The Tanners (10 page)

This day was followed by a splendid evening. All the world was
strolling along the lake’s lovely shore beneath broad, large-leaved
trees. Walking here among all these many lighthearted, quietly conversing
people, one felt transported to a fairy tale. The city was ablaze with the
setting sun’s flames; later it smoldered, black and dark, in the glowing ashes
of the sun that had set. There’s something delightful and enchanting about a
summer sun. The lake glittered in the dark, and all the lights shimmered in the
depths of the still water. The bridges were looking splendid, and when you
walked over them you could see small dark boats shooting past in the water
below; in these rowboats sat girls in light-colored dresses, and often
when one of the larger flat-bottomed boats slowly, ceremoniously
floated past, you could hear the warm crepuscular sounds of an accordion. The
notes vanished in the black and then sonorously reemerged, clear and warm,
heartbreakingly dark. How far it carried, the sound of this simple instrument
played by some boatman! The sound seemed to be making the night even larger and
deeper. From the far distant shoreline the lights of rural settlements
shimmered, their reddish glint like gemstones in the dark heavy raiment of a
queen. The entire earth was fragrant, lying there as still as a sleeping girl.
The huge shadowy dome of the night sky arched above all eyes, all the mountains
and lights. A sense of spacelessness hovered about the lake, and the sky now
had
something enclosing, encompassing, overarching about it. Whole groups of people
were collecting. The young folk appeared to be waxing rhapsodic, and upon all
the benches silent, still people sat pressed close together. There was no lack
of flighty, pridefully coquettish women, nor of men who had eyes for these women
alone, who kept walking behind them, constantly hesitating before rushing
forward again until at last they found their pluck or the words to address these
ladies. Many were given a proper dressing-down, as the expression
goes.

