Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories Page 4
And what would the reader say to the little match or matchstick, just as dear as delicate, a sweet, odd little person, lying in its match-box next to its numerous comrades, patient, proper, well-behaved, as if adream or asleep. As long as the little match rests in its box, unused and unchallenged, it’s of no great value. It awaits, so to speak, that which is to come. One day, though, one takes it out, presses it against the rough surface, scrapes its poor, good, dear little head until it catches fire, and now the little match flames and burns. This is the great event in the life of the little match, by which it fulfills its purpose in life, does its good deed, and then dies a death by incineration. Isn’t that heartbreaking? The little match must miserably burn up, pitifully go to ground, while it performs its sweet task, awakening from its apathy, inactivity, and uselessness, revealing its worth, and smoldering with its eagerness to serve and do its duty. The moment the little match takes pleasure in its destiny, it dies; the moment it unfolds its meaning, it perishes. Its joy in life is its death, and its waking its end. The moment it loves and serves, it collapses altogether and expires.
(1915)
Translated with Annette Wiesner
THE YOUNG TRAVELING SALESMAN
I REMEMBER as a boy reading a story in a pulp magazine about a young traveling salesman whose business took him to Paris. The short narrative was accompanied by an illustration whose somber nocturnal colors and air of terror remained vivid in my memory. The young commercial traveler, a German fully unaware of the danger awaiting him in the French capital, entered an inn or hotel to dine and spend the night. After a satisfying meal of food and drink, feeling oddly sleepy and somewhat dull, which usually was not the case at that hour, he let himself be led to his room, which seemed very high up. He was wished a pleasant good night, and the young innocent, without the slightest premonition that he found himself in the villainous and satanic hands of criminals, undressed quietly, lay down on the bed, and at once fell into a hard, deep sleep, as if he had fallen from a clear sky into an abyss. To sleep and murder someone in his sleep? What? Is that so? O, don’t sleep, young man! But that’s what we’re about to see! Sleep is gentle, kind, and sweet, and in its innocence and ingenuousness likened unto heaven. One thinks sleep is holy. Not, however, at the outlaw inn in Paris the young German salesman had come to.
The bed in which he slept was a canopy bed; however, the bed canopy was nothing other than a fiendish machine. Don’t sleep, young man! Wake up, wake up! He awoke. The room was lit by the moon. It would have been approximately midnight. O, what luck that you are awake. All around everything was quiet. Still as the ocean, quiet as the sea. But what was there? It was a picture on the moonlit wall, and then while regarding the picture the young man observed how it gradually disappeared, how something from high in the room lowered itself over the painting, slowly and silently. He was alert, he started, a deathly chill ran all up and down him, and when he leapt out of bed he saw the Fiend: the canopy sank down and down with a mechanical violence to crush the one asleep on the pillow. Swiftly and soundlessly he threw himself into his clothes, and with bold resolve, for only boldness could save him now, he opened the window and, by catching hold of the ledges and gutters, climbed down the wall, while the night wind blew through his ruffled hair and the moon gazed upon the frightened face, until the young man reached the street, where he quickly thanked the Good Lord for his miraculous deliverance from deadly peril. Soon thereafter he returned home.
(1915)
TOOTHACHE
I REMEMBER once I had for a time a severe toothache. In order to numb the pain, I ran into the fields and roared there like King Lear. At home I chose to dash myself against the wall and, in my rage, smash a few precious chairs from the Biedermeier period, but this in no way caused the toothache to stop, rather the trouble got worse by the hour. At night the horror scenes I staged woke the entire house; it was a scandal. The frequent imbibing of the finest cognac scarcely helped. I dealt myself blows to the face like Sancho Panza when he noticed his donkey was lost. At one point I inflicted upon myself with a knife a fortunately by no means life-threatening wound, but this crude step did not in the least better my condition, instead seemed only to increase the torture. Finally I went to the dentist, that is, for the sake of sweet frugality, to a dental clinic, where I gladly handed myself over for purposes of study. My mouth was diligently examined by the hand of a young lady apprentice, and after that the procedures began. I may say with some authority that I placidly endured a tremendous amount and accepted with considerable composure all sorts of things.
