H. Adler - The Wall

“That’s right, but you are alive. What do you really need to own?”

“You think we disagree?”

“I mean, all you need is life.”

“We disagree, it seems to me. You have something when you possess something. I didn’t at all say that I do not possess anything. If that were true, then I wouldn’t be alive. Yet besides life — one might even say, more precisely, naked life — well, besides that I have shockingly little to feed and clothe this life. More precise would be to say ‘to support this life.’ Hence it’s a meager life, one of privation. Do you have any idea how hard that is?”

“You’re not complaining about how poor you are, if I understand you right. But I don’t understand much more than that. You’re thinking of what’s irrecoverable.”

“Right. Irrecoverable possessions. Ineffable things. The indications that there is something, or was, which either doesn’t exist or only in memory, and that is uncertain, for even the best memory is unreliable and can hardly make up for what has been lost. Something that you possess, even when you do really own nothing. Fräulein Zinner, think of the very value that one possesses. ‘Value’—just, consider for a moment what this word means. It lies at the center of the sociology of oppressed people that I have formulated.”

“Wouldn’t you like to tell me more about it?”

“Really? May I?”

“But of course!”

“Human dignity involves the material and immaterial sanctioning of value, as proscribed by society, and guaranteed by it. The complete fulfillment of this dignity rises from the optimal freedom from oppression. An oppressed man is one whose external or internal value is denied or withdrawn. The starker and more immediate this withdrawal, the less free the person. Disenfranchisement and exploitation, bondage and slavery are made manifest through the clear withdrawal of value, though the slave need not be robbed of all dignity or value, which are the same. On the other hand, someone who was once enslaved or in some other way oppressed cannot, through the easing or abandonment of his social conditions, ever again replace the value denied with one that is in part completely fabricated, for it is in essence irretrievable; it can never thus be found again. That is the tragedy of oppression; entirely irrespective of one’s psychology, its marks are in all cases indelible when in the course of one’s life it is significantly intensified. This happens especially through the withdrawal of attention or other measures that socially uproot the oppressed. If one is born into oppression and attains during the course of his life more dignity and value, as well as possessions, such that he is granted more rights, then that’s different. Thus only alone does one achieve a greater freedom from oppression. Society is a system of value; the social order is an ordering of value. Freedom in a society depends on how it is achieved, what kind of awarding of value its own members experience, whether it’s maintained equally or unequally, whether groups are different or roughly the same. A fundamentally equal and unified awarding of value for all members of a society would indeed need to be declared programmatically and in a constitution, though that has never happened. However, history has often shown the willingness to withdraw value from individuals or, much more frequently, from entire groups, and indeed in the many different kinds of societies that have been formulated. But I feel as if I am now delivering a lecture, and that’s not right.”

“Oh, I’m very grateful to you for explaining it to me so fundamentally. I’m afraid I’m just not the best audience for it. I feel I just don’t deserve it.”

“Now you’re mocking me.”

“No. I use words quite simply, in an everyday manner. I don’t know very much about sociology or other disciplines. But, please, you look so sad again.… Please don’t be. At least believe me when I say that I have the greatest respect for what you’re sharing with me.”

“And these are … were they your brothers?”

“Yes. That’s Richard, and that is Eli. His proper name was Elias, like his grandfather. But he was called Eli. Father thought Elias sounded too heavy.”

Fräulein Zinner picked up the picture of Eli as a boy and blew away a speck from the frame; it was probably a tiny bread crumb that had fallen there as a lost victim. Eli, the little one, upon whom the house had collapsed at the end of the school vacation, didn’t need anything to eat. His sister was right to run a cloth over the glass in order to make it shine. Lost crumbs of bread pained one too much. Wipe it all away. It had been rude of me to so carelessly lecture, useless arrogance, but my abrupt shift to the dead siblings was a hideous way out. How could I be so unkind! I couldn’t get rid of this wretched feeling as I clawed at my hair in an ugly fashion. That was embarrassing, for it must have looked awful, not to mention the sound of scratching, just like an ape. It occurred to me that my hair must look badly rumpled; that was the price for my sins. And then the vanity! With both hands I smoothed out my hair, while it would have been best to pull out my pocket comb, but I left it, feeling that I had already done enough damage. Fräulein Zinner took it all in stride, feeling that I didn’t deserve all this and speaking out of forgiveness.

“You get so dirty in the city. Here you can mention that you have a spot of soot on you, for no one gets upset. It’s not at all ill-mannered.”

“Yes, so much soot, and yet so little coal.”

She had placed the picture of the boy Eli next to his brother, Richard, again and shifted it around for a bit, as if it was particularly hard to set it down in precisely the same spot. She wasn’t being at all pedantic, but it felt like that to me; I pulled myself together in order to hide my disapproval, because Fräulein Zinner was suffering, her cheeks tired and lank, and then there was the dead brother, who deserved some small act of care. I could not transgress by showing any disapproval or discomfort, for commemorating the dead was to be honored, as was the memory of the dead. Just be, it occurred to me, just stand here, for I feared that I would seem too mawkish. Such senseless thoughts weighed me down. I pulled myself together in order to get hold of myself.

“That’s also a family picture.”

What I said was so shamefully dumb that I really did have to shift my demeanor and make it seem as if I meant it in an uninhibited manner. I reached out my hand, grabbed hold of the group portrait, and held it up in front of me. But even up close there was not much to see, all of it blurry, nothing at all to see, memory failing the contemplated picture, and therefore it no longer revealed anything, just a gray shadow, perhaps twilight, with light and dark flecks. I blinked in order to awaken my dreaming eyes, which worked, for there stood the picture again in its place, nor had I even picked it up. Why hadn’t I? All I had to do was handle it in a concerned fashion in order to be nice, Fräulein Zinner expecting me to do so, which she had a right to, though I didn’t give the slightest indication of doing so. Instead, I looked sharply at it, but without picking up the picture. The children were still small — Richard eight and Eli two, the sister around eleven — all of them frozen in their childhood, standing unchangeable outside of time, as if freedom were seized hold of in an eternal moment, though it was no freedom at all. An altogether different Zinner family, the daughter transformed, but still there, the others dead, buried memories that didn’t belong to me; how terrible to be surrounded by the dead! Eli fidgeting and irritable in his mother’s lap, she who only wanted a keepsake for her children. Richard leaning against his father, young and alert and conscious of the photographer, the father having the same expression as the later picture, just fresher and not so serious. In the middle stood a bashful smile full of hopeful expectation, playing the violin, the young girl standing between the parents, curls hanging on each side with little bows at the end.