Zbinden's Progress

by Christoph Simon

  I imagined how I’d begin the course: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, my roots lie back in time immemorial when the world was not yet a village, but a sphere. I’ll be friendly to you, and I want you to be friendly to me. I’m offering a series of classes on walking, as I am afraid of your dying jaded.’

  I’d be taking the reduced retentiveness of senior citizens into consideration. Those who didn’t speak up in the theory lesson wouldn’t be called on to answer questions. I would not be setting homework. Everyone would have the right to walk around freely or – if close to suffocating, the sweat pouring off them – to open or close the window. In the event of any tests in the practical part, limited used of public transport would be permitted.

  With a furrowed brow and evident difficulty, Markus fought his way through the first pages of my lecture – and postponed further reading of it to his next visit, when he would have more time and peace for that kind of thing.

  ‘It could be full of fascinating insights, things that are worth knowing,’ I said, to encourage him.

  Markus looked at the pages, then at me, then back at the pages. ‘Rain walkers have become accustomed to regarding the rain that’s teeming down on them positively,’ he quoted. ‘After all, the best thing you can do when it’s raining is just let it rain.’ He got up. ‘Thanks a lot, hey.’ Trembling with impatience, he added, ‘I have to go. The parking meter’s running out.’ In one hand, he was holding my manuscript out to me. In the other, my medicine.

  ‘Back then,’ I said, ‘I kept vigil over Emilie. The whole night long. She couldn’t decide whether she was in labour or not. When the time came, I was blissfully asleep.’

  Markus laughed. ‘I attended preparation courses for weeks: how to make giving birth painless. And when the time came, I was flat out: in a dead faint on the floor. Neither of us passed the first test of fatherhood with flying colours, exactly. Bye, Dad.’

  He stopped at the door, turned around again. ‘All the best for the class,’ he said, tenderly, ‘and take care.’

  I don’t know, Kâzim, I’m discovering new traits in my son. And I ask myself: did I overlook them before? Or has he become more open to me with age?

  Being a father was never easy for me – never as easy as being a walker, a teacher, Emilie’s husband, a resident, here in the Home. Lukas Zbinden, who – without blinking an eye – would call himself the last of the meek, isn’t happy with a whole host of things as regards his relationship with his son. I know I can no longer solve any major problems. And believe me, that weighs twice as heavily when it’s to do with my own son. It would be good if we were to use the time we’ll still share.

  And indeed: four weeks after I moved into the Home, the manageress chased a group of slightly confused souls out into the courtyard, where they looked around, irritated. She told the group where to sit, on the folding chairs set out beneath the chestnut tree, where there was enough shade to spend a fair amount of time. A balmy autumn afternoon. The manageress apologised to me as she’d have to leave my lecture after fifteen minutes, owing to other commitments elsewhere. She then closed the glass door back into the Home and leaned against it, gripping the handle tightly. She gave me a signal. Sitting on the stone bench beside the fountain, I began to lecture. I was simultaneously excited and calm. Felt a little like a singer who, after what was supposed to be his last performance ever, returns to the stage.

  ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, have you ever felt afraid of your own jadedness? Either you’re not jaded; or the fact that you are protects you from a fear of the same. Anyone with the slightest respect for himself and his senses can grasp that there’s nothing worse than a jaded life, i.e. one without feeling. If we learn to fear this dullness, we’ll ask: where’s the way out of this? And we’ll realise: walking is the way out. Every step can become a walk.’

  It all seemed to be going smoothly until Herr Imhof, in the first row, realised what had happened to him: he’d been dragged to a lecture that didn’t in the least interest him. What he wanted was to lean out of his window and observe the street below. Instead, sheer bad luck had led him, on his way back from a piece of home-made Black Forest Gateau in the Cafeteria, to bump into the manageress. He’d had no intention whatsoever of listening to my Jaded-Fog Speech in a moderately busy courtyard that got very little sun, when there was all that lively activity out on the street. He stood up and, walking sideways, made a quick exit. Instantly, three others who’d been dragged along seized the chance to flee. Messrs Wenk and Hügli, and Frau Steinimann, who died last spring. They rushed past the manageress and – making sufficient noise for me to be forced to lower my papers and pause – fled indoors, back to artificial light.

