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Good Friday 1955
In March, troubling reports about Robert. He had to be taken to the hospital because of a flu-like lung inflammation. High fever and bloody sputum; the fever was quickly reduced with penicillin, then there was a rapid recurrence with another fever. The doctor recommended that our walks stay close to the sanitarium.
I'm astonished, then, to see Robert waiting at the train station. He agrees with a smile to a more leisurely pace than usual. We climbed slowly to the forest and the ruins that we visited last time; he likes this route. On the way up he breathes heavily; but contrary to his custom he smokes two cigarettes during our three-hour walk. When I mention that I've recently been invited to Warsaw, Moscow, Irkutsk, and Peking, we discover that Dostoyevsky's House of the Dead is among our mutual favorites. With emotion, Robert recalls the episode in which the usually rough prisoners take the eagle that has lived among them for months because of a crippled wing, throw it over the wall, and watch it longingly as it hops away over the autumn steppes.
Then he told me that he had recently read with great enjoyment the four-volume [offiziersroman] Im Eckfenster by the Hamburg sailor and hotelier Friedrich Gerstäkker, as well as Captain Grant’s Children by Jules Verne. My news, that a young English poet, Christopher Middleton, a lecturer in London, had translated Robert's stories Spaziergang and Kleist in Thun into English with great sensitivity, was met with “So, so!”
Before heading for home I spoke to Dr. Steiner, who said he had suggested Robert not stray far from the sanitarium. Robert had nonetheless insisted on meeting me at the train station. The condition of his heart was such, however, that strenuous exercise could bring on a heart attack. I asked if Robert had been more friendly toward the nurses during his illness than he was toward the other staff and patients. No, he answered, mostly Robert just turned to the wall and refused all offers of fruit juice. In his opinion, water was good enough.