The Tanners

“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.”

Simon leapt to his feet, violently agitated, his cheeks flushed with indignation:

“What’s that you’re saying? In the family? You’re quite mistaken, my noble storyteller. Take a good look at me, if you will. Do you perhaps see in me as well something that might run in the family? Must I too be sent to the madhouse? This would indubitably occur if it ran in the family, for I too come from this family. That young man is my brother. I’m not at all ashamed to identify as my brother this merely unfortunate and by no means insidious individual. Is his name not Emil, Emil Tanner? Could I know this if he were not my own dear natural brother? Is his father, who is also mine, not a flour merchant by any chance, who also does a flourishing business in wine from the Burgundy region and oil from Provence?”

“Indeed, all that is true,” said the man who’d been telling the story.

Simon went on: “No, it cannot possibly run in the family. I shall deny this as long as I live. It’s simply misfortune. It can’t have been the women. You’re quite right when you say it wasn’t them. Must these poor women always be at fault when men succumb to misfortune? Why don’t we think a bit more simply about it? Can it not lie in a person’s character, in a particle of the soul? Like this, and always like this, and therefore in the soul? Look, if you will, how I am moving my hand just now: Like this, and in the soul! That’s where it lies. A human being feels something, and then he acts in such-and-such a way, and then collides with various walls and uneven spots, just like that. People are always so quick to think of horrific genetic inheritances and the like. To me that seems ridiculous. And what cowardice and lack of reverence to insist on holding his parents and his parents’ parents responsible for his misfortune. This shows a lack of both propriety and courage, not to mention the most unseemly soft-heartedness! When misfortune crashes down upon your head, it’s just that you’ve provided all that was needed for fate to produce a misfortune. Do you know what my brother was to me, to me and Kaspar, my other brother, to us younger ones? He taught us on our shared walks to have a sense for the beautiful and noble, at a time when we were still the most wretched rascals whose only interest was getting up to tricks. From his eyes we imbibed the fire that filled them when he spoke to us of art. Can you imagine what a splendid time that was, how ambitious — in the boldest, most beautiful sense of the word — our quest for understanding? Let’s drink one more bottle together, I’m buying, yes that’s right, even though I’m just an unemployed ne’er-do-well. Hey there! Innkeeper, a bottle of Waadtländer, your finest. — I’m a person who knows no pity. I forgot all about my poor brother Emil long ago. I can’t even manage to think of him, for you see, I’m the sort whose standing in the world is so precarious that he must struggle with all his might to keep on his feet. I don’t want to fall down until such time as I’ll no longer harbor thoughts of getting up again. Yes, that’s when I might perhaps have time to think of these unfortunates and feel pity: when I myself have become pitiable. But this isn’t yet the case, and for the moment when it comes to my own death I intend to go on laughing and jesting. In me you behold a fairly indestructible individual able to endure all sorts of adversity. Life need not be so sparkly to enchant my eyes — to me it’s already sparkling. I generally find it quite beautiful and can’t understand the ones who carp and call it ugly. Here comes the wine. Drinking wine always makes me feel so elegant. My poor brother is still alive! I thank you, sir, for having forced my memory to encounter this unhappy man today. And now, leaving all soft-heartedness behind: Let us raise our glasses, gentlemen: Long live misfortune!—”

“Why, if I might ask?”

“You go too far!”