The Wall

by H. G. Adler

  “A husband’s support.” I said that once, only as an attempt to seize hold of a fading wish, but Johanna shot back nothing more than merciful surprise. Sometimes I tried to figure out whether what she would have me believe was real, but I only sensed a suppressed pain in her that was not visible. It’s all the same to her: the worries themselves, the numerous shortcomings of our household; none of it bothers her. It serves only to inspire her to a higher art. The essence of this art is patience; that’s all that’s needed, and it provides a relaxed, ongoing play in the return of reassuring conditions for my difficult-to-reassure, always disturbed, painful existence. How well it suits me that this tattered house puts up with me as an inhabitant in this meager neighborhood of careworn people. One can think whatever of me, but people live their lives without having to know about my empty troubles, for the stranger doesn’t bother the street at all.

  Only Johanna knows, but what does she know? Almost nothing, and even that she covers up. Welcome to Peace. But will the children ever know it? No, Michael and Eva don’t know anything, at least not yet; that way, they don’t get confused. They have their time, and what is past should not bother them. When they finally learn, it will by then be lost, no way into it through memento, dream, or memory, at most a long-lost history, an account in a book one can read but which remains unknown. Michael and Eva, already members of the circle of street kids, the boy already at the school that harmlessly takes him away from his father, the father’s speech only a distant resonant sound that will not find new voice in the next generation. Thus they look at their father with hardly any feeling of danger, nothing more than a playmate, his place in the scheme of things undoubted. I, however, don’t disturb this fantasy, but rather protect it and feed it with jokes and games. Johanna also helps out, dismissing with a smile any groundless question, and wherever shadows creep or rustle she’s there to set things right with her hands. Quickly I shy away, leave quietly, and am glad to be back in my study. The children are allowed to run free outside and return to the light of day, unaffected, no loss having touched them.

  Then I pray to an unknown guardian, he perhaps able to protect the children such that they have no idea of what they have mercifully been shielded from. The father should remain within their love as only the familiar stranger who once appeared, was there, then went away; yes, a passing ship, already having landed on the island and found the mother. Yet earlier there was nothing, only waves, nothing ever having happened. So it is in the world. One suddenly arrives, a ship, and everyone must travel to this island for the first time, an island where one can be and forget. Now the foundation is laid, the arc of Being lifted, the bridge erect and no longer capable of being destroyed. Above lies the light of all the stars, sacred and undisturbed creation presiding, the earth illuminated in the hand of the Lord. Whatever has fought against this no longer exists and has damned itself to darkness and discord, never to be again. Sheltered prosperity, the joyful vicissitude of a good family passing from fathers to grandchildren to their children’s children with all daily hardships taken care of, but also blessed in itself. The sanctuary of the sexes that do their work, and when one dies a noble grave awaits him; kept gratefully alive in memory, he lives on as an example, nothing having been in vain. His acts will inform his descendants; they are not unique, but in being true they reveal what is just. No doubt presses back, such that the sinister severs the chain and casts away and destroys its earlier roots. May this be true for the children!

  What will happen when the children no longer believe this? They will retreat from me and take me to task. You were a vagrant, a vagabond and a layabout. You just crept your way into this city; you are not our father and don’t belong to us. We don’t owe you anything, and we will disown you in order not to suffer eternal shame. And what will I, on the other hand, say to you? You are clever and gifted; how many years will pass before already you’re grown. Also, words will no longer comfort your mother. She would gladly stand sympathetically before the door of my room, but son and daughter will demand a royal entrance. Then I have to welcome them. They mess about in my drawers and demand the key to my desk. “What do you want to know?” I’ll ask. They will answer, “You!”—“I don’t exist,” I’ll assure them, but they will explain: “That is only half a memory. We want to find out about you. We want to know what is there when we see you—something horrible in your past, something disreputable which you keep secret.”

