Chapter One

Edith loves him. More on this later. Perhaps she never should have initiated relations with this good-for-nothing who has no money. It appears she's been sending him emissaries, or -- how shall we put it -- ambassadresses. He has ladyfriends everywhere, but nothing ever comes of them, and what a nothing has come of this famous, as it were, hundred francs! Once, out of sheer affability, benevolence, he left one hundred thousand marks in the hands of others. Laugh at him, and he'll laugh as well. This alone might make a dubious impression. And not one friend to show for himself. In "all this time" he's spent here among us, he's failed -- which delights him -- to gain the esteem of gentlemen. Can you imagine a more flagrant lack of talent? His polite manners have worn on certain people's "nerves" for quite some time. And Edith loves him, poor lass, and in this warm weather we're having, he takes his evening dip as late as half past nine. All the same to me, just so he doesn't complain. What a labor his education has been! And this Peruvian, or whatever he calls himself, really supposes he could manage alone? "What is it now?" Words like these are addressed to him by working-class girls, and -- lummox that, so help me, he appears to be -- he finds this way of inquiring into his wishes enchanting. Here and there they've been treating him like a real pariah, an honor he enjoys to this day. They look at him as if to exclaim: "So this impossible person is back again, just for a change? Oh, what a bore!" To be glanced at unkindly amuses him. Today it rained a little, and so she loves him. She loved him tenderly, as it were, from the very first moment, but he didn't believe it possible. And now this widow who died for him. We shall return, no doubt, to this relatively exemplary woman, who owned a shop in one of our streets. Our city is like a big farm, all its parts fit together so neatly. On this subject as well there'll be more to say. At any rate, I'll keep it brief. And rest assured, nothing unseemly will be disclosed to you, for I consider myself a refined sort of author, which is perhaps perfectly foolish of me. Perhaps a few not-so-fine items will slip in as well. That hundred francs, then, will come to nothing at all. How can a person be as prosaic as this incorrigible light-heart, who is obliged to hear from the lips of prettily aproned girls when they catch sight of him: "And now this. That's really the last straw." Naturally such expressions make him inwardly tremble, but he always forgets everything. Only a good-for-nothing like him can let so many important, lovely, useful things constantly tumble out of his brain. Being perpetually short of cash is a form of good-for-nothingness. Once he sat upon a bench in the woods. When was this? Women of circumstance judge him more gently. Might they harbor expectations of cheekiness? And the way managers shake hands with him. Isn't that odd? To shake the hand of this Robber?

The by-your-leave-ism, don't-mind-if-I-do-ishness of pedestrians on the streets vexes motorists. One more quick thing I'd like to say: there's a stand-in here who won't listen to me. I intend to abandon him to his pig-headedness. I'll leave him most splendidly forgotten. But now a mediocrity has scored a success with Edith. He wears, at any rate, one of those flattering hats that lend all their wearers a modern appearance. I'm mediocre myself, and quite pleased that I am, but there was nothing mediocre about the Robber on his woodland bench, otherwise he couldn't possibly have whispered to himself: "Once I frolicked through the streets of a luminous city as a clerk and dreaming patriot. If my memory hasn't dimmed, I once went to fetch a lantern glass, or whatever it may have been, at the request of her ladyship my employer. In those days, I kept watch over an old man and told tales to a young girl about what I'd been before arriving in her proximity. Now I sit idle, and, for propriety's sake, I'll put the blame on foreign countries. From abroad I received, promising each time to show some talent, a monthly stipend. But then, instead of occupying myself with culture, spirit, and so on, I chased after diversions. One day my benefactor drew my attention to the inappropriateness which seemed to him to slumber in the possibility of his further financial support. This announcement made me nearly dumb with astonishment. I sat down at my elegant little table, that is, on the sofa. My landlady found me