‘Does life have a deeper meaning?’ I continued, in spirited fashion. ‘Is it a complete coincidence that we were born? I have a friend, a retired teacher. He was once invited to the home of an industrialist in Schlieren. The man, who was divorced from his wife three times, and went back to her three times, has a wonderful villa by the River Limmat. A hundred guests are romping around. The different sections of the shelves on the wall are filled with all kinds of decanters, vases, arty spice and herb containers. My friend meets the master of the house and says: You’ve got it good. You live like a king! A house like this! A profitable glass factory! A delightful wife! Dear children! And the man answers: Yes, you’re right, things are going well for me. But, suddenly, he becomes deadly serious and says: But don’t ask what it looks like in here, and he points to his heart.

The most important things, we should do first. And if walking frees us from melancholy, jadedness, lethargy, apathy, then the most important thing is that we go for walks.

People like to be outside in the fresh air. They rustle up open-air experiences for themselves: the nice view, for instance, that rewards the discomfort felt in the ears by cable car users. But the world is a hidden world; do you know what I mean when I say that? I’ll explain, using an image: a thick wall of fog. Hidden behind the wall of fog is a rose. Now, people can’t live without the rose. And so start to look for it. They throw footballs against the wall of fog, they hold playing cards, they attend evening classes, they form rows of four and play wind instruments in the orchestra. Those are the efforts involved in various leisure activities. The walker puts one foot in front of the other and penetrates the wall of fog. He finds the rose. A whole rose bush. Diminutive birds build their nest in its branches. Bugs nibble at its stem. He who finds the rose has found the world.

I often ask myself why people aren’t bright and attentive. They’re well off, for the most part, after all. But they can’t be bright and attentive. Why? Because they’re jaded. Asleep, completely drunk, indifferent. And no self-help book or teacher of a walking class is going to take away that feeling of jadedness. Only walking can do this. An encounter that inspires him, or seeing something that touches him, catapults the walker into a condition full of love, clear-sightedness and fulfilment. For as long, at least, as it takes him to return to the drab, joyless, everyday consciousness that most people have accepted as normal since they were taught as children always to close doors.

Why do we close doors? Even the door to the Dining Room is locked during meals. Not a breath of wind moving the white curtains. What is it we have to protect ourselves from so relentlessly? Wherever my late wife now is: there, the doors, for sure, aren’t locked. So the wind can pass through the apartment, and who knows, maybe the doors don’t even have locks: maybe it’s only a string of beads that separates her apartment form the world outside it.

Listen: one of the beauties of this town is the green river that, as the poet says, embraces the town. I often go for a walk there. People jump in, to float from one bank to the other. Boats wherever you look, their sterns blunted. At the weir, a bridge leads across. The water crashes down the weir. And one day I see that where the water crashes down, a large piece of wood is dancing. I observe how the wood goes under and comes back up and turns in a circle. From time to time, it looks as if the current could come and carry it off. But the maelstrom grabs it again. When I return the next day, the piece of wood is still there. The vortex keeps getting hold of it. Can you imagine that? The current is there, and the wood comes up and goes under and turns in a circle. Human lives are often no different. It’s always the same three windows that the world is seen through: the window in the room, the windscreen in the car, the goggle box. On the one hand, people know they need to act, if they want to change anything. On the other, that’s exactly what they don’t do, as they’re afraid of the consequences. They ponder their discontentment, but in order not to have to act, they silence any unsettling thoughts with reassurances: It was a wonderful day, anyway, and I can’t take too much sun. On the weir, I thought: all it would take is a push or a prod and the wood would enter the current. But I couldn’t reach because I, a non-swimmer, didn’t want to risk falling in. I swim like an anvil. Once, I fell into the learners’ pool. All I heard was terrible gurgles, and bubbles rose to the surface.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are not a piece of wood. The one step out of the only-ever-the-same circle, the one step into the current, is a step we ourselves can take. Do feelings sometimes threaten to overwhelm you? Do situations sometimes seem to be over your head? Does the whole world weigh on your weak shoulders? Are you unable to sleep out of sheer longing for your deceased husband? Do you not know how to show your son you love him? Then put one foot in front of another on the immaculately cemented-over bed of a stream, or in a biotope that is significant in terms of natural history. That is always possible, even when nothing else is. Ladies and Gentlemen, this walking course will help you open up your heart, such that your life will make sense, as in: become sensuous. Sensuousness is what makes sense possible, in the first place. You want facts, not a sermon. Walking means: going for a walk. Not, listening to lectures about walking. As the speaker, I feel like someone standing in front of a fountain, selling water. You’ve heard now what I have to say. You can think you’ve been taught something, or been re-orientated, or born again, or whatever you like. Believe me when I say that in the lives of sprightly people, walking plays at least as central a role as their profession, poetry, godparenthood, family and health. Thank you for your attention.’

