it for him. There was certainly also some inconsiderateness in the fact that he did not help me one bit, for I got to the top only with the utmost effort, on all fours, often
sliding back again, as though the wall had become steeper under me. At the same time it was also distressing that [the wall] was covered with human excrement so that
flakes of it clung to me, chiefly to my breast. I looked down at the flakes with bowed head and ran my hand over them.
When at last I reached the top, my father, who by this time was already coming out of a building, immediately fell on my neck and kissed and embraced me. He was
wearing an old-fashioned, short Prince Albert, padded on the inside like a sofa, which I remembered well. “This Dr. von Leyden! He is an excellent man,” he
exclaimed over and over again. But he had by no means visited him in his capacity as doctor, but rather only as a man worth knowing. I was a little afraid that I should
have to go in to see him too, but this wasn’t required of me. Behind me to the left I saw, sitting in a room literally surrounded by glass walls, a man who turned his back
on me. It turned out that this man was the professor’s secretary, that my father had in fact spoken only with him and not with the professor himself, but that somehow
or other, through the secretary, he had recognized the excellences of the professor in the flesh, so that in every respect he was as much entitled to an opinion on the
professor as if he had spoken to him in person.
Lessing Theater: Die Rattern [The Clatter].
Letter to Pick because I haven’t written to him. Card to Max in joy over Arnold Beer.
9 May. Yesterday evening in the coffeehouse with Pick. How I hold fast to my novel [Amerika] against all restlessness, like a figure on a monument that looks into the
distance and holds fast to its pedestal.
Hopeless evening with the family today. My brother-in-law needs money for the factory, my father is upset because of my sister, because of the business, and because
of his heart, my unhappy second sister, my mother unhappy about all of them, and I with my scribblings.
22 May. Yesterday a wonderfully beautiful evening with Max. If I love myself, I love him more. Cabaret Lucerna. Madame la mort [Madame Death] by Rachilde.
Dream of a Spring Morning. The gay, fat girl in the box. The wild one with the coarse nose, her face smudged with soot, her shoulders squeezed up out of her dress
(which wasn’t décolleté, however) and her back twisted to and fro, her simple, blue blouse with white polka dots, her fencer’s glove, which was always visible since most
of the time her right hand was either resting flat, or on its finger-tips, on the right thigh of her lively mother seated beside her. Her braids twisted over her ears, a
not-too-clean light-blue ribbon on the back of her head, the hair in front encircles her forehead in a thin but compact tuft that projects far out in front. Her warm,
wrinkled, light cloak carelessly falling in folds when she was negotiating at the box office.
23 May. Yesterday, behind us, out of boredom, a man fell from his chair—Comparison by Rachilde: Those who rejoice in the sun and demand that others rejoice are
like drunkards coming from a wedding at night who force those they meet to drink the health of the unknown bride.
Letter to Weltsch, proposed that we use “Du” to one another. Yesterday a good letter to Uncle Alfred about the factory. Day before yesterday letter to Löwy.
Now, in the evening, out of boredom, washed my hands in the bathroom three times in succession.
The child with the two little braids, bare head, loose little red dress with white dots, bare legs and feet, who, with a little basket in one hand, a little box in the other,
hesitatingly walked across the street near the National Theater.
How the actors in the play, Madame la mort turn their backs to the audience, on the principle that the back of an amateur is, other things being equal, as beautiful as the