The Tanners

  “I’m getting cheekier and cheekier. One of these days she’ll send me packing for good!”—

  –13–

  Three weeks later, liberated from all obligations, Simon stood in a narrow, steep, hot alleyway before a building, deliberating whether or not to go in. The noonday sun was blazing down, making the walls release their unsavory odors. Not the slightest breeze was stirring. Where in this alley could a breeze have slipped in? Out in the modern streets there might be breezes wafting, but in here it felt as if centuries had passed since a breath of air last breezed and blew. Simon had a small sum of money in his pocket. Should he board a train and travel to the mountains? Everyone was traveling to the mountains these days. Strange unfamiliar people, men and women, moved singly, in pairs, or little groups through the white bright streets. From the hats of the ladies, amusing veils fluttered down, and the men were going about in knee-length trousers and light-colored summer shoes. Oughtn’t he decide to follow these strangers to the mountains? Surely it would be cooler up there, and in a hotel perched high up on a peak he would surely find work. He might even play the role of tour guide, he was rugged enough for this, and also clever enough to say at the appropriate time: “Observe, ladies and gentlemen, this waterfall, or this scree, or this village, or this cliff face, or this blue shimmering river.” He’d have what it takes to depict a landscape in words for his traveling guests. He could also, should the circumstance arise, carry a fatigued and fearful Englishwoman in his arms when it came time to cross a pass just three shoe-lengths wide. Certainly he had a desire to do so. Oh yes, those American girls and Englishwomen: He’d learn to speak English, which to his mind was a sweet language that sounded like whispers and sighing, both gruff and soft.

  But he didn’t go to the mountains, instead he went into this old, tall, thick, dark building in the alleyway, knocked at a door and asked a woman who came out to see who was knocking whether she had a room to let.

  Indeed, she did.

  He asked if he could have a look at it, and if it was a room—not too large, not too dear—suitable for a person without much money.

  After she had showed him the room, the woman asked:

  “What do you do?”

  “Oh, nothing at all. I’m unemployed. But I’m going to look for work. Don’t be concerned. I’ll pay you this sum here in advance so you won’t have to worry too much. Here, take it.”

  And he placed a rather large coin in her hand as prepayment. This was a plump female hand, and the woman, who was satisfied, said:

  “Unfortunately the room isn’t sunny, it faces the alley.”

  “All the better,” Simon replied, “I love shade. I’d hate to have the sun shining into my room just now in this warm season. The room is very nice, and, let me add, very cheap. It’s perfect for me. The bed appears to be good. Oh yes. Please. Let’s not poke about too much. Here is also a wardrobe that can hold more clothes than I possess, and here to my delighted astonishment I espy an armchair for comfortable sitting. Indeed, if a room has such an armchair to show for itself, it is, in my eyes, most opulently furnished. There’s even a picture hanging on the wall: I love when there’s only a single picture hanging in a room, you can observe it all the more closely. I see as well a mirror for examining my face. It’s a good one, it reflects my features clearly. Lots of mirrors distort the features they reflect when you look into them. This one is quite excellent. Here at this table I shall write my letters of application which I shall send off to various commercial firms in order to obtain a post. I hope I shall succeed in this. I can’t see why I shouldn’t, as I’ve had success so many times already. For your information, I’ve changed jobs many times now. This is an error that I hope I shall be able to correct. You are smiling! Yes, but it’s quite serious. With this room you’ve become, as it were, my benefactress, for it’s a room in which a person like me can feel happy. I shall always make an effort to observe my obligations toward you promptly.”

  “I believe you will,” the woman said.

  “At first,” Simon said, “I wanted to go to the mountains. But this shady room is more beautiful than even the whitest mountains. I’m feeling a bit tired and would like to lie down for an hour, may I?”

  “Why, of course! It’s your room now!”

  “Oh, surely not!”

  And then he lay down for a nap.

