The Tanners (23 page)

Simon leapt to his feet, violently agitated, his cheeks flushed with
indignation:

“What’s that you’re saying? In the family? You’re quite mistaken, my
noble storyteller. Take a good look at me, if you will. Do you perhaps see in
me
as well something that might run in the family? Must I too be sent to the
madhouse? This would indubitably occur if it ran in the family, for I too come
from this family. That young man is my brother. I’m not at all ashamed to
identify as my brother this merely unfortunate and by no means insidious
individual. Is his name not Emil, Emil Tanner? Could I know this if he were not
my own dear natural brother? Is his father, who is also mine, not a flour
merchant by any chance, who also does a flourishing business in wine from the
Burgundy region and oil from Provence?”

“Indeed, all that is true,” said the man who’d been telling the
story.

Simon went on: “No, it cannot possibly run in the family. I shall deny
this as long as I live. It’s simply misfortune. It can’t have been the women.
You’re quite right when you say it wasn’t them. Must these poor women always
be
at fault when men succumb to misfortune? Why don’t we think a bit more simply
about it? Can it not lie in a person’s character, in a particle of the soul?
Like this, and always like this, and therefore in the soul? Look, if you will,
how I am moving my hand just now: Like this, and in the soul! That’s where it
lies. A human being feels something, and then he acts in
such-and-such a way, and then collides with various walls
and uneven spots, just like that. People are always so quick to think of
horrific genetic inheritances and the like. To me that seems ridiculous. And
what cowardice and lack of reverence to insist on holding his parents and his
parents’ parents responsible for his misfortune. This shows a lack of both
propriety and courage, not to mention the most unseemly
soft-heartedness! When misfortune crashes down upon your head, it’s
just that you’ve provided all that was needed for fate to produce a misfortune.
Do you know what my brother was to me, to me and Kaspar, my other brother, to
us
younger ones? He taught us on our shared walks to have a sense for the beautiful
and noble, at a time when we were still the most wretched rascals whose only
interest was getting up to tricks. From his eyes we imbibed the fire that filled
them when he spoke to us of art. Can you imagine what a splendid time that was,
how ambitious—in the boldest, most beautiful sense of the word—our quest for
understanding? Let’s drink one more bottle together, I’m buying, yes that’s
right, even though I’m just an unemployed ne’er-do-well. Hey
there! Innkeeper, a bottle of
Waadtländer
, your finest. —I’m a person who knows no pity. I forgot
all about my poor brother Emil long ago. I can’t even manage to think of him,
for you see, I’m the sort whose standing in the world is so precarious that he
must struggle with all his might to keep on his feet. I don’t want to fall down
until such time as I’ll no longer harbor thoughts of getting up again. Yes,
that’s when I might perhaps have time to think of these unfortunates and feel
pity: when I myself have become pitiable. But this isn’t yet the case, and for
the moment when it comes to my own death I intend to go on laughing and jesting.
In me you behold a fairly indestructible individual able to endure all sorts
of
adversity. Life need not be so sparkly to enchant my eyes—to me it’s already
sparkling. I generally find it quite beautiful and can’t understand the ones
who
carp and call it ugly. Here comes the wine. Drinking wine always makes me feel
so elegant. My poor brother is still alive! I thank you, sir, for having forced
my memory to encounter this unhappy man today. And now, leaving all
soft-heartedness behind: Let us raise our glasses, gentlemen: Long
live misfortune!—”

“Why, if I might ask?”

“You go too far!”

