‘Frau Grundbacher, the day is over,’ I say. ‘You didn’t ask for it but, no doubt, made the best of it. Now it’s gone, let’s look forward to the next one.’
But how can we combat this jadedness?
Once back home, the walker reviews the walk. Was the river flowing freely in the green shade of trees or was it sluggish beneath a stormy-grey sky? Did a block of rock glimmer in the sun or did it languish in the rain? Did a passer-by’s face light up with a smile or had it a handkerchief tied round it? Reality was different every time; it changed from step to step. Once back home, the walker again smells the beginning-to-wither blossoms and enjoys the view out over blue valleys and white mountains. He enjoys looking back, just as, now comfortable in his armchair, he enjoys a glass of wine that, in the inn in the valley, in his rush to get home before black clouds and impending thunder caught up with him, he drank in one gulp.
Have you met Herr Imhof from Room 103 already? Gaunt face, lot of sharp edges, snowy-white hair, always boasting about the Thurgovian blood in his veins? Retired Major. He says, ‘Herr Zbinden, you always talk about walking as if it were the one and only thing in life. That’s being fanatical. Isn’t what people do in their spare time completely irrelevant?’
You can see what he’s trying to say, can’t you? Go for a walk, make a phone call, collect toy soldiers, sleep all day Sunday, play the French horn, spin honey, watch satellite television, indulge in booze-ups, affairs – the main thing is you enjoy something or other and have a deep respect for what isn’t actually visible. No doubt, you see it that way too, Kâzim? It would be fanatical to play off one pastime against another. You agree with Herr Imhof, don’t you? You don’t need to be shy with me. You have the advantage of youth on your side, and I’m just a fool who knows as much about these things as the man on the moon. Don’t you feel like arguing with me? – Are you saying nothing because I’ve one foot in the grave? What aren’t you saying, in order not to appear impudent?
I once tried to get Herr Imhof to go for a walk. I literally forced him to leave 103. His room has an excellent view onto Brunnadernstrasse. By night, it’s flooded with lamplight. Herr Imhof reports sinister incidents. Lately, the police checked out his tip-off when he claimed a woman had been abducted in the late evening by a man in a delivery van. Turned out: the woman was paralysed, and the man a taxi driver.
‘What’s wrong with you young ones?’ Herr Imhof shouts, leaning out of his window and staring, disgusted, at the young people balancing on their sports bikes on the pavement below, with one hand against the wall.
‘Come with me into the courtyard, Herr Imhof,’ I say, to cheer him up. ‘The natural stone, the nettles – what am I saying? – the chestnut in bloom! Let’s do a trip round the world right here.’
‘Leave me alone, Zbinden. I’ve a terrible headache.’
‘You’ll have to vacate your room soon, in any case. Frau Beck wants to change the bed linen.’
Outside, an embittered Herr Imhof stares straight ahead, noticing neither the nettles at the fountain, nor the other residents. ‘Bitch,’ he mutters, through clenched teeth. ‘Bitch! She wouldn’t be able to take her life by persuading a snake to bite her. Faced with biting her, the snake would rather die.’
I don’t know which affair with which woman is darkening his mood. Who can know another person’s thoughts? You can only know as much about them as they wish to let you. Suddenly, he steps out, smartly, as if in the army, perkily and with dignity. He looks up and calls over, ‘Hey, Zbinden! Why are these scientist guys always working at ways to prolong life, instead of finding an efficient way to end it? I’ve worked out whether throwing yourself from the window in the attic would be fatal. It would, for sure, but the roof conceals the view – and so you can’t see where you’d land. Maybe in a flowerbed. Maybe on the caretaker’s parking space. Goodness, Zbinden, don’t look at me like that – as if I’ve gone crazy!’
He sits down on the stone bench at the fountain, contracts his muscles painfully, and sits there, motionless. I inform him that the fountain is exactly 264 paces from his room, three paces for each year of his life, but it doesn’t seem to cheer him much. He just grunts.
Herr Imhof: a spent match. Up until a year ago, he always wanted to be first out of his room, and at the breakfast table by seven at the latest. There, he could say ‘Good morning’ to all the women, and compliment them.