  He had a strange dream that pursued him for a long time after:

  It was in Paris, but why Paris he no longer remembered. At first he was walking down a street completely covered with succulent green foliage so that the trains of the ladies’ dresses dragged the leaves behind them with a rustling sound. Meanwhile a soft green rain of tiny whispering leaves was falling, and an inexpressibly gentle wind was blowing, like the breath of clouds. The buildings were wonderfully tall, some gray, some yellowish, some snowy white. The men walking along on the street wore their hair long, hanging down so that their curls tumbled past their shoulders, and there were also dwarfs dressed in black tailcoats and red hats walking there who were able to slip right through the others’ crossing legs. The ladies in their long-trained dresses cut splendid figures: tall, far taller than the men, who themselves appeared quite slender. Upon the slender busts of the women, lorgnettes hung down below their waists, and arches of heavy opulent hair spanned their lovely heads. Up on top sat tiny little hats with even tinier little feathers, but a few of them were wearing large, broad, splendidly pendulous feathers that appeared to be bending their whole heads back. The hands and arms of these women were a wondrous sight, covered to above their delicate elbows with long black gloves. In fact everything looked wondrous as far as the eye could see. The large buildings insisted on constantly rocking up and down like strange naturalistic stage sets in a theater. The light belonged half to the daytime and half to the already quite advanced night. The scene was now a building completely enshrouded in wild vegetation. “This is where the most beautiful women in Paris live,” is what you’d be told if you asked. All at once a fragrant white cloud bowed down into the street. The astonished question: “What’s that?” was met with the answer: “As you see, monsieur, it’s a cloud. A cloud is by no means a rare sight in the Parisian streets. You must be a foreigner, since this can still surprise you.” The cloud remained lying there on the street as white foam, resembling a large swan. Many ladies ran up to it and plucked off little bits, which they placed, moving their arms with wondrous grace, upon their hats, or else they threw the bits at one another in jest, which stuck to their dresses. A person thought: “Just look, these Parisians! They’re quick to chuckle at the foreigner and his astonishment. But aren’t the Parisians themselves astonished each day anew at their city’s beauty?” Then the wicked street urchins of Paris arrived to tickle the cloud with burning matches, and so it flew back up into the sky again, light and majestic, until it vanished above the buildings. Again one could observe the street. In the beautiful restaurants that extended out onto the sidewalks, waiters were serving in light green tail coats, and ladies were drinking coffee and chatting in delightful voices. Poets stood upon raised platforms, singing the songs they’d written at home. They were clad in noble brown velvet—by no means ridiculous figures, far from it. The works they presented were deemed amusing, but without anyone paying particular attention to them, which in Paris would have been impossible. Beautiful slender dogs trotted along behind human beings and comported themselves as if they knew that in Paris one must behave well. Each and every figure and
individual seemed to be more floating than walking, more dancing than striding, more flying than running. And yet all of them were running, walking, leaping, striding and marching in a quite natural way. Nature appeared to have taken up residence in this street. Entire flocks of sheep passed through the street amid a constant “ding ding,” as if the street were a valley at dusk, the dark-clad shepherd marching at their head. Then came cows with larger bells: “ding dong” and “dang dong”! And yet this was a street and not some mountain pasture, it was the middle of Paris, the heart of European elegance. Though to be sure the street was as broad as a large wide river. Now all at once the lamps were being lit by small, fleet-footed boys carrying long lighting sticks. They used these sticks to open the valves at the top of the lanterns to let the gas come flowing out of its pipes, and these they lit. They sprang from one lantern to the next until all of them were burning. Now lights were glimmering on all sides and seemed to be perambulating along with the wandering people. What sort of magical white light was this—and these devilish boys lighting it, where had they come leaping out from—and to where, away from what, with what aim? Where were they at home, did they too have parents, brothers, sisters, did they too go to school, could they too grow up, get married, father children, grow old and die? Dressed in short blue jackets, all of them seemed to be wearing rubber shoes, for one could barely hear them, flitting by rather than walking. Now they were gone. And as evening fell you could see marvelously odd female figures in the promenading street. They wore their hair in oversized splendor, bright yellow and deep black. Their eyes gleamed and shimmered so brightly it hurt to look at them. The most splendid thing about them were their legs, which were not covered by trains or skirts but instead could be seen to the knee, at which point they were encased in trousers rustling with lace. Their feet were clad almost all the way up to their pliant knees in tall boots crafted of the finest leather. The boots themselves were the daintiest things that could