by H. G. Adler
At the moment I realized that I had turned into a caterpillar completely, I pushed hard through the dense gravel and was greeted by an unexpected shaft of daylight, which blinded me. Because of the glaring light, I pressed my eyelids together. Exhausted, I sank down. Then I blinked as I ventured to look around, though only for a few moments, because it hurt to do so. I then regretted renouncing all human feelings, though of course I knew that my crazy urge had not been fulfilled. I realized that one would rather die than forsake the roots of his human existence. I had not forsaken my human nature at all; it had just become wretched, my extremities reporting that I was nothing but a raw suffering hulk, and, above all, a body filled with sensations and thoughts that had never disappeared. Instead, they had balled themselves up quite densely, like clumps that had frozen together, simply because they could no longer be shared with others; nor was there another being to appreciate them. A person does indeed remain a human being, but the world around him no longer takes him for a human being when he is scorned by all groups, and he hardens as a result, concerned with himself alone, unloved and unrecognized.
Such desolate thoughts haunted me as, miserably, I failed to extricate myself from the earth. And so I thought back to everything that had happened recently. I knew that my effort to escape was probably fruitless, for I couldn’t escape the reach of the police. In fact, I heard someone calling me from back in the cell, demanding that I respond and appear immediately. “Arthur Landau! Arthur Landau, report to interrogation! If he’s hiding and doesn’t crawl out right away, then drag him down here straight off!” I sensed the bloodhounds circling, and that my trick had come to an end. In my despair, I rallied all my strength and stood up with a sudden leap. I then shook off the earth and found my footing. And there I stood, in the middle of a garden. It seemed familiar to me as I rubbed my eyes and looked around me, blinking, for I couldn’t believe what I saw. And yet there was no doubt—there I stood in the middle of my own garden. Johanna could not be far off. Magically freed, I wanted to give a fervent shout of thanks. But good as everything seemed to be, my voice had hardly any strength. Upset, I realized that I had celebrated too soon, for the house and garden were surrounded by police officers, their weapons drawn and pointed at me. Then I released a terrible cry, and Johanna shook me from my dream.
That was only one of the many dreams that plagued me, but this one returned again and again, though in slightly different forms. In my room, I bent over my books and writing and couldn’t work, instead staring only at the request to appear before the immigration police, while my inability to shake the nightmarish imaginings that haunted me further undermined my sanity. Johanna wanted to phone the police in order to calm me. It bothered her to see me so intensely upset. Yet when she made such well-meaning suggestions, I was the one who would snap at her and point out that, no matter how insensible my fears were, any such inquiry with the authorities would only make us look ridiculous. Secretly, I also feared that perhaps a harmless disclosure that might be made in the process could lead to more serious trouble if further questions were asked. One should never ask an official anything if it can be avoided, for it will only lead to suspicion. Don’t attract attention—that’s the central motto of the hunted and the weak, and whoever has survived such persecution without losing his head should never risk having the earthly powers take interest in his activities and freedoms.
Finally, the day of our appointment came. We left Eva two doors down with Mrs. Stonewood, then dropped Michael off at school before riding twenty minutes on the city train. When we came up out of the station it was cloudy, and we walked along slowly. I smoked a cigarette, and every step that took us closer to our destination felt heavy. It was an older, somewhat ostentatious brownstone that we had been summoned to, not the modern building of the immigration department that I well knew stood in the middle of the city. Johanna took me firmly by the hand and pointed to the front garden: cowslips, snowflakes, and tender yellow plants, none of which looked afraid. I forced a smile and agreed that it was nice to have blossoms protected by the police. Johanna said something imprudent, but only with the intention of shaking me out of my stupor with her animated observation that one could be thankful for a country where even the police had not lost the appreciation of the good things in life. This well-meant attempt at diversion made me uncomfortable. The good things in life. A pompous term, which I found tasteless. “You mean flowers, sweet animals, and little children,” I replied sharply. Indeed, the hardest of hearts can’t help being softened by them. The authorities carry out their nasty business without restraint, and take joy in bringing any criminal under the protection of their legal powers. They are prepared for any horror and will murder, if they are allowed to, for they want to perpetuate the right to kill. But then they go all soft and wipe away a tear when they see a little cat that has hurt its paw. Pity is an abominable virtue when it’s a cover for mean-spiritedness. I stood there and didn’t want to move an inch, and spoke as loud as seemed appropriate. Angrily, I wanted to step from the walkway and trample the blossoms in the next bed. “What’s gotten into you?” Johanna asked, and I couldn’t bear the look she shot me, myself at last laughing over the miserable madness that I had yammered on about, feeling ashamed. Willingly, I let myself be led on.