Much I patiently suffered, but from time to time I found it apt to utter a rather loud scream, which I did on purpose because by so doing I succeeded in causing the master to rush up and intervene, helping with his masterly skills, which for me was no insignificant relief. In such moments, of course, the young lady became annoyed with me; she thought it very naughty of me to emit such a forceful sound. I allowed myself to say I would be willing to scream even more often whenever unnecessary pain was inflicted upon me. It was not at all nice of me to speak like that, she responded. Gradually I came to have a fairly delightful intercourse with her, and once she had the idea to ask me what I was. I was sort of a writer, I said modestly. She called loudly into the dentist’s room, “I’ve got a writer,” whereupon all the gentlemen and ladies, among them the master, came running up to engage in a cozy study of the peculiar patient. I was subjected to a precise inspection. “If you are a writer,” said the master, “then you are surely one of the poorer ones, one of those who stay unsuccessful their whole lives, one can see this clearly.” I had to laugh at this refined remark and answered, “Certainly I am poor and up to this day have never lacked in failure, but life without success can also be beautiful. If only I become well again and have pretty teeth, which I fervently wish, then I will leap about like a deer and be happier than many a so-called lucky fellow.”
(1917)
Translated with Annette Wiesner
THE NIMBLE AND THE LAZY
I CONFESS that the invention of the story I’m telling here has caused me the greatest difficulties, though it’s likely you will find it a little silly. It deals with a lazy nimble person and a nimble lazy person. It needs to be noted that the nimble one with all his squirrel-like nimbleness lagged far behind the lazy one’s clumsy laziness, and this astounded him not a little, which really is quite understandable. The strange and remarkable thing about this simple and foolish story, which fortunately is not all that long and prolix, is that basically the nimble one is the lazy one, and basically the lazy one is the nimble one, for the nimble one was, alas, in reality only too nimble, and the lazy one, fortunately or unfortunately, splendidly proved himself in the totality of his laziness, in that he was not at all nimble, yet basically was all the same much nimbler than the nimblest of the nimble, whereas, alas, the nimble one in the complete abundance of his nimbleness and agility was certainly in no way lazy, and yet was all the same much lazier than the laziest of the lazy, which in any case is really quite regrettable. The nimble one in any case surpassed the lazy one in proper nimbleness, but all the same he came off badly and in the end finished far behind the lazy one, who in any case, providing we’re not grossly mistaken, greatly transcended the nimble one in laziness, in that he was as lazy as the personification of laziness, yet all the same was not at all as lazy and much nimbler than the nimble one thought, whom he left far behind and magnificently defeated, about which remarkable circumstance the pitiful, poor nimble one almost died of fright. This, my dear reader, is the story of the nimble and the lazy or the lazy and the nimble, depending on which one you prefer and how you like it. Judge it gently, laugh at it, and don’t be altogether angry with its author in whose head it stuck so fast he found himself compelled to write it down just to be rid of it.
(1917)
Translated with Annette Wiesner
NO ONE
ONCE UPON a time there was someone called No One. He belonged to the th
ieves’ guild, had a lively craving for putting into order the financial affairs of others, and at pilfering was unequivocally a master. One can say that he understood stealing at its very base and his favorite occupation was cleaning up. His cardinal virtue consisted in his being unusually well suited for visiting rich people at midnight. He held just a little too much interest in those who had to huff and puff under their heavy incomes. His most constant worry was how best to relieve the heavily burdened. Thus through his preference he lessened their worry, carried away loads, and relieved suffering. Equal distribution seemed his ideal. There lived there a certain Herr Lovengood to whom No One paid a most polite and successful visit, in that he lessened Herr Lovengood’s worries and heavy burden in order for him to breathe easily again. But Herr Lovengood couldn’t take a joke; he knew who the thief was and went promptly to the police to make his report. “Last night,” he said, “I was broken into. It was No One, I know it.” “Well,” he was told, “if it was no one, we can’t help you. Why did you come to us when no one had broken in?” And Herr Lovengood, who felt considerably relieved that he had been unburdened of all sorts of financial worries, had to withdraw. “No One has been at my house. No One robbed me, No One did it, I know that for a fact,” he said over and over, but all that talking did him no good. Since he himself said no one had robbed him, it must have been so, and everything was in order. Herr Lovengood was awfully outraged, but at last had to be content. The thief laughed up his sleeve, but nonetheless on one occasion he was, so to speak, collared and placed behind bars, and then his laughter died out.