The applause from my five listeners, at the end of the lecture, sounded friendly. Even if I could assess only with difficulty how loud it actually was – as my pupils, in the past, would only applaud if I distorted the word ‘mashed potatoes’ in twenty-three ways, something that had them howling with laughter. Today’s pupils, I suspect, would shoot me down for fun like that.

‘Good,’ said Sebastian, helping Madame Revaz up from her folding chair, ‘I’ll contradict you for the duration of my stint here.’

A sceptical young man. Scared to death, he was, of catching a fatal disease here. On his first day as a civvy, he took a deep breath before entering the Home, then didn’t breathe again for three months.

Herr Ruchti, at least, stretched his limbs and happily paid me several compliments that I played down, coolly. He said he rejected most of my views, and considered them alarming in almost every respect except, perhaps, with regard to their harmlessness. It had been exceedingly pleasant for him, though, to hear views so very far from his own. These words prompted the manageress and Frau Dürig to repeat Herr Ruchti’s compliments, and once they were suitably enthusiastic, I accepted them. Let the devil take me if that’s not Herr Pfammatter coming towards us. Look! I’ve told you about our folklorist, haven’t I?

Good evening, Herr Pfammatter! Why, don’t you always turn up just as we think we’ve heard the last of you! – Oh, dear, what do you look like? – No, no. Matted and damp. As if you were on your way back from an uncomfortable night in a cave – where you had had to hide from something, in the darkness, that you actually wanted to hunt. – Budapest, exactly! – Did you get a decent haul of souvenirs? – Let’s see! – That’s a lady’s watch! How did you get your hands on a lady’s watch? – At supper, whatever you think. Herr Probst wants to know whether you’d be available for a game later? – Pardon? – Kâzim, our new carer. A rower. A good listener. And a splendid escort. I must be as heavy as lead on his arm, but if I am, he doesn’t let on. – No? What would you like to be praised for then, Kâzim? – Tomorrow, when you’ve recovered a little, Kâzim could visit you in your room and see the frightening collection of found items you have, what do you think, Herr Pfammatter? – Yes, no rush, just take your time getting changed, and see you later!’

Of course, we saw the talks on walking through – what did you think? The second lesson had to be postponed due to operations on Madame Revaz’s eyes, but we then tested our skills out together – in the pretty courtyard, and on the street outside, beneath Herr Imhof’s suspicious looks. Herr Ruchti, a yellow scarf wrapped round his neck, trudged three steps ahead of the others, his head back, and with a chortling laugh, setting the pace and determining the direction, very much the centre of this old-timers’ expedition, while Herr and Frau Dürig talked enthusiastically about when they first met. Sebastian was wearing sunglasses even if the sun had no intention of breaking out from behind the cloud cover. They then sat – Madame Revaz, Sebastian, Herr Ruchti and the Dürigs in bizarre cuddly slippers – squeezed up together on the sofa that’s been in the Day Room for generations. Madame Revaz’s feet were resting on a footstool with a knitted cover, the exact copy of the knitting in her hands.

They’d listen to what I had to say about proper walks, or look far back to their own early experiences as pedestrians, on the way to school and on forays, remembering injured and rescued animals, exploring building sites, finding bones in the forest, snowball fights.

‘Once, in winter,’ Herr Ruchti told us, ‘I asked my father if I could take the horse to school as it was such a long way. Father said: okay then. We harnessed Sambo, hitched him up to the sleigh, Father walked alongside the horse. When we reached the summit and looked down on the village, it started to snow.’

You missed Herr Ruchti, Kâzim. A charming, white-haired beanpole, who – despite the classroom atmosphere in the Day Room – could amuse himself royally. He’d begin by chuckling secretly to himself, then burst out laughing, and regularly break into applause. As a teacher, you try hard not to have favourites, but Herr Ruchti, with his beaming smile, was my favourite participant on the course.

Madame Revaz would knit, Herr and Frau Dürig would doze off hand in hand, and Sebastian, always in tight T-shirts, as if he’d been pumped into them, would draw my attention to any contradictions. On his last day as helper, Madame Revaz opened her handbag and took out a scarf she’d finished knitting, of the finest black wool.

‘For you, Sebastian,’ she said and, touched, he wrapped the scarf around his bull neck. He then shook my hand till it was numb, and claimed he’d really enjoyed our ‘slow-motion walks’ though he didn’t plan spending any more of his time on them. ‘Maybe I enjoyed listening to you so much because every word you said confirmed, for me, that I haven’t been missing much.’

In his face, I could see dozens of former pupils of mine.

