by H. G. Adler
So I said in a softly pleading voice, “Not so fast, please! I can’t breathe! How much farther is it?”
Confidently, a hand thrust itself under my arm and gave me much needed support.
“We’re almost there.”
The hand was so close, but the voice, comforting as it was, pressed at me from far away. It took a good while to ascertain whose it was. In order to hear it again, I spoke so that it might reply.
“Not long. Can you say that again?”
“Why, of course. It certainly won’t be long at all. Hardly a minute. Why are you so anxious? Or are you just tired?”
This time the voice sounded much more triumphant as it reinvigorated me and made me feel warm inside. Nor did I have to remain a half step behind any longer, but could walk right alongside, supported by the hand, even able to perhaps slip ahead a bit, since I knew where we were headed. I believe I even said something to this effect, which was met with a joyful laugh. It sounded reassuring, but also a bit foreboding. I soon saw why. We came around a corner, and the voice spoke again.
“There, where you see the light, we’re here already.”
I should have gone on ahead, since that was the custom here, but as I was the stranger here I offered not to take the lead.
“You are certainly a shy one.”
The door opened. We stepped into a pleasant, not too large dining room with niches to the side.
“I’ve never seen anything so pleasant here. Much more lovely than the Belgian restaurant.”
“I’m so pleased. Do you want to pick a quiet corner?”
I looked at the face of the voice, as if I would find the answer there as to what would be the best table to take.
“Well, looking at me won’t help you find a spot.”
“Maybe it will,” I replied in a carefree manner.
My companion only laughed, no longer worried about my foolishness, and moved decidedly toward a niche at the farthest corner of the back of the room. There was nothing for me to do but march along behind her. Then I helped Fräulein Zinner out of her coat, took mine off as well, and stood there holding them without a clue. She laughed as I stood there not knowing what to do with the coats.
“Either set them on a couple of chairs or there are hangers over there.”
So I withdrew and playfully hung up the coats. When I turned back to the table, I could see that Fräulein Zinner was already speaking warmly to a waiter whom she seemed to know. She had already ordered for herself, and when I said that anything was fine with me, and that I’d be happy to have what the fräulein was having, she wouldn’t hear of it, even though the waiter said that I couldn’t go wrong with that. But that didn’t do me any good, so I had to pore over the menu as I bent over it, meticulously reading it from beginning to end. Meanwhile, the two of them chatted softly, though I didn’t listen to what they said. Once I had read through it all, I looked up in confusion, for I wasn’t at all clear about what I should order.
“Forgive me, Fräulein! I’m so hopeless. There’s too much to choose from. I’m not used to so much. The simplest would be to have them just bring me whatever. I’m sure it’s all good.”
She laughed even more heartily than earlier. However, the waiter remained serious and recited from memory the most important items on the menu, carefully pronouncing the name of each dish, sometimes offering an extra bit of panegyric, though, unfortunately, it was all too fast to help me in choosing a single dish for myself. I only continued to look in confusion back and forth between the waiter and my companion.
“It’s all so much trouble. Just bring me the cheapest one!”
Fräulein Zinner was clearly amused at my incompetence, yet she was not happy with my choice, but finally came to my rescue and responded to my pressing plea about what she had ordered. Since I assured her that that was exactly what I would have ordered, she finally agreed and dispensed with the waiter’s consideration by simply requesting what she had ordered. I only had to decide for myself what I wished to drink, for Fräulein Zinner insisted on it and wouldn’t hear anything about my just having tap water like her. Finally the waiter withdrew with an amused smirk. I breathed freely and was relieved that I had survived the endless negotiation in good shape.
“You are a wonderful guest, my dear. How would you do it without me?”
“I wouldn’t be able to at all. I can’t help but admit it.”
“And yet you did it!”
“Are you making fun of me? You have every right to.”
“No.”
“You are very kind. No one here has been so kind.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true. Believe me! It’s all taken so much effort to boost my confidence and succeed. People are often nice to me, sometimes very nice, but there’s no human warmth, or hardly any goodness, or it’s so twisted and screwed up that it ends up crumpled and knotted. The friends I used to have here … I’d rather not say anything about them. It’s horrible that it’s all broken down. I feel like I’m deluded. I want a regular life, and sometimes it feels like I’m on the right track, but in reality it’s all so uncertain. No one takes me seriously. There must be something about my manner that captures people for a moment, but then it’s suddenly over, things get shaky, and they are put off. They feel my character to be a mixture of arrogance and inferiority. Something is knotted up inside me that prevents me from slipping into the social order. I often ask myself whether it’s my fault, whether it is my fault alone. What do you think?”
“You’re deeming me worthy of such extraordinary confessions, though alone I cannot decide for you. Are you not what you wish to be?”
