by H. G. Adler
“It’s looking down at us.”
I had to explain to Anna what I meant.
“At the roofs of the houses, at the people in the houses, into their very hearts. The otherworldly becomes intimately familiar.”
This I had often felt, and loved it. A lookout, where whoever entrusted himself to the peak of such a mountain shared its power and might, and the allure of both. He becomes part of the mountain itself. He relinquishes his own human fears and cannot be harmed. If his duty becomes too much to bear, then he runs straight off into the protection of the forest, becoming small again and, once small, safe again. Anna didn’t entirely understand. She found that I had changed and looked sideways at me. Indeed, I had changed, the mountain world having given itself over to me for the last time. Sadness had holed up inside my heart. Indeed, no wall was broken through, but I had exchanged my very being with it; no one could say now what was the wall and what was the person. The search for the wall and for the person, the separation of the conscious and the unconscious—this I could not acknowledge. A painless dissolution, the torment sifted out, and that which had no voice was now a part of me. Thus was I saved. Indeed, without any feeling of home, and yet a place to be. Adam within the world once again.
“Do you recognize me?”
“You are strange, Arthur. I never understood you, and I admit that if I thought that you’d feel better in the forest I was wrong.”
“Everyone is wrong, everyone. That’s just the way it is. Don’t let it bother you. However, we won’t forget this day. It’s a gift to us both. I couldn’t wish for anything more.”
“No, nothing more. If you are satisfied, I certainly am as well.”
“Satisfied … No, there is no word for it. Just let it be! Look at the central ridge here in front of us. After this foothill, it falls away completely. But it’s beautiful country. The mountain behind that blocks our view is a mighty sentinel. It dominates the Choden countryside around Taus. And here, the outlying areas to the north with their forests, and the last peak to the right, do you see it? That’s the Ratscher, a modest but much-loved mountain. That one I know well. I have often been there.”
“With Franziska?”
“Yes. You always want to hear the name, even though you know it already. There we were. There, I believe, we promised ourselves to each other during indescribable hours.”
“You believe? One indeed knows, no?”
“I no longer know for sure. Nor do I want to.”
“Wouldn’t you like to go back there sometime?”
“To Ratscher? No. Certainly not. I no longer know it. It’s too much inside me.”
“Oh, everything you say has a double meaning. You can’t make up your mind.”
“How could I? There’s nothing that’s at all certain. Don’t think that I’m just being contrary and don’t believe in the real, the sublime, or even the holy. They are simply indefinable. People were much too certain, and too many still are today. They fall into error, but, when they are consoled by it, it must be all right. You can’t stand in their way. Yet, for me, it’s not so. You have to be able to feel broken and yet not damn the world, to not become callous, not hate your neighbor, not the guilty, for they are your neighbors. You can’t separate them from those who are not guilty. Doubt and lack of faith are two very different things. Beware the one who exchanges one for the other, or mixes them up! Avoid negation, and embrace the end, even praise it! For the end is also a gift and is part of the plan. At the end, you submit yourself and accept your fate.”
“That’s so bleak.”
“Not bleak. Not me. It just involves surrendering yourself to oblivion. That may make you uncomfortable. But I think—and this I am very aware of—that you can’t also negate the negative. Only then, I feel, really only then can you embrace the positive with all your heart, humbly and reverently. Whoever doesn’t love the negative—I mean, who doesn’t love it as a test, who doesn’t accept his destruction and recognize his Creator because he sees nothing more than his own human misery, and who curses the Creator and all his creation, he only takes the miserable to be true and thinks and acts so.”
“Is that true for all?”
“I wouldn’t risk such a pronouncement. But I certainly would never maintain that it’s only true for me or for such people who have experienced the same or something similar. It’s indeed valid, but it’s not so obvious to all. And you can’t force someone out of his house, out of the house of his soul, out of solitude. Solitude, Franziska said, is the house of the soul. No one can be forced out of it, out of the house in which he indeed knows himself to be safe. But—and it’s worth asking—who still has such a house? Who will have such a house tomorrow? Who has his own solitude? Those beaten down must provide the warning.”
“Is that your mission?”
“It’s not for me to decide.”
“What do you think about, then?”
“Nothing. I just try my best, that’s all. The rest has already been decided. I don’t have to wait for it. It will come of itself. If I can just be, then I am also ready. Otherwise, I don’t exist at all.”
“What to make of you, Arthur? Especially when you say it all so fervently! I can’t compare my experience with your suffering, and yet there’s something—”
“Oh, you’ve been part of so much! Don’t object to what I say or explain to me what I know!”
“Fine, I don’t mean to say you are bitter. There’s no comparison. Yet my life seems to me a dream, and so I walk through life as if through a dream.”
“Are you then saying something different than I am?”
“Not really. Or perhaps only that everything seems much simpler to me. If I wanted more, I would lash out. Do you understand? Lash out, such that I would hurt someone and end up wounding myself. But you can’t do that—or, more humbly, I can’t do that.”