“Misfortune is educational, that’s why I’m asking you to raise your
glasses with this glittering wine to drink a toast to it. And again! There. I
thank you. Let me tell you, I’m a friend of misfortune, a very intimate friend,
for misfortune merits feelings of closeness and friendship. It makes us
better—that’s doing us quite a good turn. Indeed, such an act of friendship must
be reciprocated if a person wishes to behave respectably. Misfortune is our
lives’ cantankerous but nonetheless honest friend. It would be quite insolent
and dishonorable of us to overlook this fact. At first glance we never quite
understand misfortune, and for this reason we hate it the moment it arrives.
Misfortune is a refined, quiet, unannounced fellow who always surprises us as
if
we were mere galoots and easily surprised. Anyone who has a talent for
surprising others must certainly, regardless of who he is and where he comes
from, be something quite extraordinarily refined. Not letting any forebodings
come to light and then suddenly standing there; having about one not the
faintest inquisitive, anticipatory taste or odor, and then all at once clapping
a person chummily on the shoulder, addressing him in a familiar tone while
smiling and showing him a pale, mild, all-knowing, beautiful face:
This takes more skill than eating bread, requires other devices than those
flying contraptions mankind
has already started boasting about with
grandiose, bombastic words even though they’re still just half invented. No,
it’s destiny—
misfortune—that’s beautiful. It’s also good, for it
contains fortune, its opposite. It appears to be armed with weapons of both
sorts. It has an angry crushing voice, but also a gentle mellifluous one. It
awakens new life when it has destroyed old life that failed to please it. It
spurs one on to live better. All beauty, if we still harbor hopes of
experiencing beautiful things, is due to it. Misfortune allows us to grow tired
of beautiful things and shows us new ones with its outstretched fingers. Isn’t
unhappy love the most emotional sort and thus the most delicate, refined and
beautiful? Does not abandonment ring out in soft, flattering, soothing notes?
Are these things I am saying all new to you, gentlemen? Well, they surely are
new when someone says them aloud; for they rarely get said. Most people lack
the
courage to welcome misfortune as something in which you can bathe your soul just
as you bathe your limbs in water. Just take a look at yourself when you’ve
undressed and are standing there naked: What splendor: a naked healthy human
being! What good fortune: being clothed no longer and standing there naked! It’s
already a stroke of fortune to have come into this world, and having no other
good fortune than your health is still fortune that outsparkles and outshines
all the finest gemstones, all the beautiful tapestries and flowers, the palaces
and miracles. The most marvelous thing of all is health, this is a fortune to
which nothing comparable can be added, unless a person in the course of time
has
become savage enough to wish he might become ill in exchange for a
money-purse filled with cash. This plenitude of splendor and good
fortune—if we are indeed inclined to see the naked, firm, pliant, warm members
that have been given us for our journey through life as such a plenitude—must
be
counterbalanced, and thus we have misfortune! It can prevent us from bubbling
over, it provides us with a soul. Misfortune educates our ears to perceive the
beautiful sound that rings out when soul and body, intermingled and conjoined,
respire as one. It turns our body into something bodily-soulful and
gives our soul a firm existence at our center so that if we choose, we can feel
our entire body as a soul, the leg as leaping soul, the arm as carrying soul,
the ear as a hearing one, the foot as a nobly walking soul, the eye as the
seeing one and the mouth as the kissing one. It makes us truly love, for where
can we have loved if no misfortune was present? In dreams it’s even more
beautiful than in reality, for when we dream we suddenly understand the
sensuality of misfortune, its enchanting kindness. Otherwise it’s usually a
hindrance, particularly when it arrives in the form of financial loss. But can
this be a misfortune? Say we lose a banknote—what are we losing? Admittedly,
this circumstance is highly disagreeable, but it’s no cause to feel inconsolable
for any longer than it takes to realize that this is hardly true misfortune.
And
so on! One could speak a great deal about this; and eventually grow weary of
the
topic—”

“You speak like a poet, sir,” one of the men remarked with a
smile.

“That may be. Wine always makes me speak poetically,” Simon replied,
“as little a poet as I am otherwise. I tend to lay down rules for myself and
in
general am hardly disposed to get carried away by fantasies and ideals, since
I
consider doing so ill-advised and presumptuous in the extreme. Take my
word for it, I can be quite dry. It’s also far from permissible to assume any
person you happen to hear speaking of beauty is a poet with his head in the
clouds, as seems to be your habit; for I do believe it can occur even to an in
general coldly calculating pawn-shop broker or bank cashier to think
of matters not pertaining to his money-grubbing profession. As a rule,
we reckon too few individuals capable of sentimental reflection, for people
haven’t learned to look at each other. I’ve taken it upon myself to engage in
bold, heartfelt conversation with every single person so that I’ll quickly see
what sort he is. You often make a fool of yourself using a rule like this in
life, and occasionally you might even get your ears boxed—by a delicate lady,
for example—but what harm does that do? I find it enjoyable to disgrace myself
and maintain the conviction that the respect of individuals in whose eyes you
lose face the moment you begin to speak openly isn’t so terribly valuable that
losing it is any reason to feel glum. Human respect must always suffer beneath
human love. That’s what I wanted to say in response to the somewhat derisive
remark you made at my expense.”

“I had no intention of hurting your feelings.”

