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returning from Switzerland, where he had spent a few expensive and rain-filled days. With a certain tender care, he let his feelings rest and sought to summon up a mild sense of boredom. Sitting in the yellow coupé was an older gentleman and beside him a lady in her sixties. Unthinkingly, the student stared at them for a minute, then got up and went slowly into the corridor. He looked through the glass panes of the compartments and noticed afemale student from his university with whom he was besotted – silently until now, as was his custom with such matters in their early stages. And as he saw her, he could not help feeling that this was quite natural. With the air of someone who had acted judiciously, he returned to his compartment.
    In the evening, around nine thirty, the train pulled into the university town. The student got off without looking back. When, soon after, he saw the female student lugging a big black suitcase ahead of him, he approved of this scene as being quite natural. The memory of rainy Swiss days began to fade.
    He made little effort to follow her through the station, this female student whom he was in love with (‘after all – in love’, he remarked to himself). Without a doubt she would wait with her suitcase at the tram stop. And indeed: there she stood with a few other passengers. A fine rain was falling. The tram came (not his line, as he noted), but there is nothing more unpleasant than waiting in the rain. The female student embarked at the front, and the conductor stashed her heavy suitcase. The dark mass of this suitcase had something fascinating about it. How spectral it looked, rising from the platform! As the tram began to move the student stepped onto the front platform.
    They were the only two. The rain relentlessly showered his face. She stood beside her suitcase, wrapped in a thick travel coat in which she looked ugly – like some plaid monstrosity. The tramcar moved quickly; few people got on. They travelled to a distant district which was almost a suburb. Vexation rained down on the student like drizzle from the wet clouds. Slowly he worked himself up into a rage. He felt hatred for the administration, which had steered the tram into this distant area. Hatred for the darkened streets with windows in which lights were flickering. A glowing, passionate hatred of the vile, unfitting rainy weather. He wrapped himself in his coat anddecided not to speak, not a word. For he was not the slave of this woman in the monstrous raincoat. Oh no!
    The tramcar was moving very quickly. A sense of sovereignty came over him and he began to plan a work of poetry.
    Then he thought nothing except: I just want to see how far she will travel.
    Two minutes later the tramcar stopped. The lady got off and the conductor reached for her suitcase. This awoke the young man’s jealous fury. He grabbed the suitcase without saying a word, alighted from the tram and began following her. He had walked a hundred paces behind her when, upon perceiving an elastic gesture of her head, he felt compelled to recount to her a few words about the time and the weather, by way of apology, as it were.
    At that moment he saw the young girl stop before a door. He heard the key turn in the lock and saw the darkness of an entrance hall with barely enough time to utter an inaudible ‘Good evening’, before handing over the suitcase to the female student. The door slammed shut. He heard it being locked from the inside. With his hands deep in his coat pockets he walked uprightly into the rainy darkness, with one word playing on his mind: ‘luggage-carrier’.
    â€”
    Translated by Sebastian Truskolaski .
    Written c. 1911–12; unpublished in Benjamin’s lifetime. Gesammelte Schriften VII , 295–6; also translated in Early Writings , 85–7.

CHAPTER 20
The Aviator

    Hat, Lady and Little Table (Hut, Dame und Tischchen) , 1932.
    T he empty marble table reflected the arc lamps.