The Tanners (20 page)

“You must clean my shoes better, Simon,” the woman said.

Simon was delighted to have been reprimanded. Back in the days when
he’d gone wandering through hot, scorched, abandoned streets without direction,
how often his heart had yearned for a cruel harsh reprimand, a curse, even words
of disparagement or abuse, just to have the certainty that he wasn’t utterly
alone, that his existence wasn’t going entirely unheeded, even if the heed paid
it was a rude negative sort. “How sweet this reprimand sounds coming from her
womanly mouth,” he thought, “and how this binds me to her, how tightly it binds
and knots and shackles me, a reprimand like that feels like a tiny, scarcely
at
all painful box on the ears prompted by a mistake one has made”; and Simon
secretly resolved to go on making mistakes, that is, no, perhaps not
exclusively, as that would mark him as a dunce, but regularly to have minor
slip-ups, nice intentional ones, so as to have the pleasure of seeing
this sensitive female, who was used to having things just so, filled with
indignation. Indignation? Well, maybe not exactly indignation, but at least a
sort of questioning, an astonishment at his, Simon’s clumsiness. Then a person
would be given the opportunity to shine in other ways, and so one would be
allowed the pleasure of watching a stern, vexed face turn into a more friendly,
satisfied one. How delightful to be able to transform another’s mood from
displeasure to contentment when this person had been aggrieved just a moment
before. “I’ve already acquired one adorable reprimand today,” Simon thought,
and
further: “How pleasant it is to be the one being reprimanded—this is, in a
matter of speaking, a more mature, superior state. I was made to be reprimanded,
for I’m always grateful to receive reprimands; the only people who deserve the
favor of being reprimanded are those who know how to express their thanks by
assuming an appropriate bearing.”

Simon was in fact standing there appropriately, and he felt: “Now I’ve
really become this woman’s servant; her reprimanding me shows she feels within
her right to rebuke me without much forethought, and from me in return she
expects a decorous silence. When a superior castigates a subordinate official,
this causes him pain, and it’s always secretly one’s intention to hurt a
subordinate by drawing his attention to one’s own higher standing. One
reprimands a servant only with the intention of instructing and training him
to
be as one wishes; for a servant belongs to one, whereas one’s relationship with
a subordinate official ends along with the workday. I, for example, have now
been chastised with heartfelt warmth, and in addition one must consider that
this reprimand came from a woman who belongs to those women who are always
lovely when they set about something of the sort. Indeed, one need only hear
ladies giving voice to reprimands to realize how much better they are than men
at rebuking those at fault while avoiding petty slights. But perhaps this is
wrong, and it’s just that I consider words that would wound me coming from a
man
to be far from insulting—encouraging even—on a woman’s lips. Standing before
a
man, I’m always conscious of a proud equality, but with a woman: never, since
after all I’m a man or at least preparing to become one. With a woman, one must
always feel either superior or subordinate! —To obey a child if it has a
charming way of giving orders is easy for me, but to obey a man: Fie! Only
cowardice and financial interests might cause one man to cower before another:
such base motives! So I’m glad it’s my duty to obey a woman; this comes quite
naturally, as it can never be injurious to one’s honor. A woman can never injure
a man’s honor except by adultery, but in these cases the man is most likely
behaving like a dunce and a weakling who cannot be dishonored even by the
betrayal itself, as the very possibility of its occurring has long since
dishonored him in the eyes of all who know him. Women can make you unhappy, but
they can never dishonor you; for true unhappiness is no disgrace and can appear
comical only to coarse people and sensibilities, individuals who, let us note,
dishonor only themselves with their derision.”

“Come here!”

