H. Adler - The Wall

Herr Konirsch-Lenz stuck his hand out to me, but I didn’t grasp it.

“I’m afraid I can’t agree to that right away.”

“Why not?”

“I need to talk it over with my wife in peace.”

“You don’t talk about something like this with your wife. That just postpones matters. You have to be a man. Your wife — just look at that delicate little thing — will just be impressed once you finally get into something reasonable.”

“I don’t know if it is so reasonable. I don’t do anything without my wife.”

“Nonsense! You’re a wimp. But if you really want to, we can ask her right now.”

He stood up and wanted to walk over to the women. I was defeated and felt worthless, but in no way did I want Johanna and Frau Konirsch-Lenz to be dragged into this exchange.

“Don’t bother, I’m declining your offer. I’m very grateful, but I can’t do it.”

“You’re throwing away an opportunity. It has to do with sweat and cleverness and self-discipline. You really have to learn those, for that’s the weakness of your character. If you put yourself to it, in a year you can make a decent wage. For your scholarship, if that remains a burning necessity, you have the whole night through.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Think of your family!”

“I am.”

“It doesn’t seem you are, you egoist.”

“The last time we spoke, you talked much differently. You promised to think about how you might be able to help me. In this way you are of no help to me, and I’m sorry that I put you to any trouble.”

“Don’t be so impetuous, Dr. Landau. I’ve thought of everything. Frau Knispel is on vacation right now, and the summer is a bad time. Practical support is needed immediately — on that we are agreed, yes? I meant it for the best, and at my factory you’ll be under my oversight and counsel. Not something to simply toss away. But, of course, there are other possibilities. Yet I have to tell you openly that you have no chance at any kind of existence by relying only upon your talent. We are all talented, but only a very few can make something out of it. Moreover, I’d like to read something of yours. But not the thick tome in which you have penned what you think about the oppressed. You don’t seem to know enough about that and are a bit one-sided. If I want to read something about oppression, then I want it to be objective and not just personal experiences.”

“My sociology of oppressed people has very little to do with my private experiences. Moreover, I doubt that I’ll be laying before you this work or any of my work.”

“No false modesty, for only arrogance hides behind it! Bring something along with you next time, and let me be the judge. But we don’t need to talk about that now. No one can demand that someone else watch out for himself, which is why I told you my own story. You must remember that everyone had to suffer who came to this country before the war. Don’t think that you know what they went through! We all went through it. There is no paradise. Do you know how many here were detained even though they were completely innocent! I myself was lucky; I got out after just two weeks. I had only my wallpaper to thank for that. That’s how it is. But others were deported — to Canada, Australia — and they had to live there a year, two years behind barbed wire. That wasn’t any bed of roses, either, and many died in the process. Torpedoed ships, and drowning miserably! What do you know of the victims of the Arandora Star ? That, in fact, happened here in a free country. What can you say about it from over there? Don’t tell me anything about the sociology of the oppressed. Everyone is oppressed, and everyone has to struggle on. Here, look at these hands; that’s how one stands up against one’s century! I know the misery of these times much better than you, because I saw it with open eyes and with the gaze of a pedagogue, not a dreamer like you.”

“In other words, you’re expecting it to go badly for me here because for a long time it did not go well for you.”

“You sound impertinent, but there’s something to that. It’s the same for all. One has to earn his spurs. It never occurs to anyone here to offer us work suited to our tastes. What men with great names have had to put up with here! They had to be happy that their wives could work as servants. They had to stoop and bend, and they were always suspect, shoved around from here to there and badgered. Lawyers and doctors sitting lined up on the streets, the lucky ones being those who could find a dry spot for their behinds.”

“I think it would be best if I left now.”

Herr Konirsch-Lenz seemed very surprised. Go now? That would be cowardly. In a little while there will be tea. I shouldn’t be so fussy. If I had another idea, he was willing to listen; I should just lay it out so that we could know where the shoe pinches. I told my host that it didn’t seem right to me to deny me help that he had promised me because many who had fled here before the war were not welcomed with open arms. For this objection, I was sneered at derisively and told that no one can compare the fate of the refugees to those who remained behind, what I was saying was just rude, and, furthermore, I also needed to learn what it means to keep a promise. Someone as young as me should have disappeared before the war or hidden out, rather than just being hauled off to the slaughterhouse like a piece of cattle, and that only pointed to the weakness and incapability that Konirsch-Lenz wanted to cure me of. What I needed to understand was that no one had the responsibility to lift a finger for me, especially the moment that someone saw my healthy bones, which suffered only from laziness.

“You just have to dive in. Then no help is needed. And only then will help be found.”

Frau Konirsch-Lenz and Johanna had arranged everything for tea. We were called, and so I was absolved of the need to defend myself further. My host busied himself with Michael and his daughters, joking with them and making more noise than the children themselves. He was polite to Johanna, complimenting her and the boy, saying how lovely he was. He even said very nice things about me, only pointing out how worn down I seemed, the worst case he had seen in some time, but that made the task of trying to help me work it all out seem all the more appealing.

“You can be assured, Frau Landau, I won’t give up. Whatever gets into my head, I always make happen. ‘Failure’ is a word that just doesn’t apply to Siegfried Konirsch-Lenz.”

Johanna nodded gratefully.

“That is very good of you, Herr Konirsch-Lenz. We both value your friendship. My husband was so inspired when he got home after meeting you last time. He felt he had been so well understood.”

Frau Konirsch-Lenz beamed on hearing this praise.

“My Siegfried understands people so well. You can rely on him, Frau Johanna. He’s always had the greatest success just when things look hopeless, and your husband is lucky that he finds him so sympathetic.”

“Mommy, what’s ‘pathetic’?” asked the older daughter.

“First of all, you got the word wrong,” the teacherly father answered. “And, second, how many times have I told you not to get mixed up in grown-up conversations?”

The girl, ashamed, fell quiet and was close to tears. The mother wasn’t comfortable with such a rebuke.

“Not ‘pathetic,’ my child, ‘sym-pathetic,’ and that means lovely. We find Frau Landau and the Herr Doctor to be lovely, just as you and Petula find little Michael lovely. But you are indeed done with your meal. Then it’s best that you go off and play with Michael. You haven’t yet shown him the swing. You love to swing, don’t you, Michael?”

“Up and down, up and down — yes, I like it!”