by H. G. Adler
“So you see, Herr Landau,” said the commandant, having noticed my name, “you now have a worthy task. If we just let you go back, which, given the circumstances, I don’t doubt will happen, at the border you’d have the chance to sign a pledge whereby you would be required only to state the truth about our nation, and avoid anything that would harm our reputation.”
With this, the formalities came to a pleasant resolution as they wished me a safe journey, saluted, withdrew, and left me to myself. Then the locals were allowed to board the train. People entered my car, and soon my compartment was full. The train passed through several towns as I looked out the window or observed the other passengers, though I didn’t say a word to anyone the entire way to the city, where my old teacher was waiting for me on the platform. We greeted each other warmly. Prenzel suggested that first I needed to have a closer look around the train station with him, which was fitted out more magnificently than ever, and which I’d see if we took a thorough tour of the building. I tentatively risked a countersuggestion and said that I was tired from the day’s journey and worn out, and that after such a long time I was anxious to see the city where my parents had lived, and thus what I wanted most was to quickly get to my hotel, if only to have a bit of a rest. I invited Prenzel to accompany me and to join me for dinner there as my guest. I was then immediately informed that I must be from the moon or something, for my hotel was restricted to foreigners, and locals were forbidden to enter it, including Prenzel. When I asked, I was then also told that natives could not even enter the restaurant. I didn’t inquire any further, but suggested that Prenzel meet me somewhere for dinner after I registered at the hotel. My teacher smiled obliquely and answered my remaining questions with single-word answers that explained little. Then I realized that after I left things had changed here much more than I had previously known.
Prenzel took me by the hand and led me from one end of the station to the other, passing many people, who timidly looked on with surprise, until—without my knowing just what had happened—he delivered me to the station guardhouse. Just like lost luggage, I thought to myself. As no one seemed to be especially concerned about me, I then whispered excitedly to my teacher, asking what this was supposed to mean. He timidly looked around. Once he ascertained that we were not being observed, he confided in me that my situation was relatively good, a couple of interrogations, maybe a couple of days of detention, but there was no need to fear for my life.
“Interrogations? Because of what? I’ve done nothing, Herr Prenzel. I only came because of you, since you invited me with such urgency and enthusiasm. I didn’t come here just so the authorities could keep tabs on me. I just wanted to see the last teacher of mine still alive. You wrote me again and again that your last wish was to see me once again!”
“Certainly it is. For my part, I am deeply grateful that you have come. I was even given a special pass because of it, for they phoned from the border to say that you really had arrived. What a gentleman! Until now, not a single one of my students has returned from abroad to accept my invitation to visit.”
“You’ve invited others …?”
“Be quiet, young man. You don’t know what you’re talking about! Not even my smartest students were smart enough to get through.”
“But I want to leave! I won’t stay here. You’ve seen what my intent was—that’s all I need, so I want to leave straightaway!”
“All I can say is good luck with that!” Prenzel replied in a strangely excited voice, adding more heatedly, “Landau, if you managed to …”
My teacher said nothing more. He pulled himself together, as we were approached by a uniformed youth, and politely addressed him.
“Comrade Assessor, I present you with a dangerous enemy of the state, along with his suitcase. I suggest you assess his political sympathies.”
The Assessor of Sympathies waved mildly for my teacher to step back. As Prenzel bowed deeply to the young man, I saw for the first time how gray and thin the old man’s hair had become. Without the slightest concern for me, he lowered his head and slipped out of the station guardhouse. The Assessor signaled to me to take my suitcase and follow him. I listened without a word and—despite all my distress—with no small hope that it was all a misunderstanding, that after an interrogation everything would become clear, and afterward there would be nothing to prevent my immediate departure. The Assessor prodded me down a badly lit stairway, though there were not many steps, then I was pushed into a garishly lit room, where a woman sat waiting in front of a typewriter. The Assessor sat down behind a conference table and indicated that I should put down my suitcase and sit on a low round stool. I noticed that it was a turn stool, like the ones you used to see in front of a piano. The stool was way too low for me, which is why I started to turn it so that it would go higher—a tiresome business, for the thing was not oiled and squeaked miserably.
“Man alive,” yelled the Assessor of Sympathies. “Are you mad? Leave the witness chair alone for just a minute and sit yourself down!”
“Sorry, the stool is much too low. I’ll almost disappear in front of your table.”
“Just sit down there and be so nice as to not turn around. Understood? Later, we’ll see if you can raise it any higher.”
I gave in and sat down all scrunched up, no higher than the stool, with my legs crossed, since I couldn’t stretch them out. It was exceptionally uncomfortable. The young man took no notice of how I sat there shrunken and only asked me to pull my legs in farther. There was nothing to do but cross them all the more tightly, such that the joints cracked. When I had finally attained the proper position demanded of me, the Assessor just took a cigarette out of his case and tossed a second one to the secretary, which she adroitly caught while saying thanks. There was nothing for me to do but shove my fingers into my pocket in order to fetch my own cigarette, though a sharp look told me immediately that I needed permission to do that. For a long time I was asked nothing, and I observed the Assessor carefully, but without fathoming the thoughts of my opponent. As soon as I moved, the Assessor tapped indignantly on the desktop with a pencil. The Assessor and the secretary stubbed out the glowing ends of their cigarettes, and, finally, the interrogation began.