  Then I’ll have to talk a lot. Trapped in a corner against the wall, I will tell them something I know nothing at all about, conjuring the semblance of it in order that the children tremble and shake; however, they won’t be shaken by it, for they are well shielded against the language of sin. “I don’t exist, I don’t exist! You simply have to believe that, for both your sake and mine. I don’t exist, and though you torment me with your penetrating curiosity, you’ll still never find out, for it’s impossible. All that is there is impenetrable strangeness, because I don’t exist.” Should I expect this day to come, one in which I am overshadowed by Michael and Eva, such that my memory also will likely come to an end? It won’t change me at all, for I have decided that though the red seal of my guilt is long since reduced to dust, the future of these children will indeed be impugned. Can I protect them? Both the truth and not the truth will lead to the same doom. What, then, can I do? Why did I have children? O dull pointless lust! The belief in blind generation, for I madly wished not to be the last of my tribe, my precursors having been killed! To die childless felt like a sin. A world without children of the curse, and without memory of the fathers who suffered for them, so that there would be children of the curse. But Johanna? Her right to be a mother. The blessing of the womb, the transfiguration of birth, the soulfulness of a lullaby—all lovely, but it shouldn’t have sprung from my loins. Johanna wanted me. I pursued, it’s true, but she had consented, and that’s her fault. Yet, at the time she was attracted to me I didn’t know her; she had no idea what she had wreaked! Unhappy mother, who in conceiving children in her belly also bestowed on them an inextinguishable curse! Whatever staggeringly dumb vanity burned within me, away with it—go away, go home, go proliferate and fulfill your inchoate flesh and trembling spirit through children who are pure. Though you on your own can achieve no grace, see that the earth is inhabited with your blood and bones! Though you yourself have lived amid sin and error, you have indeed atoned for them, because you have tended to and hoped the best for your children. You have taken it upon yourself to make sure to balance your shortcomings with better intentions, such that they will be decreased, for benevolent is the Lord in the beginning, and he will forever forgive.

  Dreaming before the wall, marking time. Slowly the earth gives way and sinks below you, the years elapsing before your doubled-over supplications. With your supplicating grasp, the net of confusion begins to loosen. You work hard, not wasting a single day. Task after task you have fulfilled; you haven’t dwelled on your frailty. Therefore don’t despair too much, and trust yourself to believe that a lost one will be comforted, for I am your rock and your redeemer. Voices that I hear, and which shimmer around me, immersing me in the inapproachable whenever the enemy’s rattling surrounds me, such that I do not perish, even if I am unworthy of being held within the mesh of grace. Let it all pass, let everything pass! But I am carried through it. If I was too blessed at the wrong time, then this sinking into the ground is the sentence I must serve because I was too devout and not active enough. Now, however, you are there again. How can I resist you? Yet you still shimmer all about me, such that I am extinguished by the glow! Too much experience makes me empty, wisdom silencing any possible speech within me. Succor is my garb. That is what has happened to me; the rest is just extended sound. “You will be your own just reward.” But whose just reward will be my just reward?

  Impudent, I stand before my wall. Is it the Wailing Wall, where the sadness of all prayers is nurtured? Sadness? Prayers? No, it’s not the Wailing Wall. Yet my state plunges me into t
he depths. A continually sunken resistance, which nonetheless hardens and does not budge. I remain silent within my abyss, completely guilty and always guilty, nor can I even once do something for myself. That I still exist cannot be reckoned with. How can I ever confidently exist even for a moment? You, however, say that I can find forgiveness, for your grace is endless. You ask that I not doubt so intensely and not doubt myself so. You send me forth upon the four winds, such that I gather myself in both the seas and the deserts, the open fields and the dense cities. You command trust because you have sounded out my weaknesses, and into the world’s battles you drive my steps so that they can learn to transform themselves into peace. This I say aloud, drawing the belief in the truth of the unimaginable into the sensual poverty of my slack limbs. I turn away from the dreamy misery of the resentment and dissatisfaction that I had been carrying and apply myself to the future legacy of my children, who have no idea of my misery, but who need to heal in order to fill the chasm between which I have created with my scattered existence.

