Zbinden's Progress

by Christoph Simon

  Frau Dürig, so petite. Herr Dürig, broad and bearded. Both were from large families, had lived through hard times. After the war, Herr Dürig didn’t succeed in finding the well-paid job he needed to look after his mother and two invalid siblings. In his despair, he wrote to the fortress commander under whom he’d served in a secret tunnel in Mount Lötsch and who now held some thankless, local position in Berne. The commander promised to get him a job with the Municipal Transport Authority, but he’d have to come for interview. Herr Dürig couldn’t afford the train fare, so he cycled on a rattly old single-speed from Frutigen in the Kander Valley to the capital. There, he dusted his clothes off and entered the ministry building on Eigerplatz. You’d have looked at him as astonished as I was when it dawned on you he’d cycled back the same day, but Herr Dürig would just have blinked at Frau Dürig and said, ‘It wasn’t at all taxing. I had the promise of a job, after all, and on a piece of paper the name of a beguiling office miss I’d come across in the anteroom.’

  Not long ago, here in the Home, I got to meet one of Frau Dürig’s many sons-in-law. A good-humoured, well-nourished man, with a file under his arm. ‘Herr Zbinden, it’s really nice that you’re encouraging my ailing mother-in-law to get out into the fresh air. Here’s a hundred-franc note for taking the trouble. No, don’t be embarrassed, my expenses will cover it.’

  I ask him, ‘And you yourself? Do you go for walks?’

  ‘No, no, I’ve too much to do.’

  You understand: a good chap, but as far removed from the solutions to chemical or musical problems as the earth is from Uranus.

  I knew many people who said, rightly, ‘I’m a grafter. And I’m exhausted.’ With great fervour, they sought honorary posts, activities to be involved in; demonstrated their endurance levels without so much as a blink; rushed with import and export figures to meetings and conferences in the remotest of settlements, gasping like some creature in labour. And then death came along and they discovered: they’d spent the voyage across the sea in the ship’s hold. Hadn’t seen: the ocean beneath a starry sky; the coasts, crowned with piers and stinking harbours; the inhospitable islands, smoking volcanoes. Not heard the seagulls screeching. Not scratched crusted salt from the planks. Never thrown a lifebelt to a drowning man. They didn’t know what they were so angry about, and didn’t know how to calm themselves. Nightmarish. Buried alive. But you don’t have to live like that. Going for a walk takes you up on deck.

  Do you know what my son once said? ‘If you’ve seen one wave, Dad, you’ve seen them all.’

  In the Zbinden family, there was no history of conscientious objection to walking until my son came along. Who have you learned this habit from, Kâzim? Of putting your free hand in your pocket?

  I can hardly think of a single trait that Markus might have inherited from me. Are we completely different men? I could never have cuddled him the way he was later to cuddle his child. Markus took the whining bundle and rocked her gently, to and fro, murmuring all the while, to calm her down. Thirty years earlier, I wouldn’t even have pushed the pram across the square outside the church. Lullabies, I rattled off as if they were cavalry charges. Infants that had to spend the day with me were so homesick they fell ill. Markus, on the other hand, changed his daughter’s nappy, made her porridge, took her to the doctor, sat down beside her and read to her. How could he work and at the same time always get up in the night to comfort his teething daughter? Even on workdays, he played hide-and-seek and tig with her at the playground. If she went into a rage, threw herself on the floor and kicked her legs in the air, he knew how to calm his wife as well as their daughter. If Angela held her hand-made teddy out of their third-floor window, waving it to teach it how to fly, he would let her. Markus didn’t snatch the bear from her hand, didn’t give her a real ticking-off, just said calmly, ‘But don’t let go until I tell you. I don’t think he’s quite got the hang of it yet.’

  I always had to coerce my son into carrying our mineral water delivery down into the cellar. To his daughter, he said one day, ‘Angela, I bet a big strong girl like you can carry that crate down on your little finger’ – and from that moment on, he didn’t have to ask.

  In my day, I’d give Markus a clout. No, I did, I did. I had to explain to him that it could have dire consequences for him if he poked a piece of wire into an electric socket. I thought I could see in his face that he’d try again at the first opportunity, so I slapped him one and reiterated that putting wire in a socket could be very, very sore.

