Collected Stories (49 page)

‘The innkeeper isn’t coming, he’s not interested in guests, he is probably an unfriendly man. Or does he know that I am Betty’s fiancé, and does that give him a reason for not coming to fetch me in? It would be in accord with that that the driver kept me waiting so long at the station. Betty has often told me, after all, how much she has been bothered by lecherous men and how she has had to rebuff their insistence; perhaps it is that here too …!’ [Text breaks off]

[Second Manuscript]

When Eduard Raban, coming along the passage, walked into the open doorway, he could now see how it was raining. It was not raining much.

On the pavement straight in front of him, not higher, not lower, there were, in spite of the rain, many passers-by. Every now and again one would step forward and cross the road.

A little girl was carrying a gray dog on her outstretched arms. Two gentlemen were exchanging information on some subject, at times turning the whole front of their bodies to each other, and then slowly turning aside themselves again; it was like doors ajar in the wind. The one held his hands palm-upward, raising and lowering them in regular motion, as though he were balancing a load, testing the weight of it.
Then one caught sight of a slim lady whose face twitched slightly, like the flickering light of the stars, and whose flat hat was loaded high and to the brim with unrecognizable objects; she appeared to be a stranger to all the passers-by, without intending it, as though by some law. And hurrying past was a young man with a thin walking stick, his left hand, as though paralyzed, lying flat on his chest. Many were out on business; in spite of the fact that they walked fast, one saw them longer than others, now on the pavement, now below; their coats fitted them badly; they did not care how they carried themselves; they let themselves be pushed by the people and they pushed too. Three gentlemen – two holding lightweight overcoats on their crooked forearms – walked from the front of the building to the edge of the pavement, in order to see what was going on in the carriageway and on the farther pavement.

Through the gaps between the passers-by, now fleetingly, then comfortably, one saw the regularly set cobbles in the carriageway, on which carriages, swaying on their wheels, were swiftly drawn by horses with arched necks. The people who sat at ease on the upholstered seats gazed in silence at the pedestrians, the shops, the balconies, and the sky. If it happened that one carriage overtook another, then the horses would press against each other, and the harness straps hung dangling. The animals tugged at the shafts, the carriage bowled along, swaying as it gathered speed, until the swerve around the carriage ahead was completed and the horses moved apart again, still with their narrow heads inclined toward each other.

An elderly gentleman came quickly toward the front entrance, stopped on the dry mosaic paving, turned around. And he then gazed into the rain, which, wedged in by the narrow street, fell confusedly.

Raban put down the suitcase with the black cloth cover, bending his right knee a little in doing so. The rain water was already running along the edge of the carriageway in streaks that almost extended to the lower-lying gutters.

The elderly gentleman stood upright near Raban, who was supporting himself by leaning slightly against the wooden doorpost; from time to time he glanced toward Raban, even though to do so he had to twist his neck sharply. Yet he did this only out of the natural desire, now that he happened to be unoccupied, to observe everything exactly, at least in his vicinity. The result of this aimless glancing hither and thither was that there was a great deal he did not notice. So, for instance, it escaped him that Raban’s lips were very pale, not much less so than the very faded red of his tie, which had a once striking Moorish pattern. Now, had he noticed this, he would certainly have made a fuss about it, at least inwardly, which, again, would not have been the right thing, for Raban was always pale, even if, it was a fact, various things might have been making him especially tired just recently.

‘What weather!’ the gentleman said in a low voice, shaking his head, consciously, it was true, but still in a slightly senile way.

‘Yes, indeed, and when one’s supposed to be starting on a journey, too,’ Raban said, quickly straightening up.

‘And it isn’t the kind of weather that will improve,’ the gentleman said and, in order to make sure of it once more for the last time, bent forward to glance in scrutiny up the street, then down, and then at the sky. ‘It may last for days, even for weeks. So far as I recall, nothing better is forecast for June and the beginning of July, either. Well, it’s no pleasure to anyone; I for instance shall have to do without my walks, which are extremely important to my health.’

