The Wall

by Marlen Haushofer

  If I think back to that summer I see it as filled with activity and hardship. I could barely do all the work I had set myself. As I wasn’t used to hard work I felt constantly exhausted. I hadn’t yet found out how to divide it up properly. I worked either too quickly or too slowly, and I had to get everything done however many setbacks there were. I grew thin and weak, and even the work in the stable was excessively exhausting. I don’t know how I managed to get through that period. I really don’t know; maybe I was only able to do it because I’d got it into my head that I had to, and because I had three animals to care for. The constant overexertion soon left me feeling like poor Hugo; I fell asleep the moment I sat on the bench. On top of that I used to dream of good food, but whenever I tried to eat I could manage only a few mouthfuls. I think I lived on Bella’s milk alone. It was the only thing I could take.

  I was much too immersed in these tribulations to have a clear view of my situation. As I had decided to stick it out, I stuck it out, but I’d forgotten why it was important and was just living from one day to the next. I can’t remember whether I went to the gorge a lot in those days, probably not. I only remember once, at the end of June, going to the meadow by the stream to see how the grass was doing, and while I was there I looked through the wall. The man by the stream had fallen over and now lay on his back, his knees slightly bent, his cupped hand still on the way to his face. He must have been knocked over in a storm. He didn’t look like a corpse, more like something excavated from Pompeii. While I was standing there looking at that petrified absurdity, I saw two birds lying in the tall grass under one of the bushes on the other side of the wall. They too must have been blown out of the bushes. They looked pretty, like painted toys. Their eyes shone like polished stones, and the colours of their plumage hadn’t faded. They didn’t look dead, but rather like things that had never been alive, entirely inorganic. And yet they had once lived, and their warm breath had moved their little throats. Lynx, who was with me as always, turned away and prodded me with his muzzle. He wanted me to go on. He was more sensible than I was, so I allowed him to lead me away from the stone things.

  When I had to go to the meadow later on, I usually avoided looking through the wall. The first summer it was almost blocked off. A few of my hazel-twigs had miraculously grown roots and soon a green hedge ran along the wall. Maiden pinks, columbines and a tall yellow weed bloomed in the meadow by the stream. The meadow looked cheerful and friendly, in contrast to the gorge, but since it adjoined the wall I could never be friends with it.

  Bella kept me tied to the hunting-lodge, but I wanted to try to have a look around. I remembered a path that led to a hunting-lodge higher up, and thence down into the valley opposite. I wanted to follow it. Since I couldn’t leave the cow alone for long, I decided to go at night. There was a full moon, and it was clear and warm. I didn’t milk Bella until late in the evening, left hay and water in the stable and put milk for the cat by the stove. At the first glimmer of moonlight I set off with Lynx. I took some provisions with me, the shotgun and the binoculars. It all weighed me down, but I still didn’t dare go unarmed. Lynx was excited and very pleased by this late walk. First I went up to the hunting-lodge that was still within Hugo’s hunting-ground. The path had been well looked after and there was enough light from the moon. I’ve never been scared in the forest at night, while I was always nervous in the city. I don’t know why that was, probably because it never occurred to me that I might bump into people in the forest as well. The way up took almost three hours. When I stepped out of the shadows of the forest, the clearing lay in the white light before me, with the little hut in the middle. I wanted to wait until the return trip before examining the hut, and sat down on the bench in front of it to have a brief rest and a drink from the thermos-flask. It was much cooler here than in the valley basin, but perhaps this was just an impression caused by the cold white light.