  As a boy, Markus loved going to the airport. From the observation terrace, we would watch reverently as planes took off and landed. Shoulder to shoulder, we studied the flight information on the boards. Viewed, noisily, the displays in the kiosks and shops. As strangers, what would we take away from here? We observed the passengers, the staff, the porters. How do holidaymakers differ from business travellers? Are the group travellers already speaking to each other, or still standing some distance apart? Is the family there to welcome the man who puts the food on the table out of a sense of duty or because they can’t wait to see him again? We imagined we were returning from Tokyo or Zanzibar, or flying to Brazil, and felt some of the excitement we sensed around us. As I lifted Markus to let him see a plane landing, Emilie and I tried to fathom the logic of those parents who will never board a plane together. Would you rather be on the plane that doesn’t make it? Or prefer to be the one left alone, bringing up your son on a small allowance?

  Later, we often fought, and more than once Emilie reprehended me. ‘You know, Lukas, you’re one of those people who always interferes. If Markus brings friends home to listen to records, you simply take over. He can’t get a word in. That must be terribly annoying for him.’

  Was I a bad father? I came to his defence against Emilie when he came home at night later than agreed, but if I hoped to hear about it, I was disappointed. When I asked ‘How was it?’ he would answer ‘Fine’, and that was it. If Emilie asked whom he’d met and who had said what, he happily told her.

  At sixteen, he attended dancing lessons in Interlaken every Thursday night. Frau Spycher would play a certain chord on her piano, and the girls would rise, stand before their chairs and wait for the boys to ask them to dance. Normally, Markus chose Rhea Gugger, from Ringgenberg. Emilie and I couldn’t understand why, wasn’t she bigger than him? Emilie discovered the reason, ‘He likes her eau de cologne. 4711.’

  When I’d asked, he’d just shrugged his shoulders.

  It’s like drawing teeth if I want something out of him.

  ‘How was your day, Markus?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Anything new?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  And later, Emilie informs me that Rhea Gugger finished with him after the final lesson. I give a loud groan. ‘Is that “nothing”?’ Incredible.

  Could you bear to see your child be sad, Kâzim? You hope you’d be able to chase away the sadness by immediately doing or saying the right thing. I could never bear being in the same room if my son’s face took on that unhappy expression. As a father, you feel responsible. Fated to deal with it.

  ‘You need to go out,’ I called across to him, from the doorway of his room. ‘And get to know your friends’ sisters’ girl friends.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Markus lies on his bed, with a tortured look, staring at the ceiling.

  ‘If you can make a woman laugh, people say, you’re halfway there.’

  Markus is silent.

  ‘According to Emilie, the best way to deal with a broken heart is to take an axe and split wood until you drop with exhaustion.’

  ‘Mama never had a broken heart.’

  ‘I’m trying to give you ideas, at least. Don’t you have any of your own?’

  ‘Do you know what, Dad?’ He straightens up. ‘Life is some shit illness I managed to catch somewhere.’

  ‘Maybe you are your own shit illness?’

  The door to his room slams in my face. And yet, believe me, I was about to take h
im in my arms until everything was all right again. But Markus shuts himself in.

  Here, look, a letter from my granddaughter, with questions about how I am, with news of what she’s doing in her spare time. ‘Don’t always ask the same question, Granda, you’ll be the first to know if I’m leaving for Marseille. You can count on that.’

  Enclosed with the letter was a post-it from Markus, telling me to ask the administration in the Home for a form he needs for his tax declaration.

  My son and I: we’re grown men with our own, independent experiences. Surely, it should now be possible for us to speak to each other. It’s just that when he has to make the long journey down to the entrance hall with me, it’s as if his mouth has been tied shut. I ask why he’s not telling me anything, and he says, ‘It’s not that I’m keeping anything from you. It’s simply that Verena and Angela and I get on well, and there’s nothing to tell.’

  ‘And at work?’

  ‘Pages and pages are copied out of my scientific articles. So I’ve reason to be happy.’ He then falls silent again.

