I was almost ready to keel over.
“If only it had never crossed my mind to let on that a new novel was budding and blossoming!” a voice full of despair cried out within me.
My vexation was as great as my shame. Only by overcoming a kind of horror did I still dare now and then to show my face in the houses whose conveniences and hospitalities had once enchanted me.
To my publisher, estimable from every point of view, I had become nothing less than the bull’s-eye in the cross-hairs of the highest-caliber worries. Whenever I sat in his office he looked at me steadily, sadly, and deeply crestfallen as though I were a horrible child. Anyone can easily understand how maddening that was.
To the most estimable person in the world I had become the object of melancholy meditations.
Kindly, despondently, in a soft, still, graveside voice as though talking about matters irredeemably hopeless, he asked:
“How’s your new high-caliber novel coming?”
“It’s making progress, slowly; it’s coming along,” I tonelessly answered.
Not even I believed what I was saying, and the most estimable of persons believed it just as little as I did. His smile was tired, flat, and full of resignation.
Those and suchlike smiles are smiled only by someone who wants to convey that he has decided to forego everything splendid in the world.
One time he said:
“If you aren’t bringing me your new successful novel then there’s little or no point in coming to see me at all. The sight of a novelist who, instead of actually delivering his new capacious novel, only ever promises to deliver it, pains me, and for this reason I would ask you to put off visiting my office until you are in a position to lay your new and good novel on my desk.”
I was shattered.
“Oh, if only I had never let on that a new, respectable novel was arising within me! Alas, that it ever decided to cross my mind to promise what I could not deliver and lay on the table! If only I had nevermore given anyone to understand that a novel as beautiful as it is exciting and long-winded would be in the offing and presumably available in bookstores rather soon!”
This I cried out loud, this was my lament. I felt reduced to nothing.
How abundantly I had come to know the misery it is a novel-writer’s lot to experience when he more faithfully promises to deliver his new, astounding, and gripping novel than he in fact truly puts it on the table and delivers it, who lets on about it and holds out the prospect of it more than he writes it.
I could no longer show my face in public among the estimable people who are in the habit of asking a novelist about his new novel. But I soon brought this oppressive, lamentable condition to a sudden end by one day so to speak scramming and hitting the road.
1918
THE LETTER
WITH A letter in my pocket that the mailman had brought me and that I had not had the courage to open, I walked with slow, deliberate footsteps up the mountain into the forest. The day was like a charming prince dressed in blue. Everywhere, it chirped and blossomed and bloomed and was green and fragrant. The world looked as though it could only have been created for tenderness, friendship, and love. The blue sky was like a kindly eye, the gentle wind a loving caress. The woods were thicker and darker and soon brighter again, and the green was so fresh and new, so sweet. Then I stopped on the clean, yellowish path, pulled out the letter, broke the seal, and read the following:
“She who feels compelled to tell you that your letter surprised her more than it pleased her does not desire you to write to her again; she is amazed that you found the courage to permit yourself such familiarity even once, and she hopes that with this act of bold, foolhardy recklessness the matter will be permitted to rest once and for all. Has she ever once given you any sign that could possibly have been interpreted to mean that she wished to learn what you felt for her? Uninteresting as they appear to her, the secrets of your heart leave her utterly cold; she possesses not the slightest understanding for the outpourings of a love that means nothing to her, and thus she begs you to let yourself be guided by the knowledge of how good a reason you have to keep an appropriate distance from the sender of this letter. In relationships that are destined to remain on a solely respectable level, every warmth, you will surely agree, must remain categorically forbidden.”
I slowly refolded the letter containing such sad and demoralizing tidings, and while doing so I cried out: “How good and friendly and sweet you are, Nature! Your earth, your meadows and forests, how beautiful they are! And, God in Heaven, how hard your people are.”
I was shaken, and never before had the woods seemed as beautiful to me as they seemed at that moment.
1918
THE ITALIAN NOVELLA
I HAVE strong cause to doubt if readers will enjoy a story like this about two people, two little people, namely a charming nice young woman and an honest good and in his own way at least just as nice young man who enjoyed the most lovely and heartfelt relations of friendship with each other. The tender and passionate love they felt, each for the other, was like the summer sun in terms of heat and like decembral snow in terms of purity and chastity. Their kind mutual intimacy seemed unshakable, and their fiery, innocent inclination toward each other grew from day to day like a wonderful plant rich in color and as rich in perfume. Nothing seemed able to disturb this very sweetest of conditions and very most beautiful trust, and everything would have been nice and perfect if only the honest good dear and young man were not deeply familiar with the Italian novella. His precise knowledge of the beauty, splendor, and magnificence of the Italian novella turned him, however, as the perceptive reader will soon see, into a real numskull, temporarily robbed him of half his healthy common sense, and caused, forced, and necessitated him one day, morning, or evening, at eight, two, or seven o’clock, to say to his beloved in a dull voice, “Hey, listen, I have something to tell you, something that has oppressed, plagued, and tormented me for the longest time, something that will make perhaps both of us unhappy. I cannot keep it from you — I must, I must tell you. Gather up all your courage and fortitude. It may happen that these dreadful and frightful tidings will kill you. Oh, I want to give myself a thousand resounding slaps on the face and tear out my hair.” The poor girl fearfully cried out, “You’ve never been like this before. What is torturing you and racking you with pain? What is this dreadfulness that you have kept secret from me until now and now have to confide in me? Out with your words on the spot, so that I may know what there is to fear and what there is still, somehow, to hope. I do not lack the courage to endure what is most difficult and bear what is most extreme.”—She who spoke these words trembled throughout her whole body, of course, with fear, and her unease spread a deathly pallor over all the charms of her face, otherwise so fresh and pretty. “Listen and learn,” the young man said, “that I am alas only too thoroughly expert in the Italian novella, and that precisely this knowledge is our undoing.”—“What do you mean, for God’s sake?” asked the pitiful young woman, “How is it possible that education and knowledge could make us miserable and destroy our happiness?” At which point it pleased him to reply: “Because the style of the Italian novella is unique in its beauty and vitality, and because our love has no such style to show for itself. This thought makes me miserable, and I am no longer able to believe in any happiness.” Both of the good young people let their heads, their little heads, hang down for apx. 10 minutes or a bit longer, and were completely taken aback and adrift. But little by little they regained their composure and their lost faith and they returned to their senses. They picked themselves up from their mournful and dispirited state, looked each other affectionately in the eye, smiled, held hands, cuddled up close, were happier and friendlier than ever before, and said, “We want to take joy and pleasure in each other, now as before, despite all the style and splendor of the Italian novella, and tenderly love each other as we once did. We want to be modestly satisfied and not worry about any exemplary models that could only rob us of our own tastes and natural enjoyment. To be bound to each other simply and truly and be warm and good is better than the most beautiful, distinguished style, which can go hang as far as we’re concerned, right?” With these merry words they kissed each other in the most heartfelt way, laughed at their laughable dejection, and were once again satisfied.