The Tanners

“What’s more, I haven’t the least desire to pursue some splendid career. What means the most to some people means least to me. I cannot in God’s name value careerist ambitions. I want to live, but I don’t want to go running down some career path — supposedly such a grand enterprise. What’s so grand about it: people acquiring crooked backs at an early age from stooping at undersized desks, wrinkled hands, pale faces, mutilated workday trousers, trembling legs, fat bellies, sour stomachs, bald spots upon their skulls, bitter, snappish, leathery, faded, insipid eyes, ravaged brows and the consciousness of having been conscientious fools. No thank you! I prefer to remain poor but healthy and forego a stately dwelling in favor of an inexpensive room, even if the view is of the darkest of alleyways; I’d rather live with financial difficulties than be faced with the difficult decision of where to travel on summer holidays to restore my ruined health, though to be sure I currently enjoy the respect of only a single person, namely myself. But this is the one whose respect is worth the world to me; I am free and can always, when necessity commands, sell my freedom for a certain length of time so as to be free again after. It’s worth remaining poor for the sake of freedom. I have enough to eat; for I possess the talent of feeling sated after eating very little. I fly into a rage whenever someone approaches me with the words ‘lifetime position’ and all the presumptions implied therein. I wish to remain a human being. In a word: I love what is risky, unfathomable, floating and uncontrolled!”

“I like you,” the nurse said.

“I certainly had no intention of inducing you to like me, but it nonetheless pleases me if you do, as I’ve been speaking quite freely and frankly. Incidentally, there was no call for me to be so testy in speaking of others. That’s always stupid — you have no right to disparage circumstances simply because they don’t happen to be to your liking. One can always leave, I can always leave! But no, things are quite to my liking. My situation pleases me. People please me just as they are. For my part, I use all the means at my disposal to induce my fellow men to like me. I’m hardworking and industrious when I have a task to perform, but I won’t sacrifice the pleasure I take in the world for anyone’s sake, at most I’d sacrifice it for our sacred fatherland — the occasion for which, however, has to this day failed to present itself, a circumstance I expect to continue. Let them pursue their careers, I can understand this, they wish to live in comfort and see to it their children will also have something, they’re good providers whose actions are nothing if not laudable; so let them also leave me to do as I please, to pluck life’s pleasures as I see fit — this is something everyone tries to do, every one of us, just not in the same way. How wonderful it is to be mature enough to let others do as they will in their own way, as best they know how. No, if a person has faithfully discharged his duties for thirty years, he is certainly no fool when he reaches the end of his career, as I said before in my testiness; rather, he is a man of honor who has earned the wreaths that will be placed on his grave. You see, I don’t want any wreaths on my grave — that’s the whole difference. My end is a matter of no interest to me. They’re always telling me, other people, that I shall have to pay bitterly one day for my cockiness. Well then, so I’ll pay, and I’ll learn then what it means to pay for something. I like to learn things and so I’m not nearly as apprehensive as people who worry about their nice smooth futures. I’m always afraid some life experience might pass me by. In this sense I’m as ambitious as ten Napoleons. But now I’m hungry, I’d like to get something to eat, would you join me? It would be a pleasure for me.”

And the two of them went off together.

After his rather wild speech, Simon had suddenly grown soft and gentle. With enchanted eyes he gazed at the beautiful world, the round, opulent crowns of the tall trees and the streets where people were walking. “Dear, mysterious people!” he thought to himself and raised no objection when his new friend touched his shoulder with his hand. It pleased him that the other was becoming so chummy: This fit quite nicely, it was both a bond and a release. He saw everything with laughing, happy eyes, at the same time thinking: “How beautiful eyes are!” A child was looking up at him. To be walking along beside a companion like the nurse struck him as a great novelty, something he’d never before experienced, but agreeable in any case. On the way, the nurse purchased a portion of fresh beans from a greengrocer’s and some bacon at a butcher shop, and he invited Simon to come have lunch with him, an offer that was willingly accepted.