Selected Stories (7 page)

I catch a glimpse of a bookseller and of a book shop; likewise soon, as I guess and
observe, a bakery with braggart gold lettering comes in for mention and regard. But
first I have a priest, or parson, to record. A bicycling town chemist cycles with
kind and weighty face close by the walker, namely, myself, similarly, a regimental
or staff doctor. An unassuming pedestrian should not remain unconsidered, or unrecorded;
for he asks me politely to mention him. This is a bric-à-brac vendor and rag collector
who has become rich. Young boys and girls race around in the sunlight, free and unrestrained.
“Let them be unrestrained as they are,” I mused. “Age one day will terrify and bridle
them. Only too soon, alas!” A dog refreshes itself in the water of a fountain. Swallows,
it seems to me, twitter in the blue air. One or two elegant ladies in astonishingly
short skirts and astoundingly fine high-colored bootees make themselves, I hope, certainly
as conspicuous as anything else. Two summer or straw hats catch my eye. The thing
about the straw hats is this: it is that I suddenly see two hats in the bright, gentle
air, and under the hats stand two fairly prosperous-looking gentlemen, who seem to
be bidding each other good morning by means of an elegant, courteous doffing and waving
of hats. The hats at this occasion are evidently more important than their wearers
and owners. Nevertheless, the writer is very humbly asked to be wary of such definitely
superfluous mockery and fooling. He is called upon to behave with sobriety, and it
is hoped that he understands this, once and for all.

As now an extremely splendid, abundant book shop came pleasantly under my eye, and
I felt the impulse and desire to bestow upon it a short and fleeting visit, I did
not hesitate to step in, with an obvious good grace, while I permitted myself of course
to consider that in me appeared far rather an inspector, or bookkeeper, a collector
of information, and a sensitive connoisseur, than a favorite and welcome, wealthy
book buyer and good client. In courteous, thoroughly circumspect tones, and choosing
understandably only the finest turns of speech, I inquired after the latest and best
in the field of belles-lettres. “May I,” I asked with diffidence, “take a moment to
acquaint myself with, and taste the qualities of, the most sterling and serious, and
at the same time of course also the most read and most quickly acknowledged and purchased,
reading matter? You would pledge me in high degree to unusual gratitude were you to
be so extremely kind as to lay generously before me that book which, as certainly
nobody can know so precisely as only you yourself, has found the highest place in
the estimation of the reading public, as well as that of the dreaded and thence doubtless
flatteringly circumvented critics, and which further-more has made them merry. You
cannot conceive how keen I am to learn at once which of all these books or works of
the pen piled high and put on show here is the favorite book in question, the sight
of which in all probability, as I must most energetically suppose, will make me at
once a joyous and enthusiastic purchaser. My longing to see the favorite author of
the cultivated world and his admired, thunderously applauded masterpiece, and, as
I said, probably also at once to buy the same, aches and ripples through my every
limb. May I most politely ask you to show me this most successful book, so that this
desire, which has seized my entire being, may acknowledge itself gratified, and cease
to trouble me?” “Certainly,” said the bookseller. He vanished out of eyeshot like
an arrow, to return the next instant to his anxious and interested client, bearing
indeed the most bought and read book of real enduring value in his hand. This delicious
fruit of the spirit he carried carefully and solemnly, as if carrying a relic charged
with sanctifying magic. His face was enraptured; his manner radiated the deepest awe;
and with that smile on his lips which only believers and those who are inspirited
to the deepest core can smile, he laid before me in the most winning way that which
he had brought.

I considered the book, and asked: “Could you swear that this is the most widely distributed
book of the year?”

“Without a doubt!”

“Could you insist that this is the book which one has to have read?”

“Unconditionally.”

“Is this book also definitely good?”

“What an utterly superfluous and inadmissible question.”