  Geriatric Nurse Britta took advantage of this disturbance. ‘When does the Laundry close today?’ she asked Lydia.

  ‘Four.’

  ‘Damn,’ Britta said, struggling to her feet. ‘Come on, Lydia.’

  Lydia had just slipped her shoes from her swollen feet and found a comfy position. She looked overworked and exhausted and seemed not to mind this chance to snooze beneath the chestnut before having to rush to Frau Jacobs with the pipette. Now, she was reluctantly following Britta to the Laundry. This seemed to encourage the entire left wing: they stood up as one and got in under the roof. Frau Schaad, not yet paralysed down one side at that point, turned her head in surprise and, fearing she might miss her chance, rushed after those hurrying off. Her folding chair fell over with a bang.

  Five people remained. Herr Ruchti, Madame Revaz, Frau Dürig, the then civilian-service carer, Sebastian, and the manageress. I gathered my papers together and encouraged them to leave too. Maybe we’ll meet on a walk some time, I murmured.

  ‘I’ve got time,’ Herr Ruchti said, smiling mildly. ‘Feel free to continue to appeal a little to our consciences.’

  Madame Revaz fished her glasses from her bag and asked would I mind if she knitted while listening. And Frau Dürig said: at least it was more comfortable sitting here than in the Day Room, where it smelled of poor ventilation.

  ‘Does life have a deeper meaning?’ I continued, in spirited fashion. ‘Is it a complete coincidence that we were born? I have a friend, a retired teacher. He was once invited to the home of an industrialist in Schlieren. The man, who was divorced from his wife three times, and went back to her three times, has a wonderful villa by the River Limmat. A hundred guests are romping around. The different sections of the shelves on the wall are filled with all kinds of decanters, vases, arty spice and herb containers. My friend meets the master of the house and says: You’ve got it good. You live like a king! A house like this! A profitable glass factory! A delightful wife! Dear children! And the man answers: Yes, you’re right, things are going well for me. But, suddenly, he becomes deadly serious and says: But don’t ask what it looks like in here, and he points to his heart.

  The most important things, we should do first. And if walking frees us from melancholy, jadedness, lethargy, apathy, then the most important thing is that we go for walks.

  People like to be outside in the fresh air. They rustle up open-air experiences for themselves: the nice view, for instance, that rewards the discomfort felt in the ears by cable car users. But the world is a hidden world; do you know what I mean when I say that? I’ll explain, using an image: a thick wall of fog. Hidden behind the wall of fog is a rose. Now, people can’t live without the rose. And so start to look for it. They throw footballs against the wall of fog, they hold playing cards, they attend evening classes, they form rows of four and play wind instruments in the orchestra. Those are the efforts involved in various leisure activities. The walker puts one foot in front of the other and penetrates the wall of fog. He finds the rose. A whole rose bush. Diminutive birds build their nest in its branches. Bugs nibble at its stem. He who finds the rose has found the world.

  I often ask myself why people aren’t bright and attentive. They’re well off, for the most part, after all. But they can’t be bright and attentive. Why? Because they’re jaded. Aslee
p, completely drunk, indifferent. And no self-help book or teacher of a walking class is going to take away that feeling of jadedness. Only walking can do this. An encounter that inspires him, or seeing something that touches him, catapults the walker into a condition full of love, clear-sightedness and fulfilment. For as long, at least, as it takes him to return to the drab, joyless, everyday consciousness that most people have accepted as normal since they were taught as children always to close doors.

  Why do we close doors? Even the door to the Dining Room is locked during meals. Not a breath of wind moving the white curtains. What is it we have to protect ourselves from so relentlessly? Wherever my late wife now is: there, the doors, for sure, aren’t locked. So the wind can pass through the apartment, and who knows, maybe the doors don’t even have locks: maybe it’s only a string of beads that separates her apartment form the world outside it.

