H. Adler - The Wall

“That’s different,” he said, nodding. “You should have said that from the start.”

The man was an old codger; how was I supposed to say anything to him, since right away he had overwhelmed me with his surly speech? He looked me over carefully, yet in a friendly manner, and seemed to be waiting for me to say something further. I, however, was also waiting, for I didn’t want to get myself into more trouble. So I forced him to ask a question himself.

“Who are you here to see?”

“Fräulein Zinner, International Bureau for Refugees, Search Office, Section …”

“She’s certainly already gone. Try again tomorrow, but before five!”

I doubted it was my fault that I had missed my appointment.

“That can’t be possible! I am expected! I just spoke to her on the telephone twenty minutes ago!”

“That’s different. You should have said that in the first place.”

Again the porter nodded approvingly and wanted to know my name. He turned to a telephone and dialed carefully. It took a while before he reached Fräulein Zinner, but then he announced that everything was okay, he being as happy as I was, for he was pleased at his accomplishment and that I was the beneficiary.

“On the fifth floor!” the porter said, calling out the room number. “The entry to the right. You’ll find it. Normally you could take the elevator, but after five it doesn’t work. It’s turned off.”

“Many thanks! I can manage without the elevator.”

That was, of course, not at all true, for the stairs were very hard for me. The stairwell was poorly lit, as everywhere people cut back on anything they could, so why would it be any different at the Search Office, where people did research on the lost! The stately building, although some years ago it had been elegant and well cared for, had lost its splendor and was now crusted over with dirt and sadness. If you took a breath, it smelled sour and damp, and it irritated my nose, causing me to sneeze, which then echoed resoundingly in the stairwell. My knees began to quiver, so I stopped on a landing and had to interrupt my climb several times. When I got to the fourth floor, I felt so miserable that I stopped for even longer. I didn’t want to press on any farther, but rather the opposite, yet to hang about between the porter and the fourth floor wouldn’t work at all. Which was why I did nothing and just waited. Inside, I hoped for a sign of rescue in order to conquer my inability to move.

I hadn’t felt so bad since the war. Sweat poured from me, my forehead and neck wet, and I was dizzy. Back there during the first weeks, I often thought that my health had been broken, but it didn’t matter to me; I didn’t want any help from doctors. It is what it is, I stubbornly said whenever Anna reproached me for my recklessness, though finally I gave in to her nagging and a doctor poked around me, tapped on my breast and back, took my weight, stood me up before the fluoroscopic screen, and asked me a couple of questions. The doctor nodded in satisfaction: “Nothing organically wrong with you.” He could see that I was very weak, a bundle of nerves, he said, so it was no surprise that I felt so bad, but otherwise he was satisfied and said, as he prescribed a restorative and wrote out instructions for extra monthly rations of butter, milk, and eggs, that I was surprisingly healthy and in good shape, and that I should see the poor devils that came to him. Above all, this stiffened my will, which always fought against sickness, and I told myself, “You survived, now it’s your responsibility to be healthy.” That’s how I thought, for I didn’t think of myself as war wounded. No matter how much I deceived myself about my condition and overestimated my staying power, I recognized first that I was in the metropolis, in unfamiliar though fervently sought-after surroundings that had more to offer me than I could handle. I felt stress that I’d never felt before, nor through any measures or any amount of rest was I able to assuage it. Even though my condition had previously been in question, now it was destroyed. This I saw clearly, sensing it and yet not daring to admit it, nor allowing others to take notice of it. I was afraid that my frailty would harm me in the eyes of others and ruin my prospects. If one was going to be amazed, it made more sense to consider how well I had come through it, and to such talk I simply smiled and felt flattered. I didn’t like the weather, I found the food terrible, I could never get enough sleep or sleep well, the way of life bothered me, which is why I constantly felt under a stress that threatened to do me in. Now I was lost in the middle of a sad building, in a strange stairwell, where I had not come in search of anything, office hours now over as well, while in the stairwell there slumbered an uncomfortable and awful stillness that caused my inner unease to hammer on all the more.

