I jointed the roebuck, a task that caused me a great deal of effort at first, and put the salted meat in buckets which I fastened shut with big lids. Then I carried the buckets to a well and plunged them to the brim in the icy water. This isn’t my spring; there are a lot of wells here. It comes out under a beech-tree and collects into a little pool in a hollow between the roots, then flows on for a few yards and disappears into the ground again. One of Hugo’s hunting-guests, a little man with glasses, once claimed that the whole mountain range, even the valley, stood over enormous caves. I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but I’ve often seen springs or little streams disappearing into the earth without a trace. The little man was probably right.
The thought of those caves sometimes haunts me for days. All the water gathering down there, absolutely clear, filtered by earth and chalk. Maybe there are animals in the caves as well. Salamanders and blind white fish. I can see them swimming around endlessly under the huge domes of the stalactites. The only sound is the lapping and hissing of the water. Could there be anywhere lonelier? I will never see the salamanders and fishes. They may not even exist. I’d just like there to be a little life in the caves as well. There’s something about caves that’s at once very attractive and disturbing. When I was still young and still took death as a personal insult, I often imagined withdrawing to a cave to die, never to be found. This idea still holds a certain charm for me; it’s like a game you’ve played as a child, which you still like to think about from time to time. I have no need to withdraw into a cave before I die. Nobody will be with me when I die. Nobody will touch me, stare at me or press their hot and living fingers on my cooling lids. They won’t hiss and whisper by my deathbed and force the last bitter drops between my teeth. For a while I thought that Lynx would keen for my death. That’s not to be, and it’s better that way. Lynx is safe: for me there will be neither human voices nor the howling of animals. Nothing will pull me back into the old torment. I’m still glad to be alive, but one day I’ll have lived enough, and I’ll be happy that it’s over.
But of course everything could happen quite differently. I’m far from safe. They could come back any day and get me. They will be strangers, who will find a stranger. We won’t have anything more to say to each other. It would be better for me if they never came. Back then, in the first year, I didn’t yet feel that way. Everything has changed almost imperceptibly. That’s why I no longer dare to plan too far ahead, because I don’t know how I shall be feeling and thinking in two years’ time, or in five, or ten. I can’t even imagine it. I don’t like living day by day, without a plan. I’ve become a tiller of the soil, and a tiller of the soil has to plan ahead. I was probably never anything but a frustrated tiller of the soil. Maybe my grandchildren would have turned into frivolous butterflies. My children rejected all responsibility. I’ve stopped giving life and death. Even the solitude that has kept us company for so many generations dies with me. That is not good and it is not bad; it simply is.
And how do I spend my days this winter?
I wake up in the half-light and get up straight away. If I stayed in bed I would start thinking. I’m afraid of thoughts in the morning gloom. So I go to work. Bella greets me happily. She’s had so little pleasure lately. I wonder how she bears it. Being alone day and all night in her dark byre. I know so little about her. Maybe she dreams sometimes, fleeting memories, sun on her back, lush grass between her teeth, a calf pressing against her, warm and fragrant, tenderness, an endless, mute conversation from winter days past. Nearby the calf rustles in the straw, familiar breath rising from familiar nostrils. Memories rise from her heavy body, and sink down in her sluggish bloodstream. I know nothing of how she feels. Every morning I stroke her big head, speak to her and see her huge, moist eyes gazing at my face. If they were human eyes I’d think they were a little mad.
The lamp stands on the little oven. By its yellow light I wash Bella’s udder with warm water, and then start milking. She’s giving a little milk again. Not much, but enough for me and the cat. And I talk and talk, I promise her a new calf, a long, warm summer, fresh green grass, warm showers of rain that will chase the mosquitoes away; again and again, I promise her a calf. And she looks at me with her gentle, crazy eyes, presses her broad forehead against me and lets me scratch the roots of her horns. I’m warm and alive, and she senses that I mean her well. We will never know anything more about each other. After the milking I clean the byre, and the cold winter air streams in. I never air it longer than necessary. The byre is cool in any case; the breath and warmth of a cow only make it slightly milder. I throw Bella the rustling, fragrant hay, and fill the bowl with water, and once a week I go over her short, smooth coat with the brush. Then I take the lamp back, and leave her alone in the dim-lit byre for a long, lonely day. I don’t know what happens when I leave. Does Bella gaze after me for a long time, or does she sink into a peaceful half-sleep until evening? If I only knew how to make the door into the bedroom. I think about this every day when I have to leave her on her own. I’ve told her about it, too, and halfway through my story she licked my face. Poor Bella.
