The Storyteller by Walter Benjamin Read Free Book Online

tables in the thicket, were served. Incidentally, there were few of them. Most had been prudent enough to bring a woman with them in order to be able to transform the melancholy of a Spanish song into the rhythms of their stride and their shoulders.
    Schinzinger and his partner had no such avenue of escape. How is it that they had come to be there in the first place? They had barely been sitting opposite each other for five minutes when Schinzinger raised this very question. Not that he had other, let alone better plans. He was a man in his fifties and the disreputable quarters around the city’s harbour no longer presented either a mystery or an attraction to him. This much, however, appeared probable: had they – he and G – sat at separate tables at opposite ends of the city, they would have been more comfortable. He had managed to laboriously prolong their consultation regarding the choice of Mavrodaphne, but their conversation soon deteriorated.
    â€˜Greek wine? Well, as you wish.’ This was the last thing that G said. Then, after an unusually short pause: ‘Do you know Wilhelmshaven?’ Suddenly Schinzinger felt as though he had sojourned for an eternity in this town, with its ugly dockworkers’ barracks, cranes and long, straight, desolate terraces, only to become acquainted with the young happiness that the man opposite him was able to draw in these dreary surroundings from his marriage to Elsbeth.
    â€˜A few weeks later’, G continued, ‘our afternoon class in mechanical engineering had been moved on board the Olga , which was alleged to be the most modern oil tanker in the German navy. Our lesson plan left something to be desired. It had not been taken into account that the examiner’s commission of the North German Boiler Surveillance Association was also going to be on board in order to inspect the ship inthe name of the Stern insurance firm. The chief engineer of the commission directed the procedures while our class stood waiting at the stern. The lesson, which we had whiled away by laughing and chatting, was drawing to a close when we heard voices from the midship. Some movement ensued and we realised that something had happened. I, who at the time seized every opportunity to try out my technical skills, ran towards the chief machine operator. Yes – there had indeed been an incident.’
    â€”
    Translated by Sebastian Truskolaski .
    Fragment written c. 1925; unpublished in Benjamin’s lifetime. Final paragraph thought to have been lost. Gesammelte Schriften VII , 644–6.

CHAPTER 23
Sketched into Mobile Dust
Novella

    Garden of Passion (Garten der Leidenschaft) , 1913.
    T here he sat. He always sat there around this time. But not like this. Today the unmovable one, who customarily stared off into the distance, looked idly about himself. Yet it did not appear to make a difference, for he saw nothing here either. But the mahogany cane with the silver knob did not lie beside him, perched on the edge of the bench as it usually did; he held it, directed it. It slid across the sand: O , and I thought of a fruit; L , and I halted; Y , and I felt embarrassed, as though I’d been caught doing something forbidden. I saw that he wrote the thing not as someone who wishes to be read. Rather, thesigns interwove, as if each one wanted to incorporate the next: there followed – in nigh on the same spot as before – MPIA , and the first marks had already begun to vanish as the last ones emerged. I came closer. This too did not cause him to look up – or should I say awaken? – so accustomed was he to my presence. ‘Calculating again, are you?’ I asked, without letting on that I had been watching him. I knew that his ruminations concerned imaginary budgets for distant journeys, journeys that extended as far as Samarkand or Iceland but which he never undertook. Had he ever left the country at all? Aside from that secret journey, of course,