With these words the lady plucked the servant from his presumptuous
train of thought and commanded him to go dress the sickly lad. He obeyed and
did
as she asked. He carried a basin of fresh water to the bedside and with a sponge
carefully washed the boy’s face, gave him a glass half filled with clean water
and had him rinse his mouth, which the boy lying in bed did very prettily with
his beautiful hands, applied brush and comb to his hair, and finally served him
his breakfast on a silver tray, watching as it was methodically consumed—with
a
great deal of picking up and putting down—without growing weary or even
impatient; for how ugly and unfitting impatience would have been here; then he
carried the dishes back out again and returned to dress the invalid, who was
unable to dress himself. He lifted the light thin body somewhat gingerly from
the bed, having first pulled the stockings over the feet and legs, placed little
house slippers on the feet, picked up the trousers to put them on, buckled the
belt, tossed the suspenders properly from back to front—all of this quickly,
soundlessly and with economy of gesture—then placed the collar around the boy’s
neck, a wide, folded boy’s collar, skillfully attached necktie to shirt button,
the shirt of course having already been put on; and now he presented the vest,
had the boy slip his arms through the armholes, and then the same with the
jacket and the few objects the boy was in the habit of carrying around, such
as
watch, watch fob, pocketknife, handkerchief and notebook, and the opus was
finished. Now Simon had to straighten the bed of his young master, as well as
tidying the entire bedroom just as the lady had showed him, opening the windows,
distributing the pillows, comforters and sheet on the windowsills and doing all
these things just as they ought—and as it appeared to him they ought—to be done.
The lady watched his every move the way a fencing instructor observes the
movements of his pupil, and found that he devoted himself to these tasks with
talent. Not that she uttered even a single word of approval. This would never
have occurred to her. Besides which, the servant ought to realize from her
silence that she condoned his manner of working. She was glad to see how tender
he was with her son, for she had noted how Simon’s each gesture as he dressed
the invalid expressed his respect for him. She couldn’t help smiling as she saw
how hesitantly he’d touched the boy at first, and then later, as he overcame
this hesitation, his gestures had become more firm, steady and calm. She was
quite pleased with the young man so far, she had to confess to herself. “If he
continues in this way, I’ll have to love him for not deceiving me in the feeling
I had about him right from the start,” she thought. “He’s very quiet and
respectable and appears to be talented at familiarizing himself quickly with
any
situation. And since he, as I believe I am allowed to conclude from his manners,
comes from a good background, I shall insist on intelligent, attractive behavior
on his part, for the sake of his mother, who is perhaps still alive, and that
of
his siblings, who perhaps hold positions of some respect and are concerned about
his fate, and it will delight me when I see him getting the hang of things and
behaving as is expected of him. Perhaps I shall soon be permitted to treat him
in a more confidential manner than one is usually forced to adopt with one’s
servants. But I shall take care all the same not to give him an excuse to get
fresh with me by overhasty friendly accommodations. His character contains a
faint smack of impertinence and audacity, and these must not be encouraged. I
shall always have to suppress the pleasure I take in him if I wish him always
to
have the desire to please me. I think he is much taken with my stern face; I
guessed something of the sort when he smiled a moment ago as I was giving him
what was after all a rather unfriendly dressing-down. One must guess about
people if one wishes to see them at their best. He has soul, this young man,
and
so one must approach him in a soulful, soul-conscious way to get
anywhere with him. One must be considerate while at the same time acting as if
one isn’t showing any particular consideration, since after all that’s certainly
not necessary. But it’s better and wiser to be considerate if it can be done
without a fuss.” —She resolved to see Simon in this adventurous light, and now
sent him out to do the shopping.

What a novelty it was for Simon to go hurrying through the streets
with a basket or leather tote bag in his hand, to purchase meat and vegetables,
to walk into shops and then run back home again. In the streets he saw people
going about their various sorts of business, each animated by an intention, as
he was himself. It seemed that people were surprised at his figure. Might his
way of walking fail to accord with the full basket he was easily carrying? Were
his gestures too unrestrained to correspond to his commission, that is, to
running errands? But these were friendly glances he was receiving; for people
saw he was hurrying and busy, and he must have given the impression of a dutiful
man. “How beautiful it is,” Simon thought, “to rush through the streets like
this with a duty in one’s head alongside all the swarms of people, being
overtaken by a few who have longer legs, while flying past others who walk more
indolently, as though they have lead in their shoes. How agreeable it is to be
seen by these spick-and-span maidservants as one of their
own, to observe what a sharp eye these simple creatures have, to note that they
might be tempted to stop for a bit and chat with you for ten minutes. How the
dogs go tearing along the street as if they were chasing the wind, and how
busily the graybeards are still rushing about with their hunched necks and
backs! Can you look at this and still wish merely to stroll? How charming women
are whom you’re allowed to race past without attracting their notice. How could
you expect them to notice you? That would certainly be something! It’s enough
to
have observant eyes yourself. Does a person have senses only to be kindled by
others and not to kindle oneself? The eyes of women on a morning street like
this are so utterly splendid when they gaze off into the distance. Eyes looking
past you are more beautiful than eyes that gaze directly at you. It’s as if they
lost something. How quickly you think and feel when you’re walking so briskly.
Just don’t start looking at the sky! No, it’s best just to sense that somewhere
up there, above your head and all the buildings, something beautiful and broad
is hovering, a hovering something that is perhaps also blue and most certainly
fragrant. You have duties—and this too is a hovering, flying, enthralling
something. You are carrying on your person something that must be counted out
and handed over if you wish to be seen as reliable, and given my present
circumstances, I consider it infinitely agreeable to be reliable. Nature? Let
it
conceal itself for the moment. Yes, it seems to me as if it were in hiding
there, behind the long rows of buildings. The forest has, for the time being,
lost its appeal for me, and I don’t wish to be tempted by it. All the same,
there’s something beautiful about thinking that everything’s still there while
I
fleetingly, busily rush through the blinding streets, paying no heed to anything
that’s not simple enough to be understood by my nose.”—Once more he counted the
money in his vest pocket with sentient fingers, not taking it out, and then went
home.

Now he had the table to set.

He had to spread a clean white tablecloth over the table with the
creases facing up, then lay out the plates in such a way that their rims didn’t
protrude over the edge of the table, then distribute forks, knives and spoons,
set glasses in their places along with a carafe of fresh water, lay napkins upon
the plates and set the salt-cellar on the table. Setting and laying,
placing and touching and arranging, touching daintily, then more firmly,
touching cloth only with fingertips and plates with great care, distributing
and
adjusting, the silverware for instance, being noiseless in the process, swift
and yet also cautious, both careful and bold, stiff and smooth, calm yet
vigorous, not letting the glasses clink together or the plates clack, but also
showing no astonishment should a clinking or clacking be heard, instead finding
this comprehensible, and then announcing to one’s masters that the table was
set
before bringing out the dishes and withdrawing through the door, only to go back
in again when the bell was rung, watching the food being eaten and taking
pleasure in this, telling oneself it was more agreeable to watch others eat than
to eat, then clearing the table again, carrying out the dishes, putting a
leftover scrap of roast meat in one’s mouth and making an exultant face, as
though this were an action that required an exultant look, then eating oneself
and finding that one really did deserve to eat now: All these things Simon had
to do. He didn’t have to do all of it, for instance he wasn’t required to look
exultant when he stole, but it was his first tender theft, and for this reason
he had to be exultant; for it reminded him vividly of childhood, when one steals
something or other from the pantry and exults.

After the meal, he had to help the girl clean the dishes, wash and dry
them, and the girl was not a little surprised to see how nimble he was at this
task. Where had he learned how? “I used to live in the country,” Simon
responded, “and in the country one does such things. I have a sister there who’s
a teacher, I always helped her dry the dishes.”

“That was nice of you.”

