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17 July 1955
Turnfest in Zurich. You could get the impression that the whole city is tipsy. Young boys, barefoot and yodeling, saunter down the Bahnhofstrasse, bumping into women and making clumsy jokes. Alcohol seems to release a tendency for clowning and childish masquerade among us Swiss, as well as for enjoyment of carnival knickknacks and kitsch: Tyrolean hats, stuffed dolls, miniature beer steins and the like; it's depressing, and no consolation that this lack of taste has grown to an international epidemic.
Over the deep green landscape, lush from the rains, a milky blue sky; between Zurich and Wil torn strands of fog trail down to earth. The train is half empty. In Gossau Robert asked peevishly where we were going, and I told him: St. Margarethen. He grew quiet and brooded over what I had planned for him. Finally he asked: “Do we want to have breakfast there?” Yes, of course, I was hungry, too. As we ate in the train station cafeteria the conversation proceeds with difficulty.
Then we made a steep climb through the woods toward Walzenhausen, paused at romantic sites along the stream, and started discussing Tolstoy's Resurrection. This is an endless and fruitful subject. We agree that this mature work written at the end of the 19th century under the burden of a youthful sin (as a young officer he had seduced a servant of his aunt's and then abandoned her to misery). It belongs to the sacred books of humanity. I remind Robert of the wonderful scene where Count Nekhlyudov tells Maslova, who's waiting for the transport to Siberia, that her pardon has been denied. It's full of inner tension. But when the guard tells him that she's being returned to prison from hospital because she had an affair with the army doctor his feelings cool. He greets her coldly and she blushes because she guesses the reason for his mood. Later the Count will learn that she strongly resisted many advances by the doctor, and so is innocent. The count's struggle with his demons is one of the many linked insights in this novel. Robert mentions the schnapps-drinking laborer on the train the Count is taking to Siberia, who says to him and the other third-class passengers, referring to their disapproving looks: "Of course, when I drink everyone sees it, but when I work, no one does."
Perhaps to agitate me Robert mentions the prostitutes, of whom Maslova is one, disparagingly, in that he approves of the harshness of the English who a few days ago hanged a barmaid who had shot her cheating lover: strict values should always be demanded from women. I reply that Tolstoy hadn't judged her as harshly as Robert had: for the former prostitute Maslova, out of genuine love made the greatest sacrifice, in that she married Vladimir Ivanovitch, whom she didn't love, to give the Count his freedom. We continued in this vein for a time, as well as discussing Tolstoy's citation of Thoreau's remark about how every honest citizen in a slave state should sit in prison.
The dog-day heat gradually began to affect Robert, as he walked more and more slowly, and seemed to wrap himself in silence. Then suddenly he stopped and almost collapsed. He grumbled that he had bad cramps in both his legs, but he didn't want to rest. He waves his arms furiously, as though defending himself. He tried some knee-bends, and made unassisted walking motions to the left and right. I didn't dare help him. As we neared Wolfhalden the cramps returned even worse, so that he himself recommended that we look for a bus stop of train station. I asked an old lady watching from a weaver's where we might find a bus or train, indicating that my friend was a bit shaky on his feet. Robert mumbled a curse as the woman showed us a path to Rheineck. Calming as we descended he said "Sometimes it's valuable to be friendly to people.”
Lunch in the Ochsen in Rheineck. The beer makes us both sleepy. We doze until the arrival of the train and then in the compartment. Is his condition worse than I had thought? I'm overcome with sorrow. His words of departure: “Have you seen the heavenly colors of the Bodensee?”