Be blessed, I know – that’s not what you want to hear. To you, it sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it, young man? Once I was crossing a bridge, the Kirchenfeldbrücke. Two men, one youngish, the other older, were outside the Casino. As I walk past, the older of the two greets me, ‘Good afternoon, Herr Zbinden!’
Now it’s my turn to ask, ‘Do we know each other?’
He laughs and explains to the younger one, ‘This is my former teacher. Herr Zbinden. A very decent teacher, he was.’
‘Samuel!’ I exclaim. ‘Samuel Klopfenstein! You were late for everything!’ – and I’m amazed that, even in a small country like Switzerland, twenty or thirty years can pass before you happen upon your former pupils.
‘In case the chalk was all in the sink, Herr Zbinden always carried some with him. Three white pieces, one blue, one red. Wasn’t his only quirk.’
‘My only what?’
‘Really, Herr Zbinden. You were a very decent teacher. But you were always talking about going for walks.’
‘Heavens,’ I exclaim, radiant. ‘That isn’t a quirk!’ I turn to the younger of the two. ‘I assume you have an occupation that eats all your time. And two children are waiting at home for you. Imagine, you’re trying to read the instructions for a new camera while little Diana’s insisting, vociferously, that you look at her picture book with her, Look – what’s that crawling there? – and little Bruno’s poking his fingers in your eyes to see if you’re alive, still. At that moment, everything depends on whether or not you’ve secured your own space, one that isn’t a brandy cellar. At that moment, everything depends on whether you go for walks or drink yourself to death. Do you go for walks, young man?’
‘You see?’ the older one says, smiling at the other. ‘There he goes again.’
Look at my shoes, Kâzim. Tanned leather soles, double-stitched. Inside the Home, I wear simple slippers. If I go for a walk in the courtyard in those slippers, I keep losing them. What do we conclude from this? That, outdoors, human beings instinctively step out more energetically. When my unassuming grandmother went for a walk, she wore shoes she could put on either foot, left or right. Indeed, she had to do this. For them to wear evenly. – Brandy cellar, here? You’re joking, Kâzim, there’s no alcohol here. A quarter-litre of wine at mealtimes is all that’s permitted, and the warden ensures that’s kept to. Herr Probst’s secret trips to the kitchen storeroom are the result – to top the wine up with kirsch. How long after breakfast is still too early for a glass, Herr Probst? Who have you to thank for your alcoholism?
Even if my legs are feeling wobbly, I go for a walk. Even if I feel no desire whatsoever to go for a walk. How you feel before a walk is often in reverse proportion to what you will gain by walking. The worse you feel, the more wonderful the walk, maybe because ill humour increases the body’s adrenaline production. I didn’t leap for joy, exactly, any time Emilie suggested – despite the rainy weather – looking for hawks and falcons at the military airfield, but I always did look for my walking shoes. Hawks, falcons and sparrowhawks, I should tell you, used, in the past, to be perched on every telephone pole. For years, Emilie blamed her powers of observation for their disappearance. Until she realised that, quite simply, they were no longer there.
Is this too slow for you, going down the stairs? Just say, if so. You don’t need to claim, out of pure charity, that you like walking slowly.
You see, I’m weak when it comes to staircases, but I don’t say ‘I will not fall’ for the thought of ‘falling’ is more likely to cause a fall than the force of the accompanying ‘not’ is to prevent it. I tell myself, ‘I can walk safely on stairs.’
If you intend avoiding the sniffles, you don’t say ‘I’m not going to catch a cold’ but ‘my mucosae are functioning perfectly, my immune system is my shield and protection at times of peril, I am secure, unassailable, within it’.
If you don’t fancy going through the woods for fear of meeting a bear, you say – but look who is coming towards us! Frau Jacobs, everything okay? – You’re in a hurry, I see. – Visitors? That’s nice. – Oh dear. Well, put some milking grease on it. That will stop it itching so much. – Definitely! Get Lydia to give you some milking grease! – I don’t know the Gurtners, do I? – Aha. Yes? – Really? – And how. – Why, yes. – This shirt, you say? It’s to create a good impression, nothing more than that. May I introduce our new carer? Kâzim; his hair curls despite everything he does to stop it. – But no, please, don’t let us keep you back. – If you go up a floor, don’t go falling over Alessandra. She’s on all fours, looking for Frau Binggeli’s crown. – And get Lydia to … Exactly!