“I would just like to be, period. You know, I don’t even know if I am alive. But there is something inside me or perhaps outside me, I can’t say for sure, but there is something, and for that I continue to live, or at least try to. Perhaps I only exist in as much and so long as I am able—I can’t describe it—to live for that alone. I have often thought so. And not only when I find myself questionable, which happens quite often. For I feel questionable most of the time. I think of myself as something that is split into pieces, but not something pathological, because the pieces also are linked to one another, though this is questionable. The split-apart pieces know of one another; they just aren’t joined up. Can you understand when I say that I am not my own master, and therefore am split, but without being sick? Look, this was particularly true when everything seemed questionable, not just me alone—for that would easily have been pathological—but instead the questionable became dominant in an environment where, for many, the questionable was transformed into that which could not be questioned, because doing so cast them down and ate them up. Perhaps I have simply ensconced myself within nothingness and cannot exist in any other way.”
“But that must take incredible strength!”
“That’s what you say, but I’m not so certain. I’m not at all so certain. I am uncertainty embodied. That’s why it’s hard to be friends with me, although I think of myself as someone who’s good at being friends. But I exist only by clinging. Where others are independent, or at least appear to be, I’m lost. Then everything dissolves. Isn’t that ridiculous?”
Fräulein Zinner smiled, not because she found my explanation ridiculous but because I had talked with a fervor that was pointless and only struggled along without any real grounding. Such talk had not at all helped me attain any kind of serious depth, nor was such foolishness suited to pleasant dinner conversation. There was also no justifiable reason to highlight my nullity in such a manner, and I thought that this could cause people too easily to see me as just a crank. To please Fräulein Zinner—this vain effort was at the root of my foolishness in wanting to show myself as more likable. I was lucky that the waiter soon brought the soup and the bread, for that way I couldn’t finish up what I had been talking about, and therefore couldn’t talk as much, and therefore could observe Fräulein Zinner more intently. Neither my disastrous talk nor
the unedifying episodes in the office seemed to have put her off. After a long silence that Fräulein Zinner broke, I began to head in a direction that could easily have led to danger.
“How do you wish to make a start?”
“You know, what interests me is the sociology of oppressed people, the persecuted, but also the persecutors.”
“Does that come from your own experience?”
“Only in part. I was already interested in the subject before I experienced in my own life what it means to be persecuted.”
“A painful thing to know.”
“Yes. We shouldn’t speak about it. Misery is my business, but not my pleasure.”
“No one’s pleasure, but everyone’s plight.”
“That’s right. But one mustn’t continually give oneself over to it. Or, at least, shouldn’t.”
“But what about when we are all in the midst of it? What happens then?”
“You have a firm footing, Fräulein Zinner. You always know how things are for you. You don’t have to toss yourself into boundless seas. I’m terrible company. It was an unforgivable mistake to invite you out this evening.”
“Do you regret it?”
“I regret nothing. On the contrary, I’m grateful to you. But you must really regret it. If you don’t chase me off immediately, it’s all your own fault.”
“What you say is not very flattering. After we’re done eating, I’d be happy to leave and bring you back to your guesthouse.”
“Have I upset you?”
“Not me, Herr Doctor, but my vanity.”
“For heaven’s sake, what have I done?”
“Nothing at all. Don’t give it a thought. I’m an odd duck, a bit quirky. I don’t deserve anyone’s kindness.”
“Do you wish to play some more? The violin?”
“You can have it. I already offered it to you at the Haarburgers’.”
“What am I supposed to do with a violin?”
“What should I—?”
“Play!”
“I don’t play. No longer. I’m played out.”
“Such pessimism doesn’t suit you.”
“So say you?”
“Yes. So say I. You have to start over, you have to live.”
“And to whom do you say that, if I may ask?”
“To you, Fräulein Zinner. And—yes, I’ll admit—to myself as well. But I think first it’s my duty to share it with others.”
“To each his own.”
“Are you serious?”
“One must, where possible, help others to fulfill such a duty.”
“Is that what you try to do?”
“Not very well. It’s a good idea. But I don’t accomplish much.”
“But you do accomplish something. That’s something. I haven’t yet been able to do so in my life. But you shouldn’t just give up the violin.”