Then I carry the milk into the house, rake the fire and prepare breakfast. The cat gets up from my bed, walks over to her saucer and drinks. Then she retires to her stove door again, and washes her winter coat. Since Lynx died, she’s slept all day in his old place under the warm oven. I haven’t the heart to drive her away. In any case it’s better than having to see the sad, empty cave. In the morning we barely talk to one another; then she’s bad-tempered and sullen. I sweep the room and carry wood into the house for the day. It’s got bright in the meantime, as bright as it ever gets on an overcast winter morning. The crows fall shrieking into the clearing and settle on the spruce-trees. Then I know that it’s half-past eight. If I have rubbish, I carry it to the clearing and leave it under the spruces. If I have to work outside, chopping wood, shovelling snow or fetching hay, I wear Hugo’s lederhosen. It took a lot of effort to make them narrower around the waist. They reach down to my ankles, and keep me warm even on very cold days. After having lunch and clearing up I sit down at the table and write my report. I could also go to sleep, I suppose, but I don’t want to. I need to be so tired in the evening that I can go to sleep on the spot. I can’t let the lamp burn too long, either. In the coming winter I’ll have to make do with candles made of deer-fat. I’ve tried it before and they smell frightful, but I’ll have to get used to that as well.
At around four o’clock, when I light the lamp, the cat comes out from under the stove, and jumps up on the kitchen table to where I’m sitting. She patiently watches me writing for a while. She loves the yellow lamplight just as much as I do. We hear the crows rising out of the clearing with their raw shrieks, and the cat gets nervous and puts her ears back. When she’s calmed down again, our time has come. The cat gently knocks the pencil from my hand and spreads herself out on the covered pages. Then I stroke her and tell her old stories or sing for her. I’m not a good singer, and only do it quietly, intimidated by the silence of the winter afternoon. But the cat likes my singing. She loves serious, drawn-out notes, especially hymns. She doesn’t like high notes, any more than I do. When she’s had enough she stops purring and I fall silent immediately. The fire crackles and pops in the oven, and if it’s snowing we watch the big flakes together. If it’s raining, or if there’s a storm, the cat tends to become melancholy, and I try to cheer her up. Sometimes I succeed, but generally we both sink into hopeless silence. And very rarely the miracle happens: the cat stands up, presses her forehead against my cheek and props her front paws on my chest. Or she takes my knuckles between her teeth and bites at them, gently and daintily. It doesn’t happen terribly often, for she’s sparing with proofs of her affection. Certain songs send her into raptures, and she pulls her claws over the rustling paper with delight. Her nose gets damp, and a gleaming film comes over her eyes.
All cats tend towards mysterious states; then they are far away and entirely impossibl
e to reach. Pearl was in love with a tiny red velvet cushion that had belonged to Luise. For her it was a magic object. She licked it, scratched runnels through its soft nap and finally rested on it, white breast on red velvet, her eyes narrowed to green slits, a magnificent fairy-tale creature. Her half-brother, Tiger, born after her, was enraptured by fragrances. He could sit for ages by a scented plant, his whiskers spread, his eyes closed, little drops of saliva on his little bottom lip. In the end he looked as if he was on the point of exploding into a thousand pieces. When that point had been reached, he escaped back into reality with a bold leap and, tail upright, uttering little cries, dashed into the hut. Usually, after these extravagances, he would behave in a truly loutish manner, like a half-grown boy caught reading a poem. You can never laugh at cats, they take it very badly. Sometimes it wasn’t easy to take Tiger seriously. Pearl was much too beautiful to laugh at, and I wouldn’t dare laugh at her mother. What do I know about her life? I once surprised her playing with a dead mouse behind the hut. She must just have killed the little creature. What I saw that time convinced me that she saw the mouse as a favourite toy. She lay down on her back, pressed the lifeless thing to her breast and tenderly licked it. Then she carefully put it down and gave it an almost loving shove, licked it again and finally turned to me with piteous little cries. I was supposed to make her toy move again. Not a trace of cruelty or malice.
