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5 February 1950
In between unpleasant stormy and rainy days, a spring-like, mild Sunday. That morning we walk about in the Villenquartier des Rosenbergs (in the village of Rotmonten), in the afternoon on the Drei Linden and on the summit of Notkersegg; below us, sometimes wrapped in fog, St. Gallen.
In a confectioner’s Robert rolls a shapeless cigarette that starts a little fire when it’s lit. A couple nearby snickers; they think he’s a hick. He says that in the sanitarium he’s now sorting and untying string for the Post Office. This work is all right with him; he’ll take what comes.
Remarkable discussion of virtue and vice. Robert opines: “People are more proud of their vices than of their virtues, especially when they’re young. I was like that in Zurich when I associated with all sorts of loose, rude guys, quit my job for poetry, and wrote Fritz Kocher’s Aufsätze.”
I told Robert I’d seen an amateur production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It in Waedenswil. “Waedenswil? That’s a pleasant memory for me. You know about it from Der Gehülfe, where I also wrote about my position as a clerk in an elastics factory in Winterthur. That only lasted a couple of weeks, but before I took the position in Wadenswil I left to spend eight weeks in boot camp.”
Later the conversation shifted to Bern. Robert asked who I knew there, and I recalled two or three names; most of the time I had been there was during military service. With whom had Robert associated in Bern? He turned his head to me and said softly “With myself.”