weeping. `Don't be worried,' she said to me. `If you delight my ears each evening with a lovely recitation, I'll have the most succulent cutlets prepared for you in my kitchen, free of charge. Not all human beings are destined by nature to be useful. You constitute an exception.' These words constituted for me the possibility of continued existence without the performance of work. Then the railroad lines conveyed me here so that Edith's face might terrify me. The pain she brings me is like a sturdy beam from which pleasures swing." Thus he conversed with himself beneath the canopy of leaves, subsequently leaping in several bounds up to an unfortunate drunkard who was just tucking away his flask beneath his coat. "You there, wait!" he cried out, "explain to me what sort of secret it is you're concealing there from your fellow man." The one so addressed stood still as a pillar, not without smiling. The two gazed at each other, whereupon the unfortunate fellow took himself off again, shaking his head, and dropping in his wake all sorts of sotto voce platitudes regarding the spirit of the times. The Robber carefully gathered up all these remarks. Night had fallen, and our expert on the environs of Pontarlier made his way home, where he arrived quite sleepy. As for the city of Pontarlier, he had made its acquaintance in a famous book. It boasts, among other things, a fortress in which, for a time, both a writer and a Negro general agreeably lodged. Before our frequent and prodigious reader of French lay down in his nest, or bed, he remarked: "Really I should have given her back that bracelet long ago." Whom might he have been thinking of? A curious soliloquy, to which we are reasonably certain to return. He always polished his shoes with his own two hands at eleven in the morning. At half past eleven he ran down the stairs. For lunch, as a rule, there was spaghetti, oh yes, which he always ate with pleasure. How strange it sometimes seemed to him that he never tired of finding it tasty. Yesterday I cut myself a switch. Imagine this: an author strolls about in the Sunday countryside, harvests a switch, which allows him to put on colossal airs, devours a roll with ham, and finds, while he's polishing off this roll with ham, that the waitress, a damsel splendidly slim as a switch, merits being approached with the query: "Would you strike me on the hand with my switch, miss?" Nonplussed, she retreats from the petitioner. Nothing of the sort has ever before been asked of her. I arrived in the city and with my walking-stick tapped a student. Other students were sitting in a café, at the round table reserved for them. The one I'd touched looked at me as though he'd never before seen such a thing, and all the other students looked at me this way, too. It was as if, all at once, they felt there were many, many things they had never before realized. But what am I saying? At any rate, all of them, for reasons of decorum, pretended great astonishment, and now the hero of my novel, or the one who's destined to become this, pulls the blanket up to his lips and reflects on something. He had the habit of always pondering something or other, of brooding, one might say, although he never received the least remuneration for this. From an uncle who had spent his life in Batavia, he received a sum of how many francs was it? We lack precise knowledge about this sum. And in any case, there's always something very refined about uncertainties. Our Petrucchio sometimes ate, instead of an ordinary, that is, a proper lunch, simply, by way of exception, a slice of cheese pie, which he washed down with coffee. I couldn't be telling you any of this if his Batavian uncle hadn't helped him. On the basis of this help, he continued, as it were, to conduct his singular existence, and on the basis of this extraordinary and yet also quite ordinary existence, I am constructing here a commonsensical book from which nothing at all can be learned. There are, to be sure, persons who wish to extract from books guiding principles for their lives. For this sort of most estimable individual I am therefore, to my gigantic regret, not writing. Is that a pity? Oh, yes. O you driest, most upright, virtuous and respectable, kindest, quietest of adventurers--slumber sweetly, for the while. What a dullard he is to content himself with a room in the attic when instead he might cry out: "Let's have that luxury apartment you're obligated to keep at my disposal." He just doesn't see.

