Selected Stories (22 page)

Isn’t there a beautiful woman I know who remarks, every time I meet her, that I do
not please her, because once I did please her but apparently was not able to feel
fortunate enough about it? She is a free woman, and consequently a sensitive one,
who feels every insensitivity most sensitively, who in other words considers every
freedom one allows oneself to take regarding her to be unrefined and partly forfeits
her candor, that is, her freedom, which, as I believe I have been able to stress,
has about it much that is not understood, never experienced, constantly astonishing,
warming and chilling, something that is troubled by any failure to consider how it
is constituted.

I hope I may be believed if I permit myself to say that freedom is difficult and produces
difficulties, with which phrase perhaps there sprang from my mouth an insight the
expression of which could be accomplished by none but a connoisseur and gourmet of
freedom who notes and cherishes all the unfreedoms internal to freedom.

[1928]

A Biedermeier Story

I
N
the Biedermeier period, thus during the time when, let’s say, a Lenau brought to
the shaping stage his ineffably delicate and beautiful verses, at his ease, and slowly,
as he raised them up out of the silent depths of not yet having been written down,
there lived, unless my presence of mind forsakes me entirely, a housemaid, of whom
and in whose hearing, albeit she was in her way an excellent person perhaps, more
young than old, and more nearly beautiful than fundamentally hideous, some were apt
to say she was a beast.

If her hair was a fair match for her eyes, she also enjoyed the not particularly nice
reputation of being a glutton, which could have been an insult, of such utterly unwarranted
slightness that, living, moving, and standing as I do in my own epoch, I am most gratifyingly
astonished by it.

During the time when, as is well known, the Russian general Gorchakov practically
dominated the European scene, there existed with the upper and lower middle class,
to set ladies’ maids’ fingers flying, corsets, or bodices. Everyone knows that Biedermeier
women were laced to the utmost tightness when they went to their soirées.

The moment this housemaid, due to the prevailing servant hierarchy, received a blow
on the head, she would say of the punishment that had been inflicted upon her, yes,
insofar as she would smile politely, that is to say, with impertinent civility.

She worked in a nimble way, but her lover became, with more success than was welcome
to his fellows, a criminal, who did with wondrous precision things I shall not mention.

While misdeed upon misdeed accrued to his credit, or, in slightly diffierent language,
good prose pieces galore seemed to drop from his pen, his conduct toward the housemaid
was so beneficial that she believed she was right to think of him as a man whose goodness
had no bounds.

The maid, true, though this emphasis is only incidental, had a habit of eating
Schabziger,
as they call it, a variety of herb cheese. More and more difficult did it become
for him to kiss her on the lips. He once took the risk of indicating disapproval thereof;
she begrudged him this.

With a nobly casual air as befitted his rank as a war lord, General Gorchakov, who
only comes into this sketch of mine for local color, commanded his armies.

Once the housemaid had performed her tasks, instead of going out for a walk, which
certainly would have done her no harm, she went to her room, sat down at the table,
and started to write.

If it was letters she wrote that reached her lover safely every time, perhaps the
window was open and a sparrow, or chaffinch, would be fluttering on the sill.

All the songs of singing birds heard by people such a long, long time ago!

[1928–29]

