Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das: Robert Walser

The Tanners, Robert Walser
New Directions, 2009. Translated by Susan Bernofsky.
With a perfect introduction to Walser by W. G. Sebald.

The Tanners is the last novel Robert Walser published before entering the madhouse -- and we waited a century for this translation. This is the last of Walser's novels to be translated, which leads one to think it must be the bottom of the barrel somehow, like the last of Hemingway. But no, not at all! It's as lovely as anything Walser wrote. I can't believe my good fortune, finding this now, after re-reading the NYRB Walser Selected Stories so many times it may qualify as a personal tic.

The Tanners is the story of five siblings and focuses on Simon, who explains, "I am the youngest and the one who occasions the fewest hopes." Like every Walser protagonist, he wanders around dreaming, walking, losing jobs, renting rooms, and praising women without actually getting involved with them. He moves from misfortune to misfortune, and praises them all.

The translation, by Susan Bernofsky, reads so beautifully. Can she be enticed to do more? How about a fresh selection of stories? Can we take up a collection?

This book is full of all the strange things only Walser can do -- the peculiar storm light of mania, the special cheerfulness of extremely depressed people, the vast detached love of which they are capable. Magic is spun from the most pedestrian adjectives. So much that is dreamy, disappointing, unfathomable -- it's so nearly weightless and at the same time succeeds in catching so many extraordinary moments and feelings.

There's something so exhilarating about Walser's protagonist, an eternal zero, who never succeeds at anything -- but also never seems to fail in any way that matters. (I love the way people fail in this novel. Money is lost, wives are abandoned, people freeze to death in the forest -- but no one ever seems to mind.) It's exhilarating to read about someone who isn't interested in success, power, importance, travel or sexual conquest -- I feel myself in the presence of a man who has stumbled upon real life.

MAD RELATIVES

ten small stories

Art by Akemi Shinohara

Stories by Guttersnipe Das

* * *

dedicated to

My friends in the Shinobazu Study Group

And to the boundary-less wild genius of

Clarice Lispector.

Preface: The Return of Color

I prayed to God, God couldn’t be bothered. The Buddha remained Gone Beyond. Who showed up was Clarice Lispector (died, Brazil, 1977), wrapped in a shawl the green of dragonflies and looking entirely ferocious. She had no tolerance for self-pity. She took me by the wrist. She used her nails. The door was flung open. She led me out of the house, away from the alcohol and the collection of benzodiazepines. “You are going to the park,” she said.

Ten days later, out the door of the Malaysia Hotel in Bangkok. The taxi cabs are flamingo pink, the motorbike men wear orange vests and the vendors blue caps. Everywhere death has not been nailed down there is green. I clutch the door frame. The guard (pink shirt!) smiles encouragement.

Sweet Mary Mother of God: someone has turned on the color.

Depression is such a misleading word I wonder if the government isn’t somehow behind it. “Panicked frenzy of self-loathing” is somewhat more accurate, but I prefer to vote with tradition and say demons. And I do not believe in demons either – but try telling that to them.

The demons steal away the color, the world goes out of reach – it can be bumped against, it cannot be touched. What remains is a flabby putrefied fly-swarmed maggoty self. The easiest test for depression is with a mirror: check for a corpse. (This also works the other way. Occasionally I think I’m just adorable. And this is a very dangerous sign.)

The demons are not impressed by prayer. They like to see me beg and bang my head against the floor. The demons like liquor and adore psychiatry. In Tokyo it is possible for them to get a visa to stay almost indefinitely.

Nonetheless a moment comes when one is released. Fuck if I know why. There is not a moment when the guard opens the door and says that one is free to go. More like the kidnappers throw you from the car. I find myself suddenly out on the street and still in prison clothes.

And there is a breeze, an actual breeze, which touches your skin and is not off-limits to you. There is a space around things. The sky goes up and up. Men are wearing pants that don’t hide much.

Almost immediately I become busy. That’s all right: the nice thing about being functional is you can do things. Life is underway and demands attention. Oh, hello, I’m in Thailand! Oh goodness gracious, I’m married aren’t I?

Looking around me now, I walk a little faster. This is no permanent reprieve. This open window may hover for a month, or be gone in an hour. There are repairs that need to be made, windows to be taped, books to read and suicide notes to burn. (Suicide notes must be written afresh for each occasion: this is how one buys time.)

