The Wall

by Marlen Haushofer

  The crows sat on the spruce-trees. When Lynx barked at them, they flapped into the air and then settled again on trees further away. They were well aware that this barking didn’t threaten them in any way. Lynx didn’t like the crows and was always trying to drive them off. Later he reluctantly came to terms with them and grew a little more tolerant. I have nothing against the crows, and leave them meagre scraps from the kitchen. Sometimes, too, there were substantial meals for them, whenever I’d shot a deer. They are actually beautiful birds, with their shimmering plumage, their fat beaks and their brilliant black eyes. I often come across a dead crow in the snow. It’s already gone next morning. Perhaps a fox has taken it. Maybe the fox that fatally injured Pearl. I found bite-marks on her, but what had killed her had been an internal injury. She’d survived the bites.

  Once, it must have been in the first winter, I saw a fox standing drinking at the stream. It was clad in its greyish-brown winter coat covered with a layer of whitish frost. In the sleepy silence of the snowy landscape it looked very much alive. I could have shot it; I had the gun with me, but I didn’t do it. Pearl had to die just because one of her ancestors was an overbred angora cat. From the start she had been destined as a victim for foxes, owls and martens. Was I to punish the beautiful living fox for that? Pearl had suffered an injustice, but that same injustice had also befallen her victims, the trout; was I to pass it on to the fox? The only creature in the forest that can really do right or wrong is me. And I alone can show mercy. Sometimes I wish that burden of decision-making didn’t lie with me. But I am a human being, and I can only think and act like a human being. Only death will free me from that. Whenever I think ‘winter’, I always see the white, frost-covered fox standing by the snow-covered stream. A lonely adult animal going his predetermined way. Then it seems that this image means something important to me, as if it is only a sign for something else, but I can’t get to the meaning of it.

  That expedition on which Lynx had found the dead chamois was the last of the year. It was starting to snow again, and soon the snow was ankle-deep. I busied myself with my little household and Bella. She was now giving less milk and growing visibly fatter. I often lay sleeplessly considering all the possibilities. If anything happened to Bella my survival prospects were much smaller. Even if a cow-calf was born they were very limited. Only a bull-calf could give me hope of staying alive longer in the forest. Back then I still hoped that somebody would find me one day, but I repressed all thoughts of the past and the distant future as best I could, and only concerned myself with immediate things: the next potato-harvest and the lush meadows of the Alm. I spent whole evenings thinking about a summer move there. Because I had been sleeping worse since working less outdoors, I stayed up longer in the evening (a criminal waste of oil) reading Luise’s magazines, the diaries and thrillers. The magazines and novels bored me to death very quickly, and I always got more pleasure from the diaries. I still read them today.

  Everything I know about rearing cattle, and it isn’t much, comes from those diaries. I even like the stories in them better; they just make me laugh, some of them are touching, some gruesome, particularly the one in which the king of the eels chases a farmer who’s been torturing animals and finally, in dramatic circumstances, strangles him. This story is really excellent, and I get very frightened whenever I read it. But back then in the first winter I still couldn’t get on too well with those stories. In Luise’s magazines there were page-long articles about face-masks, mink coats and porcelain collections. Some of the masks were made of a honey and flour paste, and I always got very hungry when I read about them. What I liked best were the gorgeously illustrated recipes. But one day, when I was very hungry, I got so furious (I have always had a short temper) that I burned all the recipes in a single go. The last thing I saw was a lobster in mayonnaise, which curled as the fire swallowed it up. That was very stupid of me, as I could have lit the fire with it for three weeks. Instead, I wasted it all in a single evening.

  I stopped reading in the end, and preferred to lay my Tarot cards. It calmed me down, and contact with the familiar, dirty characters diverted me from my thoughts. Back then I was simply afraid of the moment when I would have to turn off the light and go to bed. That fear sat next to me at the table all evening. Around that time the cat had already gone out, and Lynx was asleep in the stove door. I was quite alone with my cards and my fear. And yet every evening I had to go to bed in the end. I was almost falling under the table with fatigue, but the minute I lay in bed in the darkness and silence I was wide awake, and thoughts fell upon me like a swarm of hornets. Then, when I finally went to sleep, I dreamed and woke up in tears, then was plunged again into one of those terrible dreams.

  My dreams had been empty up until then; from that winter onwards they were cluttered. I only dreamed about dead people, for even in my dreams I knew there were no more living people. The dreams always started out quite safely and deceitfully, but I knew from the first that something bad was going to happen, and the plot slipped inexorably along to the moment when the familiar faces took shape and I awoke with a groan. I wept until I went to sleep again and sank back down to the dead people, deeper and deeper, faster and faster, and again awoke with a cry. In the daytime I was tired and dejected, and Lynx made desperate attempts to cheer me up. Even the cat, who had always struck me as entirely self-absorbed, gave me abrupt little caresses. I don’t think I’d have survived the first winter without them both.

  It was a good thing that I was obliged to devote more time to Bella, who had grown so fat that I had to be prepared for the arrival of the calf any day. She had grown ponderous and short of breath, and I talked to her every day to cheer her up. Her beautiful eyes had assumed an anxious, intense expression, as if she was worrying about her condition. But maybe I only imagined that. So my life was divided into terrible nights and sensible days during which I could barely stand up for fatigue.

