The Tanners (30 page)

With this, she went off.

Several minutes later she returned and, still at a distance of several
paces, resumed the conversation by exclaiming: “How encompassed by novelty
everything here is! Just look around: Everything is fresh, novel, newborn. Not
a
single memory of anything old! Usually every house, every family possesses some
old piece of furniture, a whiff of olden times, a concrete souvenir that we
still love and honor because we find it beautiful, just as we find a scene of
parting or a melancholy sunset beautiful. Do you see anything of the sort here,
even the faintest hint of memory? It seems to me like a dizzying, curved, light
bridge leading into the as yet inexplicable future. Oh, to gaze into the future
is more beautiful than dreaming about the past. It’s also a sort of dreaming
when you imagine a future. Isn’t there something marvelous about this? Wouldn’t
it be cleverer for persons of fine sensibilities to devote their warmth and
inklings to the days yet to come rather than those that lie in the past? Times
yet to come are like children to us and need more attention than the graves of
the departed, which we adorn perhaps with somewhat too exaggerated a love: these
bygone days! A painter will do well now to sketch costumes for distant people
who will possess the grace to wear them in decorum and freedom; let the poet
dream up virtues for strong individuals not gnawed at by longing, and the
architect design as best he can forms that will charmingly give life to the
stone and to building itself, let him go to the forest and there take note of
how tall and noble the firs shoot up from the ground, let him take them as a
model for the buildings of the future; and let man in general, in anticipation
of things to come, cast off much that is common, ignoble and unserviceable, and
whisper his thoughts into the ear of his wife as clearly as he can when she
offers him her lips for a kiss, and the woman will smile. We women understand
how to spur you men on to perform deeds with our smiles, and we fancy we’ve done
our duty when we’ve succeeded in vividly, delightfully filling your senses with
your own duties, just by virtue of a smile. The things you achieve make us
happier than our own accomplishments. We read the books you write and think:
If
only they were willing to do a bit more and write a bit less. In general we
don’t know what would bring much more profit than subordinating ourselves to
you. What else can we do! And how willingly we do so. But now of course I’ve
forgotten to speak of the future, this bold arch across dark waters, this forest
full of trees, this child with gleaming eyes, this unspeakable entity that
always tempts one to catch it in words as if in a snare. No, I believe the
present is the future. Doesn’t everything around us seem to radiate
presentness?”

“Yes,” Simon said.

“Outside the winter’s so horribly severe now, and here indoors it’s so
warm, so perfect for having conversations and for my sitting here beside you,
a
quite young and apparently somewhat
down-at-the-heels person, and any minute now I’ll
be neglecting my duties. Your comportment has something fascinating about it,
do
you realize this? One can’t help wanting to box your ears straight off, out of
a
secret fury at the way you sit here so foolishly and yet have such a strange
capacity to seduce a person into wasting her precious time with you, a random
guest. Do you know what: Why don’t you go on sitting there a while longer.
Surely you’re not in so much of a hurry. I’ll come back later to have another
crack at your ears. For the moment, duty calls—”

And she was gone.

