H. Adler - The Wall

“You really think, madam, that I came to this country in order to put people out because of a local sense of charity?”

“I would never think that! I don’t mean you, and I wouldn’t hurt a fly. I’m only talking in general. But, I swear, what would you do if you didn’t have something to nibble on?”

“Madam!” whispered Fräulein Zinner.

“I don’t mean any harm. I’ve already said I would never hurt a fly. And perhaps Herr Dr. Landau can show us that he is, in fact, one of the few intellectuals who can do something. All the better. Then I’m right. What do you think, Herr Buxinger?”

“It’s not easy. But don’t let it get you down too much, Herr Dr. Landau. There are still possibilities, and relationships sometimes change overnight.”

“That’s right. I see it particularly from the vantage point of charitableness. I can indeed say a little something about that. In any case, Herr Doctor, the situation is completely bedeviled. If I were in your shoes, I would certainly have stayed where you were. Where so many had been murdered, brrr, it would have been horrible, but new able-bodied blood is certainly needed there.”

“It’s a graveyard.”

“You’re exaggerating, Herr Doctor. You’re being too emotional. Of course, you’re always happy to see the dark side, but a graveyard is alive and blossoms and requires a horde of gardeners to tend to it. Yes, it’s true. Surely you cannot hold my decency against me, and new life blossoms from ruins. A German poet said that. And life brings us joy, so said another.”

“Madam, I beg you …”

Then I stopped, though they kept talking. But why? My hands began to tremble. The talk went on, cards floating from mouth to mouth, little packets that fell into four stacks. Why did I listen? Mere vanity, all my limbs hurting because of it. Uncomfortable sensations crept across the chair, sawdust everywhere, filling up my mouth, me unable to swallow another mouthful. My stomach was bursting as Frau Haarburger came over to me proffering a little bowl of fresh, sweet chatter. No, thank you. I only gestured my thanks by pointing at my stomach. It was all so disturbing, the way they opened their mouths so that the bounty of sweet chatter continued to flow. I was getting more and more tired, my hands dangling at my sides, as I yawned continually. On tiptoe, coffee was brought in. Shh, so that he doesn’t wake up! When will the card game finally be done? I wiped my face doubtfully with my handkerchief. I often looked askance at Herr Dr. Haarburger to see if he would take pity on my pressing situation, but he was far too wrapped up in his own thoughts and only rarely cast an encouraging glance at my group. As soon as he did that, I smiled at him beseechingly, but he mistook this sign of my desire to be rescued and thought it only a sign of hopefulness or an expression of my feeling fine. He took in my state with a fleeting glance and turned away, satisfied. I fell apart inside and fought against my feeling of powerlessness. Luckily, my speaking partners were finally done with trying to discuss the right or wrong way for me to proceed from afar, and instead asked me to speak in greater detail about my previous experience. Thus a request ignited me. I instantly felt more sure of myself and in my element.

I loved most to share my views about the discontinuity of human consciousness in society and the resulting social ills. I based this on the impossibility of attaining a mutual shared feeling among a large number of people and explained this inability as a main cause of the general lovelessness that did not shrink from barbaric forms of oppression and contempt for others and, at a minimum, forwarded a hard-hearted sense, never mind the sensibility such ills led to. Quickly I found many connections to my own experience and observations, which I had really pulled together after the war. Full of the urge to share, but without satisfactory explanations, I needed to get my thoughts across. But I was hardly capable of recognizing how much my listeners could stand to hear. Today, I know that this was a last attempt to exist, to unfold a personality that, as I wished to be, was a tower of arrogant pride amid despair.

That’s an illusion. But how long before one reaches one’s own limits! And now even I, who had no more limits, was consumed by the points of reality that continually flared up here and there, and which I quickly and yet clumsily lurched along, never reaching the end of them, since they dissolved in between. Thus, for me, life is like non-life, being and time having become invalid. All that remained was this: to be completely at the mercy of others, a figure, even the vestige of someone different which I played, the expression of one who has endured, not because that is what I needed but because it is what they saw reflected in a lowly mirror, which one could look into with pleasure or pain, perhaps becoming wiser through me and no longer needing me at all. At such moments, when I was in some way conjured, permitted to exist, viewed, and taken in, I could either feel happy or fall into the deepest despair. But if it is one or the other, even if it is despair, then it’s almost fine with me; it’s a comfort, because I am perceived and I perceive. But that’s no way to live.

How does one live? The street hawkers press threateningly along West Park Row. No, they don’t threaten, they only want to sell their wares, and that’s why they’re so loud, the poor fellows hungering after money. That’s an existence, and they can’t call out enough, whether it be to offer mussels or little crabs, yellow ice cream in cubes stuck between waffles or piled up on pointed cones. It’s the same for the hawkers as it is for me. Only they are not as down as I am, as they cry out more heatedly in their work, indeed begging and cajoling, unrelentingly appealing to the children, who are already running, Michael and Eva as well, holding their coins, trembling with throbbing desire as the men effervesce over their excess of wares and ever more wildly hawk them with mounting lust that chases the children into their homes with demands: we want, want to buy, give us the money! There’s no use calling out to the dead, and my life is too uncertain for me to make much of a fuss. Who would buy me to have in his hands and throat? That’s foolish. I have no wagon overflowing with goods, my hands are empty, my heart lies hidden, a constant pain runs throughout my limbs; I cannot offer myself in the same way as the hawkers. But back then, when I arrived in the metropolis, at the Haarburgers’ I called out just like such a salesman, offering myself, though I had no goods, for my complaints and forthright advertisements were unsellable goods. That was no way to live.

Nonetheless, I spoke. Fräulein Zinner listened to me. My onslaught appeared to frighten her, but she patiently held herself together. Whether she felt my talk was poignant or clumsy didn’t matter to me. I looked at her. She didn’t seem curious, which was almost always the case when new acquaintances in the metropolis listened to me talk, seeming shy and somewhat nervous, which always struck me. It always felt good that someone in such circles devoted such attention. Thus I worried less about the bookseller Buxinger and the benefactress Saubermann, though they egged me to talk on. Soon my words were directed only at the silent one. I hoped she would say something, and I secretly wooed her, though without any success, for she preferred to listen, me holding forth on awkward and clumsy matters not all that cleverly. Finally I could see that, every now and then, with a breaking voice she would pose a pertinent and impersonal question. The more I wanted to capture Fräulein Zinner’s attention, the more embarrassed I was to look at her. Suddenly, I interjected and asked my listeners if they could imagine that a healthy young girl who as yet had remained seemingly untouched by a dark fate could ever marry a man with my gloomy past. I was shocked to find myself having made a pass in such a completely unreasonable and also foolish and almost completely obvious manner. I could only expect an awful reply. Fräulein Zinner didn’t think long, and responded quietly but firmly before the others knew what to say, such that it hit me almost cold when she did.