The Tanners

Several weeks of marvelous summer passed in this way. Simon had never before experienced so marvelous a summer as this year, when he was spending so much of his life on the street looking for work. Nothing came of his efforts, but at least it was beautiful. When he walked in the evening through the modern, leaf-trembling, shadowy, light-flickering streets, he was always unceremoniously approaching people and saying something foolish, just to see how it would feel. But all the people just looked at him in bewilderment — they didn’t say anything. Why wouldn’t they speak to the one walking and standing there, why didn’t they ask him, their voices low, to come with them, go into a strange house and there engage in some activity only people of leisure indulge in, people who, like himself, have no other life purpose than watching the day pass by and evening arrive, in full expectation that evening will bring miracles and fantastical deeds? “I’d be prepared to undertake any deed, provided it was bold and required some derring-do,” he said to himself. For hours he sat upon a bench listening to the music that came murmuring from some regal hotel garden, as if the night had been transformed into soft notes. Nocturnal womenfolk passed by the solitary watcher, but they only needed to take a good look to know how things stood with the young man’s wallet. “If only I knew a single person whom I could touch for a bit of money,” he thought. “My brother Klaus? That wouldn’t be honorable; I’d get the money, but accompanied with a faint, sad reproach. There are people one can’t go begging to because their thoughts are too pure. If only I knew someone whose respect weren’t so important to me. No, I can’t think of anyone. I care about everybody’s respect. I’ll have to wait. You don’t actually need so much in summer, but winter’s on its way! I’m a bit scared of winter. I have no doubt that things will go badly with me this coming winter. Well, then I’ll go running about in the snow, even if I’m barefoot. What harm can come of it. I’ll keep going until my feet are on fire. In summer, it’s so lovely to rest, to lie upon a bench beneath the trees. All of summer is like a warm fragrant room. Winter is a thrusting open of windows, the winds and storms come howling and blustering in and that makes you have to move about. I’ll soon give up my laziness then. It’ll be fine with me, come what may! How long the summer seems to me. It’s only been a few weeks I’ve been living in summer, and it already seems so long. I think time must be sleeping and stretching out as it sleeps if you’re always having to think what to do next, just to get through the day on your few coins. Besides which, I believe that time spends the summer sleeping and dreaming. The leaves on the tall trees are growing ever larger, at night they whisper, and in the daytime they doze in the warm sunshine. I, for example, what do I do? When I have no work, I spend entire days lying in bed with the shutters closed, in my room, reading by candlelight. Candles have such a delightful smell, and when you blow them out, a fine, moist smoke floats through the dark room, and then a person feels so peaceful, so new, as if resurrected. How will I manage to pay my rent? Tomorrow it’s due. Nights are so long in the summer because you stroll and slumber all day long, and the moment night falls, you awaken from all sorts of confused buzzings and stirrings and begin to live. Now it would seem to me almost sinful to sleep through even a single summer night. Besides, it’s too humid to sleep. In summertime your hands are moist and pale as if they sense the preciousness of the fragrant world, and in winter they’re red and swollen as if angry about the cold. Yes, that’s how it is. Winter makes you go stamping around in a rage, whereas in summer you wouldn’t be able to find any cause for anger, except perhaps the circumstance that you’re incapable of paying your rent. But this has nothing to do with the beautiful summer. And I’m not angry anymore either, I think I’ve lost the talent for flying into a rage. It’s nighttime now, and anger is such a daylight phenomenon, as red and fiery as a thing can be. Tomorrow I’ll have a talk with my landlady—”

The next morning he inserted his head into the door of the room where his landlady lived and asked with intentionally precise intonation whether he might have a word with her, should she have the time.

“Of course! What is it?”