I don't know whether or not I'm entitled to say, like Prince Vronsky in the book The Insulted and Injured by the Russian Dostoevsky, I need money and connections. Who knows, perhaps I'll soon be placing a lonely-hearts ad in a local paper. And the way this lout, upon concluding his supper one evening, a repast consisting for the most part of chicken and salad, slammed down the tip before her dear, lovely person. You'll have guessed, my friends, that I'm speaking of the Robber and his Edith, who at times officiated as waitress in the most elegant of restaurants. Could a demon treat the object of his adoration any more boorishly, crudely, inconsiderately? You've no idea what a pile of things I have to tell you. A stalwart friend might perhaps be necessary, that is, important for me, though I consider friendship infeasible: it seems too difficult a task. On this specific point various reflections might be made, but my little finger cautions me to avoid verbosity. Today I gazed into a marvelous thunderstorm whose tumultuous strength delighted me. Enough, enough. Already I'm afraid I've bored the reader atrociously. What in the world has become of all those "fabulous ideas," such as, for instance, the idea about the Robber's renting a room from the woman with the enormous goiter? This woman was married to a railroad man, they had an attic apartment. The ground floor housed a music shop, and in the woods above the city dwelt a vagabond whose lips, though by no means delicately fragrant, were nonetheless valiantly kissed by the one who, leaving the goiter lady behind, took a train direct to Munich so as to establish himself there, if possible, as a genius. By moonlight he crossed Lake Constance. This Munich trip and these goiter ladies all rank as early experiences. In Munich he bought himself, at the very least, a pair of kid gloves. Afterward, he never again wore such things. The English Garden struck him as almost a bit too delicate. He was more accustomed to underbrush than to neatly mown lawns. One rarely sees goiters circulating in public these days. In this respect, noticeable changes have occurred. Very early on, I saw, while out for a stroll with my parents, a beggar seated on the ground. An enormous hand held out to the passersby a hat for the receipt of alms. This hand was a veritable blue and red clump. Nowadays such a conspicuous hand would scarcely be exposed to the public eye. Medicine, after all, has long since made advances which permit excrescences such as goiters and Cyclopean hands to be nipped in the bud. This woman with the goiter wished the departing would-be adventurer all the best in his career. She even had tears in her eyes. Wasn't it terribly nice of her to behave maternally on the occasion of this chance farewell, and now, like that Russian prince in the famous storyteller's tale, I'm seeking various optimally agreeable things, and because this little Robber of mine once, in the presence of his sweetheart as well as that of other persons, exclaimed: "Long live Communism!" he's going to have to beg her forgiveness. I intend to soften this obligation, which he acknowledges, by accompanying him on his visit, for he suffers from timidity. Many high-spirited folk lack steadfastness of spirit, plenty of the proud are deficient in pride, and not few among the weak want the strength of soul to acknowledge their weakness. Often, in consequence, the weak will act strong, the vexed delighted, the insulted proud, and the vain humble: take me, for example, who out of sheer vanity never cast a glance in the mirror, for I find the mirror impertinent and rude. It's not out of the question that I will address myself to a representative of the fair sex in the form of a letter in which I shall affirm, above all else, that I am full of good intentions, but perhaps it is better to affirm nothing at all. People might suppose I've a low opinion of myself. On my table lie magazines. How could someone they name as honorary subscriber be a person of little worth? Often I receive entire bundles of letters, which clearly demonstrates that here and there I'm very much in people's thoughts. If I ever make a visit where visits have significance, I'd do it quite cozily, with respect, and, as for the rest, as if I had one of my hands in my coat pocket, that is, a touch woodenly. For it's amusing to appear somewhat awkward, I mean to say, there's something beautiful about it. Poor Robber, I'm neglecting you completely. It's said he likes to eat semolina pudding, and worships anyone who fries him up some nice Rösti potatoes. Admittedly this is slander on my part, but with a person like this, why split hairs? Now something about that deceased widow. Across from me stands a house whose façade is quite simply a poem. French troops who marched into our city in 1798 beheld the countenance of this house, provided they took the trouble or had the time to notice it.