I have never seen eyes more innocent than those of my cat when she had just tortured a little mouse to death. She had no idea that she had caused the little thing pain. A favourite toy had stopped moving, and the cat was lamenting the fact. I shivered in the bright sunshine, and something akin to hatred moved within me. I stroked the cat quite absently and felt the hatred growing. There was nothing and nobody that I could hate for this. I knew I would never understand, and I didn’t want to understand, either. I was afraid. I’m still afraid, because I know that I can live only if I fail to understand certain things. That was, incidentally, the only time that I happened upon the cat with a mouse. She seems only to pursue her shocking and innocent games at night, and I am pleased about that.
Now she is lying in front of me on the table, and her eyes are as clear as a lake, with fine-branched plants growing on its bed. The lamp has already been burning too long, and the time is coming for me to go into the stable and spend half an hour with Bella, before I have to leave her alone for a night in the darkness. And tomorrow will be like today, and like yesterday. I shall wake up, get out of bed before my first thought has had time to impinge, and later the black cloud of crows will sink down over the clearing, and their harsh cries will enliven the day a little.
Before, I sometimes used to read old newspapers and magazines in the evening. Today I’ve lost all feeling for them. They bore me. The old newspapers were the only thing that has bored me here in the forest. They probably always bored me. Only I didn’t know that the constant mild unease was boredom. Even my poor children suffered from the same thing, and couldn’t stay alone for ten minutes. We were all thoroughly numbed by boredom. There was nothing we could do to escape it, with its uninterrupted droning and flickering. Nothing surprises me any more. Perhaps the wall was only the last desperate experiment of a tormented person who had to break out, break out or go mad.
The wall has killed boredom too, among other things. The meadows, trees and rivers beyond the wall can’t get bored. With a shudder the roaring drum was silenced. On this side all you can hear now is the rain, the wind and the creaking of the empty houses; the despised, bellowing voice is silent now. But there is nobody left to enjoy the great silence.
As September stayed cheerful and warm, and as I had recovered from my fatigue, I decided to go in search of berries again. I knew the people of the village had always fetched cranberries from the Alm. Cranberries had been a blessing for me, because you can preserve them without sugar. Their tannin content means that they don’t go off. On the twelfth of September I set off with Lynx after early milking. I left Bella in the byre for safety. My sole concern was for Pearl, who had taken to going off for little trips to the stream. A few days before, she had come home with a trout in her mouth, and lain down to have dinner under the verandah. She was proud and pleased about her first success, and I had to praise and stroke her. So every day she sat on a stone in the middle of the stream, her right paw raised, waiting. Her coat gleamed in the sun from afar, and no one with eyes in their head could fail to see her. There was nothing I could do about it. My dream of a peaceful house-cat was over, and in any case I had never really believed it. Neither the old cat nor, later on, Tiger, ever went to the stream. They were both terribly frightened of water. But Pearl was different. The old cat watched the irksome behaviour of her daughter with disapproval, but no longer meddled in her affairs. Pearl was barely half grown, yet her mother hardly ever bothered about her now, and had returned to her old way of life. So I locked Pearl with meat and water in the upper room, where I stored bark and kindling. I was sorry for it, but there was nothing else I could do.
The climb to the Alm, and the path wasn’t hard to find, took three hours. The path was in good condition, having been used when the cattle were driven up there. If the wall had come up a few days later there would have been a little herd of cattle up there, and a dairymaid. But I wasn’t complaining, as everything could have been a lot worse for me.
