The Tanners (24 page)

–15–

The next morning he didn’t wake up until the bells were
ringing. From his bed, he noted that out of doors it must be a splendid blue
day. The light flashing in the windowpanes suggested a glorious morning sky
high up over the alleyway. Gazing at the wall of the building opposite, one
was conscious of bright-golden intimations. It was difficult to
think how dark and dismal this blotchy wall must look under a sky thick with
clouds. One gazed at it for a long time, imagining what the lake must look
like now with all the sails upon it in the golden blue morning weather.
Certain mountain meadows, certain views and certain benches beneath the lush
green trees, the forest, the streets, the promenades, the meadows upon the
back of the broad mountain with its full complement of trees, the rampant
green slopes and forest ravines, the spring and woodland brook with its
large stones and water singing softly when you sat down beside it to be
lulled to sleep. All these things could be seen quite clearly when Simon
gazed over at the wall that after all was just a wall, but today was
reflecting an entire vision of a blissful human Sunday, just because
something like a breath of blue sky was bobbing up and down above it. And of
course the bells were ringing all this time with their familiar notes, and
bells, yes, they know how to awaken images.

Still lying there in bed, he resolved to be more industrious from now
on, to study something, a language for example, and in general to start living
a
more regulated existence. He’d let so much slip through his fingers! Learning
surely brought a person great pleasure. It was so lovely to engage in these
heartfelt, vivid imaginings of how it would be to keep studying and studying
assiduously, never once emerging from one’s studies. He sensed a certain human
maturity within him: And how much lovelier all this studying would be if
approached with the sum of this already attained maturity. Yes, that’s what he
would do now: study, set himself tasks, and take pleasure in uniting both
teacher and pupil within his own person. What about, for example, taking up a
melodious language such as French? “I would learn words and imprint them firmly
on my memory. My constantly active imagination would come to my aid. Tree:
l’arbre. With all my feelings I would see this tree. Klara would come to mind.
I’d see her in a white dress with wide folds beneath a broad, shady, dark green
tree. In this way many things, things I had almost already forgotten, would
return to me. My mind would grow stronger and more active in grasping. It blunts
you if you never study anything. How sweet this smallness is, this beginner’s
stage! I’m now finding this prospect vastly appealing and don’t understand how
I
could have been defiant and sluggish so very long. Oh, all sluggishness is just
defiance, an insisting on one’s own knowledge and the putative superiority of
this knowledge to that of other people. If only we knew how little we knew,
things might still turn out well. Hearing the sound of the foreign word, I would
think of the German one more warmly and spread its meaning out more fully before
me in my thoughts, and so even my own language would become a new, richer sound
filled with unfamiliar images. Le jardin: garden. Here I would think of Hedwig’s
country garden that I helped plant when spring arrived. Hedwig! In a flash it
would all come back to me, the things she said, did, suffered and thought during
all the days I spent with her. I have no cause to forget people and things so
quickly, above all my sister. After we’d already planted the garden it snowed
again one night, and we were terribly worried that nothing would grow. That
would have been quite a blow, for we were hoping to harvest a great many
splendid vegetables from our garden. How lovely it is to be able to share one’s
worries with another person. Just imagine how it must be to suffer the pains
and
fight the battles of an entire people! Yes, all these things would come to me
if
I were studying a language—and many others as well, so many that I can’t even
imagine them yet! Just to study, to study, who cares what! I’ll also immerse
myself in natural history, all on my own, without a teacher, using some
inexpensive book that I can go and buy right away tomorrow, since today is
Sunday, so of course all the shops are closed. All of this is quite feasible,
clearly. Why else is one alive? Could it be I’ve stopped thinking I owe myself
anything at all? I’ve got to pull myself together—it’s certainly high time.”

And he leapt out of bed as though he felt the need to get started with
his new plans right this minute. Quickly he got dressed. The mirror told him
that he looked quite nice indeed, which satisfied him.

As he was about to go downstairs, he came upon Frau Weiss, his
landlady and room-letter. She was dressed all in black and held a
small prayer book in her hand, having just returned from church. She gave a
cheerful laugh as she beheld Simon and asked whether he hadn’t wanted to go to
church himself.

He responded that he hadn’t been to church in many years.

The entire kindly face of the woman flinched as she heard these words,
which she found unsuitable coming out of a young man’s mouth. She wasn’t angry,
for she was by no means an intolerant holy roller, but she couldn’t restrain
herself from telling Simon he wasn’t really doing what he should. Besides which,
she added, she didn’t believe him; he didn’t have that look. But if it were in
fact true, she hoped he’d keep in mind that it wasn’t right never to go to
church.

Wishing to keep her in a good mood, Simon promised he’d go to church
soon, whereupon she gave him a quite friendly look. Meanwhile he was on his way
downstairs, not letting her delay him any longer. “A nice woman,” he thought,
“and she likes me, I can always tell when women like me. How amusingly she
pouted because of church. The sort of pout that covers the entire face always
looks good on women. I like to see such a thing. Besides which she respects me.
I shall make a point of preserving her respect. But I shan’t speak with her too
much or often. This will make her wish to engage me in conversation, and she’ll
be happy whenever I do say something to her. I like women of her sort. She looks
wonderful in black. How sweet the little prayer book looked held in her
voluptuous hand. A woman who prays actually becomes even more sensually
appealing. How beautifully this pale hand stood out against the black of her
sleeve. And her face! Well, that’s enough now. In any case it’s most agreeable
to have something sweet in reserve, an auxiliary supply, as it were. This gives
you a sort of home, a place of refuge with another person, a recourse, a magic
spell—for I cannot live without there being a certain magic present. She still
had a desire to go on speaking with me, back there on the stairs. But I broke
off our conversation; for it pleases me to leave unfulfilled wishes behind with
women. This allows one to inflate one’s value rather than decreasing it. The
women themselves, incidentally, wish for you to act in such a way.”

The street was swarming with people in their Sunday best. The women
were all wearing light-colored, white dresses, the girls wore colorful
broad ribbons on their white skirts, the men were simply dressed in
lighter-colored summer fabrics, boys wore sailor suits, dogs were
trotting along behind a couple of people; in the water, confined in a wire
enclosure, swans swam about, and a few young people leaned over the railing of
the bridge, observing them attentively; other men were walking rather solemnly
to their polling places to cast their votes in the election, bells were ringing
for the second or third time, the lake shimmered blue and swallows flew high
above in the air, over rooftops all agleam in the sunlight; the sun was first
of
all a Sunday-morning sun, then a sun pure and simple, and then a
special sun for a pair of artist’s eyes that were no doubt present somewhere
in
the crowd; here and there, the trees of the municipal parks burgeoned with
green, spreading their crowns; in the darker world beneath the shade trees,
still more women and men were strolling about; sailing vessels flew before the
wind upon blue distant water, and lethargic boats tied to barrels were rocking
near the shore; still more birds were flying here, and people were standing
still, gazing at the blue, whitish distance and the mountain peaks in that
distant sky were like precious, white, all but invisible lace, and the whole
sky
like a light-blue dressing gown. Everyone was busy watching, chatting,
feeling, showing, pointing, noticing and smiling. From a pavilion the sounds
of
a band came darting like fluttering, twittering birds from amid the foliage.
Simon too was walking there in all the green. The sun cast bright spots upon
the
path through the awning of leaves, as well as on the grass, on the bench where
nursemaids were rocking perambulators back and forth, on the hats of the ladies
and the shoulders of the men. Everyone was chatting, gazing, glancing, calling
out greetings and promenading back and forth. Elegant carriages rolled along
the
street, now and then an electric streetcar whizzed past, and the steamboats were
whistling, you could see their smoke flying away, heavy and thick, between the
trees. Out in the lake young people were bathing. Admittedly you couldn’t see
them as you strolled up and down beneath the foliage, but you knew there were
bare bodies swimming about, luminous in the liquid blue. What wasn’t luminous
today? What wasn’t flickering? Everything scintillated, flashed, shone and swam
in colors and dissolved into sounds before your eyes. Simon said to himself
several times in a row: “How beautiful a Sunday is!” He looked into the eyes
of
the children and all the people, he gazed at everything blissfully and,
bewildered, now he glimpsed a beautiful isolated gesture, and now the picture
as
a whole appeared before his eyes. He sat down beside an apparently
still-young man upon a bench and looked the man in the eyes. A
conversation began to unfold between the two of them, for it was so easy to
begin talking when everyone was so happy.