“Arthur Landau, what is your mission in entering the country?”
“There is no mission—”
“We know there is. You can’t deny it, though it’s all part of the game played between the police and every criminal. But we have little time for such pleasant foolishness. Therefore, for both our sakes, make it short! Who hired you?”
“I came for my own reasons—”
“We know about that, too, a journey made for idealistic reasons. Who sent you here?”
“Who? No one? I only came to visit someone. I just wanted to satisfy the wishes of my old teacher.”
“Fine! But you, of course, knew that Prenzel works for us?”
“I had no idea of that. You mean … No, an old teacher wouldn’t serve as a snitch!”
“Snitch? That’s a bit rude.”
“Okay, then, a policeman.”
“Of course he’s a policeman. It’s obvious that as a teacher he is also a policeman.”
“When I was a student, it wasn’t obvious to me.”
“Fool! Not then! Now! My God, don’t you understand anything?”
“No.”
“But you are saying that you conspired with him? You are raising suspicions against a civil servant? You know, such testimony is a very serious matter, even if you’re innocent!”
“I don’t know anything. I suspect no one and have done nothing.”
“Do you deny that you were born here?”
“No.”
“Good. And do you deny that you were once hauled away from here, yet that still didn’t keep you from returning after the war was over?”
“No, but—”
“There, you see, that explains it! That’s all we need. You haven’t done anything, that’s correct, simply because we hav
e stopped you before you could. And that’s all we need. You needn’t think yourself innocent, because there’s no way you can be. No, you were looking to start something.”
“That’s not true.”
“Quiet! You wanted to. Otherwise you wouldn’t have tried to slip into the country.”
“I didn’t slip in. I’m legal, and I came on a regularly scheduled train—”
“And almost were arrested for violent resistance when our border police wanted to inspect your passport.”
“That’s not true.”
“Really? And you didn’t raise any kind of a stink when they wanted to hold your passport for security reasons? And you didn’t give cause for suspicion on the day when you were not ashamed to demand a written receipt of your passport and assumed you’d get one?”
“Part of it isn’t true; part of it is completely distorted. I wanted my passport, but I neither asked for a receipt nor was given one.”
“So you’re denying it even happened? I’m warning you!”
“I deny any kind of bad intention.”
The Assessor and the secretary, who was typing hurriedly, shook with laughter.
“To us there is no one who, after having once emigrated, returns without bad intentions. You have to at least see how it looks to us.”
“I wanted to see my teacher. That’s all.”
“Excellent. That’s all we need. But let me remind you that to just take your high treason and all your bad intentions and just shove them onto your old teacher is obscene.”
“Prenzel lured me into a trap?”
“Is that a question?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t ask the questions here. Besides, you should have thought about all that earlier.”
“I’ve had it completely up to here with this visit, and I don’t want to wait another day before returning to the country of my choice.”
“You’ll have to remain here, at least until we hear the decision handed down by the judge.”
“Am I charged with something?”
“Not yet. First, you have to confess. Since you don’t seem inclined to do that today, I’ll give you a day to think about it. Later the jail time, if that’s what you’re given, will be a good deal longer—a month, maybe even a year.”
“I object! I demand that I be allowed to contact my embassy immediately.”
“If that’s meant as a plea bargain, and there’s no doubt about your culpability, then I can formally remand you for trial immediately. If, however—”
“It’s not a plea! Not at all! It’s a demand for human and legal rights!”
“Spare me your lousy, stupid speeches! You’ve already gone too far and made matters worse with your loud protests. There is, however, an honorable way out.…”
The Assessor of Sympathies paused and looked at me searchingly to see if I understood what he meant, waiting for me to give a sign that I understood. However, I had no idea and sat there unhappy on my stool. Since the Assessor gave no hint of what he meant, I tried hard to think of something smart and to come up with the right answer. Nothing occurred to me except to ask if I could raise my seat. That way, I would at least learn whether my situation had at all improved. The Assessor seemed not to have understood, for he completely ignored my request, saying instead that he was happy to hear that I was ready to collaborate with him, which took me completely by surprise. Stunned, I just muttered, “Collaborate … collaborate.”
“Yes, of course, collaborate. That’s something else altogether. If you go to work for us, I will drop the charges. You’ll be let go in no time, the charges will not be filed with the district attorney. Understand?”
“Understand what, Herr Assessor?” I asked very quietly, confused.
Then he got mad and yelled at me with contempt, “That’s really the best that such a stupid fool like yourself can ask from well-meaning folk who have a knife held to their throat by foreign degenerates!”