I agreed with Anna, and had nothing to say in reply, and turned from her back to the view. I pointed out toward the Ratscher forest, where the landscape, often covered with trees, opened out ever more among fewer and lower hills into rolling fields and flats that faded into the thin silver of the haze above the ever-spreading landscape. “In this direction,” I said, “lies the old city.” I said its name in an almost imperceptible voice. Anna didn’t know why I was whispering. There seemed nothing about this name that one had to keep quiet about. But when I informed her that it was so for me she understood, and for a moment took hold of my hand in sympathy. Above the far-off haze, which stretched out on the horizon like the dense edge of a veil, cumulus clouds floated almost still with their subdued glow. I couldn’t stand this scene for long, for I sensed the coming darkness, and the stark waning of the day, so familiar to me, reminded me of having to leave. It was indeed time, the shadows lengthening, the smell of evening pressing its cool feel into the warmth of day. Even the easier path that I had planned required vigorous effort, and I wanted to avoid darkness.
Anna agreed, wanting only to take in the nearby softness once more, as well as the alluring green of the hills drifting off. That was a lovely moment, for our eyes flickered before the enchanting distance. We felt as one the pangs of a pressing pain, yet it came more from what we took in than from our wayward wandering. Once more I pointed down at the Angeltal; quietly, several settlements seemed almost to pass before our eyes. But the peace that the distance offered granted only brief satisfaction. I sensed how the buildings floated there lost, after which my eyes sought the comfort of the mountain train rising up the slope from the right. It displayed to us its sunny side, with its little bridge, as it headed farther up toward the narrow peak rising out of the time-drenched rocky contours of the land like a silent lasting message. However, I tore myself away from this enchanting scene in order not to be lost in the boundless distance.
We didn’t need to exchange a single sign as we began to walk down more carefully than was needed. Our limbs felt heavy, ourselves almost done in. As I turned, because the next step required it, everyt
hing trembled before me on all sides; at once free of suffering and saturated with pain, it stood gathered before me. I still thought it real, but I could no longer grasp it as it spun around, the border shattered into tender pieces and separating in every direction; peak and valley, sky, the forest splendor, and the green fields mixing with one another, a dense, soughing song pressing into my ears. Was it the mountains? Was it me? Was it the impending departure? I didn’t know. Yet it was good that I couldn’t lose myself for too long in this alluring, all-encompassing feeling. Indeed, it was warming, but, amid its glow, a deadly chill also alarmed me, a bliss almost drunk with destruction that offered itself in an undignified manner. Pleased and relieved, I saw the hiking lodge before us, ridiculously austere and disclosing the riches of its empty plank tables and backless benches.
It looks abandoned, Anna thought, but I didn’t believe it was. As I explored the building, she sat down at a table. The doors were ajar, but they resisted opening with a squeaking noise, as I pushed into the gloomy front hall. Before I pressed into the guest room, a young girl appeared. She didn’t seem at all pleased by the visit and asked me sharply what I wanted, as if she wanted to get rid of the disturbance as quickly as possible. There was nothing to eat. However, we didn’t want anything. But at least something to drink was offered. There was no milk available, nothing special that had been brought in from afar. Black coffee—chicory, obviously, for what else could one expect?—could be ordered. No, no thanks. Soon it was pointed out to us, even if we didn’t want any, that beer was the only other thing available. Fine, then. I escaped outside to Anna and sat down. She had spread a little cloth over the table, and we ate what we had brought along ourselves. After a while, suspicious and grumbling, the girl showed up carrying two glasses of beer. Thin beer from the country that had been destroyed. But at least the drink was cool and pleasant. Anna hesitated, but I told her that this beer wouldn’t make her sleepy. The girl just took a couple of steps back, placed her hand on her hip, and stared at us. She was mad at us. And so I called to her and asked to pay. Would she take money from the other side of the border?
“If I have to. At a rate of one to ten.”
I gave her what she asked for. She didn’t even say thanks for the tip.
“You shouldn’t look at us that way. We’ve done nothing to you.”
She lifted a hand and pointed over the border.
“Not me, I’m from over there. But there they …”
She didn’t say what she was thinking. I had no desire to explain, but Anna nodded at her sympathetically.
“I know it’s not right. But we don’t feel at home there either.”
The girl looked at us as if she would have liked to say something about not wanting anything to do with us. She placed her hand back on her hip.
“It’s fine by me.”
Cold and hostile was how she had spoken. Then she walked back inside the building with a strident gait and closed the squeaking door behind her, though she wasn’t happy about being stuck inside and leaped up to open the door a crack. The girl didn’t look at us again. Soon we left. Anna had hardly emptied half her glass.
I thought of the slow-witted girl who on the first day at the tank station had offered us fresh eggs with pungent boletus mushrooms, a delicious meal. The woman belonged to another people. Perhaps she had regained control of her property from the regime that had stolen it, having had to forfeit it when the border fell, or perhaps she stole the inn from someone else once the border had been restored. The woman herself did not bring the food; instead, a local girl who worked for the proprietor was sent out in a little Cinderella dress, carrying a bowl, a small young girl of grace and mercy, who worked for the expiation of her unconscious acts, as long as she remained in that country. Meanwhile, Anna had been upset by the incident, and I didn’t wish to remind her of it. I kept quiet, both of us quiet and concentrating on the path ahead of us.