Above all, there are people to be loved, people with sharp voices or curly hair, people smelling of shampoo and sweat and curry. People with problems of their own. Actual people with hands to be held, with real mouths and real ears to hear as you walk around together exclaiming, “My god, look at the colors!”

Mad Relative

After a long time abroad, Randy Mesmer returned home to discover that he'd become the mad relative. Of course he did not realize it right away. Everyone seemed only unusually interested. His father ceased to criticize; his brothers grinned at everything he said. His mother stood often in the doorway, gazing at him with tender brimming eyes. And Randy Mesmer's heart grew warm. He thought they'd really missed him after all. For weeks he didn't have a clue. In fact he felt quite pleased with himself. He thought, it's about time they start to respect me!

The mad relative: every generation must have one. Like Aunt Lucy, his father's sister, who was brought from the state hospital in Laconia to attend all family occasions. There she sat, grinning in her folding chair, smoking menthol Salems, and mumbling into the air. Now and then she groped one of the nephews. She was getting old, poor Aunt Lucy. She'd had surgery for cancer and afterward no one could say for certain what had been removed.

After a few weeks home, Randy began to make suggestions about the future of the pumpkin farm. His father, Ulysses Richard Mesmer, was also getting on in years. Certain decisions must be made. Randy was relieved to discover that everyone agreed to his suggestions immediately.

He was so pleased it took him weeks to notice, and weeks longer to admit, that his suggestions and opinions had absolutely no effect. Everything went on exactly as it always had. Dick Mesmer remained firmly in charge. (His father hated the name Ulysses and used only the first initial.)

One day, when Randy became particularly insistent, he was taken to the furthest corner of Pumpkin Field #12 and left there for nine hours with only a peanut butter and honey sandwich and a deplorably dull hoe.

Certainly it is disconcerting to discover that one has become Puerto Rico in the family: you go right on voting, but your vote counts for nothing.

Every member of the family felt pleased at the way Aunt Lucy was treated. They removed her from the madhouse for special events the same way they took the big punch bowl from the back closet, always careful to give it a good rinse first. They considered themselves extremely enlightened. Randy had felt this way too. He was ashamed to think of it now.

Every generation must have a mad relative. Now it was his turn.

"I'm not crazy," Randy Mesmer insisted. "I can quietly give reasonable and pragmatic reasons to support my moderate opinions!"

His brother and sister-in-law nodded at him and smiled beneath sad eyes. He was the mad relative. There was no court of appeal.

Actual madness, you see, had very little to do with being the mad relative. The entire family was mad. It was more about power and plain bad luck. Traditionally of course, a woman generally got stuck being the mad relative. Now it was more equal opportunity.

If being the mad relative were determined by actual madness, his father would win hands down. Instead he was in charge of the farm and took turns persecuting his sons and imagining himself to be prominent figures from history: Lincoln, Trotsky, Madame Blavatsky, Harry Houdini, Helen Keller. If you questioned him you were promptly demonized. This was a miserable and dangerous situation -- you could very well be declared the mad relative.

Why, he wondered, must there always be a mad relative? Certainly it must have stemmed, centuries before, from pragmatic reasons. One less way to divide the pie. The mad relative forfeits everything.

It is true that the mad relative usually did end up being actually, factually mad. After all, it is enough to make anyone crazy, being the ghost/dream voice/dependent protectorate in the family. Also it is natural to want to fulfill family expectations, just as, in other families, one son becomes a priest.

Aunt Lucy had begun years ago to drool. She drooled more as time went on. Nephews learned to dodge her hands. Who could blame her, Randy thought. There was no prize for obedience, nor penalty for misbehavior. You are a ghost in the family. You might as well not exist. You are the mad relative and you will always be the mad relative.

A Lost Soul

Sorry -- I can't explain it. I don't understand it myself and I was there. The nicest couple. Pillar of the community types. Sure, a little starchy. He's a manager at my company, not my branch but another. Been there forever. He volunteered his dining room.

His wife was -- very much a manager's wife. Very polite, not a chit-chatty type, but then she had a huge amount of food to lay out. She did it all herself, that's unusual, and the food itself was -- different. At least not what folks around here are used to. As we had our meeting I could see her setting the table. Formal for us means a salad fork and a cloth napkin -- but she laid out a huge amount of silver, spoon after spoon, like a kid copying out a composition. I thought gosh she must be anxious to make a good impression.

