Robert Walser - The Tanners

Simon was meanwhile sitting scarcely a thousand paces away in a dining establishment, a small room stuffed full of eating people. All sorts of folks came to eat here who had to eat cheaply and quickly. Simon was quite fond of the place, though it was utterly devoid of elegance and comfort. After all, he did have to watch his expenses. This dining hall had been established by a group of women who, taken all together, called themselves the Association for Moderation and the Public Good. Indeed, anyone who went there had to be satisfied with a perfectly moderate and scanty meal. And all were satisfied for the most part, aside from occasional petty, narrow-minded dissatisfactions. Everyone who frequented the place appeared content with the food, which consisted of a plate of soup, a piece of bread, a portion of meat, ditto vegetables and a miniscule, dainty dessert. The service left nothing to be desired beyond a bit more alacrity, and in fact all in all the waitresses were swift enough considering the large number of hungry eaters. Each received his meal promptly enough, though each felt some slight impatience for even prompter distribution. There was a constant stream of meals being served up, doled out and devoured. Some whose meals had already been put away may well have wished they hadn’t yet finished and cast envious glances at the ones still awaiting what was in fact quite agreeable to devour. Why did they eat so quickly? An absurd habit, gulping down one’s meals so fast. The service staff was made up of charming, delightful girls from the rural areas surrounding the city. At first these creatures made quite a few blunders, but soon they learned to hold their own and, by fending off what they must, give themselves time to fulfill the most urgent burning desires. Where so many desires are present, it’s necessary to differentiate and select among them. Now and then one of the originators of this establishment would come in, a benefactress, and observe the common folk at table. One such lady held a lorgnette to her eye to peer at the food and those devouring it.

Simon was partial to these ladies and always felt happy when they came in, for it seemed to him as if these dear kind women were visiting a room filled with small poor children to watch them enjoying a feast. “Are not the masses like a big poor little child that must be given a guardian to watch over it?” something in him cried out, “and is it not better for it to be watched over by women, who after all are elegant ladies and have kindly hearts, than by tyrants in the old if admittedly more heroic sense?” —So many different sorts of people were eating in this dining hall, all united as a single harmonious family! Female students predominated. Did students have the time and money to lunch at the Hotel Continental? And then there were serving men in thin blue smocks with boots on their legs, large bristly moustaches and rather rectangular mouths on their faces. Could they help it if their mouths were rectangular? No doubt many a guest at the Hotel Royal displayed rectangular proclivities in the moustache region. To be sure, the angularity in that case was whitewashed with roundness, but what significance did this have? Maidservants without posts were represented as well, down-at-the-heels copyists, and outcasts in general: the penniless, stateless, even some who had not so much as an address to their names. Here one also encountered women of easy virtue: females with oddly coiffed hair, blue faces, chubby hands and expressions simultaneously shameless and demure. All these people — especially, of course, the holy rollers, a contingent of whom was present — displayed, as a rule, shy courteous behavior. Each gazed into the faces of the others while eating; not a word was spoken, except, now and then, a quiet, polite one. This was the visible blessing of the public good and moderation. Something comical, artless, subdued and yet also liberated rested upon these squalid individuals, in their manners, which were as colorful as the wings of a summer bird. Others comported themselves with more delicacy here than the most refined guest at the finest establishment. No telling who they were, what they had been in earlier days, before winding up at this public dining hall. After all, wasn’t life in the habit of jumbling together human fates as if shaking them in a dice cup? Simon was sitting in a little corner niche, a sort of window bay, eating butter with honey spread together on a slice of bread, and drinking a cup of coffee: “What need have I to eat more on such a beautiful day. Is not the blue sky of early summer peering sweetly through the window at my golden meal? Yes, this meal is most certainly golden. Just look at the honey: Hasn’t it a bright-yellow, sweet-golden appearance? Upon the little white plate this gold flows about so appealingly, and scraping off a bit with my knife point, I imagine I am digging for gold and have just discovered a treasure. The white of the butter lies delightfully beside it, and then comes the brown hue of the tasty bread, and most beautiful of all is the dark brown of the coffee in the delicate clean cup. Is there any meal on earth that could look more beautiful and appetizing? And I am sating my hunger quite excellently with it, and need I do more than sate my hunger to be able to say: I have eaten? There are people, I hear, who make a culture, an art out of eating; well, can I not say just the same of myself? Most certainly! It’s just that my art is a humble one and my culture more delicate, for I enjoy this modest fare more rapturously and voluptuously than others enjoy endless cornucopias of plenty. Besides, I don’t like it when meals drag on and on — I lose my appetite. What pleases me best is feeling the desire to eat again and again, and for this reason I eat sparingly and with delicacy. Which incidentally brings me another benefit as well: delectable conversations with ever new people.”

