H. Adler - The Journey

Take for instance the following passage from early on in The Journey when the Lustigs and other citizens of Stupart are subjected to the repression that will soon lead to their removal from their own homes, the very notion of a stable society under the rule of law having been turned on its head:

All that had been forbidden in the world now meant nothing, for it had never been a law but rather an arrangement that rested on enforced custom. What was once taken in stride now appeared all of a piece to the law, which had the last word and did not allow anything to contradict it. Life was reduced to force, and the natural consequence was fear, which was bound up with constant danger in order to rule life through terror. You experienced what you never had before. You rejoiced over that which you were allowed, but even this did not last for long, because any such comforts had only to be noticed and the next day they were taken away. Thus the tender juicy meat was taken away since you who are made of flesh need no meat. Then they banned fat, for your belly was full of fat. They denied you vegetables, for they stunk when they rotted. They ripped chocolate out of your hands, fruit and wine as well. You were told that there wasn’t any more.

Highways and byways were forbidden, the days were shortened and the nights lengthened, not to mention that the night was forbidden and the day forbidden as well. Shops were forbidden, doctors, hospitals, vehicles, and resting places, forbidden, all forbidden. Laundries were forbidden, libraries were forbidden. Music was forbidden, dancing forbidden. Shoes forbidden. Baths forbidden. And as long as there still was money it was forbidden. What was and what could be were forbidden. It was announced: “What you can buy is forbidden, and you can’t buy anything!” Since people could no longer buy anything, they wanted to sell what they had, for they hoped to eke out a living from what they made off their belongings. Yet they were told: “What you can sell is forbidden, and you are forbidden to sell anything.” Thus everything became sadder and they mourned their very lives, but they didn’t want to take their lives, because that was forbidden.

Here we see Adler’s musical touch in his constant play upon the word “forbidden.” No sequence of events leads up to the announcement of what is “forbidden,” nor does there seem much logistical sense in forbidding things like “shoes” or “dancing” or “night” or “day” except to demoralize and dehumanize those to whom such edicts are directed. Adler, however, explains none of this, but instead drops us directly into the psychological state of the “forbidden” through the arbitrary way it is imposed by anonymous powers for the sake of power itself. Add to this the way in which Adler speaks of the anonymous “you” who experiences all of this in both a first- and secondhand manner and we find ourselves in a kind of netherworld, a place that is not a place, a time that is not a time, spoken by a person who is not a person, but rather the idea or vestige of a person. The result is the “almost futuristic deformation of social life” that the title character of W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz cites after reading Adler’s study of Theresienstadt. One never quite knows where one is or who is speaking in The Journey , and that is much to the point. Such disorientation is meant to convey a society that has fallen into complete dissolution, one where all borders between perpetrator and victim are fluid and unbound, the menace that consumes them a force in itself.

Listen, for instance, to the following passage a bit farther on where Adler now switches from the firsthand “you” that speaks for the “forbidden” to the imperative use of “you” by the officials herding the “forbidden” onto the trains:

You’re being given a sign to move, don’t you see it? You have to admit that cross-eyed Herr Nussbaum is certainly on the ball. Everything goes off without a hitch. The assistants sigh deeply, but it’s a sigh of relief, for they have done well. Not a single complaint is heard. The heroes stroll and strut the length of the station platform. You sit down, one on top of another, four to a bench, eight to a compartment, like regular, upstanding citizens. But this is no ski hut, there is no snow. No, they are empty train cars. They are narrow, much more narrow than the huts you should have built, but which have already been finished, thus saving you the work. Everything has been taken care of, for they did not want to strain your silky little hands. Who could possibly complain about such sound accommodations? How could you have even completed the job when you have never learned to work with your hands?

You can’t be trusted with anything, everything must be arranged for you, because you are a lazy bunch that not even lifting a shovel can change. Like little children, everything has to be done for you, though you arrive at the dinner table without uttering the slightest thank-you. Nothing can be expected from you but your stinking smell. Everything you youngsters need has been taken care of for you, we’ve made sure of that. We have sacrificed ourselves for you. If we were a little tougher with you, then you would get all worked up and melt right in the middle of snowy winter. You want snowdrops? We haven’t brought you flowers. It’s too late. The train will depart before we can get some. We’ll send them to you. Yes, everything your heart desires will be sent to you. But you should be off already! Have you forgotten something? That doesn’t matter. Just drop us a line, we’ll take care of everything. You can count on us. Can’t you see it in our faces? Just look in our eyes and you’ll see that we can be trusted! Something could happen to you? Who told you that? It’s just a bunch of stupid chatter! Not a single hair will be disturbed. Such transgressions are not allowed. Now you are traveling to safety, your new home, just like you always wanted. Is the good-bye hard for you? That’s hard for us to believe! No, we can’t believe it! The forbidden at last lies behind you for good, and now eternal freedom is waving you on. There you can do what you want. We wish we had the chance to share your lot, but unfortunately that has been denied us. With us lies the responsibility to worry about your well-being, and then to worry about your brothers who are also awaiting the journey.

Again we find several themes at play here. Mention of the “huts” that the “forbidden” were meant to have built alludes to the Jewish work details who were cruelly sent ahead to construct unwittingly their own future ghetto at Theresienstadt. This is countered by the focus on the train cars, as if the latter were luxury travel accommodations about to take them on a winter ski vacation, rather than the same trains that will later transport the “forbidden” to the east and near-certain death. Adler’s mix of allusions to the past, present, and future taps the ability of montage to link seemingly disparate times and places such that, again as in Kafka, one place is interchangeable with another amid the nightmare of a seemingly inescapable labyrinth. In addition, an almost comic book-like transparency reveals the bitter irony with which Adler designates the commanders as “die Helden,” or “heroes,” while his description of the henchman Herr Nussbaum as “cross-eyed” plays off of the vocabulary of deformity and impurity that the Nazis so frequently cast upon their victims. Most sinister of all, however, is the way in which the voice of command and coercion mixes with a disembodied voice of disdain and mockery, leaving us to sort the two in much the same way that deportees were forced to sort through the lies and promises that duped them into signing over their lives in order to gain what they thought was the safe haven of Theresienstadt.