In the lady’s absence, Simon observed his surroundings. The lamps gave
off a bright warm light. People were chatting unrestrainedly with one another.
A
few of them, now that night had fallen, were leaving because they still had to
go back down the mountain to return to town. Two old men sitting cozily at a
table struck him because of the tranquil way they sat there. Both of them had
white beards and rather fresh faces and were smoking pipes, which gave them a
patriarchal air. They didn’t speak to one another, apparently considering that
superfluous. Now and then their respective pairs of eyes would meet, and then
there was a shrugging of pipes and the corners of mouths, but this all occurred
quite tranquilly and no doubt as a matter of habit. They appeared to be idlers,
but calculating, premeditated, superior idlers—idle out of prosperity. Surely
the two of them had taken up with one another only because they shared these
same habits: smoking their pipes, taking little walks, a fondness for wind,
weather and nature, good health, preferring silence to chatter, and finally age
itself with all its special perquisites. To Simon the two of them appeared not
lacking in dignity. One couldn’t help smiling a little at the appealing
cordoned-off spectacle they presented, but this spectacle did not
exclude reverence, which age itself demands as its right. A sense of purpose
was
expressed in their tranquil visages; they possessed a completeness that could
in
no way be disputed any longer. These old men were most certainly beyond
entertaining uncertainties as to the path they’d chosen, even if it had been
chosen in error. But then what did it mean to be in error? If a person picked
an
error as his lodestar at the age of sixty or seventy, this was a sacrosanct
matter to which a young man must respond with reverence. These two old
codgers—for there was certainly something codger-like about them—must
have had some sort of procedure or a system according to which they’d sworn to
one another to go on living until the end of their days; that’s how they looked,
like two people who’d found something that worked and made it possible for them
to await their end with equanimity. “The two of us have found it out, that
secret”—this is what their expressions and bearing seemed to say. It was amusing
and touching and no doubt worth pondering to observe them and attempt to guess
their thoughts. Among other things, one quickly guessed that these two would
always only be seen as a pair and never any other way, never singly, always
together! Always! This was the main thought you felt emanating from their white
heads. Side by side through life, maybe even side by side down into the abyss
of
death: This appeared to be their guiding principle. And indeed, they even looked
like a couple of living, old, but nonetheless still jolly and
good-humored principles. When summer came again, the two of them would
be seen sitting outside on the shady terrace, but they’d still keep filling
their pipes with a mysterious air and prefer silence to speech. When they left,
it would always be the two of them leaving, not first one and then the other:
This seemed unthinkable. Yes, they looked cozy, this much Simon had to give
them: cozy and hardheaded, he thought, looking away from them to gaze at
something else.

He cast fleeting glances at various people and discovered an English
family with strange faces, men who appeared to be scholars and others to whom
it
would have been difficult to ascribe any sort of post or profession; he saw
women with white hair and girls with their bridegrooms, observed people who—one
could tell just by looking—felt somewhat ill at ease here and others who seemed
just as comfortable as if they were sitting at home in the bosom of their
families. But the hall was rapidly emptying. Outside winter was howling and one
could hear the fir trees creaking as they knocked together. The forest lay a
mere ten paces removed from the building, Simon knew well from earlier days.

While he was abandoning himself to his thoughts in this way, the
proprietress reappeared.

She sat down beside him.

A silent change appeared to have taken place in her. She seized
Simon’s hand: This was unexpected. —Hereupon she said quietly, overheard by no
one, and unobserved:

“Now it’s unlikely they’ll disturb me again and prevent my sitting
here with you, people are starting to leave. Tell me, who are you, what’s your
name, where are you from? You look as if one must ask these things. You emit
a
certain wondering and amazement, not amazement that you yourself feel—it’s
rather the person sitting in front of you who feels amazed, observing you. One
wonders about you, feels amazed, and then is filled with a longing to hear you
talk, imagining what it must be that is speaking within you. A person
involuntarily worries on your account. One goes away from you and does one’s
work, and then suddenly one’s taking mercy on you by thinking about you. It
isn’t pity, for pity is something you by no means inspire, nor is it truly
mercy, strictly speaking. I don’t know what it could be: curiosity, perhaps?
Let
me reflect for a moment. Curiosity? A desire to know something about you, just
one little thing, some sound or note. One has the impression one already knows
you and finds you not terribly interesting but nonetheless listens and listens,
just in case you say something that might be worth hearing from your lips a
second time. Looking at you, a person can’t help feeling sorry for you:
casually, condescendingly, looking down on you from above. You must have
something profound about you, but no one seems to notice because you make no
effort at all to let it shine forth. I’d like to hear what you have to tell.
Do
you have parents still, and siblings? Just looking at you, one cannot help
assuming your sisters and brothers must be important people. You yourself,
however, a person cannot help considering utterly insignificant. Why is this?
It’s so easy to feel superior to you. But one need only speak with you a short
while to realize one’s succumbed to the sort of error liable to occur when
speaking to so even-tempered a person, someone who’d scorn the notion
of snapping to attention and who has no wish to look better or more dangerous
than he is. You don’t look particularly interesting, let alone dangerous—and
women are what you get when you combine the need for tenderness with a lust for
unadulterated danger, a constant source of peril. Of course you won’t hold what
I’ve just said against me, for you hold no grudges. One doesn’t know where one
stands with you. Would you tell me your story, I’m so eager to hear it! Do you
know, I’d very much like to be your confidante, even if only for an hour, and
perhaps even if it’s just in my imagination. When I was upstairs just now I felt
such an urge to hurry back to you as if you were an important personage who
mustn’t be kept waiting and whose good graces and even condescending respect
it’s crucial to enjoy. And what I found was a person whose cheeks glow more
brightly when I come running up! How silly of me, but isn’t this odd all the
same? All right now, I shall sit quietly now and listen to you—”

