The Wall

by Marlen Haushofer

  One day I’ll have to reckon with it, because I won’t be able to live here for ever. But until then I don’t want to have anything to do with it.

  Since this morning, I’m convinced that I shall never meet another human being again, unless there’s someone else living in the mountains. If there were still people outside, they would have flown over in aeroplanes long ago. I’ve seen that even low clouds can float across the boundary. And they don’t bring any poison with them, or else I wouldn’t still be alive. So why do no aeroplanes come? It should have struck me long before. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. Where are the victors’ reconnaissance planes? Are there no victors? I don’t think I’ll ever get to see them. I’m actually pleased that I never thought about the aeroplanes. Even a year ago that reflection would have cast me into great despair. Not any more.

  For a number of weeks my eyes haven’t seemed to be quite right. I can see excellently into the distance, but when I’m writing, the lines often swim before my eyes. Perhaps it’s due to the weak light, and to the fact that I have to write with a hard pencil. I was always proud of my eyes, although it’s stupid to be proud of a physical asset. I could imagine nothing worse than going blind. I’m probably only getting a bit long-sighted and shouldn’t worry about it. My birthday’s coming around again soon. Since I’ve been living in the forest I don’t notice myself getting older. There’s nobody there to draw my attention to it, after all. Nobody tells me how I look, and I never give it a thought myself. Today is the twentieth of December. I shall write until work starts in the spring. Summer will be less of an effort for me this year, because I’m not moving to the Alm again. Bella will graze the forest meadow, as she did last year, and I’ll spare myself those long and arduous journeys.

  The February of the first year is quite empty in my diary. But I still remember a few things about it. I think it was warm and damp rather than cold. The grass in the clearing started to go green at the roots, while autumn’s yellow stalks remained above them. There was no foehn, only a mild westerly wind. Not unusual weather for February, in fact. I was pleased that there were leaves and old grass everywhere for the deer, so that they could recover a little. The birds were faring better as well. They stayed away from the hut, which meant they no longer needed me. Only the crows stayed faithful to me until spring began in earnest. They sat in the spruce-trees waiting for scraps. Their lives followed strict rules. At the same time every morning they descended on the clearing and, after circling about for a long time, shrieking excitedly, they settled on the trees. In late afternoon, when twilight fell, they rose up and left, circling and shrieking above the forest. I have no idea where they spent the night. The crows led an exciting double life. As time passed I came to feel a certain affection for them, and couldn’t understand how I hadn’t liked them before. When I saw them on dirty dumps in the city they always struck me as miserable, dirty creatures. Here, in the glistening spruce-trees, they were suddenly quite different birds, and I forgot my old antipathy. Today I wait for them to come every day, because they tell me the time. Even Lynx got used to them and left them in peace. He got used to everything I was fond of. He was a very adaptable creature. But for the cat the crows remained a constant source of frustration. She sat on the window sill staring across at them with her hair on end and her teeth bared. Once she had got herself excited and roused herself to fury she lay down crossly on the bench and tried to drown her irritation in sleep. An owl used to live above the hut. Since the crows had come it had left. I had nothing against the owl, but as the cat might be expecting kittens I was quite pleased that the crows had sent it packing.

  Towards the end of February the cat’s condition became impossible to ignore. She had grown fat, and alternated between moodiness and outbursts of affection. Lynx was baffled by this change. Only when he got a good clout around the ear did he grow cautious, and avoided disturbing his moody friend. He seemed to have forgotten that exactly the same thing had happened before. This time there wouldn’t be a Pearl, and it was much better that way. Of course you couldn’t say for sure, with such a mixed pedigree. Against all reason I’d started looking forward to the new litter. The thought of it distracted me and occupied my mind. My mood in general improved the longer it stayed light in the evening, and the closer spring came. Winter in the forest is hardly bearable, particularly if one has no companions.

