H. Adler - The Wall

I had hardly read any books in years, wisdom having escaped me and no longer found within books, the withered remains persevering on their own, though they were indeed hard to keep together. Anna was right not to worry too much about the treasures lost among their pages, as it only meant caring for the dead, guarding plunder that only took up space in the small apartment. The fact that I had once written and thought about writing books that could have been printed, bound, and sold now seemed to me implausible, though indeed such ideas had often buoyed me during the war years. In the same spirit, I collected so much experience and carried it along with me, so much pressing deep into my memories, held there as I told myself I would need it, and now it appeared to me it was indeed lost, myself unable to find it any longer, Franziska’s death and my survival having shredded the volume that gave the contents some kind of sense, all my stowed-away knowledge now covered in dust and ground down to a pulp. What had prodded me to say later that I would write it all down, feeling that I had finally experienced for real what I had learned about only in my lifeless studies? A book? I thought of the Inca tribesman who was handed a book and told that it was the truth, and so he took the book, shook it, listened, and responded contemptuously that it hadn’t said a thing, and threw the book to the ground. How vainly I had sought to gain solace with all my plans! In cleverly developed sections I had conceived long works, written by Arthur Landau, news straight from the source, no mucking around in libraries, where one just writes what another has written, no cheap history, no beating about the bush or simply compiling other people’s stories; no, here is the real thing that had been tested and come through, and so your thirst for knowledge will be quenched! Foolish interweavings and entanglements, the powerlessness of words that won’t hold their place! I dreamed of all my plans, and I dared to think that, having survived all the horror, I did not survive for nothing, for I could say that I had been there, my life, love, and sorrows not only having been consumed by it all, but now, with a sharp mind and the keenness of an observant witness, I could go to my desk and set it down. Thus would my story fulfill a purpose, and everything wouldn’t be simply unappeased laments but, rather, such fortunes would be shared with my neighbors and the world, myself even coming to value my fate, it being unfortunate that I had been granted it, but good that I had not failed it.

Then I sat powerless in my first days at Peter’s near the vineyard and could not write a book at all. At night, ceaseless thoughts plagued me, shrill voices and interjections crossing one another, though all I wanted to set down was one word, and yet it all remained bottled up inside me and I was unable to draw it out. What I also thought made no sense, as it was full of holes and seemed the height of hubris. Everything that I had remarked on earlier seemed to have dissipated, especially when the war was first getting under way, as I buried myself in my research, sunk in the misery of my fellow brothers who had already died, searching for something like a doctor searching for a disease while taking his own pulse, calling out to colleagues puzzled at his condition, “Have you never seen anyone about to die?” And so I figured these writings were lost and didn’t mind that they were; should they ever surface, they would be obsolete and faded, truth’s lye having already eaten through them.

Then one day I held my works in my hands again. Franziska had lovingly packed them away, first in tissue paper, then covered with a thick piece of paper to protect them from water and any kind of decay, then bound together through and through, just the way she had wrapped all her gifts, such that one took great joy in opening them. Now I read through them, disturbed and ashamed, almost in tears, but my hostile feelings against my failed attempts soon dissipated. It felt as if I were looking through a murky transparent wall at a frozen life from ancient times, not my own life but a monument to a history that had disappeared and yet was still credible. In a rush, I put it all together — namely, what could be garnered from the retrieved writings and my memory. I hadn’t worked that long at the museum, but I began with what I’d learned there while trying to improve this or that text and to start to work on new books. When I arrived in the metropolis, the sociology of oppressed people was just in its early stages, most of the chapters, or at least the most important ones, having been drafted, while other studies were finished and new ones begun. What I didn’t think I could accomplish with all this activity and from these new projects! Whoever I spoke with, be it So-and-So, Dr. Haarburger, and whomever I came in touch with, I would always try to explain the basis of my work, setting forth my most important ideas, making the case for my deeply probing learned views and asking people if they would read a bit of it. If someone listened to me with attentive, careful respect, I was indeed happy, for then I would feel certain that whatever help they could give me was assured. Yet how foolish it was to hope for something, especially when someone would casually say, “Very interesting, Herr Doctor, but of course everything really depends on the finished product. One would have to see that first, then maybe something can be done.” I threw myself into my work and regularly spent nearly half the night at my desk, egged on by skeptical comments from So-and-So, who in the early days brought me books and articles to study, while I had taken too literally to heart the old saying that ninety percent of inspiration is perspiration. Indeed, that was not altogether untrue, but it had nothing to do with the actual workings; namely, the approval, funding, and completion of a successful project. Perspiration has nothing to do with genius; it only accounts for the discipline that one needs to complete something, and no one becomes a genius through perspiration alone.

I got smarter and no longer thought myself a genius, and I’m still just as hard a worker to this day. All that perspiration means is that I can persevere in order to hope to get something out of my otherwise wasted days. But back then, during the first two years of my landing in the metropolis, when I felt overwhelmed by even myself, overambitious, driven, and restless, I suddenly found a brilliant voice and capability inside me that allowed me to overcome all barriers in the world. The cynical irony with which I was greeted by people I knew and met I approached with naïveté or deliberately ignored, because I didn’t wish to give it credence and, with the overarching drive to achieve success as well as a meager living that I hoped to make from my chosen profession, I continued always to patiently sound out support that was vital to my future amid all the empty promises and even open refusals. I have never really known if I was treated any better or any worse by those who didn’t expect to be confronted in a social situation, as they kept their own willfulness in check and never let it show. For many years I didn’t understand it, but nonetheless played along. Even Johanna put up with it, she who had such faith in me, who did everything for me, and tapped her countless professional connections without knowing that she was not at all suited to the new way of things that had never been seen before. How could she know when even I, as a sociologist, had no idea that the social network had organized itself as a community, even though within it the rules were always changing, such that for certain functions in both private and institutional settings there were always correlating ways to say and do things that one had to employ in order to attain any success. Such understanding eluded us, and soon Johanna learned that people were just smiling emptily when they spoke with her, or avoided her altogether or simply sent her on through a chain of one person after another, each of whom, with a shrug of the shoulders, would turn down all the unsuccessful requests for help and still innocently ask, “Well, my dear Frau Landau, what is it you really want? The best thing to do would be to send your husband around to an employment agency, and if he doesn’t get anything, then you should have a look for yourself!” In the end, Johanna no longer knew what she had even been asking for, and those who had been approached offered only the backhanded compliment that she certainly was a brave woman.