Everything she cooked had curry in it, or avocado, or eggplant. Fish with the head still on. The kind of bitter salad that nobody in the world eats unless other people are watching. Mollusks. Nothing for the white bread crowd in sight and I know for a fact that several people went out for a burger later.

We were all seated at the table. I was wondering if there was any way to mix things together so it might taste normal. The guacamole turned out to be mustard so hot it was like getting whooped in the head. And somebody brought up Sean, who had to be let go. He didn't have the charisma for sales. Frankly I don't think he had the charisma for accounting. He may have had a little drinking problem. And he got caught once with porno on his computer. He didn't have the right professionalism, shall we say. So we had to let him go.

Mr. Arlington didn't say anything that hadn't been said before. Mr. Arlington always agrees with everyone -- which frankly may be why he's risen so far even though he's not, shall we say, an innovator. He wasn't adding anything, just putting his seal on the conversation. Mr. Arlington sighed and said, "He's a lost soul." We nodded and said uh-huh, and looked up to see a jalapeno glazed drumstick hit Mr. Arlington right between the eyes.

The guacamole followed, along with a pitcher of sangria. At the opposite end of the table, Mr. Arlington's wife had erupted: she was hurling dishes at him just as calmly and methodically she'd laid them out. A Cornish game hen in a clay pot, tuna in raspberry sauce, venison in molé . She was a helluva good shot too. She would have killed him if she'd started in with the cutlery. And for his part he just sat there and stared at her, like he was seeing her for the first time in his life, and then he looked down at his Brooks Brothers shirt, which, he discovered, now had wine, chocolate, curry, hollandaise, and tomato stains.

Obviously the rest of us had scattered as best we could. Johnson, Stuckey, and Young -- the vice presidents -- spent the whole time under the table and got away with little more than mustard stains. The president was already on his cell phone pleading for a fresh set of clothes.

The wife had been entirely silent except for an umph! when she hurled the platter of duck curry and assassinated a painting of sailboats in a harbor which I believe was very valuable.

Now she started to howl. A sound you'd never think a lady like that would have in her. The same thing over and over. A lost soul! A lost soul! A lost soul!

The wife really was a beautiful woman, though I guess she wasn't young. Pitching dinner at her husband had put some nice color in her face. She was wearing a crisp peach pant suit which I swear did not get one spot on it and which I bet she wore again.

She cleared the entire table right straight at Mr. Arlington. He got the mango chutney last and took it too, like a man receiving final judgment.

Last thing she did she pulled up the linen tablecloth, the silver slid and clattered, the crystal smashed on the hardwood floor. She walked right up to him and tossed the white cloth over his head and he just sat there, wrapped in it.

Of course we didn't blame poor Mr. Arlington. He kept his good job. Lately he is more agreeable than ever. Mr. Arlington, as I have said, is not an innovator. No one blames him or teases him, though I'm sure the combined dry cleaning bill was astronomical. The only thing that's different is we don't have dinner at Mr. Arlington's house anymore. The poor man can't be expected to do all that cooking on his own.

Don Quixote Does Escalators

In Yotsuya station, at the bottom of an immensely tall escalator, a cleaning lady stands holding a cloth soaked in antiseptic against the handrail. Even though the escalator is a hundred meters long, she can clean it all this way, just standing there, enjoying a small break in her arduous day.

This is exactly the sort of thing I would never in a million years figure out myself.

Oh no, I'd be dashing up and down the escalator, flinging myself at the arm rail, gasping for breath, getting my pants caught in the jaws at the edge. Running up the down side, then down the up side. Of course! Let no one accuse me of being lazy or taking the easy way out! Unrivaled in my ferocity! Famed for relentlessness! Day after day I battle the escalator and lunge with my cloth at the rail, wiping six inches here, six inches there, as sweat and grime coat my distorted face, a man at war.

But I wouldn't complain, oh no. Not a word of complaint would pass my lips -- not even as I jostled a businessman, or sent a schoolboy in a sailor suit into a headlong plunge as I battled, desperate and fearless, to clean the handrail of the escalator. One brave and reckless man stands alone between Tokyo and contagion!