The Honeymoon

I
T
was ideal, and the couple would think of it for a long time afterwards. He wore on
his head a beret and she a
voile de voyage
floating in the wind that scudded over the blades of grass. The forest edge checked
the wind. Firs waved and nodded, and good-naturedly oaks spread their limbs. “We hope
with hearts as one,” he said. She looked at him, gratefully. In their rolling motor
car they came into a sumptuous town with high-gabled houses glowing duskily. Among
the splendid, exquisite buildings were blossoming gracious trees that seemed to bid
the new arrivals welcome. On the windowsills flowerpots stood, and in the inn where
the couple comfortably dismounted, for repast and repose, musicians were fluting,
bag-piping, and trumpeting. The next day their journey took them across fields and
through forests. Beside a sparkling brook, as it rippled along, they had a snug idyllic
picnic in a setting of distant hills. Traveling on, they encountered a crackpot who,
gaunt and very tall, in threadbare lackadaisical clothes, gave them a haughty look.
“Bachelor!” said the bridegroom, suffused with love and devotion, to the stranger,
“why do you look at us with such contempt?” The scornful smiler answered: “Because
I am nagging and caviling at you, and only half believe in your happiness.” The bride
shook her head, as if this man who doubted joy was beyond her comprehension. Soon
the philosophical figure had disappeared from their sight. In time they came to a
station, through which a train passed. Not far from there a friendly body of water
spread itself, in a wreath of reeds. A swan was swimming on the calm, clear surface.
From a bell tower on whose tip a cockerel shone golden in the sun, a clock announced
the hour. A boy on stilts strutted past a table on whose top a pair of gloves was
lying. A Gaul or Hun had a tobacco pipe in his mouth and was belaboring with a saw
a piece of wood, using a sawing horse. For a time the eyes of the happy couple were
attracted to a spindle. A hunter pursued a partridge, aided by a nimble and willing
dog. Toward the swan, on the lake shore, a pig walked at a leisurely pace, grunting
contentedly from time to time, aiming to cozy up to the noble creature. The ill-favored
animal, which even then presented a sort of image of peerlessness, succeeded in coming
up alongside. The swan, in its soft and elegant way, was willing to accommodate the
eager pig in partnership. What a beautiful thing friendship can be! Yet many other
sights were in store for them, a farmer plowing, for instance, and next to him a country
manor of townlike appearance, over which a snail was strolling, on some errand or
other, if to speak of a stroll can be justified here. A robed rider rode on his buoyant
horse out of a suggestive thicket, evidently on a mission, and a piece of rope, or
string, was lying on a bench. The bench was absorbed in the expectation of being sat
on. To enumerate every concrete thing in the world would exhaust me, and the reader
too, so I shall confine myself and wish the couple a safe return home and a cornucopia
of delights on their life’s way. All around they looked, were interested in a variety
of things, took careful note of some, including an elephant, a dove, and a snake.
Capped with fluttering bannerets, and highbreasted, a ship ran into a harbor. Barrels
and boxes lay there in quiet heaps. Before a group of soldiers, someone who had made
a mistake and was about to atone for it received a number of blows, buffets, or lashes.
The person inflicting the punishment stood at attention, while the recipient of it
kneeled and implored, quite properly, for trustful behavior did not suit him. Over
him as he whimpered, a crocodile was shedding tears. Little swallows flew through
the blue over an acrobat competing with a juggler who threw balls, torches, knives,
and so forth, into the air, each attempting to astonish with his art, with finesse
and winsomeness. Twenty meters and more above the earth an angel sat, as if on a chair.
How did he do so, without any basis? There was nothing to support him, sustain him;
nevertheless, he sat there, with peace of mind, angelic, absolving an exercise. The
friendly expression never left his face for a second. Not a trace of strain did he
show. Apparently he could do this difficult thing with perfect ease. A fullness evidently
fortified and secured him. And he never ate anything! Food makes one feel tired, crusty,
heavy, stiff, and somnolent. In fasting there is unquestionably a deep significance,
an impulse, a lifting up. A task had taken possession of the angel; he had been entirely
absorbed into it. A will to attain an object, to merge with the object, to become
one with it, to be himself, filled him. I could never do what he could. For him it
was the opposite. Not to be able to do what he had to do would not have been possible
for him. Thus he sat there so peacefully, so dead.

“When I am dead,” said the bride to her bridegroom, “my life will be stronger, better,
because then you will think of me all the time.”

Home again, they talked about the curiosities their journey had revealed to them,
on a balcony. A sunshade was spread over the charming lady.

The work he meant to devote himself to was already claiming his thoughts, and he had
fears for himself, because he was doubtful about his enterprise, and for her, because
he intended to forsake her somewhat.

Had his happiness come so soon to stand in his way?

