H. Adler - The Wall

Empty, the wall before me, empty, no way to know whether it is permanent. From the cracked-open sash of a window on the fourth floor of the apartment building on the other side of the street, two old ladies look out, their faces lit up by the sun, a hand scattering crumbs or scraps (it could easily be the crushed shells of peanuts) onto the street below. Black with a couple of white spots, its stiffened tail sticking up, the cat snakes its way between them, embracing this human domain made all the more secure by this housemate. Alas, these women, perhaps they are vexed by unfulfilled wishes, perhaps worries eat at them, but probably it’s not so bad. They have the leisure to act so, for it is not just the cat that is wrapped in contentment; the women purr with satisfaction as well. I know very well they have reason to, because with shopping bags chock-full they head home from Simmonds’s. Do the women remember? Certainly! They are comfortable in their own skin, the whisperings of the radio granting them confidence and a shine to their cheeks. Their mouths open, the lips flap away, roundabout talk that, even when not entirely taken in, is still understood. Like the children, these women have nothing pressing before them; they simply are, and that’s the way it is.

Why must I rise above my own memories as they rise below me? And my own, what does that mean? Where is it that I stand? How free the view, the world open, but soon you bump up against the horizon’s border, and once again you see that there is another border much farther off. No, there’s no such border, it’s only an idea, but not one that can be grasped; only the law identifies you, demands that you stop. But where the laws of heaven and earth do not hold sway you brush up against a command, a command that overshadows you, announcing that you may not, you may not do something. That’s true for you as well, Johanna. It’s true for all of you, though it rarely catches up with you, and therefore you rarely realize it.

Now both ladies are gone; they both left at the right time so that they didn’t have to see it, having been warned, a task having called them away, they leaving behind the street where now they could not have helped seeing the gray height of the wall that does not disturb them in the cushioned horror of their living room. They are in their own home, one made familiar by the cat that has already jumped down from the windowsill, busying themselves before their glass cabinet with the colorfully kitschy porcelain. Soon they will eat, though they won’t taste any danger on their tongues as they stick to their customary routine, they being blessed and able to unwind, they having been given what defines them. Meanwhile, it’s different for me. If indeed I’m alive, it’s due only to my reflection. Light and shadow overlap each other, an image emerges, breathed into and called forth: “Now exist!” I am that image; to the degree that it speaks to me, I respond, appearing before the wall, which functions as protection, because before it I can exist and rise to become a figure that is visible and casts a shadow, though within myself I remain an indeterminate entity.

The wall before me has never disappeared; I have known it for many years, not knowing when it first sprang up, though I didn’t always see it. Only when I peer forward intently and want to believe that I exist do I see it. Otherwise it does not appear to exist; for hours, often days, even many weeks on end, I do not notice it. Nor does the wall stand always at the same spot, for suddenly it will loom up where I would never have expected it. Sometimes it shimmers with wetness, almost like the flowing crest of a wave, then at other times it rises up dogged and heavy, composed of piled-up, dense patches of fog, though always it’s the same wall. Whenever I feel invigorated and brave, I stride toward the wall, farther and farther, and yet it always stands before me. It is never far from me, but I have never gotten all the way to it. Indeed, I rush toward it, wanting to reach it, storm it, and overtake it, yet no matter how much I tirelessly try, it always remains there across from me, securely fixed and implacable. Wall of my vicissitude that often from an insatiable distance lures me onward, until I collapse before it exhausted, abandoning my pursuit. Then I kneel before it once again, wanting to sacrifice myself before it, but it only scorns such a desire. It does not care about me; it merely appears, rises, towers, admonishes, warns, even threatens, though remaining furtive, fooling the eyes, retreating silently, slowly, and steadily, drawing me toward it or holding me back, sometimes offering resistance and yet wandering off. Tirelessly this game repeats itself. I don’t own the wall, but it belongs to me alone, it having been created for no one else, meaning nothing to anyone else, neither good nor evil. Nor can I show it to anyone, prove it to anyone, or explain it, for it remains inexplicable to me as well, it being my wall, and only my wall, as it doesn’t belong to those who simply are self-evident, who hardly ever come up against it.

It’s thus that I realize that I don’t belong to human society. I and the wall, we are alone, we belong together; there is nothing else that I belong to — what any academic would call an asocial existence. If I have been granted a consciousness, it doesn’t allow me the possibility of sharing a basic understanding with others who sense they are conscious. I am not part of any continuum that allows those who are self-evident — so they maintain, at least — to discover something in common or at least assume it. But what makes others tick? They run along their way, driven by their senses, intentions, wishes, and duties, they remember, which in turn nourishes them along their journey’s path. Does memory not lie at the root of all society? Yet I suspect that people each have their own wall. If this is so, then my belief is confirmed that the much lauded continuum of those who are self-evident actually doesn’t exist, that it’s only a dream, the conjuration of those who simply appear to be self-evident which vaults over the abyss of that which is not at all self-evident. Could not the continuum be evidence of a mighty past, the conscious symbol of a golden age, the myth of paradise, an exalted state of innocence or a dreamy fairy-tale existence that has been carried off but still stands separate before us, a looming, unreachable wall that, as an inscrutable archetype, perpetuates our descent from a society that once existed but has long since been lost?

I can talk about most anything with Johanna, but even this protector between the self-evident world and myself balked with tender consideration at following along whenever I wanted to implicate her in this mystery. She always firmly stood her ground when I began with it and she could no longer hold me off. “I grant you your wall, Arthur. I know that you need it. It’s the protection granted you by nature.” I pressed her, asking whether she believed that it’s real. “That’s not up to me. It’s real for you, and therefore let’s leave it at that.” Only compassion persuaded Johanna to grant the existence of my wall for my sake; she was not convinced that I was talking about something real, about the true embodiment of my very being, which, after all, is nurtured and nourished by Johanna alone. Myself between Johanna and the wall — that is my plight, which the most fervent talk cannot reveal and betray to anyone. Only the wall listens calmly and without repercussions, but it answers none of my prayers; it is simply there, though it has never yet considered me worthy of contact. Johanna believes she has no wall; I don’t dispute this, for I recognize that she is not in any way in touch with her own ungraspable mystery, although through me she has drawn close to it for good.