H. Adler - The Wall

The years of my first investigations passed, and doubts began to punch holes in the dense web of that pure realm. Yet I didn’t grow weak, but instead applied myself and became stronger, powerfully engaged, uplifted, and humbled, as I suffered and rejoiced, all the doubts only enriching me. Those years helped me grow, childhood and youth stripped away, mistakes and achievements building my character, myself able to stroll through good and bad nights, to sink into loneliness, to formulate the murky question of justice, to recognize the difference between similar creatures, such that I laid claim to a measure of judgment as well as a view of a world created for my sake, in which with proud humility I confidently placed myself at the top. Always I remained on track; I was not destroyed, nothing able to force from me the confession that I did not exist.

How, then, after such a promising start did I come to my downfall? How did all certainty cease, such that I came to believe that I was only what others saw me as and I didn’t know myself any longer? No particular set of developments, no specific harm, or any kind of sickness reduced me to such poverty — not poverty, for I would have been poor no matter what, but, rather, plunged into confusion and reduced to nothing! It didn’t happen because of anything I did, nor did it suddenly mushroom, such that I couldn’t help seeing that I was losing my moorings. No, I kept my wits; I believed in myself and did not notice for a long time that I had disappeared. Yet, indeed, that is what had happened.

What lies between the time when I was me and now, when this is no longer true? This cannot be completely forgotten, but it resists being articulated, for it digs in, puts up borders that cannot be crossed. I feel that one does not die within, that it comes from without, as one is suddenly or stealthily taken away. And then there are those who have power and, behind their wrinkles, will. They say, “Him there? No, he doesn’t exist. We did away with him already.” Pleading protests are raised against them, but no weapon in defense. You are simply hunted down, but you don’t admit it. Instead, you hobble along, legless and missing your head, through suffocating and impassable neighborhoods. Laws are proclaimed which maintain that this is not possible. You are simply confused, because you are dead and present yourself as a dead mistake, a vestige of yourself amid the funeral march of the frozen ghosts in their dance of death. Yet, because the masters of this world are so concerned with their own power, they don’t notice the whirring, and so they patiently choose to consider this rush of bodies nothing more than the day’s residue. They know it will come to nothing; it’s not worth the effort to deny those who have been expunged the last throes of their dance of death, as it will be finished by the break of day. I’m not saying this is what happened to me; it was probably quite different, this being only a depiction of my dissolution, perhaps a small part of the picture. It’s an unfit allegory. The entrance into the loss of one’s essence cannot be made visible, for memory digs its way into horrid trenches, downfall and downtrodden, the fallen remaining, not all dead, but the arisen are also extinguished, their being wiped out behind pale hungry eyes, each living in want, even when they are awake and appear everywhere, speaking words that cannot be heard. Done away with and hauled off, and yet composed, and yet still there. Thus they are, but am I among them? How so … me …?

A clamoring bell, and I am dragged out from behind the curtain. Then came the blows. There was a war in which many fought and either perished or survived, others not fighting but likewise perishing or surviving, while still others could neither fight nor not fight, though all of them perished and none survived, even when you made it through until a certain day, when you suddenly let in the light, paused at the window, and some voices shouted, “Everyone out! The war is over!” I also count myself among those who heard this simply because they had made it through and yet had not survived. Someone stretched out his right hand and laid the middle finger of the left next to it. Six was what he was trying to indicate, having lost the words — six years of war. That’s a long time, a lot can happen, and at some point during these long years I died. What befalls millions of creatures at the outbreak of peace, and how can that be realized without the roar of fierce battles? All die, both victors and vanquished. Yet I belong to neither, nor can I recall having been overtaken by the storm of battle. I was not sent into the fighting but instead stashed in the hinterlands, and the hinterlands were endless. Yet since the war was no longer limited to a single theater and it scoffed at all those hidden away, it’s quite possible that I was part of those who fought.

How it really was I hardly know, and I cannot remember having ever felt the throbbing heat of battle or combat, only that a distant rumble reached my hideout. The voices around me knew very well what it meant when they called out, “Planes!” be they planes attacking or planes defending. But, then again, no one knew who was being attacked or who was being defended. Whether it had anything to do with us as we lay hidden, no one said, for nothing was shared with us. Later there were more thuds, not close by, but the earth shook. Bombardment, we were told, and pulsing cannons. Round us every day, murder raged on. Even today I don’t know if that was part of the war, as the enemy never burst into our sheds. The narrow confines in which we were enclosed and stowed away were never disturbed. Those who murdered us were allies, friends. There was no one to stop them, certainly not the enemy. The murderers didn’t say very much; their shrill screams were short, though they carried themselves, it seemed to me, as if they were just doing their job. Assiduously they went about their business, doing it with diligence, and if my heart were not consumed with the fear that at any moment these heroes might relieve me of my bodily existence, I would have marveled at their dauntless zeal. Out of cowardice I avoided them and stayed out of the front row if I wasn’t able to crouch in a corner somewhere. I just didn’t want to attract attention and only hoped through fate, through some invisible entity and sheer luck, to escape my own murder. Did I in fact succeed? Doubt still eats at me even today. Others around me died because they were killed; I died because no one noticed me. Is there any difference? During those six years, my memory was strained. Because I was hidden away, it was stretched to the limits, drunk down with the agreeable arrogance of my youth. That gave me strength to cling to life, wanting to remain true to it so that it would have mercy on me and stand by me. I continued to hope. It wasn’t clear what I hoped for; I just remained within myself and waited for morning to come, just for it to be there, and then another morning, always another morning.

And so I went on. The days passed, though I never noticed that with each day I became weaker. The murder of my companions consumed me, yet I had no idea that each died for me, and that with each I died as well. Did I brood over my own fate? Time melted away inside me. Before I knew it, beneath the foamy froth of this roiling madness my very being had become pale and thin, shrunken to a fragile husk that resulted from my being fed nothing but a few meager morsels. I was given just enough food to keep me alive and alert enough to feel hungry and to crave more bites of food. I was denied them, and so I dreamed of them, which nourished me and granted me a steely strength. The deeper I sank, the more I distanced myself from myself, withdrawing from the reduced means of existence that maintained me and yet continued to weaken me as well. But still I defended myself against all the dangers that threatened me from without and from within, helped on by believing that protection and rescue were possible. Thus I prayed throughout, praying myself always away, really away, and into this intense engagement with the unknown I disappeared. The transitory wore me away. On the day they announced that the war was over, there was nothing left but a snakeskin, a dried, brittle skeleton that I could discern through tender self-regard, though I the living animal had slipped away, gone without a trace, no longer to be found. I tried to tell myself that the damage was not real but rather only a deep numbness: Patience, you will live again. In the meantime, I felt it best to live as if I were healthy and sound.