H. Adler - The Wall

“Forgive me, but did you go to the train station?”

“No, I couldn’t. I was no longer here but gone. Away, far away. I thought, Perhaps the old ones will be spared. What a foolish idea. Why should they be? It was because of my parents that I stayed in this country. Also my grandmother, who was almost ninety then.”

“Was she transported as well?”

“No. On the day before she was supposed to be, she was prudent and died. All by herself. No one did anything to her, and it wasn’t suicide.”

“How fortunate! But of course such old people they didn’t—”

“Yes, they did! Why wouldn’t they? There was no one too old to go.”

“How do you know about the grandmother if you were already gone?”

“Those who came after me told me so. I also learned about my parents from them, and about many, many others. And what happened then? Don’t ask. I know, and I don’t know. In any case, there’s nothing to say about it.”

“But Franziska?”

“Her parents poisoned themselves. They didn’t want to suffer and just took some pills to go to sleep. That happened months earlier, after they had given up their apartment and moved with two other older couples into a dismal little room in a musty old folks home. They were discovered much too late — they couldn’t be woken. When Franziska and I showed up after breakfast in order to start the move, they had already been taken away. Franziska ran to the hospital with me, but she didn’t see her parents again, neither alive nor dead. It was not allowed, and she pleaded to no avail. Then came the burial. They should have a grave in the central cemetery, if everything is still the way it was.”

“Nothing happened there.”

“The dead, who are still among us! It’s good that they’re there! Simple graves, thank goodness they still exist!”

“And tomorrow? After tomorrow? The future? Will you just keep going?”

“Do you have the desire to? Not me. Time has stopped, or I have stopped. It doesn’t matter what happens. Whatever happens tomorrow or in the future has nothing to do with me or with this day.”

“You said that you still love.”

“Yes, I did, and it’s true. That’s a time frozen still. That’s Franziska, who is always there, for she doesn’t exist.”

Anna then turned off the night light. The sudden darkness blinded me, and from the window the cool air poured in. Anna didn’t say another word, but only rustled her covers, perhaps curling up small beneath them. I didn’t know why she had turned out the light so suddenly, whether out of fear or because of my talking, whether out of compassion or tenderness or only because she was tired. Anxiously I listened for some sign, but the thick darkness released no sound. I could have said something, or at least wished her good night, but I was too uncertain that my voice would be lost to the darkness, the risk of being cut off by it frightening me. All that Anna gave off was a quiet hesitancy, nothing else, she having drifted off, or she not wanting to give any explanation in her own apartment. Therefore my silence was warranted; no word could possibly be expected of me. Already my eyes had gotten used to the dark, and yet the surroundings were hardly recognizable, only the nearby table’s edge recognizable in the light gray of the submerged room, the window soon appearing as if cut out of the darkness, behind it the drab and milky color of the night’s lofty freedom and the tender starry lights in the distance that floated above the hill’s slope on the other side of the river. I raised myself up a bit in order to better see the lights, but they didn’t appeal, for they were cold and unmoving. No stars shone that way; they were too fixed and hard.

Soon I turned away, settled myself into bed, pressed my head into the pillow, turned slowly toward the wall, as quietly as possible, and beheld nothing more than a weak, washed-out glow. It was neither comforting nor hopeless, only near and nonetheless uncertain, but at ease, since I didn’t disturb it. As I closed my eyes, the same indistinct wall remained, only thicker. It didn’t bother me, but instead finally left me alone. I had raised the covers higher, pressing my chin in between my folded hands, because I didn’t want to be anywhere else except by myself and with myself, no matter how strange the room that surrounded me, no matter how strange the acceptable covers and the strange web extending from my father’s hands to my body. What belongs to me? I asked myself. What do I own? “Myself,” I whispered. “Myself, and nothing but myself.” But that is also only a fiefdom, a fleeting possession. The Father can always take it away, and then I am no more. I loved someone. Why had I confessed that to Anna? And whom did I love?

Franziska is no more, but outside the wind blows, and my love is there. Will she enter my lair and dally with me? Why would she do that? She has no room, and if she comes closer, all the way in, she won’t find any. Is she not sitting there, or is she calling from a distance that cannot be measured? Then I let myself drift off to sleep and wandered away into the silent vanished joy where I once met her before we were husband and wife. Was Franziska in the fog or in sunshine? Franziska at my side as we walked, someone next to someone, or also no one. Now we were where one shouldn’t be, hidden dreamers in a green forbidden landscape. The little train laughed and carried the wanderers with many resounding whistles slowly along the length of the river, a traveling home, for the lovers wanted it so, and everywhere back then was home, everywhere a place of love they chose to visit. Here I am, it said, Here I am, the echo, and every place became a destination, home reached via the shortest journey. Soon the train stopped, and love stepped out, the gravel under its feet crunching, tickets gathered at the exit by a heavy hand, then vendors offered things for sale, wares offered up on portable stands and waiting for loose change, also baskets on the ground in which seasonal fruit was piled up. Soon there followed an imploring array of vendors, there being a ramp across the rails. All the hopeful merchants hawked their goods on and on, the children barefoot, accompanied by chickens and a sullen black dog. There was no more time, or had it dissolved into the dense cover of forest that wound around the path that climbed toward the heights? The blessed escape into the many-layered heights from the open flats, where summer forgets that there it feels like autumn. Trust in the light of day, the limbs warm, and all at the ready. The path forks, softly moving on, and where shall we go today?

“Are you awake?”

“No, I’m asleep, Johanna. I’ve been asleep for a while.”

“Then I’m sorry that I bothered you.”

“Don’t worry! I’ll sleep some more. I always sleep.”

“You can’t anymore. The order has arrived.”

“Please let me! There’s still time till tomorrow.”

“Unfortunately not. It’s already tomorrow.”

“You can’t scare me. It’s today.”

“No, you’re wrong! It’s already tomorrow! Just read the date!”

“I don’t want to. I can’t read it.”

“You have to, because it has to do with you. Later, you can sleep without end.”

“So read it to me, if I have to know it so bad!”

“Oh, don’t be so difficult! The men are already waiting outside!”

“What do they want?”

“They have brought your coffin, Arthur.”

“I don’t need any coffin.”

“Propriety demands it. You have to.”

“What, then?”

“One can only be cremated in a coffin.”

“I don’t want to be cremated. I just want to be buried in the coolest earth. Near a spring, out in the green forest, where there is plenty of shade.”