‘I dreamed of you last night, Barbara,’ he might say, beaming, as the kitchen hand hurried past with freshly baked loaves. ‘I heard your voice; you were singing a song. And I was following your voice, as if compelled to.’
He called the women queens, and if one of them had a delightful name – Julia, for example – you’d have thought he was going mad. Frau Jacobs comes in, he plucks at his lips and says with grief-stricken eyes, ‘Julia! I’ve not seen you for two days. You don’t love me! But I’ll do anything to win you over! Caesar scented the sails of his ships to make Cleopatra desire him even from a great distance.’
Frau Jacobs retorts, passing, ‘You’re not in your right mind.’
Herr Kleiber, unsettled by a letter from his estate agent, turns to Herr Probst. ‘The years haven’t made Herr Imhof any wiser. He’d still prefer a woman over money.’
Herr Kleiber has asked for a price for his former home that he himself thought absurdly high. His estate agent is informing him of a buyer who accepts the price. Herr Kleiber immediately smells a rat: the price must be too low. He wants to take the house off the market, to try again in six months – at a higher price.
‘What is money?’ Herr Probst says, dreamily. ‘All it takes is for a dry summer to come along and it all gets drunk away.’
Herr Kleiber shakes his head and turns to Herr Pfammatter, who is lost in thought. ‘Love fades, but money never goes stale.’
Herr Pfammatter is silent, angry, because, a few minutes ago Hügli’s tom badly scratched a priceless, incredibly valuable Glenn Miller record that, in his day, Herr Pfammatter had smuggled out of a music shop in Antwerp under his coat. It has touched him to the quick to see the record so badly scratched. He would have liked to take the tom by the tail and whack it round his four walls, but controlled himself and just threw it out of the room.
Once, the knife fell from Frau Jacobs’ hand and bounced at Herr Imhof’s feet. He bent down and returned it with a wink. Without even looking at him, she accepted it back with the words, ‘I could’ve done that myself.’
‘You really will have to learn to adjust, Frau Jacobs,’ Herr Imhof replied with his barracks voice – menacing sentences, gradually gaining in volume – ‘You’ll still have to meet a requirement or two, if you wish to become Frau Imhof.’
For a few seconds Frau Jacobs looked at him, her interest suddenly flaring, as if she wanted to establish which planet Herr Imhof was living on. Then, melancholy and pensive, she looked into nowhere and said, ‘It’s not just that you don’t always get what you want. Most of the time, you get something and don’t begin to know what to do with it.’
Those were the final words the two of them ever exchanged. Repeatedly, I find myself hoping it might yet turn out to be a story with a touching ending. Lady Jacobs and Major Imhof, alone in the dark corridor on the third floor, both groping for the light switch.
Watch out, Kâzim. As soon as a new carer comes along, Herr Imhof mourns the passing of his predecessor, even though he was always dissatisfied with that one too.
The hours I spend, wandering round this city, unaccompanied. Even when they don’t involve a special encounter, I like to remember them. May I tell you about my walk yesterday? – Before the memory pales? Hügli’s tom dozing, its legs stretching out ominously from beneath the bench at the entrance. Lydia, running after me to give me an umbrella, though it’s not raining. The hum of the caretaker’s electric hedge-clippers. The cloud, the shape of Italy. Bobby, at the tram stop, looking for his multi-journey ticket in the inside pocket of his jacket. Dry leaves from last autumn, stubbornly clinging to th
e shrub. Cloud cover, looking like the Near East now. The nice cosy fire on the tarmacked car park beside the Art Gallery. Fingernails, cut short, carefully, and manicured red. The sparrows that venture out in the damp air. Fuck performance and Be friendly to concrete – new graffiti, scrawled overnight, in the urinal at the Zytglogge. The dying potted palm at the Kornhaus. The young woman who, while straightening the collar of her blouse, tweaks at her hair, turns her rings, and – in the narrow space between the hot dog counter and the drinks dispenser in the Migros Take Away in Marktgasse – acts out the minor tragedy she was involved in at her workplace. The coffee beaker that drops from a woman’s hand and remains upside down on the pavement. The girl with the brace and her school stuff outside the jewellery shop, her gaze fixed on a sapphire. Chocolate gateaux and chocolate bears, vying for space in the window. That very specific kind of young, unflinching men, their beer bottles at the ready for throwing, who make me step up my pace, want to put some distance between us. The Iceland