–12–

To Simon it appeared quite marvelous to be laboring in this quiet
kitchen in the middle of the big city. Who’d ever have thought it? No, human
beings never quite managed to envision their futures. He who in earlier days
had
gone wandering freely across mountain meadows, sleeping like a hunter beneath
the stars and gasping for breath when he discovered vistas that gave new expanse
and depth to the earth below, who wished the sun were even hotter, the wind
stormier, the nights darker and the cold more bitter when he ran around out of
doors in all seasons and weather, searching, rubbing his hands together and
puffing—now he was cooped up in a tiny kitchen drying a dripping plate while
it
was still warm. He was glad. “How glad I am to be so hemmed in, so confined,
so
enclosed,” he thought. “Why should a person always be hankering for wide open
spaces, and isn’t longing so restrictive a sentiment? Here I am tightly squeezed
in between four kitchen walls, but my heart is wide open and filled with the
pleasure I take in my modest duty.”

He did find it a bit humiliating to be in a kitchen, occupied with a
task ordinarily performed only by girls. It was a bit humiliating and a bit
ridiculous, but nonetheless most certainly mysterious and odd. No one could
possibly dream of finding him here. This thought had something gratifying and
proud about it. Having such a thought could make one smile. The girl asked what
he’d been in his former life, and he replied: “A copy clerk!” She couldn’t
comprehend how a person could possess so little ambition as to leave behind his
desk in order to creep into domestic service. Simon replied that his case, first
of all, involved nothing that might be described as creeping, as she so
charmingly expressed herself, and secondly it was still an open question which
was preferable: sitting behind a desk or leading a plate wiper’s existence. He
by far preferred the open, airy, warm, steamy, interesting kitchen to the
dry-as-dust office where the air was usually stale and the
general mood embittered. How could one feel bitter in a kitchen where a roast
was stewing in the pan, vegetables cooking, soup steaming, the copper shining
down so sweetly from the rack and the plates making such a friendly sound when
one knocked them together. But being a servant, the spirited maiden rejoined—it
wasn’t much, it didn’t amount to anything. He didn’t want to amount to anything,
Simon said softly. She let that be the end of it, but she found he was a
curious, difficult to understand person. But she also thought: “He’s decent,”
and felt he might be “allowed some liberties.” Simon had just finished his
drying when the lady walked into the kitchen and bid him come into the other
room, she had a task for him. “What lovely task might she have for me,” Simon
wondered, and he followed the woman striding on ahead. “During the afternoon,
there’s nothing further for you to do, so you might as well read to my son and
me. Do you know how to read aloud out of a book?” Simon said he did.

And then he read to them for a full hour. His breath was somewhat
strained, but he read with accurate, clear, good enunciation, in a warm voice
that demonstrated the reader was moved by what he read. The lady appeared
pleased, and the boy was all ears to the very end, whereupon he thanked Simon
graciously for the treat. Simon, whose cheeks were glowing bright red with
emotion, found it lovely to be thanked. He betook himself, since for the moment
he didn’t know what else to do, into the domes
tics’ quarters, which were
lit up red by the evening sun, and be
gan to smoke out the window.

“I disapprove of your smoking here,” said the woman, entering the
room.

He, however, went on smoking, and she left again, rather miffed.
“Certainly I can understand her disapproval, but must she really approve of
everything about me? I’m not about to give up smoking. No, I won’t, devil take
it! Even if twenty ladies were to come one after the other and forbid me to
smoke.” He was furious, but at once his mood lightened again, and he said to
himself: “I ought to have tossed the cigarette away; that was impertinent!”

