The Assistant Book

Start with that figure at the door early one morning. He seems to have materialised out of thin air. And now here he is, expected to play the main role in a story, he doesn't seem to know himself how he came to be here. There is no indication of his provenance, here he is, here and now, at the door of a free-standing, seemingly spruce residence. Seemingly? Why seemingly? Whether a house is spruce and tidy is only ever apparent to the eye, surely.... That eeriness, that sense of things somewhat out of kilter, continues. It is raining. The young man is well-nigh astonished to find that he is carrying an umbrella. For he never owned an umbrella in his early years - aren't these his early years? If he's young? What child ever owns an umbrella? At the end of one down-stretched arm there is a cheap, tatty suitcase. "Before the eyes of this man who had apparently just come from a journey was an enamel sign on which could be read: C. Tobler, Technical Office. He waited a moment, as if to consider something that was almost certainly inconsequential, then he pressed the button of the electric bell, whereupon a person came, to all appearances a maid, to let him in." (Own translation) To all appearances? Should we not trust what we see?

Joseph, for that is his name, announces himself as the new employee - der neue Angestellte, a word that connotes a relationship with C. Tobler based on contract, on commercial principles, on clearly defined agreements regarding such things as hours of work, payment rendered, notice required for dismissal or resignation, a word that we associate with clear roles and structures, obligations, rights, duties, tax and insurance docked, maybe, maybe the odd perk here and there for outstanding work that goes beyond the line of duty. A word at odds with the title - Der Gehülfe - for that is an outmoded word, one that conjures a far more personal connection, a personal assistant, helpmate, amanuensis. And indeed it is an oddly archaic world that Joseph enters. For although Tobler is an engineer who designs thoroughly modern machines that range from the moderately original (a clock with added wings on each side for advertising) to the bizarre (a vending machine for bullets) to the potentially useful (a wheelchair for the sick), the role he sees for himself is that of Master of All He Purveys. Captain of Industry. Man of Status. Pillar of Society. And while he is waiting for Capital to come and Invest in his Brilliant Ideas, at the very least he must give the appearance of Success. He must give the impression of prosperity: a large house (seemingly spruce) in the best part of town, a happy family including faithful dog, a housemaid, cook and gardener, and (enter Joseph) a live-in assistant.

Joseph is to have a room in the copper-roofed tower, to share the family meals, to drink his afternoon coffee with Madame on the sunny terrace. He may smoke as he works. The food is good, tasty and plentiful, the cigars aromatic, the work, initially at least, is not too taxing. It sounds charming? It could be. If it were not for the weird dislocation, the morass of the inappropriately personal bound up in the commercial: the boss is capricious and irascible and uses Joseph as his kicking board: Madame is sweetly charming, and as lonely as Joseph, (but as distant as the moon and the stars) and uses Joseph as a companion. Pauline, the maid (to all appearances) disdains Joseph, wants to humiliate him by flirting with him - a weird courtship display that involves beating the youngest Tobler child when the parents are out with the others - and then rejecting him. And Joseph?
Joseph is lost.
Joseph has no idea how to behave.
Joseph has no idea how he fits in to this bourgeois idyll, what role he should play.
He is insecure and self-doubting. He seems to be missing a social compass anyway, one that prevents you saying things that might offend, a characteristic that has prompted some critics of Walser to call his protagonists child-like; he has an uncanny knack of picking the wrong battle at the wrong moment and using the most inappropriate language to defend his position. His attacks are pusillanimous at best, and collapse into abject self-recrimination at the slightest opposition. Like a depressive, his mood swings from viciously hurtful rebellion to miserable self-pity and self-loathing, from euphoric intoxication to desolate self-castigation. And no-one here wants to give him any guidance: he is taken into the family, but if he criticizes Madame's treatment of that bed-wetting youngest child, he is threatened with dismissal. He is too afraid of Tobler, too in awe of him to question his business acumen. He is lost in a strange country with no map.
He has a heart. But what room is there for a heart in this heartless world?
Walking, physical activity is the only thing to rely on. The body, moving.

It cannot last, it will not last. C. Tobler has over-extended himself. He is driven by an overweening sense of his own entitlement, his overpowering certainty that his ideas are destined to improve the world if only the idiots out there would recognise their worth, blind to the value of marketing and a realistic calculation of costs and revenue. Mehr Schein als Sein - all surface, no substance.

We were right not to trust appearances.

Discomfiting. Painful. But utterly magnificent.