The Tanners

Simon was walking beside Klaus, happy that his felicitous simple answers to all the many questions his brother kept asking were successfully instilling in the latter the conviction that he was definitely by no means a lost soul yet. With both a certain pride and humility in his voice he addressed his more seasoned brother, who all the same was like an unschooled child when asking about certain things, though he always displayed a loving concern. Without even trying, they spoke in beautiful, long, circuitous sentences, and it delighted Klaus to see how comprehending Simon was regarding various things he’d at first assumed his brother, given his circumstances, would simply make fun of and laugh at. “I didn’t think you half so serious as you are proving to be!” Simon replied: “I don’t make a habit of displaying my reverence for a great many things. I tend to keep matters like this to myself, for I believe: What’s the point of wearing a serious expression if one’s been earmarked by fate — I mean, if a person has perhaps been chosen — to play the fool. Fates aplenty exist, and to them I shall submit without complaint. Is there any other choice? Besides, I’d like to see someone just try to accuse me of hanging my head, dumbfounded, despondent. I’ve already made it clear to various people how things stand with my innermost being.” —When Simon spoke like this, he did so in fluent sentences and with proper intonation, and with such perfect calm affability that Klaus didn’t view these declarations as chips on his younger brother’s shoulder but rather as a certain searching on his soul’s part to clarify its own status vis-à-vis the world. Klaus was managing to convince himself that Simon possessed some serviceable qualities, but he was nonetheless still somewhat afraid that these qualities might merely be floating, cavorting, beckoning and dancing superficially about the person of his brother rather than rooted firmly within him. After all, it was simple enough for such a soul to grow ardent in speech, conjuring up an entire world of obedience and sweet serviceability that might intoxicate it for hours on end, particularly on such an occasion as a reunion after many years. And yet Klaus was delighting in his brother’s presence and said all sorts of sweet comforting things to him with visible pleasure. Behind them, at a certain remove, pressed tightly together, walked Klara and Kaspar. The painter was intoxicated by the beauty and music of the night. He was dreaming of horses galloping through nocturnal gardens bearing lovely slender riders on their backs whose skirts played on the ground with the horses’ hooves. Then he laughed at it all — impudent, irrepressible laughter — laughed at all the people, the landscape and every last thing that came before his eyes. Klara didn’t even try to quiet him, on the contrary, she was delighting in the beauty of this unshackled spirit. How she loved the youth, the impudence, even the presumptuousness of this boyish creature laboring to reach manhood. He might be jabbering away ridiculously, saying things that, coming from another’s mouth, she’d have found inane and idiotic — but on his lips she loved them. What was it about this person that compelled her to find him so unconditionally fetching in every situation and gesture — his behavior, all he did and left undone, his speaking and his silence? In her eyes he was a match for all mankind, superior to other men, and yet he was scarcely a man at all. His gait, how should she put it, had something awkward about it and yet also commanding. This entire young person displayed not a trace of agitation, and yet there was something shy, foolish, profoundly childish about him. So calm and yet so swift to catch fire! She could see his hair, luminous in the darkness, youthful and undulant. Add to that his gait and the way he held his head aloft with such modest, questioning, contemplative pride. How this youth must daydream when he was thinking of someone. Kaspar had grown quieter. Always she gazed at him, always! On this night filled with wandering strollers, it was lovely to gaze at him, so lovely one might swoon. She found looking at him even lovelier than kissing him. She saw his lips part as if in pain; surely he wasn’t thinking anything in particular, no, most certainly not; it was just the way he held his lips that made her think of pain. His eyes were coolly, calmly gazing into the distance, as though they knew of better things to be observed there. His eyes seemed to be speaking: “We, we are looking upon beauty; do not torment yourselves, all you other human eyes, for you shall never see what we do!” His eyebrows curved with enchanting lightness, as if in worry, like angels bending over children — the eyes — which looked, as they gazed about, as though they might be injured at any moment. “To be sure, any human eye can easily be injured, but gazing at his eyes instantly fills me with pain, as though I can see them already pierced by splinters. So large and prominent and yet apparently so unconcerned, they are always heedlessly wide open; how easily they might be injured!” she lamented. She didn’t even know if he loved her, but what did it matter, after all she loved him, and that was enough, indeed it could not be otherwise; she was on the verge of tears. Then Simon and Klaus came back to join the others. Klara pulled herself together as best she could, took Simon’s arm and walked on with him before the others. “Let me look into your eyes,” she said to him. “You have such lovely eyes, Simon — looking at them is like lying in bed when all is calm, and saying a prayer.”