  The days slipped by. In the middle of December it grew warmer and the snow melted. I went to the hunting-ground with Lynx every day. Then I could sleep a little better, but I still dreamed. I realized that the composure with which I had adapted to my situation from the first day had only been a kind of anaesthetic. Now the anaesthetic was wearing off, and I was reacting quite normally to my loss. I felt that the worries that beset me during the day, about my animals, the potatoes and the hay, were appropriate to the circumstances, and hence bearable. I knew I would overcome them, and was prepared to deal with them. The fears that gripped me at night, on the other hand, struck me as entirely futile; fears of the past and dead things that I couldn’t bring back to life, which held me at their mercy in the darkness of night. I probably made things worse for myself by so stubbornly refusing to examine the past. But I didn’t yet know that. Christmas was approaching, and I dreaded it.

  The twenty-fourth of December was still, grey and overcast. In the morning I went to the hunting-ground with Lynx, and was glad to see that there was at least no snow. It was silly of me, but Christmas without snow struck me as more bearable back then. As I was walking up the familiar slopes the first flakes broke away and fell, slowly and silently. It was as if even the weather was conspiring against me. Lynx couldn’t understand why I didn’t go into raptures when more and more flakes floated from the grey and white sky. I tried to be cheerful for his sake, but I couldn’t manage it, so he trotted anxiously beside me, his head lowered. When I looked out of the window at midday the trees were already dusted with white, and towards evening, when I went into the byre, the forest had turned into a real Christmas forest, and the snow crunched crisply under my feet. While I was lighting the lamp I suddenly knew I couldn’t go on like this. I was seized by a wild desire to give in and let things slide. I had grown tired of constant flight, and wanted to stay put. I sat down at the table and abandoned my resistance. I felt the tension easing in my muscles, and my heart beating slowly and evenly. Even the simple decision to give in seemed to be helping. I remembered past times very clearly
, and tried to be just, to distort nothing, and to run nothing down.

  It’s terribly hard to do justice to one’s own past. In that distant reality, Christmas had been a beautiful and mysterious celebration, while I was still small and believed in the miracle. Later, Christmas turned into a jolly feast, at which I got presents from everybody and imagined I was the centre of the house. I didn’t for a moment consider what Christmas might mean to my parents or grandparents. Something of the old magic had crumbled away, and its gloss went on fading. Later, when my children were small, the celebration came into its own again, but not for long, since my children weren’t as susceptible to mysteries and miracles as I had been. And then Christmas became a jolly feast again, at which my children got presents from everybody and imagined everything was happening for their sakes alone. That’s actually how it was. And yet another while later, Christmas was no longer even a feast, but just a day on which people habitually gave each other things they had had to pay for in some way or another. Even then Christmas had already died for me, not on that twenty-fourth of December in the forest. I realized I’d dreaded it since my children had stopped being children. I hadn’t had the strength to bring the dying feast back to life. And today, after a long series of Christmas Eves, I was sitting alone in the forest with a cow, a dog and a cat, and I no longer had any of the things that had gone to make up my life for forty years. The snow was on the spruce-trees and the fire crackled in the stove, and everything was as it originally should have been. But the children weren’t there any more, and no miracles happened. I would never have to run through the department stores again buying unnecessary things. There was no enormous, decorated tree slowly fading in the heated room instead of flourishing and burgeoning in the forest; no flickering of candles, no gilded angel and no sweet songs.

  When I was a child we always sang Ihr Kinderlein kommet. It has always remained my private Christmas carol, even when people stopped singing it at all, for some reason, or sang it only rarely. All the little children, where had they gone, seduced by the seduced into the stony void? Perhaps I was the only person in the world who remembered that old carol. Something conceived for the best had gone wrong and turned out for the worst. I couldn’t complain, because I was just as guilty or innocent as the dead. So many feasts had been created, and there had always been one person with whose death the memory of a feast had died. With me dies the feast of all the little children. In the future, a snowy forest will mean nothing but a snowy forest, and a crib in the stable nothing but a crib in the stable.

  I stood up and walked to the door. The lamp cast its glow on to the path, and the snow on the little spruce-trees gave a yellowish gleam. I wished my eyes could forget what that scene had so long meant to them. For something quite new lay waiting behind it all, which I was unable to see because my head was crammed full of old things and my eyes were unreceptive. I had lost the old without finding anything new; the new was closed to me, but I knew it was there. I don’t know why that thought filled me with a very faint, almost imperceptible joy. I felt better than I had done for several weeks.

  I put on my shoes and went back to the byre. Bella had lain down and gone to sleep. Her warm, clean fragrance floated around her. Gentleness and patience flowed from her heavy, sleeping body. So I left her again and stamped back through the snow to the house. Lynx, who had gone outside with me, came out from under a bush, and I closed the door from inside. Lynx jumped on to the bench and put his head on my knee. I talked to him and saw that it made him happy. He had earned some attention from me over the last dreary weeks. He understood that I had come back to him completely, and that he could reach me by yapping, whimpering and licking my hand. Lynx was very contented. At last he got tired and fell fast asleep. He felt he was safe, because his human had come back to him, from a strange world where he couldn’t have followed her. I laid my cards and stopped being afraid. Whether the night was going to be bad or good, I wanted to take it as it came, and not resist it.

