The Wall (33 page)

Why should I write that? It might shock the recipient, for So-and-So was always hypersensitive. There was also no reason to think that he would welcome such a letter. Nonetheless, I had to write something if I was going to write. But the reference to reasons that could not be revealed, never mind be valid—there was no reason to go into that. (Our relations, which I considered close, they having always been especially sweet and easy, suffered
an unforeseeable interruption, which you, I am assuming, also noticed.) That was a risky assumption, but Peter and Anna were always inclined to encourage such presumptuous expectations. Sometimes they succeeded in convincing me that I was entirely right, but when I began to write it down I couldn’t maintain a proud self-confidence. I had to change the point I was trying to make, for it could be expressed differently, or at least more humbly.

The ties we maintained have nothing to do with the fate I have suffered of late, even when looked at in the most favorable light, which is why I ask that you not think of me as out of line when, in good conscience, I have also imagined that, from your completely different perspective, it is possible to feel sympathy for me. If I am wrong, then blame the circumstances, and please forgive me! You don’t have to answer, but instead just throw the letter away.… After such reductiveness and emotional presumption in a first letter after many years, strong objections cannot help but be raised. I showed so little confidence in the constancy of my friend’s attitudes that I ended up, first, presenting myself as a poor witness and, second, suggesting that I didn’t at all expect to be esteemed as a true friend who has remained loyal. I had to be determined to move ahead more boldly and, in the process, be more reserved as well. I gathered together all my powers and wrote this letter:

Dear So-and-So!

No doubt you will be surprised to receive a letter from me after so long and somewhat unexpectedly. Perhaps it will also make sense to you just why I ask you to think of the first sentence as not having been written. Forget it, take it in stride, and quickly read on. All I ask is that you choose one or the other possibility and don’t be angry with me!

Look, I have indeed reappeared before you—in written fashion, yes, and yet almost directly. It’s my handwriting. It hasn’t improved with the years but, rather, the other way round, yet you will certainly recognize it and think, indeed, it’s the same old me. I haven’t grown any older, for the war years simply don’t count.

And, in mentioning this, I have thus informed you why you haven’t heard from me in so long, for certainly you will think, What, you mean throughout the entire war he never thought it necessary to send me a little card to tell me what happened to him, all the while I was worried about him,
and now that the whole affair is barely over and everything is back on track, then he steps to the fore and pretends that nothing happened in between?

I can’t deny any of that. When I think back, this is exactly how it seems: damn little has happened, my friend, but you can believe me when I say that during this war the mails functioned miserably. How often I inquired with the appropriate authority whether it was possible to write to you, but my request was only scoffed at, while I had to keep quiet so that they would think me harmless and not suspect me of being a spy. That’s why I couldn’t follow through on my intentions, and therefore it resulted in an awkward disruption in our correspondence.

As you well recall, you quickly took off right before the war began and hardly had time to properly say goodbye to me. But I was not upset about that, I really wasn’t, but rather concerned, for I was worried that, in between, too many things could happen that could take you away from me. Those are reactions that you have to forgive! They would have been quickly dispensed with if it had been at all possible for you to visit here even once or invited me to visit you. Everything would then have been cleared up, and I am convinced that we could have continued our conversations just where they left off before the war.

I am deeply interested in how you are. The news that reached me made it seem that things were not at all easy for you all on the outside, and I can imagine that it would be hard to overestimate the difficulties endured by the citizens. Hopefully, you gained a foothold somewhere and lived with others you could trust. It would only set me at ease and please me no end to hear from you that everything went as you hoped it would.

That’s also the central reason I am writing. I can only imagine that you and other old friends feel a horrible hesitancy in trying to tie together the frayed threads of the past. Please believe me that such thoughts, at least on my part, are not necessary, for there is no reason that you have to worry about me. The weather is as lovely as ever—a lovely summer and an even more glorious fall have come to the old city. The streets and parks, in which I spend so many exhilarating hours thinking of you and so many other dear people, are full of joyful hustle and bustle, and whoever can ignore the fact that a familiar face rarely shows itself hardly notices that any kind of unusual years have occurred in this country.

Which is why I have to readily declare that one should not be too sentimental about such things, because otherwise weak nerves could cause one to feel gloomy. People have even been overcome by such feelings. Only with steady calm can one tread upon reality. Then you can bear life in a cheerful state of mind and reassure yourself that you are no exception.

If there is anything I can do for you here, be it privately or through the authorities, please just let me know!

