Telegrams of the Soul by Peter Altenberg Read Free Book Online

C2-42531, Schubert, The Trout.
    One day she didn’t come any more.
    The song survived like a present from her.
    Autumn came, and the esplanade was lightly paved with scattered yellow leaves.
    And then they shelved the gramophone in the watchmaker’s shop since it no longer paid to keep it.

A Real True Relationship
    She sat by the immense ground floor window that almost reached down to the ground of the dusty, gray, miserable country lane, and sewed blouses on a lovely, glittering sewing machine from morning to night. Her eyes wore an expression of despair. But she herself was not aware of it. She sewed, sewed and sewed.
    She was very slender, not made for the storm of life that shakes and sweeps away souls and bodies. In the evening she ate the cold vegetables from her midday meal. All this I saw through the immense ground floor window and she saw that I saw it all.
    One evening she stood leaning against the front door of the house. And she said to me: “I’ve taken a job in a blouse factory in Mariahilf, so I won’t have to work on my own any longer in this lonely room.”
    And I thought: “Country lane, country lane, you’ve lost your sparkle, you’ve lost your riches.
    â€œA person’s got to get ahead in life, isn’t that so?” she said, “and by the way, I’ve always watched you walk by my window, three times a day. Three times a day you walked by, that’s right. But in Mariahilf there’ll be forty girls, and we’ll be able to chatter and work like in an anthill—.”
    â€œListen, Miss, I’ll still walk three times past your window when you won’t be seated there anymore—.”
    â€œWill you really?!? Well, then in a way I’ll still be there too, I’ll be back home just like before—.”
    â€œMaybe you could leave your glittering little sewing machine at the window and with it one of your unfinished blouses—.”
    â€œSure, why not, I will—.”
    That was the only real true relationship I ever had with a female soul in my entire uneventful life—.
    Country lane, gray, dusty country lane, so now you’ve lost your sparkle, you’ve lost your riches—. And she, she’s going to work now, going out into the world—!

October Sunday
    A steamy sun-drenched quiet afternoon. I sit and write. Somebody knocks at the door. “Please do not disturb me, I must be alone!”
    â€œGee, Peter, I really just wanted to chitchat with you, it’s so boring today, do you have office hours, are you poetizing?”
    â€œWhy the irony? Yes, I’m poetizing.”
    â€œBut Peter, you’re not some kind of manual laborer, thank God you’ve got no steady job, you can go right back to composing your poetry undisturbed in two hours when I’m gone!?”
    â€œJust try it some time, you don’t seem to understand much about this kind of work!”
    â€œThat’s a new one, a poet who keeps office hours and refuses to receive a friend who’d just like to pleasantly chitchat with him. It’s not like your impressions are going to evaporate away! Or are they?!”
    â€œWould you ever think of troubling a lawyer, a doctor, a bank director while he was engaged in his work?!”
    â€œEngaged in his work, Peter, come off it, yours isn’t work in the ordinary sense of the word, it’s a distraction, an amusement!”
    â€œDo you wish to impede my distraction, my amusement with your pleasant chitchat ?!”
    â€œSee you ’round, Peter, you’re downright ungrateful to your admirers, but nobody takes you seriously, thank God. Adieu. Poet! I don’t want to be the cause of the world’s missing out on something! So long.”

Fellow Man
    No one man can abide another, in matters big or small, he just can’t do it, that is his eternally unspoken tragedy. He can’t give the reasons, which is why he must keep it to himself. That