The Tanners Read online

  “Here’s a temporary post at a lawyer’s office that needs filling for approximately one month. Would that suit you?”

  “Most certainly, sir.”

  With this, Simon landed in the lawyer’s office. He earned a pretty penny there and was perfectly content. Never had the world appeared lovelier to him than during this lawyer episode. He made some pleasant acquaintances, spent the day writing in an easy, effortless manner, checked over calculations, took dictation—at which he was particularly skillful—and to his own surprise behaved in such a charming way that his superior took a lively interest in him; he drank his daily cup of tea in the afternoon, and while he was writing, daydreamed out the breezy bright window. Daydreaming without neglecting his duties—he was supremely skilled at this. “I am earning so much money,” he thought to himself, “that I could have a young woman.” The moon often shone in the window as he worked, and this enchanted him.

  In conversation with his little ladyfriend Rosa, Simon expressed himself in the following manner: “My lawyer has a long red nose and is a tyrant, but I get along with him quite well. I take his grumpy dictatorial nature as humorous and am myself surprised at how well I submit to all his commandments, many of which are unfair. I love it when things get a bit caustic, that suits me well, launching me to certain warm heights and whetting my appetite for work. He has a beautiful slender wife whom I should like to paint if I were a painter. She has, take my word for it, wonderful large eyes and splendid arms. Often she busies herself with something or other in the office; how she must look down on me, poor devil of a copy clerk. When I look upon such women I tremble and yet I’m happy. Are you laughing? Unfortunately I am accustomed to show myself before you without inhibitions, and I can only hope this pleases you.”

  Indeed Rosa did love it when people were open with her. She was a peculiar girl. Her eyes had a marvelous gleam, and her lips were downright lovely.

  Simon went on: “When I’m on my way to work at eight in the morning, I feel so beautifully connected to all the others who must also report to work at eight. What a great barracks modern life is! And yet how beautiful and contemplative all this uniformity. Constantly you long for something that might be approaching, something you ought to encounter. You’re so utterly bereft of possessions, so very much the poor devil, and you find yourself utterly at sea amid all this erudite, orderly precision. I ascend the four flights of stairs, go in, say “Good morning” and begin my work. Good God, how little is being asked of me, how little knowledge they expect. How little those around me seem to suspect I might be capable of quite different things. But this charming lack of demandingness on the part of my employers suits me perfectly. I can think while I am working—I have great prospects of becoming a thinker. I often think of you!”

  Rosa laughed. “What a scoundrel you are. But do go on, it’s quite interesting, what you’re saying.”

  “The world is in point of fact marvelous,” Simon continued, “I can be sitting here with you and no one can stop us from chatting for hours. I know you like listening to me. It’s your opinion that my way of speaking is not without grace, though now I find myself compelled to laugh horribly inside because I’ve said this. But it’s my habit to say anything and everything that comes to my mind, even if it should happen to be, for example, self-praise. I can also criticize myself with just the same lightness—I’m even pleased when I have occasion to do so. Why shouldn’t we say whatever’s on our minds? How much is lost if you insist on first examining everything at length. I don’t like to spend too long considering before I speak, and whether the words are suitable or not, out they come! If I am vain, my vanity will inevitably come to light; if I were miserly, there would be miserliness speaking in my words; if I am decent, then doubtless my respectability will peal out from my lips; and if God had made an honest man of me, stalwartness would emanate from me regardless of what I was saying. In this respect I find myself free of worries, because I know myself and us a little and because I would be ashamed to display timidity while speaking. If, for example, I insult, wound, injure or annoy someone with words, can’t I make this bad impression disappear again with the next few words? I never start thinking about how I am speaking until I notice disagreeable wrinkles on the face of my listener, such as those I now see on your face, Rosa.”

  “It’s something else—”

  “Are you tired?”

  “Go home now, why don’t you, Simon. It’s quite true I’m feeling tired. You’re sweet when you talk. I’m very fond of you.”

  Rosa held out her little hand to her young friend, who kissed it, said good night and departed. When he was gone, little Rosa sat there for a long time crying quietly to herself. She was weeping over her beloved, a young man with curls on his head, an elegant gait, an aristocratic mouth, but a dissolute lifestyle. “And so you love the one who doesn’t deserve it,” she said to herself, “and yet should I love out of reason, out of wishing to assign value? How laughable. What do I care about what is valuable—all I want is what I love.” Then she went to bed.