A feisty lady. Did you notice that when Frau Jacobs laughs, her face completely changes? Her eye area breaks up into a thousand little crinkles and she bares two rows of immaculate, snowy-white false teeth. Never again, she once announced, triumphantly, would a dentist discover a problem with one of her teeth. – Oh, I know. You were told Frau Jacobs is always complaining. That a blouse she didn’t like was put out for her. And the drama with the eye drops. – Naturally, Kâzim. But Frau Jacobs hits Lydia because she gives her the eye drops just as she’s waking up and is still half-asleep. – Of course. Ask for yourself. I stick a leg out sometimes too when Lydia bursts in, asking for an arm. Not always easy for the nursing staff, we old fools. But to return to the bears: let me reassure you. The likelihood of encountering a bear while out for a walk in the woods is minimal. As long as you avoid clumps of bushes with berries, don’t follow bear tracks and tie a bell round your ankle. – You’re not afraid of bears? – Of dogs? Never look a dog in the eye.
A sociable walker like me gets to hear excuses from all kinds of people. My son, who has turned grey too now, claims walks are for pensioners. They eat up your time. No one else goes on them. Engines exist for those purposes. He’s not attractive enough, he says. Or has better things to do. You can fall over. According to him, going for a walk involves meeting people you can avoid by staying at home. You’ve sore muscles the next day. Blisters on your feet. You’re at the mercy of the weather and all the dirt in the wind. The human heart is programmed to beat so-and-so many times, he says, and you die when you use your last beat. Every activity that increases your heartbeat should therefore be averted. ‘Father, you just want to put me off driving,’ he says.
My son as a driver: one hand on the wheel, the other dangling out of the rolled-down window. His watch, temporarily on his right wrist so the white patch on his left can also tan. His concerns, if you urge him to go for a walk, are truly unusual. His face rigid and pale with displeasure, it’s as if he were asking, ‘How long might it be before I actually get somewhere? What could go haywire at home while I’m being idle, out for a walk? How am I supposed to pay the bills run up while I’m out?’
You reckon he shouldn’t be so docile, allowing himself to be inundated by doubts like that? What I always say is: one of many entertaining ways for a motorist to ease his way into the flow of pedestrians is for him to go in rolling a car tyre along, and using a square-section key. If several motorists join in at once, one of them can give his tyre a push, and the others can try to throw their car keys through as the tyre trundles past. You laugh! But the truth is that no one can ever get my son out of his hermetically sealed spaces. Should he, one day, step outside and actually walk past his car, bells will ring to tell the world a miracle is happening. – My son’s profession? Biochemist. In a lab that doesn’t tax him too much. He told me once, ‘I created a bacteria strain, then spent the whole morning watching a Scania trying to turn.’
I can imagine what’s going through your mind. The answer is: no, I’ve nothing against motorists. Why should I? They kill themselves to be polite to me. If I’m standing at the zebra crossing at the Freudenberg Migros, the traffic on the slip-road to the motorway will come to a standstill while one driver stops and waves me across.
If my son collects me for a father-and-son outing to Emilie’s grave, I – conscientiously – practise being a passenger
. It’s an art form. I look in the mirror on the back of the sun visor and pull funny grotesque faces. I look fierce and wild; smile sweetly. Like a child larking about. I lean forward and look through the windscreen and discover – in the clouds above Mount Niesen – half-boots and contrabasses; a rotting mummy; a bloated sheep; the profile of a talking head. If the sky is cloudless, I’m pleased about the good opportunity the sun is getting, and report where the rays are falling to my son. ‘On the left, the sun’s shining into a shed in Hünibach and tickling a pig’s ear so much it needs to sneeze. On the right, the sun’s shining onto the Park Hotel, which is slowly desiccating and shrinking.’