The open peaks now lay behind us, the forest surrounding us again, the path leading steeply down, the border behind us. We sank into the King’s Forest, huge, lovely, proud, and protected from sharp winds. Soon the craggy path downward was behind us, the way now more moderate along the length of the hillside. When we reached the forest road, we began to walk fast, a long stretch between us, as if we weren’t walking together. I had seen enough for today, and knew only that forest followed forest, that I was one with the forest, a forest without end, a forest possessed of the goodness of its own loveliness, a forest that I would no longer be able to experience after leaving it, though there were still many wonders awaiting me along the way: famous tall trees, old beeches, ancient lindens, the wild Klammerloch waterfall, with its swift cold water, the lake black in the late light, as if spun from the evening itself. All of it was still there. I looked on at it, yet I needed nothing more, for it repeated itself with the same pulse and spoke to me, sucking me into its changeable permanence, wearing me down, mocking me, talking me out of who I am and tossing me as a little speck of shadow into the fullness of its unfathomable richness, such that I sank away into it, into its deeply secret and exalted night, into the mottled coolness that rises from the bell flowers, the burial song of the immortals, a humming knowledge, spreading its spirit in the dance of dying thoughts that, empty of desire and fleeting, quietly twine themselves ominously around that which stands tall, grasping the bark, sensing the strong taste of the hidden in the swaying height, carefree and undisturbed, yet always gathered in the splayed needles of the young shoots, cradled in the crackling sway and higher yet, where the squirrels skitter away in fright, where no bird nests any longer in the loneliest treetops.
Forest, forest, and the forgetting that cannot be conquered, yet, below, the sure step that trusts the ground without paying attention, without having to think about it at all. Forest, forest, in the evening, in the weariness branching through one’s limbs, in the secret stroll of sleep that would find a home among society, in dwelling and the transformation of dwelling, forest of the dead, forest of the living, forest of those who return and those driven out, the same for all, since only the dreams differ, each possessed of a face and its grave expressions that we grasp with our eyes between the eyelids, calling out a name when we remember it or when a book or a list reminds us, witnesses to our past and to everyone’s past, carried over into the sorrow and length of our hours, since everywhere we are met by a face looking at us, demanding and fixed upon us, having tossed away its unexamined questions so that we don’t boldly decide to take on their most imposing demand, but such that we also have the heart to stand upon our feet and take hold with our hands, and that we force the lazy lips of our no-good oafishness to heartfelt avowal. Here we are, the children of the forest within every border, ourselves walking entities of the days denied us, and there you are, children of the same forest, all of us foreigners made brothers, ourselves entities, yourselves images as caught by the nimble artists, the confident pencil capturing your expressions, they then painting your faces, always a look followed by a brushstroke, careful, intent, as good as can be, flattering and yet fatuous, but it almost seeming as if done with love, a memorable work to be handed down to your children, who then gather up the likenesses and place them in frames, a sacred legacy, a drawn-out inheritance passed from tree to tree, carved and always kept in the same forest where the houses stand with their many dwellings.
On the walls hang the family trees, reverently dusted off, always branching out from the main trunk, Father and Mother, each of them looking alive and present with serious faces projecting from the past into the present, the sweet eyes meaning something to the grandchildren, the offspring in the forest comfortably gathering around and holding their breath before them. The first reverence paid by gazes that can barely understand, looking up questioningly toward the walls, their own strange future gazing down from the preserved faces, their own hearts full of wonder. A people born of a memory renewed in each new generation, as down through the parents, the grandparents, and the ancestors the
first parents continued on, about which the Holy Book spoke, no longer as being in the forest but as sand from the ocean, each a grain created by the same law. Human beings have treasured that which has been; though it might have been in vain, it was also dear to them and, indeed, one often heard it said how important it was to remember. That’s why such memories were cherished in those rooms and protected with touching diligence.
Then, however, the destroyer arrived, calling out to the living and leading them from rooms in which the last warmth glowed, the hunted taking with them only a little travel bag, no longer a settled people and also this not an exodus toward salvation but, rather, aimless wanderers, cool and matter-of-fact, almost athletic, hardly having taken one last look around the decrepit dwellings, drawers, and wardrobes standing open and ransacked, only the ancestors remaining undisturbed on the walls, always looking down, steady and true, their mien not in the least withdrawn, though not letting on whether they noticed the horrible changes and the sudden emptiness. No one carefully wiped the frames any longer; no one dabbed tenderly with a white cloth over the similarly colored canvases, with their spreading cracks, or over the faces behind glass. Since the ancestors were frail and old, they could not help themselves and relinquished all responsibility, such that they drowsily turned gray with dust. The faces became wizened, the eyes dull, the hair dry and thin, and the throat weak, their garments meager—a poor people, encased in several coats of grime and soon invisible. Even the frames suffered and broke, gold fading, flaking off in an ugly manner from the wood.