The hut in the pasture stood in the middle of a large meadow, where the grass was already yellowing a little. While I walked across the soft meadows I thought of Bella who had been eating the hard and scrubby grass in the clearing all summer long, while the tenderest plants were growing here for her. I immediately thought of bringing her up here the following May. At the same time, however, I saw so many difficulties arising before me that I shied away in fear. The hut was in good condition, and if necessary I could live in it for a summer. I found a butter churn, two old diaries and the photograph of a film-star I didn’t know pinned to the cupboard with drawing-pins. So, the dairymaid had been a dairyman. The hut was very dirty, there were brown rings of fat on the pots and pans, and the table looked as if it had never been washed down. I also found a greeny-black, shiny felt hat and a torn weatherproof cape. I was tired, and my desire for cranberries was weakening by the minute. I had to force myself to go on. Finally I found the place where they grew. But they were still pink; so I would have to climb back up to the pasture to fetch them. Before I set off homewards I looked for another vantage point from which to view the countryside. The meadow turned into forest, and then fell suddenly away into a scree slope. I sat down on a tree-trunk there and looked into the distance through the binoculars.
It was a fine autumn day, and visibility was very good. I shuddered slightly when I started counting the red church-towers. There were five in all, and a few tiny houses. The forests and meadows were not yet changing colour. In between there were yellowish-brown rectangles, the still unharvested cornfields. The streets were deserted. I thought I could make out a few little objects as lorries. Nothing was moving down there, no smoke was rising and no flocks of birds descended on the fields. I gazed into the sky for a long time. It remained empty and free of any movement. I hadn’t, I suppose, expected to see anything else. The binoculars slipped from my hand and fell into my lap. Now I could no longer make out the church-towers.
Lynx was bored, and wanted to go on. I stood up and followed him. I left the empty pail behind in the hut, so that I wouldn’t have to carry it back up again, but I took the diaries, a little sack of flour and the butter churn with me. I fastened the churn to my rucksack and it immediately started to rub and stick into me. But I couldn’t do without it. It was hard enough beating tiny portions of butter with the whisk. Now that I had a churn I could even think about making clarified butter. Lynx had one of his fits and dashed off across the meadow, his long ears flying. I panted along behind him with the butter churn. I’ve always had an aversion to heavy loads, and I’d always had to struggle with them. First with my over-full schoolbag,
then with suitcases, children, shopping-bags and coal-scuttles, and now, after bales of hay and logs, a butter churn. I was amazed my arms didn’t reach to my knees. Perhaps then the small of my back wouldn’t have hurt so much when I bent down. All I lacked now were claws, thick fur and long fangs, and I would have been a thoroughly well-adapted creature. I looked enviously at Lynx, flying light-footed over the meadow, and it struck me that I had only drunk a little water from the stream. I had entirely forgotten to eat. My supplies were under the butter churn. I was quite exhausted when I arrived at the hunting-lodge, and my shoulders hurt for days. But the butter churn had been rescued.
I find no entries in my diary for a fortnight now. I barely remember that time. Were things so good or so bad that I didn’t want to write? Bad, I think. The monotonous food and the great strain had left me much weaker. But it must have been at that time that I gathered twigs and bark and piled them in the upper room. I had already done that once before. I needed dry wood for kindling. The wood under the verandah was protected when the weather was steady, but when there were storms and rain it sometimes got damp and wouldn’t light. The garage would have made a very good storage space for wood, but I needed it for the hay. Incidentally, damp wood has advantages too, it burns much slower and you don’t have to add so much to it. In the evening, if I want the fire to stay lit throughout the night, I always put damp wood on it.
On the second of October I came back to life in the diary. The potatoes were harvested. I dragged them home in sacks and spread them out in the bedroom. I didn’t dare put them in the little cellar dug into the mountain behind the hut. As an experiment I put a few potatoes in it and they froze when the first frost came. In the bedroom, with the shutters closed, it was dark and cool, and, strangely, not damp. It was now terribly cramped because I’d stored all my supplies in it. My initial capital had multiplied. In the evening, despite being tired, I cooked up a pot of potatoes and ate them with fresh butter. It was a feast, and I was truly satisfied and went to sleep at the table. Lynx too, who had woken me reproachfully after an hour, had been given potatoes, but the cats, pure carnivores, had turned up their noses at them. Lynx, incidentally, liked eating potatoes, but I didn’t give them to him often, because I knew they weren’t good for him.
The Wall Page 9