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9 April 1945
A fragrant blue early spring day; as von Moerike wrote:
I pass the cloud and the stream.
The sun's golden kiss
Warms me deep within.
My eyes, enchanted,
Are in a dream.
In my ear the sound of the bee
Robert was waiting for me in a new Marengo (sic) suit that his sister Fanny had given him. His hair was short. I told him how young he looked. He smiled contentedly, but had little to say on the way to St. Fiden. We veered right on the road to Speicherschwendi. It's calmingly secluded. A farmer driving cattle to town; a schoolboy shoveling horse manure into a two-wheeled cart; a peddler with stringy gray hair carrying a little seamstress shop on her bowed back.
"This is the strangest time, the beginning of spring, when everything is full of promise and gentle hope! How easy it is to walk now! It's no longer cold, not yet warm, the birdsong awakes from sleep, clouds travel with you, and people have happy faces again."
In Rehetobel we have a Zneuni (soft drink). I ask a man in the pub about Egon Z and he tells us that he's been in the Thurgau asylum for several years. His father was much too strict with him: when he was five he was in first grade, and eventually the long daily trip to school in Trogen strained his nerves to the breaking point. Robert listened with interest.
Afterwards we descended the wooded ravine, on whose far slope Trogen sits. Aerial combat at a great height. The farmers paused in their work and watched. But Robert turned toward the trees and the flowers, the neat little Appenzeller houses, and the steep walls of rock. Our morning's walk has been a joy for him.
Lunch in Trogen at the Schaefle. We have huge appetites and clean our plates: porridge, bratwurst, potato soup, beans, and stewed pears.
At the next table are some soldiers discussing the fall of Nazi Germany. Robert said to me "The stupid idolization of Hitler will be paid for. Anyone as elevated as he was must fall that much further. Hitler hypnotized himself into a cynical self-regard in which he had no consideration for the welfare of his people."
Then he recalled Raimunds Verschwender, which he had seen in Berlin with his brother's stage setting. Girardi played the master carpenter Valentin who puts up the down-on-his-luck Count, whose servant he was. "To this day his Hobellied rings in my ears." Later in Bern he saw Hebbel's Maria Magdalena, which powerfully reminded him of Schiller's Kabale und Liebe. Why is such an interesting piece performed so seldom? He described its plot in great detail.
On contemporary poetry: "Don't you think that current poets respond too visually? They're afraid to show their emotions, and try instead to recreate a picture. But can pictures make up the essence of a good poem? Shouldn't a poem first have a heart?"
In the train station cafeteria in St. Gallen: "I love to hear the ringing of the cash register, and the rattle of the plates, and the bright sound of the glasses. It makes a homely kind of music." He had recently reread Im Haus des Kommerzienrats by Marlitt, and the officer's novel Im Eckfenster by the adventurer Friedrich Gerstäcker; in spite of the one-dimensionality of his characters he was an exciting narrator.
Robert never acquired his own library, at most a pile of little Reclam editions. "What else do you need?"
"Everywhere there are stories in the air. In Bern I lived for a while with a nice milliner on 19 Kramgasse; this house had belonged at time to the lords Hallwyl. But you'd be disappointed if you thought that Bern would be a friendly place in general. Quite the opposite. Many places were haunted and spooky [spukt und gespenstert]. That's why I moved so many times. I thought a lot of the apartments were eerie."
A few minutes before my train left I said to him: "Don't be mad at me, Herr Walser. It was I who asked through the medical director if you wanted to move to nicer quarters." Robert: "Why would I want higher class accommodations? Haven't you yourself stayed a corporal, dclining an officer's status? I'm a sort of corporal too, and want to stay one. I have as little appetite for being an officer as you. I want to stay with the people and disappear among them. That's the most suitable for me."