H. Adler - The Wall

When years ago I spoke with Johanna about the wall for the last time, which I have kept myself from doing ever since, I insisted on inquiring whether she herself didn’t recall something similar. She at first avoided the question, but when I protested she replied.

“I can’t see far enough to see a wall — I mean, your wall. Believe me, for that you need to be farsighted.”

“I’m nearsighted, dear.”

“Because you see the wall. That makes you nearsighted, that’s what gives you this feeling. But I’m nearsighted because I can’t even see as far as your — forgive me, I mean a, or at least any, wall.”

“But what indeed do you see in front of it?”

“In front of the wall? I already told you, I don’t see any wall. What I see is simple, a narrow wall-less perimeter. That’s why I feel my way forward. You, however, have the gift of seeing something, a border; you don’t have to feel your way.”

“I can’t feel my way at all. You know that. I depend on you, on the wall, on everyone and anyone. It’s terrible. I’m dependent and yet I’m totally alone. Those who think they know me don’t know me at all. Forgive me if these words hurt. It’s a confession that simply slipped out.”

“Arthur, I’m no match for you. I can only follow you, I’m here only for you — to watch over you, to listen to you, to be grateful for your riches.”

“Riches? I don’t have—”

“No, don’t say a word! Oh, why are you laughing? Let me say something for once! I’m not good for anything except helping you. It’s my great purpose in life, even more important than the children. Perhaps it’s my only purpose. But I don’t dare question you. What others wanted to take away from you — namely, freedom — that, you see, is what I want to give you.”

“Freedom …?”

“And that means that I can’t get mixed up in your affairs when they are beyond me. You try so often to bring me before your wall, which doesn’t want to reveal itself to me.”

“Reveal itself? No, it doesn’t reveal itself. If it did, I would know what to do. Everything, everything would be different. It is the impenetrable. It is fate.”

“Yes, exactly that. Though I feel not just fate alone but also a disguise. And a disguise is protection. I honestly believe that the wall is your protection. It separates you from your past, from all the horror. The fate that has transpired, what has been overcome … I know, you don’t like that word, but forgive me, I know no other way to say it. The most horrible things that you have survived and experienced are now beyond one’s grasp — for you, for me, perhaps for all human beings. You can no longer get at it, a curtain hides it. That is perhaps a wall less severe. If you say it’s fate, that holds a double meaning for me. It is also an enormous grace.”

I was touched that Johanna tried so hard, always attempting to extract the uncanny from the storm of my agitation and bring it to lee, then to soothe it, and with a confidence that always hoped to make it dissolve for me into something blessed. For that I must be thankful, for it holds me together. A benevolent undertaking, and often a solace to me, when, especially in the early years of our marriage, it diverted my all too emotionally charged daily existence into tolerable channels for the first time. Nevertheless, this encouragement, this conciliatory manner of Johanna’s, is never a cure but, rather, something that calms me and works for a limited time. Yet the way that Johanna manages again and again not to tire of this ultimately futile effort and to remain patiently supportive is astounding. No, the wall is not conquered or explained through such gentle tact, nor is it properly identified, although this interpretation is lovely and has often fascinated me. Certainly, if I have a past a wall stands between it and me, that I can’t deny, but it’s not my wall, not the entire wall before which there is no complete resolution and no real decision that is valid, much less valid for good.

The wall keeps everything at a distance from me and also coalesces everything for me, depending on the side from which I approach it or from which it regards me. A wall that defines nothing and yet defines me. A wall that changes me more than I want to be changed. A wall that advises me and is also my adversary. Johanna’s ultimate explanation often made me wonder whether it could even convey or temper my beliefs. I tried to imagine if I could even think as far back as the first time the wall appeared. I never could. No matter how deeply I look inside, the wall has always been there, and when there’s no going back any further there stands the wall. For as long as there has been something in me that says “I,” so it has been, and for just as long there has always been for me this wall, that which separates, which is unique, that which does not seem as incurable in other people but which certainly threatens me with expulsion from the continuum. To go it alone, this desire, which so many people acknowledge, seems to me not worth remembering, for nothing is more certain to me than exactly that, since, even if I don’t wish to call it my curse, it is still my greatest burden. Whoever has a wall is a loner; whoever doesn’t have one would alone be able to take part in the continuum, able to know what is held in common. In all humility, I cannot say this is not a blessing, yet I don’t want to assert my desire for what has been closed off to me as an ideal true for all. But is the continuum that I dream indeed simply there, unquestionable and self-evident? This I don’t know. If one is not aware of the wall, is he then not a part of that which is self-evident and thus a part of the continuum? This I don’t know, either. Perhaps others who don’t worry about such things are just part of the herd, are not individuals at all, and are not part of any continuum. Then Johanna would be right and those people would have no wall; they would just be a part of nature, a creature of contingency tossed back and forth in its element without knowledge of its limits, nourished by unknown currents, susceptible to the beat that moves one to dance.

No such beat, however, stirs or moves me, for I dance to my own drummer, always on the margin, the odd one out, the recalcitrant crank, and yet I’m not at all sure of being that blessed. This doesn’t make me despair but, instead, feel exposed, with no feeling of having been born of a woman. If I had just a single tiny picture of my mother, or perhaps just a picture of me as a child, then it would be easier for me to imagine myself a descendant with parents. I have no way of tracing the lineage of my features, for all those whose faces I have not seen for years exist only as a shadow without the help of a picture of them. Is that why I feel so distant from my mother? She has sunk away. I call out to her memory, but there is no answer, no echo resounds; as there was no mother for me, no one held me in her arms, rocking me and singing a lullaby. When I appeared, I was the same as I am today; what happened before remains unknown. No family home, no protected childhood, exists in my memory. Johanna was the first to teach me what that means — here are the parents, here the children, Michael and Eva dancing in a circle, then the mother enters. I look on. But where should I enter? When was it a part of my own upbringing? Can someone without a past of his own fulfill the present? The past, which helps Johanna and most people affirm their present, has left little within me and instead has left only instability, most of it being dead or, at a minimum, deaf and unreachable. Often, Johanna pleaded for me to describe my mother. To no avail, many words occurred to me, yet whatever I said turned out dry and empty, like a report from a file or an arid book. There is nothing comforting in such accounts, nothing that eases or fulfills me. I arrived, or so I say in horror at the paucity of my knowledge of my own birth; all I have is headlines, chains of letters linked together as part of an understanding that the heart cannot embrace. It’s not fear that prevents me from bridging the gulf but shame that holds me back from pressing the investigation further.