H. Adler - The Journey

Off in the distance one can hear the faint call: “Ruhenthal! Everyone off!” The light in the windy train station goes out. The baggage men flee and let the suitcases fall where they are. The stationmaster spits in anger. The switchman sees trouble coming. The telegraph operator has lost the connection. Those getting off fall head over heels onto the tracks and are bloodied. Anxiously the locomotive blows its whistle, its cries asking the night for mercy, though no mercy is given. The youngest daughter of the stationmaster appears at the window ledge in a white nightgown with a candle, looks at the confusion below, and begins to sing a little song:

I’ve seen it, it’s true ,

The long journey is through ,

The train’s in the station ,

The wanderers are resting .

Lord, let me rest ,

The signal is set ,

Look after the trains

’Til the end of your reign!

Good night! Good night!

’Til the end of your reign

Our thanks for the trains!

As the daughter sang, everything was still for a moment, but now she’s gone, having taken the candlelight with her. The air is thick and sooty. There’s hardly any air to breathe. Only sharp, monstrous tears full of coal dust fill the entire world. The witch doesn’t giggle, she laughs.

You are alive in a flowing stream, surrounded by black reeds and black algae. Fishhooks also dangle in the thick foam. You can feel them distinctly when they pass nearby and come too close. But anyone who is hooked by them is also not saved. You are only made to squirm unmercifully. If you are nonetheless hauled out, then no amount of pleading helps, the fish will never again be let go, Frau Ilsebill* simply won’t allow it, and the most helpless creature is addressed with the scornful words of the standard verdict against those forbidden to live within the fatherland. Then they cart you off and pull you through the tar and then feather you, and then drag you to the gallows. There the verdict is read again, the fisherman having to do as Frau Ilsebill has ordered, as he reads out:

“In the name of the law, bow down! You have violated the station platform and have falsely set foot upon it when my fishhook took mercy on you. With some effort I have yanked you from the black waters because you begged me to and lied by saying that you could fulfill all my wishes. Not a single word of that was true. You misled the authorities, you attempted to deceive them. You are no goldfish. You’re not even a fish. You are nothing more than the dirty little girl from the lake who must die.”

Zerlina listens to what the horrible fisherman says to her. Zerlina has to agree that she is not a fish, as she had hoped. She knows that she must relinquish her young life; she must cease. She can no longer live. She is a bit of madness who happens to have a name.

“Zerlina Lustig, former daughter of Leopold Lustig and Caroline, née Schmerzenreich!”

“Here!.. No! I’m not here! I don’t know her, nobody knows her, she never existed, at least not in my life! She didn’t come, nor get on the train! Since her death she’s been sick! I can swear to it, Herr Fisherman and Frau Ilsebill!”

But no one believes her. Frau Ilsebill shakes with laughter. Why should anyone believe anyone when all that is said is a lie? There is no truth. Herr Nussbaum in the Technology Museum removed it from the luggage. Whoever smuggles the truth into the final destination of the journey will have to answer to the severest measures of the state police and will be hanged three times over! Thus had Cross-Eyes yelled out to everyone when he discovered a tiny piece of truth tucked away in a purse. There is however none anywhere, for it is only an illusion. If there is any at all, it is only what has been. The apartment house is suddenly no more. There appears to be a foot scraper that wants to suck in the dirt, but then you fall helplessly into the barrel of tar. Frau Ilsebill opens up her beak, snaps up the stationmaster’s daughter, and flies off with her.

Did they kill your father? He loved little Bunny so much, that fat dog! No, the old man croaked peacefully like a dog, a natural death. Dr. Plato swears on bended knee that the fleas bit him in the ear. The neighbor prays that the Lord has taken him. It was a peaceful end in bed, which you can be assured of yourself. The spittoon was not disturbed. There was no raspberry juice in it, only a couple of drops of water, fresh and pure. You grabbed the cold hand and pressed it lovingly to yourself. No, it was murder, he could have lived longer. They shoved half-boiled barley into him. Whoever takes measures that shorten someone’s life by a single day is a murderer, and the law will hunt him down. But when will that happen? Just be patient, Frau Ilsebill, and wait for the law, for it will come sooner than you think.

Zerlina sits with the other girls and women in the workshop where boxes are assembled and glued. Simple, small boxes that will journey far and wide. Endless rows of boxes that trundle along and are stacked in towers until there are too many, after which they are picked up. The boxes are so light and airy, but the workshop stinks of glue and awful dust. It smells of bad conversations that go on endlessly for hours, rising and sinking away without ever finding an end.

“Zerlina, don’t be so sad! There’s no reason for such sadness.… Ah, forgive me, this time you have a reason. I forgot. I’m sorry, my pale Snow White. But he was old indeed.”

“They murdered him. He should have lived longer.”

“You yourself don’t want to live anymore and you’re young. How can you complain about an old man whom God has taken in order that he be spared what we all have to suffer? Look here, Zerlina, how unreasonable you’re being, worse than a child!”

“You’re right that I don’t want to live, Vera! Everything here is wretched, hopeless! They will murder us all before they themselves are murdered. I’m tired of it all, I’m sick of it. Enough! Do you hear?”

“That’s no way to talk. You have to want to go on. Whoever doesn’t want to live has no hope. And whoever has no hope, he only has hell. We at least have a chance of surviving.”

“No one survives hell, or at least whoever survives it only ends up living in hell again. Therefore there is no hope worth having. It’s all a hoax, an illusion, which …”

“You’re wrong, Snow White! Have you not often said yourself that in Ruhenthal we were under a spell and really just sleeping? That one day the prince’s servant will come and trip over a shrub while carrying our coffins. Then the poison apple we were forced to bite will pop out of our throats. We’ll lift off the coffin lids, stand up, and live once again. Come on, snap out of it! Your dear father was an old man. He could never have lived a normal life again, as you keep insisting.…”

“Look, Vera, that is so because you don’t understand what I said to you, for there’s nobody here who understands, which is why I don’t want anything to do with you anymore. Life just doesn’t have any point to it. I don’t want to tell you any more fairy tales.”

“But Snow White …”

“Please, enough!”

“I don’t want to upset you. But Zerlina! Whoever gives up may nonetheless live, but it’s much harder, because he has nothing in which to believe!”

“I’m not talking about that! My father lived so well. He was a big kid. He had no idea how badly he had been treated. But I know it. I know what’s been done to us. I see it continually.”

“You are so unreasonable. You should be grateful that your father still has a grip on you. What could have been better for him than a relatively peaceful death after a long life?”