Simon was walking beside Klaus, happy that his felicitous simple
answers to all the many questions his brother kept asking were successfully
instilling in the latter the conviction that he was definitely by no means a
lost soul yet. With both a certain pride and humility in his voice he addressed
his more seasoned brother, who all the same was like an unschooled child when
asking about certain things, though he always displayed a loving concern.
Without even trying, they spoke in beautiful, long, circuitous sentences, and
it
delighted Klaus to see how comprehending Simon was regarding various things he’d
at first assumed his brother, given his circumstances, would simply make fun
of
and laugh at. “I didn’t think you half so serious as you are proving to be!”
Simon replied: “I don’t make a habit of displaying my reverence for a great many
things. I tend to keep matters like this to myself, for I believe: What’s the
point of wearing a serious expression if one’s been earmarked by fate—I mean,
if
a person has perhaps been chosen—to play the fool. Fates aplenty exist, and to
them I shall submit without complaint. Is there any other choice? Besides, I’d
like to see someone just try to accuse me of hanging my head, dumbfounded,
despondent. I’ve already made it clear to various people how things stand with
my innermost being.”
—When Simon spoke like this, he did so in
fluent sentences and with proper intonation, and with such perfect calm
affability that Klaus didn’t view these declarations as chips on his younger
brother’s shoulder but rather as a certain searching on his soul’s part to
clarify its own status vis-à-vis the world. Klaus was
managing to convince himself that Simon possessed some serviceable qualities,
but he was nonetheless still somewhat afraid that these qualities might merely
be floating, cavorting, beckoning and dancing superficially about the person
of
his brother rather than rooted firmly within him. After all, it was simple
enough for such a soul to grow ardent in speech, conjuring up an entire world
of
obedience and sweet serviceability that might intoxicate it for hours on end,
particularly on such an occasion as a reunion after many years. And yet Klaus
was delighting in his brother’s presence and said all sorts of sweet comforting
things to him with visible pleasure. Behind them, at a certain remove, pressed
tightly together, walked Klara and Kaspar. The painter was intoxicated by the
beauty and music of the night. He was dreaming of horses galloping through
nocturnal gardens bearing lovely slender riders on their backs whose skirts
played on the ground with the horses’ hooves. Then he laughed at it
all—impudent, irrepressible laughter—laughed at all the people, the landscape
and every last thing that came before his eyes. Klara didn’t even try to quiet
him, on the contrary, she was delighting in the beauty of this unshackled
spirit. How she loved the youth, the impudence, even the presumptuousness of
this boyish creature laboring to reach manhood. He might be jabbering away
ridiculously, saying things that, coming from another’s mouth, she’d have found
inane and idiotic—but on his lips she loved them. What was it about this person
that compelled her to
find him so unconditionally fetching in every
situation and
gesture—his behavior, all he did and left undone, his
speaking and his silence? In her eyes he was a match for all mankind, superior
to other men, and yet he was scarcely a man at all. His gait, how should she
put
it, had something awkward about it and yet also commanding. This entire young
person displayed not a trace of agitation, and yet there was something shy,
foolish, profoundly childish about him. So calm and yet so swift to catch fire!
She could see his hair, luminous in the darkness, youthful and undulant. Add
to
that his gait and the way he held his head aloft with such modest, questioning,
contemplative pride. How this youth must daydream when he was thinking of
someone. Kaspar had grown quieter. Always she gazed at him, always! On this
night filled with wandering strollers, it was lovely to gaze at him, so lovely
one might swoon. She found looking at him even lovelier than kissing him. She
saw his lips part as if in pain; surely he wasn’t thinking anything in
particular, no, most certainly not; it was just the way he held his lips that
made her think of pain. His eyes were coolly, calmly gazing into the distance,
as though they knew of better things to be observed there. His eyes seemed to
be
speaking: “We, we are looking upon beauty; do not torment yourselves, all you
other human eyes, for you shall never see what we do!” His eyebrows curved with
enchanting lightness, as if in worry, like angels bending over children—the
eyes—which looked, as they gazed about, as though they might be injured at any
moment. “To be sure, any human eye can easily be injured, but gazing at his eyes
instantly fills me with pain, as though I can see them already pierced by
splinters. So large and prominent and yet apparently so unconcerned, they are
always heedlessly wide open; how easily they might be injured!” she lamented.
She didn’t even know if he loved her, but what did it matter, after all she
loved him, and that was enough, indeed it could not be otherwise; she was on
the
verge of tears. Then Simon and Klaus came back to join the others. Klara pulled
herself together as best she could, took Simon’s arm and walked on with him
before the others. “Let me look into your eyes,” she said to him. “You have such
lovely eyes, Simon—looking at them is like lying in bed when all is calm, and
saying a prayer.”

Klaus and Kaspar walked in silence. They hadn’t been on such good
terms for the past year or two; a minor dispute had broken out between them,
and
they’d stopped seeing one another or even exchanging letters. Klaus took this
very much to heart, while Kaspar simply accepted it as somehow inevitable. He
said to himself that it lay in the very nature of things to find oneself
misunderstood at times, even by a brother. He didn’t want to keep looking over
his shoulder at things in the past; they were over and done with—unworthy of
further thought. He preferred to keep marching straight ahead and considered
it
harmful to gaze back at former ties. Now, finding it unbearable to remain silent
at Kaspar’s side, Klaus began to speak of his brother’s art, encouraging him
to
take a trip to Italy some time so as to come into his own there as a mature
artist.