  When I look at Johanna I am often happy, though sometimes also sad, yet always something is affirmed, and many fears are tamped down. What happens between us folds in upon itself and creates an understanding; we trust each other, there’s no need to search for anything else. Thus we stoutly believe in each other. No matter how strange and distant we are, our hands are always entwined as one. Perhaps I am wrong about Johanna. It’s easy for me to be near her, for then I am lost to the light. She is awake; she has unconscious control of me. She beams at me, she wants me, she makes me real, she sees me, she talks to me. This is the deepest effect she has on me. For she is never despondent; seemingly docile, she conquers my sudden, often startling disappearance with action conjured out of nowhere. When I don’t exist, she doesn’t break down; if anything, it entices her to provide all the more strongly what wouldn’t exist without her confidence. All of my weaknesses are only inducements to her. It almost seems that she needs a weak man. For the fact that Johanna has chosen me remains as unfathomable as it does unrewarded. Did she consider the consequences of our relationship? What ingratitude lies in such a question! I am amazed, and it still upsets me when I recall how it all happened. My long journey, my hope coupled with a new country, the strange hazy city, so much fog, for weeks given the runaround for no apparent reason, then a glance exchanged at a gathering, and there was Johanna, once, then again. I didn’t know why, but I spoke to her, and already the marriage was settled.

  I had been referred to others along the way before I had taken flight, and my friend So-and-So provided me entrée in the metropolis and to what I told myself were influential personalities. They welcomed me politely and led me into their circle like an exotic mythical beast, and indeed I was met with nothing but wincing curiosity and a gaping desire to know more. Meanwhile, I just took it all as part of the urge to extend to me a friendly invitation to join their ranks. But no, I didn’t mean anything to them, for they just stared at my mouth as it spewed out surprising news that they wanted to listen to, only to go on making light conversation, the stinging accounts about the horrors endured pleasing the spoiled ladies and gentlemen. But I myself disappeared, a passing folly who was persistently mistaken in thinking that he would be taken good care of, though I was nowhere present in any of the stories themselves, and was not at all even comprehensible, even when they listened to my own story. How foolish of me to feel satisfied with how others were astonished at me and fawned over me with cheap courtesies. The allure of the stranger soon dissipated, everyone having heard enough of my plans, all fondness for me dissolving. Awkwardly, I displayed my displeasure and could not regain the advantage; the beginning of my isolation had been fatally set in motion.

  In the first days, I was invited by Herr Dr. Haarburger and his wife once or twice a week, they being wealthy refugees in a luxuriously furnished villa whose contents had all been purchased in their native country. During one of my first visits, the Haarburgers had arranged for me to come to dinner, after which friends and some guests of rank and renown were summoned to appear, handsome men and bejeweled ladies who drank their coffee and gawked at me from all sides while eating cake and smoking cigarettes, Frau Haarburger having urged me in a well-meaning way to make sure and show them my best side.

  “Make contacts, that’s all, my dear Herr Landau. Professor Kratzenstein is president of the International Society of Sociologists. He has fantastic connections, as well as with publishers, and he has access to loads of money and stipends. But you need to be in good form, Herr Landau!”

  “He will indeed be. He’s certainly clever, Hannah!” Dr. Haarburger reassured.

  “And can he do something for me?”

  “But of course, and a lot! Indeed, he can!”

  Frau Haarburger then counted off those whom Kratzenstein had already helped.

  “He’s tremendous. But you have to make your move! You can’t just be difficult. And Frau Singule is nearly as important as he is. You must know the name. No? I’m flabbergasted! What do you make of that, Jolan?”

  “Nothing to worry about! Please, dear, he can’t know everyone. Actually, Singule used to be a zoologist. But that didn’t work out so well for him.”

