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30 August 1953
For the first time, Robert gave the impression of an old man with dwindling physical strength. The sun's heat made today's Wanderung especially strenuous. We began with the intention of swimming in the Bodensee, but in Rorschach Robert suddenly took another route, toward the mushroom- and fir-scented forest. Then over fields. Up the hill, down the hill, once wading through a deep stream.
At the edge of the woods Robert stopped several times, his left hand cupped at his ear, his head bending forward, sniffing about. I recalled boyhood games playing Indians. Robert spoke to himself, berated the rude motorists, before whom, terrified, he hopped away when we crossed a road, and he made a wide circuit around the yelping barnyard dogs.
But today, what strikes me about him is his heavy, dragging gait, and the frequency with which he falls behind, especially on the steamy asphalt, where he looks like a worn-out peasant with a cigarette butt in his lips and his high-water pants. By midday his face had grown quite red, and several times he pushed his gray felt hat to the side with a sharp gesture.
It's a beautiful, light blue day, gold-green meadows and doe-colored cows, gardens glowing with zinnias, geraniums, and gladioli; there was meadow saffron with its virginal violet petals. Trees full of apples, plums, and pears in blessed abundance. A rainy summer leads to a fruit-rich autumn.
We didn't have much luck with our meal. Our café complet was served by a cute red-cheeked girl, who turned out to be in a bad mood. A crucifix hung above us. From the neighboring kitchen we heard a continuous yelling and screaming between arguing women and children, and above it all was the voice of the cute daughter-waitress. Eventually things quieted down. Only the clatter of pans and china, though the disagreement continued, and then from the kitchen came the murmur of prayers. This is the family that prays the morning prayer.
Later as we walked Robert asked if I had ever written any plays. "The treatment of Nestroy's farce Der Zerissene that I did with Alfred Polgar and that ran for about two dozen peformances in the Zurich Schauspielhaus is the only time that I trespassed in this field. And you? Have you ever tried it?"
"Yes, but not much came of it. For that it needs a hook-nosed character. Think of Schiller!"
He talked about the poet Max Dauthendey, with whom he spent a whole week in Würzburg. Dauthendey's father had been the first portrait photographer in Russia. In Munich Robert had spoken with Frank Wedekind a few times. An interesting man, but strange, full of devilish traps. You wouldn't have wanted to see him on the stage. "Writers take themselves too seriously as actors. Acting is overvalued these days. What's important is what the writer says and how he says it. This whole dance around Max Reinhardt and his crowd is somehow indecent, narcissistic. As for me, I've found third-rate-staged and –acted pieces amusing. The most sophisticated is not always the most agreeable."
For a long time we talked about Sophocles's Oedipus and Hölderlin's adaptation. Robert is fascinated by this play, and considers the sexual relations between mother and son not necessarily repulsive. Something beautiful could come of it, such as Antigone. For social reasons, however, incest must be clearly forbidden. That includes the protection of the immature against the [Erhaltungsgier] and possessiveness of adults.
I tell him about some unusual customs practiced by orthodox Jews. When he asked I told him how one Saturday night in Zurich-Ausserstil I visited the synagogue of an orthodox sect. My companion was the Yiddish poet Laizar Aichenrand, who at the time was an immigrant in Zurich. His youth had been spent as the son of a small-town tailor near the Polish district capital of Lublin, and he's now a tailor himself. Once his father came home terribly depressed because Jew-haters had shaved his beard, and for weeks he didn't dare leave the house, for fear that they'd do something worse. One sabbath evening Aichen and I came a bit late to the synagogue, where headgear for men is required. The prayers and hymns, which began at dusk, had already drawn to a close. But there were still several of the pious in an ecstatic trance in which they, with burning eyes chanted and threw their arms about. Nearby a small group spoke about everyday matters. As we entered the synagogue two boys courteously extended their hands and greeted us: "Shalom."
Like the others we forked a piece of herring out of vinegar in a metal dish. Then we approached a group of men sitting around a wooden table chatting and serving themselves beer and bread. In an adjoining room the women and girls celebrated similarly. As the last celebrants left for home a slender man of about 40 began to complain. In Yiddish he said that he came from Kiev, where he'd been a paper hanger. Then he'd fought in Israel against the British and Arabs, and later he had been recruited by Jewish organizations to smuggle Jews from Hungary and Czechoslovakia to Israel. He'd been caught twice and escaped severe punishment only by fleeing. The papers he used to get around were real with numerous passport stamps and foreign languages. He was talking to a rabbi, a white-haired little man with a youthful complexion, as pink as a piglet. He smiled impishly, but not in an unfriendly way, at the theatrics of his friend who, we learned, wished to leave Switzerland for a kibbutz. You could tell the rabbi was accustomed to this sort of performance. His merry eyes were in stark contrast to the despairing glances that the traveler cast on those around him, and half-curious, half-bored, or mistrustful [dass das Ganze auf eine Schnorrerei herauslaufen wurde, dem Disput zuhörte]. The stranger said the Jews of Zurich had hearts of stone: "No one wants to help, they're only interested in themselves." The rabbi encouraged him about the future: a solution will present itself; no Jews starve in Zurich. With these words his pleasant voice rose, for a Yiddish expression says that the only way to quiet a barking dog is by speaking louder than him. And then, in fact, everyone seemed to grow tired of talking and went out to the dark street, including the poet and I.
We went to a Jewish restaurant for [kalten Karpf]. It wasn't especially cozy there, faceless people in a faceless business. You could smell Zurich's fussy cleanness. I would have preferred some honest eastern European Jewishness. But I heard all sorts of interesting information about customs of the orthodox, at which the western Jews might unjustifiably wrinkle their noses. I was told that during Passover, which commemorates the Jews' escape from Egypt, the head of the family lies comfortable across a chair to suggest the freedom the Jews obtained after their long servitude. The family gathers around their patriarch who tells them of their deliverance. Curious children question him helping to set up a joke on the goy, who asks why Jews may not perform manual labor. He is told "because we're still sore from making bricks in Egypt."
Also unique is the chivalrous custom of many Hasids concerning whether the husband may sleep with his wife on the night of Sabbath (Friday to Saturday): he tosses his cap on his wife's bed. If it isn't thrown back he knows he's welcome, otherwise he sleeps alone. If he neglects this ancient custom, the Rabbi may then declare divorce, if the wife petitions.
"The ancient lawgivers were no dummies" said Robert. "What they aimed at is today set out much too rationally."