At just this moment when he was preparing to launch into a monologue,
a scream rang out in the corridor, followed immediately by the loud crash of
crockery falling to the ground. Simon opened the door and saw the woman gazing
with a mournful, silent, crestfallen face at the floor, where lay the shards
of
a porcelain platter she had no doubt been fond of. She had wished to carry the
platter with a piece of cake on it from the icebox to her room and had managed
to drop it, she herself couldn’t say how. All it had taken was the most fleeting
misperception, or something of the sort, and the misfortune had occurred. When
the woman beheld Simon, who was standing behind her, her expression instantly
changed from crestfallen to enraged and accusatory, and she said to him in a
tone that clearly signified what she was feeling: “Pick this up!” Simon squatted
down and gathered up the shards. As he did so, his cheek brushed against the
skirt of his employer, and he thought: “Forgive me for having stood by and
witnessed your maladroitness. I understand your anger. It is I who bear the
guilt for breaking the platter you dropped. I broke it. How this must pain you.
Such a beautiful platter. Surely you were fond of it. I feel sorry for you. My
cheeks are brushing against your dress. Every shard I gather up says to me: ‘You
wretched creature,’ and the hem of your dress says to me: ‘O happy one!’ I’m
intentionally taking my time about gathering up the shards. Does it now fill
you
with fresh rage to be forced to notice? I’m finding it amusing to have been the
miscreant. I like you when you’re angry with me. Do you know why your anger so
pleases me? Your way of being angry is so tender! You’re only angry because I
witnessed your clumsiness. You must have a fair bit of respect for me if it so
mortifies you to have made a fool of yourself in my presence. You the grand lady
in the presence of ignoble me. With what enchanting rancor you bade me gather
up
the shards. And I’m not even hurrying as I do so; for I wish you to become
utterly furious and incensed over my taking so long with the shards that cannot
help telling me the story of your clumsiness, and telling it to you as well.
Are
you still standing here? The strangest sentiments must now be intermingling
within you: shame, pain, fury, vexation, equanimity, irritability, tranquility,
surprise and majestic dignity, with so many trivial, unmentionable
accompaniments slinking alongside, snatched away again each moment before a
person can properly grasp them; that one there was like a pinprick or a whiff
of
perfume or a pair of twinkling eyes
.
—Your silk dress is beautiful
when one considers that it contains a female body capable of trembling with
excitement and weakness. Your hands are beautiful hanging down toward me in all
their length. I hope you’ll box my ears with them some day. Now you’re leaving
already, without having scolded me. When you walk, your dress giggles and
whispers on the floor. A moment ago you forbade me to smoke. But I shall have
the impudence to smoke when I walk behind you on the way to market to help with
the shopping. There you will see me smoking: gleaming white cigarettes, and I
certainly hope you’ll then have the presence of mind to slap the cigarette from
my lips. Just now I had to employ all the gestures at my disposal to beg your
forgiveness for your having broken a platter. I wish I might have the
opportunity to perform some misdeed that would give you cause to send me
packing. Oh no, no! What am I thinking. I must be mad. Truly, this shard
incident has made me mad. Now it’s no doubt evening out on the street. The
lanterns will be burning pale yellow in the waning daylight. I’d like to be out
there on the street now. There’s no help for it, I must go downstairs—”

“I’d like to go out for a brief while,” he said, walking into her
room. “May I?”

“Yes! But see you don’t stay out too long!”

Simon raced outside and down the stairs, where a veiled female figure
stared after him in astonishment, then out of the building to the street, into
the air, into mobile damp glittering evening freedom. How strange it was, he
thought, this belonging to a household where you lived just like a prisoner.
How
strange to be a grown man and as a grown man be compelled to seek out a woman,
to enter a dark room where you only half see the woman sitting there in the
dark, and ask her permission to be allowed to go out. As if you were a piece
of
furniture in her possession, an object, a purchase, something, a thing, a
something or other, and as if this something were nothing or were something only
insofar as it was suited to be a thing of this particular sort, something of
hers! Strange, too, that you might nonetheless experience this state of affairs
as a sort of refuge, a home. That you might feel you were now walking about the
streets ten times more exaltedly for having received permission to do so from
a
person you were obliged to ask. Requesting permission, to be sure, had something
schoolboyish about it, he thought; but even graybeards were often enough
required to seek permission, sometimes under humiliating circumstances. And so
all of life was marvelous, and you had no choice but to enter into this marvel,
even if it often looked to you rather strange.