  All the numb depression of the past while slipped from me, leaving me feeling light and liberated. If I have ever felt peace, it was that June night in the moonlit clearing. Lynx sat pressed close to me, gazing peacefully and alertly across to the ink-black forest. It was hard for me to stand up and go on hiking. I crossed the dew-drenched meadow and disappeared into the darkness of the forest once more. Now and again there were rustling noises in the darkness; there must have been a lot of little animals on the move. Lynx stayed silently by my side, perhaps still imagining that we were going stalking. The path took us through the forest for half an hour, and I had to walk slowly because the moon cast only a faint light on the path. A screech-owl cried, and his call sounded no stranger than any other animal noise. I caught myself walking unusually carefully and quietly. I couldn’t help it, something forced me to. When I finally emerged from the forest, dawn was just beginning to break. Its dim glow mingled with the light of the sinking moon. The path now took us between mountain pines and alpine roses, large and small grey clumps in the first light. Sometimes a stone broke away under my feet, and clattered down the scree into the valley. Once I’d reached the highest point I sat down on a little rock and waited. At around half-past four the sun rose. A cool wind came up and passed through my hair. The greyish-pink sky turned orange and fiery red. It was my first sunrise in the mountains. Only Lynx was sitting beside me, staring into the light as I did. It was a great effort for him not to start barking with joy, as I could see from the twitching of his ears and muscular spasms rippling across his back. Suddenly it was bright daylight. I stood up and began my descent into the valley. It was a long, thin, densely forested valley. Using the binoculars I could see nothing but forest. A ridge of peaks rising opposite blocked my view. That was disappointing, for I’d hoped I’d be able to see a village at least. Now I knew I’d have to go back along the path through the mountain pines if I wanted a clear view. There was an Alm1 there, and from that point I would surely be able to see deeper into the landscape. But I couldn’t get to both the Alm and the valley, so I opted for the valley. It seemed more important to me. Maybe I was still foolishly hoping I wouldn’t find a wall down there. I’m afraid that was it, because otherwise I could have spared myself the journey. I was now on the neighbour’s beat, which, as far as I remember, was leased to a rich foreigner who turned up only once a year, in the rutting season. Maybe that was the reason for the poor state of the road; you could see the marks of the spring thaw everywhere. In Hugo’s beat the damage had been repaired immediately. In places the road looked almost like a river-bed. There was no gorge here. Wooded slopes rose on either side of the stream. All in all this valley had a friendlier face than my valley. I’m calling it ‘my valley’. The new owner, if he exists, hasn’t contacted me yet. If the road hadn’t been so washed away I would have considered the trip a mere stroll. The closer I got to the valley floor, the more cautious I grew. I stuck my walking-stick out in front of me and made sure that Lynx wasn’t growing tired. He didn’t, incidentally, seem to be troubled by any dark imaginings or recollections, and trotted along cheerfully beside me. I was still in the forest when my stick hit the wall. Here the wall was further from the nearest houses than it was on the other side. Even the big hunting-lodge, which had been built only two years before and was said to be fitted with all mod cons, was still out of sight.

  Suddenly I grew very tired, almost exhausted. I almost keeled over at the thought of the long walk back. I slowly went back a little way, up to a woodman’s hut that I hadn’t noticed. It nestled against the mountain in a little hollow, and the door was completely overgrown with stinging nettles. There was nothing in the hut apart from a tin bowl and a piece of mouldy, mouse-gnawed bacon. I sat down at the rough table and unpacked my supplies. Lynx had gone to the stream for a drink. I could see him through the open door, and that set my mind somewhat at rest. I drank tea from the flask, ate a kind of rice-cake and later gave Lynx some as well. The silence and the sun blazing on the roof encouraged sleep. But I was afraid of the fleas in the straw-filled bedsteads, and in any case a brief sleep would
only have made me even more tired. It was better not to yield to the desire. So I packed my rucksack and left the hut.

  My high spirits of the night and the morning had flown, and my feet ached in my heavy mountain boots. The sun burned down on my head, and even Lynx seemed tired and didn’t try to cheer me up. The path upwards wasn’t steep, but it was very long and monotonous. Maybe it only seemed monotonous to me given the depressed mood I was in. I stumbled up there without noticing my surrroundings, and gave myself up to brooding thoughts.

