The Tanners (22 page)

“What a melancholy dream I’ve just had,” he thought as he rose
from the bed. Meanwhile evening had come. He went to the window and for the
first time looked down into the alleyway that lay far beneath him. Two men
were just walking by, there was just barely room for the two of them to walk
comfortably side by side between the high walls. They were speaking, and the
sound of their words rose to his ears with a strange clarity up the walls
which then carried the sound even further. The sky was a golden, deeply
saturated blue that awoke an indeterminate longing. Directly opposite Simon
in the house across the way, two female figures appeared and prodded him
with their rather impertinent, laughing glances. He felt as if he were being
touched with unclean hands. One of the figures addressed him across the
alleyway without even raising her voice—it was as if the three of them were
sitting together in a single room that just happened to contain a narrow
band of sky: “You must be very lonely!”

“Oh, yes! But it’s lovely to be lonely!”

And he closed the window as the two women burst into laughter. What
could he have discussed with them that would not have been unseemly? Today he
wasn’t in the mood. The changes once again affecting his life had put him in
a
somber frame of mind. He drew the white curtains, lit the lamp, and went on
reading the Stendhal novel that he hadn’t managed to finish reading in the
countryside with Hedwig.

–14–

After he’d read for an hour, he extinguished the lamp, opened the
window, and went out of his room and then out the building’s front door to the
steeply inclined street. A heavy, warm darkness received him. The old part of
town was full of tiny drinking establishments, so many that a person walking
along might find it difficult to choose. He took a few more steps in the lively,
bustling street, then went into a bar. A small, jolly company was assembled at
a
round table, their focal point apparently a humorous little fellow in their
midst, for everyone started laughing whenever he opened his mouth. He must have
been one of those people who, whatever he happens to say, always has a comical,
laugh-muscle-stimulating effect. Simon sat down at a table
occupied by two young men and involuntarily listened to what they were saying.
They were conversing earnestly, using many quite intelligent expressions. The
subject of their discussion seemed to be a young, unhappy man whom both had
apparently known quite well. But now one of them was listening without
interruption as the other told his story, and Simon heard the following:

“Yes, a splendid fellow! Even as a boy, when his hair was still long
and his trousers short and he went out for walks on the streets of our small
town holding his nursemaid’s hand, already people would turn to look at him,
saying: ‘What a stunning little
fellow!’ He completed his assignments with
a great deal of
talent—his school assignments, I mean. His teachers
loved him, he was docile and easy to teach. His cleverness made it easy for him
to fulfill his responsibilities at school. He was a splendid gymnast, and
skilled at drawing and sums. I know at least that the teachers held him up as
a
role model to later generations of pupils, and even to some of his older
schoolmates. His soft features and those magnificent eyes filled with masculine
presentiment bewitched all who came into contact with the lad. He enjoyed a
certain celebrity by the time his parents sent him away to continue his studies.
Coddled by his mother, which everyone could understand, and admired by all, his
spirit must have acquired early on that softness that comes with privilege and
recognition, that lassitude, that lovely insouciance that permits a young person
to easily master the pleasures of life. When school holidays arrived, he’d come
home with glorious grade reports and a horde of young schoolfellows who thrilled
his mother’s ear with tales of his various successes. Naturally he concealed
from his mother the successes that even then he’d begun to have with girls of
easy virtue, who found him handsome and kind. He spent his holidays hiking
through the lowlands; and in the vast high mountains that beckoned to him
because they reached so high up and so far off into the indeterminate distance,
he would spend not just hours but days in the gay company of rapturous dreamers
like himself. He bewitched and beguiled them all
.
—In his good
health and his mental and physical suppleness he resembled a god who seemed only
to be spending a short time at a classical gymnasium for his own amusement. When
he was out walking, girls turned to look after him as though the glances he’d
cast back in their direction were drawing them on. Upon his blond, handsome head
he wore a blue student cap at a rakish angle. He was enchantingly frivolous.
Once—the county fair was on, and the large square where usually herds of animals
were rounded up was now covered with stands, huts, carousels, slides, pony
rides—he substituted a bird rifle loaded with real shot for the ordinary
harmless pop-gun at a shooting gallery where he could often be seen,
since the girl who worked handing out the guns there had caught his fancy. The
tiny bullet pierced the canvas wall of the booth and continued on into the wagon
parked right behind it and missed injuring a small sleeping child by a hair’s
breadth. This was the wagon that served these itinerant folk as their family
home. Naturally this prank came to light, several others were added to it as
well, and the next time holidays came around, the report of the young pupil’s
grades contained an acrimonious comment from the school principal, who wrote
the
parents a generous letter simultaneously filled with ceremonious sentiments and
the warm recommendation that they voluntarily take their child out of school,
since his expulsion would otherwise be an imminent necessity. The reasons:
senseless behavior, inciting others, being a bad influence, and
irresponsibility. The letter went on about the principal’s great responsibility,
the duties to be fulfilled while also taking into consideration—in short, all
those things that are always invoked in such cases: morality under siege, the
need to protect those not yet corrupted, and so on—”