“Don’t torment me so! There are certain things you have to bury and leave behind. What is called a guilt complex these days, Herr Doctor, should not be so easily handed over to the modern caretakers of the soul to manage. One has to, of course, bring sacrificial victims, even when they are of no use to anyone, and with victims there follows burial. One has to have the courage for it, and it’s really courage, for it doesn’t happen out of cowardice but through the attempt at atonement, even as a victim. Yet I couldn’t say that to anyone else, because no one would understand and they would laugh me out of the room. But you must understand! Don’t pretend—you indeed do understand! You know, I’m probably a bit naïve, yet I’ve felt that I’ve had somewhat of a personal relation to the great questions. In order to remain a human being, you pay a price. You are therefore guilty in simply being a human being, but you also have the chance to be a human being. That’s kind of how I think of the first humans in the biblical story. If Adam and Eve were allowed to remain alive after having sinned in taking on forbidden knowledge, then that was possible only because they were required to serve some kind of atonement. Since then, it is so: whenever we feel or know we are guilty of something, we then need a sacrificial victim. It doesn’t take much effort to see that, right? Don’t laugh, but if I’m entirely honest with you it reminds me today of an earlier incarnation. If you would be so kind, let’s not say any more about it.”
All of this spoke to me, it being what I felt as well. I should certainly not have mentioned the violin, but I would have been happy to continue talking about guilt and victims, though the waiter prevented that from happening as he carried in the entrées. Both portions were served at the same time, the meat on a plate, potatoes and vegetables in a bowl, only the salad served separately in two little bowls. The waiter began to serve the food, but Fräulein Zinner waved him away. She dished it out herself, and, despite my protests, I got the greater portion.
“You hardly have any roast!”
“You’ll manage it.”
I had to give in, and I saw how happy Fräulein Zinner was to be able to do something for me. As she noticed how good it tasted to me, she was so happy that she couldn’t contain it.
“I had hoped that it would please you. I watched you at Haarburger’s and saw what little interest you had in getting hold of such delicacies and eating them. It can make one very happy to be able to take care of someone.”
I didn’t respond at all, but instead let it pass and just looked up in gratitude. Fräulein Zinner caught my gaze and slowly chewed little bites of her food without paying attention to mine. Perhaps she ate so slowly out of kindness, in order not to finish much earlier than I did the heaped plate in front of me. That’s why it seemed best for me to eat as fast as possible, while still being polite, in order not to have to be chewing after she had finished her meal. I had never before observed someone as closely during a meal, for I had always before thought it unbecoming to dedicate so much attention to such an intimate activity. I had no idea why I was so keenly interested in how she handled her knife and fork, or even raised the food to her mouth, though I couldn’t stop myself, even though I didn’t feel it was right. I considered whether Fräulein Zinner didn’t remind me of someone, and searched my simultaneously aroused and benumbed memory. Why do people compare people with others? I asked. Each is without compare, it seemed to me. Yet that’s not true. In general, you could make comparisons when the difference was not decisive, which accounts for the masses. Certainly this girl reminded me of no one, for I had encountered no one like her before, that which was familiar sitting across from me being nothing but the strange, the unknown, which attracted me. Why was I eating with this girl? The coming together of two people unknown to each other is a mere accident, and a world collapses as a result, everything falling, everything buried, sunken, filled in, though something foggy creeps along, a secretive strangeness, digging in the depths, uncovering something, lifting the discovery high up to the light and announcing, “Look, here is what was. It appears to be an ally who lived in the long ago, but not during our time.” To discover the strange in another is good fortune. It lessens the pain that lives in oneself, such discovery being the only joy.
My thoughts were disrupted by the waiter. The dessert table stood before us, set with little glass bowls filled with a soft colorful foam. I tried some, and it melted on my tongue and tasted of lemon. Fräulein Zinner looked at me somewhat absently, though she noted my pleasure. I broke the silence so suddenly with a question that it almost shocked her.
“Do cooking and housework interest you?”
“I’m a terrible cook and, to my endless worry, know nothing about running a home.”
She said this with such concern; I thought I even saw tears well up. Why had I touched on something so sensitive?
“That doesn’t matter,” I tossed back cheerfully, and blithely went on to say, “No one needs to know about such things. When it comes time, you learn on your own.”
She laughed somewhat tensely, as if a bit angry.
“Really? You think so? Your experience is amazing.”
“Ah, my exp
erience! What are you thinking!”
She looked at me, full of concern.
“I always had other things to do than housework. You don’t do such things for yourself alone. You need to do it for others; otherwise, it’s senseless. When my brother—”
She fell silent. The waiter cleared the dishes from the table and brought the coffee. I was pleased that we would at last be rid of him. But Fräulein Zinner’s distress bothered me. The tables seemed entirely turned since the office, and on the way here, when she was so certain and I was so helpless. Did I now have the advantage? What a miserable advantage it was if all it meant was that I had transferred my troubles to this girl without becoming any steadier myself. What had I done! The entire evening had failed, a bad beginning to desires never to be satisfied. I thought about how I could manage to collect myself, or, if that was not possible, at least subordinate my concerns and prop up Fräulein Zinner. Yet what I lacked was the strength found only when I tapped the strength of another. I consciously tried to subordinate myself, but I couldn’t. My dependence on other people had nothing to do with subordination.