by H. G. Adler
“It will be all right, Anna. We didn’t suffer so that injustice would prevail.”
“It will be all right? Unfortunately, it doesn’t look that way. People are hauled off. Even friends, papers, and bribes are of doubtful help and do not last. A bad example was set, and everyone got the picture.”
“Are you in danger?”
“I already told you, I’m fine. Right at the moment, I’m almost certain. I don’t expect anything bad to suddenly happen. The people in the building are seemingly decent, the porter is on the straight and narrow, and that’s the most important. He managed to fend off the mob that came inquiring from house to house right after the war. Then he spoke so well of me to the police, the national security, during the investigation of war criminals, to the governing authority for the identification of state enemies and traitors, and who knows who else? Yes, my dear, that all surprises you! ‘Frau Meisenbach is one of us,’ he said. ‘She behaved better than many of our own people, and her brother was a hero who died on our behalf.’ I don’t make too much of it, but until now it has kept me safe. As have Arno’s political friends. Then, after a few days, I received a declaration of harmlessness from the police, a red card. That’s the best that one can get. It’s signed and is stamped in several places. But whether that will last forever? Even though I don’t have to leave, I don’t want to stay here.”
It was soothing for me to learn of so much unfamiliar sorrow and of Anna’s personal troubles. I was wrenched from the loneliness of my own pain, yet it affected me almost more than I could bear. Expulsion and flight, the urge to steal, hatred of others, bitter people, the sword of injustice; I knew what it meant to feel powerless, and the despair of those who feel worthless. Such ruin had not ceased, and it claimed victim after victim.
From outside, military music thumped along closer, tin horns and drums, pressing at me and hurting my ears, although the noise was muffled, since it came from somewhat far off.
“We have to hear that every day, and sometimes more than once a day. At Peter’s, up near the vineyard, you’ll hardly hear it at all.”
“Military music in any country is unbearable.”
“I don’t like it, either. They celebrate so much right now, and they need it for that.”
I closed the double windows in the face of the lovely June day without even asking Anna, but it seemed the right thing to do. The warlike flood of noise could hardly be heard. Smiling, Anna said that the closed windows had the disadvantage that it would be hard to tell when the band was finally far enough away.
“Should I open them up?”
“We can try it in ten minutes. By then the festivities will certainly be over.”
Then Anna said that she had to go out to do some shopping, and that she’d be gone around fifteen minutes. If I wanted, I could come along, but she would understand if I preferred to stay in the apartment, which is what I decided after mulling it over for a bit.
With a large bag in tow, she headed out. I wanted to accompany her to the elevator, but I only stood up and closed the door behind her. I had agreed with Anna that I would not open it, even if someone rang the doorbell. Peter would certainly not be coming in the meantime, and, besides, I know his signal: three quick rings.
Left alone, I inspected Hermann’s books more closely than I did yesterday, but, once again, I didn’t pull out any of them. I was too deeply shy, the books themselves causing me to feel this even more than the thought that they belonged to a dead man and were left behind to no end, beautiful books calmly standing one next to the other, arranged according to height, though perhaps also color, rather than content, the works of most older writers in several languages, many philosophical works, history, memoirs, and letters. In some ways, all books were letters to the world—envoys, complaints, bearers of joy, intimations, endless information, and public news. But who is meant to read them? For whom were all of these thoughts really put together? All had proclaimed themselves, had expressed something to the formative memory of those living in the present and to future generations. But who had the many continuous letters actually reached, and did they all really wish to stand there exposed so obviously as a pack of lies, such shameless lies? Each book a corpse, describing something that once was but is no longer; in fact, it never was, my dear girl. If one blocks one’s ears against the silent chorus of so many dried-up voices, then there’s nothing to hear, not even time. It had all been said, love and hate, but all of that had been said already and didn’t mean a thing. No, the books seemed like inept messengers who had failed in their duties and didn’t mean anything to me. With my thumbnail I flicked across a row of them from right to left, raising a soft whistle like a long, drawn-out note. That was strange—the letters were effaced and were worth nothing anymore. I did it again and again, then I had had enough. The spines of books are sensitive; my fingernail could leave marks, and that would not have been right.
I had hardly read any books in years, wisdom having escaped me and no longer found within books, the withered remains persevering on their own, though they were indeed hard to keep together. Anna was right not to worry too much about the treasures lost among their pages, as it only meant caring for the dead, guarding plunder that only took up space in the small apartment. The fact that I had once written and thought about writing books that could have been printed, bound, and sold now seemed to me implausible, though indeed such ideas had often buoyed me during the war years. In the same spirit, I collected so much experience and carried it along with me, so much pressing deep into my memories, held there as I told myself I would need it, and now it appeared to me it was indeed lost, myself unable to find it any longer, Franziska’s death and my survival having shredded the volume that gave the contents some kind of sense, all my stowed-away knowledge now covered in dust and ground down to a pulp. What had prodded me to say later that I would write it all down, feeling that I had finally experienced for real what I had learned about only in my lifeless studies? A book? I thought of the Inca tribesman who was handed a book and told that it was the truth, and so he took the book, shook it, listened, and responded contemptuously that it hadn’t said a thing, and threw the book to the ground. How vainly I had sought to gain solace with all my plans! In cleverly developed sections I had conceived long works, written by Arthur Landau, news straight from the source, no mucking around in libraries, where one just writes what another has written, no cheap history, no beating about the bush or simply compiling other people’s stories; no, here is the real thing that had been tested and come through, and so your thirst for knowledge will be quenched! Foolish interweavings and entanglements, the powerlessness of words that won’t hold their place! I dreamed of all my plans, and I dared to think that, having survived all the horror, I did not survive for nothing, for I could say that I had been there, my life, love, and sorrows not only having been consumed by it all, but now, with a sharp mind and the keenness of an observant witness, I could go to my desk and set it down. Thus would my story fulfill a purpose, and everything wouldn’t be simply unappeased laments but, rather, such fortunes would be shared with my neighbors and the world, myself even coming to value my fate, it being unfortunate that I had been granted it, but good that I had not failed it.
