“I am poor, and I am steeling myself for even more poverty,” I wrote, as I recall, to delightful Auguste, who had been my sweet little lady friend, “and you will probably never again respond to a letter containing such doleful confessions. I understand you womenfolk; you are only lovely, good, and kind to those who visibly enjoy good fortune in this world. Penury, indigence, and misfortune repulse you. Forgive the anguish that is not ashamed to write such things. What am I capable of offering you when I am scarcely able to keep my own head above water? Clearly things are over between us, no? for you will surely find it expedient to shun me. This I can understand. And I as well am joyfully taking leave of you today, because now it is time for me to invest what strength I possess in fighting an all too unlovely struggle for survival. Oh, all those rose scenes, that divine, gay exuberance you bestowed on me, that laughter! I shall always be prepared to think back on a happiness whose mischievous originator you were. Let me kiss you once more in thought, tenderly, as if we were still entitled to dally thus. No doubt you have already begun to forget me. And so adieu forever.” —I have interposed this letter in order to offer the reader a brief, elegant diversion. The letter remained unanswered, and this is what I’d expected, well-acquainted as I was with my clever little Auguste. Despite all her amusing diminutiveness, she was a soul of great resolve. She went on her way, and this pleased me. But now back to Frau Scheer. Back to the matter at hand.
Around the neighborhood, in the shops, at the grocer’s or hairdresser’s, on the street and on the stairs, people spoke of that stingy old witch, that “Scheer,” and all too cheap and superficial phrases were invoked to condemn her. The picture of her being sketched out had nothing at all to do with reality and truth. Later on it was an easy matter for me to see through it all. Meanwhile I was gradually coming into contact and acquaintance with this so widely discussed and disparaged woman. She complained about my taciturnity and reticence, but I found it appropriate to continue to be reticent and taciturn. I realized she was utterly abandoned. Apart from a lady of quite elegant appearance who came to the house now and then, and apart from Emma, her former maid, who came every day to offer her a small amount of assistance in the household, no one ever visited. The visitors she did receive — who made their presence known with larger and smaller amounts of noise — were workmen and businessmen of all sorts; Frau Scheer was a landowner and real estate investor on a grand scale. Or else there would be a ring or a knock at the door, and tenants would uneasily enter, either coming to pay the rent that was due or bounding up to declare that they were in no position to pay. Or then I would suddenly hear shouting and hurled invectives in the hall. This would be some person who believed himself unfairly treated. And so Frau Scheer had to telephone the local police station for help, whereupon policemen appeared, and thus the dwelling of a woman who had enormous sums of money at her disposal witnessed one unlovely scene after another, countless unfortunate incidents, so that the lady and mistress of this home found it a comfort and experienced the greatest refreshment and relief when she was able to sit quietly in her room in the evening and weep, simply that: weep undisturbed.
My room and Frau Scheer’s writing and living room lay side by side, and often I heard through the thin wall a sound that I was only ever able to explain to myself with the thought that someone was weeping. The tears of a wealthy, stingy woman are surely no less doleful and deplorable, and speak a surely no less sad and moving language than the tears of a poor little child, a poor woman, or a poor man; tears in the eyes of mature human beings are appalling, for they bear witness to a helplessness one might scarcely believe possible. When a child cries, this is immediately comprehensible, but when old people are induced or compelled to weep despite their advanced years, this reveals to the one hearing and seeing this the world’s wretchedness and untenability, and such a person cannot escape the oppressive, devastating thought that everything — everything — that moves upon this unfortunate earth is weak, shaky, and questionable, the quarry and haphazard plaything of an insufficiency that has entwined itself about all that exists. No, it is not good when a human being still weeps at an age when one should consider it a divinely lovely activity to dry the tears of children.
With the exception of her niece, wife of the Cantonal Executive Councillor So-and-so, with whom she maintained, or so it seemed, amiable relations, Frau Scheer seemed to be on irrevocably bad terms with all her relatives. Some of them, I was later told, were her mortal enemies as a result of a vicious and deep-rooted feud. If what I heard people saying immediately following Frau Scheer’s death is true — namely, that one of her sisters had been living in the most squalid circumstances without receiving any support whatever from wealthy Frau Scheer, and that she even tormented and oppressed this sister so as to mock her misery on top of everything else while remaining utterly unmoved by it — of course this information casts a peculiar light on this friend of mine, and I am wondering with some degree of urgency whether she truly was capable of such dastardly, merciless conduct. Her relatives seemed to have the worst possible opinion of her. To be sure, one mustn’t underestimate the role played in this by personal animosity. They tried to present Frau Scheer to me as a heinous actress whose mind was entirely filled with insatiable egotism. Hatred, distrust, wickedness, and duplicity, they averred, were the purpose and meaning of her depraved, corrupt existence. I listened to all these things without saying much in reply, but meanwhile was thinking thoughts of my own, for these people who were doing their best to make me think of the unfortunate woman in bad and bleak terms by no means struck me as being so terribly pure of heart and good themselves. At the same time it pained me that Frau Scheer no longer had even a good remembrance in this world where she had so struggled and suffered. But here I must draw attention to yet another strange circumstance, for I may not leave anything important unmentioned that might be able to give life to or illuminate my subject. In Frau Scheer’s immediate neighborhood, a young, pretty girl — a real goose, by the way, the little daughter of a police inspector — was generally thought to be poised to inherit Frau Scheer’s fortune. I often saw this girl at the apartment, and I have to say that this rather silly little thing of eighteen who was presumptuous enough to surround herself with all sorts of fond, happy illusions, did not make a particularly favorable impression on me. If the gullible parents of this girl indulged frivolous hopes with even more frivolous complacence, then they found themselves utterly deceived in a quite instructive way. For later on not so much as a single dotted i was found in favor of Little Miss Cheeky, and the hope-filled damsel inherited not a penny. This should be the fate of all those who are not ashamed to base their prospects on the death of a fellow human being.