Hereupon he yawned and seemed to become exhausted, since he had now heard Raban’s voice and, occupied with this conversation, no longer took any interest in anything, not even in the conversation.

This made quite an impression on Raban, since after all the gentleman had addressed him first, and he therefore tried to show off a little, although it might not even be noticed. ‘True,’ he said, ‘in town one can very easily manage to go without what isn’t good for one. If one does not do without
it, then one has only oneself to blame for the bad consequences. One will be sorry and in this way come to see for the first time really clearly how to manage the next time. And even if in matters of detail … [Two pages missing] … ‘I don’t mean anything by it. I don’t mean anything at all,’ Raban hastened to say, prepared to excuse the gentleman’s absent-mindedness in any way possible, since after all he wanted to show off a little more. ‘It’s all just out of the book previously mentioned, which I, like other people, happen to have been reading in the evening recently. I have been mostly alone. Owing to family circumstances, you see. But apart from anything else, a good book is what I like best after supper. Always has been. Just recently I read in a prospectus a quotation from some writer or other. “A good book is the best friend there is,” and that’s really true, it is so, a good book is the best friend there is.’

‘Yes, when one is young—’ the gentleman said, meaning nothing in particular by this, merely wanting to indicate how it was raining, that the rain was heavier again, and that now it was not going to stop at all; but to Raban it sounded as though at sixty the gentleman still thought of himself as young and energetic and considered Raban’s thirty years nothing in comparison, and as though he meant to say besides, insofar as it was permissible, that at the age of thirty he had, of course, been more sensible than Raban. And that he believed even if one had nothing else to do, like himself, for instance, an old man, yet it was really wasting one’s time to stand about here in this hall, looking at the rain, but if one spent the time, besides, in chatter, one was wasting it doubly.

Now Raban had believed for some time that nothing other people said about his capabilities or opinions had been able to affect him, on the contrary, that he had positively abandoned the position where he had listened, all submissively, to everything that was said, so that people were now simply wasting their breath whether they happened to be against him or for him. And so he said: ‘We are talking about
different things, since you did not wait to hear what I was going to say.’

‘Please go on, please go on,’ the gentleman said.

‘Well, it isn’t so important,’ Raban said. ‘I was only going to say books are useful in every sense and quite especially in respects in which one would not expect it. For when one is about to embark on some enterprise, it is precisely the books whose contents have nothing at all in common with the enterprise that are the most useful. For the reader who does after all intend to embark on that enterprise, that is to say, who has somehow become enthusiastic (and even if, as it were, the effect of the book can penetrate only so far as that enthusiasm), will be stimulated by the book to all kinds of thoughts concerning his enterprise. Now, however, since the contents of the book are precisely something of utter indifference, the reader is not at all impeded in those thoughts, and he passes through the midst of the book with them, as once the Jews passed through the Red Sea, that’s how I should like to put it.’

For Raban the whole person of the old gentleman now assumed an unpleasant expression. It seemed to him as though he had drawn particularly close to him – but it was merely trifling … [Two pages missing] … ‘The newspaper, too. – But I was about to say, I am only going into the country, that’s all, only for a fortnight; I am taking a holiday for the first time for quite a long period, and it’s necessary for other reasons too, and yet for instance a book that I was, as I have mentioned, reading recently taught me more about my little journey than you could imagine.’

‘I am listening,’ the gentleman said.

Raban was silent and, standing there so straight, put his hands into his overcoat pockets, which were rather too high. Only after a while did the old gentleman say: ‘This journey seems to be of some special importance to you.’

‘Well, you see, you see,’ Raban said, once more supporting himself against the doorpost. Only now did he see how the passage had filled up with people. They were standing even
around the foot of the staircase, and an official, who had rented a room in the apartment of the same woman as Raban had, when he came down the stairs had to ask the people to make way for him. To Raban, who only pointed at the rain, he called out over several heads, which now all turned to Raban, ‘Have a good journey’ and reiterated a promise, obviously given earlier, definitely to visit Raban the next Sunday.