The man telling the story paused for a little while.

Simon took advantage of this opportunity to draw attention to his
presence and said:

“Your story interests me from several points of view. Please, permit
me to continue listening to you. I am a young man who has just turned his back
on a career opportunity and could perhaps learn something from what you are
relating; for it seems to me you always gain something by listening to a true
story—”

The two men took a good look at Simon, but he seemed not to make too
bad an impression on them, as the one who had been speaking invited him to go
on
listening if this gave him pleasure, and then he continued:

“The youth’s parents were naturally filled with great consternation
and even greater worry by his expulsion; for where might one find parents so
indifferent that they might behave in their usual way under such distressing
circumstances. At first they were of the opinion that it would be best to remove
the rogue entirely from his scholarly course of study and have him apprenticed
to learn a solid profession like machinist or metalworker. Even the word and
land America entered their thoughts; given their son’s predicament, it must have
occurred to them of its own accord. But things came to pass quite differently.
Once more the mother’s tender heart prevailed as it had so often before when
the
father was determined to take drastic steps; she had her way. The young man was
sent to study at a far-off, isolated institute where he was to prepare
for the profession of schoolmaster. This was a French institute where the boy
would have no choice but to behave in a fitting manner. At any rate by the time
he’d served his sentence and left the place behind, he’d become a
practical-minded, youthful teacher. He found a temporary post near his
native town. He taught the children as best he could, and at home, when time
allowed, read the French and English classics in their original tongues; for
he
had a truly wonderful talent for languages, and, secretly thinking of another
career, he wrote letters to America seeking a post as a private tutor, an
endeavor that bore no fruit, and lived a life divided between duty and a
reserved unrestrainedness. Since it was summer, he often went with his pupils
to
bathe in the deep, swift-running canal. He’d join his pupils in the
water to show them how to go about learning to swim. But one day the current
caught hold of him and whisked him away so fast it looked as if he would surely
drown. The pupils were already running back to town, shouting: ‘Our teacher has
drowned!’ But the strong young man was able to fight his way free of the
treacherous whirlpools and came home again. Some time later, though, he found
himself in a different place: surrounded by mountains in a small but affluent
village filled with companionable people who respected him less as teacher than
as a human being. He was an accomplished pianist in addition to being a
generally quite likeable fellow who, when in company with several others, was
expert at twining the magical thread of conversation entirely about himself.
A
perfectly dear but no longer very young maiden fell so terribly in love with
the
teacher that she arranged for him to enjoy all manner of comforts and
conveniences and introduced him to all the most influential people in the
village. She came from an old family of officers whose ancestors had once
performed military service in foreign lands. One day, as a memento, she gave
him
a charming little ornamental dagger that was surely by no means innocuous as
a
weapon and in its day may well have dripped blood occasionally. It was a
splendid piece, and the good, dear woman presented this trinket with downcast
eyes, perhaps suppressing a deep sigh. When with a romantically noble bearing
he
sat at the piano and played, she would listen, unable to take her eyes off him.
Often she went ice-skating with him, since it was winter, upon the
high-up small mountain lake, and both of them delighted in this
pleasurable activity. Soon the young man wished to depart again, however, and
all the more so as he felt all too vividly the warm, tempting bond that would
so
dearly have liked to fetter him to this village forever, but from which he must
escape if he was still to possess the wish to aspire to some form of greatness
in the world. So he went traveling, using the money of this woman, who was rich
and found it gave her a melancholy and lugubrious joy to give him money without
any restrictions on its use. And he traveled to Munich, where he lived the high
life in the manner of the students there, then came home again, started looking
for a post, and found one at a private institute that lay at the foot of a