Kaspar cried out: “I’d rather the devil came for me right this minute!
Italy! Why Italy? Am I suffering from an illness, must I be sent to recover in
the land of oranges and pine trees? Why should I go to Italy when I can be here,
a place I like? Would I have anything better to do in Italy than paint, and am
I
not able to paint right here? Or do you mean I should go to Italy because it’s
so beautiful there? Isn’t it beautiful enough here? Can it possibly be more
beautiful there than here, where I live and work, where I behold a thousand
beautiful things that will remain when I myself have long since rotted away?
Is
it possible to go to Italy when one wishes to be productive? Are the beautiful
things more beautiful in Italy than here? Maybe they’re just more sophisticated,
and for this reason I prefer not to see them in the first place. When sixty
years from now I’ve reached the point of being able to paint a wave or a cloud,
a tree or a field, then we’ll see whether or not it was clever of me not to go
to Italy. Can I be missing out if I haven’t seen those temples with their
columns, those humdrum town halls, those fountains and arches, those pine and
laurel trees, those Italian folk costumes and splendid edifices? Must one wish
to devour everything with one’s eyes? I find it infuriating when people accuse
me of harboring plans to become a better artist in Italy. Italy is just a trap
we bumble into if we’re stupendously dumb. Do the Italians come visit us when
they wish to paint or write? What use is it to me to go into
raptures over
bygone cultures? Shall I—if I am honest with
myself—have enriched my
spirit by these means? No, I’ll just have spoiled it, made it cowardly. Let an
ancient, vanished culture be as magnificent as it likes, let it trump us in
vibrancy and splendor, there’s still no cause for me to go snuffing about in
it
like a mole; I prefer to observe it, as long as this is feasible and amuses me,
in books, which are constantly at my beck and call. In truth, lost, bygone
things are never so utterly worthy of our estimation; for when I gaze about me
in the present, which is so often disparaged as lacking beauty and grace, I find
no dearth of images that delight me and beautiful sights enough to fill both
eyes to overflowing. This mania for all things Italian that has strangely,
shamefully beset us makes my blood boil. Perhaps I am mistaken, but even twenty
bristly devils stinking up the air and waving their horrific pitchforks around
wouldn’t manage to drag me off to Italy.”

Klaus was shocked and saddened by the vehemence with which Kaspar was
gauging matters. He’d always been like this, and, as things stood, it couldn’t
be anticipated how a person might succeed in establishing fruitful relations
with him. Klaus said nothing, merely offered his brother his hand in parting,
for they had reached the place where he was staying.

Back in his monotonous room, he said to himself: “So now I’ve lost him
all over again, and all because of a perfectly innocent, well-meaning
but in fact somewhat incautious remark. I just don’t know him well enough,
that’s all, and maybe I never shall. Our lives are too different. But perhaps
the future, which we never quite fathom, will bring us together some other time.
It’s best to wait and endure as one slowly becomes a more seasoned better
person.” Feeling terribly lonely, he resolved to depart again soon and return
to
his own province.

–5–

Sebastian was a young poet who recited his poems from a small stage
to the audience seated below. Thanks to the impetuousness of his performance,
he
tended to wind up looking a bit ridiculous. He’d run away from home at an early
age, living in Paris at sixteen and returning home at twenty. His father was
music director in the small town where Hedwig, the sister of the three brothers,
also resided. There Sebastian lived out his odd
ne’er-do-well existence, sitting or lying for days at a time
in a dusty attic room, stretched out on a narrow bed in which he slept at night
without taking the trouble to tidy it before going to sleep. His parents
considered him a lost cause and let him do as he pleased. They gave him no
money, for they considered it inappropriate to support the dissolute lifestyle
to which they knew he was prone with financial contributions. Sebastian could
no
longer be persuaded to undertake serious university studies; with some book or
other tucked beneath his arm, he would wander about in the mountains and
forests, often not returning home for days and passing the night, when the
weather even halfway permitted, in tumbledown huts no longer used by human
beings, not even rough, savage shepherds, in meadows whose altitude made them
closer to the heavens than to any human civilization. He always wore the same
threadbare suit of light yellow cloth and let his beard grow, but otherwise made
a point of looking attractive and clean. He tended his fingernails more
carefully than his mind, which he allowed to go to seed. He was handsome, and
since it was known he wrote poems, his person was soon surrounded by a
half-ridiculous, half-melancholy aura of enchantment, and
plenty of serious-minded people in town honestly pitied the young man
and warmly took his part every chance they got. As he was excellent company,
he
was often invited to social gatherings, which was some small compensation for
the fact that the world was setting him no tasks that might satisfy his urge
to
achieve something. Sebastian possessed this urge to a considerable degree, but
he’d strayed too far from the tracks of generally accepted and prescribed
strivings. When he now strove, it was perhaps too fiercely, and, since he
realized his strivings did him no good, he no longer felt much desire to pursue
them. He also played songs of his own composition on the lute, singing along
in
his pleasant soft voice. The only injustice—a large one, to be sure—that had
been done him was that he’d been coddled as a schoolboy, thereby helping him
arrive at the notion that he was something like a child prodigy. How this proud
fantasy insinuated itself into the boy’s receptive heart! Grown women favored
the company of this lad, who was old beyond his years and understood such a
great many things, and he inspired them with an incomparable attraction at the
expense of his own human development. Sebastian was in the habit of saying: “My
days of glory lie far behind me now.” It was horrifying to hear so young a man
speak in such a way. Indeed, no matter what he did, aspired to, set about and
performed, he managed to do this so wearily, coldly, and
half-heartedly that he didn’t truly do anything, he was just toying
with himself. Hedwig once said to him: “Sebastian, listen to me, I think you
often cry over yourself.” He nodded his head, confirming this. Hedwig felt pity
for him and sometimes slipped him a little money or something of the sort to
make his life somewhat more bearable. Now, for example, she’d taken him along
on
this little trip to visit her brothers. This same evening when Klara was so
blissful, Klaus sad and lonely, Simon in good spirits, and Kaspar irritable and
overbearing, the two of them, Hedwig and her bard, went strolling silently,
slowly along the shore of the lake. What was there to say; and so they kept
silent. Kaspar approached them, saying:

“I hear you’ve been working on a poem that’s to mirror the events of
your life. How can you mean to portray a life when you’ve scarcely yet
experienced one? Just look at yourself: How strong and young you are, and to
think that youth and strength like this plans to cower behind a desk singing
its
life in verse. Save it for when you’re fifty. Besides, how shameful, a young
man
crafting poetic lines. That’s not work, it’s just a hiding-place for
the idle. I wouldn’t be saying any of this if your life were completed and had
been crowned by some great, extenuating experience that would justify a person
letting his flaws, virtues and meanderings pass in review. You, however, appear
never to have failed, nor to have carried out a good deed either. Start writing
poems when you’ve established yourself either as a sinner or an angel. Or better
yet, don’t write poems at all.”

Kaspar had a low opinion of Sebastian; that’s why he was mocking him.
He had no understanding whatever for tragic individuals, or rather, he
understood them all too easily, all too well, and therefore had no respect for
them. Moreover, he was in a diabolical mood this evening.

Hedwig leapt to defend the poor insulted fellow who was unable to
stand up for himself: “How awful of you to speak in such a way, Kaspar,” she
cried to her brother with an ardor that sprang from her eagerness to defend the
lad, “and certainly not clever either. You enjoy hurting a person who should
be
spared and respected by all for the sake of his unhappiness. Mock all you like.
I know you regret your words. If I didn’t know you so well, I’d have to consider
you a ruffian, a tormenter. It’s so easy to torment an unfortunate, defenseless
person, one might as well torture some poor animal. The defenseless all too
easily fill the strong with a desire to inflict pain. If you can feel strong,
be
happy, and leave the weaker ones in peace. You show your strength in a bad
light, misusing it to torment the weak. Why isn’t it enough for you to stand
on
a firm footing, do you have to place your foot upon the necks of others, the
hesitant seekers, making them doubt themselves even more and sending them
plummeting down, down into the waters of despair? Must
self-confidence, courage, strength and determination always commit the
sin of pitilessly, tactlessly riding roughshod over others, even though these
others aren’t in their way at all, they’re just standing there covetously
listening to the peals of fame, respect and success ringing out? Is it noble
and
good to insult a soul filled with longing? Poets are so easily hurt; oh, one
should never hurt poets. By the way, I’m not even speaking about you now, my
little Kaspar; for have you yourself amounted to much of anything in this world?
You yourself perhaps still amount to nothing and have no cause to scoff at
others who amount to nothing as well. When you wrestle with fate, let others
do
the same as best they can. Both of you are already wrestling, so why battle one
another? How foolish, how unwise. Both of you will find pain enough in the
perils and meanderings and promises and failures in your art; must you insist
on
causing one another even more pain? In all truth, I’d be a poet’s brother if
I
were a painter. And never be so swift to look in scorn upon someone who is
failing or appears lethargic or inactive. How quickly his sunshine, his poems
can arise from these long, dull dreams! And where does that leave the ones who
were so hasty with their scorn? Sebastian is struggling honestly with life, that
in itself should be a reason to respect and love him. How can one mock him for
his soft heart? Shame on you, Kaspar, and may you never again give me cause—if
you have even a trace of love for your sister—to get worked up like this over
you. I’d rather not. I revere Sebastian because I know he has the courage to
admit his many failings. As for the rest, it’s all just idle chatter—feel free
to leave if you prefer not to walk with us. What a face you’re making, Kaspar!
Just because a girl who enjoys the privilege of being your sister happens to
give you a lecture, is this grounds for anger? No, don’t be angry. Please. And
of course you’re allowed to make fun of poetry. Why ever not. I was taking
things too seriously a moment ago. Forgive me.”