[Two pages missing] … has a pleasant job, with which he is indeed satisfied and which has always been kept open for him. He has such powers of endurance and is inwardly so gay that he does not need anyone to keep him entertained, but everyone needs him. He has always been healthy. Oh, don’t try to tell me.

‘I am not going to argue,’ the gentleman said.

‘You won’t argue, but you won’t admit your mistake either. Why do you stick to it so? And however sharply you may recollect now, you would, I dare wager, forget everything if you were to talk to him. You would reproach me for not having refuted you more effectively now. If he so much as talks about a book. He’s instantly ecstatic about everything beautiful.…’

Translated by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins

E
VERY EVENING
for the past week my neighbor in the adjoining room has come to wrestle with me. He was a stranger to me, even now I haven’t yet spoken to him. We merely shout a few exclamations at one another, you can’t call that ‘speaking.’ With a ‘well then’ the struggle is begun; ‘scoundrel!’ one of us sometimes groans under the grip of the other; ‘there’ accompanies a surprise thrust; ‘stop!’ means the end, yet the struggle always goes on a little while longer. As a rule, even when he is already at the door he leaps back again and gives me a push that sends me to the
ground. From his room he then calls good night to me through the wall. If I wanted to give up this acquaintance once and for all I should have to give up my room, for bolting the door is of no avail. Once I had the door bolted because I wanted to read, but my neighbor hacked the door in two with an ax, and, since he can part with something only with the greatest difficulty once he has taken hold of it, I was even in danger of the ax.

I know how to accommodate myself to circumstances. Since he always comes to me at a certain hour, I take up some easy work beforehand which I can interrupt at once, should it be necessary. I straighten out a chest, for example, or copy something, or read some unimportant book. I have to arrange matters in this way – no sooner has he appeared in the door than I must drop everything, slam the chest to at once, drop the penholder, throw the book away, for it is only fighting that he wants, nothing else. If I feel particularly strong I tease him a little by first attempting to elude him. I crawl under the table, throw chairs under his feet, wink at him from the distance, though it is of course in bad taste to joke in this very one-sided way with a stranger. But usually our bodies close in battle at once. Apparently he is a student, studies all day, and wants some hasty exercise in the evening before he goes to bed. Well, in me he has a good opponent; accidents aside, I perhaps am the stronger and more skillful of the two. He, however, has more endurance.

Translated by Martin Greenberg and Hannah Arendt

25 J
UNE
. I paced up and down my room from early morning until twilight. The window was open, it was a warm day. The noises of the narrow street beat in uninterruptedly. By now I knew every trifle in the room from having looked at it in the course of my pacing up and down. My eyes had traveled over every wall. I had pursued the pattern of the
rug to its last convolution, noted every mark of age it bore. My fingers had spanned the table across the middle many times. I had already bared my teeth repeatedly at the picture of the landlady’s dead husband.

Toward evening I walked over to the window and sat down on the low sill. Then, for the first time not moving restlessly about, I happened calmly to glance into the interior of the room and at the ceiling. And finally, finally, unless I were mistaken, this room which I had so violently upset began to stir. The tremor began at the edges of the thinly plastered white ceiling. Little pieces of plaster broke off and with a distinct thud fell here and there, as if at random, to the floor. I held out my hand and some plaster fell into it too; in my excitement I threw it over my head into the street without troubling to turn around. The cracks in the ceiling made no pattern yet, but it was already possible somehow to imagine one. But I put these games aside when a bluish violet began to mix with the white; it spread straight out from the center of the ceiling, which itself remained white, even radiantly white, where the shabby electric lamp was stuck. Wave after wave of the color – or was it a light? – spread out toward the now darkening edges. One no longer paid any attention to the plaster that was falling away as if under the pressure of a skillfully applied tool. Yellow and golden-yellow colours now penetrated the violet from the side. But the ceiling did not really take on these different hues; the colors merely made it somewhat transparent; things striving to break through seemed to be hovering above it, already one could almost see the outlines of a movement there, an arm was thrust out, a silver sword swung to and fro. It was meant for me, there was no doubt of that; a vision intended for my liberation was being prepared.