We were shown to the first floor. A hall with huge windows and a balcony door served as the waiting room. At the smaller end of the room, near the entrance, a uniformed policeman presiding over a large battered table responded cheerily to our greeting, and asked to see our summons and papers. Then he pointed to where we should take a seat among the chairs lined up in wide arcs on three sides of the hall. Already many sat there waiting in what must once have been a very handsome room. All that was left of it was its height, the whitewashed silk coverings that were pulling loose from the walls, and the precious, though somewhat broken plaster on the ceiling that had also been whitewashed. Otherwise, it looked meager and barren, the floor covered with gray felt that had holes in it. Sadly the chairs stood there, one hardly matching another, many of them rickety, and not one of them without a stain. An unlit iron stove—it was good that we had coats with us—stood somewhat near the policeman’s table, the exhaust pipe winding in a crooked fashion out through the lead-covered upper part of a window. Not on the table but rather on a chair near the door was a telephone surrounded by tangled wires, one of which led off through a door panel in order to make some unknown connection somewhere else. Originally, the hall had been larger. Now it was divided by a paper wall constructed of thin laths. This barrier wasn’t quite square with the corners of the walls that ran lengthwise, such that the window side was longer than the other side. Oddly and irregularly, this offensive barrier infringed upon the cold, bleak room, slicing through the ceiling ornament as well.
Men and women of various ages who had been gathered there were tossed together and could see how they filled to bursting the badly arranged, miserable space. But they never came together as a single body. Each sat with his own thoughts and each had a different goal, each being from a different world, be it the fragile little mother, or the hefty young man with swollen cheeks and sullen eyes, or the nicely dressed young lady with dainty feet, or the pointy-nosed pale intellectual. There they sat all together, whether sour or concerned, apathetic or arrogant, good-natured or crude, nothing shared between them but the power of the immigration police, who had only to send off their brief notes in order to haul in little men and little women, this being how they were treated for a number of hours amid their daily business, brought together submissively from every quarter and every major city here in this waiting room, themselves the lost, who can be in the right only by meekly following orders in the hope that their always precarious good standing might last forever.
There was hardly any noise. Only the policeman up front dared say anything aloud whenever a new visitor entered and looked about at the others, clueless and dense. Our guard being good, he called out in a husky voice until the new arrival figure
d out what to do and was at ease, though still without hope, shuffling over to a vacant chair. Sometimes a second policeman, to whom our guard whispered something, got involved. Usually it was our man who called out the names—four or five at a time, as a rule—when people’s turn came, butchering the foreign ones so badly that confusion would arise. That was harmless fun, pleasing the policeman enormously, for the time went by so slowly, and except for calling out the names, there was hardly anything else to do but now and then pour tea from a huge thermos into an ugly green cup or light a cigarette whose ashes he tapped into an old-fashioned inkwell.
Those waiting nodded their heads and dozed or chatted quietly. Most of them didn’t know one another, but some ran into others they knew here, including married couples, while others had brought along their bratty children. Some crossed their legs, while others sat there stiff and upright, others bending forward or aslant, others fidgeting, while still others chose not to rest on a chair but instead stood up and, with large, energetic steps, paced back and forth, though only for a little while, for they soon discovered that it did no good, though no one said anything, not even the police. Women had planted their shopping bags next to them on the floor and worked away at their knitting needles, the slowly climbing threads of yarn rising up from the bags below. A student brooded over geometric figures and mathematical formulas, some other men burying themselves in rustling newspapers, while others read books. The few children that were there soon found one another out and began to play, running frequently to the window or straying toward the policeman, who had fun blowing smoke at them, their antics otherwise not bothering him at all, while nearby a young girl fed her doll a piece of chocolate.
Whoever was called got his papers back from the police, disappeared somewhat noisily with a cough, and was never seen again. An exit into the unknown. Anyone who had once waited never had to wait again. You were called, taken in, then spit out; no one knew what happened to you. I had to admit that all my anxieties had been uncalled for, yet I pitied those who were called up, who now had to fight their little battles, while, looking on, the rest of us felt that we had a much better chance of success if we would be allowed to mount a defense. What nonsense. For what good are such insights when no one believes in them or trusts them? In chopped-up segments, time passes by, while just before noon the last stragglers arrive, more and more of those having been called up by the police, the empty chairs soon looking thin and spiritless.
After remaining patient for more than two hours we were finally called up. The policeman said, “Seven,” which was the room number where we had to appear. A sign said to enter without knocking. A small, somewhat wizened man in civilian dress and wearing glasses, no doubt a school warden in better times, greeted us in a friendly manner. We were offered a seat. After we hastily spread our papers in front of him on the desk, everything grew silent. The civil servant sank with pleasure into the contents of the documents. It seemed that for him everything was in order, the statements recorded in the valid passports were true, a world of doubt kept at bay by the neat entries made by civil servants. Born, entered, and approved—everything was in order; the picture is real once it’s been stamped. As anyone who is trained to do so can read, passports reveal that the state attests to the validity of created beings. Whoever has documents that are in order, good for him—he is indeed alive and may go on living. Yet how pitiable the one who does not empty his pockets and offer up papers meekly with outstretched hands, like a desperate prayer to the civil servants, who, immediately touched by such gestures, take on much weightier matters. The ones asking, or who have been summoned to step forward, can relax and stretch out on their chairs, breathing easier through their noses with the patience of pure being, or play with their fingers, look gratefully at the floor, or boldly look wherever they wish, as long as they remain civil. But the best thing to do is watch with shy restraint the promising quiet proceedings of the official, always ready to respond to any glance with the right bits of information or nods of the head in order to assure someone that everything is on the up-and-up. As the official looks over the work of his predecessors and his colleagues, the one summoned is taken in, his fate almost suspended, for everything he is lies there in the written notes, his physical presence just a means in itself, a messenger delivering a message, an appointed courier of papers that grant him a complete sense of himself. So it goes for every person, especially if he is a foreigner, in order that he be certified.