“In that case, how nice of you,” Simon said and gave a laugh. Then he
added abruptly after a moment’s pause: “As for your story about my brother, by
the way, it did in fact affect me. He’s still alive, my brother, and scarcely
anyone still thinks of him; for when a person steals away, above all to such
a
dismal place, he’s soon stricken from people’s memories. The unfortunate! You
know, I could argue that it would only have taken the tiniest alteration in his
heart, perhaps a single teeny jot more in his soul, and he’d have been a
productive artist whose work would have enraptured humankind. It takes so very
little to make a person strong—and so very little, on the other hand, to thrust
him into utter misfortune. What use is there talking about it. He’s ill, and
he’s standing now on the side where there’s no longer any sunshine. I shall
think of him more often now, for his misfortune is just too cruel. It is a
misery even ten criminals wouldn’t deserve, much less him, who had such a heart.
Yes, misfortune is sometimes far from lovely, I now freely confess this. I
should warn you, sir: I’m a defiant person and like to go about making wild
claims, which is no way to act. My heart is at times quite hard—particularly
when I see that others are filled with pity. I feel such an impulse then to
start raging and laughing in the middle of that nice warm pity. Very bad of me,
very very bad! As for the rest, I am by no means a good man, far from it, but
I
hope one day I will be. It was a pleasure for me to be permitted to speak with
you. The happenstance is always the most valuable. I would appear to have drunk
rather a lot, and it’s so warm here in the barroom, that I feel an urge to go
outside. Farewell, gentlemen! No, not
au
revoir
. Absolutely not. I wouldn’t dream of it. I feel no urge at all
to see you again. There are still so many people I have yet to meet, I can’t
go
about frivolously saying
au revoir
.
That would only be a lie; for I have no desire to see you again unless it’s by
chance, and then it will be a pleasure for me, though only to a certain extent.
I don’t like to make a fuss and prefer to be truthful, this is perhaps my
distinguishing characteristic. I hope it also distinguishes me in your eyes,
though you are now gaping at me in a rather astonished and foolish way, as if
you were insulted. Well, then, be insulted! Devil take it, what can I have said
to insult you? Well?”

The innkeeper walked over and asked that Simon keep his voice
down:

“It’s best you leave now, it’s time.”

And Simon allowed himself to be steered gently out into the dark
alleyway.

It was a deep, black, humid night. It was as if the night were some
creeping entity making its way along the walls. From time to time a tall
building would be standing there, a dark shape, and then another one would glow
yellow and white as though it possessed some magic power that made it luminous
in the dark night. The walls of the buildings smelled so strange. Something
moist and close emanated from them. Isolated lights now and then lit up a patch
of street. Up above, the bold rooftops jutted out over the smooth high walls
of
buildings. The entire wide night seemed to have laid itself into this little
tangle of alleyways in order to sleep here or dream. There were still isolated
late-night individuals walking about. Here someone was staggering and
singing as he went, another one was cursing loud enough to cleave the heavens
in
two, a third was already collapsed on the ground while a policeman’s helmet came
glinting from behind the corner of a building. When you walked, your steps
resounded beneath your feet. Simon encountered an old, inebriated man who
was reeling from side to side the full width of the street. It was a wretched
and at the same time jolly sight: the way the dark, awkward figure was being
thrust back and forth as though shoved by an nimble, invisible hand. Then the
old, white-bearded man dropped his walking stick and wanted to pick it
up from the ground—no doubt a daunting task for this drunkard, who appeared
about to fall down himself. But Simon, seized by a smiling merciful sentiment,
hurried over to the man and his stick, picking up the latter and pressing it
into the man’s hand, who murmured his thanks in the mysterious language of
drunkenness, in a tone of voice that suggested he had cause to be still
insulted. This sight immediately had a sobering effect on Simon, and he turned
out of the old part of town into the newer, more elegant district. As he was
crossing a bridge over the river that separated the two halves of the city from
one another, he inhaled the strange perfume of the flowing water. He strode down
the street in which he’d been addressed three weeks previous by that lady before
the shop window, saw a light still burning in the home of his former mistress,
reflected that she’d still been his mistress only yesterday, and then went on
walking beneath the trees until he came to the broad dark lake lying there
before him, appearing to be asleep across its entire splendid expanse. Such
sleep! If an entire lake could sleep like that with all its bottomless
depths—that was an impressive sight. Yes, it was certainly a strange thing,
barely comprehensible. Simon went on gazing out at it for a while until he began
to long to sleep himself. Oh, he would sleep excellently now. It would come over
him so peacefully, and tomorrow he would remain lying in bed a long time,
tomorrow was Sunday after all. Simon went home.