I can well understand that Frau Dürig, for example, prefers to go for a walk with an understanding older person than with a twenty-year-old carer: it’s the generation you know, you don’t have to explain or apologise so much. But the fact I’ve contact here with you civilian-service boys, I consider an incredible stroke of luck. You hear so often that you should try to have young friends. I’m all the more thankful that young men like you, Kâzim, and Sebastian, are gifted to me. You haven’t waited until you have to visit your own mother in a care home to discover solidarity with the elderly. For that, I thank you more than I can express in words.

What are you saying, Kâzim? The final step! Safely and fearlessly we’ve reached the ground floor! Boy, boy, – eighty-seven, but you’re still making the likes of this look easy, Lukas Zbinden. Madame Revaz! Here we are, over here! – We’ve just been speaking about you. How are you? – What’s your children’s news? – Your daughter went to university, remember? – The boy has emigrated to Paraguay, married a nurse. You have good children, Madame Revaz, you should be proud of them! – Why, yes! – Do you maybe remember when you got married? – Of course, it’s a long time ago! But when exactly? – You were born in 1919, weren’t you? – Do you remember how old you were when you married? – Did you get married at twenty? No? – But you weren’t thirty by the time … right? – Twenty-one maybe? – Twenty-two? – Could be. If you were twenty-three, you got married in 1942. Does that seem about right? 1942: marriage to Bértrand Revaz in the Eglise du Saint-Esprit in Delémont? – Let’s return to the subject tomorrow, Madame Revaz. Think hard until then about when exactly you married. – Don’t mention it! To the front door, Kâzim.

Nowadays, Madame Revaz can no longer knit. She listens to the TV, and is forgetting her past. How long, do you think, can we depend on ourselves? On our senses? On our minds? For how much longer will I wake in the morning with the memories I took to bed the evening before?

Once, Emilie and I were lying on a freshly mown meadow, watching the evening.

‘Happiness,’ I said to Emilie, ‘what do you think of when you hear that word?’

‘Can’t you just enjoy the evening, quietly?’

‘No, tell me.’

‘Okay,’ said Emilie, scratching her leg where a mosquito bite was annoying her. ‘There is big and little happiness. Big happiness is our love. The little one would be if you’d just listen to the silence.’

Frau Schild, wait! – Just hand me the envelope. You don’t need to put it in my pigeonhole. It’s much more practical this way. – What’s in it then? Increasing the flat rate for the running costs, are we, hm? – Pardon? – Alessandra? She was turning the third floor upside down, trying to find Frau Binggeli’s crown. – And Frau Jacobs is digging with her index finger inside her collar, to get at something itchy. Perhaps you could ask Lydia or Britta – or is Britta already on maternity leave? – I know nothing about that. Kâzim, did Herr Ziegler mention wanting to visit his wife? As far as I know, he just went up to his room to peel himself out of a garment. Is that your phone ringing? – Pleasure. It’s not as if it’s of any interest to us.

In four weeks, Nurse Britta will have a child. She’s getting into a panic because the office at home is still an office and not a nursery.

Just a little spurt across the hall now and we can breathe again, after holding our breath for much too long. – What? – No, you won’t get me into a wheelchair. – No, Angela pushed me around the squeaky corridor once, then – before I could protest – squeezed me out the door and into the street. She worked up quite a speed, I was rattled around like a sack of potatoes, she turned the corner and then, just as Brunnadernstrasse starts to climb slightly, she ran out of strength. I told you, I know, that I can’t imagine a single trait my son has inherited from me. But Angela says, with a mischievous smile, ‘I always tell Dad that he talks the head off Mum the exact same way he says you always talked Emilie’s head off.’

You see, Kâzim: the shaggy carpet curls and blocks the entrance.

You can let go of my arm now, Kâzim. Thank you very much. Wind force zero. No butterfly’s going to be thrown off course. But you can never know. This is precisely the type of weather that often has a storm in tow. And then the gullies overflow, the water washes the Parliament away, and politicians hit on the idea of abandoning politics and working instead – though not a single case occurs to me, that ended so badly. – Of course, the smoking ban’s been reversed. Be my guest. As long as you don’t throw the butt into the nettles. But I don’t want to keep you any longer, have you considered it? Will you accompany me on a walk? – Really? – You mean, where? – To the river? Gladly! Do you have your boat nearby, by any chance?

