by H. G. Adler
Soon we came to a little station, it containing an enclosed peacefulness that reminded me of a mountain hut. So remote and unattended that it felt as if it promised sanctuary, it serving the local line of the national railway, diffidently dreaming away, only a couple of times the rare arrival stopping. Pontsticill in big letters was what it said on the helplessly useless building, where not a person was to be seen within its walls or nearby. In fact, there really wasn’t anything surrounding it, the station simply plunked down in the middle of nowhere, as if it were the midpoint between other destinations. The train that had rumbled past us had never, I believed, stopped at this forsaken place. The tracks had disappeared.
In awe, we walked on arm in arm, the quiet road not causing us to hurry, it feeling as if perhaps we weren’t walking at all but rather that the road just slowly moved beneath our feet. We approached some houses, not even a village, much smaller than Vaynor, though it had a name, a sign saying Dol-y-gaer. Quietly we wandered through, thus remaining unobserved. What were the people doing behind those walls? Only a child rapped against a windowpane and shouted, though he didn’t meet our gaze and hardly noticed us. After only a few steps more, we had left Dol-y-gaer, this being another non-place. Peacefully there lay, as if embedded in the bottom of a large kettle, green and slate blue, a lake. Johanna knew that it was called Pen-twyn, and said that it was man-made, its waters functioning as a reservoir for many cities of the country. A little while later, we then reached two farm buildings on its shore, at which point we left the road.
It had stopped raining and was brighter than it had been in recent days. We turned left and climbed uphill, scrambling over two or three barrier hedges and eventually arriving in a damp pasture. Frequently we looked back, the lake smooth as a mirror, only looking darker from farther away, less watery, more metallic, its waters having secretly swallowed up the light, a rich denseness, viscous and filled with unfathomable depth. The little houses on its shores looked toylike, toylike, as well, the embankment with its rails, toylike above us the blank sky that pressed its whitish blue between the swiftly moving clouds that billowed up white and drifted soundlessly. The sun sequestered a hillside here and there in soft yellows, wandering out over the lake as well, its lit-up surface dazzled by its soft glittering, its rays soon reaching our slope, pushing on farther, striated by shadows that distinguished depths and heights that were gray but also patiently anticipated the unfolding wonder.
We eventually reached the top. Since we had climbed vigorously, the weather continually opening up the skies and then clearing off, and since the air in this windy land hardly stirred, we were warm. Only the stunted plant growth made it look like winter; otherwise the time of year didn’t seem at all evident, it smelling of late autumn or early spring, the view of the mountains almost making it feel like summer. The soft, pearly mist, the treeless barren hills, the sloping summits and sharp peaks with their dark cliffs transformed the Black Mountains—a moderately high range that, some miles north of here, barely rose to twenty-five hundred feet—almost into a high range of triple the height and five times the length, as the peaks appeared much grander and more distant than they really were. Thus we climbed along as if in alpine meadows and pastures. Beyond lay a runnel with a little creek running through it, no more than an arm’s length across, while to the left we saw a mountain that was also only a hill, yet still looked much larger than it was, and which we wanted to climb. Johanna called it Twyn Croes, though certainly she didn’t know the name. It hardly took us half an hour to reach the top. I regretted that we didn’t have a map, but Johanna explained the view to me as well as she could.
“When we go down again, and hopefully soon, you should have Betty tell you, for she knows better than me. She knows every corner of this country. She’s proud of that, and happy when someone asks her about it. We’ve walked in a sort of semicircle, for we’ve come back some ways by climbing the heights that we didn’t wish to leave. Now the man-made lake in Pen-twyn is to our north. You see the road along which we were walking; it’s a Roman road. Near Pen-twyn it forks in two. The road to the right runs pretty close to the train to Brecon. The left branch climbs sharply higher and runs directly north. Without hardly wavering, it leads to Brecon. Betty is always amazed by the raised mounds of Offa’s Dyke, and proudly points to them as if she had built them herself. Do you see them? The steeply rising mountains toward the left in the distance are the Brecon Beacons. They are the highest peaks of the Black Mountains. Somewhat craggy, but the view from them is nice if you’re lucky. Toward the north side, from which you can see Brecon deep below, they fall off even more steeply. Farther left, where the heights are softer, I don’t know my way around as well. But the valley before it—you can only guess where it is from here—it’s very deep and particularly beautiful. The colors there look almost as if one were in Italy. I love it. It’s called Cwm Taf, and the brook that flows there is named Taf Fawr. At Cefn—you saw it when we went for a walk with Betty on the first day here—it joins up with our beloved Taf Fechan. There you also see the hollow where Merthyr Tydfil lies, and which then grows smaller. That’s the Merthyr Valley. Behind that range are the mountains of Aberdare. Straight ahead of us we can almost see Vaynor. I don’t think it can be more than three-quarters of an hour away. Then there is our old familiar Morlais Hill, which blocks the view of Merthyr behind it.”
“And there, where the smoke is rising?”