mountain range embellished with fir forests. There he was required to instruct
young boys from all over the globe, the offspring of the wealthy, which he did
for a time with great love and much interest, but then he got into trouble with
his superior—the proprietor of the institute—and left. Then it was the turn of
Italy, to which he journeyed as a private tutor, followed by England, where he
was given two half-grown girls to instruct but only got up to mischief
with them. He returned home again, his head haunted by wild notions and his
heart, now empty, burning with helpless fantasies that had no claim on reality.
His mother, into whose lap he longed to throw himself, died around this time.
He
was empty and inconsolable. He imagined immersing himself in politics, but for
this he possessed neither sufficient general knowledge and
cool-headedness nor the necessary polish and tact. He also wrote stock
market reports, but senseless ones; for they were written poetically, products
of an already destroyed mind. He authored poems, plays and musical compositions,
painted and drew, but childishly, like a dilettante. Meanwhile he’d taken up
a
post again, though admittedly only for a brief time, and then a new post, and
then a new one! He drifted around between a dozen differ
ent places,
believing and finding himself betrayed and hurt
everywhere he went,
he lost his sense of propriety vis-à-vis his pupils and
borrowed money from them, for he was always out of cash. He was still a slender,
handsome man, gentle and elegant in appearance and still noble in his bearing
as
long as he had his wits about him. But this was now rarely the case. Nowhere
on
earth could he hold a job for long—he’d be sent away as soon as people got wind
of his true nature, or else leave of his own accord, giving the most peculiar,
cobbled-together explanations. This, of course, led to utter fatigue
and enervation. From Italy he’d still been writing his brother enthused,
idealistic letters. In London, where he suffered deprivations, he once walked
into the business office of a prosperous silk merchant, an uncle of his,
petitioning for support in his miserable circumstances; he was asking for money,
perhaps not explicitly, but it was clear what he meant, and they sent him away,
shrugging their shoulders, without giving him anything. How his beautiful,
gentle human pride must have suffered when he found the courage to go beg alms
from ignoble people. But what was he not forced to do, seeing the deprivations
he suffered! One may speak of pride, but one must also remember all of life’s
happenstance, all the circumstances that can make it inhuman to keep demanding
pride from a human being. And the one asking for help was soft. He’d always
possessed a childishly soft heart, and it was a simple matter for the pain and
regret over his lost chances to destroy this heart. One day, after all his
wanderings, he turned up at home again: pale, fatigued and exhausted, with his
clothes in tatters. His father no doubt received him heartlessly, and his sister
as kindly as she dared before the eyes of their incensed father. It was his idea
to find a little editorial job somewhere, and he meanwhile loitered about the
city, where he gave all the girls rings and said he wanted to marry them. It
was
quite clear he was already becoming infantile. There were rumors, of course,
and
people laughed. Then he went away again, to take up a teaching post, but there
it was demonstrated that for this world he was no longer suitable. One day he
came into the schoolroom with one bare foot; one of his feet was missing its
shoe and stocking. He no longer knew what he was doing, or else he was simply
doing what his other, mad mind commanded him. During this same period he erased
a demerit that had been recorded in his military service record, one he’d
received years before on account of a serious failing on his part. As a
result—since this bold crime came to light—he was locked up in prison. From
there, since his mental state was soon apparent, he was transferred to a
madhouse, where he still lives today. I know all these things because I was
often his companion, over many years, both in civilian life and in the military,
and I also helped bring him to the place where he is now, where he had to be
brought unfortunately.”

“How sad!” the other man said.

“Let’s drink up and go,” said the one who’d been telling this story,
adding: “Some insist on claiming that the girls of ill repute he’d been involved
with had destroyed him, but I don’t believe this; I think people tend to
exaggerate the bad influence these wenches can exert on a man. These things
aren’t quite so serious, and perhaps madness just ran in the family.”