  At ten o’clock I carefully pushed Lynx away from me, packed the cards up and went to bed. I lay stretched out in the darkness and looked sleepily at the rosy glow that fell from the stove on to the dark floor. My thoughts came and went quite unhindered, and I still wasn’t afraid. The lights on the floor stopped dancing, and my head was a little dizzy from all the thinking I had done. I now knew what had been wrong, and how I could have done it better. I was very wise, but my wisdom had come too late, and even if I’d been born wise I couldn’t have done anything in a world that was foolish. I thought about the dead, and I was very sorry for them, not because they were dead, but because they had all found so little joy in life. I thought about all the people I had known, and I enjoyed thinking about them; they would be mine until the day I died. I would have to clear a safe place for them in my new life if I was to live in peace. I went to sleep, and slipped down to my dead people, and this time my dream was different from the dreams I had had before. I wasn’t frightened, just sad, and this grief filled me to the brim. I was woken by the cat jumping on to my bed and curling up against me. I was going to reach my hand out to her but I went back to sleep and slept dreamlessly until morning. When I woke up I was tired but contented, as if I’d put a hard task behind me.

  From then on my dreams improved; they gradually faded, and the day reclaimed me. The first thing I noticed was that my wood-supply had dwindled. The weather, though dreary, was not too cold so I decided to make use of the fine days and attend to the wood. I carted the logs across the snow and started sawing. I felt like working and I had no way of knowing what the weather was going to do next. I might fall ill, the weather could turn cold and hold up my wood-cutting. My hands were soon covered with blisters again, but after a few days the blisters turned into calluses and stopped hurting.

  After I’d sawed up enough wood I set about cutting it into smaller pieces. Once, when my attention had wandered, I cut myself above the knee with the axe. The wound wasn’t deep, but it bled a lot and I realized how careful I would have to be. It wasn’t easy for me, but I got used to it. People who live alone in the forest have to be careful if they want to stay alive. The wound above my knee needed stitches; it left a wide, bulging scar that hurt every time the weather changed. Otherwise, however, I was very lucky. All the wounds that I inflicted on myself healed quickly, without suppurating. I still had sticking plaster back then; now I simply tie a piece of material around it and it heals that way too.

  I didn’t fall ill once throughout the winter. I had always been susceptible to colds, and suddenly I seemed to be thoroughly cured of them, even though I couldn’t afford the time to rest and sometimes came home exhausted and soaked. The headaches from which I had often suffered before hadn’t appeared since early summer. My head hurt now only when logs flew up and hit it. In the evening I could very often feel all my muscles and bones, particularly after I’d been wood-cutting or when I’d been pulling hay up to the gorge. I was never very strong, just stubborn and resilient. I gradually worked out all the things I could do with my hands. Hands are wonderful tools. Sometimes I imagined that Lynx, if he had suddenly grown hands, would soon have started thinking and talking as well.

  Of course there are still a lot of tasks that I can’t manage, but then it wasn’t until I was forty that I discovered I had hands. I can’t cope with too much. My greatest triumph would be to fix the door to Bella’s new byre properly. I still find carpentry particularly difficult. I’m not so clumsy, on the other hand, when it comes to agriculture and animal husbandry. I’ve always found anything to do with plants and animals quite straightforward. I just never had the opportunity to make the most of that natural talent. And that kind of work satisfies me the most. Throughout the whole of Christmas week I sawed and chopped wood. I felt good and slept deeply and dreamlessly. On the twenty-fourth of December it grew very cold overnight, and I had to stop and go back into the house. I sealed the cracks in the doors and windows of the byre and the house with strips I’d cut from an old blanket. Th
e byre was solidly built, and it wouldn’t be too cold for Bella yet. Also the straw that I’d put down in the byre and on top of it kept out the worst of the cold. The cat hated the cold, and in her little round head she started making me responsible for it. She chastised me with sulky and reproachful looks, and whiningly demanded that I finally put a stop to this nonsense. The only one who wasn’t bothered by the cold was Lynx. But he cheerfully welcomed all kinds of weather. He was just a little disappointed that I didn’t want to go walking in the crisp cold, and kept trying to rouse me to go on little expeditions. I was worried about the deer. The snow lay more than three feet deep, and there was no longer anything for them to eat. I had two sacks of horse chestnuts left over from the previous year’s feed, which I wanted to keep for myself as an emergency supply. I might reach the point where I was glad of horse chestnuts. But when the sharp frost came to an end I dithered, and kept thinking about the two sacks in the bedroom. On the sixth of January, Epiphany, I could no longer stand it in the hut. The cat still treated me with the greatest contempt, showing me her striped backside, and Lynx was feverishly excited about the idea of going out. So I put on everything I had to keep me warm, and set off with the dog.