Robert Walser - The Tanners

Still lying there in bed, he resolved to be more industrious from now on, to study something, a language for example, and in general to start living a more regulated existence. He’d let so much slip through his fingers! Learning surely brought a person great pleasure. It was so lovely to engage in these heartfelt, vivid imaginings of how it would be to keep studying and studying assiduously, never once emerging from one’s studies. He sensed a certain human maturity within him: And how much lovelier all this studying would be if approached with the sum of this already attained maturity. Yes, that’s what he would do now: study, set himself tasks, and take pleasure in uniting both teacher and pupil within his own person. What about, for example, taking up a melodious language such as French? “I would learn words and imprint them firmly on my memory. My constantly active imagination would come to my aid. Tree: l’arbre. With all my feelings I would see this tree. Klara would come to mind. I’d see her in a white dress with wide folds beneath a broad, shady, dark green tree. In this way many things, things I had almost already forgotten, would return to me. My mind would grow stronger and more active in grasping. It blunts you if you never study anything. How sweet this smallness is, this beginner’s stage! I’m now finding this prospect vastly appealing and don’t understand how I could have been defiant and sluggish so very long. Oh, all sluggishness is just defiance, an insisting on one’s own knowledge and the putative superiority of this knowledge to that of other people. If only we knew how little we knew, things might still turn out well. Hearing the sound of the foreign word, I would think of the German one more warmly and spread its meaning out more fully before me in my thoughts, and so even my own language would become a new, richer sound filled with unfamiliar images. Le jardin: garden. Here I would think of Hedwig’s country garden that I helped plant when spring arrived. Hedwig! In a flash it would all come back to me, the things she said, did, suffered and thought during all the days I spent with her. I have no cause to forget people and things so quickly, above all my sister. After we’d already planted the garden it snowed again one night, and we were terribly worried that nothing would grow. That would have been quite a blow, for we were hoping to harvest a great many splendid vegetables from our garden. How lovely it is to be able to share one’s worries with another person. Just imagine how it must be to suffer the pains and fight the battles of an entire people! Yes, all these things would come to me if I were studying a language — and many others as well, so many that I can’t even imagine them yet! Just to study, to study, who cares what! I’ll also immerse myself in natural history, all on my own, without a teacher, using some inexpensive book that I can go and buy right away tomorrow, since today is Sunday, so of course all the shops are closed. All of this is quite feasible, clearly. Why else is one alive? Could it be I’ve stopped thinking I owe myself anything at all? I’ve got to pull myself together — it’s certainly high time.”

And he leapt out of bed as though he felt the need to get started with his new plans right this minute. Quickly he got dressed. The mirror told him that he looked quite nice indeed, which satisfied him.

As he was about to go downstairs, he came upon Frau Weiss, his landlady and room-letter. She was dressed all in black and held a small prayer book in her hand, having just returned from church. She gave a cheerful laugh as she beheld Simon and asked whether he hadn’t wanted to go to church himself.

He responded that he hadn’t been to church in many years.

The entire kindly face of the woman flinched as she heard these words, which she found unsuitable coming out of a young man’s mouth. She wasn’t angry, for she was by no means an intolerant holy roller, but she couldn’t restrain herself from telling Simon he wasn’t really doing what he should. Besides which, she added, she didn’t believe him; he didn’t have that look. But if it were in fact true, she hoped he’d keep in mind that it wasn’t right never to go to church.

Wishing to keep her in a good mood, Simon promised he’d go to church soon, whereupon she gave him a quite friendly look. Meanwhile he was on his way downstairs, not letting her delay him any longer. “A nice woman,” he thought, “and she likes me, I can always tell when women like me. How amusingly she pouted because of church. The sort of pout that covers the entire face always looks good on women. I like to see such a thing. Besides which she respects me. I shall make a point of preserving her respect. But I shan’t speak with her too much or often. This will make her wish to engage me in conversation, and she’ll be happy whenever I do say something to her. I like women of her sort. She looks wonderful in black. How sweet the little prayer book looked held in her voluptuous hand. A woman who prays actually becomes even more sensually appealing. How beautifully this pale hand stood out against the black of her sleeve. And her face! Well, that’s enough now. In any case it’s most agreeable to have something sweet in reserve, an auxiliary supply, as it were. This gives you a sort of home, a place of refuge with another person, a recourse, a magic spell — for I cannot live without there being a certain magic present. She still had a desire to go on speaking with me, back there on the stairs. But I broke off our conversation; for it pleases me to leave unfulfilled wishes behind with women. This allows one to inflate one’s value rather than decreasing it. The women themselves, incidentally, wish for you to act in such a way.”

The street was swarming with people in their Sunday best. The women were all wearing light-colored, white dresses, the girls wore colorful broad ribbons on their white skirts, the men were simply dressed in lighter-colored summer fabrics, boys wore sailor suits, dogs were trotting along behind a couple of people; in the water, confined in a wire enclosure, swans swam about, and a few young people leaned over the railing of the bridge, observing them attentively; other men were walking rather solemnly to their polling places to cast their votes in the election, bells were ringing for the second or third time, the lake shimmered blue and swallows flew high above in the air, over rooftops all agleam in the sunlight; the sun was first of all a Sunday-morning sun, then a sun pure and simple, and then a special sun for a pair of artist’s eyes that were no doubt present somewhere in the crowd; here and there, the trees of the municipal parks burgeoned with green, spreading their crowns; in the darker world beneath the shade trees, still more women and men were strolling about; sailing vessels flew before the wind upon blue distant water, and lethargic boats tied to barrels were rocking near the shore; still more birds were flying here, and people were standing still, gazing at the blue, whitish distance and the mountain peaks in that distant sky were like precious, white, all but invisible lace, and the whole sky like a light-blue dressing gown. Everyone was busy watching, chatting, feeling, showing, pointing, noticing and smiling. From a pavilion the sounds of a band came darting like fluttering, twittering birds from amid the foliage. Simon too was walking there in all the green. The sun cast bright spots upon the path through the awning of leaves, as well as on the grass, on the bench where nursemaids were rocking perambulators back and forth, on the hats of the ladies and the shoulders of the men. Everyone was chatting, gazing, glancing, calling out greetings and promenading back and forth. Elegant carriages rolled along the street, now and then an electric streetcar whizzed past, and the steamboats were whistling, you could see their smoke flying away, heavy and thick, between the trees. Out in the lake young people were bathing. Admittedly you couldn’t see them as you strolled up and down beneath the foliage, but you knew there were bare bodies swimming about, luminous in the liquid blue. What wasn’t luminous today? What wasn’t flickering? Everything scintillated, flashed, shone and swam in colors and dissolved into sounds before your eyes. Simon said to himself several times in a row: “How beautiful a Sunday is!” He looked into the eyes of the children and all the people, he gazed at everything blissfully and, bewildered, now he glimpsed a beautiful isolated gesture, and now the picture as a whole appeared before his eyes. He sat down beside an apparently still-young man upon a bench and looked the man in the eyes. A conversation began to unfold between the two of them, for it was so easy to begin talking when everyone was so happy.