The Tanners

by Robert Walser

  And she was gone.

  In the lady’s absence, Simon observed his surroundings. The lamps gave off a bright warm light. People were chatting unrestrainedly with one another. A few of them, now that night had fallen, were leaving because they still had to go back down the mountain to return to town. Two old men sitting cozily at a table struck him because of the tranquil way they sat there. Both of them had white beards and rather fresh faces and were smoking pipes, which gave them a patriarchal air. They didn’t speak to one another, apparently considering that superfluous. Now and then their respective pairs of eyes would meet, and then there was a shrugging of pipes and the corners of mouths, but this all occurred quite tranquilly and no doubt as a matter of habit. They appeared to be idlers, but calculating, premeditated, superior idlers—idle out of prosperity. Surely the two of them had taken up with one another only because they shared these same habits: smoking their pipes, taking little walks, a fondness for wind, weather and nature, good health, preferring silence to chatter, and finally age itself with all its special perquisites. To Simon the two of them appeared not lacking in dignity. One couldn’t help smiling a little at the appealing cordoned-off spectacle they presented, but this spectacle did not exclude reverence, which age itself demands as its right. A sense of purpose was expressed in their tranquil visages; they possessed a completeness that could in no way be disputed any longer. These old men were most certainly beyond entertaining uncertainties as to the path they’d chosen, even if it had been chosen in error. But then what did it mean to be in error? If a person picked an error as his lodestar at the age of sixty or seventy, this was a sacrosanct matter to which a young man must respond with reverence. These two old codgers—for there was certainly something codger-like about them—must have had some sort of procedure or a system according to which they’d sworn to one another to go on living until the end of their days; that’s how they looked, like two people who’d found something that worked and made it possible for them to await their end with equanimity. “The two of us have found it out, that secret”—this is what their expressions and bearing seemed to say. It was amusing and touching and no doubt worth pondering to observe them and attempt to guess their thoughts. Among other things, one quickly guessed that these two would always only be seen as a pair and never any other way, never singly, always together! Always! This was the main thought you felt emanating from their white heads. Side by side through life, maybe even side by side down into the abyss of death: This appeared to be their guiding principle. And indeed, they even looked like a couple of living, old, but nonetheless still jolly and good-humored principles. When summer came again, the two of them would be seen sitting outside on the shady terrace, but they’d still keep filling their pipes with a mysterious air and prefer silence to speech. When they left, it would always be the two of them leaving, not first one and then the other: This seemed unthinkable. Yes, they looked cozy, this much Simon had to give them: cozy and hardheaded, he thought, looking away from them to gaze at something else.

  He cast fleeting glances at various people and discovered an English family with strange faces, men who appeared to be scholars and others to whom it would have been difficult to ascribe any sort of post or profession; he saw women with white hair and girls with their bridegrooms, observed people who—one could tell just by looking—felt somewhat ill at ease here and others who seemed just as comfortable as if they were sitting at home in the bosom of their families. But the hall was rapidly emptying. Outside winter was howling and one could hear the fir trees creaking as they knocked together. The forest lay a mere ten paces removed from the building, Simon knew well from earlier days.

  While he was abandoning himself to his thoughts in this way, the proprietress reappeared.

  She sat down beside him.

  A silent change appeared to have taken place in her. She seized Simon’s hand: This was unexpected. —Hereupon she said quietly, overheard by no one, and unobserved:

  “Now it’s unlikely they’ll disturb me again and prevent my sitting here with you, people are starting to leave. Tell me, who are you, what’s your name, where are you from? You look as if one must ask these things. You emit a certain wondering and amazement, not amazement that you yourself feel—it’s rather the person sitting in front of you who feels amazed, observing you. One wonders about you, feels amazed, and then is filled with a longing to hear you talk, imagining what it must be that is speaking within you. A person involuntarily worries on your account. One goes away from you and does one’s work, and then suddenly one’s taking mercy on you by thinking about you. It isn’t pity, for pity is something you by no means inspire, nor is it truly mercy, strictly speaking. I don’t know what it could be: curiosity, perhaps? Let me reflect for a moment. Curiosity? A desire to know something about you, just one little thing, some sound or note. One has the impression one already knows you and finds you not terribly interesting but nonetheless listens and listens, just in case you say something that might be worth hearing from your lips a second time. Looking at you, a person can’t help feeling sorry for you: casually, condescendingly, looking down on you from above. You must have something profound about you, but no one seems to notice because you make no effort at all to let it shine forth. I’d like to hear what you have to tell. Do you have parents still, and siblings? Just looking at you, one cannot help assuming your sisters and brothers must be important people. You yourself, however, a person cannot help considering utterly insignificant. Why is this? It’s so easy to feel superior to you. But one need only speak with you a short while to realize one’s succumbed to the sort of error liable to occur when speaking to so even-tempered a person, someone who’d scorn the notion of snapping to attention and who has no wish to look better or more dangerous than he is. You don’t look particularly interesting, let alone dangerous—and women are what you get when you combine the need for tenderness with a lust for unadulterated danger, a constant source of peril. Of course you won’t hold what I’ve just said against me, for you hold no grudges. One doesn’t know where one stands with you. Would you tell me your story, I’m so eager to hear it! Do you know, I’d very much like to be your confidante, even if only for an hour, and perhaps even if it’s just in my imagination. When I was upstairs just now I felt such an urge to hurry back to you as if you were an important personage who mustn’t be kept waiting and whose good graces and even condescending respect it’s crucial to enjoy. And what I found was a person whose cheeks glow more brightly when I come running up! How silly of me, but isn’t this odd all the same? All right now, I shall sit quietly now and listen to you—”

  Simon said to her:

  “My name is Tanner, Simon Tanner, and I have four siblings, I am the youngest and the one who occasions the fewest hopes. One brother is a painter, he lives in Paris, and he lives there more quietly and reclusively than in a village, for he is painting. He must have changed a bit by now, it’s been over a year since I last saw him, but I think if you were to meet him the impression you’d have is of an important and utterly autonomous person. Getting close to him is not without its perils: He captivates people in such a way that one can commit foolhardy acts for his sake. He’s a consummate artist, and if I, his brother, understand something about art, it’s to his credit rather than my own understanding, which only developed a little as it was drawn to him. I think he must be wearing long curls now, but on him the curls look as natural as a closely shorn head on an officer, they aren’t obtrusive. He disappears in the
crowd, and it’s his wish to disappear so he can work in peace. Once in a letter to me he wrote something about an eagle that spreads its pinions above rocky crags and feels most at home hovering above chasms, and another time he wrote to me that a man and artist must work like a horse—collapsing from exhaustion meant nothing at all, it was necessary to collapse and get back up again at once to return to work. He was still just a boy then, and now he paints pictures. If some day he ceases to be able to paint, he’ll scarcely be alive any longer. His name is Kaspar, and as a schoolboy he was always considered a lazybones both at school and in the parental home, take my word for it, and this was only because his general manner was so placid, so mild. He was taken out of school at an early age since he wasn’t doing well there, and had to carry about boxes and crates, and then he escaped from his homeland, and outside it learned to compel people to give him the respect he deserved. He’s one of my brothers, and another is named Klaus. Klaus is the oldest, and I consider him the best and most thoughtful person in all the world. His very gaze bespeaks his forbearance, scrupulousness and consideration. He’s an able man, so very able that his modest, discreet abilities will always remain hidden. He watched us younger ones grow up and devote ourselves to our desires and passions, he observed this all in silence and waited, occasionally speaking a word of concern or advice, but always he saw that everyone must tread his own path, he merely did what he could to avert misfortune, and his uncanny acuity of vision always let him discern what was good in a person. This brother is secretly worried about me, I know this quite well, for he loves me, in fact he loves all people and has a strangely shy esteem for them that we younger ones lack. Although he holds a position of prominence in the scholarly world, I am nonetheless convinced that only his scrupulousness—which is tempered always with shyness—is to blame for his not yet occupying an even higher one, because he deserves the very highest position, the one of greatest responsibility. I have a third brother as well who is unfortunate and nothing more; all that remains of him is what memories of his earlier days can tell a person. He’s in the madhouse—shouldn’t I be permitted to state this candidly? Given that you’re sitting here listening to me with such an attentively harkening ear, I assume you’re interested in hearing all there is to tell in its most truthful form or else nothing at all, isn’t that right? You nod, which says to me I already know you rather well if I make bold to assume you to be a simultaneously kind-hearted and courageous woman. Please keep listening. This unfortunate brother was surely, and I may say so without hesitation, the ideal of a young beautiful man, and he had talents that would have been better suited to the gallant, charming eighteenth century than our times, whose demands are so much harder and drier. Allow me to pass over his misfortune in silence; for in the first place talk of it might dishearten you, and secondly and thirdly, and as far as I’m concerned sixthly, it isn’t proper to tug apart all the folds of misfortune and cast aside all ceremony, all lovely veiled mourning, which can exist only when one keeps silent on such matters. I’ve now given you a tentative, sketchy portrait of my brothers, and now a girl will appear, a lonely schoolmistress sequestered in a little village with thatched roofs, my sister Hedwig. Would you like to make her acquaintance? You and all your sensibilities would be delighted by this girl. There is no prouder creature on all the planet. I lived a full three months with her in idleness in the countryside; she wept when I arrived and laughed at me when, suitcase in hand, I tried to bid her a tender farewell. She threw me out, and at the same time gave me a kiss. She said to me that all she felt for me was a faint, insuppressible contempt, but she said that so sweetly I couldn’t help but feel it as a caress. Just imagine, she gave me shelter in her home when I came to her with more beggarly, more importunate demands than the most insolent vagabond who only remembered his sister because it occurred to him: “You can go there until you’re standing on your own two feet again.” —But then we lived for three entire months as if in a gay pleasure garden filled with bower-lined paths. Such a thing can never be forgotten. When I went out and took walks in the woods, finding myself too indolent to know whether to scratch my chin or behind my ears, I dreamed of her, of her alone, as if wanting to dream of what was simultaneously closest and farthest away. She was far from me out of reverence and close out of love. She was so proud, I’ll have you know, that she never allowed me to feel how very shabby I must have appeared to her. She just felt glad when I made myself at home and settled in with her. This persisted until the very last hour, and then she simply cut my farewell off before it left my lips, in the presentiment that I would say only hurtful, stupid things. When I’d left, I turned to look back down the hill behind me and saw her waving at me amicably and simply, as if I were just heading off to the nearest village cobbler and would return in an hour’s time. And yet she knew she was being left behind, alone with her isolation, and would be faced with the task of adjusting to the absence of a companion—and this certainly was a task, an internal labor. When we sat together in the evenings, we’d tell each other stories about our lives, and we heard the wings of childhood beating once more, just as our mother’s dress would rustle on the floor of the room when she came toward her children. My mother and my sister Hedwig always comprise in my head an intimately conjoined and interwoven image. When our mother fell ill, it was Hedwig who cared for and tended her, as one must tend a little child. Just imagine: A child must watch her own mother become a