H. Adler - The Wall

Johanna removed the chain from its velvet cushion and looked at the beads without a word, stroking them as they rustled and shimmered, then she poured them into the palm of her hand, a cone-shaped glistening mound piled on trembling ground. Then she closed her fingers around them, the pearls now invisible. Only from the side, spilling out from her little finger, did a little tail brashly stick out, which I observed while smiling. Johanna sensed my amusement and quickly opened her hand, ashamed, the jewels there among the shadows of her fingers a pale, shining, disorderly clump of gems. With two fingers Johanna took hold of the left end and pulled the entire chain out, grabbing the other end with her right hand and pulling it out so that before us stretched a long, gorgeous double row at eye level, and then she brought them closer to her face until the pearls lay like a satiny bow just below her nose and, opening wider, passed over her eyebrows, her temples, behind the ears, and then over her head.

Johanna bowed her head slightly, the chain shifted and clattered softly, then she stretched it out far from her face, a finger running right and left and looping the pearls around it, the center lowering to form a broad sinking point, forming a rounded bow. Johanna was pleased, that I could see, but she didn’t thank me and didn’t say anything, but just smiled under lowered eyelashes, her mouth open a little and uneven, one corner sunk deeper than the other, the lips barely parted, teeth not showing. I didn’t look directly at her, but I didn’t turn away; instead, I tried to draw closer or to look past Johanna, but that didn’t work, and so I blinked. Something had begun, that I knew, though I didn’t know what and didn’t want to think about it, as within me it bubbled up like delirium, myself unable to breathe, a mild pain in my foot making itself known, doubtless the last effects of the injury from the suitcase that had fallen on my foot shortly before I arrived in the metropolis and which had provided me with a painful memory in the weeks since, though I had not felt it for many days. Then I remembered the last apple from back there, Anna’s goodbye gift, which had rolled out of my suitcase. I couldn’t help feeling that I now needed an apple as something to carry from the past into the future and which could bind the two together.

I opened the knapsack and didn’t look at Johanna in order that she not get mad the moment I violated the ironclad decision made earlier. Then I had the fruit in my hand, striped with yellow and red, cool and with a soft lovely glow, a wonderful orb with sunken poles at either end. I held it, covering only half of it with my hand as protection, though I didn’t intend to take a bite of the apple. Then I tried to glance at Johanna again. In her eyes there were tears, very clear and bright, though she wasn’t crying but instead the teardrops were involuntary. The pearls hung perpendicular from a hand toward the ground. Our glances met, the pearls and the apple both unacknowledged signs in our hands. The hands that were free reached out to each other, but the fingers didn’t grasp one another, only the backs of the hands lay against one another, betokening a bond: pearls, hands, apple.

Who knows how long we sat there? The coolness of the ground increased, the dampness rising; it was only a few days after New Year’s, there being no way to ignore the season, as we felt the frost coming on. Through leather and wool it pressed and deepened, but my foot no longer hurt, only immense stiffness filled my limbs, smoky puffs of breath blowing from our mouths in the intense chill of the air. Above us the clouds moved in again, long, sinuous strains racing over summit and hill alike, though the silver-blue sky peeked through here and there. It wasn’t long before the clouds lowered around us and wrapped us in thick veils and a dense enclosure soon surrounded by streams of sunlight. Nonetheless, we were bathed in light, the milky threads of cloud strongly lit through, though containing a brilliance of their own, the ridges and basins of the land soon retreating into darkness, here in the country of the Black Mountains, even the grass turning black, the lambs that slowly moved about below on the slopes now dark gray.

We had warm clothes on, but since we had been sitting for so long they no longer kept out the weather. If we didn’t want to freeze completely, we couldn’t stay any longer and finally had to get up, though each of us was too shy to make the first move or suggest that the other should, so we continued to sit there undecided. It could have begun raining, the air above getting more and more damp, while from the ground the dampness rose like quiet hidden flames. The apple in my left hand had turned into a frozen ball, my fingers around it so stiff that they hurt. Had the pearls in Johanna’s involuntary iron grip turned to frost? I grabbed her by the hand and pressed it gently, she closing her fingers tight with her thumb stretching over them. Through such vigorous rubbing we awoke from the numbness that endangered our souls, looking more intently at each other, our gazes no longer lost in a dream but also unwavering, consciously looking into the depths, such that we knew that we would be there for each other. For the first time, we beheld each other in our shared togetherness and our foregone separateness, it becoming clear what held us together and apart, us understanding what we would have to seek and what avoid, sensing the overpowering shudder of what had been passed on to us, the undiminished power of the deep inheritance and flooding surge of an ancient beginning, the break of a new day, the wish for children perhaps having overcome Johanna in that moment much as it did me, something which earlier I only rarely felt and never yet to such a degree.

I then could have said something, or even should have, since we had run the gamut of the superficial to the intimate that day and now understood each other so well; and yet I didn’t do it. I wasn’t sure if Johanna expected me to; perhaps she was also not sure if I expected something from her. Yet I had to do something; I had to betray the moment and decide something. Thus I started to stand, but no, I could not, for it was not so easy, my legs being too heavy, the joints stiff. I had to let go of Johanna and swing my arms in order to lift myself up, but after a couple of tries I could get only as far as my knees. Johanna sat there without saying a word and looked at me tenderly. It could have been that she felt for me and was surprised at me at the same time; the look she shot me was a double one, sincere and direct, but also unreadable and shifting. With strong strokes I rubbed my legs in order to get the blood moving. This helped, for I could finally stand and breathe deep. Then I helped Johanna, it being easy to do so, it really being presumptuous of me to think she needed my help, for she really didn’t.

“Do you like the pearls?” I asked softly, without hesitating.

“Can I keep them? Are they mine?”

I nodded. Johanna fiddled with the gold clasp, the three black pearls gleaming darkly. Soon the pearls were around her neck; for a moment I saw the lovely face of my mother before me, after which I thought of the mother of my dearest, and then of Franziska’s shadow. From the place where we had sat, I picked up the papers and some rubbish, burying it all under stone, lifted the knapsack, and stuck the box for the pearls into it, wondering for a moment whether I should make the apple disappear, but then thought better of it, closed tight the laces, and went over to Johanna. We were ready.

“I know the direction in which we need to head, Johanna, but I don’t know the way. Can you take the lead?”

“There is no way. We just walk on ahead. Downhill. It’s not far to Vaynor.”

We took the steepest path, making our way with powerful steps. Soon we were warm and took a more measured gait.