Robert Walser - The Tanners

Simon brought his letter to the post office. The following Sunday, Klaus came to visit, the older brother. It was drizzling, and the sight of the cold raindrops slapping the already wide-awake blossoms was enough to give you the shivers. Klaus looked not a little astonished to discover Simon living with his sister — he’d assumed he was abroad somewhere — but he remained as amicable as he was able, not wishing to spoil their Sunday. All three of them remained rather quiet, often standing there before one another without speaking; they appeared to be hunting for words. Klaus brought a certain contemplative alienation to Hedwig’s home. Upon closer examination, all sorts of things here proved, in fact, to be out of place. The main object, of course, being Simon’s presence. Klaus was determined not to utter any reproaches today, though in truth he felt sorely tempted; but he avoided all divisive remarks. He gazed at his brother questioningly and significantly, as though to say: “I am astonished at your behavior. How can you be considered an adult? Is it honorable to take advantage of your sister��s position to live in idleness? It’s truly dishonorable! I’d be saying this to you quite openly, but I wish to spare Hedwig, who would be hurt by such remarks. Far be it from me to spoil our Sunday!” Simon understood nonetheless. He knew quite well what was meant by this expression, this stiff unnatural warmth as they greeted one another, this silence and discomfiture. He was just glad Klaus held his tongue; for otherwise he’d have to respond with something he was already finding abhorrent as a justification. Certainly, certainly! His position was deplorable for a young man like him, there was no excuse for his behavior. But it was so lovely to be here — lovely, lovely! Gripped suddenly by emotion, he said to Klaus: “I know perfectly well what you think of me, but I swear to you this will end soon. I think you know me a little. Do you believe me?” Klaus pressed his hand, and their Sunday was saved. Soon it was time for lunch, and Hedwig no doubt noted with a secret smile the changed situation between the brothers. “He’s a good man, Klaus. Klaus is good,” she thought, and with even greater pleasure served the delicious meal. There was a splendid soup, in whose exquisite preparation Hedwig was highly skilled, followed by pork with sauerkraut and finally a roast rich with fat. Simon chatted unrestrainedly about heaven and earth, drawing his brother into all sorts of conversations and then returning again and again to praise the splendid meal with such comical enthusiasm that each time Hedwig burst out laughing until she was filled with good cheer and forgot everything that might have been considered worrisome. In the afternoon, the dismal weather notwithstanding, they took a short walk. The field through which they trudged was so wet they soon turned back again. All of them that evening were quiet once more. Simon tried to read a newspaper, Klaus spoke as if intentionally about the most trivial matters, with Hedwig replying distractedly. Before he took his leave, Klaus said a few words to the girl, whom he’d summoned to the kitchen, words on which the one standing in the other room preferred not to eavesdrop. What could it be. Let it be whatever it was. Then Klaus departed. When they both — having accompanied their guest on the first leg of his return journey — were back at home again, just the two of them, their hearts involuntarily felt gayer, like schoolchildren after the stern inspector has left. They breathed more freely, feeling they could be themselves again. Hedwig now began to speak, and the apprehensiveness inspired by what she was about to say made her voice sound more intimate and raised its pitch: “Klaus is just the same as ever. There’s always a tiny bit of fear to contend with in his presence. Being with him involuntarily turns a person into a guilty schoolgirl awaiting her scolding for having been imprudent. In his eyes, you’ve always been imprudent, even when you think you’ve been acting in a serious way. His eyes see things so differently — they look at the world in such a strangely alarming manner, as if there’s always something to fear. He’s constantly worrying both himself and others. That tone issuing from his mouth is assembled out of a thousand well-intentioned misgivings — he has so little trust in the world and the threads that bind us to it of their own accord. He looks as if he wants to lecture you like a schoolmaster and at the same time sees perfectly clearly that he is lecturing unawares — he doesn’t wish to lecture, but that’s just what he does, despite his best intentions, because of his innermost nature, for which we can’t hold him responsible. He is so unquestionably kind and affectionate, but he cannot stop questioning whether it’s appropriate to be gentle and kind. Severity ill becomes him, and yet he believes he can accomplish with severity what he’s failed to achieve by means of kindness. He thinks of kindness as incautious, and yet he’s so very kind! He forbids himself to be artless and kind, which is what he’d most dearly love to be, because he’s so afraid of spoiling something in this way, and then appearing imprudent in the eyes of the world. He sees only eyes observing him, never eyes wishing to gaze peacefully into his. You can’t gaze peacefully into his eyes, since it’s quite palpable how nervous this makes him. He always thinks people are thinking something about him and he needs to get to the bottom of those thoughts. If he can’t find anything wrong with you to carp about, he seems ill at ease. And yet he is kind! Happy he is not. If he were, he’d start speaking differently in a instant, I know he would. And it isn’t that he begrudges others their happiness, but he’s constantly inclined to criticize the happiness and carefree spirits of those around him, which I’m sure must cause him pain. He doesn’t like to hear talk of happiness, and I can understand why. It’s quite obvious, any child can understand it: Yourself joyless, you hate the joy of others. How often this must pain him, for he’s noble enough to feel what injustices he’s committing. He is absolutely noble, but — how shall I say this — also a bit corrupted on the inside, just a tiny bit, because of having been neglected and then always struggling to shrug off this neglect. Yes, fate has most certainly given him the cold shoulder — he’s far too worthy for its frostiness and whims. That’s how I’d like to put it; for I feel pain on his account! You, for instance, Simon. My God. For you one feels quite different things, my eternally jolly brother! Do you know, thinking of you, one always says to oneself: He ought to get a beating, a really sound beating, that’s what he deserves! You make a person feel astonished with wonder — why haven’t you yet plunged into an abyss? It would never occur to anyone to feel pity for you. Generally people consider you a carefree, impudent, happy fellow. Is it true?”