child, and becomes a mother to her own mother. What a strange displacement of feelings. My mother was a highly respected woman, and the esteem she received from all sides was pure and heartfelt. The impression she made was always at once rural and refined. Simultaneously unassuming and dismissive, she could quickly put a damper on disobedience and unkindness. Her expression could ask and command at one and the same time. How the ladies in our town would cluster about her when she went for a walk, how many gentlemen’s hats were doffed before her. Then, when she fell ill, she was forgotten and became an object of worry and shame. For one feels ashamed when a family member is ill and is almost enraged to remember the days when a healthy woman commanded the respect of all who knew her. Shortly before her death—I was fourteen years old at the time—she sat down at noon one day to write a letter: “My beloved son.” But do you imagine her whimsically slender handwriting continued any further than this salutation? No, she just gave a weary confused smile, murmured something and was compelled to lay down the pen once more. There she sat, there lay the beginning of a letter to her son, there the pen, and the sun was shining out of doors, and I observed all these things. One night Hedwig then knocked at the door of my room, telling me to get up, Mother had died. A thin ray of light fell through the crack of the door as I leapt out of bed. As a girl, my mother had been unhappy, born into unfavorable circumstances. She left the distant mountains and came to live in town with her sister, my aunt—where she was forced to work as a maid practically. As a child she walked a long road deeply covered in snow to get to school, and she did her homework in a tiny little room by the light of a paltry candle stub that made her eyes hurt because she could scarcely read the letters in her book. Her parents were unkind to her, and so she became acquainted with melancholy at an early age, and one day, when she was a girl, she stood leaning against the railings of a bridge, wondering whether it wouldn’t be better to leap down into the river. She must have been neglected, shunted back and forth and in this way maltreated. When as a boy I once heard about her wicked childhood, I trembled with indignation, rage shot into my face, and
from then on I hated the unknown figures of my grandparents. For her children, our mother had, when she was still healthy, something almost majestic about her that frightened and intimidated us; when she became ill in her mind, we pitied her. It was a crazy leap to make: from fearful, mystical awe to pity. All that lay between—tenderness and trust—remained unknown to us. And so it happened that our pity was strongly intermingled with an unspeakable regret over all we’d never felt, which then caused us to pity her all the more deeply. I remembered all my boyish pranks, all my disrespectful behavior—and then the sound of our mother’s voice, with which she meted out punishments even at a distance, so that the actual physical punishment that followed was sweet, laughable sugar-candy by comparison. She employed just the right tone of voice to make you instantly regret the error you’d committed and desire to see her outrage mollified as quickly as possible. There was something so wonderfully mild about her mildness, and seeing it was like receiving a present; we didn’t receive it often. Oversensitive irritability was my mother’s usual state. We weren’t nearly as frightened of our father as of her, we feared only that he might say or do something that would cause Mother to fly into a rage. He was powerless before her—it was in his nature to prize vigor far less than relaxation. He was a boon companion, and as such well-loved, but when it came to difficult matters, he wasn’t the one to take things in hand. Now he’s eighty years old, and when he dies, a piece of town history will die along with him; the old people will shake their heads more pensively and wearily when they no longer see the old man going about his business, which he still does today, and on fairly spry legs. In his youth he was rather a wild fellow who was gradually polished by city life, but this life also gave him a taste for luxury. Both Mother and Father came from rugged, secluded, mountainous regions and then found themselves in a town that even at the time was known, if not notorious, for its liberal vitality. Industry was flourishing in those days like a fiery plant, permitting an easy, carefree lifestyle—much money was earned, and much spent. When five or six days a week were workdays, this was considered industriousness. Workers lay for days at a time upon the sunny riverbank, catching fish, when they weren’t getting up to mischief. And whenever they needed more money to finance this life, they’d go work a few days more, earning enough to return to their leisure. The craftsmen were making money off the workers, for when even the poor have money, how much more prosperous must the well-to-do be. The city appeared to have acquired an additional ten thousand inhabitants overnight, everyone came streaming in from the surrounding countryside into buildings that were occupied and filled the moment they looked on the outside as though they might be finished, never mind how damp and dirty the inside might still be. Construction firms were having a heyday, all they had to do was keep producing buildings, which they did as shoddily as could be managed. Factory owners rode around on horseback, and their ladies traveled in barouches while the town’s old nobility observed these activities and sniffed. On festival days the town went all out, surpassing all rivals, and left no stone unturned in its bid to be celebrated everywhere as the best town for revelries. The merchants had nothing to complain about under these circumstances, nor did the schoolchildren; the only ones who felt uneasy were a handful of insightful individuals who couldn’t find the courage to join their neighbors on the unsteady, rose-strewn pleasure ground of superficial amusements. Into such surroundings my parents now came, Mother with her irritable sensitivities and her taste for simple refinement, and Father with his talent for assimilating everything around him. For children, every region is lovely and charming, but this particular place, thanks to its setting, was made for children who love to pursue their games amid lairs such as rocks, caves, riverbanks, meadows, hollows, gorges and wooded ravines. And so we enjoyed this entire landscape for our games and inventions until we left school. When Mother died, I was sent to a bank as an apprentice. During the first year I acquitted myself splendidly; for the novelty of what I encountered in this world filled me with timidity and fear. The second year found me a model apprentice, but in the third year of my apprenticeship the director cursed me to the devil, keeping me on only as an act of mercy, in deference to my father, whose close acquaintance he’d been for many years. I’d lost all gusto for work of any sort and spoke insolently to my superiors, whom I considered unworthy of ordering me around. There was something in me that I now find incomprehensible—I recall that everything, every piece of furniture, every object, every word caused me pain. Eventually, I became so timid that the time had come to send me away, and that’s what they did. They found me a job in a far-off town just to get rid of me, as I had proved myself utterly useless. And so I left.