My son’s an expert on the many colourful cars that drive past. As a child, he cut all the cars out of glossy magazines and brochures: the Cadillacs, Buicks, BMWs; the posh Borgward Hansas; the Chevrolets; the Opel Kapitän limousine; the improbably long Oldsmobile 98 Convertible. Nowadays, he can still identify all the different models and, if I’m in his good books, he teaches me too. If, concentrating hard, I look for a few minutes at everything whizzing past, then close my eyes, he asks me questions like ‘How many silver Citroëns were parked outside the St. Beatus Caves? Which turn-off did the red Datsun with the tinted windows take?’
‘Look at these.’ In the parking space at the cemetery, I lift my feet onto the dashboard. ‘Do you know what these are?’
‘Feet,’ Markus answers, emphatically, calmly.
‘And what, do you think, do we need them for?’
‘The left one for the clutch. The right, for the accelerator.’
Markus claims he can identify cars blindfold if they’re parked and creaking irregularly as they cool down. A talent that can’t be explained in terms of his immediate predecessors.
Do you have children, Kâzim? We don’t need to discuss that in depth right now, but if you give a child a rain cape as a present, instead of a pedal tractor, it will be able, one day, to do without a car.
Whereas I’ve come to understand how wrong people think I was, the way I tried to rear my son to be a walker.
I drag him away from his chemistry set. Emilie’s already standing there, holding his cape.
‘No!’ Markus roars. ‘I simply can’t believe I’m supposed to join you on this frigging walk with the Nägelis! The Nägelis are your friends, not mine!’
‘It’s nothing to do with the Nägelis, it’s to do with your friends from the playing field.’
‘What about them?’
‘It’s to do with you taking penalties with Lisa Stoll’s dolls.’
‘I’m telling you a-bloody-gain: that’s not true. What arsehole made out –’
Enter Emilie: ‘You’ll come with us until you learn to speak to your father in a different tone.’
‘I must’ve been adopted! My real parents would never treat me like this!’ He has paled with rage, his voice cracks. ‘And I won’t be putting this damn cape on, that’s for sure. It’s for kids!’
‘My brother died of pneumonia at your age!’ I hurl at him. ‘And I’ve no desire to see the same thing happen to you.’
We all have sensitive spots that we can’t bear to be touched.
‘If you’ve children of your own one day,’ Emilie says, in a more conciliatory way, putting the cape over our son’s head, ‘then you can do things better from the outset.’
At the Steindler schoolhouse, I often heard it said with a sigh that you should have your own children – because those were the only children who would really have any time for you. There were times, with Markus, when I strongly doubted that. ‘Having a teacher as a father is real bad luck,’ he often said when fellow pupils, who should actually have been his friends, had pulled his swimming trunks off in the beginners’ pool, or excluded him from listening to Elvis Presley. Do you think too, Kâzim, that your parents should never have parented?
Of course, the world was different back then. When it came to discipline and the way things should be, I had a less relaxed attitude than my son has nowadays. Sit up straight. And eat up. Don’t crawl around in the dirty washing. What’s the magic word? First, tidy your things away and put your pyjamas on. I thought we’d agreed you don’t point arrows at people? Fingernails aren’t a type of food. If he was given too many Christmas presents, half of them would be locked away and kept for the following year.
I’d always feared that if my car-daft son ever had to decide between saving a child and saving a vehicle, he’d crush the child in the gutter. And yet Markus observes speed limits very carefully; never crosses the white line in the middle of the road; doesn’t have a go at pensioners, puttering along in their Porsches; and he’s turned out to be a wonderful father. I remember all the photo albums in the bookcase at his place. I take one out and it happens to be a record of the seventh year of my granddaughter’s life, with the funny things children say about starting school and birthday cards in between the photos. I say, ‘Verena gave herself a job, doing all this.’
And my granddaughter, quite astonished, answers, ‘No, Dad did that.’