  –2–

  One day Simon rang the bell rather shyly—it was noon—before an elegant house standing off on its own in a garden. The bell sounded to him as if a beggar had rung it. If he himself were sitting inside the house just now, as its owner for instance who was perhaps eating lunch, he would have turned indolently to his wife and asked: Who could be ringing the bell just now, surely a beggar! “When you think of elegant people,” he thought as he waited, “you always picture them at the dinner table, or in a carriage, or getting dressed with the help of male or female servants, while you always imagine a poor man standing outside in the cold with his coat collar drawn up, as mine is now, waiting before a garden gate with a pounding heart. Poor people have, as a rule, rapid, pounding, ardent hearts, while those of the rich are cold, roomy, upholstered, well-heated, and nailed shut! Oh, if only someone would rush fleet-footed to the door, what a relief that would be. There’s something constricting about standing and waiting at a wealthy portal. Despite my little bit of worldly experience what weak legs I am standing on.” —And indeed he was trembling when a girl came hurrying up to open the door for the one standing outside. Simon always had to smile when someone opened the door and invited him in, and now, too, this smile was in evidence, a smile that resembled a timid appeal and perhaps could be seen on many other faces as well.

  “I’m looking for a room.”

  Simon removed his hat before a beautiful lady who appeared and looked the newcomer up and down with great attentiveness. This pleased Simon, for he believed it was her right to do so, and because her air of friendliness was unabated.

  “Would you like to come with me? There, up the stairs.”

  Simon invited the lady to precede him. To do so, he gestured with his hand, actually employing his hand for this purpose for the first time in his whole life. The woman, opening a door, showed the young man the room.

  “What a beautiful room,” cried Simon, who was truly astonished, “far too beautiful for me, unfortunately, far too elegant for me. I am, you should know, so very poorly suited to such an elegant room. And yet I would dearly love to inhabit it—all too dearly, far far too dearly. In fact, it wasn’t right to show me this chamber. It would have been better had you shown me the door at once. How do I come to be casting my gaze into such a gay, beautiful space—it’s as if it were made for a god to dwell in. What beautiful dwellings are inhabited by the well-to-do, the
ones who possess something. I have never possessed anything, have never been anything, and despite the hopes of my parents will never amount to anything at all. What a lovely view from the windows, and such pretty, shiny furniture, and such charming curtains—they give the room a girlish look. I would perhaps become a good, tender person here, if it’s true, as people say, that surroundings can change a person. Might I gaze at it for a little while longer, remain standing here one more minute?”

  “Of course you may.”

  “I thank you.”

  “What sort of people are your parents, and, if I may ask, in what sense are you ‘nothing,’ as you expressed yourself a moment ago?”

  “I’m unemployed.”

  “That wouldn’t matter to me. It all depends!”

  “No, I have little hope. Though admittedly I shouldn’t be saying such things if I am to speak with perfect truthfulness. I’m overflowing with hope. Never, ever does it abandon me. —My father is a poor but joyful individual who would never dream of comparing his currently bleak circumstances with his glory days. He lives like a lad of twenty-five and can’t be bothered to ponder his condition. I admire him and seek to emulate him. If he can still be cheerful in his snowy old age, it must be his young son’s duty, thirty times—indeed one hundred times—over, to hold his head high and meet people’s gazes with eyes that flash like lightning. But the gift of thought was given to me—and to my brothers even more than me—by our mother. My mother is dead.”

  A dismayed “ah” came from the mouth of the lady, who was still standing there kindly.

  “She was a good-hearted woman. We children always, constantly still speak of her whenever and wherever we’re reunited. We live scattered all across this round, wide world, and this is excellent, for we all have such heads on us, you see, that they shouldn’t come together for very long. There’s a ponderousness to each of us that would be burdensome if we appeared together in human society. But this is something that, thank goodness, we avoid, and each of us knows perfectly well why that’s imperative. And yet we love one another with appropriate fraternal love. One of my brothers is a fairly prominent scholar, another a stock market specialist, and yet another nothing more than just my brother, for I love him more than a brother—and thinking of him, it never occurs to me to emphasize any of his qualities except simply the fact that he is my brother: mine, someone who looks just like me, and nothing more. I would like to live here in your home together with this brother of mine. The room is large enough for both of us. But no doubt this isn’t possible. What does the room cost?”

  “What does your brother do?”

  “He’s a landscape painter! How much would you charge for the room?— — Oh, that much? This is assuredly not too expensive for this room, but for us it’s far too much. Besides which, come to think of it, now that I am peering at you more keenly: The two of us would hardly be suitable, strolling in and out of this house as though we belonged here. We are still so coarse, you’d be disappointed in us. What’s more, our habits are a bit rough on duvet covers, furniture, linens, window curtains, doorknobs and stair landings—you’d be horrified and would lose your temper with us, or perhaps you would forgive us and strive to turn the other cheek, which would be even more humiliating. I don’t wish to be the cause of your having trouble with us at some later point. Surely you would! Do hear me out. I can see it all perfectly clearly. Basically, the two of us have, in the long run, little respect for anything fine and delicate. People such as ourselves should be left standing before wealthy garden gates—free to make derisive remarks about all the splendor and attention to detail. We are great deriders! Adieu!”