But it's disgraceful how absentminded I am! After all, the Robber once encountered, in the pale November woods, after having put in an appearance at a book-printing shop and chatted a while with its owner, the Henri Rousseau woman, dressed all in brown. Stricken, he froze before her. Through his head raced the thought that he had once, years earlier, on the occasion of a railroad journey in the middle of the night, said in an, as it were, express-train manner to a woman traveling with him: "I'm on my way to Milan." Precisely in this way he now thought with lightning-swift rapidity of the chocolate bars you can buy in grocery shops. Children like to eat them, and he too, our Monsieur Robber, still enjoyed consuming this comestible from time to time, as though the love of chocolate bars and the like were among the duties implicit in the rank of Robber. "No lies!" the brown-clad lady now opened her bewitching mouth. It's interesting, don't you think, this bewitching mouth, and she went on: "You're always trying to convince your fellow men, who wish to make something useful of you, that you lack what is important for life and its leisures. But are you really lacking this essential thing? No. You have it. You just don't place any value on it, insist on finding it burdensome. Your entire life you've been ignoring a possession." "I have no possession," I replied, "that I wouldn't gladly put to use." "You most certainly do have one, but you're hopelessly indolent. Hundreds of accusations, unjustified or reasonable, trail along behind you like a lengthy serpent or the very serious train of a dress. Yet you feel nothing." "Most esteemed, beloved Henri Rousseau woman, you are mistaken, I am no more than what I am, have no more than what I have, and what I have and have not are matters I alone am best in a position to judge. Perhaps the whims of fortune ought to have made me a cowboy, though, to be sure, I'm a terrible weakling." The lady replied: "You are too sluggish even to consider that you and your talents could perhaps make someone very happy." He, however, denied this. "No, I'm not too sluggish for such a thought, but I lack the implement by means of which happiness is inspired," and he walked on. The woods seemed to him furious at his refusal to believe the assurances of the lady in brown. "It's all a matter of faith," said this somber creature. "Are you not, in a word, willful?" "Why do you insist absolutely on my having a thing I distinctly feel I lack?" "But you can't possibly have misplaced it. You can't simply have lost it at some point or other." "Certainly not. Something I never had cannot possibly have left me. Nor can I have sold it or given it away, and there is nothing in me that I've neglected. My talents have been put to industrious use, please be so good as to believe this." "I'll never believe a word you say!" She stuck right at the heels of the so delicate one. She'd simply gotten it into her head to consider him a disavower of a portion of his abilities, and no assurances to the contrary could change her opinion that he was destroying himself, wantonly laying waste to his own most precious concerns, treating himself wretchedly. "I manage a hotel," she announced at a turn in the path. The trees smiled at this frank declaration. The Robber, blushing, resembled a rose, and the woman was like a judge -- if female judges, in the zeal of their unwillingness to dispense with passing judgments, were incapable of going astray. "Are you one of those petty souls who quiver with nervousness at the least indication that some little cranny or crack isn't being put to good social use? It's a shame this narrow-mindedness has become so widespread. You can see I'm satisfied with myself. Can this cause you dissatisfaction?" "This contentment of yours is nothing more than a trick drenched with laboriousness. I'll say it to your face: you are unhappy. It's just that you are always careful to feign happiness." "This care is so sweet it makes me happy." "You are not fulfilling your obligations as a member of society." She who said this had the darkest eyes; no wonder she spoke so darkly, so severely. "Have you a doctorate?" the other, fleeing, inquired. The Robber fled like a girl before the woman in brown. This was in November. The entire countryside lay stiff with cold. It was difficult to believe in the existence of warm rooms, and so now this confectionery-nibbler, this aficionado of chocolate bars, fled before the custodian of the public weal, who, however, in large part, had her own good in mind. "Once I attended a colossal Beethoven concert. The price of admission resembled in its minuteness a monumental edifice. A princess sat beside me in the concert hall." "That was all once upon a time." "But surely, with your kind permission, it may be allowed to live on within me, as a memory?" "A public menace is what you are. You owe me tenderness, affection. In the name of civilization, it is your duty to believe you are, as it were, made for me. I can see you have husbandly virtues. You appear to possess a strong back. Your shoulders are broad." This he denied, remarking softly: "Nothing frailer by way of shoulders was ever created." "You are a Hercules." "It merely seems so." And a shirker like this went about in robber's garb. In his belt he wore a dagger. His trousers were wide and pale blue. A sash hung across his slender frame. Hat and hair embodied the principle of intrepidity. The shirt was frilled with lace. The coat, admittedly, was rather threadbare, but all the same edged in fur. The color of this garment was a none-too-green green. This green probably looked marvelous in the snow. The eyes, blue, glanced about. There was, so to speak, something blond about these eyes, which emphatically claimed brotherhood with the cheeks. This assertion proved to be nothing but the truth. The pistol he held in his hand laughed at its owner. It appeared to have a merely decorative function. He resembled the product of a watercolor painter. "Don't be so hard on me" he bade his assailant. She had purchased Schlatter's book on paths appropriate for women and studied it with diligence. And she loved him, but the Robber couldn't get beyond Edith. Always she stood there, high up above him, inexpressibly dear to him. And now to Rathenau.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Robber by Robert Walser. Copyright © 1986 by Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag.
Translation copyright © 2000 University of Nebraska Press. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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The Robber

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