The Wall

by Marlen Haushofer

  Here, in the forest, I’m actually in the right place for me. I bear the motor-car manufacturers no grudge now; they ceased to be of interest long ago. But how they all tormented me with things that repelled me. I only had this one little life, and they wouldn’t let me live it in peace. Gas-pipes, electrics and oil conduits; only now that people have ceased to be do these things show how truly pitiful they are. And back then they had been turned into idols rather than functional commodities. I too have one of those things standing in the middle of the forest, Hugo’s black Mercedes. It was almost new when we came here in it. Today it’s overgrown with vegetation, a nest for mice and birds. Particularly in June, when the wild grape blossoms, it looks very pretty, like an enormous wedding bouquet. It’s beautiful in winter, too, glittering in the hoarfrost or wearing a white helmet. In spring and autumn, between its brown struts I can see the faded yellow of the upholstery, beech-leaves, bits of foam rubber and horsehair torn out and pulled apart by tiny teeth.

  Hugo’s Mercedes has become a wonderful home, warm and sheltered from the wind. More cars should be put in the forests, they would make good nesting-places. In the open countryside there are probably thousands of them, overgrown with ivy, nettles and bushes. But they are quite empty and uninhabited.

  I see the plants flourishing, green, well-fed and silent. And I hear the wind and all the noises from the dead cities; window-panes shattering on the pavement when their hinges have rusted through, the dripping of water from the burst pipes and the banging of thousands of doors in the wind. Sometimes, on stormy nights, a stone object that was once a human being tips from its chair at a desk and crashes with a boom to the parquet floor. For a while there must have been big fires as well. But they’re probably over now, and the plants are hurrying to cover up the remains. If I look at the ground behind the wall, I don’t see any ants, or beetles, not even the tiniest insect. But it won’t stay that way. With water from the streams life, tiny, simple life, will seep in and revivify the earth. I might have been quite indifferent to that, but strangely it fills me with secret satisfaction.

  On the sixteenth of October, after my return from the Alm, I began to make regular entries in my diary again; on the sixteenth of October I took the potatoes out of the ground and collected the black dust-coated tubers in sacks. It had been a good harvest, and the mice had done little damage. I was able to be content, and to look forward to winter with some comfort. I wiped my black hands on a sack and sat down on a tree-trunk. The time when my stomach would constantly be rumbling was over, and my mouth watered when I thought about my evening meal: fresh potatoes with butter. The last sunbeams were falling through the beech-trees, and I relaxed, tired and content. My back ached from bending over, but it ached pleasantly, just enough for me to notice that I had a back at all. I was still faced with the task of lugging the sacks home on the branches. I always tied two of them on to the beech-branches that served me as a cart in summer and a sled in winter, and pulled them along the beaten path to the hunting-lodge. When I’d stored all the potatoes in the bedroom in the evening I was so tired that I went to bed without my supper and had to postpone the great feast.

  On the twenty-first of October, while the weather was still fine, I fetched home the apples and crab-apples. The apples tasted wonderful, although they were still a little hard. I stored them in the bedroom and made sure that they didn’t touch one another. Those with bruises I put in the first row, for early consumption. They looked very pretty, grass-green, with flame-red, sharply contrasting cheeks, like the apple in the Snow White story.

  Fairy-stories were still very clear in my memory, but I’d forgotten a great deal else. As I hadn’t known much in any case, only a little knowledge remained to me. Names lived on in my head, and I no longer knew when the people who had borne them had lived. I had only ever learned for exams, and later the dictionaries behind me had given me a sense of security. Now, without these aids, my memory was in a terrible muddle. Sometimes lines from poems occurred to me; I didn’t know who had written them, and was seized by an obsessive desire to go to the nearest library and take out some books. It was some comfort to me that the books must still exist, and that I would one day get hold of them. I know today that by then it will be too late. Even in normal times I couldn’t live long enough to fill in all the gaps. Neither do I know whether my mind could still retain these things. If I ever get out of here I shall lovingly and longingly caress every book I find, but I shall never read them now. As long as I live I shall need all my strength to keep myself and the animals alive. I will never be a truly educated woman. I must come to terms with that.

  The sun was still shining, but from one day to the next it grew a little cooler, and in the morning there was sometimes a touch of frost. The bean-harvest had been very good, and now it was time to fetch the cranberries from the Alm. I very much disliked going to the pasture, but I felt I couldn’t do without the berries. The meadow at the pasture lay still and enchanted beneath the pale October sky. I visited the vantage point and looked out over the countryside. Visibility was better than it had been in the summer, and I discovered a tiny red church-tower that I had never seen before. The meadows were yellow now, with the brownish haze above them, the sea of ripe seeds. And in between lay the rectangular and square surfaces that had once been cornfields. That year they had already been eaten away by big greenish patches, the flourishing weeds. A paradise for sparrows. Except that there wasn’t a single sparrow there any more. They lay in the grass like toy birds, already half sunk into the earth. I had gone with no expectations and yet, when I saw all that, not a cloud of smoke, not the slightest trace of life, I was once more overwhelmed by deep despondency. Lynx grew alert, and urged me to walk on. It was also much too cool to stay sitting down for long. I spent three hours picking berries. It was tedious work. My hands had quite forgotten how to deal with such little things, and were very clumsy. In the end I had filled my bucket, and sat down on the bench in front of the hut and drank hot tea. There were big patches in the meadow where it had been grazed and then had grown again. The grass was already yellowish and a little dry. There were low, lilac-coloured gentian bushes here and there. They looked as though their blossoms were cut from frail old silk. Sickly, autumnal plants. I also saw the buzzard wheeling again, and plunging suddenly into the forest. I was overcome by the feeling that it would be better to keep away from the Alm for ever.