possibly have been appropriate to sheathe a supple female foot. You needed only observe this to laugh with all your heart. The gait of these women displayed a heart-thrilling buoyancy, then a gravity, then a dance-like lightness. Their way of walking was worthy of being sketched and experienced, raising you up and drawing you along after it, and made your eyes start dreaming of sweetness, made your soul awaken so as to ponder how it came about that God made women so beautiful. One felt quite vividly: “If the gods could somehow be at home somewhere on earth, which admittedly isn’t conceivable, their place would have to be Paris.” All at once without seeing it coming, Simon found himself standing upon a staircase carved and carpentered of dark wood that led him up into a room where a girl lay sleeping upon a day-bed. When he looked more closely, it was Klara. A small cat was slumbering beside her, and the sleeping woman cradled it in one arm. A Negro servant brought in supper, and Simon sat down at the table while from the ceiling of the room rippled a soft, muted music, like the plashing of a precious, inventive fountain, murmuring now in the distance and now just beside his ear. “In Paris, meals are served strangely,” Simon thought as he tucked in just like in a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. Then the sleeping woman awoke. “Come here, I want to show you something,” she whispered to him. He got up, and using a magic wand, or so it appeared, she opened a double door—at least she didn’t seem to be employing her hands. “I’ve become a sorceress,” she said, smiling at Simon’s astonishment, “do not doubt me, but don’t by any means let this terrify you either. I shall show you nothing repugnant.” He went with her into the next room, she breathed on him with her fragrant warm breath, and all at once he saw his brother Klaus sitting there writing at his desk. “He is industriously writing his life’s work,” Klara said in a low, expressive voice. “Look what a thoughtful face he’s making. He is immersed in his contemplations of the course of rivers, the history and age of mountains, the twists and turns of the valleys and the earth’s strata. But in between he is thinking of his brother, he’s thinking of you now! Just look at the folds in his brow. You appear to be causing him worry, you wicked boy! Unfortunately he cannot speak, otherwise we’d both hear what he’s thinking about you and what he has to say about your worrisome conduct. He loves you, just look at him! A person like that loves his brother and wants to see him established in the world as a good, respected man. But the picture, I see, is already dissolving. Come. Now I’ll show you something different.”—As she said this, she opened a second, somewhat smaller door with her little wand, which she really was carrying in her hand, and Simon glimpsed his sister Hedwig stretched out upon a cot draped in white linen. There was a wonderful scent of herbs and flowers in this room. “Look at her,” Klara said, and a trembling made her clear, quiet voice unsteady, “she is dead. Life caused her too much pain. Do you know what it means to be a girl and suffer? I wrote her a letter, you know, back in those days: a lengthy, ardent letter filled with longing, and she will never again lift her hand to answer it. She is departing without having answered the world’s question: ‘Why don’t you come?’ How wordlessly she parts from us: so girlishly, like a blossom! How dear she was. You as a brother cannot feel this nearly as acutely as I do, her friend. Do you see how she is smiling! If she were still able to talk, she would surely speak friendly words. She spoke severely. She bit her own lips in misery. But you can’t see this now looking at her mouth. Death must have kissed her if she can still be smiling even in death! She was a courageous girl. Like a flower she died, like a flower that dies when it withers. Let us go on. In my magical realm, gaping is forbidden. Have I hurt your feelings? Well? Surely not: What can be painful about such a beautiful death? The rest of you left her to suffer, that’s what was painful. . . . I don’t wish to hurt you. Come, now you shall see something else.” And with these words she caused a third door to spring open, and Simon gazed into a roomy studio and smelled the odor of oil paint. On the walls he saw his brother’s paintings hanging, and he himself, Kaspar, was working with his back turned at an easel, utterly immersed, it appeared, in his work. “Shh, don’t disturb him, he’s working,” Klara said, “one mustn’t disturb people when they’re creating something. I always knew he lived only for his art, even then, when I still thought I’d be following him, thought I’d be able to. No, it’s better this way. I’d only have held him back and impeded him. He must forget everything around him, even what is dearest to him, if he wants to create. Such creation demands the killing off of everything dear and heartfelt so that all this love and true feeling can be transferred to the work itself. You won’t understand this—only Kaspar understands. When you see me looking at him like this, don’t you think I feel the urge to throw myself into his arms? To hear what he says to me when I ask in a whisper, trembling with apprehension: ‘Do you love me, Kaspar?’ He would surely caress me then, but I’d be filled with premonitions and on his beautiful forehead I would discover a faint trace of displeasure. And this discovery would hurl me, like a woman damned unto all eternity, down a thousand depths into a foul ignoble abyss. No—this Klara shall not do—I value her too highly, and he is too precious and dear to me just as he is. And so I stand behind him, free to imagine how he is creating things, how he is rolling the huge, fiery, steaming orb of art before him, like a splendid wrestler sacrificing his last breath to achieve victory over his opponent. Look how entranced he is, plying his brush—ringing the thousand-toned bell of his colors and working to make every line more linear, every color more colorful, every emphasis more deliberate and every longing more poignant. His gaze (which I so