Simon said to her:

“My name is Tanner, Simon Tanner, and I have four siblings, I am the
youngest and the one who occasions the fewest hopes. One brother is a painter,
he lives in Paris, and he lives there more quietly and reclusively than in a
village, for he is painting. He must have changed a bit by now, it’s been over
a
year since I last saw him, but I think if you were to meet him the impression
you’d have is of an important and utterly autonomous person. Getting close to
him is not without its perils: He captivates people in such a way that one can
commit foolhardy acts for his sake. He’s a consummate artist, and if I, his
brother, understand something about art, it’s to his credit rather than my own
understanding, which only developed a little as it was drawn to him. I think
he
must be wearing long curls now, but on him the curls look as natural as a
closely shorn head on an officer, they aren’t obtrusive. He disappears in the
crowd, and it’s his wish to disappear so he can work in peace. Once in a letter
to me he wrote something about an eagle that spreads its pinions above rocky
crags and feels most at home hovering above chasms, and another time he wrote
to
me that a man and artist must work like a horse—collapsing from exhaustion meant
nothing at all, it was necessary to collapse and get back up again at once to
return to work. He was still just a boy then, and now he paints pictures. If
some day he ceases to be able to paint, he’ll scarcely be alive any longer. His
name is Kaspar, and as a schoolboy he was always considered a lazybones both
at
school and in the parental home, take my word for it, and this was only because
his general manner was so placid, so mild. He was taken out of school at an
early age since he wasn’t doing well there, and had to carry about boxes and
crates, and then he escaped from his homeland, and outside it learned to compel
people to give him the respect he deserved. He’s one of my brothers, and another
is named Klaus. Klaus is the oldest, and I consider him the best and most
thoughtful person in all the world. His very gaze bespeaks his forbearance,
scrupulousness and consideration. He’s an able man, so very able that his
modest, discreet abilities will always remain hidden. He watched us younger ones
grow up and devote ourselves to our desires and passions, he observed this all
in silence and waited, occasionally speaking a word of concern or advice, but
always he saw that everyone must tread his own path, he merely did what he could
to avert misfortune, and his uncanny acuity of vision always let him discern
what was good in a person. This brother is secretly worried about me, I know
this quite well, for he loves me, in fact he loves all people and has a
strangely shy esteem for them that we younger ones lack. Although he holds a
position of prominence in the scholarly world, I am nonetheless convinced that
only his scrupulousness—which is tempered always with shyness—is to blame for
his not yet occupying an even higher one, because he deserves the very highest
position, the one of greatest responsibility. I have a third brother as well
who
is unfortunate and nothing more; all that remains of him is what memories of
his
earlier days can tell a person. He’s in the madhouse—shouldn’t I be permitted
to
state this candidly? Given that you’re sitting here listening to me with such
an
attentively harkening ear, I assume you’re interested in hearing all there is
to
tell in its most truthful form or else nothing at all, isn’t that right? You
nod, which says to me I already know you rather well if I make bold to assume
you to be a simultaneously kind-hearted and courageous woman. Please
keep listening. This unfortunate brother was surely, and I may say so without
hesitation, the ideal of a young beautiful man, and he had talents that would
have been better suited to the gallant, charming eighteenth century than our
times, whose demands are so much harder and drier. Allow me to pass over his
misfortune in silence; for in the first place talk of it might dishearten you,
and secondly and thirdly, and as far as I’m concerned sixthly, it isn’t proper
to tug apart all the folds of misfortune and cast aside all ceremony, all lovely
veiled mourning, which can exist only when one keeps silent on such matters.
I’ve now given you a tentative, sketchy portrait of my brothers, and now a girl
will appear, a lonely schoolmistress sequestered in a little village with
thatched roofs, my sister Hedwig. Would you like to make her acquaintance? You
and all your sensibilities would be delighted by this girl. There is no prouder
creature on all the planet. I lived a full three months with her in idleness
in