  And as for the opposite: how can walkers walk past it all – suffering, misery, begging, pollution – and not do anything? A pyromaniac bursts into a primary school with a box of matches? And Zbinden the Walker? What does he do to ensure such a thing never happens again? Does he deliberately blind himself to the seriousness of the international situation? Just recently, one nation marched out of its own country and into another with a worse balance of trade. Does Zbinden the Walker hear the resulting discord? Or does he harbour the illusion that the world’s in a hopeless situation, anyway, it’s drowning in hopelessness, and there are far too few lifebelts for the number of people drowning? That the way the world’s cereals are distributed is, quite simply, irreversible? Does he blind himself to the thought that history should move in the direction of improvement, and human beings, grow to attain greater freedom and perfection? Or does he regard the question of women, the starving, the persecuted, in terms of ‘job done!’? As for the exploitation of man by his fellow man – on whose side does a walker see himself? Don’t you ask yourself these questions, Kâzim? – You do?

  Take the year 1776. Austria abolishes torture. America declares its independence. James Cook sails round the world for the third time. The first living orang-utan is brought to Holland. And the unworldly walker is sitting in Eisenstadt, wondering whether to cut his toenails or buy a larger size of boot.

  My granddaughter likes to bad-mouth walkers as aesthetes and utopians with no ambitions. She can, indeed, identify valuable elements in a walk, she says, from which people could build a knowledgeable world experience, but she slates walkers for not going about this productively enough. The fruits of their efforts? The visible use? Critics of walking view walking, on the whole, as a form of diversion. And all diversions, as is well known, and as Pascal said, are nothing but a human invention to ensure we avoid seeing the enormous suffering beneath the horror of our own unfathomable misery. But Heraclitus – does the name mean anything to you, Kâzim? Slept on a dung-hill to cure himself of dropsy and spoke about how, even when asleep, we contribute, directly or indirectly, to what goes on in the world. This is the sense, I explain to my granddaughter, in which walkers operate too.

  You know, I regard walkers as pioneers in the battle for freedom of movement and like to see them as friends of free movement across the world, and yet – on one point, I share the view of my critics: when it comes to appointing people to posts in government, preference should be given to single-minded motorists. Politics, as you know, comes down to being in the right place at the right time. There, behind us. Can you hear that, Kâzim? The manager’s coming crashing towards us. His key ring rattling and dancing on his belt. – Did Herr Probst find you, Herr Stauffer? – One moment, Herr Stauffer! Is the rumour true that you want to fire the chef and have a canteen kitchen deliver our food? – Whoa!

  Now tell me, Kâzim! Is that his idea of sheltered housing? Could he not at least have stopped briefly and asked how we are? He could have badgered you with questions about your first week here, or said hello, at least. What are you looking for down there, Kâzim? – Oh. – Emilie used to tie her laces calmly and without rushing – compared to you. Are you happy with your laces? – Without the right laces, the leather doesn’t shine as it should. Do you not think the laces a little too shiny? – I think they’re a little too shiny. Why don’t you do a double knot?

  Maybe I should give her a holiday. – My granddaughter. Where would you like to travel to, Kâzim?

  Always untroubled, inclined to be cheerful, Emilie would be asleep almost before her head had touched the pillow. She got up early, was always active, always in excellent form, ate light meals, no meat, two pills per annum. She should’ve lived to be a hundred. It would interest me to know what position the Federal Health Ministry would take regarding Emilie’s death.

  ‘Emilie, do you never worry?’ I would ask her.

  ‘I have a low opinion of worrying.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re never worried. I worry about Markus, I torture myself thinking he could get into difficulty. I wouldn’t be a good father if I didn’t do that – correct? Yesterday, biting this Benjamin boy – what on earth’s wrong with him?’

  ‘Nothing, you fool. He’s just very active: active and bright.’

  ‘I worry about my work. If I don’t take work seriously, I’ll lose it. I worry about the situation in the world, the governments couldn’t care less about things. We plan a picnic, and I worry we could be rained off. I worry about you, about your well-being, though you don’t appreciate that at all. Not to worry is like escaping, a way of shirking your responsibility, of suppressing all your problems and not giving a damn about everything else.’

