by H. G. Adler
This page: Arthur then stops writing letters from home, choosing, instead, to write letters from his office at the museum. He thinks of the haunted nature of the objects he collects, especially of Franziska’s pearls, which were passed on to him by an elderly survivor. Frau Holoubek, once his grandmother’s servant, also passes on family mementos, thus increasing his burden. The same happens again and again with other former acquaintances, Arthur forced to stumble through the streets, weighed down with objects passed on from the dead.
This page: A voice again addresses him as Adam, commanding that he return to his past.
This page: Shaken from his reverie on West Park Row, Arthur talks with Johanna about the strangeness of time, how the present is never the present, and how he feels stuck outside of time, unable to reenter it.
This page: Arthur then takes his children to a fair at Shepherd’s Field. There he sees a show put on by Roy Rogers and his troupe, and then he visits a fortune-teller named Fortunata.
This page: Segue to Arthur’s memory of leaving his native city for good and his friends accompanying him to the train station. Present are Anna and her new husband, Helmut; the museum’s porter, Herr Geschlieder; and Peter. Arthur is both anxious to leave and anxious about leaving. Once the train is en route, Franziska appears to him in a vision and releases him from having to dwell on her loss ever again.
This page: Arthur leaves his room in a guesthouse in the metropolis to call Fräulein Zinner from a phone booth. She invites him to come to her office. Arthur rushes back to his room to dress for the occasion. Once he reaches the Search Office of the Bureau for Refugees, where Fräulein Zinner works, he climbs the stairs to her fifth-floor office but collapses on the way. Fräulein Zinner finds him and takes him to her office to recover. As he regains his strength, he tells her about his work and talks about the loss of his parents, and the past that he cannot recover or escape. They then leave to go to dinner at a restaurant. Along the way, Arthur hallucinates that his head separates from his body.
This page: Arthur awakens the morning after his first night at Anna’s while calling out Franziska’s name. Anna fixes him breakfast, while Arthur is anxious about what to do next. Anna suggests that he move in with Peter. She also suggests that he write to friends abroad and try to emigrate, which she eventually hopes to do as well.
This page: At Peter’s place, Arthur tries to start work on his sociology of oppressed people, but he struggles until the return of his earlier drafts, which were carefully preserved by Franziska at the start of the war.
This page: Segue to Arthur at work on his book in the metropolis while struggling to find support for it, especially when others urge him to take a menial job in order to support his family. Deeply frustrated at not being able to find a viable place in society, despite his constant written appeals for help, Arthur writes a short story called “The Letter Writers.”
This page: “The Letter Writers”
This page: Arthur continues to reflect on his inability to gain support for his work. Eventually Professor Kratzenstein does agree to meet him, but all Kratzenstein is willing to do is invite Arthur to the working group of the International Society of Sociologists, rather than invite him to lecture, as he had earlier promised. Kratzenstein recommends that Arthur seek the help of Dr. Singule and Dr. Haarburger.
This page: At Frau Haarburger’s urging, Arthur visits Dr. Singule, who is of little help. All he can do is recommend that Arthur seek the help of Kratzenstein, which he has already done. Frau Singule sends him home with some chocolate for Johanna.
This page: Arthur next visits Herr and Frau Saubermann, philanthropists who own a factory that manufactures artificial beads. Johanna, too, is invited to their home to talk about the possibility of getting work in the factory, even though she is pregnant with her first child. However, Frau Saubermann scolds Arthur for being too proud to seek out work himself in order to support his family.
This page: Arthur then goes back to the Haarburgers to ask for further support. Frau Haarburger is upset to hear how badly the visit with the Singules went, nor does Dr. Haarburger have anything left to give him.
This page: Penniless and destitute, Arthur thinks of himself as a fallen Adam who, in essence, does not exist.
This page: Four years after his arrival in the metropolis, Arthur meets with Siegfried Konirsch-Lenz, another philanthropist who offers to help him, but only by offering to hire him to do menial work in his wallpaper manufacturing business, which Arthur refuses. He and Johanna return to West Park Row.
This page: On West Park Row, Arthur reflects on how he still exists among his neighbors, who are more decent to him than his so-called friends and supporters, and decides that there is nothing to do but press on with his work.
This page: Segue back to Arthur’s work in the museum in his native city, where he thinks of the people in the portraits as patients who have survived, much to the horror of Frau Dr. Kulka, who sees the portraits simply as objects.
This page: Herr and Frau Lever from Johannesburg arrive at the museum, having fled the old city before the war. Arthur gives them a tour of the hermitage, a former synagogue that had been converted by the occupying forces to house dioramas with wax figures depicting the customs of the people they had deported and killed. Along the way they meet Professor Hilarius Prenzel, Arthur’s old high-school teacher, and the man who betrayed him to the authorities in his earlier nightmare about returning. In the museum, Arthur explains the creation of the dioramas in detail, as if he were present at the time the work was done. The Levers are amazed by it all, while Arthur feels trapped within.
This page: Segue to Arthur’s arrival in the metropolis, where at the train station he is met by the scholar Oswald Bergmann, who has changed his name to Birch, and his sister, Inge, a poet and an illustrator. So-and-So is also there to welcome him. Arthur thinks back to Oswald’s reluctance in responding to his letters and pleas from the old city but forgives him and is pleased to see him at the station. Otto Schallinger, a classmate of Arthur’s from middle school, is also there to greet him, along with Dr. Haarburger, who then leaves. The rest all head to Oswald Bergmann’s home, where Arthur falls asleep, exhausted by his journey. When he wakes up, Oswald and So-and-So suggest that they go to a restaurant for dinner.
