Robert Walser - The Tanners

“Have you sent off the letter already?” Simon asked.

“Yes,” Hedwig went on, “what could have stopped me? Perhaps I shall soon be going away from here, and this departure worries me; for I am leaving behind a great deal and shall perhaps not receive anything in exchange that would allow me to forget what I’ve discarded and abandoned. Nevertheless I have firmly made up my mind to leave; I don’t wish to be alone with my dreams any longer. You too will be leaving soon, and then what would I be doing here? You’ll leave me behind like some leftover scrap, like an object that’s gone bad, or rather it’ll be like this: The entire place, this village, everything here will be the scrap, the abandoned, discarded, disregarded object — and I’ll still be sitting right in the middle? No, I’ve become far too accustomed to seeing the life we lead here with the help of your eyes, finding it beautiful as long as you did; and you did find it beautiful, and so I found it beautiful as well. But I wouldn’t go on finding it beautiful and large enough for me, I’d despise it for being limited and dull, and it would in fact become limited and dull because of my indifference and contempt. I cannot live and at the same time despise my life. I must find myself a life, a new life, even if all of life consists only of an endless search for life. What is respect compared to this other thing: being happy and having satisfied the heart’s pride. Even being unhappy is better than being respected. I am unhappy, despite the respect I enjoy; and so in my own eyes I don’t deserve this respect; for I consider only happiness worthy of respect. Therefore I must try whether it is possible to be happy without insisting on respect. Perhaps there is a happiness of this sort for me, and a respect accorded to love and longing rather than cleverness. I don’t want to be unhappy just because I lacked the courage to admit to myself that a person can be unhappy on account of trying to be happy. Unhappiness of this sort is worthy of respect; the other isn’t; it isn’t possible to respect a lack of courage. How can I sit by any longer as I condemn myself to a life that brings only respect, and brings respect only from people who always want you to be just the way it suits them best? Why should it suit them at all? And why must a person go through the experience of learning that what you derive from all of this is worth nothing at all? So now you’ve worried and waited and provided, and in the end you’ve been made a fool of. It’s bitterly foolish to insist on waiting for things; nothing ever comes to us if we don’t go and get it ourselves. To be sure, we’re given a scare by cowards who make such a show of being worried on our account. I almost hate them now, the ones who start shaking their heads the minute you say anything even the least bit bold. I’d like to see how they behave when they hear that the act requiring courage has been successfully carried out. How these advice-givers will scatter before the mighty heart of a freely performed deed! And how they enslave you with their saccharine love if you fail to find this courage and instead submit to them. People here will be so sorry to see me move away and will be unable to understand how I can be leaving behind such a pleasant and beneficial place; and I too shall be leaving the country with a sentiment that still wishes to persuade me to remain. I dreamt of becoming a farmwife, of belonging to a man, a simple and tender human being, of owning a home with a bit of land and bit of garden, with a bit of sky to go along with them, of planting and tilling and demanding no other love than respect and experiencing the delight of watching my children grow up, which I’d have found perfectly adequate compensation for the loss of a deeper love. The sky would have touched the earth, each day would have rolled the one before it down into time and times, and with all my cares I’d soon have become an old woman standing on sunny Sundays at the door of my house, already almost uncomprehendingly watching the people walk past. Then I’d never again have striven for happiness and would have forgotten all more ardent sentiments, I’d have obeyed my husband and his commands, along with what I’d have envisioned as my duty. And I’d have known what duties were expected of a farmer’s wife. My dreams would have gone to sleep with the days like evenings, they would never again have made demands. I’d have been contented and gay — content because I didn’t know any better and gay because it wouldn’t have been right to show my husband an ill-tempered, worry-darkened brow. My husband would perhaps have been tactful enough to go easy on me at first, when many things would still be surging and thrashing ardently within me, and to educate me gently for the tasks that lay ahead, which I would have gratefully accepted; and then things would have been all right, and one day I’d have observed with astonishment that I no longer enjoyed the company of women whose dispositions were characterized by impetuousness and longing, that is, those whose nature was as mine once had been, for I considered them dangerous and harmful. In a word: I would have become just like all the others and would have understood life just as all the rest understood it. But all these things remained a mere dream. I would be wary of saying something like this to anyone but you. Dreamers aren’t ridiculous in your eyes, nor do you despise anyone for dreaming, since you despise no one at all. And it’s not as if I were usually so high-strung. How could I be? It’s just that I’ve gone on a bit too long just now, and when I speak in such a way, it’s easy for me to say too much. A person can’t help wishing to elucidate all her feelings, and yet this isn’t possible, all you do is talk yourself into a frenzy. Come, let’s go to bed—”