I couldn’t stay here forever, so I had to decide something. If nothing better occurred to me, then I had to sit on a step and wait until someone came along and helped me. Eventually Fräulein Zinner would have to lose patience and leave the building, which gave me hope that she would find me, unless she used another stairwell that I didn’t know about. What would happen to me then I didn’t dare think about. She was prepared to welcome a difficult guest (though who knew what had moved her to do so, perhaps a moment of compassion), though she wasn’t at all prepared for a patient who would have to be tended to and who could not go to dinner. She would stand before me, tall and strange, her head lifted up high and above the protective scarf, though from my perspective, bent down and somewhat bewildered, perhaps even repulsed, myself indeed small and meek before her, a cowering puppy on the stairs. I couldn’t allow myself to sit there. I gathered myself together and had already decided for sure to mount the last floor, no matter the cost, but the steps rose higher than my feet and wouldn’t bow to my weakness. I had to querulously acknowledge my powerlessness and rest awhile longer to gather my strength and attack the devilish ascent.

I leaned against the window, but I was immediately shocked to find that the paint did not stick to it but instead came off in washed-out flecks that stuck to my jacket. Thus I could no longer lean against it and had to try to wipe the nasty traces from my jacket, but neither rubbing nor swatting at them seemed to work. Like spongy flour, they attached themselves to the fibers of the fabric. While saying a quick prayer, I sought release from my plight, but it hardly eased me, my pleas crumbling to nothing, unfortunately useless. Then I sought refuge again on the landing and clung to it with both hands, my gaze wandering cockeyed over the wall, following its surface halfway up to the next floor. Graffiti, scrawled in pencil or scratched out with knives or nails, waited for the absolving hand of whoever might paint the room, the names and monograms obliterated and painted over which sat here unused and pointless, probably inscribed by those in search of something, having seen their day, a beginning without end, even in the double strangeness of an international bureau for refugees and its search office, perhaps posting a silent request — as I had once been told back there in the Office for Returnees — passing searchers who wanted to know that not everything was lost, there were some who had been saved and were found again, the harvest of gentle patience, just once, after many years, indeed.

I decided to try to find this stairwell during daylight in the next few days, once I again felt better, in order to carefully explore the graffiti from the ground floor to the top. It certainly made no sense to do so, but such never-resting desire could be just the thing to provide an enticing sustenance. There were so many people once known and yet forgotten, the mention of their names enough to bring them back, and that could indeed be good. They exist, they exist, even strangers exist, and it’s comforting to know they exist; one should know them and gather them and humbly commemorate the signs they left behind, this being perhaps a first step toward self-awareness. Names written down — oh, the courage of avowal, where all the others have already fled — then to bow before the wall of life and in hasty humility offer up that they exist, when indeed they no longer exist, stumbling up and down the stairs in further flight, now indeed more prepared for their own passing, since with bold recklessness they have inscribed their names. Trembling, I pulled a pencil from my pocket, a worn-down stub from who knows where. Wait, now I remember that, absentmindedly, I had taken it from the phone booth of my guesthouse, a stubby thing that was useless, though here it was, me staggering to the wall, bending over and getting down on my knees, for I wanted to be way down, down where it hadn’t even occurred to the others to search for a spot, where the wall was only marked by thoughtless feet, that being where I scribbled it ever so slowly, nothing but an “A,” a big clumsy “A.” Then I let the stub fall, it being no longer of any use to me or to anyone else, rolling away, at first slowly, then a bit faster, nearing the landing where I expected there would be some resistance, but the gap between the flooring and the iron bars of the landing that ran below was large enough to let it pass through, soon rolling on and disappearing, floating on air, though I couldn’t see it but instead felt it, a soundless flight down through the stairwell of the Search Office, a message descending from the dreaming Adam, me listening and finally hearing it hit, two times, one right after the other, it likely having hit and bounced up, the horror of such a fall wishing to occur twice in one life. But then it was over — stillness, nothing moving — and the porter in his cell hadn’t heard a thing, or it simply didn’t worry him. He had seen too much in his job already to ever be frightened by a mere thought.