I wanted to say something quickly, and I was upset that I had passed up the chance to do so, but the Assessor ignored me and decided not to let me say another thing. He then rang a bell. A policeman appeared, and after some orders quietly and hastily whispered, which I could neither completely hear nor understand, I was led out of the detention room. I tried to reach for my suitcase, but I had barely grabbed hold of it when it was knocked from my hand. Then I was led higgledy-piggledy up stairs and down through a confusing labyrinth, though we never left the area of the train station. Several times I caught the unmistakable smell of the locomotives, and in passing I spotted a train from afar and once heard clearly the melancholy whistle of a machine, which then began to puff as it started to move. Finally, we arrived at a door with “Station Jail—Department of Espionage” written on it. My guard knocked, the door opened, and a jailer took me by the arm. “By special order of the Assessor of Sympathies. He’ll likely be picked up tomorrow.” This I heard the policeman say.
Then the door was closed behind me. With instructions that I couldn’t make out, the jailer handed me over to an attendant, who grabbed my right hand painfully and dragged me off. He stopped in front of a cell, opened a low door through which a ten-year-old could barely walk upright, forced me to kneel down, and gave me such a swift kick that I fell facedown upon the slimy wet floor inside a cagelike room. It was no higher than the door that had already slammed shut behind me.
The cell was empty. I could only sit on the floor, unable to stretch out, because even diagonally the room was shorter than I was. There was nothing there to see except a quietly fluttering ventilator fan that was the only source of air, while from the ceiling a dull lightbulb hung at the end of a wire, barely bigger than the bulb of a flashlight. When I clumsily, but not too harshly, bumped the bulb, the light went out. Now it was dark, for the door was shut so tight that not even the barest of light got through any crack. I despaired that through my clumsiness I had robbed myself of the last comfort available to me in my dungeon, and so I tried with clammy fingers—for I was almost done in, and the thick air was miserably damp—to feel for the lightbulb, which probably wasn’t burned out but had just come loose. Soon I held the glass bulb in my fingers and gave it a twist, but it didn’t work. I grabbed the socket with my other hand, but with no success.
There was nothing to do but surrender to my misfortune, but the dark bothered me more and more, and I thought that if no other comfort was going to be supplied here the light, at least, should work according to prison regulations. All I needed to do was yell in order to get the guard’s attention, and he would come and fix the light. It was to no avail; no one showed up. No one cared about me—no one brought anything to eat or to drink, no blanket to protect me from the cold and damp. Not one thing was provided for my needs. I listened intently for any kind of noise, naïvely imagining that I heard the jangle of a key chain, and, more serious, the cries of someone being mishandled. But nothing broke through the abysmal silence, not even the rumble of the distant train, it was that deadening. All that could be heard was the soft fluttering of the ventilator fan. Although that was not too bothersome, it got on my nerves, for it continued on so monotonously.
What I had had on me or in my pockets had not been taken away, nor had I even been robbed of my watch. There then arose in me the urgent need to find out the time. I had always been one to keep an eye on the time, but never before had I wished so hard to follow its secret unfolding. I was pleased to be able to take my watch out of my pocket, but I couldn’t hear any ticking. I held it up to my ear, but there was no sound. No doubt it had broken when I was shoved into the cell. I couldn’t feel anything wrong with it on the outside, but I wanted to figure out what was broken as best I could, and so I tried to get the light to work once again. When I reached for the wire, I discovered that there was something the matter with it, for I got an electric shock, which, because of the damp, was so strong that it caused me to sit up. I hit my head hard on the ceiling and was dazed, almost falling unconscious, as I sank back down
.
I had no idea how long this woozy state lasted, but it seemed to go on for an endless stretch of time. Everything I knew was reduced to nothing; my memory was so worthless that I no longer even knew why I had been placed in custody. I couldn’t account for the reason I was there. Fearful thoughts of being buried alive disrupted my sleep, and I never expected to see the light of day again. Deep pain bored into the hand that had suffered the shock. Certainly I had gotten a nasty burn that, if not cared for, would soon become infected amid all this filth. Perhaps the hand was lost, even if I was rescued. Indeed, there seemed little cause for hope, as, more than likely, I would only be subjected to new and worse treatment, if not altogether abandoned here to languish in the dark.
Then I decided to change entirely; I wanted to be transformed, to stop being who I was. And yet such a total transformation was not in itself enough: I no longer wanted to be a human being. All consciousness had to disappear. For it was not enough that such a transformation should turn me into something other than a human being if that meant I still felt like a person who was full of memories of suffering that he could not bear.
I rocked back and forth inside my cage, banged against its walls, and became smaller and smaller as a result. I felt a buried strength within me, then I began to dig with my hands. The ground gave way and I touched small clumps of earth, but I could feel that they were breaking up and so I pressed on. It was dirty and tiresome work, but my limbs grew stronger the more I tried, my forehead and my mouth, especially, taking on incredible force. It eventually became clear that I had struck some small stones and roots, impediments that threatened to halt my progress. Yet my focus remained unshaken. By pummeling, scratching, twisting, and biting, I pushed through the mass in front of me and broke it into bits, so that I slowly, yet steadily dug on. As a result, I did not so much move forward as find that I was able to stand taller. It was the urge to stand up and possibly reach the light that spurred me on. I became ever thinner and more pliant, like a badger or a mole, but much more flexible. I had turned into a caterpillar.