  So now I had examined the valleys that I could reach without staying away for days at a time. I could still climb up to the pasture and look out over the landscape, but I couldn’t risk going any further into the long mountain range. Of course somebody would find me if there was no wall over there, in fact, I had to tell myself, they would surely have found me long since. I could sit quietly at home and wait. But I kept feeling compelled to do something myself to counteract that uncertainty. And I was forced to do nothing and to wait, a state that I had always particularly disliked. I had waited much too often and much too long for people or events which had never turned up, or which had turned up so late that they had ceased to mean anything to me.

  On the long walk back I thought about my former life and found it unsatisfactory in all respects. I had achieved little that I had wanted, and everything I had achieved I had ceased to want. That’s probably how it was for everybody else, too. It’s something we never talked about, when we used to talk. I don’t think I shall have the opportunity to talk to other people about it again now. So I shall have to presume it was so. Back then, walking back into my valley, it still hadn’t quite dawned on me that my former life had come to a sudden end; I knew it, that is, but only in my head, so I didn’t believe it. It’s only when knowledge about something slowly spreads to the whole body that you truly know. I know too that I, like every living thing, will have to die some day, but my hands, my feet and my guts still don’t know it, which is why death seems so unreal. Time has passed since that June day, and gradually I’m beginning to understand that I can never go back.

  At about one o’clock in the afternoon I reached the path through the mountain pines, and sat down on a stone to rest. The forest lay hazily in the midday sun, and the warm scent from the pines floated up to me. Only now could I see that the alpine roses were in bloom. They stretched in a red ribbon over the scree. It was now much quieter than in the moonlit night, as if the forest lay paralysed by sleep beneath the yellow sun. A bird of prey circled high in the blue sky, Lynx slept, his ears twitching, and the great silence descended on me like a bell-jar. I wished I could sit here for ever, in the warmth, in the light; the dog at my feet and the circling bird above. I had stopped thinking long since, as if my worries and memories no longer had anything to do with me. When I walked on I did so with deep regret, and on the way I slowly changed, becoming the only creature that didn’t belong here, a person troubled by chaotic thoughts, cracking branches with her clumsy shoes and engaged in the bloody business of hunting.

  Later, when I reached the hunting-lodge higher up the hill, I was my old self again, keen to find something usable in the hut. A faint hint of regret remained within me for hours.

  I remember that expedition very well, perhaps because it was the first one; it rises like a peak from the unchanging months of my daily troubles. Incidentally, I haven’t gone that way again since that time. I always wanted to, but I never got around to it, and without Lynx I don’t dare go on expeditions any more. Never again shall I sit above the alpine roses in the midday sun, listening to the great silence.

  The key to the hut hung on a nail under a loose tile, and wasn’t hard to find. I immediately set about looking through the house. It was naturally much smaller than the hunting-lodge, and consisted only of a kitchen and a little bedroom. I found a few blankets, a tarpaulin and two rock-hard wedge-shaped headrests. I didn’t need the headrests or the blankets; the tarpaulin was waterproof, and I took it with me. I didn’t find any clothes there. In the kitchen, in a little cupboard over the stove, there was flour, fat, biscuits, tea, salt, powdered egg and a little sack of prunes, which the huntsman must have seen as a panacea, for I remember he was always chewing them. Also, in the drawer of the table, I found a pack of dirty Tarot cards. I know the Tarot only from having watched it, but I liked the cards, so I took them with me. Later I invented a new game with them, a game for a lonely woman. I have spent many evenings laying out the old cards. The figures were as familiar to me as if I’d known them for ever. I gave them names, and took to some of them more than others. My relationship with them became as personal as those with the characters in a Dickens novel that you’ve read twenty times. I no longer play that game. One of the cards was devoured by Tiger, the cat’s son, and Lynx flicked one into a bowl of water with his ears. I would rather not be constantly reminded of Lynx and Tiger. But then is there anything in the hunting-lodge that doesn’t remind me of them?