“That’s already in the middle of the wastes of coal country. Dowlais, a poor and miserable place, an ugly town—that I know. It looks as if all the violence of the war took place there. Nothing like that happened in Dowlais, but that’s what misery can do. The area has been depressed for years, for the men have no work and have to be taken care of by the state their whole lives. The coal mines stretch out farther to the east, valley after valley, one after another, a brook running through each, as well as the railroad next to it, and high-piled black mounds of coal waste. Tredegar, Ebbw Vale, Brynmawr are some of the names.”
“I’m amazed that you can remember such difficult names. I doubt that I could.”
“It took me some effort. Betty badgered me to get them right. Well, is that enough for now?”
“Yes, Johanna. It’s enough for today. We’re near a border here, and borders have always meant something to me. But this time I want to remain on this side of the border.”
“Not in the coal country?”
“No, not in the coal country. Not in any country. Just here.”
“So, then, no longer in the metropolis?”
“That’s unavoidable.”
“I can speak to Betty. Maybe it is avoidable.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Betty wants to help me and will do anything I ask her, if she can. Several times she’s suggested that I should move closer to her. Perhaps she can use us to help her with her baked goods or find something else for us.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“No, Arthur. But I can.”
“No. That wouldn’t be for me. Unfortunately. There are no prospects here for my work. My escape can’t end up landing me in complete isolation.”
“I’d be with you, Arthur.”
“Of course. I know. I’m so grateful you are. But I meant something else by this.”
“I understand. You have to follow your own path.”
“You understand me so well, my dear. Opportunities have to be followed up on. I already know so many people, and each week I meet new ones. There has to be something right for me. My efforts can’t continue to go for naught. True, at the moment everything is still uncertain, more uncertain than ever. But must it remain so? Is there no way for me to break through the wall? Can’t I finally be a person among persons? I believe, dear, it will happen. Together with you—when you’re not afraid of my uncertainty, my abyss, I can achieve something. Oh, to achieve something! I’m filled to the brim with things I want to do, books and essays to write, lectures to give, to articulate my id
eas and thereby attract the interest of a small number of worthy people, as well as good friends for the both of us. Do you believe that can happen as well?”
“I will do anything you wish. I’ll stand by you, whatever happens. I love you so unutterably and have limitless faith in your future, in your integrity, and your great strength.”
“Don’t go too far, Johanna, not too far! The darkness inside me will still shock you. My weaknesses weigh on me and can at times almost consume me entirely.”
“I’m not afraid of anything, Arthur. Maybe I’m a dumb fool and have a thousand senseless anxieties of my own, but I am not a child. I’m not blind to the danger. That’s why I offered to talk to Betty. She is simple and not fraught with problems, but she has the wisdom of the heart, and because of that she is kind.”
“Then let us be grateful that we have her backing. But let’s not ask anything of her, anything that will guarantee our life or my life in this border land. Let me sink into the metropolis. It’s immense, labyrinthine, sinister, and I have yet to figure it out. But it has a mysterious neutrality, completely different from the big cities I knew back there. One doesn’t belong to this city but, rather, lives with it, independent, almost free, hardly touched by it, and having nothing to do with one another. It feels as if I can never be entirely lost in its lostness. I can be unhappy in the thick of it, but there I feel the unhappiness much less than if I lived in Vaynor and climbed Twyn Croes with you each week. I have no home and seek no home. Yet the metropolis, with its couple of dozen neighborhoods—it, at least for the foreigner, is not a home but rather a habit. And not even the entire city, just the neighborhood in which one settles.”
Johanna didn’t say anything in response, murmuring something inaudible that still felt loving. She took me by the hand, then soon let go again and looked for a little spot where we could rest awhile. It took some time before we found a place where we could sit on the half-dry ground. Johanna took from me the knapsack—the same one that I had bought before the journey to the mountain woods—and set out something for us to eat. She did so gracefully, less energetically than Anna, she being somewhat dreamy and inward and yet, of course, confident, as if it were a matter of serving invited guests. We ate almost all the good things we’d brought along in the bag. All that remained was a piece of chocolate and two apples, which Johanna insisted that we save for later.
“Are you happy?” she asked out of the blue.
I looked at her long and hard, said nothing, laughed, and moved closer to her.
“We are very much together, Johanna. You are so good to me.”
“And the dead?”
“We live from the dead, Johanna. Everything living comes from the dead. When they pass away in peace, it’s forgotten, in the sense that through greater awareness we do not have to suffer a terrible shock to our consciousness. We talk about parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and can follow a complete chain all the way back to the first people, back to Adam and Eve. But if one’s parents and loved ones have been swallowed up by a distant, ambiguous, and often unknown death, then naturally we succumb to a horror that we can hardly overcome, and by which we are eventually bested, one’s own family chain having been severed, and this horror can never be overcome. It weighs upon us because it is not there. Because we cannot bury it away in our souls. Thus there is no way for us to forget, for now our knowledge is meager, and with that our consciousness remains constantly on edge. For it cannot console us.”
“What shall we make of it together, my dear?”
“We must live like the first human beings, Adam and Eve in the far fields after their sin.”
“Yet that can’t happen. That would not only be blind but also impossible.”
