H. Adler - The Wall

This time the voice sounded much more triumphant as it reinvigorated me and made me feel warm inside. Nor did I have to remain a half step behind any longer, but could walk right alongside, supported by the hand, even able to perhaps slip ahead a bit, since I knew where we were headed. I believe I even said something to this effect, which was met with a joyful laugh. It sounded reassuring, but also a bit foreboding. I soon saw why. We came around a corner, and the voice spoke again.

“There, where you see the light, we’re here already.”

I should have gone on ahead, since that was the custom here, but as I was the stranger here I offered not to take the lead.

“You are certainly a shy one.”

The door opened. We stepped into a pleasant, not too large dining room with niches to the side.

“I’ve never seen anything so pleasant here. Much more lovely than the Belgian restaurant.”

“I’m so pleased. Do you want to pick a quiet corner?”

I looked at the face of the voice, as if I would find the answer there as to what would be the best table to take.

“Well, looking at me won’t help you find a spot.”

“Maybe it will,” I replied in a carefree manner.

My companion only laughed, no longer worried about my foolishness, and moved decidedly toward a niche at the farthest corner of the back of the room. There was nothing for me to do but march along behind her. Then I helped Fräulein Zinner out of her coat, took mine off as well, and stood there holding them without a clue. She laughed as I stood there not knowing what to do with the coats.

“Either set them on a couple of chairs or there are hangers over there.”

So I withdrew and playfully hung up the coats. When I turned back to the table, I could see that Fräulein Zinner was already speaking warmly to a waiter whom she seemed to know. She had already ordered for herself, and when I said that anything was fine with me, and that I’d be happy to have what the fräulein was having, she wouldn’t hear of it, even though the waiter said that I couldn’t go wrong with that. But that didn’t do me any good, so I had to pore over the menu as I bent over it, meticulously reading it from beginning to end. Meanwhile, the two of them chatted softly, though I didn’t listen to what they said. Once I had read through it all, I looked up in confusion, for I wasn’t at all clear about what I should order.

“Forgive me, Fräulein! I’m so hopeless. There’s too much to choose from. I’m not used to so much. The simplest would be to have them just bring me whatever. I’m sure it’s all good.”

She laughed even more heartily than earlier. However, the waiter remained serious and recited from memory the most important items on the menu, carefully pronouncing the name of each dish, sometimes offering an extra bit of panegyric, though, unfortunately, it was all too fast to help me in choosing a single dish for myself. I only continued to look in confusion back and forth between the waiter and my companion.

“It’s all so much trouble. Just bring me the cheapest one!”

Fräulein Zinner was clearly amused at my incompetence, yet she was not happy with my choice, but finally came to my rescue and responded to my pressing plea about what she had ordered. Since I assured her that that was exactly what I would have ordered, she finally agreed and dispensed with the waiter’s consideration by simply requesting what she had ordered. I only had to decide for myself what I wished to drink, for Fräulein Zinner insisted on it and wouldn’t hear anything about my just having tap water like her. Finally the waiter withdrew with an amused smirk. I breathed freely and was relieved that I had survived the endless negotiation in good shape.

“You are a wonderful guest, my dear. How would you do it without me?”

“I wouldn’t be able to at all. I can’t help but admit it.”

“And yet you did it!”

“Are you making fun of me? You have every right to.”

“No.”

“You are very kind. No one here has been so kind.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true. Believe me! It’s all taken so much effort to boost my confidence and succeed. People are often nice to me, sometimes very nice, but there’s no human warmth, or hardly any goodness, or it’s so twisted and screwed up that it ends up crumpled and knotted. The friends I used to have here … I’d rather not say anything about them. It’s horrible that it’s all broken down. I feel like I’m deluded. I want a regular life, and sometimes it feels like I’m on the right track, but in reality it’s all so uncertain. No one takes me seriously. There must be something about my manner that captures people for a moment, but then it’s suddenly over, things get shaky, and they are put off. They feel my character to be a mixture of arrogance and inferiority. Something is knotted up inside me that prevents me from slipping into the social order. I often ask myself whether it’s my fault, whether it is my fault alone. What do you think?”

“You’re deeming me worthy of such extraordinary confessions, though alone I cannot decide for you. Are you not what you wish to be?”

“I would just like to be, period. You know, I don’t even know if I am alive. But there is something inside me or perhaps outside me, I can’t say for sure, but there is something, and for that I continue to live, or at least try to. Perhaps I only exist in as much and so long as I am able — I can’t describe it — to live for that alone. I have often thought so. And not only when I find myself questionable, which happens quite often. For I feel questionable most of the time. I think of myself as something that is split into pieces, but not something pathological, because the pieces also are linked to one another, though this is questionable. The split-apart pieces know of one another; they just aren’t joined up. Can you understand when I say that I am not my own master, and therefore am split, but without being sick? Look, this was particularly true when everything seemed questionable, not just me alone — for that would easily have been pathological — but instead the questionable became dominant in an environment where, for many, the questionable was transformed into that which could not be questioned, because doing so cast them down and ate them up. Perhaps I have simply ensconced myself within nothingness and cannot exist in any other way.”

“But that must take incredible strength!”

“That’s what you say, but I’m not so certain. I’m not at all so certain. I am uncertainty embodied. That’s why it’s hard to be friends with me, although I think of myself as someone who’s good at being friends. But I exist only by clinging. Where others are independent, or at least appear to be, I’m lost. Then everything dissolves. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

Fräulein Zinner smiled, not because she found my explanation ridiculous but because I had talked with a fervor that was pointless and only struggled along without any real grounding. Such talk had not at all helped me attain any kind of serious depth, nor was such foolishness suited to pleasant dinner conversation. There was also no justifiable reason to highlight my nullity in such a manner, and I thought that this could cause people too easily to see me as just a crank. To please Fräulein Zinner — this vain effort was at the root of my foolishness in wanting to show myself as more likable. I was lucky that the waiter soon brought the soup and the bread, for that way I couldn’t finish up what I had been talking about, and therefore couldn’t talk as much, and therefore could observe Fräulein Zinner more intently. Neither my disastrous talk nor the unedifying episodes in the office seemed to have put her off. After a long silence that Fräulein Zinner broke, I began to head in a direction that could easily have led to danger.