The Tanners

by Robert Walser

  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 othe
r 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.”

  After a brief moment of silence, during which the nurse gazed at him intently, he went on:

  “What’s more, I haven’t the least desire to pursue some splendid career. What means the most to some people means least to me. I cannot in God’s name value careerist ambitions. I want to live, but I don’t want to go running down some career path—supposedly such a grand enterprise. What’s so grand about it: people acquiring crooked backs at an early age from stooping at undersized desks, wrinkled hands, pale faces, mutilated workday trousers, trembling legs, fat bellies, sour stomachs, bald spots upon their skulls, bitter, snappish, leathery, faded, insipid eyes, ravaged brows and the consciousness of having been conscientious fools. No thank you! I prefer to remain poor but healthy and forego a stately dwelling in favor of an inexpensive room, even if the view is of the darkest of alleyways; I’d rather live with financial difficulties than be faced with the difficult decision of where to travel on summer holidays to restore my ruined health, though to be sure I currently enjoy the respect of only a single person, namely myself. But this is the one whose respect is worth the world to me; I am free and can always, when necessity commands, sell my freedom for a certain length of time so as to be free again after. It’s worth remaining poor for the sake of freedom. I have enough to eat; for I possess the talent of feeling sated after eating very little. I fly into a rage whenever someone approaches me with the words ‘lifetime position’ and all the presumptions implied therein. I wish to remain a human being. In a word: I love what is risky, unfathomable, floating and uncontrolled!”

  “I like you,” the nurse said.

  “I certainly had no intention of inducing you to like me, but it nonetheless pleases me if you do, as I’ve been speaking quite freely and frankly. Incidentally, there was no call for me to be so testy in speaking of others. That’s always stupid—you have no right to disparage circumstances simply because they don’t happen to be to your liking. One can always leave, I can always leave! But no, things are quite to my liking. My situation pleases me. People please me just as they are. For my part, I use all the means at my disposal to induce my fellow men to like me. I’m hardworking and industrious when I have a task to perform, but I won’t sacrifice the pleasure I take in the world for anyone’s sake, at most I’d sacrifice it for our sacred fatherland—the occasion for which, however, has to this day failed to present itself, a circumstance I expect to continue. Let them pursue their careers, I can understand this, they wish to live in comfort and see to it their children will also have something, they’re good providers whose actions are nothing if not laudable; so let them also leave me to do as I please, to pluck life’s pleasures as I see fit—this is something everyone tries to do, every one of us, just not in the same way. How wonderful it is to be mature enough to let others do as they will in their own way, as best they know how. No, if a person has faithfully discharged his duties for thirty years, he is certainly no fool when he reaches the end of his career, as I said before in my testiness; rather, he is a man of honor who has earned the wreaths that will be placed on his grave. You see, I don’t want any wreaths on my grave—that’s the whole difference. My end is a matter of no interest to me. They’re always telling me, other people, that I shall have to pay bitterly one day for my cockiness. Well then, so I’ll pay, and I’ll learn then what it means to pay for something. I like to learn things and so I’m not nearly as apprehensive as people who worry about their nice smooth futures. I’m always afraid some life experience might pass me by. In this sense I’m as ambitious as ten Napoleons. But now I’m hungry, I’d like to get something to eat, would you join me? It would be a pleasure for me.”

  And the two of them went off together.

  After his rather wild speech, Simon had suddenly grown soft and gentle. With enchanted eyes he gazed at the beautiful world, the round, opulent crowns of the tall trees and the streets where people were walking. “Dear, mysterious people!” he thought to himself and raised no objection when his new friend touched his shoulder with his hand. It pleased him that the other was becoming so chummy: This fit quite nicely, it was both a bond and a release. He saw everything with laughing, happy eyes, at the same time thinking: “How beautiful eyes are!” A child was looking up at him. To be walking along beside a companion like the nurse struck him as a great novelty, something he’d never before experienced, but agreeable in any case. On the way, the nurse purchased a portion of fresh beans from a greengrocer’s and some bacon at a butcher shop, and he invited Simon to come have lunch with him, an offer that was willingly accepted.

  “I always cook myself,” the nurse said when the two of them had reached his apartment, “it’s become a habit with me. I enjoy cooking, take my word for it. Just wait and see how tasty you’ll find the beans with this lovely bacon. I also knit my own socks, for example, and do my laundry myself. You save a lot of money this way. I’ve learned to do all these things, and why shouldn’t such tasks be suitable for a man in exceptional cases if he happens to have a taste for them? I don’t see what could be shameful about activities of this sort. I also make my own house slippers, like these you see here. Such a task certainly requires a bit of care. Knitting wrist warmers for winter or making vests doesn’t cause me any particular difficulty. When one is always so alone and on journeys like myself, one picks up the oddest habits. Make yourself at home, Simon! May I call you by y
our first name? I feel we’re becoming friends—”