  Listen: one of the beauties of this town is the green river that, as the poet says, embraces the town. I often go for a walk there. People jump in, to float from one bank to the other. Boats wherever you look, their sterns blunted. At the weir, a bridge leads across. The water crashes down the weir. And one day I see that where the water crashes down, a large piece of wood is dancing. I observe how the wood goes under and comes back up and turns in a circle. From time to time, it looks as if the current could come and carry it off. But the maelstrom grabs it again. When I return the next day, the piece of wood is still there. The vortex keeps getting hold of it. Can you imagine that? The current is there, and the wood comes up and goes under and turns in a circle. Human lives are often no different. It’s always the same three windows that the world is seen through: the window in the room, the windscreen in the car, the goggle box. On the one hand, people know they need to act, if they want to change anything. On the other, that’s exactly what they don’t do, as they’re afraid of the consequences. They ponder their discontentment, but in order not to have to act, they silence any unsettling thoughts with reassurances: It was a wonderful day, anyway, and I can’t take too much sun. On the weir, I thought: all it would take is a push or a prod and the wood would enter the current. But I couldn’t reach because I, a non-swimmer, didn’t want to risk falling in. I swim like an anvil. Once, I fell into the learners’ pool. All I heard was terrible gurgles, and bubbles rose to the surface.

  Ladies and Gentlemen, we are not a piece of wood. The one step out of the only-ever-the-same circle, the one step into the current, is a step we ourselves can take. Do feelings sometimes threaten to overwhelm you? Do situations sometimes seem to be over your head? Does the whole world weigh on your weak shoulders? Are you unable to sleep out of sheer longing for your deceased husband? Do you not know how to show your son you love him? Then put one foot in front of another on the immaculately cemented-over bed of a stream, or in a biotope that is significant in terms of natural history. That is always possible, even when nothing else is. Ladies and Gentlemen, this walking course will help you open up your heart, such that your life will make sense, as in: become sensuous. Sensuousness is what makes sense possible, in the first place. You want facts, not a sermon. Walking means: going for a walk. Not, listening to lectures about walking. As the speaker, I feel like someone standing in front of a fountain, selling water. You’ve heard now what I have to say. You can think you’ve been taught something, or been re-orientated, or born again, or whatever you like. Believe me when I say that in the lives of sprightly people, walking plays at least as central a role as their profession, poetry, godparenthood, family and health. Thank you for your attention.’

  The applause from my five listeners, at the end of the lecture, sounded friendly. Even if I could assess only with difficulty how loud it actually was – as my pupils, in the past, would only applaud if I distorted the word ‘mashed potatoes’ in twenty-three ways, something that had them howling with laughter. Today’s pupils, I suspect, would shoot me down for fun like that.

  ‘Good,’ said Sebastian, helping Madame Revaz up from her folding chair, ‘I’ll contradict you for the duration of my stint here.’

  A sceptical young man. Scared to death, he was, of catching a fatal disease here. On his first day as a civvy, he took a deep breath before entering the Home, then didn’t breathe again for three months.

  Herr Ruchti, at least, stretched his limbs and happily paid me several compliments that I played down, coolly. He said he rejected most of my views, and considered them alarming in almost every respect except, perhaps, with regard to their harmlessness. It had been exceedingly pleasant for him, though, to hear views so very far from his own. These words prompted the manageress and Frau Dürig to repeat Herr Ruchti’s compliments, and once they were suitably enthusiastic, I accepted them. Let the devil take me if that’s not Herr Pfammatter coming towards us. Look! I’ve told you about our folklorist, haven’t I?

  Good evening, Herr Pfammatter! Why, don’t you always turn up just as we think we’ve heard the last of you! – Oh, dear, what do you look like? – No, no. Matted and damp. As if you were on your way back from an uncomfortable night in a cave – where you had had to hide from something, in the darkness, that you actually wanted to hunt. – Budapest, exactly! – Did you get a decent haul of souvenirs? – Let’s see! – That’s a lady’s watch! How did you get your hands on a lady’s watch? – At supper, whatever you think. Herr Probst wants to know whether you’d be available for a game later? – Pardon? – Kâzim, our new carer. A rower. A good listener. And a splendid escort. I must be as heavy as lead on his arm, but if I am, he doesn’t let on. – No? What would you like to be praised for then, Kâzim? – Tomorrow, when you’ve recovered a little, Kâzim could visit you in your room and see the frightening collection of found items you have, what do you think, Herr Pfammatter? – Yes, no rush, just take your time getting changed, and see you later!’

