word.
16 February. Wasted day. My only joy was the hope that last night has given me of sleeping better.
I was going home in my usual fashion in the evening after work, when, as though I had been watched for, they excitedly waved to me from all three windows of the
Genzmer house to come up.
22 February. In spite of my drowsy head, whose upper left side is near aching with restlessness, perhaps I am still able quietly to build up some greater whole wherein I
might forget everything and be conscious only of the good in one.
Director at his table. Servant brings in a card.
DIRECTOR: Witte again, this is a nuisance, the man is a nuisance.
23 February. I am on my way. Letter from Musil. Pleases me and depresses me, for I have nothing.
A young man on a beautiful horse rides out of the gate of a villa.
8 March. A prince can wed the Sleeping Beauty, or someone even harder to win too, but the Sleeping Beauty can be no prince.
It happened that when Grandmother died only the nurse was with her. She said that just before Grandmother died she lifted herself up a little from the pillow so that she
seemed to be looking for someone, and then peacefully lay back again and died.
There is no doubt that I am hemmed in all around, though by something that has certainly not yet fixed itself in my flesh, that I occasionally feel slackening, and that
could be burst asunder. There are two remedies, marriage or Berlin; the second is surer, the first more immediately attractive. I dived down and soon everything felt
fine. A small shoal floated by in an upwards-mounting chain and disappeared in the green. Bells borne back and forth by the drifting of the tide—wrong.
9 March. Rense walked a few steps down the dim passageway, opened the little papered door of the dining-room, and said to the noisy company, almost without
regarding them: “Please be a little more quiet. I have a guest. Have some consideration.”
As he was returning to his room and heard the noise continuing unabated, he halted a moment, was on the verge of going back again, but thought better of it and
returned to his room.
A boy of eighteen was standing at the window, looking down into the yard. “It is quieter now,” he said when Rense entered, and lifted his long nose and deep-set eyes
to him.
“It isn’t quieter at all,” said Rense, taking a swallow from the bottle of beer standing on the table. “It’s impossible ever to have any quiet here. You’ll have to get used to
that, boy.”
I am too tired, I must try to rest and sleep, otherwise I am lost in every respect. What an effort to keep alive! Erecting a monument does not require the expenditure of
so much strength.
The general argument: I am completely lost in F.
Rense, a student, sat studying in his small back room. The maid came in and announced that a young man wished to speak to him. “What is his name?” Rense asked.
The maid did not know.
I shall never forget F. in this place, therefore shan’t marry. Is that definite?
Yes, that much I can judge of: I am almost thirty-one years old, have known F. for almost two years, must therefore have some perspective by now. Besides, my way
of life here is such that I can’t forget, even if F. didn’t have such significance for me. The uniformity, regularity, comfort, and dependence of my way of life keep me
unresistingly fixed wherever I happen to be. Moreover, I have a more than ordinary inclination toward a comfortable and dependent life, and so even strengthen
everything that is pernicious to me. Finally, I am getting older, any change becomes more and more difficult. But in all this I foresee a great misfortune for myself, one
without end and without hope; I should be dragging through the years up the ladder of my job, growing ever sadder and more alone as long as I could endure it at all.
But you wanted that sort of life for yourself, didn’t you?