H. Adler - The Journey

Different classes of execution can be carried out, according to the resources available to the family or the readiness of the victim himself. Allowances are happily made for individual tastes by making various choices beforehand. Zerlina has paid a great deal. She wants to hear the cinema’s organ play a chorale and the national anthem. It’s a moving moment that leaves not a single eye dry. It’s a rare treat. One can’t often afford such a splurge. The organ whimpers and whines and complains to the living that they should be bold enough to not have anything to do with executions. Suddenly a rabbit runs into the middle of the ceremony. No one knows how it got into the hall. It disrupts the somber atmosphere inside the theater, but eventually everyone is lightened by laughter because the sight is so strange. Luckily a press photographer is also there who has a flashbulb and the presence of mind to use it. A couple of snapshots calm the bedazzled little creature. This is also true for the inconsolable widow, who, bent over, has taken her seat in the first row of the parquet, and who is moved as much by the lavish flowers as by the music, but for whom nothing is better than to push back the black veil in order to have a better view of the innocent animal as it hops about the suffering hall without a care in the world.

Only the officials from the ash factory are upset and become angry, because they are afraid that such an unheard-of incident will lead to bad rumors circulating in the city. Yet the manager knows what to do. That’s why he acts fast and presses the electric bell that is normally used at the end of any execution ceremony. Immediately a servant appears with a large broom. The man sweeps lightly back and forth in order to shoo away the rabbit as he pushes the broom across the smooth floor until Zerlina grasps the seriousness of the situation and is already outside without having had a chance to pluck a flower or a garland, which was her most pressing wish.

Now the execution of Dr. Kmoch, the deserving president of the Medical Board, can proceed without further disruption. The national anthem begins, the powerful tremolo chords of the cinema organ are tenderly accompanied by the melody of the lead violin. Most of the audience rise to their feet. On the brightly lit stage copper-brown doors open left and right, set in motion invisibly as the scaffold draped in black, which holds the beautifully decorated coffin, moves forward soundlessly. Slowly it moves away, as is tactfully appropriate to such an occasion, the farewell itself being somber, as is proper. Now the flower-draped box is almost to the rear of the hall as it wobbles slightly, as if timidly entering a dream, the Medical Board on its feet and standing still at the back. The copper doors close again as mysteriously as they opened. Now the organ opens all registers to send forth the rhythms of the national anthem in thick waves of sound over the ceremonial hall and outward into every corner of the crematorium, as far as the oven that runs efficiently, and then farther into the open, where the running rabbit can hear it as well.

Suddenly the instrument returns to complete silence. Everyone is moved and weeps for the nation. Still the guests look on as the black-and-brown curtain is drawn across the stage with rustling cords, signaling an end to it all. The opera is over, the audience abandoned. The performance was wonderful and has made an unforgettable impression on everyone gathered here. Everyone has forgotten the incident with the rabbit. How surprised people will be to see it tomorrow in the newspaper. But maybe that won’t happen, for the crematorium has a lot of influence, maintains the most crucial ties, and won’t be above employing bribery to prevent the publication of the photo. Such things cannot happen on opening night. There can be only one view of the quality of the execution. The actors have carried themselves valiantly. The staged performances were appropriate and suited the exaggerated pretensions one can make on a fine stage. The music was met with the approval of the critics and the listeners, and even if the incident with the rabbit gets out, it doesn’t matter, because its entrance was charming and only demonstrated a great love of animals. All in all the production and direction were superb, the media is impressed, it greets the production with enthusiastic praise, only finding fault with the meager courtesy of the star attraction, the doctor having neglected at the end of the execution to step out from behind the curtain and acknowledge the cheers of those left behind.

Yet nobody reads the papers anymore, for none exist. The crematorium is also empty. It doesn’t matter that the doctor didn’t take a bow, for he is no longer behind the curtain. He has disappeared. Nor is there anybody in front of the curtain, there are no mourners there. Actors and audience have dissipated. The crematorium’s curtain separates nothing from nothing, death is everywhere and there is nothing else but what once was, and that is nothing as well. It’s all in the past, long gone, finished, utterly changed, outside of time, Ruhenthal now gone and Leitenberg gone. There was only the journey and that’s all there still is. Yet nobody journeys anywhere, but instead they just keep traveling, from rubble to rubble, from one spot to another, the rubbish of reality all that there is, and yet not even that, because that’s also the nothing that hides in the face of nothing, the grave itself, the threadbare wall, the unseen face that does not look back, the fairy tale of nothing, the fairy tale devoid of magic, betrayal that cannot betray, steps that lead nowhere and without reason and without sense, where no one gets on and no one gets off.

Locales are abandoned because no locales exist. Leaning out of the window has become even more dangerous. Nobody dares to. No one sees anything. The faces are either hidden or drowned. Nobody has a home. Everyone is in flight and keeps on the move, because there’s no other choice. Not even the ground exists onto which one might collapse. If anyone still runs around, it’s mere folly. The graves that exist have been torn open and then sealed again without a hand having stirred. Nothingness has set in motion its own journey and whirls along because it can do nothing else. Chopped-off hands, which used to indicate directions on signposts, lie everywhere. They don’t belong to anyone, nor is anyone afraid of them. They cause no fear; they are either just a last vestige of danger or simply a new trend. Yet there is nobody there who can understand what they mean.

If an eye looks at a hand it’s with an empty gaze that does not recognize it or anything else. Yet an idea is still there, itself the first moment of creation, as it looks, imagines itself, and seeks to imagine, and since it wants to look, then something is again there. It wants to know itself, and in doing so gives rise to something more than itself, a being, whether it be a being that consists of nothing or is indeed a being, an idea that dares to exist, a nascent idea. It roams around outside, it cannot remain buried. It wants to make sense of the hands that cannot be untangled, that point their fingers in no direction that can be found on any map. Yet the idea grows stronger because it is. It doesn’t give up and keeps trying, finally sorting through the images before it says: “There!”

The hands also point in that direction. And whatever once was reawakens again and exists once more, a “there” that is once again where it used to be. Yet what once was meant to follow the idea no longer exists. The immense effort now appears to have been in vain, a moment of creation that led to no creation, such nothingness being immensely powerful as it threatens Being with forgetting. Uphill or downhill everything is empty. There are or there are not destroyed graves. Yet the idea does not shrink, does not give in. It wants to belong to someone and command him. It’s a person. He is not happy, but the idea makes him happy. He wants to follow it, yet he is too tired, the effort too much. The body cannot do what the idea wants it to. The body is too tired, and what the chopped-off hands point to doesn’t make sense. They don’t point toward anything and don’t connect to any idea, but are pointless direction with no end. Thus everything is senseless.