Simon had scarcely murmured or thought these words when an old man with white hair sat down in the empty seat beside him. The old man’s face displayed a gray, haggard pallor, his nose was dripping, or rather, a large drop hung from his nose, unable to fall and yet heavy enough to fall. One was constantly expecting it to fall at any moment. But the drop clung on. The man ordered a dish of boiled potatoes and nothing more, and then he ate his potatoes, carefully sprinkling them with salt from the tip of his knife, with elaborate pleasure. But beforehand he folded his hands together and said a prayer to his Lord God. Simon allowed himself the following little prank: He secretly ordered a slice of roast meat from the serving girl and, when it arrived, he had a good laugh at the man’s astonishment when the plate was set down before none other than himself.

“Why do you pray before you eat,” Simon asked simply.

“I pray because I need to,” the old man replied.

“Then I’m glad I saw you praying — I was just curious what sort of sentiment prompted you.”

“One has many sentiments when one prays, young man! You, for example, surely do not pray at all. Young people today have no time for it, nor the desire. I can understand this. When I pray, I am merely continuing my habit, for I have grown used to prayers, and they give me comfort.”

“Were you always poor?”

“Always.” —

As the old man spoke this word, the clean yet nonetheless musty and squalid dining room was suddenly graced by the appearance of beautiful Frau Klara. Every hand holding a fork, a spoon or a knife, or the handle of a cup hesitated for a moment before going on with its work. Every mouth popped open, and all eyes were riveted at the sight of a figure so unlikely to have any business in such a place. She was the consummate lady, never more so than at this moment. It was exactly — even for Simon’s eyes and senses — as though from an open fluttering sky an angel had emerged and was now floating down to earth and visiting some dark hole in order to bring happiness to those who lived there simply with her heavenly appearance. This is just how Simon had always imagined a benefactress visiting the poor and wretched, people who possessed nothing more than the questionable privilege of being constantly flogged with worries as if with birch canes. In this charitable establishment it appeared to come quite naturally to Klara to comport herself like a regal remote creature that had just flown here from distant borderlands, from a different world and walk of life. Precisely this splendor and radiance compelled all these timid persons to gape, struggle for breath and use their free hands to steady the hands holding their knives for fear they might drop them, they were trembling so. Klara’s beauty suddenly, painfully, gave them something to consider. All at once it occurred to every one what other things existed in this world besides harsh labor and the fear of not making ends meet. Health like this — this luxuriant, voluptuous, smiling charm — had nearly vanished from their imaginations; life in all its bleak unsavory ordinariness was slipping through their fingers, ground down in worry and squalid graspings. All these things now occurred to them — though perhaps not in each case with such great clarity — occurred tormentingly, for a torment it is to behold beauty whose very scent intoxicates but which can kill a person whose thoughts take the liberty of smiling along with beauty’s smile. All of them therefore frowned involuntarily, showing grimacing faces to the woman towering over them, for they were seated on low chairs, squeezed into narrow spaces, while she in her loftiness stood erect above them. She seemed to be looking for someone. Simon kept quiet in his corner, steadily smiling at the woman as she peered about. And it was a long time before she noticed him, although the room was relatively small; it must have been strenuous to accustom her eyes to this jumbled dark hodge-podge and pick out individual figures such as she wasn’t in the habit of noticing at all. She was about to withdraw again, having grown somewhat impatient, when her eyes swept over Simon and recognized him. “So here’s where you’re sitting, all tucked away in a corner?” she said, and with the greatest joy sat down beside him, on the chair between her young friend and the old man, whose nose still bore the large glistening drop. The old man was asleep. It was not permitted to sleep in such establishments, but it was a quite common occurrence for old people to fall asleep here after eating, out of sheer exhaustion they could no longer control. Perhaps this old man had a long fruitless peregrination through all the city’s streets behind him. Quite possibly he’d asked for work everywhere his thoughts could even faintly suggest he try. Growing ever more weary, he had perhaps nonetheless tried to achieve something this day, might have expended his last resources scaling a mountain, for the city extended up the mountainside, and at the mountain’s summit he was rejected just as swiftly as down below; and so he went back down again, his heart filled with death, his strength shattered, until he came to this place. The very thought that this old man might, as one could suppose, have gone out looking for work, that he still had the will to work, old as he was — there was something piteous and horrifying about the very idea. But this was a thought that lay quite near at hand. This old man had no other home than this dining establishment, but even here only during certain hours, for afterward the restaurant was closed. Perhaps this was why he prayed: to give the awful seriousness of his situation a soft soothing melody. This was why he said: “I need to pray.” So it wasn’t at all sanctimoniousness but just the utterly plaintive need to sense the presence of a hand that wished to caress him, the hand of a child or daughter softly, consolingly stroking his old creased forehead. Perhaps the old man had begotten daughters — and what about him now? It was easy to give in to such thoughts, sitting there beside the old man watching him sleep like this, his head strangely immobile, hands propping his chin. Klara said: “Your brother has come, Simon, in his officer’s uniform, and your sister too, and one other gentleman named Sebastian.” Hearing these words, Simon paid what he owed, and the two of them left together. When they were gone, one of the serving girls noticed the sleeping man, gave him a shake and declared with mock severity: “No sleeping! You there! Can’t you hear? You mustn’t sleep!” At this, the old man woke up.