Then I sat powerless in my first days at Peter’s near the vineyard and could not write a book at all. At night, ceaseless thoughts plagued me, shrill voices and interjections crossing one another, though all I wanted to set down was one word, and yet it all remained bottled up inside me and I was unable to draw it out. What I also thought made no sense, as it was full of holes and seemed the height of hubris. Everything that I had remarked on earlier seemed to have dissipated, especially when the war was first getting under way, as I buried myself in my research, sunk in the misery of my fellow brothers who had already died, searching for something like a doctor searching for a disease while taking his own pulse, calling out to colleagues puzzled at his condition, “Have you never seen anyone about to die?” And so I figured th
ese writings were lost and didn’t mind that they were; should they ever surface, they would be obsolete and faded, truth’s lye having already eaten through them.
Then one day I held my works in my hands again. Franziska had lovingly packed them away, first in tissue paper, then covered with a thick piece of paper to protect them from water and any kind of decay, then bound together through and through, just the way she had wrapped all her gifts, such that one took great joy in opening them. Now I read through them, disturbed and ashamed, almost in tears, but my hostile feelings against my failed attempts soon dissipated. It felt as if I were looking through a murky transparent wall at a frozen life from ancient times, not my own life but a monument to a history that had disappeared and yet was still credible. In a rush, I put it all together—namely, what could be garnered from the retrieved writings and my memory. I hadn’t worked that long at the museum, but I began with what I’d learned there while trying to improve this or that text and to start to work on new books. When I arrived in the metropolis, the sociology of oppressed people was just in its early stages, most of the chapters, or at least the most important ones, having been drafted, while other studies were finished and new ones begun. What I didn’t think I could accomplish with all this activity and from these new projects! Whoever I spoke with, be it So-and-So, Dr. Haarburger, and whomever I came in touch with, I would always try to explain the basis of my work, setting forth my most important ideas, making the case for my deeply probing learned views and asking people if they would read a bit of it. If someone listened to me with attentive, careful respect, I was indeed happy, for then I would feel certain that whatever help they could give me was assured. Yet how foolish it was to hope for something, especially when someone would casually say, “Very interesting, Herr Doctor, but of course everything really depends on the finished product. One would have to see that first, then maybe something can be done.” I threw myself into my work and regularly spent nearly half the night at my desk, egged on by skeptical comments from So-and-So, who in the early days brought me books and articles to study, while I had taken too literally to heart the old saying that ninety percent of inspiration is perspiration. Indeed, that was not altogether untrue, but it had nothing to do with the actual workings; namely, the approval, funding, and completion of a successful project. Perspiration has nothing to do with genius; it only accounts for the discipline that one needs to complete something, and no one becomes a genius through perspiration alone.
I got smarter and no longer thought myself a genius, and I’m still just as hard a worker to this day. All that perspiration means is that I can persevere in order to hope to get something out of my otherwise wasted days. But back then, during the first two years of my landing in the metropolis, when I felt overwhelmed by even myself, overambitious, driven, and restless, I suddenly found a brilliant voice and capability inside me that allowed me to overcome all barriers in the world. The cynical irony with which I was greeted by people I knew and met I approached with naïveté or deliberately ignored, because I didn’t wish to give it credence and, with the overarching drive to achieve success as well as a meager living that I hoped to make from my chosen profession, I continued always to patiently sound out support that was vital to my future amid all the empty promises and even open refusals. I have never really known if I was treated any better or any worse by those who didn’t expect to be confronted in a social situation, as they kept their own willfulness in check and never let it show. For many years I didn’t understand it, but nonetheless played along. Even Johanna put up with it, she who had such faith in me, who did everything for me, and tapped her countless professional connections without knowing that she was not at all suited to the new way of things that had never been seen before. How could she know when even I, as a sociologist, had no idea that the social network had organized itself as a community, even though within it the rules were always changing, such that for certain functions in both private and institutional settings there were always correlating ways to say and do things that one had to employ in order to attain any success. Such understanding eluded us, and soon Johanna learned that people were just smiling emptily when they spoke with her, or avoided her altogether or simply sent her on through a chain of one person after another, each of whom, with a shrug of the shoulders, would turn down all the unsuccessful requests for help and still innocently ask, “Well, my dear Frau Landau, what is it you really want? The best thing to do would be to send your husband around to an employment agency, and if he doesn’t get anything, then you should have a look for yourself!” In the end, Johanna no longer knew what she had even been asking for, and those who had been approached offered only the backhanded compliment that she certainly was a brave woman.