cloud, its shadow flitting over the wall of a house and my path: a lilac and some laurels fade, then light up, bright green. The property over in Obstberg on which, where before there were a few shrubs and a patch of brown grass, a swimming pool has been created in just a few weeks by some hardworking men from a construction company, who dug and staked out and removed sludge and huge great stones, their forgotten Marlboros hanging from their lips. Frail people like me, who – unlike me – aren’t on the path along the Aare in the early mornings, preferring to relive their youth by watching a wartime pin-up on TV. The iced-tea teabags, the crumpled crisp bags and the still glowing butts of roll-ups that show a herd of tech college pupils passed a few minutes ago. Swarms of pigeons shooed into the air. The dark prints on the pavement, left by the leaves removed by the Highways Department. The umbrella stand, with the appropriate sticker on it, ready for the bulky refuse collection. The finger exercise audible from the window. The deaf woman at the market stall asking loudly for black bread, making it sound as if Heaven and Earth were passing away right then. The drizzle that proves children’s playgrounds are played in even when there isn’t any sun. Policemen, neither especially friendly nor polite, deliberately forgetting who pays their wages. On the fencing round a building site: shrill posters advertising a concert at the football stadium. Railway station guards, ensuring no one dares to sit on the stairs. The fire-, impact- and theft-proof payphones that permit you to have a conversation – postponed forever, it seems – with your own son. The orientation system for the blind that makes you think of nothing else for the rest of the day but Frau Rossi and your own eyesight and what good fortune it is to be able to see colours and faces, and always to know where exactly you are. How vulnerable everything is, and how easily something can happen. Don’t sit on the banister, Kâzim, you could fall off.
I’m telling you about yesterday’s walk, and I’ll tell Lydia about it too when I return the umbrella, but understand: it’s not the words that are important but the experience itself. I could continue for hours in this manner – and should any exciting adventure stories occur to me, I’ll all too gladly tell you them. But a large part of what we experience drowns in words. Occasionally, I catch myself having the heretical thought that the time invested in telling someone about a walk might be better used going for more.
As a young walker, I liked to complement what I experienced with things I made up. An over-fed, milky-white dog followed me half the length of the canal.
‘One of those nice little ones?’ Emilie asked.
‘A big, angry one. One that would grab himself a chicken, if some happened to cross his path.’
To entertain her more, I add a separation scene, and then a reunion. ‘On the way back, the dog dropped a peacock feather at my feet’ – and who knows what else.
But Emilie had a good feeling for which experiences were genuine and which made up. ‘Is that all true, what you’re telling me?’ she might ask, pensively.
‘Well, you shouldn’t take it literally.’
‘So it’s lies. Quite simply, lies.’ If I’d been a book, Emilie would have tossed me in the corner.
Her eyes were keener than a sparrowhawk’s. ‘Who broke the rose twig off?’ she could ask.
I’d seen our son snapping it off, but why get him into trouble? So I explained it must’ve been a stray cat. The next day, Annemarie Gygax from across the way comes and shares with Emilie both who did it and that I observed the culprit. Or: the two bushes of ripe strawberries – why should I denounce the girls who had eaten the strawberries? I said I’d seen the birds eating them. I couldn’t know that the girls’ mothers would send them round to confess all.
‘You lied to me, Lukas Zbinden,’ Emilie said, angrily, and I stood there so exposed and ashamed, I could feel the weight of my shoes and the sweat in my armpits. Emilie had no time whatsoever for fibs.
And what did you do this morning that you’ll soon have forgotten, Kâzim? Let me guess: washed and shaved Herr Mühletaler, together with Lydia; accompanied Frau Wyttenbach on her crutches to Gymnastics; talked Herr Kleiber out of the idea he’d been robbed? And at the weekend? – Really? Do you often go rowing? – No, I wouldn’t be able. – You could be right. What I mean is, I can’t imagine me doing it. – That’s nice of you, Kâzim, but it’s really not for me. I’d rather go home. By myself, if necessary.
While we’re talking about walking: people who have had practice memorising their walks can soon report on lively experiences during them. They learn, for example, to tell one path from another. Can you tell one path from another, Kâzim?
