H. Adler - The Wall

“I feel like one can talk to you. Will you listen to me?”

“But of course.”

“Then come along!”

She pulled me over to an empty card table and shoved it somewhat to the side, causing some cards to fall to the floor. I shyly picked them up and held them in my hand, but Fräulein Zinner smiled and took them from me and laid them down. We sat there and were not disturbed. She started to talk about herself, hesitantly and carefully at first, always checking to see how I reacted. Yet, because I encouraged her as she talked, she lost her inhibition and spoke more freely. Ten years younger than me, she came from over there, yet from the south. She had wanted to be a violinist, had had a wonderful teacher who shaped the whole person, not just the playing.

But nothing came of it. On her nineteenth birthday, she left with her two younger brothers. Her parents stood at the train station, smiling with a shared knowledge between them. The father was already old and yet spry; the mother much younger, but sick and fragile. The hands holding white hankies waved their long goodbyes. Thus the parents had sent off the children and did not follow them, did not want to follow, could not follow, the parents just having to bear it, nothing else to do. They had lived their lives; the children had to leave. The weapons on the border glinted, the violin too valuable, not allowed, thus taken away. And the train traveled on, thundering across the bridge, the border giving way. Mistrustful glances welcomed them, but then they were let through, the train’s thundering echo advancing until the salvation of the coast.

“They wanted to save us, but it didn’t completely work.”

Fräulein Zinner stopped talking. She thought and nodded quietly, setting a strand of hair in place, which wasn’t at all necessary.

“But why am I telling you all this? It’s so irrelevant.”

I disagreed and asked, because it seemed the safest subject, about her violin playing.

“I was given one. It made me happy, for I could write home about it. I also practiced, for the sake of my parents, as long as I could, until the war began. Then, of course, not at all after that. I never touched it again.”

“A shame!”

“No. I still have it. It’s sleeping in its black coffin. Do you want the violin?”

“I don’t play.”

“I would love to give it to you. It’s just wasted on me.”

“Couldn’t you start playing again? You shouldn’t give up something like that. You should start again.”

“You think so?”

I talked to her some more, but she refused. “That’s over — the hands are no good anymore, too many dishes, yard work, grinding work in a factory.”

“And your siblings?”

“No, it’s just me. The brothers weren’t saved.”

Fräulein Zinner said this with sudden, strong bitterness. I looked at her, surprised, because until then she talked on easily. As I tried to distract her, she waved at me almost angrily. Why shouldn’t I know everything? The brothers didn’t survive the war. One had joined the army way too young after he had been imprisoned for a year. Then he sailed on a troopship that was torpedoed. The younger brother went to school on a scholarship and had done well. During the holidays, he wanted to come to the city to be with his sister. She should have prevented it, but he begged and pleaded. Then an air raid; he was only twelve years old. She had to bury him, as the older brother was in prison then, and couldn’t come. Which was why he ended up in the army, as the prisoners were conscripted.

“And your parents?”

They knew nothing about it, which is good. When the bombs fell, the daughter didn’t write to tell them that they did; when the ship sank, there was nothing more to write. No, they hadn’t been deported. The parents were spared that. Fräulein Zinner was happy about that, and smiled. They just died of old age, one shortly after the other, within a week. First the father, then the mother; yes, from reliable sources she heard in a roundabout way, and it was confirmed after the war. “Nothing is more dignified when it comes to death than to have the inner decency to pop off at the right moment.” To my complete surprise, Fräulein Zinner served up this raw sentiment. I winced in response.

“A whiner!” she whispered. “A whiner is all I am! Tell me, how did you manage it … I mean, all those years?”

“I don’t know. There’s nothing that can be done about it, or—”

“Or what?”

“Or because of it is what I would say, if you really have to know.”

“I see. I understand already. I’ve read a lot of reports that tell you all about it. But you shouldn’t at all think that my parents … Naturally, I would have … But as to what happened … I can’t help thinking. And sometimes that helps. You also lost people?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Of course you did. I shouldn’t ask such a dumb question.”

“It doesn’t bother me.”

“So you’re not a whiner. Look, I hardly ever talk about it. But when someone was involved so directly …”

“That I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know if I was all that directly involved. I didn’t in fact die, and therefore I don’t know.”

“I don’t entirely understand.”

“There’s not much to understand. Only the dead were there, because they alone remained. The rest of us only passed through. That’s just the way it seems to me, something entirely different. I can’t really remember.”

“So you escaped? You didn’t want to be there? Is that why you ended up here? Is that so?”

“There was a lot back there that I didn’t want to hang around for. That’s one reason, but not the only one as to why I came here and prefer to be here. If you want to call that an escape, then you’re right. But only then. There’s no other escape. There’s no such thing, nor can there be a successful one. I wouldn’t therefore speak of any kind of running away, for I know that I can’t get away from the persecution. The monstrous is always at my neck. But this experience and my memory are not one and the same.”

“Explain!”

“I don’t mean forgetting. That I can’t do. Such things are still present to me as experiences and images, and I want to investigate them, since I cannot do anything else. Until everything is thought through and made clear, I cannot rest, let alone find peace. Thus there can be no escape. But memory is something else altogether. It’s the identification with the deportation and all its consequences, therefore with those who suffered extermination. That I can’t do. At best I was broken, perhaps shattered, but, because I indeed stand before you, I was not exterminated.”

“At best? Isn’t that bad enough?”

“Yes, bad enough. But to be exterminated would be better.”

“So you don’t want to live any longer?”

“Oh, no. I very much want to live, perhaps even too much so, but only my own extermination could amount to a true memory of what happened.”

“What is it you want, really?”

“Nothing. Only to be.”

“That’s comforting.”

“That’s entirely unsure. Listen to what I say: One has in no way the right to call his behavior good.”

“Why be so hard?”

“Excuse me, but I’ve gotten off track. It’s so tiring to have to hold yourself together, to think of yourself as an individual entity. I repeat again, nothing is for sure. The extermination was not successful, therefore there is no complete memory. In short, memory is unattainable. A person on the edge of things remains in abeyance.”

“That’s what you mean by nothing being for sure.”

“Correct. The decision has been set aside. One is neither alive nor not alive; one simply goes on. Probably that’s not true for most people, and for others it’s unacceptable. But for me it is certainly so.”