The Tanners (18 page)

–10–

One evening Hedwig said: “I almost have the impression there’s
something like a thin but opaque wall cutting me off from life. I can’t even
manage to feel sad about it, just pensive. Perhaps other girls feel something
similar, I don’t know. Perhaps I missed out on my life’s true profession when
I
set out to find a career for life. Studying to learn a profession is something
we girls do halfheartedly anyhow, for us it isn’t the main thing. How strange
it
now seems to me that I became a teacher. Why not a dressmaker, or something
completely different? I can no longer even imagine the feelings that drove me
to
take up such a profession. What sense of wonder and promise held me in its
thrall? Did I think I would become a benefactress, did I feel I had no choice
but to see this as my duty, my calling? You believe all kinds of things when
you
lack experience, and later you experience things that make you see the world
quite differently. How very strange. Taking life as seriously as I did involves
a certain severity in the way one treats oneself. I must tell you, Simon: I took
life too seriously, too sacredly; I didn’t stop to consider that I was a girl
when I undertook a task fit only for men. No one told me I was a girl. No one
flattered me with such an observation. No one thought of me so thoughtfully as
would have been necessary to observe so simple a thing, which I’d have heeded
even if my first response was indignation. If these words had come from a heart,
I’d have heeded them. But all the words I heard were superficial, offhanded:
‘Do
this, do that. It’s good you want to take up a profession. It does you honor.’
And so on. What an honor it is to be a miserable girl filled with emptiness and
longings, as practicing this honorable profession has made me. A profession is
a
burden to be borne through life by a man with strong shoulders and a powerful
will: A girl like me is crushed by it. Does my profession bring me joy? None
at
all. Please don’t be too shocked by this confession; I’m only making it because
you’re the sort of person one almost longs to confess to. You understand me,
I
know you do. Others would perhaps understand me just as well, but only out of
a
sense of obligation. You understand willingly, as you have no reason to feel
shocked by simple, honest confessions. On the inside, you’re living my entire
life along with me, your sister. In fact you’re far too good to be only my
brother. What a pity you can’t be more to me: This too you’d do willingly; for
I
see you nodding your head. Let me continue. When a person has you as a listener,
it’s a pleasure to speak. And so hear this: I’ve decided to give up my school
career, and soon; for I lack the strength to withstand this life much longer.
I
thought it would be so lovely: introducing children to the world, teaching them,
opening their souls to virtue, watching over them and guiding them. And indeed
the task is lovely, but it’s also far too strenuous for a weak woman like me;
I’m no match for it, not by far. I thought I was, but now I realize the opposite
is true: I find myself buckling beneath my responsibilities. I thought it would
be a daily source of refreshment to me, but I only experience it as an excessive
and unjust burden. Something that oppresses you can’t help but seem unjust. Do
you think it’s unfair of me to feel this way? Don’t my feelings themselves set
the standard for measuring injustices against my person? And can I help it if
this injustice is, in its way, guileless and sweet: the children? The children!
I can no longer endure them. At the beginning I rejoiced at all their faces,
their little gestures, their eagerness, even their mistakes. I rejoiced at the
thought of devoting myself to this young, shy, helpless little band of humans.
But can a single thought belie the life one is experiencing, can one think away
a life with an idea? Beware the day when your idea and your sacrifice no longer
mean much to you—when you can no longer manage to think the thought that’s
supposed to compensate for all the rest with the heartfelt passion needed to
justify this exchange within your soul. Woe betide you if you even notice an
exchange was made. For then you’ll begin to brood, making distinctions, weighing
one thing against another, gloomily and balefully comparing; you’ll feel unhappy
at having become so fickle and unfaithful, and you’ll rejoice when each day
finally draws to a close so you can hide yourself away somewhere and weep.