If I look back evenhandedly at my career path, as it is called, in the first three or four years since I arrived in the metropolis (and it’s important for me to do so, since I’m working on a study that I plan to call “The Position of the Creative Artist in the Age of the Large-Scale Social Organization That Threatens Culture”), then I haven’t a clue, since the intertwinings of my efforts are confused. The particular reasons for my failure are much less clear to me than the general rule that describes such failure. That rule says: Social institutions run or maintain culture or sustain themselves in a neutral manner when serving the clear purpose of supporting the well-being of the community and nothing that undermines its individual members. Out of this comes the corollary: Should social institutions no longer serve such clear purposes, then they will be utilized for other purposes than those for which they were meant, as these institutions only serve themselves, whereby the well-being of the community is threatened and the development of its individual members is inhibited or even harmed. If things should go this far, then it’s bad for culture, as it is then directed by institutions that are themselves marginalized, depleted, and finally replaced by ideologically run, industrial-sized disasters, the result being that any possible freedom for people to attain their own intellectual feats and works is continually shrunk until it disappears. Unique achievements of value become rare, while sound achievements that link to tradition are devalued and the realization of both is threatened, if not entirely forbidden. That which is produced independently is constrained if it does not come under the yoke of a totalitarian tyranny, having to forsake distribution unless it takes on a plethora of economic and social burdens. This rule tells us of the collapse of art and scholarship which is caught unawares or is no longer desired at all, since everything has attached itself to guiding principles that have been set in place by the powerful and totalitarian realms of overarching institutions. Only that which follows these declarations will be deemed worthy, while only that which is produced through the aid of institutional powers—which today in the West means through the press, the media, or the control of advertising—will be supported or even allowed.
This is the situation in which I ended up. The social ineptness of a person such as myself, who has been kept out of almost all social organizations, rather than just declassed, makes it impossible to gain a foothold. Any foothold is taken away the moment you contact someone, prepare to make the proper approach, and set off but never arrive, nor does your work ever arrive, you being like a letter writer who writes letters to unknown or unauthenticated addresses. This tragedy, of which I’m a part, describes the position of the creative artist of this epoch. I can see, then, how it all connects together and prevents my taking part in society in any possible way, for it is all confirmed in me, which I also observe is what has happened to me in detail, this daily and weekly collapse, while these pinched attempts to escape this entrenched, but also this perpetual and not entirely perceivable, loneliness, I have not yet explained. The less of a person I am because I am not allowed to exist, the more the world is closed to me and cuts itself off behind a wall. If that didn’t exist, if it only had a door and could be walked through, then I myself would be this wall, but the world would also be the wall; put another way, the wo
rld and I would be bound together through the wall, and we would come together as a single seamless wall.
As I first appreciated this insolvable conflict, I did something I never thought of doing before in my life. I wrote a story. The shallowness and meaninglessness of most of the letters we write had always pained me, for I think of the letter as a primary symbol of the person who has been excluded from something. And every person is excluded, every person reaches a border, no matter how many different ones may be drawn, some closer for some, for others farther away, or as visible as the Great Wall of China or spreading out into the distance in endless glittering flatlands, often not known or recognized, and yet the root of all human misery, sensed as eternity, the depths, as the source of our behavior and the driving force behind our vices and virtues, the source of all despair and hope. To be human is to have a border, and to want to cross it through letters that will reach beyond to their goal. I worked hard on this story for a long while, polishing it, copying it over, and changing it, though it always remained unfinished and did not please me, as I am not a writer. Nonetheless, though it is also a failed piece, it still means a good deal to me, because it says more about me and my thinking than I have ever managed to express in my scholarly work. Which is why today I have picked it up again and revised it thoroughly once more. Here it is. It’s called:
THE LETTER WRITERS
Letters, for those who do not know, are an ancient invention. You write them, feel unburdened, and write some more. So it was millennia ago, so it remains to this day, no one finding it surprising, all thinking it good. People sit at home, look out the window for a bit, and think of their friends, then look up addresses that are often hidden away, take out envelopes and write down the names, towns, and streets with solemn letters. Then they reach for writing paper and spin away their thoughts.
Meanwhile, outside it has grown colder. Whoever does not have pressing business does not move along the streets, where at this time of year misery most likely awaits. If the letters are finished and sealed, one often strokes them tenderly, protecting them with religious or superstitious measures from the evil eye—from all harm—and from the danger of loss, carrying them out quickly at midday when the cold eases up for a little while. Many people, especially women, carefully wrap the letters in a scarf in order to protect them from the frost. Whoever does not want to pay to send them as registered mail, or does not trust only the large boxes at the post office, walks to the next mailbox, into which the anxiously guarded cargo is carefully slipped. Then the writers turn back home, anxious or relieved, though with an inscrutable mien, to write new letters to the same or other addresses.