The Tanners

Simon was partial to these ladies and always felt happy when they came in, for it seemed to him as if these dear kind women were visiting a room filled with small poor children to watch them enjoying a feast. “Are not the masses like a big poor little child that must be given a guardian to watch over it?” something in him cried out, “and is it not better for it to be watched over by women, who after all are elegant ladies and have kindly hearts, than by tyrants in the old if admittedly more heroic sense?” —So many different sorts of people were eating in this dining hall, all united as a single harmonious family! Female students predominated. Did students have the time and money to lunch at the Hotel Continental? And then there were serving men in thin blue smocks with boots on their legs, large bristly moustaches and rather rectangular mouths on their faces. Could they help it if their mouths were rectangular? No doubt many a guest at the Hotel Royal displayed rectangular proclivities in the moustache region. To be sure, the angularity in that case was whitewashed with roundness, but what significance did this have? Maidservants without posts were represented as well, down-at-the-heels copyists, and outcasts in general: the penniless, stateless, even some who had not so much as an address to their names. Here one also encountered women of easy virtue: females with oddly coiffed hair, blue faces, chubby hands and expressions simultaneously shameless and demure. All these people — especially, of course, the holy rollers, a contingent of whom was present — displayed, as a rule, shy courteous behavior. Each gazed into the faces of the others while eating; not a word was spoken, except, now and then, a quiet, polite one. This was the visible blessing of the public good and moderation. Something comical, artless, subdued and yet also liberated rested upon these squalid individuals, in their manners, which were as colorful as the wings of a summer bird. Others comported themselves with more delicacy here than the most refined guest at the finest establishment. No telling who they were, what they had been in earlier days, before winding up at this public dining hall. After all, wasn’t life in the habit of jumbling together human fates as if shaking them in a dice cup? Simon was sitting in a little corner niche, a sort of window bay, eating butter with honey spread together on a slice of bread, and drinking a cup of coffee: “What need have I to eat more on such a beautiful day. Is not the blue sky of early summer peering sweetly through the window at my golden meal? Yes, this meal is most certainly golden. Just look at the honey: Hasn’t it a bright-yellow, sweet-golden appearance? Upon the little white plate this gold flows about so appealingly, and scraping off a bit with my knife point, I imagine I am digging for gold and have just discovered a treasure. The white of the butter lies delightfully beside it, and then comes the brown hue of the tasty bread, and most beautiful of all is the dark brown of the coffee in the delicate clean cup. Is there any meal on earth that could look more beautiful and appetizing? And I am sating my hunger quite excellently with it, and need I do more than sate my hunger to be able to say: I have eaten? There are people, I hear, who make a culture, an art out of eating; well, can I not say just the same of myself? Most certainly! It’s just that my art is a humble one and my culture more delicate, for I enjoy this modest fare more rapturously and voluptuously than others enjoy endless cornucopias of plenty. Besides, I don’t like it when meals drag on and on — I lose my appetite. What pleases me best is feeling the desire to eat again and again, and for this reason I eat sparingly and with delicacy. Which incidentally brings me another benefit as well: delectable conversations with ever new people.”

Simon had scarcely murmured or thought these words when an old man with white hair sat down in the empty seat beside him. The old man’s face displayed a gray, haggard pallor, his nose was dripping, or rather, a large drop hung from his nose, unable to fall and yet heavy enough to fall. One was constantly expecting it to fall at any moment. But the drop clung on. The man ordered a dish of boiled potatoes and nothing more, and then he ate his potatoes, carefully sprinkling them with salt from the tip of his knife, with elaborate pleasure. But beforehand he folded his hands together and said a prayer to his Lord God. Simon allowed himself the following little prank: He secretly ordered a slice of roast meat from the serving girl and, when it arrived, he had a good laugh at the man’s astonishment when the plate was set down before none other than himself.

“Why do you pray before you eat,” Simon asked simply.

“I pray because I need to,” the old man replied.

“Then I’m glad I saw you praying — I was just curious what sort of sentiment prompted you.”