The other man said to Simon:

“I’m a nurse, but at present I’m nothing but a loafer. I come from
Naples, where I cared for the sick at the International Hospital. It’s quite
possible that ten days from now I’ll be somewhere in the American interior, or
else in Russia; they send us wherever nurses are needed, even to the South Sea
Islands. It’s one way to see the world, quite true, but your own homeland
becomes so unfamiliar, I can’t express this clearly enough. You for example no
doubt have always lived in your own native land, it constantly surrounds you,
you feel encircled by familiar sights, you do your work here, you’re happy here
and surely experience adversity here as well, never mind, but at least you’re
allowed to feel connected to a soil, a land, a sky, if I may say it thus. It’s
lovely to be bound to something. You feel at ease, you have the right to feel
at
ease, and every reason to expect the understanding and love of your fellow men.
But me? Nothing of the sort! You see, I’ve grown too wicked for my own narrowly
circumscribed homeland—perhaps also too good, too all-comprehending. I
can no longer share the sentiments of my countrymen. I now understand their
preferences just as little as I do their anger and dislikes. In any case, I’m
a
stranger there, and when you’ve become a stranger, people do hold it against
you. And certainly they’re right—for it was wrong of me to become estranged.
Even if my views about so many things are now more worldly and intelligent, what
use is this if they serve only to offend my countrymen’s sensibilities? They
must be wicked views if they cause offense. You have to hold a country’s customs
and values sacred if you don’t wish to become a stranger there one day, as has
happened now with me. In any case, I’ll soon be traveling far from home again,
to wherever my patients are—”

He smiled and asked Simon: “What do you do?”

“I’m an outlandish figure in my own homeland,” Simon replied.
“Actually I’m a copy clerk, and you can no doubt imagine how great a role I
therefore play in my fatherland, where the copyist is pretty much at the very
bottom of the social hierarchy. Other young people intent on pursuing commercial
trades go off traveling to distant lands for educational purposes and then
return home with a sack full of knowledge to find that honorable positions have
been reserved for them. I however—take my word for it—shall always remain in
this country. It’s as if I were afraid that in other countries no sun would
shine, or an inferior one. I’m bound fast to this place and am always seeing
new
things amid the old, perhaps this is why I’m so unwilling to leave. I’m going
to
the dogs here, I can see that perfectly well, and nonetheless I must, or so it
seems to me, go on breathing beneath the sky of my homeland if I wish to live
at
all. Naturally I don’t enjoy much respect, I’m generally seen as a wastrel, but
this doesn’t matter at all to me, not one bit. Here I am and shall no doubt
remain. It’s so sweet to remain. Does nature go abroad? Do trees wander off to
procure for themselves greener leaves in other places so they can come home and
flaunt their new splendor? Rivers and clouds are always leaving, but this is
a
different, more profound sort of leave-taking, without any returning.
It’s not really a departure anyhow, just a flying, flowing way of being at rest.
Such a depature—how beautiful it is, if I may say so! I’m always looking at the
trees and telling myself: They aren’t leaving either, so why shouldn’t I be
permitted to remain? When I find myself in a city in winter, I feel tempted to
see it in spring: Seeing a tree in winter, I wish to see it resplendent in the
springtime, sending out its first enchanting leaves. After spring, the summer
always comes, inexplicably beautiful and quiet, like a glowing huge green wave
arising from the unfathomable depths of the world, and of course I wish to enjoy
the summer here, do you understand me, sir, here, where I saw the spring
blossoming. Take, for example, this little strip of meadow or lawn. How sweet
it
looks in early spring when the snow upon it has just melted beneath the sun’s
rays. It’s this tree and this lawn and this world that matter: In other places,
I don’t think I’d even notice summer. What it comes down to is that I have a
truly devilish desire to remain right where I am, along with all sorts of not
terribly amusing reasons that preclude my undertaking a journey abroad. For
example: Would I have any money for travel? As you surely know, a person needs
money to travel by rail or boat. I have money enough for perhaps twenty more
meals; but I don’t have the money to travel. And I’m glad not to have any. Let
other folks go traveling and come home more clever. I’m clever enough to be able
to die here with dignity one day, in the land of my birth.”