The Tanners

The next morning at eight, Simon was already installed at the Office, and a few days later he’d accustomed himself to his co-workers. These were all people who at some point in their lives had succumbed to some form of dissolution and lost the ground under their unsteady feet. There were people there who because of some serious offense committed years before had spent time in jail. An old, very handsome man was known to have spent years in prison because of a heinous crime against morality he’d committed against his own flesh and blood: his daughter, who denounced him to the judge. In all the time Simon observed him, his silent strange face remained free of all expression, as though silence and listening were native to that face and had become a necessity. He worked calmly, peacefully and slowly, was handsome, looked at you calmly when you looked at him, and appeared to be not in the least conscious of some tormenting memory. His heart seemed to be beating as quietly as his old hand was working. No trace of a grimace could be remarked in any of his features. He appeared to have atoned for and washed away everything that might ever have disfigured or soiled him. His clothes were tidier than those of the administrator, although he must have been poor. His teeth and hands were curiously well groomed, as were his shoes and clothes. His soul appeared to be calm and unusually pure. Simon thought of him: “Why not? Can’t sins be washed away, and should a jail sentence destroy an entire life? No, one sees neither a sin once committed nor a jail term served when one looks at this man. He appears to have forgotten both of them completely. There must be goodness and love in this man, and great strength, really a huge amount of it — but all the same: how strange!”