  “Then he turned to medicine.”

  “He was great at that. But now he’s general secretary of Europe for a rich, perhaps the richest, American foundation. His central interest is natural science, biology. But, nonetheless, the job suits him, for he’s someone who is interested in everything. Indeed, his word is as good as gold. Too bad that he’s not here himself. He has so terribly much to do and rarely can get away. Perhaps next time.”

  “For Herr Landau it’s probably better that he doesn’t come. Don’t you think so, Jolan? Frau Singule can handle it all herself. Just a suggestion from her to her husband—that’s all it takes to get his ear and have him on board with anything.”

  Frau Haarburger’s hopes were fulfilled, for Singule didn’t show, his wife apologizing on his behalf with great fanfare. Instead, others appeared. Kratzenstein was the star attraction—“What a head! Could anyone look more clever?” Then there was the bookseller Buxinger—“All I need do is say one word to him and he’ll lend you any books you need!” As well as Herr and Frau Saubermann, a rich couple who owned factories and had humanitarian interests—“How much good they have done, and with such humility!” And Resi Knispel, a Zurich press agent—“Simply brilliant, well educated, and works for some kind of literary agent as well!” And, in addition, Fräulein Johanna Zinner, an official in a refugee organization—“Not so important, but a heart of gold. Jolan and I love her like our own child!” There were others as well, but none that I recall any longer. First, I was introduced to Frau Singule.

  “Herr Landau—in fact, Herr Dr. Landau—just arrived, our new friend. You’ll see how famous he is! He can tell you all about it!”

  “My pleasure, my pleasure.”

  “The pleasure is mine, madam.”

  “All that happened to you doesn’t at all show. Maybe what happened wasn’t so bad, but bad enough, I understand. Or were you lucky?”

  “Lucky, madam.”

  “Yes, that’s what my husband says as well. Too bad he’s not here. He never has any time. One of his family members died. How terrible! Too many. Most likely you would have known him if you were there. Dr. Berthold Singule, an attorney. He was such a good person.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Really? But I find that amazing! You were there and didn’t see him? Unbelievable! He was loved by so many! We’ve heard reports from survivors how well he carried himself. You mean to say—”

  “You said it yourself, madam, there were too many! There was no way to know everyone. I’m often asked about relatives, and in almost every instance there’s nothing I can report.”

  “One hopes for a chance encounter.”

  “Certainly, madam.”

  “That is really awful! One wants to know!”

  “Of course.”

&
nbsp; “That’s what I’m saying! And then he was sent away. He didn’t deserve it. So kind. And not a trace more, nothing. Gone.”

  “That’s how it was, madam. Everyone gone. In the end, it was left to chance who remains and who does not.”

  “That’s what you say! But one really wants to know just what happened. When, where, under what conditions? And whether the poor dear suffered much or not?”

  “Certainly, madam.”

  “Oh, it’s horrible that you can say that so easily. But, understandably, one must be blunt.”

  “Not quite, madam. At least not me. I want to put it into a larger context.”

  “That must be terribly interesting and is certainly very important! Congratulations—no, I mean what courage, Herr Landau!”

  “That’s what I meant to say,” Frau Haarburger said, interrupting. “Dr. Landau is the man for the job.”

  “I can only recommend my friend in the warmest way,” said Dr. Haarburger. “That’s a head that will impress your dear husband. Terrific, I say, the very best!”

  “It’s a shame that he always has so much to do. Overwhelmed. Looking over applications all day long. By the way, one might be of interest to you, Herr Landau—something about experiences with typhus and lice. Ugh, simply disgusting. But the poor fools who died of it! Terrible!”

  “Herr Dr. Landau knows all about that, Frau Singule,” Dr. Haarburger confirmed. “Your husband would be interested to hear all about it.”

  “Naturally, if only he could! It’s horrible! Just imagine, tonight another meeting about the dispersal of grants for the next quarter. That can last all night.”