  Of course, we saw the talks on walking through – what did you think? The second lesson had to be postponed due to operations on Madame Revaz’s eyes, but we then tested our skills out together – in the pretty courtyard, and on the street outside, beneath Herr Imhof’s suspicious looks. Herr Ruchti, a yellow scarf wrapped round his neck, trudged three steps ahead of the others, his head back, and with a chortling laugh, setting the pace and determining the direction, very much the centre of this old-timers’ expedition, while Herr and Frau Dürig talked enthusiastically about when they first met. Sebastian was wearing sunglasses even if the sun had no intention of breaking out from behind the cloud cover. They then sat – Madame Revaz, Sebastian, Herr Ruchti and the Dürigs in bizarre cuddly slippers – squeezed up together on the sofa that’s been in the Day Room for generations. Madame Revaz’s feet were resting on a footstool with a knitted cover, the exact copy of the knitting in her hands.

  They’d listen to what I had to say about proper walks, or look far back to their own early experiences as pedestrians, on the way to school and on forays, remembering injured and rescued animals, exploring building sites, finding bones in the forest, snowball fights.

  ‘Once, in winter,’ Herr Ruchti told us, ‘I asked my father if I could take the horse to school as it was such a long way. Father said: okay then. We harnessed Sambo, hitched him up to the sleigh, Father walked alongside the horse. When we reached the summit and looked down on the village, it started to snow.’

  You missed Herr Ruchti, Kâzim. A charming, white-haired beanpole, who – despite the classroom atmosphere in the Day Room – could amuse himself royally. He’d begin by chuckling secretly to himself, then burst out laughing, and regularly break into applause. As a teacher, you try hard not to have favourites, but Herr Ruchti, with his beaming smile, was my favourite participant on the course.

  Madame Revaz would knit, Herr and Frau Dürig would doze off hand in hand, and Sebastian, always in tight T-shirts, as if he’d been pumped into them, would draw my attention to any contradictions. On his last day as helper, Madame Revaz opened her handbag and took out a scarf she’d finished knitting, of the finest black wool. />
  ‘For you, Sebastian,’ she said and, touched, he wrapped the scarf around his bull neck. He then shook my hand till it was numb, and claimed he’d really enjoyed our ‘slow-motion walks’ though he didn’t plan spending any more of his time on them. ‘Maybe I enjoyed listening to you so much because every word you said confirmed, for me, that I haven’t been missing much.’

  In his face, I could see dozens of former pupils of mine.

  I can well understand that Frau Dürig, for example, prefers to go for a walk with an understanding older person than with a twenty-year-old carer: it’s the generation you know, you don’t have to explain or apologise so much. But the fact I’ve contact here with you civilian-service boys, I consider an incredible stroke of luck. You hear so often that you should try to have young friends. I’m all the more thankful that young men like you, Kâzim, and Sebastian, are gifted to me. You haven’t waited until you have to visit your own mother in a care home to discover solidarity with the elderly. For that, I thank you more than I can express in words.

  What are you saying, Kâzim? The final step! Safely and fearlessly we’ve reached the ground floor! Boy, boy, – eighty-seven, but you’re still making the likes of this look easy, Lukas Zbinden. Madame Revaz! Here we are, over here! – We’ve just been speaking about you. How are you? – What’s your children’s news? – Your daughter went to university, remember? – The boy has emigrated to Paraguay, married a nurse. You have good children, Madame Revaz, you should be proud of them! – Why, yes! – Do you maybe remember when you got married? – Of course, it’s a long time ago! But when exactly? – You were born in 1919, weren’t you? – Do you remember how old you were when you married? – Did you get married at twenty? No? – But you weren’t thirty by the time … right? – Twenty-one maybe? – Twenty-two? – Could be. If you were twenty-three, you got married in 1942. Does that seem about right? 1942: marriage to Bértrand Revaz in the Eglise du Saint-Esprit in Delémont? – Let’s return to the subject tomorrow, Madame Revaz. Think hard until then about when exactly you married. – Don’t mention it! To the front door, Kâzim.