  Even in February I spent as much time as possible out of doors. The air made me tired and hungry. I had a look at my supply of potatoes and found I would have to economize to make it through to the next harvest. The seedstock couldn’t be touched on any account. In the summer I would probably have to live almost exclusively on meat and milk. But this year I could enlarge my field. I ate the potatoes in their skins, for the vitamins. I don’t know whether it really did any good, but the very idea of it cheered me up a little. Every second or third day I allowed myself an apple, and in the meantime I chewed on the tiny crab-apples, so bitter that I could hardly swallow them. I had enough of these to do me for the whole winter. Bella was now giving so much milk that the bull couldn’t drink it all, and I even had a little surplus of butter and was able to make clarified butter. Keeping food supplies was easier in winter than in summer, because the meat stayed edible for longer. All I lacked was fruit and vegetables. I didn’t know how long the bull was supposed to suckle his mother, and scoured all the diaries for enlightenment but didn’t find a word on the subject. They were written specially for people familiar with the basic rules of agriculture. My uncertainty sometimes made life exciting for me. Everywhere I sensed dangers that I couldn’t recognize in time. I had to be constantly prepared for unpleasant surprises, and all I could do was to bear them with equanimity.

  For the time being I let the bull drink as much as he wanted. After all, everything depended on his being big and strong soon. I had no idea how old a bull would have to be to sire a calf, but I hoped he would give a sign of his manhood in time. I was well aware that my plan was a little adventurous, but all I could do was wait for its success. I didn’t know how that kind of incest would work out. Perhaps in this instance Bella wouldn’t conceive at all, or a deformity would grow within her. There was nothing about that in the diaries, either. It probably hadn’t been usual to mate a bull with his mother. As I don’t like living day by day without a plan, feeling my way around in the dark, it was hard for me to stay calm. Impatience has always been one of my worst faults, but in the forest I have learned to control it to a certain extent. The potatoes don’t grow any quicker if I wring my hands, and even my little bull didn’t grow up overnight. When he was fully grown I sometimes wished he’d stayed a little round calf. He presented me with problems that made my life much harder.

  I had to wait and wait. Everything takes its time here, a time that isn’t agitated by a thousand clocks. There’s no haste or urgency, I’m the only disturbance in the forest, and I still suffer from that.

  March brought a setback. It snowed and froze, and overnight the forest turned into a gleaming winter landscape. But the chill stayed mild, for in the afternoon the sun shone warmly on the slope and water dripped from the roof. The deer weren’t threatened by any danger; on the sunny side there were enough places free of snow, with grass and leaves. I didn’t find any more dead roe deer that spring. When the sun shone I went to the hunting-ground with Lynx or fetched hay from the barn. Once I felled a weak buck and froze it. Finally the thaw came, and there were a few days of rain and storms. I couldn’t see further than from the house to the stable, the mist lay so thick. I lived on a warm little island in a moist sea of mist. Lynx began to get melancholic, and constantly trotted between the hut and the clearing. I couldn’t do anything to help him, as the cool wet weather wasn’t doing me any good and I didn’t want to catch a cold. My throat was already starting to get rough and I had a slight cold. But it didn’t turn into anything more serious and went away the next day. What was much worse was that I got rheumatic pains in all my limbs. My fingers su
ddenly grew fat and red, and hurt when I moved them. I had a slight fever, swallowed Hugo’s rheumatic pills, sat crossly in the hut and imagined that in the end I wouldn’t be able to move my hands at all.

  Finally the rain turned into hail and then into snow again. My fingers were still swollen, and it hurt every time I gripped anything. Lynx saw that I was ill, and smothered me with gestures of love. Once he made me cry, and afterwards we both sat depressed on the bench. The crows sat in their spruce-trees waiting for scraps. They seemed to see me as a marvellous institution, a kind of social security, and got lazier by the day.

