H. Adler - The Wall

“It’s as clear as day. One marries such men — I mean, it’s almost your duty!”

Herr Buxinger was simply surprised, but Frau Saubermann didn’t know what to think. She sat there with both hands clutching the back of her chair.

“Duty.… Duty.… That I find indeed a bit much, my child.”

I was not at all happy to see how quickly and matter-of-factly Fräulein Zinner looked back at me. As I considered how to go on with my talk and was searching for the right words, Herr Buxinger came up to me. He nodded meaningfully.

“How surprising. But how lovely of you, Fräulein Zinner.”

Frau Saubermann let go of the back of the chair, having gathered herself once more.

“Lovely or not lovely, it was said impulsively, my dear child. You simply can’t make such general statements about questions of marriage. It’s a duty when feelings compel you, though I’m splitting hairs! Such a marriage cannot be simply theorized. There is only one theoretical duty, my dear child, and that you will simply have to believe from someone who is very experienced in social matters, and this duty has validity because it can be fulfilled in practical terms. That is the duty to be freed of moral duties.”

“Do you always feel that way, madam?” Fräulein Zinner asked politely but sharply.

“I beg of you, who have known me since childhood, how can you ask me that? I am morally free.”

Frau Saubermann turned the conversation to herself and began to share her views on love, marriage, duty, and freedom, not sparing any practical examples. I cursed myself for having unleashed this unpleasant wave that only showed me that I was nothing but a bungler in the company of others. Soon the most holy things were talked to death; a cold onslaught that I could not interrupt spread outward from Frau Saubermann. If the humanitarian factory owner’s wife meant at all well, it was lost on me, helplessly overwhelmed as I was by the wave of talk! Useless intellect devoid of any reasonableness or worth, not even woven from one’s own views and spreading heady interests across every realm — this always left me cold and made me sad, but now I was especially miserable. Frau Saubermann’s lecture made me feel sick, like someone wasting away and suffering from her dry, bloodless knowledge. The others listened in wonder or, at least, listened patiently. “That doesn’t interest me at all!” Why didn’t I say it? But no, I didn’t utter a peep and, luckily, kept myself in check, but my head was throbbing. I bit my lip and kept my mouth shut in order not to embarrass the relentless woman. I looked off at nothing and tried to imagine that I was socially backward and therefore not capable of agilely and easily tending the splashing rudder in order to safely navigate through such thinking.

If you sit down with others, you cannot be so squeamish, dear Arthur. If you provoke others, then you cannot complain about what they throw at you from head to toe. Swallow it down, as if it were a sweet biscuit, and take a drink as well. Thus I put on a polite face and nodded now and then as if granting approval, not agreement. So it went, until suddenly I heard: “Things are a lot different now.” That I agreed with wholeheartedly — yes, very much so. One can hardly believe it, but it is indeed so. I had certainly changed and developed. Alas, “developed”—that’s a stupid word, it’s not right. “Experienced,” that’s really more like it. I had experienced change. Little ship, little ship upon the wall, traveling forth and on and on, hold yourself together, don’t fall into the flames. Away, away, I should get away. Far beyond Dr. Haarburger’s lovely house, where the father lives with his beloved among the cooing leaves at night, the beloved handing him a biscuit that she ripped from her body, and he takes it, biting into it with the sharp points of his teeth, the sawdust pouring out of the heart drop by drop, me biting a biscuit as well. Two and then another — the next one, please, that’s swimming in blood; myself, however, in a little ship on the other wall, a little sheep in a little ship. Marriage is fundamental. One must cement it with noble-mindedness, a little lamb that my father bought, though the marriage was the better. That’s worth something, two guilders the cost.…

No, I can’t lose my way. I must recognize that the people who watched the maelstrom from another coast are different from those who sailed forth without house or land. They stood and watched, forgetting themselves in the midst of today, sleeping in bed as the past burned on. Thus they survived, without the least bit of their inner natures living. This, I told myself, and held my right hand in my left in order to better restrain myself. But as Frau Saubermann’s cautionary tales continued on, I became angry and could keep my patience no longer. Having imagined a sign of sympathy from Fräulein Zinner, I took my opportunity when the triumphant factory owner’s wife paused for a breath.

“Madam, that’s all well and good, indeed also informative, but it has nothing to do with my case!”

“It’s about every case!” Frau Saubermann tried to interject.

But I left her no chance to say any more and talked over her so loudly that my words reached across to the cohort of card players, disturbing some of them, who, with quiet reluctance, looked over at our group. Frau Haarburger wanted harmony in her house and lifted a threatening finger toward me. Yet she didn’t get the chance to devote more time to us, as Professor Kratzenstein politely sidetracked her.

“My dear lady, it’s your turn!”

“Yes, I’ll play!”

“Hannah, let our young friend have his way,” Dr. Haarburger cajoled. “Such fire — it suits him well, and his temperment!”

I quietly continued on.

“It has nothing to do with my case. That would be true if you were speaking about the years Jacob spent working in order to win Rachel.… I was speaking about me, completely personally, not just a theory. I meant it practically.”

“I see, practically. How interesting!”

“Yes. I mean in terms of my marrying.”

“Are you engaged?”

“No.”

“How, then, is it practical? It’s indeed only a theory! Look, you think too much about yourself, and that’s wrong. You are not the center of the universe just because you suffered. That can only lead to trouble! Suffering should be heard, Herr Doctor, don’t get me wrong. But there’s no doubt that a man such as yourself … naturally, understandably … under the circumstances … I regret to say. Then one must also appreciate that one can’t properly mature after having lost so many years, as if having slept through them. You do understand, don’t you?”

“Just like Sleeping Beauty!” I snapped.

I couldn’t go on. I hadn’t noticed that Resi Knispel, the journalist, had sidled up to us. Now she intervened.

“Sleeping Beauty as a story of our times! How original! That would, of course, be a brilliant idea for an article. Don’t you think, Buxi?”

“You think?” the bookseller called out. “I thought we’d had enough of all that.”

“That’s right, Herr Buxinger,” I agreed, and whispered further, “The poetic methods of these vultures … blood and tears of the murdered, so that the journalist-novelists and film directors are fattened up …”

No one heard me. I didn’t want to let myself get in trouble for nothing, and so I was pleased when Herr Buxinger and Fräulein Zinner helped out by taking the conversation in another direction. A lot of conversations crossed over one another in the salon, the more so as the card players slowly finished their game. Frau Haarburger then busied herself as hostess and brought around little bowls of goodies, the party beginning to crank up and get louder. I slipped away from Frau Saubermann and got hold of myself, no longer hearing everything she said, nor what was happening amid the spots of light and shadow all around me. Frequently I looked over at Fräulein Zinner. She didn’t avoid me, but I couldn’t tell if she was keeping an eye on me, either. Yet, as my eyes swept over the room, she caught my gaze with a soft pallor and stood there calmly without saying anything. The conversations got louder, becoming ever more distant from me — slivers of opinions, the chaff of tiny concerns from washed-out mouths that reeked of sweets and schnapps. It seemed to me that my plight was buried in a grave full of frayed murmurings, as they harmlessly talked on about such strange things and assuaged it with fuzzy words and concealed gestures. Any company is crowded when one who is lost stands in its midst. Therefore I became all the more quiet and just shuffled in a disconnected manner through the waves of good cheer. I became superfluous, and that’s an awkward condition, but it saves your strength and you feel more free. It helped, for I felt better. I could easily have excused myself from my hosts with a pleasant word of goodbye and gotten away. But then Fräulein Zinner unexpectedly came up to me.