A delicate, shy but tender smile was playing in the dark about
Sebastian’s lips. Hedwig devoted herself to flattering her brother until his
mood improved. He then gave an imitation of her impassioned speech, causing all
three of them to break out in resounding laughter. Sebastian in particular
laughed himself silly. Gradually all had grown still and empty beneath the
trees; people had returned to their homes, the lights were dreaming, but many
lights had been extinguished as well, and the distance no longer glittered.
There in rural parts, it seemed, lights were snuffed out earlier; the distant
mountains now lay like dead black bodies, but still isolated human couples
remained who weren’t making for home, but rather looked as if they meant to
spend the entire night conversing wide-awake beneath the sky.

Simon and Klara were sitting, immersed in long hushed conversation,
upon a bench. They had so many things to say to one another, they could have
talked on and on forever without stopping. Klara would have gone on speaking
about Kaspar, and Simon of the woman seated beside him. He had a strange, free,
open way of speaking about people who were his immediate companions, who sat
or
stood beside him listening to what he said. This came about of its own accord,
he always felt most strongly about whoever was occasioning his speech, and so
he
spoke of them and not of others who were absent. “Doesn’t it torment you,” she
asked, “that we speak only of him?” “No,” Simon replied, “his love is my love.
I
always asked myself whether either of us would ever fall in love. I always saw
this as a marvelous thing for which neither of us was good enough. I’ve read
a
great deal about lovers in books, I’ve always loved lovers. Even as a schoolboy
I spent hours bent over books of this sort, trembling and shaking and fearing
along with my lovers. It was almost always a proud woman and a man of an even
more unbending nature, a laborer in a work shirt or a lowly soldier. The woman
was always a fine lady. A common pair of lovers wouldn’t have piqued my interest
in those days. All my senses grew up with these books, perishing again and again
when I closed their covers. Then I stepped into life and forgot all these
things. I became obsessed with questions of freedom, but I dreamt of
experiencing love. What good would it do me to be angry that love has now
arrived but not for me? How childish. I am almost even happy that this love
desires not me but another, I would like to witness this first and only later
experience it. But I shall never experience love. I think life has other plans
for me, other intentions. It forces me to love everything it throws my way,
every being. I am allowed to love you, too, Klara, if only in a different,
perhaps a foolish way. Isn’t it silly that I know perfectly well that, if you
should wish it, I could die for you, would willingly do so. May I not die for
you? I’d find this so perfectly natural. I place no value on my life, I value
only the lives of others, and nonetheless I love life, but I love it only
because I hope it will give me the opportunity to throw it away in some
respectable fashion. Isn’t it idiotic to speak in this way? Let me kiss your
two
hands so you’ll feel how I belong to you. Of course I am not yours and you will
never demand anything at all of me, for what could it possibly occur to you to
ask of me? But I love women of your sort, and it is agreeable to give gifts to
a
woman one loves, and so I am giving you myself, since I don’t know what would
make a better present. Perhaps I can be useful to you, I can jump about for you
with these legs of mine, I can hold my tongue when you want someone to keep
silent for you, I can lie if you happen to find yourself in the position of
requiring a shameless liar. There are quite noble instances of this sort. I can
carry you in my arms, if you should happen to fall down, and I can lift you over
puddles to keep your feet from getting dirty. Take a look at my arms. Don’t they
look as though they were already lifting and carrying you? How you would smile
if I were to carry you, and I would smile as well, for one smile, as long as
it
is not indelicate, always calls forth another. This gift that I am giving you
is
a portable, eternal one; for man, even the simplest of men, is eternal. I shall
belong to you even when you have long since ceased to be anything at all, not
even a grain of dust; because a gift always outlives its recipient so that it
can mourn its lost owner. I was born to be a gift, I’ve always belonged to
someone or other, and it’s always filled me with chagrin to spend a day
wandering about without finding anyone to whom I could offer myself. Now I
belong to you, though I know how little I mean to you. You have no choice but
to
not value me highly. It often happens that one scorns a gift. My soul, for
example, is filled with scorn when I think of presents. I virtually abhor
receiving gifts. This is why fate has willed me to be loved by no one; for fate
is good and all-seeing. I would be unable to endure being loved, but I
find the absence of love endurable. One mustn’t love a person who insists on
loving, one would only be disturbing him in his devotions. I wouldn’t want you
to love me. What’s more, the fact that you love another makes me so happy; for
now, please understand me, you are clearing the way for me to love you. I adore
faces that turn away from me, toward some other object. The soul, which is a
painter, loves this sort of allure. A smile is so lovely when it crosses lips
one surmises rather than sees. This is how you’ll please me—do you suppose
there’s no need to? But no, now I remember: you don’t have to please me, you’ve
no need to at all; for I am incapable of judging you, at most I might manage
a
plea; but I no longer know what I am saying.”

