The Tanners

by Robert Walser

  —While the woman was writing this letter, Simon and Kaspar were sitting beside the lamp they’d lit. They had no desire to go to bed yet and were still conversing. Kaspar said: “For the past few days I’ve painted nothing at all, and if things go on like this, I’m going to give up on art and become a farmer. Why not? Must it be art or nothing? Isn’t it possible to live in other ways as well? Perhaps it’s only a habit that makes us think we must devote ourselves to art at all costs. Why not set it aside and return to it ten years from now! That would make us look at everything differently, much more simply, much less fantastically, and this couldn’t hurt. All that’s needed is the courage and the trust. Life is short when you’re distrustful, but long when you’re capable of trust. What would we be losing? I feel myself becoming more and more sluggish from day to day. Should I be pulling myself together and forcing myself like some schoolboy to do my duty? Do I have duties to perform with regard to art? One can turn the question this way and that, twisting it about however one pleases. Painting pictures! How utterly stultifying this now appears to me, how utterly meaningless. You’ve got to be able to let yourself go. Whether I paint one hundred landscapes or just two of them, what difference does it make? A person who paints constantly can still remain a bungler because he’d never think to imbue his pictures with even a trace of his experiences, for he’s experienced nothing all the days of his life. When I have more experiences under my belt, I’ll use my brush more wisely, more introspectively, and I believe this will make a great difference. What does the quantity matter. But nonetheless: Somewhere inside me a feeling is telling me it isn’t good to get out of practice for even a single day. It’s just laziness talking, accursed laziness!—”

  He said no more, for a long horrifying scream pierced the walls at just this moment. Simon seized the lamp and both of them hurled themselves down the stairs to the room where they knew she slept. It was Klara who had screamed. Agappaia had come running as well, and they found the woman lying stretched out upon the floor. It appeared she’d been about to undress for bed when she’d been overcome by a violent seizure and had fallen to the ground. Her hair had come loose, and her magnificent arms were twitching feverishly where they lay. As her chest rose and fell spasmodically, a confused smile flew about her lips, which were open wide. All three men knelt down beside her, holding her arms still until the twitching gradually subsided. It seemed she hadn’t hurt herself in the fall, as she easily might have. They picked up the unconscious woman and laid her, half clothed as she was, upon her bed, which was neatly turned down. She grew calmer when her corset was opened. She gave a sigh of relief and now appeared to be sleeping. And she smiled more and more beautifully, delirious now, speaking in whispered notes that sounded like bells ringing far off in the distance, acute and yet scarcely perceptible. They listened breathlessly, discussing whether or not there was any point to bringing a doctor from the city. “Wait a while,” Agappaia said calmly to Simon, who had wanted to set out for the doctor right away, “it will pass. This isn’t the first time.” They continued to sit there listening, exchanging meaningful glances. From Klara’s mouth came not much that was comprehensible, just brief, fragmentary sentences, half sung and half spoken: “In the water, no, just look, deep, deep. It took a long time, long, so long. And you do not weep. If you knew, it’s so black and so muddy all around me. But look. A violet is growing from my mouth. It’s singing. Do you hear? Can you hear it? You might think I’d drowned. How lovely, so very lovely. Isn’t there a ditty about it? That Klara! Where is she now? Go looking for her, go look. But you’ll have to go into the water. That’ll make your skin crawl, won’t it? My skin no longer crawls. A violet. I can see the fish swimming. I am perfectly still, I no longer do anything at all. Be sweet, be kind. You look displeased. That’s where Klara is lying, right there. Do you see her, do you? I’d wanted to say something else to you, but I am content. What did I want to say? Can’t remember. Can you hear me ringing? It’s my violet ringing. A little bell. I always knew. But don’t say so. I can’t hear anything any more. Please, please—”

  “Go on, go to bed. If it gets worse, I’ll come wake you,” Agappaia said.

  It didn’t get worse. The next morning Klara was in good spirits and had no memory of what had occurred. She had a touch of headache, that’s all.

