The Tanners

by Robert Walser

  “I don’t want a future, I want a present. To me this appears of greater value. You have a future only when you have no present, and when you have a present, you forget to even think about the future.”

  “I wish you well but I fear that something unfortunate will befall you. You interest me, that’s why I’ve been listening—otherwise I wouldn’t have wasted so much time on you. Perhaps you haven’t found your calling, perhaps you’ll amount to something yet. In any case, I hope things will go well for you.”

  With a nod of the director’s head Simon was dismissed and soon found himself on the street outside. He observed a man pacing up and down in front of a pastry shop, probably he was waiting for someone, perhaps a woman, who could say? But the man aroused his interest. He was, at first glance, horrifically ugly, with a quite unusually large curved skull, a full beard and a rather weary, even animal, expression in his eyes. He had a mincing walk that was nonetheless noble, and his clothes were of good quality and tasteful. In his hand he held a yellow walking stick; he appeared to be a scholar, but one who was still young. There was something gentle, even heart-stirring about this man and his bearing. It seemed as though one might venture to address him freely—and Simon did:

  “Forgive me, sir, for speaking to you in this way. The moment I set eyes on you something about you appealed to me. I would like to make your acquaintance. Shouldn’t such a heartfelt wish be sufficient grounds for addressing a few words to a person like yourself in the middle of the street? You seem as if you’re searching for someone, as if you suspect there might be someone waiting for you here on this square. But with this crowd of people milling about it will be difficult for you alone to discover the individual in question. I’ll help you look if you are willing to confide a few details of the person you hope to meet. Is it a lady?”

  “Yes, most assuredly a lady,” the gentleman replied, smiling.

  “What does she look like?”

  “Dressed in black from head to foot. A tall slender creature. Large eyes that, when you see them, will follow you for a long, long time, even if they aren’t still gazing at you at all. About her neck she wears a necklace of large white pearls, and on her ears long dangling earrings. Her joints are circled by simple gold hoops—I mean her wrist joints, of course. Her face has something full, oval, voluptuous about it. You’ll see. About her mouth, though this is deceptive, there is a trace of something cagey and crafty, it’s a rather shut-tight mouth. By the way, she likes to wear a broad-brimmed hat with drooping feathers: The hat appears to have just flown up and landed on her head and hair. If this description isn’t yet sufficient, let me also draw your attention to the fact that she is accompanied by a greyhound on a thin black leash. She never goes out without him. I shall remain standing here at my post and await your report. I am grateful for your offer, quite aside from the fact that, based on the words you’ve addressed to me, I find you quite interesting: And indeed the crowd of people swarming about keeps increasing in size. There appears to be some sort of festival in progress.”

  “Yes—something of that sort. I don’t generally pay much attention to these things.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, you know, each person has his own path to follow. Goodbye for now!”

  And with this, Simon went off as quickly as possible through the thick crowd of people. From all sides he was pressed and shoved, almost lifted into the air. But he pushed back as well, finding it highly amusing to pass slowly through the mass of bodies and faces in this way. Finally he reached a sort of island, that is, a small empty space, and, glancing about, he suddenly caught sight of Frau Klara. She really did have a dog with her. Since moving into her house, he hadn’t paid her much attention, and so didn’t know she was in the habit of going out with her dog at her side.

  “There’s a man looking for you,” he said when she noticed him.

  “My husband, no doubt,” she replied. “Come with me, we’ll go together. He’s suddenly returned from his journey without writing me so much as a line. It’s always like this. How did you make his acquaintance, and how do you come to be tracking down ladies on his behalf? You are certainly a strange person, Simon. What’s that? You’ve given up your job? So what are you planning to do now? Come with me, this way. We can get through more easily over here. I’ll introduce you to my husband.”

  It was decided they would spend the evening at the theater. They sent word to Kaspar, who showed up at the appointed hour at the theater, a white splendid building towering up beside the shore of the lake. When the curtain rose, it revealed a gray empty space. But this space soon came to life, when a dancer with bare legs and arms came on stage and began dancing to a soft music. Her body was veiled in a transparent, fluttering, flowing garment which appeared to mirror the lines of the dance in the floating air. You could sense the complete innocence and gracefulness of this dance, and it wouldn’t have occurred to anyone present to find her immodest or to ascribe impure intentions to the girl’s nakedness. Her dance often resolved into a simple striding, but this too remained a dance, and at some points the dancer appeared to be borne aloft upon her own waves. When, for example, she raised one leg and curled her lovely foot, she did so in such a novel

