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29 December 1946
Bitter cold, 20 centimeters of snow. We're almost running to keep warm, because Robert hasn't worn a coat. He likes the silver-gray mood of this morning. He was out of sorts when a dog ran at us from a farmyard and barked; he chased the creature a bit and said "You little devil, why don't you leave us in peace?"
We reached Niederteufen two hours later, and had Café complet in a bakery. The baker's wife is in church. Giggling in the kitchen, her young daughter and a silly maid make breakfast. Robert enjoyed the fresh white buns [Weggen] and lapped up the plum jam like a cat. I had had to work to get him to come to Teufen--a number of times he'd wanted to turn off to St. Gallen. Now he talked about his grandfather, Johann Ulrich Walser, who had been born here, and who had 14 children. During the Badischen revolt his print shop in Liestal had printed many revolutionary pamphlets that were smuggled at night over the Rhine.
On the Teufen-Speicher road the village kids liked to toboggan and ski. Eventually it grew quiet and foggy. "Russian." said Robert. "Watch out, we'll be led astray."
He said that quite a variety of writers came from Biel, some of them from the extreme left, others, the extreme right. One had even been involved in a treason trial. "That suggested that the ends of the wings have a kind of sibling relationship, and can even meet." For Robert Biel had been a place to recover from the big city stress of Berlin. With only a few francs in his pocket he was a mocked, failed author returned to the city where he had earned his first paychecks, assembled a library of Reclam editions of the classics, and had played small roles in drama club productions.
As though bitten by a snake he flew off the handle when I said "How can you say you're a failure? Is success measured by the weight of the books that a writer sells? How many people today speak of your work with great enthusiasm!"
Despairing he said "Quiet, quiet. How can you say that? You think I could believe such a white lie?" Just then a rider, perhaps the local veterinarian, galloped by on a stout horse and disappeared quickly. I calm Robert and we talk about the basic fault of writers--always trying to improve their fellow man. Only through mistakes does an individual get [Relief], said Robert, and adds that people have dumped buckets of cheap advice on him.
As we had lunch in the Appenzellerhof in Speicher Robert said "What a shame that Gottfried Keller stagnated in a small house on the Zeltweg, and died like a mouse in a trap." To which I couldn't refrain from interjecting: "You see, Herr Walser, how you schoolmaster away, like an old Swiss man!" Laughing he conceded "That's true. But it won't bother Keller any more."