  Klara felt divine. Dressed in a dark-blue morning coat that flowed loosely about her body in opulent folds, she sat upon the balcony, which provided a view of fir trees whose tips bobbed gently to and fro in the light morning breeze. How glorious the forest is, she thought, leaning out toward it over the delicately worked railing to have its fragrance closer. “How it lies there, the forest, as though already slumbering its way closer to night. When you walk into a forest during the daytime, in broad sunlight, it’s as if you’re walking into an evening where the sounds are piercing and fainter, the scents moist and more tender, where a person can rest and pray. In the forest you pray involuntarily, and it’s also the only place in the world where God is near; God seems to have created forests so we can pray in them as if in sacred temples; one person prays in one way, another in another, but everyone prays. When you lie beneath a fir tree reading a book, you are praying, if praying is the same as being lost in thought. Let God be where He will, in the forest you can sense Him, and you offer up your little bit of belief with silent rapture. God doesn’t want us to believe in Him so terribly much, He wants us to forget Him, it even makes Him happy to be scorned, for He is benevolent and great beyond all measure; God is the most pliant thing in the universe. He insists on nothing, wants nothing, requires nothing. Wanting things might be something for us humans, but not for Him. Nothing is for Him. He is happy when people pray to Him. Oh, this God is enraptured and cannot contain His bliss when I go and thank Him, thank Him only just a little. Even if my thanks are superficial, God is so grateful. I’d like to know who could be more grateful than He. He has given us everything, He’s so incautious and kind, and the way things are with Him, He cannot help being happy when the beings He’s created think of him a little. This is the unique thing about our God, that He wants to be God only when it pleases us to elevate Him as our God. Who teaches humility better than He does? Who is more prescient and still? Perhaps God merely has inklings of us, as we do of Him, and all I’m doing, just now for instance, is giving voice to my own inklings. Does He also sense that I’m sitting here on the balcony, admiring His splendid forest? If only He knew how beautiful His forest is. But I think God has forgotten His Creation, not out of bitterness—how could He be capable of bitterness—no, He’s simply forgotten, or at least it looks as if He’s forgotten us. You can feel many different things about God—He permits all sorts of thoughts. But when you think of Him, you can easily lose Him: that’s why we pray. Great God, lead us not into temptation: That’s how I prayed as a child, lying in my little bed, and I always felt pleased with myself when I prayed. How happy I feel today, how glad; my entire being is a smile, a blissful smile. My whole heart is smiling, the air is so fresh, I think it must be Sunday, people will come from the city to go walking in the forest, and I shall pick out some child, ask the parents to entrust it to me for a little while and then we’ll play. How I can just sit here like this, feeling joy at my very existence, at my sitting here and leaning over the railing! How beautiful I find myself—I could almost forget Kaspar, forget everything. How could I possibly ever have cried over anything, felt perturbed over anything? How impert
urbable the forest is, and yet also so flexible, warm, alive and sweet. What a respiration comes from the fir trees, what rustling! The rustling of the trees makes all music superfluous. Indeed, I like to hear music only at night, never in the morning, the morning is too sacred. How strangely refreshed I feel. How mysterious it is to lie down to sleep, no, first to be tired and then lie down, and then wake up again and feel newborn. Every day is our birthday. It’s like getting into the bath when one climbs out of the veils of nighttime into the waves of the blue day. Now the blaze of noon will soon come, until the sun longingly sinks down again. What longing, what a miracle from eve to morn, from noon to eve, from night to morn again. We’d find everything miraculous if we were sensible of it all, for how could one thing be miraculous and another not? I think I must have been ill yesterday and no one’s telling me. How beautiful and innocent my hands look still. If they had eyes, I’d hold up a mirror to show them how beautiful they are. How fortunate any man is whom I caress with my hands. What peculiar thoughts I’m having. If Kaspar were to come now, I’d have to weep at letting him see me like this. I haven’t been thinking about him, and he’d sense I hadn’t given him a thought. All at once I feel so wretched—the thought that I’ve neglected him. But am I his slave? What is he to me?”

  She began to cry. Then Kaspar came up to her: “What’s the matter, Klara?”

  “Nothing! What could be the matter? After all, here you are. I missed you. I’m happy, but I can’t stand being happy all alone, without you. That’s why I was crying. Come here, come,” and she pressed him to her, hard.