(1917)
THE MURDERESS
RECENTLY, I recall, I walked over the mountain with a farmer. As we were going on about various things, a stout woman stepped into the middle of the pretty village road and advanced toward us. Nothing about this farmer’s wife struck me except her robust healthy appearance. It didn’t occur to me to examine her more closely. When she had passed by, the farmer allowed himself, which he was completely justified in doing, to quietly remark, “This woman who just went past, I’m sure you didn’t notice, did you, that she has twenty-five years of prison life behind her.” Astonished, I asked, “What for?” My farmer was in no way in a hurry to respond. He paused, then finally said, “Long ago she beat her husband to death.” Appalled, I inquired about the particulars. The farmer, who was on his way over the mountain to inspect his meadows, was again silent for a while, and then with a strange ease, as if he were a superior storyteller relating a half-forgotten ballad or horror tale, he produced the following: “One morning, carrying a hoe or mattock in her hand, she entered her husband’s bedroom where he was lying in bed. He opened his eyes, saw her, and, because the hoe apparently frightened him, asked, ‘What are you doing in my room with a hoe?’ To this the murderess replied, ‘I’m about to show you.’ With these horrible, dryly, as it were, humorous words, she raised the mattock and bashed in his head.” I asked him why he thought the woman had done such a terrible thing. “We don’t know,” he said, “it’s been forgotten. Maybe the husband was a drunk too lazy to work and because of that his wife turned bitter.” Since his work pointed him in a different direction than mine, he took his leave and I went on alone, silently contemplating all sorts of things. What astonished me the most was the good, natural appearance of the woman whom we had seen pass us so quietly and inconspicuously, as if she were not herself but just anybody, not a murderess but just any upright, honest, diligent woman. “In any case, an incredible power must inhabit her,” I thought. “An atrocity and twenty-five years in prison, and still not showing the slightest trace of that—what tremendous indomitability.”
(1917)
LAKE PIECE
THIS PIECE is very simple, it’s about a beautiful summer evening and many people who promenaded back and forth along the shore of the lake. The crowd of people, of which I too was a part, was extraordinary. The whole city seemed to be taking a walk. If I say that the wide, nocturnal lake resembled a slumbering hero whose breast even while asleep is moved by concerns of bravery and noble thought, I am perhaps expressing myself a bit too audaciously. Many skiffs, festooned with lights, moved about in the dark water. The streets and side streets that led to the lake seemed to me to be canals, and I easily imagined that it was a Venetian night. Bright firelight flared up reddish here and there out of the black, and nocturnal figures strolled in the light and dark patches. Nor were lovers missing who tenderly embraced and kissed behind all kinds of thickets, nor a caressing and whispering, gently stroking and, like murmuring water, rippling night music. The half-moon on high resembled, how shall I say, a wound, from which I gather that the lovely body of the night was wounded, as a beautiful noble soul can be bruised and wounded, and because of this it reveals even more clearly its grandeur and beauty. In life, which is rough and ignoble, an injured noble soul sometimes makes a fool of itself, but not so in the art of poetry; the poet never laughs about the vulnerability of sensitive souls. As I walked over an arched bridge, I heard from below, out of the water, a wonderful voice making its way up to me; it was a brightly clad girl in a gondola who was passing by, and I and perhaps one other, who was also intrigued by the tender voice, bent over the railing to listen with utmost attention to the charming song that, in the amphitheater or concert hall formed by the gentle night, warmly and brightly faded away. We two or three, we who were listening, admitted to ourselves that we had never heard such beautiful singing, and we said to ourselves that the song of the sweet-tempered singer gliding onwards in the almost invisible skiff was tremendous, less through art and magnificent vocal talent than through a wonderful intensity of soul and the rapture of a dear, generous heart. We told ourselves moreover, that is, it occurred to us to think that perhaps, yes, even in all likelihood, the young singer in the dark boat below would be fervently blushing over the bravery and magnanimity of her song and over her ability to intoxicate and excite herself, and that her charming, joyfully young, and sweet cheek would be burning intensely with shame over the freedom and enthusiasm of the heavenly, songful outpouring. The song was like a royal palace growing to a fabulous size, so that one believed one saw princes and princesses dancing and galloping past on splendidly festooned horses. Everything transformed itself into sonorous life and into a sonorous beauty; the whole world was like kindness itself, and one could no longer find fault with life, with human existence. Especially enchanting and wonderful was the way the girl bared her tender soul while singing, laid open all her secrets, rose beyond herself and beyond her modesty, beyond all instilled decency, candidly expressed all thinking and yearning, so that, in the manner of heroines, she towered like a figure into the air. The battle that the tender creature waged against shyness and ordinary behavior yielded the most beautiful timbre, and listening, as previously mentioned, to the shamefully proud sound were a few people who all regretted that now, little by little, the song lost itself in the distance.