loved) was always lost in forms, and here in Paris he requires only a simple room to capture the world in images. He has seized Nature in his arms like a voluptuous mistress and is now pressing kiss after kiss upon her lips until both of them—Kaspar and Nature—are out of breath. It almost seems to me as if Nature were powerless and impotent before true artists and overcome with devotion just like the sort of mistress who denies you nothing. In any case, as you can see, Kaspar has plenty to do, his head, feelings and both hands are all fully occupied; like a wild, untamed horse he thrusts and labors, and when he sleeps at night, he keeps working on and on in wild dreams; for art is rigorous and seems to me the most difficult task an honorable, upright man can set himself. Never disturb him at his holy task; he is creating works for the pleasure of generations to come. If I were wishing now to impose on him my weak poor love, what an unlovely contemptible thing that would be. What’s more, a woman has no desire to kiss when she cannot help feeling that injured thoughts lie twitching between her kisses, dying: The kisses are strangling them. What a heedless murderess she would be! Like this, though, everything is lovely; to be sure, it hurts a bit to have to stand behind a turned back, behind his shoulders and curls, but in exchange for this you hear bells ringing in your soul and feel the sweet justification and the peerlessness of your position in the world. At some point our other feelings must be moderated and put in order, they must be kept in their place. Even a weak woman knows perfectly well what she must do. To watch an artist, observing each of his movements thoughtfully, is more beautiful than wishing to influence him, greedily wishing to get something for yourself, to mean something to him and to the world. Every position has its significance, but unwarranted meddling and interference will never have any meaning! There are many things I still should say to you. But now come.” —Again as Simon was being led away by Klara, a wondrous, incomprehensible music could be heard emanating from all the rooms, from all the ceilings and walls, like a distant thousand-voiced twittering of birds from a little forest. They returned to the first room and saw the little black cat insert its paw into a narrow-mouthed milk jug. But when it saw the two people, the cat leapt away and crouched behind a chair from whence it peered forth attentively with its burning yellow eyes. Klara opened a window and: What a wonderful sight! It was snowing in the summery, green street, snowing so thickly, so very flake-upon-flake, that it was impossible to see between them. “This is no rarity here in Paris,” Klara said, “it snows at the hottest times of the year, there are no particular seasons here, just as there are no particular ways of speaking. In Paris one must be prepared for anything. If you live here for a while, you too will learn this and will get quickly over your astonishment, which is uncalled for. Everything here is swift, graceful, modest comprehension. And respect for the world is considered the highest, finest thing. You’ll learn soon enough. This snow, for example: Do you think you can imagine it piling up higher than these tall buildings? But it’s true, and in all probability we shall now lie buried beneath the snow for a full month. What does it matter: We have light and a warm room. I’ll be asleep, for the most part, for sorceresses need a great deal of sleep; you’ll play with the little cat or read a book, I have the most beautiful Parisian novels here in my library. The Parisian poets write delightfully, you’ll see. And then after a month—oh, by the way, we also have music, don’t we—and then, as I said, after a month spring will arrive in the Parisian streets. Then you’ll see how after their long confinement people will embrace out on the street, weeping tears of joy at seeing each other again. Everything will be a great hugging and embracing. Desires long suppressed will erupt from gleaming eyes, lips and voices—there will be much kissing in May, but you’ll experience this yourself. Just imagine, then the air will settle into the streets all blue and warm-moist—the sky will be taking a walk in Paris, intermingling with the rapturous passers-by. The trees will all blossom on a single day and share their wonderful perfume, birds will be singing, clouds will dance and flowers will flit through the air like a rain shower. And money will appear in every pocket, even the poorest, most tattered one. But now I want to sleep. Can you see how sleepy I’m becoming already? Meanwhile, put the time to good use and study one of the works you’ll find that is capable of absorbing you for an entire month. Such books exist. Good night!” —And with that she fell asleep. But the cat wanted to lie down beside her, Simon lunged after it, the cat slipped away, he gave chase, and again and again it slipped through his hands when he was already grasping it. All this lunging about made him dreadfully short of breath, and his gasping woke him up.