  On the eleventh of March the cat jumped off the bed, walked to the wardrobe and urgently demanded to be let in. I took an old cloth, put it in the wardrobe and the cat slipped inside. In the meantime I set about my work, and it was only in the evening, when I came out of the byre, that my thoughts returned to the cat and I looked into the wardrobe. It was all over already. She purred loudly and happily licked my hand. There were three young this time, and all three were alive. Three tabby cats, from the lightest to the darkest grey, all licked clean and in search of food. The cat hardly had time to drink and immediately turned to her young. I left the wardrobe door half open and shooed the inquisitive Lynx away. This time the cat wasn’t as wild as she had been with Pearl, she hissed at Lynx but, it seemed to me, more for form’s sake. It was strange how interested Lynx was in the joyful event. As he couldn’t express his elation any other way he ate a double portion of food. I noticed as a general rule that any mental excitement unleashed in him a compelling desire to eat. The cat was the same; when she’d been annoyed by the crows, she often went to her feeding-bowl. That night the cat didn’t come to my bed, and I lay awake thinking about Pearl. The bloodstain on the floor refused to fade. I’d decided not to cover it up. I had to get used to it and live with it. And now there were three kittens again. I resolved not to grow fond of them, but I could foresee that I would be unable to keep my resolution.

  The weather slowly improved. Over the open countryside it had doubtless been fine for a long time, but in the mountains the mist often brewed for another week before lifting. And then, very quickly, it became almost as warm as summer, and grass and flowers sprouted from the damp earth almost overnight. The spruce-trees put out new shoots, and the stinging nettles around the dungheap started to burgeon cheerfully. The change happened so quickly that I couldn’t grasp it. I didn’t feel better immediately, either, and for the first warm days I was more depressed than I had been in the winter. Only my fingers got better straight away. The cat’s offspring flourished, but still stayed in the wardrobe. The old cat wasn’t as concerned about them as she had been about Pearl. At night she liked to go off for an hour or so. Perhaps she trusted me more, or she felt that the little tigers were less threatened. She drank Bella’s milk by the bowlful and turned it, in her body, into milk that the kittens could feed on. On the twentieth of March she introduced me to her young. All three were fat and shiny, but none of them had Pearl’s long-haired coat. One of them had a slightly narrower face than the others, and I concluded from this that it was a female. It’s almost impossible to establish the sex of such small cats, and I had very little experience of it. From then on the cat played with her children in the room. They were a special source of amusement for Lynx, who behaved as if he was their father. Once they realized he was harmless they started to pester him just as much as they did their mother. Sometimes Lynx tired of these pests and felt they should be in bed. Then he carefully carried them to the wardrobe. Hardly had the last one been transported than the first tumbled back into the room. The cat watched him, and if I have ever seen a cat smiling with malice, she was the one. Finally she got up, distributed a few clouts and drove her brood into the wardrobe. She was much less gentle with them than she had been with Pearl. But this was necessary, too, because they were irrepressibly keen on playing and on rough and tumble. Mr Ka-au Ka-au seemed to have won through entirely. They spent the whole day charging about the hut, and I had to be very careful not to tread on them.

  I don’t know how it happened, but at noon one day, during a wild game of tag, the smallest cat, the one with the narrow face, went into convulsive spasms and died within a few minutes. I hadn’t been paying attention to her, and couldn’t think what had happened. She seemed to be completely unhurt. The old cat immediately ran over to her and licked her, moaning tenderly, but by then it was all over. I buried the little cat near Pearl. The old cat spent an hour looking for her and then turned her attention to the other two as if there had never been a third kitten. Her brothers didn’t seem to miss her either. Lynx hadn’t been in the house, and when I came back he hesitated, gave me a questioning look and went to the wardrobe to have a look. Something distracted him, and he forgot why he’d gone there. But I’m sure he realized one of the cats was missing. I’m the only creature, even today, that sometimes thinks about the narrow-faced little animal. Had it banged its head against the wall, or do kittens have infant spasms too? I’m happy that it didn’t have to suffer long, and that I know what happened to it. Of course I didn’t grieve as I did for Pearl, but I missed it a little nevertheless.

  The ones who were left were, as it gradually turned out, actually tom-cats. Since it was so warm they played outside by the door as well, and worried me by constantly wanting to creep into the bushes. Early on they started catching flies and beetles, and made painful acquaintance with the big wood-ants. Their mother kept a close eye on them at first, but I noticed that the business of rearing children was starting to wear her out. In any case the clouts she distributed were increasingly violent. I couldn’t hold it against her, as the kittens were both wild and disobedient. I called them Tiger and Panther. Panther had light grey and black stripes, and Tiger dark grey and black stripes on a reddish background. When I had a little time I liked to watch them playing their predatory games. That’s how it happened that the two tom-cats got names while the little bull was still nameless. No name for him had occurred to me. The old cat was nameless as well, after all. Of course she had a hundred pet names, but she never got a name that lasted. I don’t think she’d have got used to it anyway.