He walked down the street, falling in love with its sweet tableau of
rising stars, of dense trees that stretched in long straight rows, and the
peacefully ambulating people, the evening’s splendor, the deep, restless
inklings of night. He too was walking peacefully, almost dreamily. In the
evening it was no disgrace to put on a dreamy appearance when all were
involuntarily compelled to dream in this atmosphere filled with the scent of
the
early summer twilight. Many women were strolling about with small elegant little
bags in their gloved hands, with eyes in which the evening light went on
glowing, in narrow dresses cut in the English style or voluminous dragging
skirts and robes that filled the streets with their marvelous breadth. Woman,
Simon mused, how she glorifies the image of the city street. A woman is made
to
promenade. You can feel her parading, enjoying her own swaying, beautiful gait.
At sunset, women determine the tone of the evening, their figures being well
suited to this with these arms full of melancholy and ampleness and these
breasts full of breathing mobility. Their hands in gloves look like children
wearing masks, hands with which they beckon, and in which they are invariably
holding something. Their entire bearing translates the evening world into
sonorous music. If you now, as I am just doing, go walking along behind women,
you already belong to them in your thoughts, in sentient oscillations, in
breaking waves that crash against your heart. They do not beckon, and yet they
do beckon you. Though they carry no fans, you can see fans in their hands,
flashing and glinting like embossed silver in the fading, blurred evening light.
Mature, voluptuous women go particularly well with such an evening, just as
gray-haired old women go with winter, and blossoming girls with the
newly arisen day, as children go with dawn and young wives with the heat of
midday when the sun shows itself to the world at its most glowing.

It was nine o’clock when Simon returned home. He had stayed away too
long, and had to listen to reproaches like this one: If this were to happen
again, even one single time more, then— —. He wasn’t actually listening, he took
in only the sound of the reproach, inwardly he was laughing, outwardly he
appeared dejected, that is, he put on an imbecilic expression and decided it
was
superfluous to open his mouth to say anything in reply. He undressed the boy,
put him to bed, and lit a nightlight.

“Might I ask for a lamp of my own?” he asked the lady.

“What do you want the lamp for?”

“To write a letter.”

“Come sit here with me, you can write here!” the lady said.

And he was permitted to sit down at her desk. She gave him a sheet of
letter paper, an envelope for the address, a stamp, a pen, and allowed him to
use her stationery case to write on. She sat close beside him in an armchair,
reading a newspaper as he wrote:

