Robert Walser - The Tanners

“Give me your hand, let me be to you what I am to my son, who understands me as soon as he hears the rustle of my garments from the next room, who grasps me with a single glance, to whom I needn’t say a word, not even a whispered one, to share my secrets with him; whose sitting, coming, going, standing and lying down tell me all his feelings exist only with the goal of understanding his mother; before whom a person must bend down to the ground, to his feet, to tie his shoes better when the laces have gotten loose; to whom one gives a kiss when he’s been courageous and good; for whom one keeps all secret things open; from whom one wouldn’t even know how to keep a secret; to whom one gives everything even though he’s a little traitor and has managed to neglect his mother for a long, long time, just like you, even though he’s been able to forget her, like you. No, you never managed to forget me. No doubt you often tried to shake me off in defiance, but whenever a woman crossed your path who looked even a tiny bit like me, you imagined you were seeing me, thought you’d found me again. Didn’t this make you tremble, didn’t you feel, as you experienced this deceptive encounter, as if suddenly above a bright regal staircase carved in stone a pair of doors had swung open to admit you to a chamber filled with the joy of reunion? What a joyous thing it is to see someone again. When we’ve lost one another on the street or in the countryside and then a year or so later find each other again, quietly, without further ado, on such an evening when the bells are already tolling out a premonition of this reunion, we press each other’s hands and no longer think of the separation and the cause of this long digression. Leave your hands in mine! Your eyes are still just as kind and beautiful. You remain identical to yourself. Now I can tell you:

“When all of us, Kaspar, I and you, had to leave the forest house last summer, do you remember, and your brother then disappeared, and I didn’t know where to, I rented myself an elegant room down in the city, yearning for the two of you and for a long time inconsolable. Toward winter everything around me appeared suffused in a red glow, I forgot everything and hurled myself into the maelstrom of worldly pleasures, for I still possessed part of my fortune, a small part, but still a lot by local standards. I used them up, and received in exchange the realization that often one needs a bit of rapture to be able to keep oneself more or less afloat upon the waves of life. I had a box at the theater, but the theater interested me far less than the balls where I could show how beautiful and spirited I was. The young men swarmed around me and I saw nothing that might have prevented me from feeling contempt for them all or from subjecting them to my whims. I thought of you and your brother, and often wished, standing at the center of all that emasculated swarming, to see your peaceful faces and open manner. Then a dark black-haired man approached me, a student at the polytechnical university, heavy and clumsy in appearance, a Turk with large forceful eyes, and he danced with me. After this dance, he possessed me body and soul, I was his. For us women, when we are whirling about in worldly raptures, there is a particular sort of man that can vanquish us only on the dance floor. If I’d encountered him anywhere else, I might well have laughed at him. From the first moment on, he behaved towards me as though he were my master, and while I marveled at his insolence, I couldn’t manage to defend myself against it. He commanded me: now like this, and now like this! And I obeyed. We women can achieve stunning feats of obedience when we feel moved. We accept everything then, and wish, perhaps out of shame and fury, for our beloved to be even more brutal than he is. No matter how brutally he treats us, it isn’t enough. To this man, the last bit of money I had to my name was quite simply his property, and I agreed and gave it to him, I gave him everything. When eventually he’d had his fill of oppressing, tyrannizing, preying on and exploiting me, he went away, back to his native land, to Armenia. His slave — I—did nothing to hold him back. I found all his actions appropriate. Even if I’d loved him less than I did, I’d still have let him go, for my pride would have prevented me from trying to detain him. And so it was simply my duty to obey him when he ordered me to help him prepare his departure: The love in me was happy to obey. I wasn’t mortified to be kissing him goodbye, this man who scarcely even deigned to look at me any longer. He gave voice to the hope that he would later, when his circumstances allowed, bring me to his country to make me his wife. I could tell it was a lie, but I felt no bitterness. With regard to this man, any unlovely feeling in me was utterly impossible. I have a child by him, a girl, she’s sleeping there in the next room.”

Klara paused for a moment, smiled at Simon, and then went on:

“I was forced to seek employment, and found a job working for a photographer as his receptionist. Coming into contact with so many people there, I was courted and even proposed to several times, but I brushed them all aside with a smile. All men thought, looking at me: ‘There’s something so tender about her, so domestic-motherly, she’d be a good one!’ But I didn’t become anyone’s ‘good one.’ My position allowed me certain expenditures, at least I was able to keep all my lovely dresses, which has proved useful to this day. My boss was a man I was able to respect, which made my work much easier, and I performed my work as if caught up in a quiet pleasant dream. I’d accustomed myself to flashing a quite particular smile when clients came in, and this made me quite popular, everyone thought I was kind, and I attracted customers, which prompted my employer to increase my salary. At the time I was almost happy. Everything vanished before me in a haze of lovely sweet memories. I felt the approach of my labor pains, and this contributed to my melancholy-happy mood. It was snowing, the streets were completely enveloped in flakes. And when in the evening I walked through the snowy streets, I thought of you brothers, you and Kaspar and a great deal of Hedwig, to whom I paid grateful homage in my thoughts and feelings. I only allowed myself to write her a single time. She never answered. ‘But that’s for the best,’ I thought. I found myself too for the best when I thought such things. I was becoming more and more fulfilled by everything, and I walked always with slow steps, feeling every footstep as an act of human kindness. Meanwhile I gave up my elegant room in the center of town and found lodgings here where you now see me. In the morning and evening I’d ride the electric streetcar back and forth, always attracting the attention of the other passengers. There was something odd about me, I myself could feel this. Many unconsciously starting talking to me, a few wishing just to exchange a word or two, and others to make my acquaintance. But acquaintances no longer had much appeal for me. I thought I could tell everything in advance, and this gave me such a decisive, rejecting but also gentle feeling that soothed me. Men! How often they spoke to me. They resembled curious children who wanted to know what I did, where I lived, whom I knew, where I ate lunch and how I was in the habit of spending my evenings. They appeared to me like innocent, rather importunate children; that’s what I was like at the time. Never did I respond harshly to a single one of them; I had no need to, for not one man allowed himself liberties: To them I was a lady who simultaneously attracted them and left them cold. Once a small, clever-looking girl spoke to me, this was Rosa, the Rosa you know. She revealed all her sufferings to me and her life story, the two of us became friends, and now she’s gone and married, though I advised her not to. She often visits me, me, the Queen of the Poor!” —