  The crows, which might have been a danger to the kittens, had left for their unknown summer hunting-ground when the weather turned warm, and there was no sign of the owl either. Sometimes, when I sat on the bench in the sun thinking about Panther and Tiger’s origins, I thought they had a chance of survival. I hadn’t managed simply to ignore them, of course. I was already starting to worry about them. I wished they would both quickly grow big and strong and learn all the tricks from their sly mother. But before they had learned anything more than catching flies Panther disappeared in the bushes and never came back. Lynx looked for him, but he was never found. Perhaps a predator carried him off.

  Tiger stayed behind on his own. For a long time he searched and cried for his brother, and when he didn’t find him he played with his mother again, or with Lynx, or with me. If nobody was paying him any attention he would dash after a fly, play with twigs or little balls of paper that I tore from a thriller for him. It hurt me to see him so alone. He was so beautifully marked and fully lived up to his name. I’ve never known a wilder and livelier cat. Over time he became my cat, because his mother wouldn’t have anything to do with him any more, and Lynx was afraid of his sharp claws. So he attached himself entirely to me, and treated me alternately as a surrogate mother and as a companion in his rough and tumble. I took a lot of scratches before he finally understood that he had to draw in his claws when playing. He shredded everything he could get hold of in the hunting-lodge, and sharpened his claws on the legs of the table and the bedposts. I didn’t mind that, though. I had no valuable furniture, after all, and even if I had, a living cat would have been more important to me than the most beautiful piece of furniture. Tiger will crop up a lot in my report. I couldn’t keep him for even a year. It’s still hard for me to understand that such a lively creature is dead. Sometimes I imagine that he w
ent and joined Mr Ka-au Ka-au in the forest and is leading a free and wild life. But those are only daydreams. I know, of course, that he’s dead. Or he would have kept coming back to me, at least for a while.

  Perhaps, in the spring, the cat will run back into the forest and have kittens again. Who knows. The big forest tom-cat may well be dead, or, after her serious illness last year, the cat may never be able to have kittens again. But if there are young cats, it will all happen all over again. I shall make my mind up not to care for them, then I’ll grow fond of them, and then I’ll lose them. I often look forward to a time when there won’t be anything left to grow attached to. I’m tired of everything being taken away from me. Yet there’s no escape, for as long as there’s something for me to love in the forest, I shall love it; and if some day there is nothing, I shall stop living. If everyone had been like me there would never have been a wall, and the old man wouldn’t have had to lie petrified by his spring. But I understand why the others always had the upper hand. Loving and looking after another creature is a very troublesome business, and much harder than killing and destruction. It takes twenty years to bring up a child, and ten seconds to kill it. It took the bull a year to grow big and strong, and a few strokes of an axe were enough to dispatch him. I think about the long time that Bella carried him patiently in her body, the arduous hours of his birth and the long months during which he grew from a little calf to a big bull. The sun had to shine and grow the grass for him, water had to spring from the earth and fall from the sky to slake his thirst. He had to be combed and brushed, and his dung had to be cleared away so that he could lie in a dry bed. And it had all been in vain. I can only see it as a hideous muddle and extravagance. Perhaps the person who killed him was mad; but even his madness betrayed him. The secret wish to murder must have been dormant within him. I’m even inclined to pity his state of mind, but again and again I try to obliterate him from my memory because it is unbearable to think that someone like that could go on murdering and destroying. I don’t think anyone else of his kind is living in the forest, but I’ve become as suspicious as my cat. My rifle always hangs loaded on the wall, and I never set foot outside the house without my sharp jack-knife. I’ve given these things a great deal of thought, and perhaps I’ve reached the point where I can understand even murderers. Their hate for everything capable of creating new life must be terrible. I understand it, but I, personally, have to resist it. There is no longer any human being to protect or work for me so I can devote myself to my thoughts undisturbed.