  In the hunting-lodge up the hill I also found an old alarm clock that became very useful to me. I did still have the little travelling alarm clock and the watch, but shortly afterwards I dropped the travelling clock and the watch never showed the right time. Today I still have that old alarm clock from the hunting-lodge, but it stopped ages ago. I take my bearings from the sun, or, if it isn’t shining, from the crows as they fly away and back again, and various other signs. I’d like to know where the right time is, now there aren’t any people left. Sometimes I’m struck by how important it once was not to be five minutes late. An awful lot of people I know seemed to see their watches as little idols, and that always struck me as sensible. If you’re already living in slavery, it’s a good idea to keep to the rules and not put your master in a bad humour. I did not enjoy being a servant of time, artificial human time, dissected by the ticking of clocks, and that often caused difficulties for me. I’ve never liked clocks, and after a while each of my own mysteriously broke or disappeared. But I concealed my method of systematically destroying clocks even from myself. Today, of course, I know how it all came about. I have so much time to think that I’ll eventually catch on to all my little tricks.

  I can manage, it doesn’t affect me at all. Even if I were suddenly given the most exciting news it would have no meaning for me. I would still have to muck out the byre twice a day, chop wood and fetch hay up from the gorge. My mind is free, it can do what it likes, but it mustn’t lose its reason, the reason that will keep me and the animals alive.

  On the kitchen table in the hut up the hill there were two newspapers dated the eleventh of April, a completed lottery slip, half a packet of cheap cigarettes, lighters, a ball of twine, six trouser-buttons and two needles. The last traces that the huntsman had left behind in the forest. I should really have burned his possessions in a great flaming fire. The huntsman was a good, orderly man, and he won’t ever exist again until the end of time. I had always paid him too little attention. He was a troubled-looking man in middle age, haggard, and, for a huntsman, unnaturally pale-skinned. The most striking thing about him was his very pale, greenish-blue eyes; they were particularly sharp and were apparently a great source of vanity to this modest man. He only ever used the binoculars with a contemptuous smile. That’s the only thing I know about the huntsman; apart from the fact that he was very conscientious and liked chewing prunes, and, yes, that he was good with dogs. I used to think about him occasionally in the early days. Hugo could easily have brought him along when he first arrived. Then the last few years would probably have been easier for me. Now, all the same, I’m no longer quite sure. Who knows what imprisonment would have done to that unassuming man. In any case he was physically stronger than I am, and I would have been dependent on him. Perhaps he would now be sitting around lazily in the hut, sending me off to do the work. The possibility of delegating work must be a great temptation for any man. And why should a man, without the fear of criticism, go on working at all? No, it’s better that I’m alone. And it wouldn’t be good
for me to be with a weaker partner, either; I’d reduce him to a shadow and kill him with care. That’s the way I am, and the forest hasn’t changed matters. Maybe only animals can put up with me. If Hugo and Luise had stayed behind in the forest there would certainly have been endless friction as time passed. I can’t see anything that could have made our coexistence a happy one.

  There’s no point thinking about it. Luise, Hugo and the huntsman no longer exist, and basically I don’t want them back. I’m no longer the person I was two years ago. If I did wish to have anyone with me, it would have to be an old woman, someone shrewd and witty, someone I could laugh with sometimes. But she would probably die before me, and I’d be left on my own again. It would be worse than never having known her. That would be too high a price to pay for laughter. Then I’d have to remember her too, and that would be too much. Even now I’m nothing but a thin skin covering a mountain of memories. I don’t want to go on. What will happen to me if that skin gets torn?

  I will never get to the end of my report if I allow myself to be sidetracked into writing down every thought that goes through my head. But now I’ve lost the desire to write anything else about my expedition. I can’t even remember what the walk up to the hut was like. In any case I came back with a fully laden rucksack, saw to Bella and went straight to bed.