The Tanners (17 page)

–9–

Simon brought his letter to the post office. The following Sunday,
Klaus came to visit, the older brother. It was drizzling, and the sight of the
cold raindrops slapping the already wide-awake blossoms was enough to
give you the shivers. Klaus looked not a little astonished to discover Simon
living with his sister—he’d assumed he was abroad somewhere—but he remained as
amicable as he was able, not wishing to spoil their Sunday. All three of them
remained rather quiet, often standing there before one another without speaking;
they appeared to be hunting for words. Klaus brought a certain contemplative
alienation to Hedwig’s home. Upon closer examination, all sorts of things here
proved, in fact, to be out of place. The main object, of course, being Simon’s
presence. Klaus was determined not to utter any reproaches today, though in
truth he felt sorely tempted; but he avoided all divisive remarks. He gazed at
his brother questioningly and significantly, as though to say: “I am astonished
at your behavior. How can you be considered an adult? Is it honorable to take
advantage of your sister��s position to live in idleness? It’s truly
dishonorable! I’d be saying this to you quite openly, but I wish to spare
Hedwig, who would be hurt by such remarks. Far be it from me to spoil our
Sunday!” Simon understood nonetheless. He knew quite well what was meant by this
expression, this stiff unnatural warmth as they greeted one another, this
silence and discomfiture. He was just glad Klaus held his tongue; for otherwise
he’d have to respond with something he was already finding abhorrent as a
justification. Certainly, certainly! His position was deplorable for a young
man
like him, there was no excuse for his behavior. But it was so lovely to be
here—lovely, lovely! Gripped suddenly by emotion, he said to Klaus: “I know
perfectly well what you think of me, but I swear to you this will end soon. I
think you know me a little. Do you believe me?” Klaus pressed his hand, and
their Sunday was saved. Soon it was time for lunch, and Hedwig no doubt noted
with a secret smile the changed situation between the brothers. “He’s a good
man, Klaus. Klaus is good,” she thought, and with even greater pleasure served
the delicious meal. There was a splendid soup, in whose exquisite preparation
Hedwig was highly skilled, followed by pork with sauerkraut and finally a roast
rich with fat. Simon chatted unrestrainedly about heaven and earth, drawing his
brother into all sorts of conversations and then returning again and again to
praise the splendid meal with such comical enthusiasm that each time Hedwig
burst out laughing until she was filled with good cheer and forgot everything
that might have been considered worrisome. In the afternoon, the dismal weather
notwithstanding, they took a short walk. The field through which they trudged
was so wet they soon turned back again. All of them that evening were quiet once
more. Simon tried to read a newspaper, Klaus spoke as if intentionally about
the
most trivial matters, with Hedwig replying distractedly. Before he took his
leave, Klaus said a few words to the girl, whom he’d summoned to the kitchen,
words on which the one standing in the other room preferred not to eavesdrop.
What could it be. Let it be whatever it was. Then Klaus departed. When they
both—having accompanied their guest on the first leg of his return journey—were
back at home again, just the two of them, their hearts involuntarily felt gayer,
like schoolchildren after the stern inspector has left. They breathed more
freely, feeling they could be themselves again. Hedwig now began to speak, and
the apprehensiveness inspired by what she was about to say made her voice sound
more intimate and raised its pitch: “Klaus is just the same as ever. There’s
always a tiny bit of fear to contend with in his presence. Being with him
involuntarily turns a person into a guilty schoolgirl awaiting her scolding for
having been imprudent. In his eyes, you’ve always been imprudent, even when you
think you’ve been acting in a serious way. His eyes see things so
differently—they look at the world in such a strangely alarming manner, as if
there’s always something to fear. He’s constantly worrying both himself and
others. That tone issuing from his
mouth is assembled out of a thousand
well-intentioned misgiv
ings—he has so little trust in the
world and the threads that bind us to it of their own accord. He looks as if
he
wants to lecture you like a schoolmaster and at the same time sees perfectly
clearly that he is lecturing unawares—he doesn’t wish to lecture, but that’s
just what he does, despite his best intentions, because of his innermost nature,
for which we can’t hold him responsible. He is so unquestionably kind and
affectionate, but he cannot stop questioning whether it’s appropriate to be
gentle and kind. Severity ill becomes him, and yet he believes he can accomplish
with severity what he’s failed to achieve by means of kindness. He thinks of
kindness as incautious, and yet he’s so very kind! He forbids himself to be
artless and kind, which is what he’d most dearly love to be, because he’s so
afraid of spoiling something in this way, and then appearing imprudent in the
eyes of the world. He sees only eyes observing him, never eyes wishing to gaze
peacefully into his. You can’t gaze peacefully into his eyes, since it’s quite
palpable how nervous this makes him. He always thinks people are thinking
something about him and he needs to get to the bottom of those thoughts. If he
can’t find anything wrong with you to carp about, he seems ill at ease. And yet
he
is
kind! Happy he is not. If he
were, he’d start speaking differently in a instant, I know he would. And it
isn’t that he begrudges others their happiness, but he’s constantly inclined
to
criticize the happiness and carefree spirits of those around him, which I’m sure
must cause him pain. He doesn’t like to hear talk of happiness, and I can
understand why. It’s quite obvious, any child can understand it: Yourself
joyless, you hate the joy of others. How often this must pain him, for he’s
noble enough to feel what injustices he’s committing. He is absolutely noble,
but—how shall I say this—also a bit corrupted on the inside, just a tiny bit,
because of having been neglected and then always struggling to shrug off this
neglect. Yes, fate has most certainly given him the cold shoulder—he’s far too
worthy for its frostiness and whims. That’s how I’d like to put it; for I feel
pain on his account! You, for instance, Simon. My God. For you one feels quite
different things, my eternally jolly brother! Do you know, thinking of you, one
always says to oneself: He ought to get a beating, a really sound beating,
that’s what he deserves! You make a person feel astonished with wonder—why
haven’t you yet plunged into an abyss? It would never occur to anyone to feel
pity for you. Generally people consider you a carefree, impudent, happy fellow.
Is it true?”

