency in his employees. If Joseph believed he was lacking in these attributes, he should be so kind as to, etc. The inventor appeared prone to repetition.

  “Oh,” Joseph said, “but why shouldn’t I keep my wits about me, Herr Tobler? As far as my abilities are concerned, I believe and most decidedly hope that I shall be able to perform at all times whatever you see fit to ask of me. And it is my understanding that for the time being I am up here (the Tobler house stood atop a hill) merely on a provisional basis. The nature of our mutually agreed-upon arrangement in no way prevents you from deciding, should you consider this necessary, to send me away at a moment’s notice.”

  Herr Tobler now found it fitting to remark that he certainly hoped it would not come to that. Joseph, he went on, should not take umbrage at what he, Tobler, had just declared. But he’d thought it best to get down to brass tacks at the start, which he believed could only be beneficial to both parties. This way, each of them knew what to expect from the other, and that is the best way to handle things.

  “Certainly,” Joseph concurred.

  Following this consultation, the superior showed the subordinate the place where he “could do his writing.” This was a somewhat too cramped, narrow and low-to-the-ground desk with a drawer containing the postage box and a few small books. The table—for in fact that’s all it was, not a real desk at all—abutted a window and the earth of the garden. Gazing past this, one could glimpse the vast surface of the lake, and beyond it the distant shore. All these things were today enveloped in haze, for it was still raining.

  “Come with me,” Tobler said abruptly, accompanying his words with a smile that to Joseph appeared almost unseemly, “after all, it’s time my wife had a look at you. Come along, I’ll introduce you to her. And then you should see the room where you’ll be sleeping.”

  He led him upstairs to the second floor, where a slender, tall figure came to meet them.
This was “her.” “An ordinary woman,” was the young clerk’s first hasty thought, but then at once he added: “and yet she isn’t.” The woman observed the new arrival with an ironic, indifferent look, but unintentionally so. Both her coldness and her irony appeared congenital. She held out her hand to him casually, even indolently; taking this hand, he bowed down before the “mistress of the house.” This is the secret title he gave her, not to elevate her to a more beautiful role but, on the contrary, for the sake of a quick private affront. In his eyes, the behavior of this woman was decidedly too haughty.

  “I hope you will like it here with us,” she said in a strangely high, ringing voice, frowning a little.

  “That’s right, go ahead and say so. How nice. Just look how friendly we’re being. Well, we’ll soon see, won’t we.” These are the sorts of thoughts Joseph saw fit to entertain upon hearing the woman’s benevolent words. Then they showed him his room, which was situated high up in the copper tower—a tower room, as it were, a noble, romantic location. And in fact, it appeared to be bright, airy and friendly. The bed was nice and clean—oh yes, this was a room in which one could do some living. Not bad at all. And Joseph Marti, for this was his full name, set down on the parquet floor the suitcase that he had carried upstairs with him.

  Later he was initiated briefly into the secrets of Tobler’s commercial enterprises and made acquainted with the duties he would have to fulfill generally. Something odd was happening to him—he understood only half of what was said. What was wrong with him, he thought, and reproached himself: “Am I a swindler, just full of empty talk? Am I trying to deceive Herr Tobler? He is asking for ‘wits,’ and today I haven’t got my wits about me at all. Maybe things will go better tomorrow morning or perhaps even this evening.”

  He found the lunch that was served quite delicious.

  Worrying again, he thought: “How is this? Here I am sitting and eating food that tastes better than anything I have eaten for months perhaps, and yet comprehend none of the ins and outs of Tobler’s enterprises? Is this not theft? The food is wonderful, it reminds me vividly of home. Mother made soup like this. How firm and succulent the vegetables are, and the meat as well. Where can you find food like this in the city?”

  “Eat, eat,” Tobler encouraged him. “In my household everyone eats heartily, do you understand? But after lunch there’s work to be done.”

  “As you see, sir, I am eating,” Joseph replied so bashfully it all but enraged him. He thought: “Will he still be prodding me to eat a week from now? How shameless of me—to be so taken with this food, which belongs to other people. Will I justify my outrageous appetite with equally prodigious productivity?”

  He took second helpings of each dish on the table. It’s true, he had arrived here from the lower depths of society, from the shadowy, barren, still crannies of the metropolis. It had been months now since he had eaten well.

  He wondered if anyone noticed, and blushed.

  Yes, the Toblers had clearly noticed at least something. The woman gazed at him several times with almost a pitying expression. The four children, two girls and two boys, kept glancing at him surreptitiously, as at something utterly alien and strange. These openly questioning and probing glances dismayed him. Glances like these cannot help but remind a person that he has only just come to perch in this unfamiliar place, and draw his attention to the coziness of these unfamiliar surroundings which are in fact a home to others, and at the same time to the homelessness of the one sitting there now, whose obligation it is to make himself at home as quickly and eagerly as possible in this snug unfamiliar tableau. Glances like these make one shiver in the warmest sunshine, they pierce the soul with their coldness and loiter coldly within it for a while before departing just as they arrived.

  “Very well now, back to work!” Tobler exclaimed. And the two of them left the table and made their way, the clerk following his master, back down to the office so as to carry out this command and return to their labors.

  “Do you smoke?”

  Indeed, Joseph was a passionate smoker.