Pavements, boulevards, promenades, arcades and tree-lined avenues; parks and gardens; gravel paths, pedestrian zones, elegant promenades for strolling along; sticky tarmac stretches, dusty country roads; beaten tracks, meandering cunningly; circular walks at altitude; entrances – full of potholes – to a farmyard … There are paths that sing an eternally cheerful ode to the sun. Paths, weak and lacking confidence, that turn to the light and look for alms. There are devious paths that trip everyone up; tyrants that spread out at others’ expense; hermits that have taken off all their jewellery and are doing penance. There are playful paths. Wise paths that have seen everything. Stout paths. Ponderous, dark, hate-filled paths. I can assure you, Kâzim: with time, paths reveal their essence to you. Flattered, walkers can see that all they have to do is help themselves. I don’t know how you see it, Kâzim, but I find gently curving roads and paths that adapt to the natural terrain are preferable for the way they steer a walker. Motorways steer too quickly and too hazardously. Walking a motorway can feel arrow-like, a lethal walk.
My son always says, ‘Walking experiences? I can tell you what you experience on a walk: annoying passers-by. Up the slope, down the slope. Accompanied by some kind of weather or other. Walking experiences? Experience of boredom, more like!’
I’d like to tell you something, as my son doesn’t want to hear it: the art of not getting bored on walks lies in looking at the same object as yesterday, but thinking something different while you do. Have you noticed the nettles at the fountain outside? I look at them and think: they are green; being green is their great merit.
Do you know what I thought yesterday? Nettles can’t fly. They are limited.
Markus, though – do you know what he’s telling people? ‘Only mad dogs and my father venture out in the midday heat.’
Saying that, the midday hour is the most pleasant for a walk. Oh, but yes. If the sun’s directly above a walker, he needs nothing more than a sports cap to protect him from it. In the late morning or late afternoon, there’s no possibility of protecting yourself from direct exposure to the slanting rays. Which wrong theories do you have your relatives to thank for, Kâzim?
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could share with one another the sensations triggered in us by the nettles beside the fountain, and gain an infinite number of images of those same nettles? Even the thought of such an exchange sends my heart thumping. My only regret is that my son doesn’t w
ish to share that pleasure with me. What do you think, do nettles have any idea they exist? – Am I an old idiot? Markus treats me like one. But he has a screw loose himself. Do you know what he claims? ‘Walkers always bring viruses into the house.’
Walkers bring viruses into the house? If there’s an outbreak of influenza in every town and village, a disheartened walker will say: ‘The day after tomorrow, at the latest, it will reach me too,’ and become infected.
The undaunted walker walks among his sneezing and coughing fellow humans without coming out in sympathy with them. Markus drops comfortably onto the sofa, stuffs a few cushions behind his back, and looks at me condescendingly – as if someone who rears a walker like him hasn’t the right to posit theories about disheartened and undaunted walkers.
Emilie was always undaunted. If rheumatic pains were torturing her so much that she had difficulty walking, she’d sit down in the armchair, rub Opodeldek into her knees, run her hand over the places that hurt and say, ‘The pain’s going away!’
Then she’d get up, do knee bends and order herself to set out into the countryside. Once back in the armchair, she’d be beaming, would massage her knees and ankles, and I’d have to tell myself I wasn’t dreaming.
My weak legs. I count the steps to make sure they’ve not increased in number overnight.
Emilie’s vitality was a mystery to me. One week she’d cart home-made soup along to those who needed it, and who would slurp and dip bread in it without a word; the next, she’d accompany the younger pupils to their ski camp and crochet doilies with the ones who had a cold or were injured. She was an active member of every organisation and charitable institution that existed down the years in our small town: Sewing Circle, Reading Group, leisure activities for the mentally handicapped, Terre des Hommes, her Woman’s World group, the school board, the Summer Holidays initiative, she sang in two different choirs, her voice filled the whole room. She had three sisters and a brother; nineteen friends she’d known all her life; a hundred and sixty female colleagues she’d worked with at some point; and seven thousand acquaintances and relatives. You had to put on a fresh tablecloth, take out the good dishes and keep up to date about people who, in the fifties, were recovering from giving birth; in the sixties, forced themselves through marriages; only to abandon the same in the seventies, then go through ‘phases’ in the eighties.
Zbinden's Progress Page 4