(1917)
Translated with Annette Wiesner
SCHWENDIMANN
ONCE THERE was a strange man. Hello, hello, what kind of strange man? How old was he, where did he come from? I don’t know. Well then, can you perhaps tell me what his name was? His name was Schwendimann. Aha, Schwendimann! Good, very good, très bien, très bien. Go on, if you like, and tell us: What did Schwendimann want? What did he want? Hmm, he probably didn’t quite know that himself. He didn’t want much, but he wanted something right for him. What was he after, what was Schwendimann searching for? He wasn’t looking for much, but he was looking for something right for him. He was distracted, a bit lost out in the wide world. Is that so? Lost? Aha, distracted! Good God, where is this going to lead the poor fellow? Nowhere, the universe, where else? Troubling question! Everyone looked at him curiously, and he at them. How frightening, how pitiful! He went along, worn down and sluggish, with shaky, uncertain steps, and the schoolchildren chased after him, teasing him spitefully and asking him, “What are you after, Schwendimann?” He wasn’t after much,
but he was after the right thing. He certainly hoped in time to find the right thing. “It’ll work out,” he mumbled into his disheveled black beard. Schwendimann’s beard was very shaggy. Is that so? Shaggy? C’est ça! Voilà! Superb. Indeed! Most interesting! Suddenly he stood before the town hall. “There’s no way I can be helped or advised,” he said, and because to the best of his knowledge he didn’t have the slightest business in the town hall, he went slowly on and came to the poor-house. “I’m certainly poor, but I don’t belong in the poorhouse,” he thought, and went diligently on, and after a while unexpectedly he came to the firehouse. “Nothing is on fire,” he said and went sullenly on. A few steps farther was the pawnshop. “In God’s wide world I have nothing to pawn,” and a little stretch farther was the bath-house. “I don’t need to bathe!” When, after some time, he came to the schoolhouse, he said, “My days in school are over,” and went quietly on, shaking his strange head. “I’ll come to the right house in time,” he said. It wasn’t long before Master Schwendimann stood before a large, dark building. It was the prison. “I don’t deserve punishment, I deserve something else,” he spoke to himself gloomily and marched on, and soon arrived before another building, namely the hospital, where he said, “I’m not sick, I’m something else. I don’t require nursing, I require something totally different.” Reeling, he walked on; it was a brilliant, luminous day, the sun sparkled and the pretty streets were full of people, and the weather was so fine, so friendly, but Schwendimann paid no attention to the nice weather. Then he came to his parents’ house, to the dear house of his childhood, to the house of his birth. “I’d certainly like to be a child again and have parents, but my parents are dead and childhood doesn’t return.” Hesitantly, with deliberate steps, he went on and saw the dance hall and after that the store. Before the dance hall he said, “I don’t want to dance,” and before the store, “I’m not buying or selling anything.” Then gradually evening fell. Where did Schwendimann really belong? In the workhouse? He no longer had any desire to work. Or in the house of pleasure? “I’m done with desire and pleasure.” It wasn’t long before he stood before the courthouse: “I don’t need a judge, I need something else.” Before the butcher shop he thought, “I’m no butcher.” In the rectory he had, as far as he knew, no business, and in the theater, people like Schwendimann hardly have any business, such people also don’t set foot in concert halls. Silently and mechanically he went on, barely able to keep his eyes open, so tired was he. It seemed to him as if he were asleep, as if he were sleepwalking. When will you come to the right house, Schwendimann? Patience, all will work out. He came before a funeral home. “I’m certainly sad, but I don’t belong in a funeral home,” and went on; came before the house of God, and wordlessly went on, and came before a guesthouse, where he said, “I’m not a good guest, and no one is happy to see me,” and went farther on his way. Finally, after an arduous journey, after it had already turned dark, he came before the right house, and as soon as he saw it, he said, “Finally I’ve found what I’m after. Here is where I belong.” At the door stood a skeleton and Schwendimann asked, “May I come in and rest?” The skeleton grinned in a most friendly way and said, “Good evening, Schwendimann. I know you well. Come in. You’re welcome here.” He stepped into the house that everyone finds in the end and where not only for him but for everyone room is available, and when he had entered, he sank down and was dead, for he had come to the house of death, and here he found peace.