  “Take a cheroot out of that blue package there. Feel free to smoke while you’re working. I do the same thing. And now look over here: this right here—and make sure you look it over carefully—is the required paperwork for the ‘Advertising Clock.’ Are you good at figures? All the better. Above all it’s a matter—what are you doing? Young man, ashes belong in the ashtray. Within my own four walls I like things to be shipshape. All right, well, above all it’s a matter of—grab a pencil over there—of, shall we say, putting together and precisely calculating the profitability of this enterprise. Have a seat over here, I’ll give you all the details you’ll need. And be so kind as to pay attention, I don’t like having to repeat myself.”

  “Will I be good enough?” Joseph thought. It was at least helpful that he would be permitted to smoke while performing difficult tasks. Without the cheroot, he would honestly have started to doubt whether his brain was properly put together.

  While the clerk was now writing, with his employer peering over his shoulder from time to time to observe his progress, the latter strolled up and down the length of the office holding a crooked, long-stemmed cheroot between his beautiful, blindingly white teeth and calling out all sorts of figures that were copied down industriously by a still somewhat inexperienced clerical hand. The blue-tinged smoke soon entirely enveloped the two figures working there, while outside the windows the weather appeared to be clearing up; now and again Joseph glanced up through the windowpanes and observed the changes quietly taking place in the sky. Once the dog barked outside the door. Tobler stepped out for a moment to calm the creature. After two hours of work had passed, Frau Tobler sent one of the children to announce that afternoon coffee was served. The table had been set in the summer house, as the weather had improved. The boss took up his hat and said to Joseph that now he should go have coffee and afterward prepare a fair copy of everything he’d written down hastily so far, and by the time he was finished, it would no doubt be evening.

  Then he departed. Joseph watched as he descended the hill through the downward-sloping garden. What a stately figure he cuts, Joseph thought, and remained standing there for quite some time, then he went to have coffee in the pretty, green-painted summer house.

  While they were partaking of this refreshment, the woman asked him: “Were you unemployed?”

  “Yes,” Joseph responded.

  “For a long time?”

  He told her what she wished to know, and she sighed each time he spoke of certain pitiable human beings and human circumstances. She did this perfectly casually and superficially, and moreover held each sigh in her mouth somewhat longer than necessary, as if she were basking in this pleasant sound and sentiment.

  “Certain people,” Joseph thought, “appear to take pleasure in contemplating unfortunate matters. Just look how this woman is making a show of pensiveness. She sighs just the way others might laugh, just as gaily. And this is the lady it is my duty to serve?”

  Later he flung himself into his copy-work. Evening fell. The next morning it would be seen whether he was self-sufficient or a zero, intelligent or a machine, someone with his wits about him or utterly mindless. For today, he decided, enough. He cleared away his work and went to his room, happy that he could be alone for a little while. He began, not without melancholy, to unpack his suitcase, all his worldly possessions, piece by piece, recalling the countless moves during which he had availed himself, so many times now, of this same little suitcase. One could become so fond of simple objects, the young clerk felt. How would things go for him here with Tobler, he wondered as he placed the few linens he possessed into the armoire, taking care to do so as tidily as possible: “For better or worse, here I am, whatever happens.” Silently vowing to make an effort, he tossed onto the floor a ball of old threads, bits of string, neckties, buttons, needles and scraps of torn linen. “If I am to eat and sleep here, I shall apply myself mentally and physically as well
,” he murmured. “How old am I now? Twenty-four! No longer particularly young.” He had emptied the suitcase and now placed it in a corner. “I have fallen behind in life.”

  As soon as he thought that it was approximately time for this, he went downstairs to dinner, then to the post office in the village, then to bed.

  In the course of the next day, it seemed to Joseph that he had succeeded in acquainting himself with the nature of the “Advertising Clock,” for he had managed to comprehend that this profitable enterprise was a decorative clock which Herr Tobler was intending to franchise to railway station managers, restaurateurs, hotel owners, and the like. A genuinely quite fetching clock like this, Joseph calculated, would be hung up, for example, in one streetcar or several, in particularly conspicuous locations, so that all those riding and traveling would be able to set their pocket watches by it and always know how early or late in the day it was. The clock is really not bad, he thought in all seriousness, especially as it has the advantage of being associated with the institution of advertising. To this end, the clock was embellished with a single or double set of eagle wings, made of silver or even gold seemingly, that could be delicately adorned. And what else would one wish to adorn them with other than the precise addresses of the firms that had availed themselves of these wings or fields—“fields” being the technical term—for the profitable advertisement of their services and wares. “A field of this sort costs money; and it is imperative, as my master Herr Tobler quite rightly points out, to approach only the most successful business and manufacturing firms. The fees are to be paid in advance, according to contracts still to be drawn up, in monthly installments. Moreover, the Advertising Clock can be displayed virtually anywhere, both locally and abroad. It appears to me that Tobler has pinned his greatest hopes on this enterprise. To be sure, manufacturing these clocks and their copper and tin ornamentation will cost a great deal of money, and the painter in charge of the inscriptions will demand payment as well, but the advertising fees, it is to be hoped, and hoped with a high level of probability, will be arriving on a regular basis. What was it Herr Tobler said this morning? He had inherited a goodly sum of money but now has “thrown” his entire fortune into the Advertising Clock. What an odd thing to do, throwing ten or twenty thousand marks into clocks. It’s good that I’ve made note of this word “throw,” it seems to me to be actively in use and is moreover an exceedingly direct verb that I will perhaps soon have occasion to incorporate in my correspondence.”