Having just once tasted unfaithfulness, you’re ready to abandon your life’s
guiding principle, which demands utter devotion, and yet you declare: I’ll do
my
duty and think of nothing else! The children are still dear to me, they’ve
always been dear to me. Who can help being fond of children? But when I’m
teaching, I think of other things, things more distant and greater than their
little souls, and this constitutes a betrayal I can no longer endure. A
schoolteacher must lose herself in little things with all her heart, otherwise
she cannot exercise power, and without power she is worthless. Perhaps I’m
expressing myself in an exaggerated way, and I’m also quite aware that all or
most people to whom I might say these things would find them exaggerated. But
my
way of speaking accords with my view of life; surely it’s out of the question
I
might speak some other way. I haven’t yet learned to feign contentment,
satisfaction or a sense of well-being I don’t feel, and anyone who
thinks I might learn this is mistaken. I’m too weak to pretend and deceive, and
ponder this as I may, I cannot see any grounds that would justify this
dissimulation. If I speak to you now in this way, it’s because I’m taking
advantage of a moment—whose arrival I’ve long been awaiting—to unburden myself
of my weaknesses once and for all. It’s such a relief to be permitted to confess
one’s weaknesses after months of nerve-racking restraint, which have
demanded more strength than I possess. Since I cannot possibly go on
indefinitely performing duties that bring out the worst in me, I’m now looking
for work that will appeal both to my pride and to my weakness. Shall I succeed
in finding it? I truly cannot say, but one thing I do know for certain is that
I
must search until I’ve succeeded in convincing myself that happiness and duty
can coincide. I wish to become a private tutor and have already written to a
wealthy Italian lady offering my services in a perhaps somewhat overly long
letter in which I inform her that I am in a position to instruct two children,
a
girl and a boy, in all the subjects she might desire. I don’t now remember
everything I wrote, just that I am eager to exchange the schoolroom for a
nursery, that I love and respect children, that I can play the piano and
embroider pretty things and that I’m the sort of girl who flourishes under a
firm hand. I expressed myself with rather proud words, saying I was adept at
loving-kindness and obedience but incapable of flattery, that I could
flatter only if I myself were to demand it of me; that I would rather imagine
my
future employer as proud and strict than lenient, that it would cause me pain
and disappointment if I were to discover that one might, if one had such
intentions, easily, insolently deceive her; that I wasn’t planning to enter her
employment for the purpose of resting, but rather that I hoped to be given work
for both my heart and hands. I confessed to her that I was already,
anticipatorily, feeling heartfelt love for her two children, that I in no way
lack the respect for children a person needs to be able to educate them both
strictly and with devotion, that I expected to be given free rein to serve her,
my lady, that I possessed a simultaneously strict and easy-going
notion of service, and that it would be impossible to convince me to deviate
from it. I wrote that it would be pointless to expect from me slick or
lickspittle slavishness, and that I lacked all talent for performing courtesies
in a crude, indecorous way, but that I would gladly forgo gentle treatment and
instead be governed coldly and strictly as long as it was not in an insulting
manner, that I knew my own station and would at all times distinguish it from
hers, that I would not insist on justice but only on a pride that would forbid
her from treating me unjustly, that it would fill my heart with joy if she would
occasionally, even just once a year, be so kind as to give me some sign of her
satisfaction, which I would treasure far more than familiar treatment, which
I’d
find humiliating rather than a kindness, that I was hoping to find a lady I
could look up to in order to learn how a person should behave in all
circumstances, and that she had no cause to fear that by engaging me she would
be taking a gossip into her service who would enjoy blurting out her secrets.
I
told her I was incapable of saying how dearly I wished to admire and obey her
and to show her how very adept I would be at never being a burden to her. I then
gave voice to the fear and at the same time the hope that, while I don’t yet
speak the language of her country, I should soon master it if they would only
show me how to go about this. Otherwise I couldn’t think of anything that would
not give me the right to join her household, I said by way of conclusion, except
perhaps the shyness that still adhered to my person, but which I hoped to
overcome, as clumsiness and awkwardness were otherwise not in my nature—”

“Have you sent off the letter already?” Simon asked.

“Yes,” Hedwig went on, “what could have stopped me? Perhaps I shall
soon be going away from here, and this departure worries me; for I am leaving
behind a great deal and shall perhaps not receive anything in exchange that
would allow me to forget what I’ve discarded and abandoned. Nevertheless I have
firmly made up my mind to leave; I don’t wish to be alone with my dreams any
longer. You too will be leaving soon, and then what would I be doing here?