Klara was in tears over his declaration. She had long since drawn him
close to her and with her beautiful hands, which had grown cool in the night
air, was touching his burning cheeks. “What you just said to me, there was no
need for you to say it, I knew these things already, already knew them,
already—knew.” —Her voice took on that tenderness we employ when we wish to
convince animals we’ve hurt a little to feel love and trust for us again. She
was happy, her soft voice resonating with long high notes of joy. Her entire
body appeared to be speaking when she said: “You do well to love me now that
I’m
compelled to love. Now my love will be twice as joyful. Perhaps I shall be
unhappy some day, but how blissful I’ll be in my unhappiness. Only once in our
lives do we women feel joyous at being made unhappy, but we know how to savor
this unhappiness. But how can I be speaking to you of pain? Just look how
indignant I am at having spoken like this—how can I dare to have you at my side
and not believe in my own happiness? You make a person believe, you make belief
possible. Remain my friend always. You are my sweet boy. Your hair glides
through my hands, and your head, full of such unfathomable thoughts of
friendship, rests in my lap. How beautiful this makes me feel; you’re making
me
feel like this—you must kiss me. Kiss me, kiss me on the mouth. I wish to
compare your kisses, Kaspar’s and yours. I want to imagine it is him kissing
me
when you kiss me. A kiss is such a wonderful thing. If you kiss me now, it will
be a soul kissing me, not a mouth. Did Kaspar tell you how I kissed him and how
I asked him to kiss me too? He should kiss differently, he must learn to kiss
like you, but no, why should he kiss like you? The way he kisses, I must kiss
him back at once, but you kiss in such a way that a person has to let you kiss
her again, just like now. Remain fond of me, remain as dear as you are, and kiss
me one more time so that, as you said before, I’ll feel that you belong to me.
A
kiss makes this so comprehensible. This is how women like to be instructed. You
have quite a good understanding of women, Simon. One shouldn’t be able to tell
this just by looking at you. Now come, let us go.”