“Thank you very much,” said I cold-bloodedly, left the book which had been most absolutely
widely distributed because it had unconditionally to have been read, as I chose, where
it was, and softly withdrew, without wasting another word. “Uncultivated and ignorant
man!” shouted the bookseller after me, for he was most justifiably and deeply vexed.
But I let him have his say, and walked at my ease on my way, which, to be accurate,
as I shall at once discuss and expound more closely, led into the next stately banking
establishment.

The very place I wished to inquire at and receive reliable information about certain
securities. “To hop into a money institute, just in passing,” I mused, or said to
myself, “in order to manage one’s financial affairs, and to produce questions, which
one utters in no more than a whisper, is pleasant, and looks uncommonly good.”

“It is good and wonderfully convenient that you come to us in person,” the responsible
official at the counter said to me, in a very friendly tone, and he proceeded with
an almost knavish, at any rate very charming and gay smile, as follows:

“It is, as I said, good that you have come. Only today we were about to communicate
to you in writing what can now be communicated to you orally, namely something which
will be for you without a doubt a gladdening piece of information, that we are instructed
by a society, or circle, of what are evidently well-disposed, good-natured, philanthropic
ladies, not to place to your debit but, on the contrary, and this will doubtless be
fundamentally more welcome to you, to credit your account with

One Thousand Francs,

a transaction which we hereby confirm, and of which you, if you would be so good,
will at once take mental or any other form of note which may suit you. We assume that
this information pleases you; for upon us you make, we must confess, an impression
such as tells us, if we may permit ourselves to say so, with almost excessive clarity,
that you very definitely need alleviation of an equable and delicate nature. The money
is at your disposal with effect from today. One can see that this very minute a great
joy suffuses your features. Your eyes are shining; your mouth this minute has about
it a trace of laughter, and this perhaps for the first time in many years, for pressing
daily troubles of a hideous kind have forbidden you laughter, and you have been perhaps
during recent times mostly in a sorrowful mood, since all sorts of evil and sad thoughts
darkened your brow. Now rub your hands for joy, rub them! and be glad that some noble
and kind benefactresses, moved by the sublime thought that to dam up a man’s grief
is beautiful, and to allay his distress is good, conceived the idea that a poor and
unsuccessful poet (for you are this, are you not?) might require assistance. On the
fact that certain persons were found whose will was to condescend to remember you,
and on this occasion of evidence that not all people regard with indifference the
existence of a poet held repeatedly in contempt, we congratulate you.”

“The sum of money so unexpectedly bestowed upon me, issuing from such tender and indulgent
fairy or ladies’ hands,” I said, “I would like to leave without more ado in your charge,
where it will surely be best preserved, since you have at your disposal the necessary
fireproof and thief-tight safes, to keep your treasures from destruction, or from
any abolition whatsoever. Besides, you pay interest. May I ask for a receipt? I assume
that I have the liberty to withdraw, at any time according to my need or desire, from
the large sum small sums. I would like to remark that I am thrifty. I shall know how
to manage the gift like a steady and methodical man; that is, most cautiously. And
I shall have, in a considerate and polite letter, to express my gratitude to my kind
donators, which I think I shall do as soon as tomorrow morning, so that it does not
get forgotten through procrastination. The assumption, which you just now voiced so
frankly, that I might be poor, could however rest upon a basis of acute and accurate
observation. But it suffices entirely that I myself know what I know, and that it
is I myself who am best informed about my own person. Appearances often deceive, good
sir, and the delivery of a judgment upon a man is best left to the man in question.
Nobody can know as well as I do this person who has seen and experienced all sorts
of things. Often I wandered, of course, perplexed in a mist and in a thousand vacillations
and dilemmas, and often I felt myself woefully forsaken. Yet I believe that it is
a fine thing to struggle for life. It is not with pleasures and with joys that a man
grows proud. Proud and gay in the roots of his soul he becomes only through trial
bravely undergone, and through suffering patiently endured. Still, on this point,
one does not like to waste words. What honest man was never in his life without sustenance?
And what human being has ever seen as the years pass his hopes, plans, and dreams
completely undestroyed? Where is the soul whose longings and daring aspirations, whose
sweet and lofty imaginings of happiness have been fulfilled without that soul’s having
had to deduct a discount?”