This page: Segue to Arthur and Fräulein Zinner arriving at a restaurant for dinner. They talk of their lives and work, and Arthur proposes marriage and Johanna accepts. They leave the restaurant and walk arm in arm through the city, talking of their future, before Johanna heads home on the subway.
This page: Arthur walks home and writes to Anna about his engagement to Johanna. He then falls asleep, thinking that he is on the threshold of a new beginning, but still feeling everything is in flux.
This page: Once again, Arthur meets with Konirsch-Lenz, who continues to berate him about the need to get a paying job and to accept the assistance of an organization called Self-Help. Again, Arthur refuses, but this time he feels liberated in doing so.
This page: Arthur thinks of Otto Schallinger, who often visits him and Johanna, finding in their home a vestige of the Old Country that he does not find elsewhere in the metropolis.
This page: While strolling along after leaving Konirsch-Lenz, Arthur thinks of his friends and how little help they have been, beginning with Oswald Bergmann, and then So-and-So.
This page: Arthur thinks of all the charlatans he has met in the metropolis, the worst being Eberhard S., who managed to convince him to write for his journal Eusemia for a pittance. He then calls Johanna to say that he has left Konirsch-Lenz and is on the way home, which pleases her. On the way, however, he muses about his failure.
This page: Segue back to Herr and Frau Lever, who are about to leave the museum. They ask what Arthur’s last name is and, upon learning that it is Landau, remember buying clothes in his father’s shop. Herr Lever reveals that his name used to be Lebenhart, which causes Arthur to remember two portraits bearing that name in the museum. The Levers
then insist on seeing the portraits and claim them as their own, though the museum refuses to release them. In the middle of heated discussions about this, a Mrs. Mackintosh arrives to ask if she can purchase some of the furniture that is stored in the museum, though Herr Schnabelberger will not allow it. Arthur then takes the Levers to see the portraits of their relatives. Nonetheless, the museum denies their request.
This page: Frau Dr. Kulka comes to Arthur’s office to accuse him of betraying the museum in telling the Levers about the portraits. At the end of their conversation, all Arthur wants to do is flee this life and this city for good.
This page: While waiting for Anna to arrive at the museum, Arthur thinks of his life as one that is constantly in flight, forever on the move, and realizes that he can truly exist only within his own intellect and mind.
This page: Stirred from sleep on West Park Row, Arthur awakens to the mailman delivering a letter from Anna saying that Helmut has died and asking if she can come to Arthur and Johanna. Another package contains a book titled Stereotyping Through Prejudice, which carries a jacket comment from Professor Kratzenstein that Johanna and Arthur find pretentious. Another letter is from Resi Knispel, saying she would like to talk to Arthur about a project that she has in mind for him.
This page: Arthur visits Resi Knispel, who along with Herr Buxinger wishes to start a new journal, and she wants Arthur’s help in recruiting talent to write for it. Knispel tries to persuade Arthur to popularize his work, eventually revealing that the journal’s name will be Eusemia. Arthur says he has to think about it and prepares to leave. In the foyer, Knispel throws herself at Arthur, claiming that she’s in love with him and scratching his hand as he tries to release it from her desperate hold.
This page: Arthur and Johanna then visit her cousin Betty for two weeks in South Wales, where they enjoy the simple country people and the countryside. Despite the frosty cold, he and Johanna hike for hours over the hills and through the fields, stopping to picnic along the way. Once again, they declare their love for each other and realize that they must begin again, like Adam and Eve. Arthur presents Johanna with Franziska’s pearls. Arthur tells Johanna that Franziska spoke to him in a dream right before he departed the Old Country, declaring that he was free to go, and that he now realizes that he indeed exists.
This page: Back on West Park Row, while anticipating the arrival of Anna, Arthur is astonished when the mailman knocks on the door to announce the arrival of the pallbearers, Brian and Derek, who have orders to bring Arthur to the Sociology Conference, at which he is to be honored. They are supposed to convey Arthur there in a coffin and a hearse, but instead Arthur rides atop the coffin while Johanna and the children travel behind in the truck of a neighborhood grocer. The conference takes place at Shepherd’s Field, the site of the earlier carnival, which is still up and running and now contains exhibitions hosted by all the characters encountered thus far from Arthur’s past and present.
This page: After appearing onstage with Roy Rogers, Arthur slinks to the side and escapes by crawling under the circus tent, fleeing Shepherd’s Field. On his way back to West Park Row, he can only be grateful for the stability his wife and children provide him in a world that remains suspended between the past and the present, the only hope being that his children will enjoy a future that is free of such duress.
BY H. G. ADLER
The Wall
The Journey
Panorama
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Prague in 1910, H. G. ADLER spent two and a half years in Theresienstadt before being deported to Auschwitz, Niederorschel, and Langenstein, where he was liberated in April 1945. Leaving Prague for London in 1947, Adler worked as a freelance scholar and writer until his death in 1988. The author of twenty-six books of fiction, stories, poems, history, philosophy, and religion, he was awarded the Leo Baeck Prize for his monograph Theresienstadt 1941–1945: The Face of a Coerced Community in 1958. The Wall was completed in 1956 but did not appear in print until 1989, a year after Adler’s death in London.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Peter Filkins is a poet and translator. He is the recipient of a Distinguished Translation Award from the Austrian Ministry for Education, Art, and Culture, a Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, and an Outstanding Translation Award from the American Literary Translators Association. He teaches literature and writing at Bard College at Simon’s Rock and translation at Bard College. His translations of H. G. Adler’s novels The Journey and Panorama were published by Random House in 2008 and 2011, respectively, and also appear under the Modern Library imprint.