Dear Kaspar, I am back in the city so well
known to you and am sitting at a beautiful, dark-hued writing desk in
a brightly lit room while down below in the street, in the summer night, beneath
the trees with all their dangling leaves, people are out strolling.
Unfortunately I cannot promenade along with them, for I am chained to a
household, not exactly by my hands and feet, but by the sense of duty I am
gradually developing, which does, after all, need to be established sooner or
later. I have become the servant of a woman who has a sick little boy whom I
look after, not much differently than a mother looks after her son, for his
mother, my mistress, observes my every move as if her eye were guiding my
actions and she were instilling in me her own solicitousness when I care for
the
boy. As I write this, she is now seated beside me in an armchair, for this is
her own room; I’m sitting here with her permission. Matters now stand as
follows: Every time some personal errand sends me out of doors, I must first
ask
“May I go out?” like an apprentice asking permission of his master. All the
same, at least it’s a lady I’m having to ask, which sweetens the indignity of
it. Being a servant, you should know, if you do not already, involves waiting
attentively for orders, anticipating desires in advance, skillful swiftness and
swift skillfulness in setting the table and brushing out carpets. I have already
attained a certain perfection at the task of cleaning the shoes of my lady, whom
I call simply my lady. This is only a small minor task, and yet it requires one
to strive for perfection just like the greatest endeavor. With the small young
gentleman I shall have to go for walks in the future when the weather is fair.
There is a little brown carriage in which I can push the boy about—which, come
to think of it, I’m not particularly looking forward to, since it will be
tedious. Good Lord, do it I shall. My mistress is the sort of woman whose most
striking and distinctive feature is her bourgeois sensibility. She’s a housewife
through and through, but in such a strict and straightforward sense that one
can
see this characteristic as genteel. She’s quite a master at losing her temper,
and I in turn have mastered the art of giving her cause for this. Today, for
example, she broke a fancy porcelain bowl out of thoughtlessness and was furious
with me for not having been the one to break it. She unleashed her fury at me
because I was the disagreeable witness to her clumsiness, and made the sort of
face one often sees caricatured in
Fliegende
Blätter
. A real
Fliegende
Blätter
face. I picked up the shards as daintily and slowly as
possible in order to vex the woman, for I must admit it gives me pleasure to
vex
her. She is charming when vexed. Beautiful she isn’t, but severe women like this
radiate a profound magic when they get worked up. The entire demure past of such
a woman trembles in her fits of excitement, which are delectable to witness,
as
they’ve been ignited by such delicate causes. For me, this is just how it is:
I
can’t help adoring such women, for I admire and pity them at one and the same
time. Such women can be haughty in their speech and bearing—so much that their
cheeks nearly explode and their mouths get all pointy with the most painful
scorn. I love scorn of this sort, for it makes me tremble, and I love being
filled with shame and fury: This drives me on to higher things, spurs me on to
deeds. But my lady there, the scornful one, is after all just a good gentle
woman, this I know, and that’s what’s so scoundrelly about this whole business:
my knowing this. When I obey her, responding to the commanding tone of her
voice, I can’t help laughing all the while, for it clearly gives her pleasure
to
see how willingly and swiftly I obey. And now when I ask her for something, she
snaps at me but then does kindly give in, perhaps feeling a bit of vexation at
the fact that I have petitioned her in such a way that it isn’t possible to deny
me. I am always hurting her just a little, thinking: It serves her right! Go
on!
Keep hurting her, just a little. It amuses her. It’s what she wants. She isn’t
expecting anything different! It’s so easy to recognize women, yet so much about
them is unrecognizable. Isn’t that strange, dear brother? In any case women are
the most instructive thing a man can find anywhere on earth
.
—If she
only knew, the one sitting here beside me, what I’ve been writing! One of my
most ardent desires is to have my ears boxed by her as soon as possible, but
I
doubt, painful as this is to realize, that she’s capable of it. A good
resounding box on the ears: If I could experience this, I’d gladly give up all
kisses I might hope to expect. This ear-boxing business, I admit, is
damnable on my part, but it’s also a genuinely bourgeois sentiment: It brings
one back to childhood, and isn’t it quite ordinary to feel longing for what lies
far behind you? There’s something far-in-the-past
about my mistress; glimpsing that element sends your thoughts far, far back in
time, to a place possibly even more distant than childhood. I’ll no doubt kiss
her hand one of these days, and then she’ll give
me the boot or chuck me
out, as they say. May I do so, and may she. What would be so awful about
that
?
—Oh, I’m going to the dogs here, let me tell
you, it already shows. My mind is occupied with folding napkins and
polishing knives, and what’s queer is that I like it. Can you imagine a
greater idiocy? How are you? I spent three months in the country, but now it
feels to me as if that time’s already far in the past. I have every
intention of becoming a person who devotes himself fully to each day without
considering his ties to more nebulous things. Sometimes I’m too lazy even to
think of you, and this strikes me as enormously indolent. I hope to see
Klara again soon. Perhaps you’ve forgotten her already, and then I shouldn’t
be bringing up the matter to begin with. And so I shan’t. Adieu, dear
brother.