H. Adler - The Journey

“Some thirty years ago I brought home four bottles of wine. This is the last one. I wanted to save it for a special occasion. Now is the right moment. I had thought it would be different. My daughter was engaged. The war has claimed the groom. He was taken away even before his wounds had completely healed. He never came back at all. The wine was for the young wedding couple. Please, don’t think twice and give us the pleasure of drinking this wine with us!”

The old bottle’s cork creaks, the wine is dark red. The glasses clink with a silvery ring, everyone drinks slowly. They are silent, three people from Unkenburg — father, mother, daughter. The stranger from Stupart sits almost motionless and studies them thoughtfully. He was often a guest here, they were wonderful times. They had never asked a thing, but had only listened, nor had Paul ever left empty-handed. Now it is silent. It has not been this silent in years, so still. The man from Stupart remembers nothing. Is that what peace is? More wine is poured, the bottle is emptied. The empty glasses cast a dull light. The last drop is enjoyed. Paul gets up. The friends are upset, yet warm and subdued; they know that he is leaving, the looter, the one who came searching for booty among the blown-apart bricks of their building. Paul looks at the girl. What are her hands searching for and why is she trembling? The groom will never come again. What else is it? Hands reach out, hands are taken. Maybe this is where Paul should embrace his happiness. Perhaps at last the daughter of this house, too. What a bold proposal! Is it the last possible sin among the rubble that has fallen? An old grandfather’s clock announces the time in low tones, striking three-quarters past the hour before falling silent. Paul looks away. He doesn’t say much, but instead turns toward the door with half-closed eyes. Frau Brantel and her daughter are bent over, weeping quietly. He can hardly hear them. He takes hold of their hands and feels the magic pass between them.

“What we cannot hold are the hands of our neighbors. The journey calls, each of us is called to take it. I thank you all for the kindness you have shown me. I leave your house wholly recovered.”

Herr Brantel accompanies his guest down the stairs, clinging to a candle along the way. With his free hand he protects the flickering light. The stairwell is quiet, but the steps echo loud and strong. Paul is not anxious, yet he feels himself descending into darkness as if encountering the arches of a crypt that holds the past. But then mockingly and with a smile the door is opened, the air heavy with the scent of lilacs, the clear spring night feeling contemplative and unusually warm.

“I can walk along with you for a ways.”

“You should go back to your wife and daughter.”

“Just to the next corner. I can’t go very far. It’s a quarter to eleven. It’s almost curfew.”

“You don’t have an overcoat?”

“On a night like this?”

“You want to accompany me just like you did then on that first afternoon when I was dumb enough to speak to Captain Dudley so stupidly.”

“Captain Dudley? He was transferred out of Unkenburg yesterday. I thought you’d like to know.”

“That’s all behind me. Everything in this town, everything in these past few years is behind me. Herr Brantel, what do you want with a stranger whom you will not see again? He drank the wine for your daughter’s wedding.”

“It was the wine of friendship that we shared. The journey will not separate us.”

“Hasn’t too much happened? Still, I think joy is still possible. I feel perhaps a bit too unburdened, more than is right to feel, yet I’m an old man. I can be forgiven somewhat. The official who filled out my papers couldn’t believe how young I was.”

“Anyone who remains committed to such a journey and is impatient and wants to complete it as fast as possible is still young and cannot be broken. You have a lot ahead of you. Perhaps it won’t be easy, most likely not, I don’t want to lie to you. I’ve gotten to know you enough such that I can understand the path that lies ahead of you and know how long it is. But it will continue. It will continue for you, for us, for everyone. That you can count on, something that for most is a terrible thing and even more terrible than sheer despair. In our time there exists a race that has a propensity for the negative. At first this world degenerated into loveless-ness and then into madness; it was destroyed and made uninhabitable, which only brought satisfaction and joy in the downfall that was served in turn. Maybe you are right, or at least for yourself, when you claim that no one has a home anymore. I can’t conceive of that, though I have to say I respect what you say. Yet homelessness must not lead to nothingness.”

“You don’t have to worry about that with me. I have goals, many goals. Someone like me, who was swept away and no longer knew whether he belonged to the living or the dead, cannot be held back for long. I, too, despair. Despair can be like a warm bath, something that I wish more people could experience. It can exist without enmity. But I think I already see things in a similar way as you do. There are too many in the world who, because of fear and vanity, fall into despair; fear, because there’s no stability, vanity, because they don’t want any stability. One should despair for something, not about something. Do you understand?”

“I think so. One must have a center, an unshakable quiet space that one clings to vigorously, even when one is in the middle of the journey, the unavoidable journey … an unmuddied sensibility free of rubbish, no left, no right, only the center, a constancy that does not change for the better or for the worse. I don’t mean it strictly in a spatial sense. I mean it instead as a circuit, one that travels from hand to hand, from heart to heart and really exists.”

“The immutable amid the journey. Free of sin and the fall from grace. I see what you mean. Despair is our fall from grace, here amid the rubble, our confiscated stolen property, our transmutable and disputable names, the heart’s home, but not the heart — in short, everything that could be taken from us. The center, if I understand correctly, cannot be taken away from us. It travels with us and lifts us up from sin, from the rubble.”

“I think we understand each other. We must bring everyone that we can into the circuit, no matter how young. One’s potential growth is only the very same transformation that vanity and fear latch onto when transforming true freedom into an impediment. The conditions are such that, in regards to this circuit, most likely it is quite small. When other people look into our faces, we have to try to reach out to them. I know myself how hard that is, for who wants to stand in someone else’s shoes?”

“Hardly anyone. But there’s always somebody. One has to trust that it will happen.”

“One can trust. Now one will not only be taken from, but also given to. That is the grace amid which creation is woven and renewed. Without such grace it will not happen.”

“The moment of creation is perhaps only a matter of a reawakened will; creation itself is a result of such grace. And grace is the journey. The dead must rest and possess a grace that, presumably, comes from the human masses and is not the journey. The first night I slept in this city, when you forgave my way of speaking, I experienced for the first time the grace of death. It was a feeling separate from the journey. It was without question something in and of itself and yet a spirit that moved, no, actually, it was the center that is within us all.”

“It’s already late, my dear friend. I thank you for everything. You have helped me so much. Neither of us will forget this day. A day lived in the center, not the middle of the night.… Take care of yourself, and safe journey!”