the countryside; she wept when I arrived and laughed at me when, suitcase in
hand, I tried to bid her a tender farewell. She threw me out, and at the same
time gave me a kiss. She said to me that all she felt for me was a faint,
insuppressible contempt, but she said that so sweetly I couldn’t help but feel
it as a caress. Just imagine, she gave me shelter in her home when I came to
her
with more beggarly, more importunate demands than the most insolent vagabond
who
only remembered his sister because it occurred to him: “You can go there until
you’re standing on your own two feet again.” —But then we lived for three entire
months as if in a gay pleasure garden filled with bower-lined paths.
Such a thing can never be forgotten. When I went out and took walks in the
woods, finding myself too indolent to know whether to scratch my chin or behind
my ears, I dreamed of her, of her alone, as if wanting to dream of what was
simultaneously closest and farthest away. She was far from me out of reverence
and close out of love. She was so proud, I’ll have you know, that she never
allowed me to feel how very shabby I must have appeared to her. She just felt
glad when I made myself at home and settled in with her. This persisted until
the very last hour, and then she simply cut my farewell off before it left my
lips, in the presentiment that I would say only hurtful, stupid things. When
I’d
left, I turned to look back down the hill behind me and saw her waving at me
amicably and simply, as if I were just heading off to the nearest village
cobbler and would return in an hour’s time. And yet she knew she was being left
behind, alone with her isolation, and would be faced with the task of adjusting
to the absence of a companion—and this certainly was a task, an internal labor.
When we sat together in the evenings, we’d tell each other stories about our
lives, and we heard the wings of childhood beating once more, just as our
mother’s dress would rustle on the floor of the room when she came toward her
children. My mother and my sister Hedwig always comprise in my head an
intimately conjoined and interwoven image. When our mother fell ill, it was
Hedwig who cared for and tended her, as one must tend a little child. Just
imagine: A child must watch her own mother become a child, and becomes a mother
to her own mother. What a strange displacement of feelings. My mother was a
highly respected woman, and the esteem she received from all sides was pure and
heartfelt. The impression she made was always at once rural and refined.
Simultaneously unassuming and dismissive, she could quickly put a damper on
disobedience and unkindness. Her expression could ask and command at one and
the
same time. How the ladies in our town would cluster about her when she went for
a walk, how many gentlemen’s hats were doffed before her. Then, when she fell
ill, she was forgotten and became an object of worry and shame. For one feels
ashamed when a family member is ill and is almost enraged to remember the days
when a healthy woman commanded the respect of all who knew her. Shortly before
her death—I was fourteen years old at the time—she sat down at noon one day to
write a letter: “My beloved son.” But do you imagine her whimsically slender
handwriting continued any further than this salutation? No, she just gave a
weary confused smile, murmured something and was compelled to lay down the pen
once more. There she sat, there lay the beginning of a letter to her son, there
the pen, and the sun was shining out of doors, and I observed all these things.
One night Hedwig then knocked at the door of my room, telling me to get up,
Mother had died. A thin ray of light fell through the crack of the door as I
leapt out of bed. As a girl, my mother had been unhappy, born into unfavorable
circumstances. She left the distant mountains and came to live in town with her
sister, my aunt—where she was forced to work as a maid practically. As a child
she walked a long road deeply covered in snow to get to school, and she did her
homework in a tiny little room by the light of a paltry candle stub that made
her eyes hurt because she could scarcely read the letters in her book. Her
parents were unkind to her, and so she became acquainted with melancholy at an
early age, and one day, when she was a girl, she stood leaning against the
railings of a bridge, wondering whether it wouldn’t be better to leap down into
the river. She must have been neglected, shunted back and forth and in this way
maltreated. When as a boy I once heard about her wicked childhood, I trembled
with indignation, rage shot into my face, and from then on I hated the unknown
figures of my grandparents. For her children, our mother had, when she was still