Not only would I not complain, I would respect myself even more. My hard work! My sacrifice! Oh no, I'd insist, I'd never trade shoes with anyone. This is my dharma, my sacred duty. The Emperor and MLK agree: Do your job and do it well. Oh I would really give it my all. . .
At the end of the day I would collapse in a heap at the base of the escalator. I would die young -- and cheerfully, knowing that I had saved the lives of millions of Tokyoites.

Because not even the greatest of heroes are entirely free of human frailties, among them resentment, I would often wonder why I had not been discretely passed a medal, why I had not yet been declared, to unanimous and thunderous acclaim, a Living National Treasure.

If, by chance, on my way home, I passed another station, another escalator, where a woman stood, holding the cloth against the moving rail, I would shake my head and feel very sorry for her. "Oh isn't that just the spirit of the times! Sure you can do it that way -- but then you miss entirely the spirit of the thing."

The Turquoise Stone

By the side of the street, in front of a shop, I found a large geode. Gray and rough on the edge: brilliant blue-green inside.

I carried the geode into the shop and said, "I want to use this stone for a project. Of course I won't harm it any way. I'll even give you my contact information so you can check up on it."

The man at the counter was reluctant. Of course the stone didn't actually belong to anyone, but still it was well-known in the neighborhood. Folks had become rather fond of it, like a friendly homeless person who's always on the same corner, and always humming the same funny song.

The stone wasn't valuable, its shape was irregular, even the color was actually quite tacky, but people really liked it. The shop clerk wasn't sure it was fair of me to think I could just go ahead and monopolize it.

I said I didn't want to monopolize it, I just wanted to take it home for awhile. Because I was absolutely certain we could do interesting work together, the stone and I.

Symmetry

This is from the crippled boy -- who is a man now, except in the way that a cripple remains always a boy, attached for life to his leg, which does not grow.

I do not think there is a heaven, where my stray sad-hearted wishes will be answered, but just the same those wishes hang round me like unsent letters -- and so there is this wish of mine and nothing to be done with it --

The wish to stand on two whole legs, two legs the same length, with functional equal calves, ankles, knees, with two whole feet which both point forward, with everything the mirror of what is on the other side.

Take a moment to rejoice, those of you immersed in such a form, which seems as remarkable to me as flying through the air might seem to you.

I long to go run barefoot on the beach in such a form, to be seen thus, with legs that would draw no attention to themselves because, well, one is just like the other.

In recompense I possess the crippled arts -- the absolute persistence, the knack of appearing harmless, the air of apology, the small-toothed viciousness. The air of something not expected to survive, which did survive.

The boundless hunger, which goads me cross the world. To Bangkok and the Super A, the sleaziest bar in Bangkok, which, come to think of it, is no small accomplishment.

I find it comforting to rest sometimes on the very bottom of the ocean, deep in the muck, with everything else that is stunted, and half-born, and did not turn out as hoped.

The boys in white underpants perched round my chair, poking at me half-heartedly; they knew I was not buying anything except another beer. Engaging in the usual timid immoral anthropology.

The bored boys found my crippled leg encased in its plastic brace. I tried to shy away. (No one is allowed to touch the leg, none of my funhouse lovers. It is my only private part.)

The boys smiled at me and one said, sympathetically, "Army?" One boy aimed an invisible gun, another mimed a landmine exploding, and what astonished me was the way this made the leg, for the first time in my life, entirely all right. Suddenly I was no longer a freak -- I was a soldier. The leg was a scar in recognition of my service, a commendation, worthy of a star.

If its five bucks to get groped, and ten bucks for a blowjob -- how much do you tip the bar boys when they perform a miracle? The leg was not a deficiency. And it wasn't my fault. I was a veteran, one of the brave. A patriot. Not like I was some freak. Not like I was born this way.

Hazelnut

Out the farmhouse and down the dirt road, past the swimming pond and the cemetery. That night I did not swim. I did not even stop to visit with the dead. To the hazelnut tree that juts out slightly toward the road, that now and then must withstand the strike of a car, some teenager's car, out for a joyride. Or lightning.

On the hazelnut's trunk, on a smooth knot, I placed my hand. I knocked. I demanded entrance to another life. The tree admitted me and I stepped through.

I have not been back