  Emilie laughed out loud. ‘I once tried to worry. As you worry about everything, I thought I might be missing out on something. I decided a certain day would be my worry day – to find out what it’s all about. That morning, I refused to get up, pulled the cover over my head, and you asked was I pregnant again? I kicked the duvet aside: nine o’clock, that explained the brightness in the room. I refused to do any kind of work and read the newspaper. One article was about how, in the US, big business and the military were as good as married. I made every effort to worry until lunchtime, but couldn’t do it. I gave up early.’

  ‘How do you manage that?’

  ‘By trusting.’

  ‘Trusting? Trusting in what? In whom? Can trusting make worries vanish?’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Emilie, ‘but it helps to get over them. At least, they don’t bother you so much then.’

  You’re asking yourself what Emilie meant by trusting, Kâzim? Believe me, I’ve been asking myself that longer than you. I mull it over like Herr Ziegler’s archaeologists would an unknown hieroglyphic. Sometimes I think my wife existed to show me what was beyond me.

  Herr Probst! Did you get anywhere on the top floor? Threaten to go on hunger strike? – At least the manager raced past us there, like a startled hare. – Stick to your guns, whatever you do. I once knew a very old, uncouth man who gave the person delivering his meals a chain of human molars. But that was many moons ago and is a very old yarn. – This evening? – Pardon? – No, Herr Pfammatter isn’t here, no, I think he’s gone to Budapest … – What? – I hope not, but of course I can’t … – No, I don’t know whether Herr Hügli is available. We’ll see, Herr Probst. – Yes, lie down for a while.

  Herr Probst never admits when he has a hangover. But there are days when he says he’s pretty tired, and today is one of those days.

  You’re bound to run into Herr Pfammatter, Kâzim. He’s travelling at the moment. Once a year, the travel bug gets to him. Then he jumps into his best suit and puts a beret on. He stuffs a pullover, rainwear, his toothbrush and some cracked soap into a battered grey army rucksack and, with the straps of a camera, a map case and binoculars tied round him, sets off for some distant destination. He looks like René Gardi, the folklorist, who s
pends his year in the savanna surrounded by giraffes, wildebeests and Masai spears.

  Last Friday, in the corridor, he said to me, beaming, ‘It’s good I’ve seen you, Herr Zbinden, I’m off to Budapest today for four days. Would you please inform the management once I’ve gone? They might be alarmed otherwise.’

  Without stolen souvenirs, Pfammatter’s travels would be unthinkable. You can look forward to seeing his room, Kâzim! Full of curious objects – the most valuable, and all the fragile ones, he keeps on the top shelf so Hügli’s tom can’t get anywhere near. From a café in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Herr Pfammatter brought back the Gitanes ashtray; from a trip on the Wiener Walzer overnight train, the sign saying Zurich–Vienna. In the National Park, he slipped a 225-million-year-old stone fossil into his rucksack. A fully rigged ship in a bottle. A silver snuffbox, decorated with fine twines and flourishes. A block of sandstone – wherever he got that from. Property isn’t what belongs to you, he makes out. Property is what you can keep from other people.

  These thefts are quickly put into perspective when you consider all the things Herr Pfammatter leaves behind on his travels: hairbrushes, cultural guides, the return portions of his tickets. On his last-but-one trip, he ended up in Rome. There, he told us once he was back, an incredible urge for a bowl of milky coffee came over him, the kind of milky coffee you can dip your bread into. Pfammatter sat himself down in a bar, ordered milky coffee, and asked for milky coffee again when the waiter brought him just a coffee in a thimble-sized cup. Pfammatter whipped out a pencil, took the serviette and drew a coffee cup with two ears, the kind used in the early nineteenth century. At the top, he drew some steam and wrote the word caffè. The waiter took the espresso back to the counter, took a soup bowl from the cupboard, and pulled the lever twelve times. But what’s Herr Pfammatter supposed to do with a dozen espressos in a soup bowl? So he draws a cow on the serviette and with both hands, four fingers clasping the thumbs, imitates a farmer milking over the coffee. The waiter rushes back and brings over two little jugs of milk that Pfammatter, now satisfied, pours into his coffee.