The Tanners by Robert Walser Page B

I’m feeling tired.
     You’re sweet when you talk. I’m very fond of you.”
    Rosa held out her little hand to her young friend, who kissed it, said
     good night and departed. When he was gone, little Rosa sat there for a long time
     crying quietly to herself. She was weeping over her beloved, a young man with
     curls on his head, an elegant gait, an aristocratic mouth, but a dissolute
     lifestyle. “And so you love the one who doesn’t deserve it,” she said to
     herself, “and yet should I love out of reason, out of wishing to assign value?
     How laughable. What do I care about what is valuable—all I want is what I love.”
     Then she went to bed.

–2–
    One day Simon rang the bell rather shyly—it was
     noon— before an elegant house standing off on its own in a garden. The
     bell sounded to him as if a beggar had rung it. If he himself were sitting
     inside the house just now, as its owner for instance who was perhaps eating
     lunch, he would have turned indolently to his wife and asked: Who could be
     ringing the bell just now, surely a beggar! “When you think of elegant people,”
     he thought as he waited, “you always picture them at the dinner table, or in
     a
     carriage, or getting dressed with the help of male or female servants, while
     you
     always imagine a poor man standing outside in the cold with his coat collar
     drawn up, as mine is now, waiting before a garden gate with a pounding heart.
     Poor people have, as a rule, rapid, pounding, ardent hearts, while those of the
     rich are cold, roomy, upholstered, well-heated, and nailed shut! Oh,
     if only someone would rush fleet-footed to the door, what a relief
     that would be. There’s something constricting about standing and waiting at a
     wealthy portal. Despite my little bit of worldly experience what weak legs I
     am
     standing on.” —And indeed he was trembling when a girl came hurrying up to open
     the door for the one standing outside. Simon always had to smile when someone
     opened the door and invited him in, and now, too, this smile was in evidence,
     a
     smile that resembled a timid appeal and perhaps could be seen on many other
     faces as well.
    “I’m looking for a room.”
    Simon removed his hat before a beautiful lady who appeared and looked
     the newcomer up and down with great attentiveness. This pleased Simon, for he
     believed it was her right to do so, and because her air of friendliness was
     unabated.
    “Would you like to come with me? There, up the stairs.”
    Simon invited the lady to precede him. To do so, he gestured with his
     hand, actually employing his hand for this purpose for the first time in his
     whole life. The woman, opening a door, showed the young man the room.
    “What a beautiful room,” cried Simon, who was truly astonished,
     “far too beautiful for me, unfortunately, far too elegant for me. I am, you
     should know, so very poorly suited to such an elegant room. And yet I would
     dearly love to inhabit it—all too dearly, far far too dearly. In fact, it
     wasn’t right to show me this chamber. It would have been better had you
     shown me the door at once. How do I come to be casting my gaze into such a
     gay, beautiful space—it’s as if it were made for a god to dwell in. What
     beautiful dwellings are inhabited by the well-to-do, the
     ones who possess something. I have never possessed anything, have never been
     anything, and despite the hopes of my parents will never amount to anything
     at all. What a lovely view from the windows, and such pretty, shiny
     furniture, and such charming curtains—they give the room a girlish look. I
     would perhaps become a good, tender person here, if it’s true, as people
     say, that surroundings can change a person. Might I gaze at it for a little
     while longer, remain standing here one more minute?”
    “Of course you may.”
    “I thank you.”
    “What sort of people are your parents, and, if I may ask, in what
     sense are you ‘nothing,’ as