  unperturbed manner that everyone thought: I have seen this before, but where? Or did I just dream it? There was something weighty about the girl’s dance, it seemed a part of nature. To be sure, measured strictly by the laws of ballet, her art was perhaps somewhat lacking, her abilities might seem paltry compared with the abilities and achievements of ballerinas. But by means of her girlishly bashful gracefulness alone she possessed the art of filling people with delight. When she sailed to the ground, with such sweet heft, and when she flew up to attain greater momentum, the wildness and innocence of her motions bewitched all the souls witnessing it. And as she moved, she too was exhilarated by her fleeting motions, and her arousal devised ever new flourishes to accompany the notes. Her hands resembled two beautiful white fluttering doves. The girl smiled as she danced, clearly this made her happy. Her artlessness was felt to be the highest art. At one point she flew in huge soft leaps, like a stag being pursued, from one beat to another. Like waves splashing up to crash down on a low shoreline, she’d seem to be dancing to scatter into spray, but next she went flowing off like a wide, sunny, powerful wave, like a wave in the middle of a lake, and now it was like a flurry of flakes and little stones, constantly changing and always poignant. The sensibilities of all who saw her danced along with her, filled with pleasure and pain. Some had tears in their eyes from watching this dance, pure tears of vicarious delight, vicarious dancing. How beautiful it was, when the girl had completed her dance, to see aged imposing women shoot passionately to their feet, waving their handkerchiefs and throwing flowers into the abyss of the stage to honor the girl. “Be our sister,” everyone’s smiles seemed to be asking. “What a joy it would be to call you my daughter if you so wished,” these ladies appeared to be exulting. Gazing at the young girl upon the stage, the hundred-headed audience forgot the boundary, the wall separating them from her. Innumerable arms arced through the air as though in imagined caresses; hands were trembling as they waved. Words shouted down to the stage were the inventions of pure joy. Even the cold golden statues adorning the stage appeared to wish to come to life and for once crown a head with the laurel wreaths they held in their gold hands. Simon had never before found the theater so beautiful. Klara was utterly delighted, who could have been otherwise on such an evening.
Only Herr Agappaia remained silent and said not a word. Kaspar said: “I’m going to paint an ovation like this, what a splendid picture it would make.” “But difficult to paint,” Simon said, “this perfume and gleam of joy—this shimmer of delight, the coldness and warmth, the definite and blurry, the colors and shapes in this perfume, the gold and the heavy red, drowning like this in all the colors—and the stage, the tiny focal point and the small blissful girl standing upon it, the clothing of the women, the faces of the men, the boxes and all the rest—really, Kaspar, it would be quite difficult indeed.”

  Klara said: “Think of a silent landscape, the way all of it is just lying there, the forests and hills and the wide meadows, and here we are in this glittery theater. How strange. But perhaps it’s all just nature—not only the vastness and silence out there, but also the small agile things that are the work of man. A theater is also part of nature: What nature instructs us to create must itself belong to nature, though perhaps that’s just a natural anomaly. Let culture become ever so refined, it will nonetheless remain a part of nature, for culture is only a long drawn-out process of inventing, spread over the ages, and performed by creatures who must always cling to nature. If you paint a picture, Kaspar, that will be nature, for you paint using your senses and fingers, which nature has given you. No, we do well to love nature and remain mindful of it—even, if I may be permitted to say so, to worship nature—for human beings must do their praying somewhere, otherwise they turn bad. If only we can love what is nearest at hand! That’s a blessing that makes us roll thoughtfully along with the earth, driving our centuries tempestuously on, a blessing that makes us feel our lives more intensely and with greater bliss—and so we must seize and grab hold of it a thousand times over, in a thousand moments—oh, what do I know!”

  She had become inflamed as she spoke. “Does that make any sense, what I just said?” she asked Kaspar.

  Kaspar did not reply. They had long since left the theater behind and were on their way home. Simon had walked on a bit ahead with Herr Agappaia.

  “Tell me something,” Klara asked her companion.

