H. Adler - The Wall

During the story of my dream Johanna had moved closer and closer to me, and now we walked arm in arm, which was the best thing to do, given the slippery path, in order to hold each other up. Johanna didn’t say a thing when I had finished; there was nothing more to say. Without saying a word, we headed toward our destination in order that we not arrive too late for dinner with our hosts. But this dream and my reporting of it to Johanna stayed with me, for its sacred truth felt salutary and manifested itself within me. Whether it’s still there within me today I don’t know. I cannot know for sure, yet in my powerlessness, which I acknowledge, I have been freed, or, to put it more precisely, I am more freed than before. The shadows that rise up within me and in my dreams have eased. Franziska, Father, and Mother, after many groundless attacks that have torn me to shreds, have released me from their hold. Nothing more of their fate is a part of me; it is as if I am my own person. It’s as if I exist. Enough, that’s enough.

I stood staggering before existence, but I was the one who staggered, and there is something there that relates existence and me to each other, perhaps never comfortably but reliably. Because Johanna is here. How far away can she be? Here she is. I can call to her, I can ask for her help. She’s alive, and here am I. Indebted to a forgiving protectoress and existing only through her. And the children, their happy chirping, their liveliness, their inviolateness, and whose earthly father I remain. Their friend, they who have someone stronger than they to thank, a guardian who prays for them and can pray. Their quick daily growth under the care of their mother. She takes care of them — Johanna speaks and sings and is sweet to them day after happy day. How wonderful it is that Anna can enjoy such lovely company for a day almost every week. The children love their aunt more than anyone but ourselves, and it’s best that she no longer lives so far away in the country, from which she rarely could visit. She now has a high-level position in a new home for the blind not so far away from us.

Whenever Anna is free she often comes by in the evening, spends the night with us, and then we have a lovely morning together and happily spend the whole day with one another. Now I hear the women and children. They appear to be done, and soon the call to breakfast will occur, Michael will be off to school, Eva to kindergarten. Without a doubt the boy will insist that Anna take him, while I will have to settle for the honor of ambling along behind them with Eva. I had to hurry to get ready while Johanna worked to prepare breakfast, hurrying around with clanging cups and plates in the back room, then again to the kitchen, everything soon ready. How easy it was to accept all of her sweet care, the unfolding of little daily concerns being Johanna’s helpful contribution. Now I was ready and wanted to go across to the others and was already standing at their bedroom door. Then the doorbell rang, and it was certainly the mailman. Michael loved to greet him, so he quickly skipped through the hall to the front door. But this time I could tell that I had to be the one to open up, and so I hurried along beside the boy. When I opened the door, the world outside was bright and wide. The air that pressed against me was fresh, a clear autumn morning. Though it wasn’t his fault that he had often brought disappointing news, the mailman is a nice man with whom I’ve always been on good terms. But never before had he laughed with me with such relish. He must have known something — namely, that he was bringing good news.

“A registered letter, Herr Landau!”

He handed me the receipt to sign, along with his blackened, thick, nubby pencil, the kind that only mailmen carry on their appointed rounds. With a quick motion, I signed my name and was ready to accept my letter.

“The letter?” said the man, looking at me with a smirk. “It’s out there in the street.”

I then looked out at the street and recognized, to my horror, the hearse that the pallbearers had previously arrived in to take me to the crematorium. I wanted to say, “It’s a mistake, it’s a mistake,” and run off and slam the door behind me, but I didn’t move from the spot. I saw how the mailman bowed to me reverently before he went on his way. His behavior confused me, such that I didn’t even thank him. Then the pallbearers, Brian and Derek, jumped out from behind the hearse and opened it up such that I beheld a beautifully decorated coffin. I was not ready for such a warm welcome; who had gone to such efforts to take care of my meager existence? But I was pleasantly surprised, for the men in their handsome suits doffed their hats to me, which isn’t customary here, and approached respectfully, not even daring to pass through the open gate on the tiled path that led to the front door. They remained standing outside on the sidewalk and stood there politely and humbly as if waiting for a sign from me before they would even say a word. This good behavior pleased me, though the visit itself wasn’t that welcome, for I was not at all inclined to let myself in for such an unprofitable business just because of some insensible duty assigned to the pallbearers by someone, and which they wished to fulfill. The mailman was already gone and did not care about us. I saw him huddling in the Byrdwhistles’ doorway as I finally roused myself to do something.

“Gentlemen, there are no dead here to haul off. You made that mistake with me once already, and I won’t stand for it again.”

Derek and Brian didn’t react at all, and just continued standing there with heads bent. I looked them both dead in the eye and observed that, despite hanging their heads, they were both shaking shamelessly with laughter. I felt that there was something sympathetic and forgiving in their expressions, as if they grasped a deep misunderstanding, which caused them to immediately summon the kind of respect that was only proper to their lower position. I looked for the mailman once again, but what could he know as he hopped from house to house in a carefree manner, hardly thinking about me but, rather, about his work, he seeming less and less important the farther off he moved. I had done nothing for him other than sign for the delivery, but even that, even that was too much; he had my signature, meaning that I alone had to worry about what to do with these pallbearers.

“Do you have some kind of message for anyone at this house?”

The pallbearers breathed more easily and looked at me officiously.

“You, then,” Brian replied, “are the famous Herr Dr. Adam Landau?”

I nodded and corrected him: “Arthur!”

“That doesn’t matter, Arthur or Adam, it’s all the same.”

“If you say so.”

This I said in a somewhat melancholy way, but I didn’t think much about it.

“You mustn’t be sad, Herr Doctor,” Derek confided. “We are here on a happy occasion.”

With an encouraging look, Brian agreed, but he seemed to disapprove of Derek’s rude talk. Then he said, “My colleague is right, the news is good.”

“So, then, tell me, Brian!” I said, such that he shut up, surprised that I had called the man by his first name.

Then the front door of the hearse opened, and the driver — I remembered right away that he was called Jock — got out with some difficulty and walked right up to the gate, where he greeted each pallbearer in turn. He had also left the door open behind him, and next to his seat I saw someone hunkered down in the hearse. It was a very old man who was wrapped up against the season in a winter coat, over which a long beard fell. The man looked familiar to me, but I could have been wrong; in any case, I likely wouldn’t have been able to recall. But then, after a moment, I realized that it was the director of the crematorium, who had interceded personally, because I had given the pallbearers such a hard time during their last visit. Yet that probably wasn’t true; the old man had likely come along for some unknown reason and had nothing to do with the task of picking up the dead. He couldn’t care less about me and the three assistants, but instead just sat there unmoving, as if the whole thing had nothing to do with him.