healthy, something almost majestic about her that frightened and intimidated
us;
when she became ill in her mind, we pitied her. It was a crazy
leap to
make: from fearful, mystical awe to pity. All that lay
between—tenderness and trust—remained unknown to us. And so it happened that
our
pity was strongly intermingled with an unspeakable regret over all we’d never
felt, which then caused us to pity her all the more deeply. I remembered all
my
boyish pranks, all my disrespectful behavior—and then the sound of our mother’s
voice, with which she meted out punishments even at a distance, so that the
actual physical punishment that followed was sweet, laughable
sugar-candy by comparison. She employed just the right tone of voice
to make you instantly regret the error you’d committed and desire to see her
outrage mollified as quickly as possible. There was something so wonderfully
mild about her mildness, and seeing it was like receiving a present; we didn’t
receive it often. Oversensitive irritability was my mother’s usual state. We
weren’t nearly as frightened of our father as of her, we feared only that he
might say or do something that would cause Mother to fly into a rage. He was
powerless before her—it was in his nature to prize vigor far less than
relaxation. He was a boon companion, and as such well-loved, but when
it came to difficult matters, he wasn’t the one to take things in hand. Now he’s
eighty years old, and when he dies, a piece of town history will die along with
him; the old people will shake their heads more pensively and wearily when they
no longer see the old man going about his business, which he still does today,
and on fairly spry legs. In his youth he was rather a wild fellow who was
gradually polished by city life, but this life also gave him a taste for luxury.
Both Mother and Father came from rugged, secluded, mountainous regions and then
found themselves in a town that even at the time was known, if not notorious,
for its liberal vitality. Industry was flourishing in those days like a fiery
plant, permitting an easy, carefree lifestyle—much money was earned, and much
spent. When five or six days a week were workdays, this was considered
industriousness. Workers lay for days at a time upon the sunny riverbank,
catching fish, when they weren’t getting up to mischief. And whenever they
needed more money to finance this life, they’d go work a few days more, earning
enough to return to their leisure. The craftsmen were making money off the
workers, for when even the poor have money, how much more prosperous must the
well-to-do be. The city appeared to have acquired an
additional ten thousand inhabitants overnight, everyone came streaming in from
the surrounding countryside into buildings that were occupied and filled the
moment they looked on the outside as though they might be finished, never mind
how damp and dirty the inside might still be. Construction firms were having
a
heyday, all they had to do was keep producing buildings, which they did as
shoddily as could be managed. Factory owners rode around on horseback, and their
ladies traveled in barouches while the town’s old nobility observed these
activities and sniffed. On festival days the town went all out, surpassing all
rivals, and left no stone unturned in its bid to be celebrated everywhere as
the
best town for revelries. The merchants had nothing to complain about under these
circumstances, nor did the schoolchildren; the only ones who felt uneasy were
a
handful of insightful individuals who couldn’t find the courage to join their
neighbors on the unsteady, rose-strewn pleasure ground of superficial
amusements. Into such surroundings my parents now came, Mother with her
irritable sensitivities and her taste for
simple refinement, and Father
with his talent for assimilating
everything around him. For children,
every region is lovely and charming, but this particular place, thanks to its
setting, was made for children who love to pursue their games amid lairs such
as
rocks, caves, riverbanks, meadows, hollows, gorges and wooded ravines. And so
we
enjoyed this entire landscape for our games and inventions until we left school.
When Mother died, I was sent to a bank as an apprentice. During the first year
I
acquitted myself splendidly; for the novelty of what I encountered in this world
filled me with timidity and fear. The second year found me a model apprentice,
but in the third year of my apprenticeship the director cursed me to the devil,
keeping me on only as an act of mercy, in deference to my father, whose close
acquaintance he’d been for many years. I’d lost all gusto for work of any sort
and spoke insolently to my superiors, whom I considered unworthy of ordering
me
around. There was something in me