The Tanners

Dear Kaspar, I am back in the city so well known to you and am sitting at a beautiful, dark-hued writing desk in a brightly lit room while down below in the street, in the summer night, beneath the trees with all their dangling leaves, people are out strolling. Unfortunately I cannot promenade along with them, for I am chained to a household, not exactly by my hands and feet, but by the sense of duty I am gradually developing, which does, after all, need to be established sooner or later. I have become the servant of a woman who has a sick little boy whom I look after, not much differently than a mother looks after her son, for his mother, my mistress, observes my every move as if her eye were guiding my actions and she were instilling in me her own solicitousness when I care for the boy. As I write this, she is now seated beside me in an armchair, for this is her own room; I’m sitting here with her permission. Matters now stand as follows: Every time some personal errand sends me out of doors, I must first ask “May I go out?” like an apprentice asking permission of his master. All the same, at least it’s a lady I’m having to ask, which sweetens the indignity of it. Being a servant, you should know, if you do not already, involves waiting attentively for orders, anticipating desires in advance, skillful swiftness and swift skillfulness in setting the table and brushing out carpets. I have already attained a certain perfection at the task of cleaning the shoes of my lady, whom I call simply my lady. This is only a small minor task, and yet it requires one to strive for perfection just like the greatest endeavor. With the small young gentleman I shall have to go for walks in the future when the weather is fair. There is a little brown carriage in which I can push the boy about — which, come to think of it, I’m not particularly looking forward to, since it will be tedious. Good Lord, do it I shall. My mistress is the sort of woman whose most striking and distinctive feature is her bourgeois sensibility. She’s a housewife through and through, but in such a strict and straightforward sense that one can see this characteristic as genteel. She’s quite a master at losing her temper, and I in turn have mastered the art of giving her cause for this. Today, for example, she broke a fancy porcelain bowl out of thoughtlessness and was furious with me for not having been the one to break it. She unleashed her fury at me because I was the disagreeable witness to her clumsiness, and made the sort of face one often sees caricatured in Fliegende Blätter. A real Fliegende Blätter face. I picked up the shards as daintily and slowly as possible in order to vex the woman, for I must admit it gives me pleasure to vex her. She is charming when vexed. Beautiful she isn’t, but severe women like this radiate a profound magic when they get worked up. The entire demure past of such a woman trembles in her fits of excitement, which are delectable to witness, as they’ve been ignited by such delicate causes. For me, this is just how it is: I can’t help adoring such women, for I admire and pity them at one and the same time. Such women can be haughty in their speech and bearing — so much that their cheeks nearly explode and their mouths get all pointy with the most painful scorn. I love scorn of this sort, for it makes me tremble, and I love being filled with shame and fury: This drives me on to higher things, spurs me on to deeds. But my lady there, the scornful one, is after all just a good gentle woman, this I know, and that’s what’s so scoundrelly about this whole business: my knowing this. When I obey her, responding to the commanding tone of her voice, I can’t help laughing all the while, for it clearly gives her pleasure to see how willingly and swiftly I obey. And now when I ask her for something, she snaps at me but then does kindly give in, perhaps feeling a bit of vexation at the fact that I have petitioned her in such a way that it isn’t possible to deny me. I am always hurting her just a little, thinking: It serves her right! Go on! Keep hurting her, just a little. It amuses her. It’s what she wants. She isn’t expecting anything different! It’s so easy to recognize women, yet so much about them is unrecognizable. Isn’t that strange, dear brother? In any case women are the most instructive thing a man can find anywhere on earth. — If she only knew, the one sitting here beside me, what I’ve been writing! One of my most ardent desires is to have my ears boxed by her as soon as possible, but I doubt, painful as this is to realize, that she’s capable of it. A good resounding box on the ears: If I could experience this, I’d gladly give up all kisses I might hope to expect. This ear-boxing business, I admit, is damnable on my part, but it’s also a genuinely bourgeois sentiment: It brings one back to childhood, and isn’t it quite ordinary to feel longing for what lies far behind you? There’s something far-in-the-past about my mistress; glimpsing that element sends your thoughts far, far back in time, to a place possibly even more distant than childhood. I’ll no doubt kiss her hand one of these days, and then she’ll give me the boot or chuck me out, as they say. May I do so, and may she. What would be so awful about that? — Oh, I’m going to the dogs here, let me tell you, it already shows. My mind is occupied with folding napkins and polishing knives, and what’s queer is that I like it. Can you imagine a greater idiocy? How are you? I spent three months in the country, but now it feels to me as if that time’s already far in the past. I have every intention of becoming a person who devotes himself fully to each day without considering his ties to more nebulous things. Sometimes I’m too lazy even to think of you, and this strikes me as enormously indolent. I hope to see Klara again soon. Perhaps you’ve forgotten her already, and then I shouldn’t be bringing up the matter to begin with. And so I shan’t. Adieu, dear brother.