H. Adler - The Journey

After work is done Zerlina inconspicuously stays behind, now a rabbit who hides in the box. After all that has happened today a little rest is needed. Also, no rabbit can run around forever. The dead father is of no help. He is no longer in this town, no longer in any town. He fled much earlier than Zerlina and did not want to wait for her. True, the father deserved to go first, but the father should have said good-bye, or at the least have said where he was going. Was he even able to be properly fitted out? It just isn’t right that someone simply dies and leaves behind those who are called the survivors. Ah, how careless are the dead, they go off and don’t ask what will happen afterward. Poor Father! Did he want to die? No, he just wanted different food. He was sick of rotten cabbage and beets. He was also disappointed with the work. He asked to practice medicine, yet they only gave him the garbage detail. His many years of practice counted for nothing, for not even once was he consulted. His offer was laughed at. ABLE WORKERS BROUGHT IN. So it said in The Leitenberg Daily , which Zerlina read in passing. The first sentence stated: “The demand for able workers necessitates that in the course of the next …” Father is no longer an able worker. He had worked far too long, and that had sapped his strength. He had only collected ashes; from that his cheeks had withered and his hands were gray.

“Hear this, all you who do not wish to believe that I am the rabbit Zerlina Lustig: The father, Herr Dr. Lustig, has disappeared into the ubiquitous tar of misfortune, the inside of a rubbish barrel having swallowed him up, making it hard on the lungs, his pilot light having gone out, the boiler no longer warm, now empty of steam. After such misfortune the others have to change trains. That is the reason why only the living are still there, for we cannot bring Father back. We cannot even show you a death notice, none was issued. Just take a look at us! We are the ones you once knew. We cannot have entirely disappeared from your consciousness just because most of us are no longer here. But not everyone is dead! Believe us! There are survivors, we are survivors. With just a little goodwill you will see for yourself. We are not shadows, nor have we donned any masks. We have just grown a bit older and perhaps look worse than we have in centuries. Ruhenthal changed us. We have been miserably undernourished and have suffered difficulties that have etched themselves into our faces. Why do you turn away? We, too, have often cursed the fact that we still exist, but since we have come through we must find the courage to befriend you! Extend your hand! Don’t stand off! You should love us because we want to join you! Do you not love us because we disappoint you? Oh, don’t you think we’re not disappointed as well? Should we cease to be simply because you wish that we no longer existed? We stand before you humble and agree that it would be easier for you if none of us appeared before you. Take then as compensation what we left behind with you, we want neither money nor goods back again if you will only have pity upon us and look on us as your brothers. Now it so happens that we are already among you again and must live side by side with you. That’s why we will not shrink away. That’s why we call upon your consciousnesses as witnesses to our existence, that which was, before you allowed without protest for us to be taken away from your midst, although you knew, indeed you must have known, that bad things were in store for us. Why are you upset when we now stand before you? Now you have no reason to renounce us, because you are not guilty, you did not haul us away, you did nothing bad to us, but instead helped us as much as the poor, weak ones among you dared to. We now want nothing more from you than the complete understanding that it is we , that we exist.”

“We’ve heard so much about how you were hunted, you dumb, bothersome rabbits! Our only doubt is whether it made more sense to just let you loose rather than load you into train cars that took you to Ruhenthal. Another kind of journey would have perhaps have been altogether better.”

To this Zerlina gives in and bows her head. She shakes because she is cold. She doesn’t hear anymore what her old friends say to her who are now in the right. Zerlina tucks her front feet and lets her ears hang down. How nice it is in the narrow box. There she can settle in with a cabbage leaf, which would otherwise be dropped useless in the rubbish, as well as a bowl of water. It doesn’t bother Zerlina that the box is almost too small to even allow her to turn around. Zerlina can move a bit forward and backward. There is enough air, the cardboard keeps out the cold, the muffled light suits her eyes. The rabbit is undisturbed, passing quiet nights. All the old friends have already left. Only once a day a guard comes and brings food. Otherwise hardly anyone notices the animal in the box; only a stranger hurrying past is pleased to suddenly hear a quiet scraping. Then he says, Ah, a rabbit! He says it in a light and friendly way, because the rabbit is a charming creature and only smells a little if his caretaker cleans him daily. Zerlina has at last given in, for the situation has managed to bring about what her will never could, and yet it’s for the best that she is pleased to quietly chew and sip and move all the sensitive muscles around her snout.

The rabbit is confident and full of hope. It does not know what will be done with it, not knowing the hour of its execution, not knowing if it will even be executed, or if the terrible idea will even occur to someone. Nobody in the world worries about such things. All it takes is a hard thump and the tiny soul vanishes. Yet since it is still alive, it’s guarded by an inexhaustible peace as long as nothing happens to it, though it remains on the watch so that nobody does it any harm. The feeling of any danger is mildly distant. Should fate reach out, then it will only be a dream without any threat. Thus Zerlina lives without any fear, cheerful, thankful for each moment. Others have gotten accustomed to the animal and sometimes let it out of its box since it’s tame and obedient. Then it romps around the courtyard, the children rejoice over its funny capers, which pleases Zerlina, who is so trusting and gentle. When it’s gone on long enough, someone calls, “Little Zerlina! Come, little Zerlina!” Then Zerlina hops happily back into the box, where fresh food is waiting. Thus many weeks pass, the fur of the once-shy rabbit becoming soft and shiny.

Yet the authorities know nothing about this metamorphosis and continue to send many letters to the address of Fräulein Zerlina Lustig. The letters all lie unopened, because there is no one in the building to take care of them and no one who has any idea where the rabbit is. The superintendent throws the letters into the rubbish bin and laughs that the officials are such fools. Yet because the animal is so sweet, it has long since been given the name Zerlina. Finally the authorities lose all patience with the fräulein, who has not answered any of their summonses, and some emissaries are sent who are meant to check up on the disobedient fräulein. The landlord looks at the symbol on the authorities’ badges and bows deeply. His building is open to their official visit. The emissaries grin slyly and want Fräulein Lustig. Yet there is no fräulein by this name. — There must be such a fräulein. — Maybe, but certainly not in this building. Then the emissaries step inside and wander up and down from the cellar to the first floor and then back outside to the courtyard. No, there really is no Fräulein Lustig, nor will you find anything forbidden. At the end the emissaries come to a corner and take a deep breath to test the air. Doesn’t it smell like a horse stall here? — That’s not really a stall, but there is a rabbit that the children love. — That would make for a tasty meal in the middle of the war. — Oh no, the children wouldn’t have it. They love their playmate. — A soft little animal, such a smooth, brown, and innocent creature! one of the emissaries exclaims, now that any trouble has been cleared up. Still the landlord continues bowing to the end, even though the emissaries are almost out of sight and now must search for Zerlina Lustig throughout the entire country. Yet the poor rabbit’s entire body trembles, because it has entirely forgotten that it once again is there and present amid a thousand horrors.