You’ll leave me behind like some leftover scrap, like an object that’s gone bad,
or rather it’ll be like this: The entire place, this village, everything here
will be the scrap, the abandoned, discarded, disregarded object—and I’ll still
be sitting right in the middle? No, I’ve become far too accustomed to seeing
the
life we lead here with the help of your eyes, finding it beautiful as long as
you did; and you did find it beautiful, and so I found it beautiful as well.
But
I wouldn’t go on finding it beautiful and large enough for me, I’d despise it
for being limited and dull, and it would in fact become limited and dull because
of my indifference and contempt. I cannot live and at the same time despise my
life. I must find myself a life, a new life, even if all of life consists only
of an endless search for life. What is respect compared to this other thing:
being happy and having satisfied the heart’s pride. Even being unhappy is better
than being respected. I am unhappy, despite the respect I enjoy; and so in my
own eyes I don’t deserve this respect; for I consider only happiness worthy of
respect. Therefore I must try whether it is possible to be happy without
insisting on respect. Perhaps there is a happiness of this sort for me, and a
respect accorded to love and longing rather than cleverness. I don’t want to
be
unhappy just because I lacked the courage to admit to myself that a person can
be unhappy on account of trying to be happy. Unhappiness of this sort is worthy
of respect; the other isn’t; it isn’t possible to respect a lack of courage.
How
can I sit by any longer as I condemn myself to a life that brings only respect,
and brings respect only from people who always want you to be just the way it
suits them best? Why should it suit them at all? And why must a person go
through the experience of learning that what you derive from all of this is
worth nothing at all? So now you’ve worried and waited and provided, and in the
end you’ve been made a fool of. It’s bitterly foolish to insist on waiting for
things; nothing ever comes to us if we don’t go and get it ourselves. To be
sure, we’re given a scare by cowards who make such a show of being worried on
our account. I almost hate them now, the ones who start shaking their heads the
minute you say anything even the least bit bold. I’d like to see how they behave
when they hear that the act requiring courage has been successfully carried out.
How these advice-givers will scatter before the mighty heart of a
freely performed deed! And how they enslave you with their saccharine love if
you fail to find this courage and instead submit to them. People here will be
so
sorry to see me move away and will be unable to understand how I can be leaving
behind such a pleasant and beneficial place; and I too shall be leaving the
country with a sentiment that still wishes to persuade me to remain. I dreamt
of
becoming a farmwife, of belonging to a man, a simple and tender human being,
of
owning a home with a bit of land and bit of garden, with a bit of sky to go
along with them, of planting and tilling and demanding no other love than
respect and experiencing the delight of watching my children grow up, which I’d
have found perfectly adequate compensation for the loss of a deeper love. The
sky would have touched the earth, each day would have rolled the one before it
down into time and times, and with all my cares I’d soon have become an old
woman standing on sunny Sundays at the door of my house, already almost
uncomprehendingly watching the people walk past. Then I’d never again have
striven for happiness and would have forgotten all more ardent sentiments, I’d
have obeyed my husband and his commands, along with what I’d have envisioned
as
my duty. And I’d have known what duties were expected of a farmer’s wife. My
dreams would have gone to sleep with the days like evenings, they would never
again have made demands. I’d have been contented and gay—content because I
didn’t know any better and gay because it wouldn’t have been right to show my
husband an ill-tempered, worry-darkened brow. My husband
would perhaps have been tactful enough to go easy on me at first, when many
things would still be surging and thrashing ardently within me, and to educate
me gently for the tasks that lay ahead, which I would have gratefully accepted;
and then things would have been all right, and one day I’d have observed with
astonishment that I no longer enjoyed the company of women whose dispositions
were characterized by impetuousness and longing, that is, those whose nature
was
as mine once had been, for I considered them dangerous and harmful. In a word:
I
would have become just like all the others and would have understood life just
as all the rest understood it. But all these things remained a mere dream. I
would be wary of saying something like this to anyone but you. Dreamers aren’t
ridiculous in your eyes, nor do you despise anyone for dreaming, since you
despise no one at all. And it’s not as if I were usually so
high-strung. How could I be? It’s just that I’ve gone on a bit too
long just now, and when I speak in such a way, it’s easy for me to say too much.
A person can’t help wishing to elucidate all her feelings, and yet this isn’t
possible, all you do is talk yourself into a frenzy. Come, let’s go to bed—”