H. Adler - The Journey

No one hears what you have to say, for it is wisely arranged that no one is allowed to speak to you. In much the same way that people in houses keep away from you, so you are kept away and it becomes true that you are not allowed any longer in houses, according to our wishes, and that you may no longer inhabit them. You are rubbish, but the kind that is not allowed between table and bed, between chair and cupboard. Rubbish mixes with rubbish, and sin with sin, all of it a disgusting gruel that is only good for the vermin that help it to rot even further. People said good-bye to you and wrung their hands over you, but they didn’t wave; on the contrary, they raised their hands to ward you off. Souls washed themselves in the waters of guilt as you were uninvited and the doors were closed in front of you, commands barked behind them as they snapped shut, for they were ordered not to look at you. Meanwhile, concerned mothers went even further than any command as they carefully closed the windows and drew the curtains so that the little children wouldn’t see you or the sight of you cause them harm. “Mommy, who are all those dirty men there?” No, such a question the mothers hated, for then they had to lie—“They’re poor men!”—and that would not be enough and they’d have to say “They’re no-good devils!”—though that didn’t work either.

And yet you don’t give up. You are given a few minutes. You are told that you should take care of your needs. You can open up your pants and piss on the rubble. If there is nothing else available, you are allowed to go down into the ditch so that you can pull your pants down. You are your own graveyards. You should be buried under the weight of your own despised possessions. It’s not meant out of hatred, but rather pity. Yet you still long to get away from the rubbish; you still long to be elsewhere, which only demonstrates how disingenuous all those ideas are about beautification floating around inside your head. Stuck in the weeds and squatting down, you look around and sniff for anything that might be of use. You want to have what no one has any longer, but you cannot take it. Indeed, the warning says:

PUBLIC WASTE DISPOSAL

as well as:

ALL FORMS OF RUBBISH LEFT BEHIND BY

PRIVATE CITIZENS ARE STRICTLY FORBIDDEN

And yet removing anything from the dump is also not allowed, because it all belongs to the authorities and therefore is still not free of owners. Thus there is nothing left in the world that doesn’t belong to someone; all goods are divided up and cause pain to those who have nothing and don’t want to have anything. It’s to them that the warning on the sign against entering is directed. So it is only thanks to the corporal’s good nature that you’re allowed to squat out here in order to ease your aching intestines. What you’re allowed to do here is indeed permitted, but it is against the general decree and is only allowed because the authorities are comfortable in the security of their own rights, though they are not generous enough to take the care to put an end to such a command.

Moreover, the town fathers don’t believe that anyone would want or take anything from here. With the stinginess of an owner who doesn’t give anything away freely, they calculate what something is worth, especially since a higher office, namely the Ministry of Commerce, has already staked a claim to the free acquisition of all that was useless, since whatever one didn’t use the state can always use. Long memos were sent to the local authorities: You must save, save, and save some more! Thriftiness spells riches to the victor! Whoever values the worthless is certain of riches! Save old glass! Save old copper, iron, and sheet metal! Save whatever one can bend or weave! Save old bones! Save paper! Save, save everything! The state doesn’t sneeze at what its citizens no longer love, and thus the rulers stand humbled before the ruled, forwarding a shining example of self-denial. That’s why next to the trusty rubbish cans in the courtyard of every building in Leitenberg there stand special containers into which everyone tosses whatever glass, metal, rags, bones, and paper they no longer have any use for. Everyone tosses it all away for the sake of the state; everyone tosses away what is worthless and sees the state transform it into something of worth once again. The dross of life itself is redeemed and repatriated through a renewed sense of its own worth, since all of it served a shared purpose, retrieved from mud and muck only to be dusted off and restored to a bright luster.

The same thing happened to the consignment shops as had happened to The Golden Grape. They were taken over and told they were no longer needed. You are out of business, because officials from the Ministry of Commerce will now handle your business, as well as take control of the stockrooms of all dissolved firms. Only a few secondhand dealers were still able to apply their expertise. Even though they were just servants and underlings, they still stood a rung higher on the social ladder since they were now civil servants. This allowed them to wear the glorious emblem reserved for those who are paid servants of the state.

A large part of the work was not the concern of the former rag dealers. The people’s pride wouldn’t stand for that. Instead, the responsibility for gathering and saving was reserved for those who were better suited and brought more spirit to the work than the cool, calculated nature of salespeople. New people were tapped who slowly, from hour to hour and year to year, attained their full potential in service to the state, climbing from the fallen on the lowest rungs of the ladder to the holy desk of the front office at the top. The Ministry of Commerce approached the Ministry of Education to help spread the feeling of general well-being, and so schoolchildren with their clever heads and tender, diligent, restless hands were enlisted to gather monthly from the houses of Leitenberg all the useless items thrown away. Whenever the children found nothing or almost nothing in a courtyard, they knocked on the door and reminded those inside, “We’re from the War Brigade for Recycling. Don’t you have any bones?” Then the people would bring the children some gnawed bone or another, the young hands snapping it up like young dogs and running away without so much as a thank-you or good-bye.

The consequence of this relentless recycling is that less and less is tossed into the dump. What is brought there is a somewhat uniform kind of rubbish that doesn’t look nasty at all. For the most part it consists of ashes mixed with scrapings, potato skins, and cabbage leaves, as well as broken pottery, pieces of wood, and nearly unrecognizable refuse. Yet whoever dared to poke around a new blossoming heap of rubbish could find rusting iron pots and kettles with holes in them or underneath a rotting shoe worn right through, a faded hat, a coat with no arms, and numerous other treasures that the wild beasts who wandered the hunting fields of what had been publicly abandoned would gladly gather up, provided that the booty was not so ruined that nobody knows how to restore its dignity or save it from further decay in order to alleviate the poverty of the ghosts of Ruhenthal. Now and then a hand lifts something up to eye and nose, and whenever it is something that could be easily hidden — a small can, a nail, a little piece of leather — it disappears into a pocket. Yet if it is something larger, you can’t take it, because the soldiers would notice immediately and shout.

“Are you completely nuts? Throw that crap away right now!”

Then the precious rag is tossed back, its fate sealed forever by wherever the wind will take it.

“Fools like you who steal from rubbish heaps ought to be taken care of for good!”

The words are barked out, but they do no harm. Only actions still matter, no longer words, for they make nothing happen. The power of the word has disappeared or is hidden away, language having lost all meaning. Indeed, what is said is not that different than in earlier times, but it no longer carries any weight. Gravity rests in actions that can be completed right away. Fate waits for nothing. Hardly is something ordered, a wave being all that it takes, and it’s done immediately. Life without sacrifice is no longer possible, while at the same time caution is thrown to the wind. It can no longer even be picked out of the wasteland of rubbish. It exists only in each single step taken by the chain of ghosts. Left right, left right. The symmetry of the steps is not something arranged, but rather only the result of fixed habit.