H. Adler - The Wall

“Yes, I agree, one wants to know. When we don’t witness the death of our parents or siblings, when we can never be taken to a cemetery and told that they are here under this mound, then they are gone and remain gone, but they are not dead. We have no peace and must look for them. Often, you are startled and believe, there they are. You hear voices, mistake others for them. There is no peace to be had — sleep and dreams and truth comingle and cannot be distinguished from one another. That’s how it is for me. It confuses me, makes me afraid and overly sensitive. You look for a witness, someone who was there when it happened. The most unbearable truth is more bearable than the somewhat familiar fog of sweet uncertainty. With Arno it’s not as bad as it could be, Frau Meisenbach. The authorities at least let you know that he is dead. Terrible that he’s dead, and yet good that he’s dead, something certain around which different ideas can form. Certainly he suffered a great deal, all of it inhuman, violence, abuse, murder, harrowing and beastly, especially if it went on for many days before the light was extinguished or he met a final coup de grâce. There was nothing graceful about it. But the end is certain, it is recorded, it can’t be changed. You can, you must, believe it. But how when there is nothing, neither an end nor a continuance?”

Peter wanted to know what I meant by that, whether the lot of those missing is more terrible than the fate of those who have fallen and been killed. I didn’t know how to answer him, saying that it remained to be seen if it was a fate at all, for it was without name, and I was not at all certain if the nameless could have a fate.

“Those are just words,” he replied. “The missing and those known to be dead — there is no real difference between them. The cases where someone returns will, nonetheless, remain rare.”

“Ah, it’s not about whether it’s rare or never or often. If one turns up and is there, then he will speak. But the condition of the missing who have gone away is that they are away, far away, not a word from them, even the place where they have been taken unknowable, whether they have been shot or poisoned and the bodies burned and the pulverized ashes scattered; no one wrote it down and preserved the names, because it is memory that has been murdered more and more thoroughly than a speaking life. That is not fate. That is worse than the missing in action. A marked departure into the unknown. A war memorial will have a name that one can think about. But the ones I mean are never even allowed to be called missing. They are the non-missing, of whom there is no account. Completely and utterly done away with. Unwanted and therefore not missed. Disappeared, the loss of their memory met with derisive laughter. Released from all fates, expelled from the worst of fates. People who existed until a certain yet unknown date, then no longer, no longer people, not even dead people but, rather, nothing at all. Do you understand that, Herr Peter?”

The young man turned red, snorted several times, and shrugged at what I said, but he didn’t take it in at all.

“Just Peter, not Herr Peter, please! Oh, God, people! Of course that’s awful, yet all are expendable. We mourn, but the world doesn’t. And later we probably won’t mourn, either, and our descendants certainly won’t any longer. One doesn’t weep for one’s great-grandfather. But things of value that are lost are irreplaceable. Burned-out galleries, Gothic domes, Baroque palaces — these are the true losses. That’s what I think.”

What Peter thought was completely understandable, but I couldn’t understand it then and was insulted, and it took a while before I could trust what I thought I had heard. I said with a weak voice: “A person, a single person who survives, is equal to all the destroyed treasures on earth!”

This was not at all what the young man had meant. He said that I was upset, the war having done in the nerves of many, yet I needed to think clearly and admit that people value themselves too much, the self-love of their hungry will to live, but works are worth infinitely more than their creators.

“So, then, you believe,” asked Anna, “that the world is worth more than God?”

The young man fell silent and lifted his shoulders ambiguously. I didn’t want to get tangled up in such deep matters, such heavy words, but there was one thing I wanted to know from Peter.

“Things went well for you in the war, yes?”

“Yes, I suppose you could say that. Indeed, they did. I was neither in battle nor locked up.”

“And nothing happened to you?”

“No. Nothing at all, really.”

“And no loved one died, nobody disappeared?”

These questions bothered Peter, as he fidgeted in his chair, grabbed the coffee pot, and poured me some. But he didn’t give any answer. So I pressed harder.

“You said to me earlier on the street that you knew that many had died, especially older people. Do you remember? You weren’t at all affected?”

“Not a single old person of mine. Please don’t grill me! There was plenty of bad news in my family. My oldest brother was burned in a plane attack. I loved him very much. I will never forget him. But to always think about that? My God, what good does that do when one wants to live? I want to live. I don’t want to perish.”

“Ah, to perish — what that even means! But suffering, do you really know what suffering is?”

“I don’t think about that. I know all I need to know. Without justice, there’s also no life.”

“Not only without justice. You are alive or you’re not. Justice is something completely different and hardly has anything to do with life.”

“You should know that Peter’s wife is in prison. He’s working to get her free. She didn’t do anything. The way things are these days … I can’t say anything more.”

“I know little or nothing about the way things are these days. Just so that you know the truth, I arrived here today. Why, if I may ask, was your dear wife …?”

“Why was she …?” Peter repeated the question. “It’s always the same. It happens. Injustice never ends.”

“But she’s alive? You know that? You also know where she is?”

“Yes, I know, and I damn well shall set her free as well!”

“Look, then, all is not lost! You have something to live for. You even think you’ll succeed in the end. You just need to point out that an injustice has been done, that’s what I think, a terrible injustice. But you don’t have to worry about your wife being murdered. As bad as things are, she isn’t going to just disappear into thin air.”

“But the disgrace!”

“Oh, come on! There’s no disgrace in prison, and injustice disgraces no one!”

“No, it’s not prison or whatever you might think. Just pure disgrace. A pack of drunken victorious soldiers attacked women, even young girls. That doesn’t seem to bother the noble liberators.”

“And how do you know all this?”

“You’re so naïve! You just know it if you want to.”

“Really? Were you there and saw it all happen?”

“May I speak for Peter? Rape, hunger, abuse, and murder. Even children are not spared. Anyone knows who is at all interested.”

“That can’t be true!”

“Oh, it’s true!” Anna made perfectly clear. “I’ll tell you all about it, if you want to listen. The streets have indeed been cleared of trouble, but they’re all locked up in the stadium. But, I agree, unhappiness is not always inescapable. One can help out and do something. Peter will manage it; he’s smart. He’s allowed to visit his wife. It costs a lot, but it happens, for the guards are corrupt. In addition, one can also learn from them what’s gone on.”

I was then informed more precisely. The deeds of the liberators were laid out, Anna and Peter allowing me to forget the reason for my visit. Messengers. Torches burning, skulls cracked open and bodies spewing blood. Old people shoved into toilets, where they drowned. Children starving in prisons, wasting away amid the vermin until they died of neglect. It was all so horrible. But I was a lucky man, for I could now be happy that I was free and no one abused me. I had survived; what did any of these new troubles have to do with me? The tales of the horrors returned past terrors to me as present once again, all of it plausible, I not doubting any of it, though it was hard for me to listen to such beastliness, for it was something I no longer had to see, no longer had to suffer.