Simon burst into laughter and this set the tone for the next hour. Then there was a knock at the door. The two of them got up, and Simon went to see who was there. It was the teacher from the next school. Her husband, a rough and ruthless individual, had beaten her yet again. They did what they could to comfort her, and in this they succeeded.

The weather was growing ever warmer and the earth more resplendent, it was covered with a thick, blossoming carpet of meadows, the fields and pastures were steaming, the forests offered an enchanting sight with their beautiful, fresh, rich green. All of nature was presenting itself, expansive, stretching, curving, rearing up, whizzing and rustling and buzzing, fragrant and motionless as a bright beautiful dream. The land had become perfectly fat, lush, opaque and glutted. It was lolling, as it were, in voluptuous surfeit. It was green and dark brown and flecked with black, white, yellow and red, blossoming with hot breath, almost perishing beneath its profusion of blossoms. It lay there like a luxuriating, veiled woman, immobile, shifting her limbs, perfumed with scents. The gardens spread their fragrance into the streets and out over the fields, where men and women were working; the fruit trees were a bright, twittering singing, and the nearby, round, vaulted forest was a choral song of young men; the bright paths scarcely penetrated the green. In forest clearings, one would see a white, dreamy, indolent sky that one could imagine sinking down and rejoicing as birds rejoice, tiny birds that one has never before seen but that are so natural a part of nature. Memories arrived that a person didn’t wish to analyze and dissect, you weren’t capable of this, it caused such sweet pain, and you were too indolent to feel a pain through to the end. Thus you walked and thus stopped in your tracks, turning in all directions, gazing off into the distance, gazing up, away, down, across and to the ground, feeling deeply affected by all the languor of this blossoming. The buzzing in the forest was not the buzzing in the barer clearing, it was different and required in turn a staking out of new positions for new daydreams. Always you were having to tussle, resist, gently thrust aside, reflect and waver. It was all one great wavering, a struggle, a finding yourself weak. But this was sweet, quite simply sweet: a bit difficult, and then a bit parsimonious, then hypocritical, then crafty, then nothing at all, then perfectly stupid; and finally it became rather difficult to find anything else beautiful any longer, this just didn’t seem called for, and so you sat, strolled, loitered, drifted, trotted and tarried in such a way that you yourself became a bit of spring. Could all this buzzing feel delight at its own buzzing and cooing and singing? Was it given to the grass to observe its own beautiful variability? Might it have been possible for the beech to fall in love with its own appearance? Without growing weary or blunted, you let things be as they were, let them go, let them waver this way and that. All of nature, the way it was looking, was just a loiterer, a lingering and dangling! Scents hung in the air, and all the earth lingered and waited. Colors were the blissful expression of this. You could discern something prematurely weary and portentous in the bush with its blossoms. It was a sort of no-longer-wishing-to-go-on, but all one great smile. The blue, hazy wooded mountains sounded like far-off, distant horns, you felt the landscape to be a bit English, it was like a luxuriant English garden, the luxuriant growth and the interweaving and wafting of voices drew your senses to this affinity. You thought: In such and such a place things might look just now as they do right here, the region conjured up all other regions in your heart. It was comical and far-reaching, a carrying-off and bringing-hither: A bringing, as things are brought by young lads, an offering up, such as children might offer, an obeying and harkening. You could say and think whatever you pleased, yet it was always just the same unspoken, unthought thing — light and heavy, blissful and painful, poetic and natural. You understood the poets, or rather you didn’t actually understand them, for, walking along like this, you would have been far too indolent to imagine understanding them. You had no need to understand anything at all, there was no understanding, and yet understanding arrived of its own accord, dissolving in the effort of listening for a sound or gazing into the distance or remembering that in point of fact it was now time to return home and discharge some admittedly rather minor duty, for even in springtime there are duties to discharge.