[1928–9]

Thoughts on Cézanne

I
F
one chose to, one might notice a lack of bodiliness; but outline is the principal
thing, long years, perhaps, of concern for the object. The man I’m now speaking of
gazed, for instance, at these fruits, which are as ordinary as they are remarkable,
for a long time; he pondered their look, the skin stretched taut around them, the
strange repose of their being, their laughing, glowing, good-humored appearance. “Isn’t
it well-nigh tragic,” he might have said to himself, “that they cannot be conscious
of their use and beauty?” He would have liked to communicate, to infuse, to transmit
into them his capacity for thought, because he was sorry for them, on account of their
being unable to have any conception of themselves. I feel convinced that he commiserated
with them, and then again with himself, and that for a long time he really did not
know why.

Even this tablecloth has its own peculiar soul, so he wished to imagine, and every
related wish came true, at once. Pale, white, enigmatically pure it lay there: he
walked up to it, rumpled it. Amazing how it let itself be grasped, exactly as the
person touching it had desired. It may be that he spoke to it: “Come to life!” Meanwhile,
one should not forget that he had the necessary time to undertake strange experiments,
exercises, playful tests, investigations. He was fortunate to have a wife to whom
he could entrust, without any anxiety, everyday cares, housekeeping, etc. He seems
to have treated her as a large and beautiful flower that never opened its cup, her
lips, to utter the least complaint. Oh, this flower, it kept to itself everything
about him that displeased her, she was, I tell myself, a miracle of docility, her
tolerance of her husband’s quirks and circumspections was the tolerance of an angel.
The latter were for her a magic palace, which she left alone, approved of, into which
she never penetrated with the least innuendo, of which she thought little, though
she also respected it. She could tell herself: These matters are no concern of mine.
Doubtless because she never did impinge upon her companion’s mere “schoolboy difficulties,”
which is how his efforts often appeared to her, she had humanity, or shall we say
tact. For hours and days on end he sought out ways to make unintelligible the obvious,
and to find for things easily understood an inexplicable basis. As time went by, a
secret watchfulness settled in his eyes from so much precise circling of contours
that became for him edges of a mystery. An entire quiet lifetime he spent fighting
inaudibly and, one might be tempted to say, with nobility, to make mountainous—if
such a paraphrase might suffice—the frame of things.

My gist is that a region, for instance, becomes bigger and richer in a surround of
mountains.

Apparently his wife did often try to persuade him that he should relinquish the gallings
of this almost ridiculous struggle, that he should travel somewhere, not be so deeply
absorbed all the time in such a singular and monotonous task.

He replied: “All right! Might I ask you to do the necessary packing?”

She did so, yet he didn’t travel, but stayed where he was, that is to say, he traveled
and raveled again in circles around the limits of the bodies he portrayed, the bodies
he reconstructed, and from the bag or basket she removed again, just as gently, and
somewhat thoughtfully, everything she had packed with the utmost care into them, and
the same old life went on as before, the old life that this dreamer renewed for himself
again and again.

One might keep an eye on the peculiarity that he looked upon his wife as if she were
a fruit on the tablecloth. For him the outlines, the contours of his wife were exactly
the same simple but also complicated ones as he’ll have seen around flowers, glasses,
dishes, knives, forks, tablecloths, fruits, and coffeepots and cups. A pat of butter
was for him just as significant as a delicate pleat corrugating his wife’s dress.
I recognize that my wording here is inadequate, but I would like to think that I can
be understood nevertheless, or perhaps better and more deeply, on account of such
provisional phrasing, in which the lights have a shimmering effect, although I deplore
in principle, of course, any sort of hastiness. He persisted in being that kind of
studio person who is always open to attack from the standpoint of family or nation.
One can hardly refrain from believing that he was Asiatic. Is not Asia the motherland
of art, of spirituality, these utter luxuries? To think of him as a person who never
liked to eat would probably be mistaken. He ate fruits and studied them with equal
pleasure; he enjoyed the taste of ham just as much as its form and color, which he
called “wonderful,” and its presence, which he called “phenomenal.” If he drank wine,
its pleasant taste astonished him—though one should not speak exaggeratedly of this
characteristic. For he translated wine, too, into the domain of art. He magicked flowers
onto paper, so that upon it they quivered, rejoiced, and smiled, swaying in their
plantlike ways; his concern was the flesh of flowers, the spirit of the secret which
dwells in the resistance a thing with special properties offers to understanding.