H. Adler - The Journey

The will to destroy is directed essentially toward people and their works; everything else remains off to the side, only grazed or accidently swept up. Indeed nature’s resilience is its salvation; whatever bends straightens itself again. But destruction’s fury, which culminates in death and never can hold itself in check, is nothing other than a sick and twisted form of greed that prefers a peaceful, versus a violent, control of things the moment sinister war breaks out, during which owners lose the balance and security of normal lives and orderly relations, the seemingly irrefutable right to ownership suddenly being suspended. Then they die or become despondent if they don’t do something bad out of the fear that causes them to do terrible things. Then they turn into hordes that are hard to control, everyone joining the march or urged to join in the uprising. Everyone is sent forth and given the charge to spread trouble, which is wicked, but even more wicked when it is done on the sly. For that’s how a fiend spreads trouble, who then is only satisfied when it leads to an orgy of destruction that swallows up everything in its reach. That, however, is when the rubbish blows about! And it blows around as well what is not yet rubbish, but will be! It has to be stepped on and kicked out of the way, its memory left to rot! Murder and fire and terror wander among those who unleash them, though they themselves will also be consumed by such force and will be pulled under by the misery they instigated.

Yet this race that eventually leads to self-destruction is rarely apparent to the minds behind it. The horror behind the flickering flames and tinkling shards of glass remains hidden and protected by secrecy, both the rampagers and the victims of the day remain unaware. Whoever outlasts such events and looks back at them as judge or victim shuns the light and doesn’t want to know in order that silence absolve the sins. Forced to speak, the participants claim that is not how it was, or at least not how it was supposed to be, fear’s dirty euphemisms smoothing things over with clever sayings that gladly conceal what they carry. However, the sadists listen to whoever among the escapees finds the courage to force himself to speak and are barely able to contain themselves before such fabrications, though it’s not long before their patience bursts and, mixed with obviously bored yawns, the crack made in hatred’s facade closes up again and new wounds are inflicted upon old open wounds, laughter soon following, then disgust, and finally suffocating forgetfulness. If the accuser, however, still cannot prove the charges, he must continue to press and threaten, for only that will bring him peace. If that fails, then nothing more is heard; no accuser is clever enough or strong enough to jump over or knock down the wall of willful deafness once it’s erected. Then the accuser must go hungry and thirsty, every exit is blocked, the desert in which he initially cried out simply disregarded, or it’s simply too far off, no one having any idea in which direction it lies, the journey leading from one desert to another desert, though the right desert is never reached, everything having been in vain.

What is destroyed never really was, and that which is in vain never came to be. And so they are one and the same, soon indistinguishable, and soon gone. From withered fingers the last drop of dust has fallen, and they are dry, brittle brushwood that collapses upon itself. Yet when everything appears to be over, when the past means nothing at all, what should have been will again be known by those who come after, all the rest now gone like a last giant breath of air one tries to take while dying. It would be useless to try to find the dust that’s blown away in a huge new sigh, for that won’t work. The hope that it will still be there leads to a rare new beginning, but in the face of the rubbish heaps it collapses. This time all the barrels have fallen from the wagons, the dust rises high, the old men are terrified, the group leader is upset and yells louder.

Go outside and stand in front of the gully in Ruhenthal, but don’t think about why you have been allowed out. Instead be happy that you have cold, damp noses that you can touch with your fingers. You’re alive! You’re alive! The bittersweet odor winds around you and makes your eyelids heavy, yet that is good. At least you know that you’re alive. You are counted off. All noses are gathered together, present and accounted for are the long snouts of the dogs. And don’t blow your nose if someone presses it! — Ouch, my nose! — Don’t scream! The nostrils take a deep breath and suck in air that tastes good to you whenever it’s not rancid. Hair grows long in the noses that bend over the spots where others have died. Just think, you noses, it didn’t take much to seduce you into a dream, one that you hardly could have imagined would turn out this way! Now you root about in mud and muck. But now off with you, for the leader has to call the tired noses back to the barrels and the wagon. Easily the empty wagon rumbles over the gravel on the way back to town.

Go to the dump that’s half the way to Leitenberg and behind the Scharnhorst barracks and stand in a long row. You can say a blessing over the past, but then you will no longer know what really has happened, how you got here and why. Only because you are tired will you stand there satisfied that you have been granted a moment’s peace, you noses on long legs. Your eyes have been allowed to stare, their gaze comprehending where recently, perhaps yesterday, the bellies of the wagons were emptied, where weeks ago, months ago, and already years ago, there where gradually the earth resettles, it no longer looks so bad because the rain has smoothed out the ashes and mixed them into the earth. The blesséd wind has also spread seeds. Pointed, jagged weeds have sprouted and dare to display their colorful blossoms. When the gaze can free itself of disgust and can take in the healthy little patches of color, then it turns toward renewal and doesn’t have to know that here misused, betrayed, and eventually tossed away goods rest, which in good-natured fashion no longer resent the harm done to them.

With effort and some tender care the beds of the most beautiful gardens could be transformed. If the Leitenberg Beautification Association could recommend anything, it would recommend that its field of concern not be focused on the castle gardens, in order to restore certain views and other enclosed spots, but instead here. Indeed the members would have to sacrifice their weekends in order to shovel, sift, smooth, and roll the earth, clear clean paths and set up beds with rose trellises and decorative bushes, build a hard-packed through road and place benches everywhere that proudly would carry labels that say:

LEITENBERG BEAUTIFICATION ASSOCIATION

The money for this work could come from public donations. Young girls would have to stand on street corners each Sunday, offering paper flowers for sale and calling out:

Listen, good people, to what we say

We want the rubbish and rubble hauled away

So spend a penny, maybe two or three

So that such dreck no longer will be!

The local authorities, as well as the military authorities, could provide a subsidy so that such initiatives could begin without delay. Architects, building firms, and gardeners would hurry to provide advice and skill, plans would be entered into vigorous competitions, tools and steamrollers placed at one’s service for free, and Captain Küpenreiter from the Scharnhorst barracks could make sure that there would be enough soldiers and tools to take care of it all.

But nothing comes of it all. Meanness, avarice, misunderstanding, and the inertia of the heart resist such well-meant undertakings; people are fed up with such efforts and turn away. Indeed your efforts at such beginnings are even seen as a madness that in the end will cost you. Such useless dreams can only occur to people who have nothing better to do, that’s what is thought, and therefore it’s good that no one ever gives you the chance to express your wishes. It’s a waste of time to bother yourselves with rubbish, a miserable sensibility that shows a lack of will to accomplish anything. That’s why it’s appropriate that you are strictly controlled as long as your suggestive natures still exist. Only because you are miserable are you sad about the stinking rubble that is the mirror of your own unquestionable hideousness, what you yourselves are and what you still don’t wish to recognize, though it’s the despair within yourselves that makes you long for the help of the Beautification Association.