  “I have a colleague, Erwin by name,” Kaspar began, walking beside the woman. “He doesn’t have much talent, or perhaps he was once talented, in his early youth. Nonetheless, despite the fact that his painting offers him no prospect of success, he is fanatically in love with his art. He declares all his pictures lousy, and lousy is what they are, but he works on them for years. He keeps scraping off the paint to try again. To love nature as he does must be a torment—and it’s also disgraceful: No sensible man allows himself to be made a fool of by any one thing, tormented and tricked for so long, even by nature itself. Of course, it isn’t art that torments him: He himself is doing the tormenting with his pathetic notions of art and the world. This Erwin loves me. When both of us were just starting out, we would paint together. We would romp about the open meadows and beneath the trees, which I always see only in the fullest, most opulent blossom when I think back on that ‘godful’ time. This word ‘godful’ is one that Erwin himself coined in his blind enthusiasm when he stood before landscapes whose beauty surpassed his powers of apprehension. Kaspar, just look at this godful landscape, is something he said to me I don’t know how many hundreds of times. Even back then, although he was turning out attractive little pictures that were made with talent, he was a harsh unsparing critic of his own work. He destroyed pictures of his that were successful, and preserved only the botched ones, because only they appeared to him to have value. His talent suffered terribly beneath this constant distrust, until finally the bad treatment caused it to shrivel up and run dry like a spring that’s been scorched by the sun and parched. I often advised him to sell his finished pictures at a modest price, but because of my importunity he almost declared our friendship null and void. Day after day he became more and more puzzled at how I could go on lightheartedly, even frivolously painting, but he admired my talent, which he had to acknowledge. But he wished I would pursue my art with more seriousness of purpose, and I replied that in the practice of art all that was required to accomplish something were diligence, a joyful zeal, and the observation of nature, and I drew his attention to the harm that could and must come about when one approached a matter with exaggerated holy solemnity. He did in fact believe me, but he was too weak to tear himself away from this bullheaded seriousness he’d sunk his teeth into. Then I left on a journey and received the most poignant letters from him, full of sadness over my departure. He said I was the only one who’d been able to keep his spirits up, such as they were. He asked me to return or, failing that, to allow him to join me. Indeed, he did join me. He was always right behind me like my very own shadow, no matter how often I treated him with coldness, scorn or even condescension. He steered clear of women, indeed he hated them, for he was afraid they might distract him from the holiness of his life’s work. I made fun of him for this, and it may be that I treated him rather contemptuously. His paintings became ever more clumsy, and he went on sketching ever more obsessively. I advised him to make fewer studies and instead get his hand used to the brush. He tried it, and wept at the sight of my own offhanded productivity. Then the two of us undertook a shared journey to my homeland—you can imagine! The paths there led one across broad high mountains, then steeply down into deep valleys and at once back up again. To me it was an easily grasped pleasure, something to savor, a slight quickening of the breath, a greater demand on the legs, and nothing further. Erwin could barely move forward: In truth, his strength had been sapped by the excesses of his artistic longings. One day the two of us—it was nearly evening, and we stood high up on a mountain meadow—glimpsed between the fir branches the three lakes of my native region. Edwin cried out at the sight. It was indeed unforgettably beautiful. Down below, the noise of the railway could be heard, and the sound of bells rang up to where we stood. The city had not yet come into view, but I stretched out my hand to show Edwin the spot where it must lie. Like the raiment of princesses, the lakes lay spread out all sparkly and gently gleaming, ringed in by noble processions of mountains, with enchantingly delicate shorelines, so far off in the distance and yet so near. That very evening the two of us reached home, dust-covered and ravenous. My sister was happy I’d brought this reticent guest with me. This was perhaps three years ago now. Little by little she drew closer to him, and I believe I am correct in thinking that a secret love for him was kindled within her. It pained her to see how I treated her chosen ward. She asked me to speak of him in a more friendly and respectful way when I made jocular remarks at his expense. The poor fellow didn’t last long. One day he took his leave. He was prevailed upon to write a few lines in my sister’s journal—it’s all so comical, and yet somehow profound. Perhaps while he was writing in her book he rested his hand thoughtfully and imagined a future for himself together with my sister. What was art offering him? I felt a bit worried my sister might make something like a scene. But she just looked at him warmly and kindly as they said goodbye. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her, he didn’t dare. Did he appear to himself a miserable wretch? Probably. Perhaps because he had a birthmark that covered half his face he was incapable of believing that a girl might love him and want him for a husband. But in my eyes it only made him look more noble. I very much liked looking at him. We were traveling, and once he asked my permission to write to my sister. ‘What’s it got to do with me,’ I exclaimed. ‘Write to her if you feel like it!’ He went home again, back to the utterly dead, dismal surroundings of his
academy professors. I pitied him, but parted from him coldly, or at least I displayed coldness toward him: For me it’s unpleasant to show warmth to someone I find so pitiable. He wrote a few letters which I never answered, and even today he still writes to me and I don’t respond. He’s clinging to me in desperation. Under such circumstances, is it necessary to respond? He’s lost, he’s made no progress whatsoever. His recent pictures are horrible. And yet no other person has ever had so close a bond with me as he did. . . . And when I think of those days when the two of us were so captivated by nature! So many things in this world pass. All you can do is work, make things, create, that’s what we’re here for, not for inspiring pity.”

