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25 May 1944
Robert's sister Lisa died in Bern on January 7. From what I know of him he'd rather bite off his tongue than mention her death. But how she loved him was always in Geschwister Tanner, where the teacher Hedwig, a self-sacrificing altruist, is in Lisa's image.
With some effort I got a day and a half pass to visit Robert. With my unit in Seewis I take part in the morning march on the 7,500 foot paass at Vilan. Bright spring sky. Enchanting carpets of gentian, narcissus, cyclamen, and pinks; among clouds of apple blossoms deep in Seewis. When I returned to the village loaded with a machine gun, the square in front of the elegant parish house where we were bivouacked was crowded with sheep, goats, and mild-mannered cows. In their midst was the veterinarian giving innoculations. I threw myself into my my Sunday best and rushed to the Valzeina train station. I dozed in the train.
Evening in Herisau. The new medical director, Dr. Heinrich Kuenzler, is off today and I won't be able to see him until tomorrow. I stay in the Gasthaus Zum Hornli, that also has a butcher shop. The bald-headed proprietor sits in shirtsleeves in his butcher's apron in a card game. He studied me from top to bottom, as he would an ox, before telling me there was a room free. The chubby waitress and the barmaid excite hopes for culinary delights.
During my stroll I came to the armory, where among tall stacks of wood some 30 boys, most of them barefoot, were drumming. Serious and industrious, they were practicing for the children's fest. A patient instructor worked at teaching the hamfisted kids some basic drumrolls. Two retarded listened, one of them a boy with the face of a 50-year-old. Grinning, with a scooter, he embraced the drummer. A little grey-haired cretin (sic) taps on his forehead, as if to show that the drummer boys weren't right in the head. At the public asylum two old men saluted as I came by in uniform.
Outstanding dinner at the Hoernli. The owner said he wouldn't dare give his guests only the officially stipulated 70 grams of meat. He'd sooner close the place. As I lay in bed the card players thundered on the table downstairs so hard I thought the building would bounce into the air.
Early the next morning with the medical director of the sanitarium. He thinks Robert's tumor has shrunk rather than grown. His weight and appetite are the same.
We wander through Winkeln and Bruggen to St. Gallen. Muggy, dreary, gray weather. Robert unshaven with gray stubble on a gloomy face. Silent struggle against his mistrust for my conversation with the doctor.
He reacted immediately when I told him that a collection had been taken up for the playwright Georg Kaiser. He thinks that only large contributions should be accepted. "Small contributions invite scorn and embarrassment. I'd rather squat in filth than have to express my gratitude to the stingy. It's always better to do for yourself than to have it done for you." He very comically acted out someone haughtily taking a coin from the pocket of his vest while kicking the beneficiary.
I asked Robert about the Justice Fountain in Biel, which I'd talked about with my army buddy, the sculptor Franz Fischer. "It's been in front of the gothic Rathaus since the beginning of the 18th century. Quite a nice piece of work. At the time cleverness still excited the people, and artists were happy to be solid, anonymous craftsmen. Artists today don't realize how much that the change from this has cost them."
Then we talked abut Schiller's Lied von der Glocke, which Robert has recently read. He admired Schiller's prophetie and his plain-spoken expressiveness. In him are Franz Moor and Karl Moor, and Tell and Gessler. Expressing the intricate clearly and easily is certainly a mark of genius.
Rässer cheese and cider in the the Rossli in Bruggen, then an aperitif in St. Georgen. Robert excited by the dramatic gorge, as well as by the forest trails and meadow paths on the way. In St. Gallen he paused for a long while before the house where the reformer Vadian was born and died, and whispered "Enchanting, enchanting! Cities are so beautiful when the people are all at home at lunch! Quiet streets are so sweet and mysterious. Enough adventure for any man!"
Elegant lunch at the train station cafeteria with a Chateauneuf du Pape. Robert said that in the sanitarium in Waldau the women spontaneously applauded him for his woodcutting. After the death of Professor Wilhelm von Speyr, with whom he had got along well, differences with the new director, Prof. Jacob Klaesi, soon began to appear, so that in the summer of 1933 he was transported, with an attendant, to Herisau.
He described at length Heinrich Zschokke's Selbstschau, in which Zschokke mocked Heinrich von Kleist's Bern lecture on the play Schroffenstein. Continuing with the Russians: "All through the literature of the czarist era runs the idea that the supposed strengths and triumphs are weaknesses which, paradoxically, go hand-in-hand with the leadership of the rulers. Thus: Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Dostoyevsky's The Husband."
On the aerial bombardment of Berlin: "Perhaps this horror has the benefit that residents of big cities will return to a simple, natural life. How much musty history we've dragged through the centuries! By the way, it can't hurt the Germans to come under a foreign yoke again. Even civilized countries must learn to knuckle under if they want to be able to rule."
Beer break in the shady garden of Zur Harfe, where I remarked to Robert "That is a lively waitress." He replied "It seems to me reserve is always appropriate. One can go much further with that than with pushiness."
I told him a story: In Sevelen, where I'm stationed, lives an amazon who runs a farm with her sister: a flat-chested woman who stands out from the other villagers by the way she dresses: she always wears men's trousers and a sort of Tyrolean hat with a chin strap. She is supposed to have lived for a time on a Hungarian property, and returned with a great love for horses, especially stallions. Once while she was leading her stallion across a field, he tried to mount a mare trotting by while hitched to a wagon. The woman threw herself from the wagon to the back of the stallion and imperiously drove the animals apart. Many people from the region are supposed to visit the sisters for faith-healing sessions. The local authorities didn't dare intrude.