—But now I don’t want to think of the past any longer, nor speak of it. There’s something wonderful about having escaped one’s early youth, for youth is by no means always beautiful, lovely and easy; often it’s harder and more filled with worries than the life of many an old man. The more one has lived, the more gently one lives. A person with a tempestuous youth may well in later years rarely or—preferably—never again behave in a tempestuous manner. When I think of how we children, each of us in turn, had to go through all these things, the years of error and violent emotion, and that all children on earth must do this at their own youthful peril, well then I don’t wish to be overhasty in praising the sweetness of childhood, and yet I will praise it, for childhood remains a precious memory all the same. How difficult it often is for parents to be good protective parents; and as for being a well-behaved obedient child—how can this be more than a cheap empty phrase for most children? As a woman, by the way, you know this better than I do. To this day I’ve remained the least capable of human beings. I don’t even have a suit to my name that might bear witness to my having put my life more or less in order. Looking at me, you can’t see anything that might point to my having made a certain choice in life. I’m still standing at the door of life, knocking and knocking, though admittedly none too forcefully, and breathlessly listening to see whether someone will decide to open the bolt and let me in. A bolt like this is rather heavy, and people don’t like to come to the door if they have the feeling it’s just a beggar standing outside knocking. I’m good at nothing but listening and waiting, though in these capacities I’ve achieved perfection, for I’ve learned how to dream while waiting. These two things go hand in hand, and dreaming does a person good and preserves respectability. Might I have missed the chance to find my true profession? This is a question I no longer ask myself; a youth might ask such a thing, but not a man. Any profession would have brought me exactly as far as I am now. And why should I concern myself with that! I’m quite conscious of my virtues and weaknesses, and take pains to avoid boasting about either. To every person I offer my knowledge, strength, thoughts, achievements and love if he has any use for them. Anyone who wants need only stick out a finger and beckon, and though many a one would thereupon just come hobbling up, not me—I come leaping and bounding, do you see, the way the wind whistles, and I skip over and tread heedlessly upon memories of all sorts if that lets me run unhindered. And the entire world comes rushing along with me—all of life! That’s how it must be, just like that! Nothing in this world is mine, but I no longer yearn for anything. Longing has become a stranger to me. When I still felt certain longings, I found people a matter of indifference, mere hindrances, I sometimes even despised them, but now I love them because I need them and I offer myself to them to be put to use. That’s what we’re here for. Let’s say someone appears and says
to me: “Hey there, you, come here! I need you. I can give you work!” This person makes me happy. Then I know what happiness is! Happiness and pain are completely transformed, they become clearer and more comprehensible to me, they elucidate themselves to me, they permit me to woo them in love and anguish, to court them. Whenever I must submit a letter of application to someone offering my services, I always draw attention to my brothers and point out that since they have both proven to be useful productive individuals, I too might perhaps also be of use, which makes me laugh every time. I’m not at all worried that I myself might not, some day, take on some form, but I want to put off forming myself as long as possible. And then it would be best if this came about of its own accord, unintentionally. Now, for starters, I’ve had myself measured for a pair of sturdy broad shoes with which I shall tread more firmly and show people with my very footsteps that I am a person with a purpose and no doubt abilities as well. To be put to the test is a pleasure for me! I scarcely know any higher pleasure. That I am poor at the moment, what does that signify? It needn’t mean anything at all, it’s merely the tiniest slip in the overall composition that can be erased again with a few vigorous strokes. It might at most cause a healthy person a moment of embarrassment, perhaps even worry, but certainly not alarm. You’re laughing. No? You’re saying you weren’t? What a shame that would be, for your laughter is a beautiful thing. For a time it was always my idea that I could become a soldier, but I no longer quite trust this romantic notion. Why not remain where one is? If it’s my intention to perish, can it be that no suitable opportunities are available to me in this country? I should be able to find a more worthy occasion here for putting my health, strength and joie de vivre on the line. For the moment, I’m delighted about my health and the joy of being able to move my legs and arms at will, then about my mind, which I still find quite lively, and finally about the thrilling recognition that I stand here before the world as a deeply burdened debtor who has every reason to finally take a deep breath and start working himself back into the world’s good graces. I adore being a debtor! If I had no choice but to tell myself that humankind had insulted me, I’d be inconsolable. Then I’d have to withdraw into apathy, antipathy and bitterness. No, things stand quite differently, they stand brilliantly, they couldn’t possibly stand any more brilliantly for a person just becoming a man: It is I—I—who have insulted the world. The world stands before me like an infuriated, offended mother: that wonderful face I’m so in love with: the face of Mother Earth, demanding atonement! I tally up everything I’ve neglected, squandered, dreamed away, overlooked and transgressed. I shall satisfy the one I’ve offended, and then some day, in some beautiful, intimate evening hour, I’ll tell my siblings all about how I managed to make things turn out in such a way that I can hold my head high. It might take years, but after all, I find a task all the more delightful the longer and more difficult the exertions it requires. Now you know me a little.”