  “The poor thing,” Klara said, “I do pity him. I wish he were here, and if he were ill, how gladly I would care for him. An unhappy artist is like an unhappy king. What pain he must feel deep in his soul to know he’s so lacking in talent. I can imagine that so well. The poor fellow. I would like to be his friend, since you have no time to take pity on him. I could make time for him. What unfortunate people there are in this world!”

  Kaspar said in a low voice, seizing her hand for the first time: “How kind you are!”—

  The forest was inky black, everything was dark, the house was a dark patch in the darkness. Simon and Agappaia were waiting for the two others at the door.

  “They aren’t coming. Come, let’s go inside.”

  “I’m going to go to bed this minute,” Simon said.

  When he was already lying in bed, about to shut his eyes, he suddenly heard a shot ring out. In sheer terror, he leapt out of bed, tore open the window and looked outside. “What was that?” he shouted down into the darkness. But only his own voice echoed back at him from the forest. The forest was eerily cloaked in a deathly silence. Suddenly he heard a man’s voice speaking just below him: “It’s nothing, go to sleep. Forgive me for alarming you. I often go shooting in the woods at night, it gives me pleasure to hear the shots resound and echo. Some people whistle a melody to amuse themselves when everything all around them is so quiet. Me, I shoot. Take care not to catch cold there at the open window—the nights are still cold. In a minute you’ll hear me shooting again, and this time you won’t be frightened. I’m still waiting for my wife to return. Good night. Sleep well.” Simon lay back down. Nonetheless he couldn’t fall asleep. The man’s voice had sounded so peculiar to him, so calm, that’s precisely what was so odd. So icy—actually the voice had an ordinary friendliness about it, and that’s just what was so icy. Surely something lay behind it. But perhaps it was just that he didn’t yet know this man’s habits. “Lord knows,” he thought to himself, “there are plenty of odd fish swimming about. Life is so tedious, and this encourages the development of oddities. You can turn odd before you know it. And so Agappaia too might not see anything queer about this queer habit of his. He can just call it sporting and so lay to rest any other thoughts that might suggest themselves. All the same, I’m going to try to get some sleep now.” —But other thoughts now came to him, all having to do with nighttime: He thought of small children afraid to enter dark rooms and who cannot fall asleep in the dark. Parents instill in their children the most dreadful fear of the dark and then, as punishment, lock recalcitrant ones up in silent dark rooms. Then the child clutches at the darkness in this deep dense dark and finds only darkness and nothing more. The child’s fear and this darkness are soon the best of friends, but the child is not managing to befriend its fear. The child has such talents for feeling fear that the fear just grows and grows. It soon overpowers the little child, being such a large, dense, heavily-breathing entity; the child might wish for example to cry out, but doesn’t dare. This not daring increases the fear even further; for there must be something utterly terrifying there if the child is too frightened even to utter cries of fear. The child believes someone is listening in the dark. How melancholy it is, thinking of such an unfortunate child. How the poor little ears strain to hear something: even the thousandth part of some faint little sound. Not to hear anything at all is more frightening by far than hearing something, when a person stands in the dark listening. Even this alone: The child cannot help listening and almost hearing its own listening—sometimes it merely listens and sometimes it hearkens, for the child is capable of such distinctions in its nameless fear. When we speak of listening, this presupposes something to be heard, but hearkening is often done in vain, it is a waiting to hear, a hoping. Hearkening is the activity performed by a child locked away in a dark room as punishment for disobedience. And now let us imagine someone approaching—approaching softly, so dreadfully softly. No, it’s better not to imagine this. Better not imagine it at all. A person who imagines such a thing will die of terror along with the child. Children have such sensitive souls, how could one be thinking up terrors for such souls! Parents, parents, never shut your recalcitrant children in dark rooms if you have first taught them to fear the dark, which is otherwise so dear, so sweet—