Simon burst into laughter and this set the tone for the next hour.
Then there was a knock at the door. The two of them got up, and Simon went to
see who was there. It was the teacher from the next school. Her husband, a rough
and ruthless individual, had beaten her yet again. They did what they could to
comfort her, and in this they succeeded.

The weather was growing ever warmer and the earth more resplendent,
it was covered with a thick, blossoming carpet of meadows, the fields and
pastures were steaming, the forests offered an enchanting sight with their
beautiful, fresh, rich green. All of nature was presenting itself, expansive,
stretching, curving, rearing up, whizzing and rustling and buzzing, fragrant
and
motionless as a bright beautiful dream. The land had become perfectly fat, lush,
opaque and glutted. It was lolling, as it were, in voluptuous surfeit. It was
green and dark brown and flecked with black, white, yellow and red, blossoming
with hot breath, almost perishing beneath its profusion of blossoms. It lay
there like a luxuriating, veiled woman, immobile, shifting her limbs, perfumed
with scents. The gardens spread their fragrance into the streets and out over
the fields, where men and women were working; the fruit trees were a bright,
twittering singing, and the nearby, round, vaulted forest was a choral song of
young men; the bright paths scarcely penetrated the green. In forest clearings,
one would see a white, dreamy, indolent sky that one could imagine sinking down
and rejoicing as birds rejoice, tiny birds that one has never before seen but
that are so natural a part of nature. Memories arrived that a person didn’t wish
to analyze and dissect, you weren’t capable of this, it caused such sweet pain,
and you were too indolent to feel a pain through to the end. Thus you walked
and
thus stopped in your tracks, turning in all directions, gazing off into the
distance, gazing up, away, down, across and to the ground, feeling deeply
affected by all the languor of this blossoming. The buzzing in the forest was
not the buzzing in the barer clearing, it was different and required in turn
a
staking out of new positions for new daydreams. Always you were having to
tussle, resist, gently thrust aside, reflect and waver. It was all one great
wavering, a struggle, a finding yourself weak. But this was sweet, quite simply
sweet: a bit difficult, and then a bit parsimonious, then hypocritical, then
crafty, then nothing at all, then perfectly stupid; and finally it became rather
difficult to find anything else beautiful any longer, this just didn’t seem
called for, and so you sat, strolled, loitered, drifted, trotted and tarried
in
such a way that you yourself became a bit of spring. Could all this buzzing feel
delight at its own buzzing and cooing and singing? Was it given to the grass
to
observe its own beautiful variability? Might it have been possible for the beech
to fall in love with its own appearance? Without growing weary or blunted, you
let things be as they were, let them go, let them waver this way and that. All
of nature, the way it was looking, was just a loiterer, a lingering and
dangling! Scents hung in the air, and all the earth lingered and waited. Colors
were the blissful expression of this. You could discern something prematurely
weary and portentous in the bush with its blossoms. It was a sort of
no-longer-wishing-to-go-on,
but all one great smile. The blue, hazy wooded mountains sounded like
far-off, distant horns, you felt the landscape to be a bit English, it
was like a luxuriant English garden, the luxuriant growth and the interweaving
and wafting of voices drew your senses to this affinity. You thought: In such
and such a place things might look just now as they do right here, the region
conjured up all other regions in your heart. It was comical and
far-reaching, a carrying-off and bringing-hither:
A bringing, as things are brought by young lads, an offering up, such as
children might offer, an obeying and harkening. You could say and think whatever
you pleased, yet it was always just the same unspoken, unthought thing—light
and
heavy, blissful and painful, poetic and natural. You understood the poets, or
rather you didn’t actually understand them, for, walking along like this, you
would have been far too indolent to imagine understanding them. You had no need
to understand anything at all, there was no understanding, and yet understanding
arrived of its own accord, dissolving in the effort of listening for a sound
or
gazing into the distance or remembering that in point of fact it was now time
to
return home and discharge some admittedly rather minor duty, for even in
springtime there are duties to discharge.