  I don’t like being invaded by outside forces, and immediately got on the defensive. There was no sensible reason for me to stay away from the Alm. I put my feeling of aversion down to fear of the troublesome move there. My suffering should be ignored; everything had been decided long ago and found to be good. And yet I shivered at the sight of the yellow meadow, the gleaming rocks and the unhealthy gentians. A sudden feeling of a great loneliness, emptiness and brightness made me get up and leave the Alm, almost as though I were escaping. Even on the familiar forest track everything struck me as very unreal. It grew cold quickly and Lynx pressed homewards to the warm hut.

  The next day I made jam from the berries and put it in jars that I had to tie shut with newspaper. I used the last few days to cut straw for Bella and Bull with the sickle, and while I was about it I also scythed a piece of the forest meadow for the deer. I stored the straw over the byre and in one of the upper rooms, and I put the hay, once it was dry, under a protective roof, where the hay for the deer had been stored in the past. I left the potato-field as it was, and had no intention of digging it and fertilizing it before the spring. Then I was tired and a little surprised that I had actually managed to make my preparations for the winter. But after all there had been good years in the past, so why should I not be granted a good year as well?

  On All Saints’ Day it suddenly grew warm, and I knew that this could only herald winter. All day, while I was doing my work, I couldn’t help thinking about cemeteries. There was no immediate reason, but I couldn’t help it, because for so many years we had been used to thinking about at this ti
me of year. I imagined how the grass would long ago have smothered the flowers on the graves, how the stones and crosses were slowly sinking into the earth and the nettles were growing over everything. I saw the vines on the crosses, the broken lanterns and the remains of the wax stumps. And at night the cemeteries lay quite abandoned. No lights burned, and nothing moved but the rustling of the wind in the dry grass. I remembered the processions of people with carrier bags full of enormous chrysanthemums and the industrious, surreptitious digging and watering at the graves. I have never liked All Saints’. The old women’s whispering about sickness and decay, and behind it a malevolent fear of the dead and much too little love. For all the attempts to give a beautiful meaning to the feast, the primeval fear in which the living held the dead was ineradicable. The living had to adorn the graves of the dead in order to forget them. Even as a child it always offended me that the dead were so ill treated. Anyone could foresee that, in death, their own mouth would soon be stuffed with paper flowers, candles and fearful prayers.

  Now the dead can rest in peace at last, untormented by the digging hands of those who had been indebted to them, overgrown with nettles and grass, slaked by moisture, beneath the eternally rustling wind. And if there should ever be life again, it would grow out of their decomposed bodies and not out of the stone things that were condemned for ever to lifelessness. I pitied them, the dead and the stone people. Pity was the only form of love for human beings that remained to me.

  The hot gusts of wind from the mountains agitated me and shrouded me in a sad gloom that I tried in vain to resist. The animals too were affected by the foehn. Lynx lay wearily under a bush, and Tiger cried and complained all day and pursued his mother with urgent affection. But she wouldn’t have anything to do with him, and then Tiger ran to the meadow, and butted his head repeatedly against a tree, crying loudly. When I stroked him, horrified, he burrowed his hot nose into my hand, crying plaintively. All of a sudden Tiger was no longer my little playmate, but an almost fully-grown tom-cat, tormented by love. As the old cat wouldn’t have anything to do with him, as she had recently become very sulky, Tiger would run into the forest and desperately search for a female, but there was no female there for him. I cursed the warm wind and went to bed overcome with foreboding. The cats both went out into the night, and soon I heard Tiger’s song from the forest. He had a glorious voice, a legacy from Mr Ka-au Ka-au, but more youthful and supple. Poor Tiger, he would sing in vain.

  I spent the whole night in a half-waking state, in which I imagined my bed was a boat on the high seas. It was almost like an attack of fever, and made me weary and dizzy. I kept imagining I was falling into an abyss, and saw terrible images. Everything was happening on a dancing patch of water, and soon I no longer had the power to convince myself it wasn’t real. It was very real; reason and order no longer counted for anything. Towards morning the cat jumped on to my bed and freed me from that terrible state. All at once my whole confusion dissolved into nothing and I finally went to sleep.

