FICTION: The Assistant By Robert Walser, translated by Susan Bernofsky, Penguin Modern Classics, 301pp. £9.99It all begins one Monday morning with a young man standing in the rain at the front door of a private, almost isolated, house, writes Eileen Battersby.
THE VERY first thought we share with this man is his thinking that he is "almost" surprised to be carrying an umbrella. "In earlier years he had never possessed such a thing." He is also carrying a brown suitcase, "one of the very cheapest". On pressing the electric doorbell "a person, a housemaid by all appearances, came to let him in." The electric doorbell is important. There could not be a simple knocker; after all - this is the home of an inventor.
But for the moment, forget about the home of the inventor, welcome instead to the world of the Swiss German master of the absurd, Robert Walser, a self-taught original who defied the rules of fiction by specialising in "now you see it, or perhaps you don't" magic. He would never have been content with writing that a housemaid had opened the door. It had to be a person, "a housemaid by all appearances".
Before Beckett, there was Walser. He had begun writing this novel in Berlin in 1907, when Beckett was barely a year old. It was Walser, born in Switzerland in 1878, who influenced Kafka, as Musil, also an admirer of Walser, was quick to note - and it was Walser who, on the publication of The Tanner Family (1907) and particularly with Jakob von Guten the following year, consolidated the way, already partly initiated by Musil's Törless (1906), for stylistically pioneering works such as Carl Einstein's Bebuquin and Rilke's The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, both published in 1910.
Within sentences, The Assistant - in this, the centenary year of its publication - makes one feel slightly like Alice about to begin her adventures, albeit this time in the gleeful company of Kafka's kindred spirit. Of course the young man at the door is called Joseph and he has come to work as a clerk. Enter his new employer, Tobler, the engineer who prefers to describe himself as an inventor. Tobler's entrance is vividly announced: "His face bore a look of astonishment, and he seemed out of sorts, which indeed he was." From this point on, Walser begins fleshing out one of the great comic portraits of European literature. Not only is Tobler larger than life, he is a brilliant satire on the self-importance of the aspiring new self-made man of the 20th century.
"'Why is it?' he asked, fixing Joseph with a punitive glare, 'that you're already here today? You weren't supposed to arrive until Wednesday. I haven't finished making arrangements. What were you in such a hurry for, eh?'" This outburst sets the tone of Tobler's behaviour for the course of the narrative through which he rants and raves his way.
Joseph, having just met his new employer, watches while the inventor attempts to come to terms with his new clerk's premature arrival. "Tobler did not seem inclined to grant forgiveness right away. He continued to belabour the topic, which caused his already quite ruddy face to turn even more red. He didn't 'understand' this and that, certain things 'surprised him', and so forth. Eventually his shock over the error began to subside, and he remarked to Joseph without looking at him that he might as well stay." All the while, as Tobler is fuming, his new employee, diffident by nature, is privately wondering at his own new composure. Walser, through a series of inspired asides, is making clear that Joseph's situation has been so desperate until this bizarre meeting that he is prepared to make some attempt at holding this job. As for the job, the most appealing aspect of life in the Tobler villa is the splendid and regular meals, not to mention afternoon coffee in the summerhouse. There is also the bedroom in the tower. Joseph lives comfortably, although his salary is never paid, and he finds himself watering the garden, minding the children and having long, intense conversations with the inventor's strange wife, a haughty, elegant creature given to long sighs.
"He told her what she wished to know, and she sighed each time he spoke of certain pitiable human beings and circumstances. She did this perfectly casually and superficially, and moreover held each sigh in her mouth somewhat longer than necessary, as if she were basking in this pleasant sound and sentiment." Frau Tobler is another daring characterisation, at once alluring and somewhat repulsive. Walser sustains an unusual and subtle level of erotic tension. Tobler is loud, rude and obsessed with finding finance for crazy, unwanted inventions such as his Advertising Clock or the Marksman's Vending Machine, his attractive wife is bored and the young clerk passive and resident in the villa. Who knows?
Meanwhile, Joseph's thoughts reveal more and more about him; his preoccupations, his doubts, his love of smoking Tobler's cigars, his pleasure in the forest scenery and the young man's ambivalent interest in Frau Tobler. Relatively little happens in the narrative. Joseph may gaze at Frau Tobler's neck or ponder at her cruel treatment of one of her two daughters, yet such is Walser's comic timing, uniquely lucid style ever hovering between dream and nightmare, as well as his flair for offbeat dialogue, that the narrative races along from one brilliant set piece to the next. Joseph, a man with no past and too much past for his own comfort, exists from meal to meal; the rest of his time is spent trying to anticipate his volatile employer's next demand.
Joseph meets Wirsich. He is introduced as a much-loved friend of the family, yet this man was dismissed from the very position that Joseph now holds. There are further developments and revelations. Eventually, a letter arrives from a former maidservant whose sexual involvement with Wirsich had cost her her job. Her letter, addressed to Frau Tobler and containing serious allegations against the lady of the house, incites such rage that Frau Tobler pens a furious reply. Before posting it, she shows it to Joseph.
"Having glanced over this letter, Joseph said that he found it good, but that it appeared to him somewhat too pompous. Such a style as Frau Tobler had employed was better suited to the Middle Ages than today's world, which was in the process of gradually - if only to the outside observer - blurring and obliterating long-standing social distinctions of rank and birth." Walser's humour is singular and so tongue in cheek as to leave the reader half sick with laughter, half weak with admiration.
As the narrative progresses, the inventor's lavish lifestyle catches up with the family and all matter of scams are devised to secure money. Joseph who, though never paid his salary, is anxious to preserve his lifestyle, informs a visitor intent on seeing his employer: "For many days now, Herr Tobler has been absolutely unavailable to speak with any person desiring to collect money from him. This is the task of his clerk, that is, myself."
Walser became mentally ill in 1913 and attempted suicide in 1929. Within four years, he had entered an asylum and explained: "I'm not here to write, I'm here to be mad." On Christmas Day 1956 he went for a walk in the snow and suffered a fatal heart attack. His legacy consists of the three novels and The Walk, a collection of short pieces dominated by the title work. The Assistant is fun, a stylish comic turn; the darker themes evident in the workings of Joseph's mind. Read Walser and then look at the world, and yourself, with eyes that bit more open.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times