The official took from a little basket a long handsomely printed form, spreading it out carefully on his blotter, and stretching it taut when the fold would not flatten out. Then the man took a pen and gracefully and skillfully wrote down the names and several other items that he found while flipping through the pages of the passport and visa. Johanna and I might as well not have been there, for potentially we could only provide wrong answers that would undermine what the documents already accurately attested to. Maybe I was mistaken, but it is difficult to know whether the questions that the official posed were necessary or whether he wished only to relieve our possible boredom. Or was he cleverly just checking to see what effort we had made to learn what was stated in the papers themselves? I was grateful to the man for taking as much care with the first page of his form as with those that followed, for it put me at ease. Only now and then did he stop to look over his entries. He seemed to be pleased with all of them, which boosted my confidence. When the process had gone far enough that it could no longer remain at just this orderly and comfortable level, the official looked up at me.
“Can you tell me, Mr. Landau, why you are really here?”
This was the last thing I expected to be asked, and so I was immediately shaken from my calm and got upset. Behind his glasses the official’s eyes were neither threatening nor shifty; rather, his gaze appeared almost friendly. All I had to do was not disappoint him.
“No, I really have no idea. I was asked to come here. The summons gave no reason.”
My answer was not bad, for the official smiled mildly, and I was happy that I had not followed his provocative question into the plummeting depths. I had been saved.
“I mean, why did you come to this country?”
“Because I love it. I wanted to get out. I wanted to be free.”
The eyes of my examiner lit up. He sensed that I really meant it. He could tell from my voice just what kind of person was before him.
“Yes, a very good reason indeed. But why didn’t you remain in your own country? Here you are a foreigner, who doesn’t speak the language so well, and for whom things are not easy.”
I defended myself and this country and offered a picture that explained why I had left there and come here. The official wrote down what I told him. He let me go on talking, only rarely posing a question in between that helped my story stay on track. It was all pleasant and easy. Finally, my examiner was satisfied; his form had been filled out. He nodded approvingly as he touched each line with the end of his pen while reading through them once more. Then, at the end, he looked at me again.
“Your case seems clear to me. I wish that matters were as simple with all foreigners. Now, just tell me off the record: how do you make a living?”
“I’m a freelance scholar. I do lectures now and then, write articles and reports. Sometimes I also have private support. Never public welfare.”
“I understand. It’s not easy. I really just wanted to know for myself.”
Then the official turned to Johanna, who sat there respectfully.
“I don’t need to hear much from you. You’re a housewife. I can see that. It’s obvious that is enough to do on its own. And as for your intentions? Certainly they are the same as your husband’s.”
With that we were dismissed and handed back our papers, the visas now having a little stamp upon them. That was the only thing that disturbed me a bit, for once such a symbol is entered it can lead to unforeseen consequences. I dared to share my thoughts aloud, but the official just smiled.
“That’s just for our interior records. Now your stay in this country is at last officially legal.”
I looked at the official questioningly, since I didn’t understand. He smiled in response.
“When you first arrived here, you didn’t inform us, and perhaps didn’t yet know, that you wanted to remain as our guest. At that time, we didn’t worry about it. We allow foreigners to visit, as long as there is no reason not to. Only when someone wants to stay do we look at the matter more closely. In the past few years, a good deal more have stayed. That’s why we asked you here.”
The official stood up, shook hands with Johanna and me, and led us to the door. Relieved, we headed off, Johanna seeming pleased, more so than I’d ever seen her. Indeed, she had always said that I had nothing to fear in this country and that I just had to be patient, and now I just had to chase away all my fears. I had to agree and felt ashamed. She looked at me seriously.
“Still so gloomy?”
“Everything is different, Johanna. We simply don’t know. It’s a good sign, but things can change in unforeseen ways. One should never be too sure. All you can do is try to do the best that you can, but then suddenly things can go wrong. It can all be taken away, even if, for now, something good is said on our behalf. All our success should teach us only that an infinite amount of prejudice lies behind any approval. But onward. I’m pleased and have no right to spoil a good day with my negative thoughts.”
As we headed home, Johanna often looked at me gratefully. After our trip to the immigration office, my spirits were lifted. I say lifted, but not really better. After suffering doubts that had eaten away at me, I was now feeling somewhat more secure. Things were falling into place; the world around me was becoming more bearable. I listened to the voice inside me, and it said, “Try!”