Emilie wasn’t a member of the Women’s Movement – the Suffragettes and the International Women’s League for Peace and Freedom – but she taught Markus how to iron and sew buttons on, and where the antiseptic is kept. Quite deliberately: I’m showing you this so you never have to be served by a woman.
At Advent, I would pull myself together, fetch a few branches from the garden, pin an arrangement on the front door, help to put up the Christmas tree, put an apron on and knead dough. Every evening, I’d end up with a sore stomach – from raw almond dough.
Once, when Emilie was out, the little smart aleck said to me, ‘You know, now Mum’s away, I could do everything for you that she does.’
I’d already given him his pocket money, though. This reckless action on my part meant he’d no incentive.
Have I mentioned this already? Going for a walk is: finding out who you are and liking what you discover. I’m a gentle walker. A person who, after the storm and stress of my career, a marital triumph and a paternal defeat, has regained my inner balance.
Were the earth to be populated only by gentle walkers, there’d never be any crush, or pushing and jostling, any disregard for right of way, or digs in the ribs; resounding slaps would happen only as a preventative measure. Would you like an apple? Here, from the cafeteria, take it. – No, we needn’t share. – Don’t mention it. My tucker bag is always deep enough for apples, postcards, hearing aids.
Don’t think a person becomes a walker automatically, or by accident. Being brought up to go for walks begins early. At the age of twelve, at the latest, children used to walking can be identified as gentle, intuitive, brash, charming or serious walkers. – No, the apple’s for you. I don’t want half. – If that’s how you accept something, Kâzim, I wouldn’t like to see you trying to give.
Serious walkers need to complete the full length of their walk, to do that hard work. They want to accomplish something. Adversities – such as a wind tugging at them – permit them to feel a determined pleasure. Serious walkers often grow to become mountain climbers. Keeping to elaborate schedules, step by step, inch by inch, they push their way up with their excessively heavy backpacks, past shady livestock barns, overtaking people who, light-footed and rucksack-less, shout ‘Hello’ after them, to which the serious climbers reply, ‘Morning!’ No alpine pasture is too steep for them, no thicket too dense. Having reached the top, they drop onto a stone, in a spiritual pose.
– Charming walkers? When they smile, the whole world smiles with them. They know that, and like to smile a little too often and too much. Charming walkers can get away with those unflattering comments you’d never forgive someone else for. They turn everyone’s heads. Only a few remain single. In the event of divorce, they’re given the children.
How does a charming walker approach an attractive woman? He steps on her foot outside a clothes shop. The woman expresses her pain with an ‘Ouch’.
The charming walker apologises. ‘I’m t
erribly sorry, please forgive me. I’m not normally so clumsy. May I treat you to a cup of tea?’
Naturally, however, these strategies are subject to fashion.
My wife was an intuitive walker through and through. You can’t imagine a more fraught activity than that of accompanying an intuitive walker. A thousand times, I regarded Emilie as a headless chicken. A walk for her went hither and thither: forward one moment, back the next. Straight paths didn’t seem to exist for her. Where she was heading one minute was by no means an indication of where she wanted to be next. Once, Emilie went to get milk for our freshly roasted coffee, and came back with the farmer’s wife and her three sisters-in-law. While doing the shopping, she regularly went walkabout, never to be seen again. And again and again, it turned out that, however absurd it might seem, she did find her way back to where her walk had begun, and had been right to turn off where, actually, she shouldn’t have been right to, at all. She did whatever came to mind, and it wasn’t advisable to try to talk her out of it. For this gentle, helpful person could then become a stubborn mule. If someone recommended we go for a walk through the Jewish Cemetery in Berlin, Emilie would thank the person enthusiastically for the good advice. Then we’d get off the train far sooner, in Kassel, because she’d recalled that, the previous evening, our three-year-old son had pointed to the unfolded map of Germany and enigmatically pronounced: ‘different place!’ She sometimes felt sorry for cyclists not being allowed to go backwards or sideways. As I see it, cyclists are always free to get off their velocipede and continue on foot.
Zbinden's Progress Page 2