  In the morning the sky was blackly overcast; the hissing wind had died down, but under the layer of clouds it was still stiflingly hot. The day crept on, and the air was thick and damp and lay heavy on my lungs. Tiger hadn’t come home. Lynx crept sadly around. The foehn didn’t affect him as much as my bad mood, which distanced me from him and made me unapproachable. I did my work in the byre, and had to rouse Bella from her slumbers before I could milk her. Bull too was peculiarly restless and unmanageable. After work I lay down on my bed. I had, after all, barely slept that night. The window and the door were open, and Lynx sat down in the doorway to watch over my sleep. I actually did get to sleep, and found myself in a lifelike dream.

  I was in a very bright room like a hall, all decorated in white and gold. Magnificent baroque furniture was ranged along the walls, and the floor was laid with expensive parquets. When I looked out of the window I could see a little pavilion in a French park. Somebody somewhere was playing Eine kleine Nachtmusik. I suddenly knew that none of this existed any more. The feeling of having suffered a terrible loss descended violently upon me. I pressed my hands to my mouth so as not to cry. Then the bright light went out, the gold sank into darkness and the music turned into a monotonous drumming. I woke up. The rain was beating against the window-panes. I lay quite still on the bed and listened. Eine kleine Nachtmusik was silenced by the rain, and I couldn’t hear it any more. It was almost miraculous that my sleeping brain had roused a past world to new life. I still couldn’t grasp it.

  That evening it was as if we had all been released from a nightmare. Tiger crept in through the cat door, dishevelled, his coat covered with earth and needles, but released from his frenzy. He cried out his fear and, after he had drunk some milk, he crept exhaustedly into the cupboard. The old cat kindly allowed me to stroke her, and Lynx crept to his bed after checking that I had turned back into his familiar human being. I laid out my old card game, and by the light of the lamp I listened to the rain beating against the shutters. Then I put a bucket under the gutter to catch water to wash my hair with, went into the byre to feed and milk the animals, and then lay down and slept deeply until the cool, wet morning. For the next few days, as it went on raining quietly and insistently, I stayed in the house. I had washed my hair, and it now floated, light and bushy, around my head. The rainwater had made it soft and smooth. Looking in the mirror I cut it short so that it just covered my ears, and I contemplated my tanned face under its sun-bleached cap of hair. It looked very strange, thin, with slight hollows in the cheeks. Its lips had grown narrower, and I felt this strange face was marked by a secret need. As there were no human beings left alive to love this face it struck me as quite superfluous. It was naked and pathetic, and I was ashamed of it and wanted nothing to do with it. My animals were fond of my familiar smell, my voice and my movements. I could easily cast off my face; it was needed no longer. At this thought a feeling of emptiness rose up in me, which I had to get rid of at any price. I looked for some kind of work to do, and told myself that in my situation it was childish to mourn a face, but the tormenting sense that I had lost something important would not be driven away.

  On the fourth day the rain started to become tiresome, and I thought myself ungrateful when I thought of the release that it had brought us after the foehn. But it was simply undeniable that I had had it up to my ears, and my animals quite agreed with me. In this we were very similar to one another. We wished we could have gentle, cheerful weather, with a rainy day once a week for sleeping. But no one was concerned with our impatience, and we had to listen to the gentle rustling and splashing for four more days. When I went to the forest with Lynx the branches beat wetly against my legs, and the damp entered my bones. Sometimes the rainy days merge in my memory into a single day that lasted for months, during which I stared miserably into the grey light. But I know very well that in two and a half years it never rained for more than ten days at a stretch.

  Meanwhile something had started happening in the byre that frightened me. Bella was calling for a mate, and roared all day. That was nothing new, it happened every few weeks, and I had become accustomed to ignoring it because I couldn’t help her. But today I can hardly understand why I had never thought about it more. Something within me must have repressed the thought that Bull might one day be fully grown. At the same time I had been waiting for this moment since his birth. In any case, one day I surprised him approaching his mother in a very unambiguous manner. My first reaction was annoyance and fear. He had pulled loose from the rope, and stood before me, trembling, his eyes red-veined. He looked terrible, in fact. But he allowed me to tie him up, and nothing further happened.

  First I went into the house and sat at the table to think. I had no idea what to do. Could I leave the two animals together at all without putting Bella, who was weaker than Bull, in danger? In the period that followed Bull became more and more insistent, and Bella seemed afraid of him. I had to keep them apart. However desirable Bull’s masculinity was, it caused
me nothing but annoyance at first. I came to realize that I needed to build him his own permanent partition in the byre, from which he could not break free. Boards were not strong enough for him, it had to be tree-trunks. I did cut down two young trees, but then I saw that I wasn’t up to building the partition. I was too weak and unhandy for real carpentry work. I wept with rage and disappointment, and then I started to look for another solution. Bull had to move into the garage. This decision caused me a lot of hard work. I had to store the hay in one of the upper bedrooms. It was arduous for me to carry the hay from there to two byres every day, and for Bull the transfer meant banishment into cold and darkness. But I had no choice.