Robert Walser - The Tanners

“You look so pensive, Simon,” the nurse said.

“Shall we go?” Simon asked.

The nurse had made himself ready, and the two of them walked the steep paths together that led up the mountainside. The sun was glowing hot. They went into a small, opulently overgrown beer garden and ordered a morning pint. When they were about to leave again, the innkeeper’s pretty wife encouraged them to stay, and indeed they remained until evening. “And this is how you can drink away a bright summer’s day without even noticing,” Simon thought with a feeling comprised of dizzy pleasure and a gentle, lovely, melodious ache. The colors of the evening amid the foliage were making him drunk. His friend gazed deeply and with desire into his eyes and wrapped one arm around his neck. “Actually this is ugly,” Simon thought. On the path, the two of them addressed flamboyant words to all the women and girls they met. The workers were just coming home from work, people who still walked in a hale, spry way, their shoulders rocking strangely from side to side as though breathing sighs of relief. Simon discovered the most splendid figures among them. When they reached the forest atop the mountain, still warm though it was already tinged with darkness, the sun was just setting down below in the distant world. They lay down among the green leaves and bushes and were silent, just breathing as they lay there. And then came what Simon had been expecting, his comrade’s approach, which, however, left him cold.

“There’s no point,” he said, “please stop,” and then, “listen, cut it out!”

The nurse allowed himself to be mollified, but he was aggrieved; people came by and they had to get up and leave the place. Simon thought: “Why am I spending the day with such a person?” But immediately thereafter he confessed to himself that he took a certain pleasure in this man, despite his strange, unlovely inclinations. “Another person might despise the nurse,” he thought further as they set out for home, “but I am the sort who considers each and every person, his virtues and vices notwithstanding, worthy of my interest and love. I shall never arrive at the point of despising other people, or rather, I despise only cowardice and vacuousness, but it’s not hard for me to find something interesting about depravity. Indeed, it sheds light on a great many things, allows us to look more deeply into the world, it makes a person more experienced and helps him judge more leniently and rightly. One must get to know all things, and one makes a thing’s acquaintance only by touching it courageously. To avoid some person out of fear — I’d consider that unworthy. Besides, having a friend is priceless! What does it matter if the friend is somewhat unusual—”

Simon asked:

“Are you angry with me, Heinrich?”

But Heinrich wasn’t saying anything. His face had assumed a dour expression. Once more they arrived at the beer garden whose delicate outlines now lay in darkness. Colorful, shimmering lanterns lit up the dark foliage at several points, sounds and laughter were emanating from within, and both of them, drawn by the lusty fiery life there, went back in, where the innkeeper’s wife gave them a friendly welcome.

The red dark wine was sparkling in the light glasses, the shimmering lights conjoined with the heated faces, the leaves of the bushes touched the dresses of the women, it seemed so natural to be spending the warm summer night in a susurrating garden, drinking, singing and laughing. From the railway station at the bottom of the hill, the noise of the trains rose up to the revelers’ ears. A wealthy, tall, red-cheeked wine merchant’s son applied himself to a bold philosophical conversation with Simon. The male nurse was constantly contradicting everyone because he was vexed and disgruntled. The waitress, a slim brunette, sat down beside Simon and allowed him to pull her close to him to kiss her. She suffered the kiss willingly, with proud curved lips that looked as if made to sip wine, laugh and kiss. The nurse’s mood was becoming ever blacker, and he wanted to leave, but the others prevented him. Then someone, a young, swarthy, dark-haired lad with a green hunter’s hat, sang a song while his girl, nestled close against his chest, leaned in close to sing along with him in soft happy notes. “This sounds so intoxicating, dark and Mediterranean,” Simon thought: “Songs are always melancholy, at least the beautiful ones are. They remind us that it’s time to go!” But he remained a long time still in the nocturnal garden.

For the entire rest of that week, Simon carried on this otiose social intercourse with the nurse, with whom he’d get into arguments and then make up again. He played cards like someone who’d been doing so for years, and rolled billiard balls around in the middle of the warm day while everyone possessed of hands was working. He saw streets filled with sunlight and alleyways in rainy weather, but always through a windowpane, with a glass of beer in his hand; made long, useless, wild speeches morning, noon and night among all manner of strangers, until finally he saw he had nothing more to live on. And one morning he didn’t go to visit Heinrich but instead made his way to a room where any number of young and old men sat at desks writing. This was the Copyists Office for the Unemployed, where people came who, owing to their particular life circumstances, found themselves in such a position that securing employment in a regular place of business was out of the question. Individuals of this sort worked for meager day-wages here, copying out addresses with hasty fingers beneath the strict supervision of a supervisor or secretary — business addresses for the most part, in lots of one thousand, for which large firms contracted with the office. Writers brought in their scribbled manuscripts, and female students their all but illegible dissertations so as to have them either typed out on the typewriter or copied in a smooth clean hand. People who didn’t know how to write but had something they needed written down brought their documents here, where the work was quickly seen to. Cake-counter ladies, waitresses, laundresses and chambermaids had their letters of recommendation copied out tidily before proffering them for examination. Benevolent associations turned in thousands of yearly reports that had to be addressed and disseminated. The Association for Natural Healing had multiple copies made of the invitations to their folksy lectures, and professors had no end of work for the copyists, who in turn were happy to have the work. This entire copying enterprise was supported by yearly subventions from the local government and headed by an administrator — himself formerly unemployed — for whom the post had been created to give him a suitable occupation for his old days. He was the scion, so to speak, of an old patrician family and had wealthy relatives on the city council who didn’t want to sit back and watch one of their family members go to ruin under shameful circumstances. And so this man became the king and protector of all the vagabonds, lost souls and hard-luck cases, and he discharged these duties with a casual dignity, as if he’d never in all his wild days, some of which he’d spent on the road in America, tasted the bitterness of deprivation.

Simon made a bow before the administrator of the Copyists Office.

“What do you want?”

“Work!”

“Today there’s nothing. Come back tomorrow morning, perhaps we’ll have something suitable for you then. For now, write down your name, permanent residence, place of birth, profession and age along with your current address on this sheet of paper, and then come back tomorrow at eight on the dot, otherwise there won’t be any work left,” the administrator said.