H. Adler - The Wall

“Do you still have a ways to go, Johanna? Where do you have to go?”

“No, I can’t stay with you. That can’t happen here. It’s impossible.”

She said this forcefully, with an almost bitter passion.

“I wasn’t thinking of that at all, sweetheart. You have to go home, I know. I’ll just walk you there.”

“In the dark? You don’t know your way. It’s very far, and you’ll get hopelessly lost.”

“Nonetheless, you have to take the tube somewhere.”

“Yes. But I can’t bring you with me. Unfortunately, that can’t happen. We’ll see each other again soon, very soon. We must see each other tomorrow, every day, always. How I’d love to stay. But, really, it won’t be long. Not much more than a week, and then we’ll be together.”

“Well, good, just don’t think of me as ludicrous. Or, indeed, I am ludicrous. But I want to protect you from anything harmful. It is and will be my job to protect you, and I will do my best to do so.”

“I’m not at all afraid. Don’t talk about such things.”

“I only want to walk with you for a while. Then I’ll be nice and go home. Here, in this neighborhood, I know my way around even at night; you have to believe me, for I’m being reasonable.”

“I don’t have the slightest doubt, my dear. But, please, shouldn’t you be getting some rest? You had a hard day.”

“Each moment with you means rest. Allow me that!”

“Okay, just until the next corner.”

“From there you travel by tube?”

“Yes.”

“Then I can go along with no problem. I know this way precisely. It’s just straight ahead.”

So we set off, and talked about the next time we could meet and what we had to get done in the next few days. Through this a lot was cleared up, it being a satisfactory close to the evening. We also managed a quick goodbye, which was necessary, it not being hard to do as Johanna caught the last train. We kissed each other softly on the lips like an old familiar couple. Then I gazed after Johanna as she bought a ticket at the booth, quickly and safely passed through the turnstile and to the escalator without looking back, the descending steps hurrying below until I could no longer see her. I left the station and scurried across to the other side of the street, where a tea stand poured forth smoke, its two oil lamps providing a pale light. A few figures lingered about, rakish souls, among them some blacks and other foreigners, also some poor suffering girls. I was hungry and thirsty and asked for a tea and a roll. The drink was watery and tasteless, the snack stringy and not very appetizing; I swallowed down only half of each. A girl spoke to me, something about a cigarette, nothing more. Since I didn’t know the best way to escape being hit up for something, I served up my favorite response, which was to say that, unfortunately, I was not from here and couldn’t give her any advice. That had always worked before, but this time it failed, a terrible sounding laughter rising from her and something mumbled, which sounded like a threat, although perhaps it was just harmless kidding.

I hurried off and paid no attention to what was called after me. Then I felt something hit my hat, though probably it wasn’t a stone but most likely a rotten apple, nothing all that dangerous, though I hurried off twice as fast. I didn’t want to stop again until I reached my guesthouse, but as I was running along I stumbled into a man who held on to me as I stammered apologies in several different languages. The stranger turned out to be a policeman, which shocked me, though he acted friendly and suggested that I be careful in the dark, once I told him that I was only trying to get back to my guesthouse. I could have reported what had happened to me back at the tea stand, but I thought it a bad excuse for my careless running and was not convinced that I had really been attacked. Perhaps a senseless fear had simply overtaken me. The policeman let me go with a well-meaning word and wished me good night.

Then I walked slowly for the last stretch and did not meet anyone else. The guesthouse was locked, but I had the house key and managed to quietly reach my room. I quickly got ready for bed, but as soon as I had undressed I changed my mind, put my coat on over my pajamas, turned up the gas fire, sat down at a little writing desk, and started a letter to Anna. She needed to know that I had gotten engaged. She deserved that from me. Once the address was written out on the sealed envelope, I got into bed. The letter to Anna provided the proper end to the day. Through it, everything I had experienced that day had been put into perspective. I had covered everything in detail; every single thing that I reported lit up another chamber of my consciousness from within. Once more, I picked up the letter. I had already sealed it, but I ripped it open and read it through, line by line, such that everything was present to me. The doors opened between all the chambers, a consistent light flooding the tiny rooms, making it seem as if they were never separated by walls. I saw myself striding through them as the victor, pleased and relaxed by the good fortune granted me. A pure new day had opened before me; wherever I turned I saw an image, any number of them, whether it be a sunny wall, a flower, a meditative garden, a glade by a brook, a hill beneath the sky, a frolicking sailboat on dusky water, the contours of a dear face, a bedecked table in a corner. Yet, when I began to examine any of them more closely, each of them turned into Johanna before my eyes. The entire world was gathered together as a flood of images and stored within me, and when I brought them all together, there stood Johanna before me. I thought about this wonder and felt nothing but gratitude and undeserved grace.

Carefully I folded the letter, got a fresh envelope that I addressed, and stuck the letter inside, though this time I didn’t seal it, for if bad dreams woke me, or if the new morning brought a rude awakening, I could read the letter in order to restore my confidence. I considered whether a report that revealed so much about me should be sent to Anna. Yet it was a good letter. I was there in it, I was it, I myself — or no, it was Johanna, perhaps it was a letter for Johanna. But, in case I wanted nonetheless to send it to Anna, I had made a copy that I could keep with me wherever I went in the next days. Satisfied, I turned out the light.

It didn’t take me long to fall asleep, but it was not a deep sleep. It trickled into me, finding a thousand small openings through which it pressed its dark drops. Hopes and fears seeped through and weighed down all of my murky senses. I never entirely disappeared, nor did my consciousness dissolve; instead, I was separated or burst quietly into pieces. I looked on everything, devoid of consciousness or, in fact, with a consciousness, but one that was distant and strange and didn’t belong to me. I was accosted by an unruly army of clamoring questions that called out to me wordlessly, all of it adding up to an insensible interrogation. But where was I, where could I be? I couldn’t move at all, but just had to suffer the fact that there was a great deal that was not me, and which perhaps belonged to no one, and which overpowered every fiber of any life supposedly run by my own will. I was not stuck in any kind of churning limbo, but for me there was also no continuous existence. I sensed that I controlled nothing, that I was at the beck and call of something else which I had to listen to and obey. That was not easy to do, for it was almost impossible to do, because all the commands simply pressed into me like a viscous fluid, all of them nearly unintelligible, while the more I tried to understand them, the more I was hindered from doing so, such that the force pushed me toward a plodding obedience, because before I could follow the demanding orders a broad swath of time covered in thick fog crept in between. Thus everything occurred behind veils and too late, much too late. The reluctance and abhorrence that resulted, as well as the awful attacks, pelted me, hurting me, but there was nothing I could do, for I had no way of getting at their cause as long as I was unable to defend myself from the onslaught. I was increasingly defenseless, although I refused to heed the demands made on me. They had no right to demand that I should give in to them, for all they wanted was to deny my basic worth and attention, and to drown me in shame. Vainly I tried to bring this miserable game to an end. Any declaration I made was like trying to strike at a cloud. I offered a single apology, but that was met only with anger. Then I tallied aloud my supposed merits, outlined my plans that stretched out a wide net full of promise, but that was dismissed, and when I alluded to the past as I summoned its shadows they were nothing but past shadows and thus remained null and void.