“I would so dearly love to be born anew, to start living all over again, to be very small and young so as to start life once more from the beginning, but then I would like to live quite differently than before. I would like to be an inconspicuous, poor woman, to be good and gentle and love my fellow human beings so as to be loved by them in return and be welcome everywhere I go. And my joie de vivre should not be of such a sorrowful bent. It should be quite, quite different. My God, I am so unhappy to be dying because I would so love to be walking better paths. You understand, don’t you, and you respect me a little, and you care for me a little bit too. Everyone despises and abhors me, mocks me and wishes for bad things to befall me. My great wealth! What should I do with it now, what good comfort does it offer me? I should like to give you a million of your own! But what would I be giving you? I should like to give you far, far more than that. I should like to make you happy, but I can’t see with what. I am very fond of you, and that is possibly enough for you, for I noticed long ago that you are easily contented. It isn’t possessions that give you joy. You too have honor, and you take meticulous care to preserve it. So let me at least say to you that your presence brings me great joy. I thank you for having been willing to interact with me a little, and for being friendly to me from time to time.” She spoke these words to me in her room one night. I didn’t quite know what to say in response, and so I drew the conversation to other matters.
I still remember one New Year’s Eve when I stood together with Frau Scheer at the open window. Everything outdoors was swathed in thick fog. We were listening to the New Year’s bells. The following autumn she fell ill, and the doctors recommended an operation. Forced to make a decision, she entered the clinic from which she never returned. She left no testament. All attempts to look for one turned up nothing. Her estate was divided among her relatives. As for myself, I soon left town. I felt the urge to revisit my distant homeland, the sight of which I’d had to do without for so many years.
1915
The Millionairess
In her five-room apartment there lived, all alone, a wealthy lady. I’m saying “lady,” but this woman didn’t deserve to be called a lady, the poor thing. She ran about all disheveled, and her neighbors referred to her as a Gypsy or witch. Her own person appeared to her to have no value, and she took no pleasure in life. Often she didn’t even bother to comb her hair or wash, and on top of this she wore shoddy old clothes, this is how greatly it pleased her to neglect herself. She was wealthy, she might have lived like a queen, but she had no taste for luxury, nor did she have the time. Rich as she was, she was the poorest of women. She had to pass her days and evenings all alone. Not a single person, with the possible exception of Emma, her former maid, kept her company. She was on bad terms with every one of her relatives. She might still get an occasional visit from Mrs. Snubnose, wife of the police commissioner, but otherwise no one came to call. She struck people as repugnant because she walked around looking like a beggar woman; they called her a skinflint, and indeed she was stingy. Stinginess had become a passion of hers. She had no children. And so stinginess became her child. Stinginess is an unattractive child, not a sweet one. Truly not. But a person does have to have something or other to hug and caress. As she sat alone like that in her joyless room in the still of night, this poor rich lady often found herself obliged to weep into her handkerchief. The tears she wept had more honorable intentions toward her than did anyone else. Otherwise this woman was universally hated and betrayed. The pain she felt within her soul was the single upright friend she had. Otherwise she had neither friend nor confidante, nor a son, nor a daughter. In vain did she long for a son who would have comforted her in his childish way. Her living room was not a room for living, it was an office, overloaded with business papers, and in her bedroom stood the iron safe filled with gold and jewels. Verily: a sinister and sad room for a woman to be sleeping in! I made the acquaintance of this woman and found her exceedingly interesting. I told her my life story, and she told me hers. Soon thereafter she died. She left behind several million. Her heirs came and threw themselves upon their inheritance. Poor millionairess! In the city where she lived, there are many, many poor little children who do not even have enough to eat. What a strange world this is we live in.
1914 (?)
A Homecoming in the Snow
For several years I lived there, getting by as best I could. I was in no way lacking in stimuli, encouragement, and the like. At times, to be sure, I suffered greatly, engaged in arduous struggles, but nonetheless always believed there was something lovely about struggling. I would never have wanted things to be different. Everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve always found myself from time to time in serious quandaries. Startling quantities of good fortune were never something I longed to receive. Never did I wish to have it better than numerous others. At no time did I attempt to deny to myself that worries have an educational effect and that distress, being disagreeable, a hindrance, strengthens a person’s character.
If I make so bold as to remark that during my time there I experienced for the most part no success at all with any of my at least at times ardently pursued endeavors, I am in no way maligning the region of which I speak, for I have no cause to do so. I am assuredly permitted to say that while the favor I found there gave me genuine pleasure, the failures I experienced were never able to sully or take away my sense of joyous equanimity. In the most pleasant way possible, industriousness was demanded of me, and it is only fitting that I openly acknowledge the intelligent, kind people I had the privilege of consorting with, who nobly and plainly drew my attention to matters of the utmost significance. I hope to be giving voice to something that is beyond all doubt universally comprehensible when I declare myself of the opinion that ingratitude is unattractive and at the same time idiotic — indeed it is a curse of the highest order. It was uncommonly satisfying for me — uplifting, even — that several people there, whose estimable images will remain forever fixed in my memory, thought me talented and therefore chose to reiterate their belief again and again that I might be capable of something, and that I was seen as possessing the drive to step out of my own being and onto the brightly lit stage to seek fulfillment in the joyful, magnanimous act of writing.
Perhaps these people I’m remembering thought almost too highly of me in their kindness and amiability — by which, admittedly, I appear to be putting myself down all too vigorously, which would be neither natural nor fitting. Above all else, though, I would like to demonstrate how greatly I aspire to be able to recognize that there is no more desirable pleasure in life than reaping acknowledgment and saying yes to the various benevolent phenomena one has been permitted to see and experience. To comment in any way other than with the greatest meticulousness and reverence on the capitals and squares where the most various meanings and the best achievements of a nation come together from all surrounding regions as if for a grand national assembly must, no doubt, necessarily appear impossible to any cautious thinker.