“It is far rather a pleasure for me,” said the beautiful woman happily. “But, in reference to your supposition, I must prepare you for a disappointment. I have never been an actress.”
At this I felt moved to say: “Not long ago I came into this region out of cold, forlorn, and narrow circumstances, inwardly sick, completely without faith, without confidence or trust, without any finer sort of hope, a stranger to the world and to myself, and hostile to both. Timidity and mistrust took me prisoner and accompanied my every step. Then, little by little, I lost my ignoble, ugly prejudices. Here I breathed again more quiet and free — and became again a better, warmer, and happier man. The terrors which filled my soul I saw gradually vanish; misery and emptiness in my heart and my hopefulness were slowly transformed into gay content and into a pleasant, lively sympathy, which I learned to feel anew. I was dead, and now it is as if someone had raised me up and set me on my way. Where I thought I must meet with much that is repulsive, hard, and disquieting, I encounter charm and goodness, I find all that is docile, familiar, and good.”
“So much the better,” said the woman, and her face and voice were kind.
As the moment seemed to have come to conclude this conversation, somewhat truculently begun, and to withdraw, I presented my compliments to the woman whom I had taken for an actress, but who was now unfortunately a great and famous actress no longer, as she herself had found it necessary to protest, with, I should add, an exquisite and very scrupulous courtesy, bowed to her and quietly, as if nothing had ever happened, walked on my way.
A modest question: An elegant milliner’s under green trees, does this perhaps by now arouse exceptional interest and evoke possibly a little if any applause?
I firmly believe it does, and so I dare to communicate the most humble observation, that as I walked and marched along on the most beautiful of roads a somewhat foolish, juvenile, and loud shout of joy burst from my throat, a throat which did not itself consider this, or anything like it, possible. What did I see and discover that was new, astounding, and beautiful? Oh, quite simply the above-mentioned milliner’s and fashion salon. Paris and St. Petersburg, Bucharest and Milan, London and Berlin, all that is elegant, naughty, and metropolitan, drew close to me, emerged before me, to fascinate and to enchant me. But in the capitals of the world one misses the green and luscious embellishments of trees, the embellishment and beneficence of friendly fields and many delicate little leaves and, last but not least, the sweet fragrance of flowers, and this I had here. “All this,” so I proposed to myself as I stood there, “I shall certainly soon write down in a piece or sort of fantasy, which I shall entitle “The Walk.” Especially this ladies’ hat shop may not be omitted. Otherwise, a most picturesque charm would be missing from the piece, and this lack I shall know as well to avoid as to circumvent and render impossible.” The feathers, ribbons, artificial fruits and flowers on the nice quaint hats were to me almost as attractive and homely as nature herself, who, with her natural green, with her natural colors, framed and so delicately enclosed the artificial colors and fantastic shapes of fashion that the milliner’s might have been simply a delightful painting. I rely here, as I said, on the most subtle understanding of the reader, of whom I am honestly afraid. This miserable and cowardly confession is understandable. It is the same with all the more courageous authors.
God! what did I see, likewise under leaves, but a bewitching, dainty, delightful butcher shop, with rose-red pork, beef, and lamb displayed. The butcher was bustling about inside, where his customers stood also. This butcher shop is certainly as well worth a shout as the shop with the hats. Third, a grocer’s might merit a quiet mention. To all sorts of public houses I come later, which is, I think, quite soon enough. With public houses, doubtless one cannot begin late enough in the day, because they produce consequences which everybody knows, knows indeed to satiety. Even the most virtuous person cannot dispute the fact that he is never master of certain improprieties. Luckily, however, one is of course — human, and as such easily pardonable. One simply appeals to the weakness of the system.
Here once again I must take fresh bearings. I assume that I can effect the reorganization and regrouping of forces as well as any field marshal surveying all circumstances and drawing all contingencies and reverses into the net of his, it will be permitted me to say, genius for computation. In the daily papers at present an industrious person can read such things every day, and he notes such expressions as “flank attack.” I have recently come to the conclusion that the art and direction of war is almost as difficult, and requires almost as much patience, as the art of writing, the converse being also true. Writers also, like generals, often make the most laborious preparations before they dare march to the attack and give battle, or, in other words, fling their produce, or a book, into the book market, an action which serves as a challenge and thus vigorously stimulates very forceful counterattacks. Books attract discussions, and these sometimes end in such a fury that the book must die and its writer despair of it all.
I hope no estrangement will ensue if I say that I am writing all these I trust pretty and delicate lines with a quill from the Imperial High Court of Justice. Hence the brevity, pregnancy, and acumen of my language, at certain points well enough perceptible, at which now nobody need wonder any more.
But when shall I come at last to the well-earned banquet with my Frau Aebi? I fear it will take quite a time, as considerable obstacles must first be put aside. Appetite in unstinted abundance has been long enough present.
As I went on my way, like a better sort of tramp, a vagabond and pickpocket, or idler and vagrant of a sort finer than some, past all sorts of gardens planted and stuffed full with placid, contented vegetables, past flowers and fragrance of flowers, past fruit trees and past beansticks and shrubs full of beans, past towering crops, as rye, barley, and wheat, past a wood-yard containing much wood and wood shavings, past juicy grass and past a gently splashing little waterway, rivulet, or stream, past all sorts of people, as choice trade-plying market women, tripping past, and past a clubhouse decoratively hung with banners flying for a celebration, or for joy, and also past many other good-hearted and useful things, past a particularly beautiful and sweet little fairy apple tree, and past God knows what else in the way of feasible things, as, for example, also strawberry bushes and blossoms, or, even better, gracefully past the ripe red strawberries, while all sorts of more or less beautiful and pleasant thoughts continued to preoccupy me, since, when I’m out walking, many notions, flashes of light, and lightning flashes quite of their own accord intrude and interrupt, to be carefully pondered upon, there came a man in my direction, an enormity, a monster, who almost completely darkened my bright and shining road, a tall, lanky beanpole of a fellow, sinister, whom I knew alas only too well, a very curious customer; namely the giant
TOMZACK
In any other place and on any other road but this dear yielding country road I would have expected him. His woeful, gruesome air, his tragic, atrocious appearance, infused me with terror and took every good, bright, and beautiful prospect, all joy and gaiety away from me. Tomzack! It is true, dear reader, is it not, the name alone has the sound of terrible and mournful things? “Why do you persecute me, why need you meet me here in the middle of my road, you miserable creature?” I cried to him; but Tomzack gave me no answer. He turned his great eyes upon me; that is, he looked down from high up on me below; for he surpassed me in length and height by very considerable degrees. Beside him, I felt like a dwarf, or like a poor weak little child. With the greatest of ease the giant could have trodden me underfoot and crushed me. Oh, I knew who he was. For him there was no rest. Restlessly he went up and down in the world. He slept in no soft bed, and could live in no comfortable homely house. He was at home everywhere and nowhere. He had no home country, and of no state was he a citizen. Without motherland and without happiness he was; he had to live completely without love and without human joy. He had sympathy with no man, and with him and his mopping and mowing no man had sympathy. Past, present, and future were to him an insubstantial desert, and life was too small, too tiny, too narrow for him. For him there was nothing which had meaning, and he himself in turn meant something to nobody. Out of his great eyes there broke a glare of grief in overworlds and underworlds. Infinite pain spoke from his slack and weary moments. A hundred thousand years old he seemed to me, and it seemed to me that he must live for eternity, only to be for eternity no living being. He died every instant and yet he could not die. For him there was no grave with flowers on it. I eluded him, and murmured to myself: “Goodbye, keep well nevertheless, friend Tomzack!”