Selected Stories by Robert Walser Read Free Book Online Page B

disclosed, but here all my faults and
     inadequacies seem to be forgiven me: I love her. It is my joy, that I may love her
     and often despair because of her. She gets me to carry her gloves and pink silk sunshade
     when it is summer; and in winter I am allowed to trot after her in the deep snow,
     carrying her skates. I do not understand love, but feel it. Good and evil are nothing
     compared with love, which knows nothing other than or outside of love. How should
     I express it: worthless and empty as I otherwise am, not everything is lost, for I
     really am capable of faithful love, although I could have ample scope for infidelity.
     I go with her in the sunshine, under the blue sky, in a boat, which I row forward,
     and keep on smiling at her, while she seems to be bored. Yes, I am a very boring person.
     Her mother has a small, seedy, rather ill-reputed workingman’s bar, where I can spend
     whole Sundays on end, sitting, saying nothing, smiling at her. Sometimes, too, her
     face comes down to mine so as to let me press a kiss on her mouth. She has a sweet,
     sweet face. On her cheek there is the scar of an old scratch, which makes her mouth
     twist a little, but sweetly. She has very small eyes, which twinkle at you craftily
     as if to say: “I’ll show you a thing or two!” Often she sits beside me on the shabby,
     hard sofa, and whispers in my ear that it really is lovely to be engaged. I seldom
     know what to say to her, for I am always afraid that it would not be opportune; so
     I am just silent and yet want badly to say something to her. Once she extended to
     my lips her small, fragrant ear: Hadn’t I got anything to say, something that could
     only be whispered? I said, trembling, that I did not think so, and then she boxed
     my ears and laughed as well, but not in a friendly way, no, coldly. She does not get
     on well with her mother and her little sister, and will not let me be kind to her
     sister. Her mother has a nose that is red from drinking, and she is a lively little
     woman, who likes to sit at the table with the men. But my fiancée sits with the men,
     too. Once she said to me, in a quiet voice: “I’m not chaste any more”; her tone was
     quite natural, and I had no objection to make. What could I possibly have had to say?
     With other girls I am brisk, and am even witty in my speech; but with her I sit dumbly
     and look at her and follow each of her movements with my eyes. Each time I sit there
     until the bar has to close, or even longer, till she packs me off home. When the daughter
     is not there, the mother comes to sit at my table and tries to make me think of her.
     I fend it off with a hand and I smile. The mother hates her daughter, and it is obvious
     that they hate each other, for each obstructs the other’s intentions. Each wants a
     husband and each grudges the husband to the other. When I am sitting, evenings, on
     the sofa, all the people who come to the bar notice that I am the bridegroom-to-be,
     and everyone has a friendly word for me, but I really could not care. Beside me, the
     little sister, who is still at school, reads in her books, or she does big tall letters
     in her writing book, and always she passes it across to me, so that I can look at
     what she has done. I have never taken any notice, normally, of such little creatures,
     and now all at once I understand how interesting every little growing creature is.
     It is because of my love for the other one. An honest love makes one better and more
     alert. In winter she tells me: “It will be lovely in spring when we can walk together
     along the garden paths”; and in spring she tells me: “It is boring with you.” She
     wants to live in a big town when she is married, because she wants to get something
     out of life. The theaters and fancy-dress balls, beautiful costumes, wine, laughing
     conversation, gay exciting people, that is what she loves, that is what she longs
     for. I long for it too, as a matter of