I’ve told you about me, now it’s your turn. – Oh, everything! How come you’re here in the Home with us; how long you’ll stay for; and whether you row in a club. A few remarks about human existence; about being a son; having a father. And, of course, whether you’re married, engaged, or somebody’s boyfriend. Who do you tell, in the evening, about what happened to you during the day? Do you celebrate religious feast days even when there’s nothing to eat? Of the people you’ve contact with, which would only you subject yourself to, and no one else? You may also answer questions that haven’t even been put to you. I do that, myself. Every day. – Possibly, but if I’m curious, then you’re stubborn. Are we going to spend the entire evening here before the night-time bell? Fire away! – No, don’t try to change the subject. I’m not budging from here until you start to spill some beans! Tell me some stories from different parts of your life! Or I’ll go back in and dance in the lift naked, while the others try to escape as quick as they can. Then they’ll put me in a home for the senile and I’ll never be heard of ever again. – Pardon? – How to go for a proper walk? You want to know how to walk properly? Kâzim, were you listening to me at all, on the stairs? What are you even doing here at my side? I would say: if a goal has been reached and you haven’t yet homed in on the next one, isn’t there a gap there somewhere? – Now, extend that gap. That’s going for a walk.

Oh dear, look over there: Gandhi, up in the chestnut. – No, I reckon, as long as he stays there, nothing can happen. He does, though, seem to be considering whether to jump over into Frau Wyttenbach’s room. Was that a raindrop? – But please, to the river is wonderful! We could cross the footbridge and borrow a dinghy from the campers in Eichholz. I’ll leave the rowing to you, if that’s okay. I’d like to see you happy. Given you’re already doing me the priceless favour of accompanying me! You’re an angel, Kâzim!

He works away at it every Sunday. If the foot spar’s not the problem, then it’s the sliding seat, and if it’s not the sliding seat, then it’s the rowlock. I fear someone’s fobbed some rubbishy rowing boat off on Kâzim. No, no, I didn’t say I want to change him. You’re putting words in my mouth again. Of course, he can continue to row! I just want not to have to race when in his company, and that’s something quite different. At breakneck speed, we suddenly ran between parked cars out onto Brunnadernstrasse, which attracted semi-enraged, semi-worried looks from both the public and private transport using the road. I appealed to forgotten deities to give me some pace. More than once I was forced to say, ‘Listen, Kâzim, we’re not running, whether this dog chases after us or not.’

No, a big angry one. One that goes for any carer that looks it in the eye. – Emilie, listen. We finally shook off the dog in Elfenau, and I asked Kâzim could we stop to catch our breath. We were standing beside a phone box, and do you know what I thought? I thought: I could die, or lose my mind, without Markus and I having talked things out, and then I’d be terribly sorry. What are you waiting for, Lukas Zbinden? I roared at myself. Do you want to tell him what you feel for him only at the last minute? Don’t try to fool yourself. What you don’t talk about while in full command of your faculties, you’re not going to talk about as a nursing case.

I summoned up all my courage and called our son. After I’d exchanged a few words with Verena, Markus came to the phone, and I said with my heart beating – I don’t know what I was afraid of – ‘I wanted to tell you I love you.’

There was silence at the other end, then the receiver was put down, and I could hear voices in the background. Our daughter-in-law came back to the phone and asked, concerned, ‘What did you say to him?’

‘I said I loved him – something I’ve never told him, and because I thought he’d maybe like to know.’

She said, ‘Markus is sitting over there, fighting back the tears.’

And I reckon, maybe we still can go about things differently, different from before. We’re not a piece of wood, right? That one step out of the always-the-same circle, that one step out into the current, we can take by ourselves.

Have you the feeling, too, that the whole house is gradually getting ready for supper? All that sniffing at the air, trying to guess what the main course is? You know, sometimes situations get too much for me. I’m so homesick for you, I can’t sleep. At times like that, I just put one foot in front of the other and tell someone about you. Hold forth about your merits. Rave on about how complete life by your side is. That is always possible, even when nothing else is. Our names are, indeed, on those deckchairs, Emilie.

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Current & Upcoming Books by And Other Stories

01

Juan Pablo Villalobos, Down the Rabbit Hole

translated from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey

02

Clemens Meyer, All the Lights

translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire

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Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

04

Iosi Havilio, Open Door

translated from the Spanish by Beth Fowler

05

Oleg Zaionchkovsky, Happiness is Possible

translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield

06

Carlos Gamerro, The Islands

translated from the Spanish by Ian Barnett

07

Christoph Simon, Zbinden’s Progress

translated from the German by Donal McLaughlin

08

Helen DeWitt, Lightning Rods

‌

‌Title: Zbinden’s Progress
Author and Illustrator: Christoph Simon
Translator: Donal McLaughlin
Editor: Sophie Lewis
Proofreader: Wendy Toole
Typesetter and eBook Designer: Alex Billington for Tetragon
Set in: 10/15.25 pt Swift Neue Pro, Verlag
Series and Cover Design: Joseph Harries
Format: 210 x 138 mm
Paper: Munken Premium Cream 80gsm FSC
Printer: T J International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

The first 300 copies are individually numbered.