“You’re indeed right; I don’t mean it literally. But we have a duty to begin again, and in this duty we are like the first human couple. What our ancestors realized, built and also misconceived is, for people like us, so beaten down and destroyed, there is nothing left but a brave new beginning to set in motion many things and plans erupting within our hearts. I don’t mean by this that we should smash to pieces everything that remains and let our souls rot. On the contrary, we need to preserve what we can preserve. You know, Johanna, those I know and who know me, they don’t want to hear that I call myself a conservative and feel myself to be one. When I briefly mentioned it to So-and-So, he doubled up with laughter, and then showered me with his derisive scorn. But it is indeed so, every tradition—though, of course, with this I am by no means talking about evil that’s bred, the sum of which can be referred to as natural and developed over time, no, not that at all—in every tradition that really is ancient, the most inner essence of the shared existence, no matter how it transforms itself, is sacred to me. From that we should drink, absorb with every fiber, guard as the most valuable treasure, care for and preserve and share with those who come after us in ever more pure and noble fashion.”
“Where, then, is the new beginning? How will it all come together?”
“The new beginning? You see, Johanna, with every heart that survives the Lord sets forth the creation once again. That is always true, and for every person. But it is hardly known and only rarely sensed. We who almost do not exist any longer feel it stronger and perhaps deeper. For the fact that we exist is a miracle. We who are no longer tolerated nor should be thought of and yet nonetheless remain, we who are not a miracle, but who are seen and thought of only as a miracle, we who are on this side and, as I know you understand, we who, no matter how much we lean back to the other side, never reach it, nor can reach it, as we can hardly recall it anymore and have only the blessing of memory in order to say something about the past, which is entirely lost. Memory, Johanna, which you honor, for I’ve heard you say so, that is the sacred tradition that I honor as well. It is the culmination of everything, as long as we do not lose hold of it and serve it faithfully. The new beginning that we commence with our faith and our works is indeed a repetition, yet, above all, it is a new beginning, the commitment and sacrifice to the future, the daily prayer, the journey toward a destination, and we can only know we’re headed toward a destination, Johanna, for we can only hope and wish for the destination, but we don’t know it and cannot reach it. It’s not what is achieved but, rather, what awaits us that matters. Do you understand what I mean? Ah, I shouldn’t be lecturing you!”
“I don’t know if I understand it all, Arthur, and yet it says a great deal to me. You must speak, and speak freely. It’s all a part of you, and it is you yourself, and I need to hear it.”
I rummaged in my coat pocket and pulled out a little leather box and held it out to Johanna.
“This is for you, dear.”
She fiddled with it in her hands, the clasp not opening, and only after several tries finally giving way. The pearls lay within, dull silver, sitting there somewhat embarrassed and shy, Franziska’s pearls, which she never wore, a gift from her father, she once said, which I remembered now, but she only liked to wear amber or turquoise, and kept the valuable jewels in a box that she hardly ever touched. I also could see the hands that after the war had brought them and given them to me. There was no more amber, no more turquoise to receive, they were lost, but the pearls in the leather box lined with tissue paper slid from my hand into the case; I could no longer look at them. There they rested until I risked taking them with me, as Anna advised. Safely I had carried them through all the borders.
“Do you like them, Johanna? You said that you are very fond of pearls and had to leave them at home. On the morning of your departure, your mother removed them from your neck.”
Johanna removed the chain from its velvet cushion and looked at the beads without a word, stroking them as they rustled and shimmered, then she poured them into the palm of her hand, a cone-shaped glistening mound piled on trembling ground. Then she closed her fingers around them, the pearls now invisible. Only from the side, spilling out from her little finger, did a little tail brashly stick out, which I observed w
hile smiling. Johanna sensed my amusement and quickly opened her hand, ashamed, the jewels there among the shadows of her fingers a pale, shining, disorderly clump of gems. With two fingers Johanna took hold of the left end and pulled the entire chain out, grabbing the other end with her right hand and pulling it out so that before us stretched a long, gorgeous double row at eye level, and then she brought them closer to her face until the pearls lay like a satiny bow just below her nose and, opening wider, passed over her eyebrows, her temples, behind the ears, and then over her head.
Johanna bowed her head slightly, the chain shifted and clattered softly, then she stretched it out far from her face, a finger running right and left and looping the pearls around it, the center lowering to form a broad sinking point, forming a rounded bow. Johanna was pleased, that I could see, but she didn’t thank me and didn’t say anything, but just smiled under lowered eyelashes, her mouth open a little and uneven, one corner sunk deeper than the other, the lips barely parted, teeth not showing. I didn’t look directly at her, but I didn’t turn away; instead, I tried to draw closer or to look past Johanna, but that didn’t work, and so I blinked. Something had begun, that I knew, though I didn’t know what and didn’t want to think about it, as within me it bubbled up like delirium, myself unable to breathe, a mild pain in my foot making itself known, doubtless the last effects of the injury from the suitcase that had fallen on my foot shortly before I arrived in the metropolis and which had provided me with a painful memory in the weeks since, though I had not felt it for many days. Then I remembered the last apple from back there, Anna’s goodbye gift, which had rolled out of my suitcase. I couldn’t help feeling that I now needed an apple as something to carry from the past into the future and which could bind the two together.