H. Adler - The Journey

You spent years here and loved to be seen about town. You left your lair together, feeling safe in Stupart, as if it were home, as if you had the right to it, completely unaware because of your greed, not even noticing or questioning what you did. You shook each hand extended to you and said “Good-bye!” yet you thought nothing of it, and so your days drifted past. You thought that you were being sociable whenever you opened your doors to someone, but that only happened because the doctor was treating someone or it was for your own pleasure. You shouldn’t complain that it’s all gone. Be happy you ever had it at all! No one asked if you ever had the right, which you thought obvious, to hang up a sign on the building and the door of the apartment which read:

DR. LEOPOLD LUSTIG

General Practitioner

You were granted that out of magnanimity and you enjoyed every bit of it. Years passed in which you lived among other people who had gathered in Stupart in order to pass their days here. Here there were neighbors and little stores whose doors rattled when you entered and one had to put up with your look. Still, you liked being greeted. People laughed and asked after your health because they loved the money in your wallet, and there wasn’t an hour during the day in which you were not welcome, no matter what happened.

But now no one lets you in anymore, and there are many doors you are forbidden to open. Only a few doors are not off-limits to you, and even those are only open for a couple of quick hours in the afternoon so that your insatiable stomachs don’t overflow with too much fodder. Others, however, shouldn’t have to do without because of you; they want to eat and drink and certainly have a right to do so since, indeed, it all belongs to them. So a little will have to last you, but you’ll take it in stride, if only you’re able to quell your hunger. You’ve gotten used to everything, and so you’ll get used to the journey as well, for you can put up with anything so long as you are patient with your existence and hope doesn’t dry up. Hope never placed limits on anyone, because only you can shut down your own eager expectations. When that happens, impenetrable night descends from which only the forgotten escapes.

But we have not let it come to that. We rise and wander through the night. We have renounced sleep. It’s better that the walls collapse; shoes have a harder time keeping out dust than they do stones. It’s easy, you only have to put one foot behind the one in front of you, the other foot behind the next. That will help keep you on track, my friend, since where there is no path anything can happen. Illusion shields each of us from our fate. Whoever sweeps that away doesn’t know what he’ll find, yet he sees things as they are. Inside such a space there is light; there one must confront everything.

“Every bit of damage, every attempt at concealment will be punished!”

You aren’t allowed to pack the electric iron. Luckily it’s broken. Many things cannot be brought along; much is worn out, much broken, Paul having destroyed not only the lute. Indeed, the authorities will receive a damaged legacy, as well as all its losses. But there is still much too much here. It’s not junk! They are precious possessions! They all cost money when we first bought them. It wasn’t that easy to earn. There’s almost no coal left in the cellar. Frau Lischka took it all away. Everything forbidden is gone, there’s nothing more to hide. The mattresses from the beds cannot be taken away. It’s written on paper that “Everything must be carefully handled” because it no longer belongs to you. There’s no such thing as your property; your property is someone else’s property. Preserved goods must stay in the pantry. Others can enjoy the goodies. You’ve gorged yourself enough. A label is glued to every glass with Ida’s shaky handwriting, each one announcing in tidy fashion: RASPBERRIES, PEACHES. There are still eight jars of tomatoes. The plum sauce is from last year and looks black, but it’s superb, for no sugar was spared in the making. The sauce is especially tasty on cake.

“Oh dear, the fire in the furnace has gone out! Zerlina, you should have relit it. It would be nice to have it warm in here.”

It’s not necessary at all. Soon it will be completely cold. The apartment is dead, paper seals carrying official stamps guard the sacred silence of the rooms. There sleep, night, dust, and cold exist. There nothing exists. Not a single memory is there. They took Bunny away. The porcelain from Leopold’s grandmother is gone. Now the furnace can remain silent. The ashes will not be taken out. No one is cold in their winter jackets. It just keeps getting warmer under the heavy layers. Finally all preparations are completed. Heavily laden, Paul and Zerlina stand, though Caroline also loads up what her ancient back can carry.

“I don’t think we’ve forgotten anything, Mother. Don’t be afraid. We’ll be back.”

Frau Lischka knows this as well: “You’ll be back. My husband will open a bottle of schnapps. Bunny will meet you at the station!”

The strangers know nothing about returning. No one knows if it will happen, everyone hopes it will, none believes so, though no one admits to his lack of belief, not even once to himself, for it’s forbidden, and no, nobody lets himself admit such things anyway. Meanwhile, the officials have no souls, they recognize neither joy nor suffering, and whoever is free of feelings only carries out the letter of the law without caring, at an unreachable remove from all others, doomed to their own forms of isolation.

“The suitcases must stay! They will be picked up later. Take only a small bag with you!”

Everything is packed tight, and there’s wisdom in bundling everything together in defiance of what’s ordered, because one’s possessions are themselves an expression of human nature, as only humans can possess something. But possessions are also obsessions, and soon they will be more powerful than those who possess them, since things reveal how they came to be possessed. Once they are acquired, it’s hard to part with them. Only when there’s a surplus of them does one gladly give them away, or at least without duress, because one chooses to do so. Whether gifts or something sacrificed, they remain gifts that are given of one’s own free will, for which the donor never expects anything in return, wanting absolutely nothing to do with a desire for reward or praise. But here all expectations are eradicated, because nothing is exchanged but rather taken. Hence nothing is safe. Yet this flies in the face of what is just. And so we invoke the need for justice.

Oh, what crazy ideas you get, still thinking about justice, as if you were never told that it’s already fit and just that inevitably you are ordered about and told to do things that only to you do not seem right. You’ve never gotten used to the idea of order, that’s why we shatter your pride. We will lead you into the desert and say, There, now look for a place to live. — But here is our home, and one can’t make a home if there is nothing there beforehand to make it with. One always has to have something in order to exist. Only Bunny and other animals have nothing, they are not the same as people. Only he who can stand up and say, It’s really me who’s shouting, only he is someone who has something and must have something. — Why do you always have to have something? That’s greed speaking for you, the addictive need to always want more and seek it. You have yourself at least.

“Frau Lischka, I have nothing more to say to you. Be well!”

You have nothing when you only have yourself, for this seems like nothing the moment you encounter something else that you can have.