H. Adler - The Wall

“That’s a beautiful coffee service. Don’t you remember, dear boy?”

“Excuse me, Frau Holoubek, but I’ve never seen this service.”

“My dear boy, the blessed dear lady, your grandmamma, always used it whenever she had guests.”

“Really?”

“If I could only tell you! I can’t believe you don’t remember! She always put it away herself, underneath in the credenza, where she locked it up. No one was allowed in there.”

“I see, I see, Frau Holoubek. That could indeed be.”

“If I were to tell you … but that one could forget something like that, no, my boy!”

“Yes, I’ve forgotten.”

“How the dear lady would get upset! The service with the gold trim! Ten cups there are. There were always two missing.”

“So it isn’t complete.”

“That doesn’t matter, my boy. The dear lady always said they could be replaced by the factory. Perhaps they can.”

“That would be expensive.”

“Yes, they are indeed expensive cups. But ten is fine, ten cups! When the dear lady died, you know, Fräulein Greger was supposed to get them.”

“I see, Aunt Olga Gröger.”

“Yes, the aunt. And then the trouble started, and she was already terribly afraid. They wanted to send her away, she said, and so she took the service and said, Look, Frau Holoubek, here is the service, which my mother — God rest her — got in her dowry. It would be a shame, she said, if it got lost. Take it from me, Frau Holoubek.…”

“Don’t upset yourself too much!”

“It was a disgrace, my boy! And yet I said, Fräulein Greger, no, something like that, that’s too much for me to handle. But take it, said the fräulein, take it with you, it doesn’t matter. Then I said, Yes, I’ll take good care of it, Fräulein Greger, and then my husband went to her. She packed it up, and some other things as well, and my husband took it, and now it’s here.”

“Frau Holoubek, don’t you want to keep it? I’d really be pleased if you did so!”

“But, my boy, what do you think I am? I’m not like that. How could I? No, that I can’t do. It belongs to you, if no one else from the family is there.”

“You know, I am alone.… I have no use for it. Oh, please, do keep it!”

“No way, my boy. Don’t tell that to Frau Holoubek. You’ll need it again sometime, for sure. One day soon you’ll again have a lovely apartment, then everything will be good again. Guests will come, and you’ll have the lovely service on a table at home, and then you’ll be happy that you have it again.”

“I don’t believe so, Frau Holoubek.”

“You don’t have to take it today. I’ll take care of it if it doesn’t suit you now. But you must have it eventually. I can’t keep it, my boy!”

So I agreed. I couldn’t expect Frau Holoubek to again painstakingly stow away in cupboards and drawers the crystal bowls, vases, egg cups, and other things she had stacked up in front of me on the table. She was pleased as she marked my change of mind and hurried to help me with the packing. She had a lot of paper and wood shavings at the ready. Thus everything was carefully guarded against breaking, piled into large unwieldy cartons, tied up with string through and through, and fitted out with handles so that I could take away the burden. I was already gone, the unsaved ownerless goods led away with my weak strength. How was I to handle it all? With it I had a new assignment, which Frau Holoubek told me about at length, asking if I didn’t remember the old washerwoman, Frau Krumbholc, who had done laundry for my grandmother.

Soon I had found my way in a confused manner to Frau Krumbholc’s, a terrible apartment, though it was clean, the fringes and tassels of the green tablecloth neatly combed, the kitchen door open, dirty white steam discoloring the room, the smell of sauerkraut, slices of apple cut into it. Frau Krumbholc was sad, she said, for she had long been widowed, and pointed to a picture behind glass on the wall. I couldn’t see much. The widow couldn’t hold back her tears as well as Frau Holoubek and asked me ten times, with whimpering amazement, whether it really was me. Several times she shook my hand, squeezed gently, and let it go again. Then she circled about me some more, but suddenly she was off and dragged in a misshapen suitcase that supposedly belonged to me. The lid popped open with a rasp, the densely packed contents pressed painfully against one another — old bed linens ready to be used, lightly yellowed at the corners, though they were good wares that could no longer be had and would be useful today. The suitcase wouldn’t shut, the washerwoman’s knee pressing hard against the lid, it bursting open, the lock clicking on the right, but the left not wanting to snap shut, so I had to help, my powers waning, rubbed raw by the strange deep sleep that did not refresh me. Meanwhile, I still had a name to look up along the way and needed to make sure not to forget Herr Nerad.

Breathing heavily, I made it to the museum with the suitcase, Herr Geschlieder helping me up the steps with it. Then I was alone and glanced despairingly at the weight that calmly crouched before me. The suitcase yawned open before me, my arms buried in dead bed linens, coldly and roughly grabbing hold of them, then other treasures sprang out of its depths all rolled up and rising toward me — wool jackets and vests, ripe red, milky yellow, sharp green — trembling plunder in my fingers, all of it clean but reeking of mothballs, the smell almost stinging my eyes, though nonetheless a lot of it eaten away by moths, cord meshing springing back, all of it rustling. When I lifted out the thin goods, from the bottom there stared at me in surprise and barely shining an almost completely dulled-out mirror. It was incredibly heavy. Now I knew why I had to struggle so with the suitcase.

Then I was there with the dried-up small Herr Nerad, once the factotum in the shop of an uncle who had died more than twenty years ago. Herr Nerad had always been devoted to Aunt Rosi. Now he unpacked three old purses, carefully wrapped in several layers of paper, that belonged to my aunt. I took Herr Nerad by the hand, looked innocently into his wrinkled countenance, which understood nothing, and said as tenderly as possible what beautiful purses but that I couldn’t use any of them. If he didn’t want to keep them, would it be possible for him to do me the pleasure of giving them away. Then Herr Nerad withdrew his hand convulsively and was nearly insulted: What, the purses were still quite nice; one couldn’t buy any like those today. I had to take them, at least as a memento. There were still little mirrors buried within them, the pale-pink powder in the powder box and the pad that went with it, all of it crumbly with extended sleep, used tickets for the tram from many years past, a scuffed-up little leather book with well-thumbed addresses, recipes, lists of things to buy, such as eggs, butter, flour, rice, dried prunes, and apples, receipts for bills from the coal handler Burda, also a worn-out change purse that would no longer stay shut, its clasp squished flat, two nickel coins slipping from its folds, yellow with endless neglect and almost no longer worth anything. I staggered heavily in the face of it. Herr Nerad also loaded me up with more names that I didn’t recognize, but that’s the way it was, me sent from one keeper to the next, and new people turning up whom I had to see for sure. Did I know indeed where else Aunt Olga had stashed a bundle? Secretly it was whispered to me as if it were still forbidden, and there was something from Uncle Alfred as well. Reluctantly but irresistibly drawn, I shuttled between well-meaning little people who raised a hand to their foreheads with half-open mouths when they sized up my appearance, their hoary astonishment melting into thin joy. They nodded at me, saying My, my, followed by regret, a memory, a sigh, a handkerchief, and tears. Then they put on splayed cloth gloves, stuffed handbags, clutching a dust cloth under the arm, creeping off to a trunk or to a storeroom, already back with something and pleased to be getting rid of a burden, since I should give it to my heirs, it was valuable. Doomed, I tried to fend it off, but I was ignored, or they didn’t believe me and felt it only right, which is why it all was quickly shoved at me, along with the lesson that mislaid goods never gained value, for what was I thinking, a memento, yes, that they wished to have, but only something small, nothing more.