The nights were becoming splendid. The moon fell in love with the
white of the blossoming bushes and trees and the long windings of the roads,
and
made them gleam. Moonlight shone in the fountains and the flowing river water.
The churchyard with its silent graves was transformed into a white fairy place,
making you forget the dead who lay buried there. The moon inserted itself among
the tangle of thin, hanging, hair-like branches, providing light
enough to make out the inscriptions on the headstones. Simon walked around the
edge of the churchyard several times, then struck out on a further path that
led
him through the flat raised field, thrust himself between low, illuminated
bushes, came upon a small, sloping meadow between them, and sat down there upon
a stone to ponder the question of how much longer he was likely to continue this
life of mere observation and contemplation. Soon it must surely come to an end,
for things could not go on in this way. He was a man, and to him pertained the
rigorous discharge of duty. Soon he would have to take action once more, this
was becoming clear to him. When he got home, he said as much to his sister in
fitting words. He shouldn’t be thinking about such things, at least not yet,
she
said. All right, he replied, I won’t think about it yet. What’s more, the
thought of remaining here further was so enticing. What was it he wanted, what
was driving him? He could hardly have travel money to make a trip somewhere,
and
as for the place he might to be going, what awaited him there? No, he would
gladly remain where he was for an indeterminate brief time. Probably he’d drive
himself mad with longing for the place once he left it, and what good would that
do him? No, he’d have to make short work of it, this longing; for it would ill
befit him. But didn’t people often engage in unbefitting pastimes? What’s more,
he would be staying on, and had no intention of surrendering any further to
these trains of thought, which he found vexing.

Thus a few more days arrived and vanished. Time arrived so soundlessly
and then withdrew without one’s noticing. In this way it actually moved fairly
quickly, although before leaving it hesitated for a long while. The two of them,
Simon and Hedwig, now became even more powerfully attached to one another. They
spent their evenings chatting by lamplight and never wearied of speaking. They
talked of food over their meals, whose simplicity and delicacy they praised with
carefully chosen words, and as they worked they spoke of work; every activity
they accompanied with words, and then they discussed the joys and pleasures of
walking while out on their walks. They had long since forgotten they were only
brother and sister, they felt conjoined more by fate than shared blood,
interacting with one another more or less like two locked-up prisoners
who are making an effort to forget their lives with the help of their
friendship. They idled away a great deal of time, but they wished to see it
wasted in this fashion, for each of them felt what gravity lay concealed behind
these exchanges, and both believed themselves perfectly capable of speaking and
acting in full earnestness if they only wished. Hedwig sensed she was revealing
herself to her brother more and more and was fully conscious of the feeling of
consolation this gave her. She found it flattering that he was living with her
not only because it was of practical advantage and in accordance with his
condition, but also because he found it interesting, and she thanked him for
this by becoming even more truly fond of him than before. To both it appeared
that each found the other valuable enough to feel pride at spending a bit of
their lives together. They spoke and thought a great deal about memories,
promising to serve up everything they could recall from that early, bygone age
when both were children. Do you remember? This was the way so many of their
conversations began. And so they immersed themselves in the precious images of
the past and were always at pains to let these remembrances, regardless of their
object, instruct their hearts and minds, careful always to whet their laughter
on them, or—when the memories were sorrowful—maintain still their high spirits,
as was only fitting. The past, in turn, made the present appear sharper and more
tender, and then this very present moment they were perceiving took on a more
vivid and richer aspect, as if doubled or trebled in a mirror, and it more
visibly, more clearly pointed the way to the future they often imagined
together, an activity that filled them with a mild intoxication. What future
could be lovelier than the one glimpsed in a daydream; and the thoughts they
thought were always light and gay.