Receipt for one thousand francs was handed out, or in, to me, whereupon the steady
creditor and accounted competitor, namely no other than myself, was entitled to bid
good day and to withdraw. My heart glad that this capital sum should fall to me, magically,
as from a blue sky, I ran out of the high and beautiful vestibule into the open air,
to continue my walk.

Add I would, can, and I hope may (since nothing new and shrewd strikes me at the moment),
that I carried in my pocket a polite, a delicious invitation from Frau Aebi. The invitation
card humbly requested me, and encouraged me, to be so good as to appear punctually
at half past twelve for a modest lunch. I firmly intended to obey the summons and
to emerge promptly at the time stated in the presence of the estimable person in question.

Since, dear kind reader, you give yourself the trouble to march attentively along
with the writer and inventor of these lines, out forthwith into the bright and friendly
morning world, not hurrying, but rather quite at ease, with level head, smoothly,
discreetly, and calmly, now we both arrive in front of the above-mentioned bakery
with the gold inscription, where we feel inclined to stop, horrified, to stand mournfully
aghast at the gross ostentation and at the sad disfigurement of sweet rusticity which
is intimately connected with it.

Spontaneously I exclaimed: “Pretty indignant, by God, should any honorable man be,
when brought face to face with such golden inscriptional barbarities, which impress
upon the landscape where we stand the seal of self-seeking, money-grubbing, and a
miserable, utterly blatant coarsening of the soul. Does a simple, sincere master baker
really require to appear so huge, with his foolish gold and silver proclamations to
beam forth and shine, bright as a prince or a dressy, dubious lady? Let him bake and
knead his bread in all honor and in reasonable modesty. What sort of a world of swindle
are we beginning, or have already begun, to live in, when the municipality, the neighbors,
and public opinion not only tolerate but unhappily, it is clear, even applaud that
which injures every good sense, every sense of reason and good office, every sense
of beauty and probity, that which is morbidly puffed up, offers a ridiculous tawdry
show of itself, that which screams out over a hundred yards’ distance and more into
the good honest air: ‘I am such and such. I have so and so much money, and I dare
make so bold as to make an unpleasant impression. Of course I am a bumpkin and a blockhead
with my hideous ostentation, and a tasteless fellow; but there’s nobody can forbid
me to be bumpkinish and blockheaded.’ Do golden, far-shining, loathsomely glittering
letters stand in any acceptable, honorably justified relation, in any healthy affinitive
proportion to … bread? Not in the least! But loathsome boasting and swaggering began
in some corner, in some nook of the world, at some time or other, advanced step by
step like a lamentable and disastrous flood, bearing garbage, filth, and foolishness
along with them, spreading these throughout the world, and they have affected also
my respectable baker, spoiled his earlier good taste, and undermined his inborn decency.
I would give much, I would give my left arm, or left leg, if by such a sacrifice I
could help recall the fine old sense of sincerity, the old sufficiency, and restore
to country and to people the respectability and modesty which have been plentifully
lost, to the sorrow of all men who seek honesty. To the devil with every miserable
desire to seem more than one is. It is a veritable catastrophe, which spreads over
the earth danger of war, death, misery, hate, and injury, and puts upon all that exists
an abominable mask of malice and ugliness. I would not have a simple workman a lord,
nor a simple woman her ladyship. But everything nowadays is out to dazzle and glitter,
to be new and exquisite and beautiful, be lord and lady, and so becomes horrible.
But in time perhaps things will change again. I would like to hope so.”

Now, as will soon be learned, I shall on account of this haughty bearing, this domineering
attitude, take myself to task. In what manner will also soon be shown. It would not
be good if I were to criticize others mercilessly, but set about myself only most
tenderly and treat myself as indulgently as possible. A critic who goes about it in
this way is no true critic, and writers should not practice any abuse of writing.
I hope that this sentence pleases all and sundry, inspires satisfaction, and meets
with warm applause.