In a gentle, calm voice she said good night.

“I’m glad to be here all the same,” she said the next morning. “How can one go wishing oneself away from a position so tempestuously. As if this were so important! I could almost laugh to think of it, and I’m a bit ashamed to have been so forthcoming yesterday. And yet I’m glad; for you do have to speak your mind sometimes. How patiently you were able to listen to me, Simon! Almost reverentially! And yet this too makes me glad. In the evening one isn’t the same as in the morning, no, one is so utterly different, so dissimilar in the way one expresses oneself and in one’s feelings. Merely having slept soundly for a single night, I’ve heard, can utterly change a person. I can certainly believe it. Having spoken in such a way yesterday appears to me now, on this bright morning, like an anxious, exaggerated, sad dream. What can have been the matter? Should one take things so irritably, so hard? Think no more about it! I must have been tired yesterday — I’m always tired in the evenings — but now I feel so light, so healthy, so fresh, as if new-born. I have such a feeling of suppleness, as if someone were lifting me up and bearing me along the way a person is carried on a litter. Open the window while I’m still lying here in bed. It’s so lovely to lie in bed while the windows are being opened. Where can I have found all the joyousness that envelops me as I lie here. Out of doors, the beautiful landscape appears to me to be dancing, the air is slipping indoors to me. Is it Sunday today? If not, it’s a day that seems made to be a Sunday. Do you see the geraniums? They stand so prettily before the window. What did I want yesterday? Happiness? Don’t I already have happiness? Should one have to go off searching for it at unknown distances among people who surely have no time to be thinking about such things? It’s good when you don’t have time for too many things, quite good in fact, for if we had time enough, we’d surely die of presumptuousness. What a brightness there is in my head. Now there’s not a single thought in my head that isn’t lying there like its mistress — me — feeling glad and light, exactly like me. Would you bring me breakfast in bed, Simon? I’d enjoy having you serve me as if I were a Portuguese noblewoman and you a young Moor who comprehends my every gesture. Of course you’ll bring me what I ask. Why shouldn’t you be attentive? How long have you been here with me? Wait, it was winter when you arrived, snow was falling, I can still remember it quite clearly — how many fair and rainy days have since gone by. Now you’ll be leaving soon; but you mustn’t rob me of the pleasure of having you here with me a few days more. And three days from now I’ll say to you: “Stay another three,” and you won’t be any better able to resist me then than you are now, bringing the breakfast to my bedside. You’re a curiously unresisting and unscrupulous person. Ask anything of you, and you’ll do it. You want everything anyone wants. I think a person might ask all sorts of improper things of you before you’d start to think ill of him. One can’t avoid feeling a certain touch of contempt with regard to you. I do despise you a tiny bit, Simon! But I know it doesn’t matter to you if one speaks to you like this. I consider you, by the way, quite capable of performing a heroic deed at a pinch: You see, I do think quite well of you. With you, people allow themselves all sorts of things. Your behavior liberates our behavior from every sort of restraint. Years ago, I used to box your ears, I was always tattling on you to Mother and having you punished when you’d committed some misdeed, and now I’m asking you: Come give me a kiss, or rather: Let me give you one, a nice cautious kiss on the forehead. There! Compared with last night I’m like a saint this morning. I feel a presentiment of the times that are coming — let them come! But don’t laugh at me. Though if you laughed I’d also be pleased; for laughter is the most fitting sound for an early blue morning. And now please leave the room so I’ll be at liberty to get dressed—”