  –6–

  Simon was beginning to find his torpid, wastrel’s life unbearable. He felt he’d soon have to return to the world of work and day-labor: “After all, there’s something appealing about living like most people. It’s starting to annoy me to be so idle, such an oddity. Food has stopped tasting good to me, going for walks just makes me tired, and what’s so uplifting and grand about letting yourself be stung all over by wasps and gadflies on hot country roads, striding through villages, jumping down steep walls, perching atop erratic blocks, propping your head in your hands, starting to read a book and being unable to finish it, then taking a dip in a lake that is lovely but remote, getting dressed again and setting off for home and then at home finding Kaspar so lethargic he no longer knows what leg to stand on or what nose to think with or what finger to lay beside which of his noses. With such a lifestyle, it’s easy to acquire a large number of noses and the desire to spend all day long laying all ten fingers beside all ten noses to reflect. Meanwhile all your noses are laughing and thumbing their noses at you. Well, and what’s so divine about watching your ten or more noses thumb their noses at you? By this I mean only to illustrate the fact that all this lying-about makes you a dunce. No, I’m starting to feel something like pricks of conscience and believe that merely feeling such pricks is not enough: I must undertake something. Running about in the sunshine cannot, in the long term, be viewed as an activity, and only a simpleton sits around reading books, for a simpleton is what you are if all you ever do is read. Labor in the company of others is, in the end, the single thing that educates us. So what should I do? Write some poems perhaps? To wish to try something of the sort on such a hot summer day, I’d have to be named Sebastian, and then maybe I would want to. That’s what he’s doing, I’m convinced of it. Sebastian’s the kind of person who first goes on an outing—studying lakes, forests, mountains, streams, puddles and sunshine, possibly taking some notes—and then goes home and writes an essay about his outing that gets printed in newspapers of world-historical significance. Perhaps this sort of thing could be suitable for me? Probably, if I could manage it, but I’m such a dilettante. I’d best go back to scraping out letters, erasing calculations, squandering ink—yes, that’s what I must do, though there isn’t much honor in starting all over from scratch in a field I quit. But it must be done. In such a case it doesn’t do to think of honor but of what is necessary and irremediable. I’m twenty years old now. How could it be that I am twenty already? How discouraged some other person might be—twenty years old and having to start again from scratch, from where you stood just leaving school. But, since it can’t be helped, I’ll display as much good humor as possible, and in any case, I have no wish to get ahead in life, I just want to live in a way that counts for something. Nothing more. And really, all I want is to make it till winter comes again, and then, when it’s snowing and wintertime, I’ll know how to go on, it’ll come to me how I should best go on living. It gives me great pleasure, dividing my life into small, simple, easily solvable equations like this—sums there’s no need to rack my brains over, they solve themselves. During the winter, by the way, I’m always more clever and enterprising than in the summer. With all that warmth, all that blossoming and fragrance, there’s no getting anything done, but cold and frost spur you on. So before winter comes, let me put myself in funds, and then enjoy the lovely wintertime spending the money sensibly. I wouldn’t insist on studying languages all winter long for days on end in unheated rooms until my fingers froze off, but all the same summer is for the sort of people who are given vacations, the ones who spend time at summer resorts and find enjoyment in leaping barefoot if not naked though warm meadows, sometimes with a leather apron bound about their loins like John the Baptist, who incidentally is said to have eaten grasshoppers. So now upon the bed of daily toil let me lie down to sleep and not wake up again until snow is flying across the earth and the mountains turn white and howling northern storms come up to freeze your ears and melt them in the flames of frost and ice. The cold is like a blaze to me, awe-inspiring, beyond description! So it shall be or my name is not Simon. In the winter, Klara will be wrapped up in thick soft furs, and I shall accompany her in the streets and it will snow upon us, so quietly, secretly, soundless and warm. Oh, when it is snowing in the black streets, going out to do the shopping, and the shops all lit up with lamps. To walk into a shop beside Klara or a few steps behind her person and say: My lady wishes to purchase this or that. Klara, fragrant in her furs, and her face—how beautiful it will be when we then go back out into the street. Perhaps when it is winter she’ll be working in some elegant establishment, just like me, and I will be able to come collect her every night—unless she should one day instruct me not to collect her. Perhaps Agappaia will send his wife packing, and then she will be forced to take up some employment or other, which will be easy for her, given what an imposing person she is. That’s as far ahead as I wish to think. Thinking further than that is something done perhaps by Herr Spielhagen of the Corporation for Electrical Illumination but not by me, for, occupying no such position, I don’t accrue so many obligations in this world that I am compelled to think any further ahead. Ah, wintertime! If only it would come soon—”