The Tanners

“I was forced to seek employment, and found a job working for a photographer as his receptionist. Coming into contact with so many people there, I was courted and even proposed to several times, but I brushed them all aside with a smile. All men thought, looking at me: ‘There’s something so tender about her, so domestic-motherly, she’d be a good one!’ But I didn’t become anyone’s ‘good one.’ My position allowed me certain expenditures, at least I was able to keep all my lovely dresses, which has proved useful to this day. My boss was a man I was able to respect, which made my work much easier, and I performed my work as if caught up in a quiet pleasant dream. I’d accustomed myself to flashing a quite particular smile when clients came in, and this made me quite popular, everyone thought I was kind, and I attracted customers, which prompted my employer to increase my salary. At the time I was almost happy. Everything vanished before me in a haze of lovely sweet memories. I felt the approach of my labor pains, and this contributed to my melancholy-happy mood. It was snowing, the streets were completely enveloped in flakes. And when in the evening I walked through the snowy streets, I thought of you brothers, you and Kaspar and a great deal of Hedwig, to whom I paid grateful homage in my thoughts and feelings. I only allowed myself to write her a single time. She never answered. ‘But that’s for the best,’ I thought. I found myself too for the best when I thought such things. I was becoming more and more fulfilled by everything, and I walked always with slow steps, feeling every footstep as an act of human kindness. Meanwhile I gave up my elegant room in the center of town and found lodgings here where you now see me. In the morning and evening I’d ride the electric streetcar back and forth, always attracting the attention of the other passengers. There was something odd about me, I myself could feel this. Many unconsciously starting talking to me, a few wishing just to exchange a word or two, and others to make my acquaintance. But acquaintances no longer had much appeal for me. I thought I could tell everything in advance, and this gave me such a decisive, rejecting but also gentle feeling that soothed me. Men! How often they spoke to me. They resembled curious children who wanted to know what I did, where I lived, whom I knew, where I ate lunch and how I was in the habit of spending my evenings. They appeared to me like innocent, rather importunate children; that’s what I was like at the time. Never did I respond harshly to a single one of them; I had no need to, for not one man allowed himself liberties: To them I was a lady who simultaneously attracted them and left them cold. Once a small, clever-looking girl spoke to me, this was Rosa, the Rosa you know. She revealed all her sufferings to me and her life story, the two of us became friends, and now she’s gone and married, though I advised her not to. She often visits me, me, the Queen of the Poor!” —

Again Klara fell silent for a moment, looking at Simon with childish amusement, and then went on speaking: