H. Adler - The Wall

That I didn’t need. It was too much for this hour. I asked myself angrily, how can you wear this article of clothing with the monogram “HM”? How could you be so unjust! HM was an account, the good standing of a paying customer. Back in the workshop sat the hunched-up old Fräulein Michelup, tirelessly stitching monograms with her needle-thin fingers. She never came out into the front of the shop. One brought her the goods and instructed her briefly, at which she nodded, and that was all. “This needs an ‘HM,’ please — that pattern there, you know the one.” It was ordered for Herr Meisenbach. Therefore Hermann had bought from my father or Anna had, most likely she, for she had known the shop since childhood. She wanted the best for Hermann, nothing cheap, for it wasn’t good enough, and she wanted good value. Father himself had served her, standing next to her with a knowing smile, running his fingers over the fabric so that she could be sure of what she chose. The clothes were always better after they were washed, and they lasted a good while, much longer than Father in the Reitergasse, a memento of his superb good trade, his impeccable honesty. Unforgettably, his clothes were still worn throughout the city and far beyond the neighborhood and throughout the land. The clothes rested in the drawers and slept, a soft treasure bound with small paper bands, perfumed with lavender, reminding one of pleasurable, cool memories of celebrations at home. Gravely the father looked down, for he knew that he profited from clothing the nakedness of the citizens in the warmth of smooth fabric. But now there was no longer any father and no Hermann, I having come instead to assert my right. I kissed the precious label that was now familiar to me, sorrow withdrawing deep inside me and into my innermost parts, pride and joy suffusing me on the surface. What I possessed as clothes in my poverty were meager threads that didn’t belong to me, yet they were mine, they were mine! Somehow they had found their way to me.

And there I stood in fine trousers and a handsome jacket. I turned toward the mirror and stood there in this outfit. I was myself again, happy to be so, for I had chosen my garments myself and shouldn’t be ashamed of such splendid things. I no longer needed the dressing gown. The way I was dressed now, I could let myself be looked at by anyone. Therefore I took the dressing gown and lay it over my arm, wanting to go to Anna outside in the room. Then she would recognize who I was, and she would find me handsome and somewhat like my old self — a person, someone who would make her forget her husband and all her friends. No introduction at all would be required, for who but the son of Albert Landau could so unselfconsciously step out? After just a few steps, any tempting vanity would be satisfied. But something held me back, the dead man’s monogram. Was it on fire? I couldn’t cause Anna such a shock. Perhaps with my teeth or nails I could pull out the stitching. But no, the monogram was too firmly embedded in the fabric; only a couple of threads were plucked out, poor Fräulein Michelup bent over in the back and nimbly sewing. It just wasn’t right. Maybe cover up the tag, as if it irritated my skin — that was an idea, its prickly fire needing to be subdued — but I couldn’t really hide it. A hand covering a name, and the name placed over a stranger’s heart, what unbearably close relations! And so I relinquished my disguise.

Whoever loses his home against his will, simply because he has been expelled by the powers that want to annihilate him, cannot return alone to the site of expulsion as one who happened to be saved from joining the fellowship of the murdered, no matter the reasons that move him. He can no longer go home, back to where he came from, for only a foreign land suits him, and he cannot get far enough away from the place that bore him. This I had realized before I began my journey. Nonetheless, I had to at least risk such loss, seeing that I was this and not that, observing the traces, taking in what was left of the past, gathering it and burying it. But now I knew that it was futile, it was forbidden. I no longer wanted to be here. Yet how could I get away, myself too tired and my strength gone? And so I thought. How pathetic the nightshirt from the Reitergasse had been, how sinfully foolish my desires. Hermann’s torso was the same size as mine, but my legs and arms were too long, a little bit of my hands and feet remaining uncovered. The father had in mind a stranger’s measurements, mine having long since been crossed out. “The young Landau?” came a painfully hard voice. “He no longer shops with us.”

How could I let Anna look at me, a joke at this hour, now too late, a dreary, sad man turning up in front of a strange woman? She would judge me harshly, and I had to inform her of who I was. Should I stay in the bathroom and sit on the edge of the tub or on the toilet? If I sat there, I’d fall asleep. Anna would also fall asleep in the room and forget about me. If she remembered me and knocked on the door—“Where are you, Hermann? It’s late!”—I could say, “Don’t be upset that it’s taking so long! I’m here. I’m here for you.” I threw the pajama top over my shoulders, it being an old piece softly worn through that fit me surprisingly well, striped fleece, the colors shimmering. The shirt didn’t belong to Hermann, for he certainly wouldn’t have liked striped clothes. Maybe I could find a monogram on it as well, but I had not paid attention and wanted to spare myself the effort. I could already tell that it belonged to my school friend and Anna’s brother, Arno the politician. It smelled of him, a little sour, while on my tongue there was an aftertaste. Thus I was properly dressed. For Anna and for me it was best, the tension between us dissipating, her own man and the strange one forced out of the house. Quickly I got my clothes together, not wanting to bring them into the room, and hid them in a corner under a hand towel.

“I no longer exist! I no longer exist!” Softly I breathed that through my teeth as I emerged from the bathroom. I knocked tentatively on the door of the room and heard a dry sound that formed itself into no words. Anna lay awake and covered in her bed, her hands moving uncertainly about, her expression dreamy yet untroubled. I relaxed, cautiously ready, standing back in the right corner at the other end of the wall. The bedding was laid out such that our feet were pointed toward each other when I lay down, our heads resting at either extreme.

“I no longer exist! Anna, I no longer exist!”

She looked at me questioningly, as if she hadn’t heard right, yet she said nothing. Then I spoke louder, and it sounded unmercifully loud.

“I am not Hermann!”

“What’s the matter with you? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I wanted to ask you to forgive me for being so terrible.”

“Forgive you … what do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing, it doesn’t mean anything. A dumb thing to say. You don’t know me; sometimes I say such stupid things.”

“Is there something else you need?”

“It’s too much.”

“I mean to eat or drink.”

“I’m a widower.”

Anna sat up halfway, propped up her elbows, and rested her chin in her hand. She looked at me as if my last words were a heap of tangled, cut threads underneath Fräulein Michelup’s worktable, meaning nothing more, me needing to at least explain.

“Not only Hermann, Anna. Myself as well. I am also dead. I mean, the woman whom I was married to.”

“Dead?”

“Yes, completely gone. No longer here. Just the same as Hermann … Did you love him very much? Were you happy? And now you have to look for your Hermann in every person, in every man? Or has he sunk away, the surface closing smooth as a mirror over him?”