  The eyes of the beautiful woman had begun to gleam intensely, and now all at once she said: “I should like to take in you and your brother after all. As for the price, I am certain we can reach some agreement.”

  “No, it’s best that we don’t.”

  Simon was already heading downstairs. Then the lady’s voice called out after him: “Please stay a little longer.” And she hurried after him. At the bottom she caught up with Simon and forced him to stand still and listen to her: “What could you be thinking of, leaving again so soon. Can’t you see that I want, that I would like to keep the two of you? Even if you don’t pay a thing. What does it matter? Not at all, not at all, just come with me, come. Come into this room with me. Marie! Where are you? Bring in the coffee at once.”

  Inside she said to Simon: “I wish to get to know you and your brother. How could you go running off like that? I am so often all alone in this isolated house that I feel frightened. My husband is always gone, off on some distant journey, he is an explorer and goes sailing off on seas the very existence of which his poor wife hasn’t even an inkling. Am I not a poor woman? What is your name? What’s the name of the other one, your brother? My name is Klara. Just call me Miss Klara. It pleases me to hear this simple name. Are you feeling a bit more trusting now? This would make me so, so very happy. Don’t you think we’ll be able to live together and get along? Certainly we’ll be able to—I think you must be quite gentle. I’m not afraid to have you in my home. You have honest eyes. Is your brother older than you?”

  “Yes, he is older and a much better person than I am.”

  “You are an honest man to say such a thing.”

  “My name is Simon, and my brother is Kaspar.”

  “My husband’s name is Agappaia.”

  She turned pale as she spoke these words, but quickly pulled herself together and smiled.

  Simon wrote to his brother Kaspar:

  What odd fish we are, the two of us. The way we drift about this earth, it’s as if only you and I were alive, and no one else. What a crazy sort of friendship the two of us have forged, it’s as though among all mankind no one else could be found who might be worthy of the designation “friend.” We’re not really brothers at all, we’re just friends, two people who find themselves companions in this world. I’m not truly made for friendship, and can’t understand what it is about you I find so splendid that I’m forced constantly to imagine myself at your side, pressed against your back as it were. I’ll soon be thinking your head is my own, for you’re so very often in my head already; and if things go on like this, perhaps I’ll soon be seizing things with your hands, walking with your legs and eating with your mouth. Truly there is something mysterious about our friendship when I say to you I consider it quite possible that our hearts have been trying to draw apart from one another, but they’re incapable of separating. I’m overjoyed I have to admit that you still can’t quite manage this, for your letters sound so nice and for the time being I also wish to remain under this mystery’s spell. For us this is good, but how can I be speaking in such a horribly dry tone: I find it simply, not to tell a lie, enchanting. And why shouldn’t two brothers overdo things a little? We fit together quite well—and we did even back in the days of still hating one another when we nearly beat each other to a pulp. Do you remember? This appeal, with a dash of healthy laughter, is all that’s needed to stir up within you, to glue together, paste, and draw pictures that are truly more than worth remembering. We had become, for reasons I can no longer recall, mortal enemies. Oh, how accomplished we were at hating—our hatred was decidedly resourceful in inventing torments and humiliations to inflict on one another. Once at the dinner table, just to provide a single example of this lamentable and childish state of affairs, you threw a platter of sauerkraut at me, because you couldn’t resist, saying: “Here, catch
!” I have to tell you, at the time I was trembling with fury even if only for the fact that here was this lovely opportunity for you to insult me so cruelly, and there was nothing I could do about it. I caught the platter, but was stupid enough to savor the pain of this mortification all up and down my gullet. And do you remember how, one noon—it was a quiet, a deathly quiet summer-hot Sunday afternoon mad with this deathly silence—someone came creeping up to you in the kitchen and asked you to be friends with me again. It was an incredible feat of self-control, let me tell you, to overcome those feelings of shame and defiance to reach out to you, the very figure of an enemy inclined to scornfully reject me. I did this and to this day am grateful to myself for doing so. Whether you’re grateful as well is a matter of the most joyous and fragrant indifference. I can only guess. Go away, I hear you trying to get a word in. Sorry, not possible. Desist! —How many delightful hours I thereafter enjoyed in your company. All at once I found you tender, loving, considerate. I think blissful feelings of joy burned on our cheeks. We wandered, you as painter and I as observer and commentator, through the meadows on the broad mountain slopes, wading in the scent of the grass, in the wetness of cool mornings, under the heat of midday and with the damp, infatuated setting of the sun. The trees watched what we were doing there, and the clouds balled themselves up, no doubt in anger at possessing no power to break our newly forged love. In the evenings we would come home horribly broken, dusty, starved and exhausted, and then suddenly you went off one day. The devil knows I helped you leave, as though I’d bound myself to do so for some sort of retainer, or as though I were in a hurry to see you depart. Certainly it was an unheard-of pleasure for me to see you setting off, for you were traveling out into the wide world. How far from wide this world is, brother.