Robert Walser - The Tanners

He was in the habit of smiling as he spoke, and speaking through his nose. What’s more, he always assumed an almost scornfully mild-mannered tone in his dealings with the unemployed — not intentionally, that’s just how it happened to come out. His face, sunken and ravaged, was the color of cold white lime and terminated in a ragged gray beard with a point to it, as though the beard itself were a pointy scrap of his face hanging down. His eyes lay deep in their sockets, and the man’s hands bore witness to ill health and physical ruin.

The next morning at eight, Simon was already installed at the Office, and a few days later he’d accustomed himself to his co-workers. These were all people who at some point in their lives had succumbed to some form of dissolution and lost the ground under their unsteady feet. There were people there who because of some serious offense committed years before had spent time in jail. An old, very handsome man was known to have spent years in prison because of a heinous crime against morality he’d committed against his own flesh and blood: his daughter, who denounced him to the judge. In all the time Simon observed him, his silent strange face remained free of all expression, as though silence and listening were native to that face and had become a necessity. He worked calmly, peacefully and slowly, was handsome, looked at you calmly when you looked at him, and appeared to be not in the least conscious of some tormenting memory. His heart seemed to be beating as quietly as his old hand was working. No trace of a grimace could be remarked in any of his features. He appeared to have atoned for and washed away everything that might ever have disfigured or soiled him. His clothes were tidier than those of the administrator, although he must have been poor. His teeth and hands were curiously well groomed, as were his shoes and clothes. His soul appeared to be calm and unusually pure. Simon thought of him: “Why not? Can’t sins be washed away, and should a jail sentence destroy an entire life? No, one sees neither a sin once committed nor a jail term served when one looks at this man. He appears to have forgotten both of them completely. There must be goodness and love in this man, and great strength, really a huge amount of it — but all the same: how strange!”

Embezzlement, theft, fraud and vagrancy all had their representatives in the Copyists Office. Present as well were the merely unfortunate, greenhorns who’d been duped by life and foreigners from abroad who simply found themselves without a bite to eat because their hopes had been dashed. Surely there were also notorious idlers and eternal malcontents. Every combination of culpability and bad luck could be found there, along with that sort of frivolity which takes pleasure in being so out-of-pocket. Simon might have used this opportunity to make the acquaintance of man in his various guises, but he wasn’t much thinking about observing other people, as he himself was kept as busy as all the others filling out forms and sinking as if in a river amid the life and bustle of the Copyists Office with all its cares, labors, little incidents and questions. Someone who’s sunk beneath the surface of a thing doesn’t think so much about the thing itself as about his own physical needs, just like all the others. Everyone here was copying away to earn what they would soon have to invest in food and drink if they wished to go on living. Their earnings flowed down their throats, from hand to mouth. Simon also managed to buy himself a straw hat and a pair of cheap shoes. But when he thought of the rent for his room, he had to confess to himself that he wasn’t in a position to find the cash for this as well. Yet he was always tired and happy in the evenings when he’d finished writing. He’d go walking then, in the company of one of his fellow scribes, through the city streets with his head held high, absentmindedly smiling at the people walking past. He didn’t even have to make an effort to achieve a beautiful proud posture; he stood up straight without even trying, his chest broadened and stretched like a tightly-drawn bow the moment he walked out the door of the Office and into the air. He suddenly felt he was the born lord and master of his limbs and consciously attended to each of his own footsteps. He now no longer kept his hands in his trouser pockets, that would have struck him as undignified. In fact, he no longer slouched at all but rather strolled with measured attentiveness, as if he were only just now, in his twenty-first year of life, beginning to cultivate a beautiful firm gait. Looking at him, a person was not to think of poverty; he was merely to sense that this was a young man who was just coming from work and now permitting himself an evening stroll. The swift, bustling world of the street enchanted his eye. When a carriage with a pair of dancing, delicate horses passed by, he fixed his gaze on the gait of the trotting animals, not deigning to cast even a brief glance at the gentlefolk sitting in the wagon, as though he were a connoisseur of horses, interested only in them. “How agreeable this is,” he thought. “A person really must learn to master his gaze and send it only to places where it is seemly and manly for his eyes to rest.” He cast sidelong glances at a number of women and had to laugh inside to see the sort of impression this made. And all the while he was daydreaming, as always! Except that now he gritted his teeth while dreaming, no longer allowing himself an indolent weary posture: “Even if I’m one of the poorest devils, it wouldn’t occur to me to let this be evident in my person; on the contrary, financial woes practically oblige one to assume a proud comportment. If I were rich, I might possibly allow myself a certain negligence. But under these circumstances, it’s out of the question, as a person must be conscious of maintaining an equilibrium. I’m dog-tired, but I cannot help thinking: Others have cause to feel weary as well. A person doesn’t live merely for himself, but for others as well. You have an obligation to cut a stalwart exemplary figure as long as you’re being observed, so that those of lesser courage can take you as a model. You should give the impression of carefree solidity, even if your knees are trembling and your stomach is warbling up into your throat out of emptiness. Such things are a source of pleasure to a young man who’s just growing up! The clock has not yet struck twelve, not for any of us; after all, any person lying on the ground impoverished enjoys the prospect of rising up again. I’ve a hunch that a proud free bearing can itself draw life happiness to a person like an electrical current, and it’s certainly true that you feel richer and more exalted when you walk about with dignity. Should you happen to be in the company of a second ill-dressed poor devil, as is presently the case, all the more cause to walk with head erect, thereby gently and vigorously apologizing, as it were, for the other’s inferior hairstyle and posture before people who may be taken aback to see two individuals who comport themselves so differently strolling along as cozy as can be, clearly intimate friends, in this elegant street. A thing like this brings you respect, fleeting as it might be. Certainly it’s charming to think you stand out agreeably from a companion who doesn’t yet quite have what it takes or never will. Incidentally my companion is an older, unfortunate man, the former owner of a basket-weaving shop, who has sunk in life thanks to all sorts of adversity and now is a copyist for daily hire, just like me, except that I don’t look entirely like a copyist and day laborer but rather more like a mad Englishman, whereas my comrade looks like someone painfully longing to return to former better days. His gait and the way his head is constantly, sweetly, touchingly wobbling speak of his misfortunate in quite shameless words. He’s an older man and no longer wishes to impress; all he wants is to hold himself a little bit upright. Me he impresses; for I know his pain and understand what a heavy burden he carries. I feel proud to be walking beside him through an elegant part of town, and press myself impertinently close to him to demonstrate my unabashed affection for his paltry suit. I’m receiving many astonished glances, many a splendid eye is looking at me in a strangely quizzical way, which can only amuse me — to so-and-so with all that! I speak loudly, emphatically. The evening is so beautifully suited to speaking. I worked all day long. It’s a splendid thing to have worked all day and then in the evening be so beautifully weary and at peace with all things. To have not a worry, scarcely even a thought. To be allowed to stroll along so frivolously, with a sense of having done no harm to any man. To look around to see if you’re meeting with approval. To feel you’re now a bit more deserving of love and respect than before, when you were just a malingerer whose days sank one behind the other into an abyss and drifted away on the air like smoke. To feel much, so very much, on a gift of an evening such as this! To see the evening as a gift, for this is what it is to those who sacrifice their days to work. Thus one gives and receives in turn—”