Robert Walser - The Tanners

Dear Brother,

It would appear you are refusing to tell me anything about yourself. Perhaps things aren’t well with you and this is why you don’t write. You are once more, as so often before, lacking a solid steady occupation — I’ve been sorry to hear this, and to hear it from strangers. From you, it seems, I can no longer expect any candid reports. Believe me, this pains me. So very many things now cause me displeasure, and must you too — who always seemed to me to hold such promise — contribute to the bleakness of my mood, which for many reasons is far from rosy? I shall continue to hope, but if you are still even a little bit fond of your brother, please don’t make me hope in vain for too long. Go and do something that might justify a person’s belief in you in some way or other. You have talent and, as I like to imagine, possess a clear head; you’re clever too, and all your utterances reflect the good core I’ve always known your soul possesses. But why, acquainted as you are with the way this world is put together, do you now display so little perseverance? Why are you always leaping from one thing to the next? Does your own conduct not frighten you? You must possess quite a stockpile of inner strength to endure this constant change of professions, which is such a disservice to yourself in this world. In your shoes, I would have despaired long ago. I really cannot understand you at all in this, but for precisely this reason — that after experiencing all too often that nothing can be achieved in this world without patience and goodwill — I’m not abandoning my hope of one day seeing you energetically seize hold of a career. And surely you wish to achieve something. In any case, such a lack of ambition is hardly like you, in my experience. My advice to you is: Stick it out, knuckle under, pursue some difficult task for three or four short years, obey your superiors, show that you can perform, but also show that you have character, and then a career path will open before you — and it will lead you through all the known world if you desire to travel. The world and its people will show themselves to you quite differently once you yourself are truly something: when you are in a position to mean something to the world. In this way, it seems to me, you will perhaps find far more satisfaction in life than even the scholar who (though he clearly recognizes the strings from which all lives and deeds depend) remains chained to the narrow confines of his study but nonetheless, as I can report from experience, is often not so terribly comfortable. There’s still time for you to become a quite splendidly serviceable businessman, and you have no idea to what an extent businessmen have the opportunity to design their existences to be the most absolutely liveliest of lives. The way you are now, you’re just creeping around the corners and through the cracks of life: This should cease. Perhaps I ought to have intervened earlier, much earlier; maybe I ought to have helped you more with deeds than with mere words of warning, but I don’t know, given your proud mind, with its one determination to be helped only by yourself in every way possible, perhaps I’d have done more to offend than to genuinely convince you. What are you now doing with your days? Do tell me about them. Given all the worries I’ve endured on your behalf, I might now perhaps deserve your being somewhat more loquacious and communicative. As for me, what sort of a person am I? Someone to be wary of approaching unreservedly and with trust? Do you consider me a person to be feared? What is it about me which makes you wish to avoid me? Perhaps our circumstance? That I am the “big brother” and possibly know a bit more than you? Well then, know that I would be glad to be young again, and impractical, and naïve. And yet I am not quite so glad, dear brother, as a person should be. I am unhappy. Perhaps it’s too late for me to become happy. I’ve now reached an age when a man who still has no home of his own cannot think of those happy individuals who enjoy the bliss of seeing a young woman occupied with running their households without the most painful longing. To love a girl, what a lovely thing this is, brother. And it’s beyond my reach. — No, you really have no need to fear me, it is I who am seeking you out once more, who am writing to you, hoping to receive a warm friendly response. Perhaps you are now in fact richer than I — perhaps you have more hopes and far more reason to have them, have plans and prospects I myself cannot even dream of — the thing is: I don’t fully know you anymore. How could I after all these years of separation? Let me make your acquaintance once more, force yourself to write to me. Perhaps one day I shall enjoy the good fortune of seeing all my brothers happy; you, in any case, I should like to see content. What is Kaspar up to? Do you write to one another? What about his art? I’d love to have news of him as well. Farewell, brother. Perhaps we shall speak together again soon.

Yours, Klaus.

When a week had passed, Simon entered his employer’s office just as evening was arriving and made the following speech: “You have disappointed me. Don’t look so astonished, there’s nothing to be done about it, I shall quit your place of business this very day and ask that you pay me my wages. Please, let me finish. I know perfectly well what I want. During the past week I’ve come to realize that the entire book trade is nothing less than ghastly if it must entail standing at one’s desk from early morning till late at night while out of doors the gentlest winter sun is gleaming, and forces one to scrunch one’s back, since the desk is far too small given my stature, writing like some accursed happenstance copyist and performing work unsuitable for a mind such as my own. I am capable of performing quite different tasks, esteemed sir, than the ones entrusted to me here. I’d expected to be able to sell books in your shop, wait on elegant individuals, bow and bid adieu to the customers when they’re ready to depart. What’s more, I’d imagined I might be allowed to peer into the mysterious universe of the book trade and glimpse the world’s features in the visage and operation of your enterprise. But I experienced nothing of the sort. Do you imagine my young years in such a sorry state that I need to crumple up and suffocate in a lousy bookshop? You are equally mistaken if you suppose, for example, that a young man’s back exists in order to be hunched. Why didn’t you allocate for my use a good proper desk so I could comfortably sit or stand? Are not splendid American-sized desks available for purchase? If one wishes to have an employee, I believe, one should know how to accommodate him. This is a knack which, apparently, you don’t have. Lord knows, all sorts of things are demanded of a young beginner: industry, loyalty, punctuality, tact, sobriety, modesty, moderation, purpose, and who knows what else. But to whom would it ever occur to start demanding virtues from a business owner such as yourself? Should my strength, my desire for activity, the pleasure I take in my own person, and the talent for being so gloriously capable of all these things be squandered on an old, meager, narrow bookshop? No, before I do any such squandering, I might join the army and sell my freedom altogether, if only for the sake of getting rid of it. It does not please me, respected sir, to own a half-measure, I would prefer to number among those who are utterly without possessions, for then at least my soul will still belong to me. You may be thinking it’s inappropriate for me to speak with such vehemence, and that this is not a fitting place for a speech: So be it, I shall hold my tongue, pay me what I am owed and you will never set eyes on me again.”

The old bookseller was quite astonished now to hear this young, quiet, shy individual — who had worked so conscientiously during the past week — speaking in such a way. From the adjoining work rooms, some five heads belonging to clerks and shop assistants pressed together, watching and witnessing this scene. The old gentleman said: “If I had suspected you of such inclinations, Mr. Simon, I would have thought twice before offering you employment in my shop. You appear to be quite peculiarly fickle. Since a desk isn’t to your liking, the entire enterprise displeases you. From what region of the world do you come, and are all the young people there cut from the same cloth? Just look how you are now standing before me — the old man. No doubt you don’t yourself know what, in that callow head of yours, you actually want. Well, I have no intention of preventing you from leaving — here is your money, but in all honesty I must say this gives me no pleasure.” The bookseller paid him his money, and Simon pocketed it.