H. Adler - The Wall

“You could just change your old name.”

“I could, that’s right. But that doesn’t help. You still know the old one, and that still troubles you. One has to begin completely anew. Nameless, in order to get a proper name. Neophilius Neander.”

I had to laugh, but I didn’t feel well when I did. I was tired, and yet I stood and looked around the room, only because I was confused. No one was tempted to extend this conversation, and Peter asked if he could help with anything. He wanted to leave, as it was almost midnight. No, Anna didn’t need anything. Then it was agreed that Peter should come the next day, but not too early. My immediate future would be decided then — whether I would move in with him, and my entire situation. Peter reached out his hand to me, his grip trusting, yet too strong. Confused, I thanked him, and he smiled boyishly, yet in a leathery manner. He left behind the apples from the street, for they indeed belonged to me, or at least that’s how he felt. I protested. Yes, I had some apples earlier today, but they disappeared long before I fell. Peter didn’t continue to insist that they belonged to me, but they also didn’t belong to him. Lovely apples, he said. Anna should have them. Then he left, whistling low, and didn’t say anything more. It occurred to me that Peter was one of those carefree people who suddenly and with no particular purpose show up in a streetcar or a train compartment when it’s fairly crowded or completely overfull, such that you have no chance to flee when he begins whistling in your ear.

Anna walked her guest out the door, saying that I should make myself comfortable, it wouldn’t take long. I thought that she would wait for the elevator with him, but as she quietly closed the apartment door behind her I knew that I would be alone for longer. At first I looked around a bit, the books attracting my attention. Upon closer inspection I noticed that only the spines were wiped clean, whereas the rest of the books were dusty and had not been read. I felt like reading, as I was no longer tired. I had already run my thumb along the spine of a brown volume and pressed my middle finger at the top of it. Then I changed my mind, I had lost all desire. How about a philosopher? No, I didn’t want that. I pulled my hand back and saw the soft flecks of pale dust pressed into the length of my fingertip, the mark of a rummaging bookishness. It was strange. I had to rub awhile before the flecks were wiped away. Then I sat down in an armchair that filled a corner of the room.

Herr Meisenbach would normally come home at night, shake away the dust, and sit himself down, a book in hand, the assets of wisdom, he happy to read and read, the pages turning as his wife tends to him, and he reads aloud to her. And now she is unfaithful; it’s as easy as that. All it took was for him not to come home just once, he having made a mistake, for he was dead … the war. A stranger, or almost a stranger, sits in the realm of the dead one and doesn’t say his name. The books now represent neither assets nor wisdom, for the dust has gathered on them. I was ashamed, yet I was defenseless. What excuse did I have? There was no picture of the deceased anywhere in the room. Alas, Herr Meisenbach was gone without even a picture left behind, since he was no longer welcome, done away with, only one thing still tolerated, and that was the dust. Not a single sign that he had even lived. The books now ownerless goods, abandoned, strange, no longer even cleaned. Ordered out of his home, he left wife and apartment and all his possessions behind. He would return, a cheerful wave, turning the corner, around a wall and gone. He would come, an echo bouncing off the walls. He would come, he would come, it was true, promised at the last moment, there was no doubt of it. What kind of man was he? He had deceived the future widow and was gone. Frau Meisenbach had to put up with it all; she was trapped. We all have to die, and doubt did no good at all. But what was I doing? I roused myself awake in my armchair and looked up.

Here I sit and see what’s around me on West Park Row, and I still don’t recognize anything. I have let myself drift too far into the otherworldly, and that’s the reason nothing is left of me. It’s the cause of my difficulties. Others simply make up their minds or their minds are made up for them, and thus they find a place in the world that is their own, it becoming clear that others are pleased with them. They keep themselves neat and have a job. It makes little sense for me to compare myself with such people, especially in this country, which seems so secure. I learn nothing from such comparisons, for, without feeling envious, I can’t help feeling that it wouldn’t do me any good to be more like them. They go their way, and thereby I recognize an order that is surprising, and by which I am almost awestruck in my feeling of detachment from the frigid night of these surroundings. The rest of you, just go your own way! The world left me behind on my own, more and more from year to year, the postwar years only reinforcing this separation after some doubtful breakthroughs that took place and were done, it all having been put into effect during the war. Still, I had hoped to be able to get free of them when, with tentative hopes for a new beginning, I fled the place of my overwhelming past for the metropolis. But here I was, at a dead end on West Park Row. With a great deal of skill, Johanna had discovered the little house and brought me here, but with the acquisition of this hideout I was not so much snug as always hidden, and now here I was, once again setting forth into the rattling fan of days, fed and cared for, allowed to rest and sleep through the night so that I would have enough strength for the waking hours and keep myself busy, even as the day rattled on, thought following upon thought, the last one always falling away with the next churn of the fan.

Thus was I administered to, Johanna making it all happen, providing for my every wish, setting things down in dry terms, giving me something definite to do, something easy and yet meaningful, something certain and harmlessly predatory, such as the green market, with its fruit and vegetable stands, Johanna sending me there twice a week in the morning with two large sacks in order to choose and purchase something useful after I took Michael to school, he trembling with excitement and mischief as we crossed two dangerous intersections. Johanna embellished me, she the master, turning me into what she wished for, such that I would be a naïve, cheery man. She created him, she set him there, yet I am only a child sent outside and cannot go my own way. She fills the hours that I should know on my own with playful stuff in the little garden, letting me count the blossoms on the strawberries. Everything is lovely, she thinks, and she’s happy when, uncertainly, I tell her the number of blossoms, it sounding like a dark echo of her own voice. Johanna portions out to me what’s bearable, such as the rumbling sounds of the boy, the rummaging curiosity of our little daughter, Eva, it also often showing up in the sweetness of the mindful sounds with which Johanna fills the patient house while tending to things from morning to night. Johanna is happy to do so, because she loves me, and if I could feel thankful I would express it always in the morning and never at night. But Johanna is fast and goes about her business quickly, though she never looks for gratitude. Instead, I am always surprised anew that she is satisfied. I get worried about her when I see that her activities have no real point. How long will she stand my showing only empty hands each evening, it all threatening to go on indefinitely? I ask her, touched to the core, but without betraying what I feel, whether she is disappointed at not being able to change me, yet she dismisses it all. She says we have enough to get by, as I swallow down the last of it.