That your dear mother perished, you no doubt have heard from others, as well as your father, Walter, whom I was often with (we became very close; he was a real character). Also, our mutual friend Hans Georg is no longer alive. Do you remember Arno Seiler? He was very political and paid for it with his life. I still see his sister Anna often, whom you also no doubt knew. Yes, it was especially tragic with Hans Georg. He appeared to have survived up until a few days before the end, when, during a march, he was shot by the troop escort because he was so weak.

Those are very tragic events, which one experiences here at every turn. They cannot be ignored, and so I mention them, even when I assume that you have already heard more about them than you care to. However, I will spare you the details. It’s always the same story again and again, and that’s why I think …

No, I can’t expect So-and-So to understand such painful matters. It was smarter not to mention anything that could upset my friend. I erased the last two sentences and wrote something else.

You’ll certainly be pleased to hear that the situation here has generally gotten much better, signs of progress visible almost every day. People are moving on with fresh courage and dignified cheerfulness toward a better future.…

Peter came into the room and looked over my shoulder. “You are completely mad,” he said, not wanting anything to do with this approach, which he disapproved of as dishonest. As I began to defend it, because it seemed to me practical, he got upset because of my indifference to the fate of so many who suffered such misery. Even if his bride were to finally be released from prison, there were still ten thousand others locked up, and another hundred thousand hunted. This made me feel ashamed that I had written such optimistic claptrap. As an excuse, I quietly suggested that I couldn’t report on
the new injustices being done, for the mails were censored. Peter laughed at me for being so stupid. No one was asking to hear from me about such expulsions, and indeed there had never been any need for me to go into such drivel. My task was first and foremost to just share the most important things. Should I wish to suppress anything uncomfortable about myself, that was no reason to conjure misleading nonsense. Thus I had to erase again and write something anew.

There’s little to say about the situation here. I could imagine that to you our circumstances here seem somewhat otherworldly. Even if that were not true, the newspapers, in which everything worth knowing is printed, would be enough to give you that sense. That’s why I’m limiting myself to telling only about me personally. Hopefully, I won’t bore you too much with it.

Certainly you will be happy when I say to you: I’m well, in fact surprisingly good. I live comfortably with a friend in a quiet suburb that is near the forest, with easy connections to the city and, since a couple of weeks ago, a really good job that suits me quite well. Don’t laugh, but I am working in a museum! In fact with paintings, exceptionally interesting ones. I’ll perhaps tell you more about them another time, for my skills will hardly allow me to describe them properly in a few words.

The life that I lead is thoroughly orderly and stimulating, as well as simple and humble. It suits me quite well. However, I have to think about where I want to be later on. I have to look for my own apartment, which, unfortunately, is not so easy, and there are many other questions that are pressing which under constantly changing conditions anyone here has to face, more or less.

What So-and-So might imagine lay behind such obscure sentences was anyone’s guess. But I let them stand, though Peter didn’t like them at all.

How keenly and inwardly free I felt in approaching these and other problems, and without any fear of insurmountable difficulties, and thus I thought at times that it would probably be more reasonable, given my talents and my research plans, to try to spend a longer time in a foreign country without decamping there too quickly. This was why I had not taken on too much, mainly because of a dearth of possibilities. To explain myself more precisely:

You must know that I am a bit isolated. I say that without any squeamish
self-pity, but it’s true and carries with it advantages with which I would think you could empathize. There are still people outside who know me, or should know me. Unfortunately, I have had no success in coming into contact with them so far.

You are the first one I have written. That explains why I am going at it in such a circuitous manner. Can you understand that? You know, it’s hard to keep your sense of balance when you have been alone for so long. I don’t want to overwhelm you, and certainly I don’t want to ask of you something that is not possible, but perhaps you indeed still have time for me, even if in today’s world, after such a hard battle to get a sustainable situation, you cannot help me. Please understand that I certainly don’t need that at all, and you should certainly not misunderstand me; I am only asking for friendly advice in order that I can form an idea of how things are on the outside—what I should aim for if I wish to get ahead without expecting too much, such as perhaps giving a lecture in my field, and to build contacts who could be useful to my further studies.

I am still interested in the same things as always (having learned too much already, my friend!). I have prepared reams of notes for a long work, and already a first draft of some of it. I have done all of this in the years …

What years? What have I done? He will not understand what I’m trying to get at. I crossed out the sentences.

You must know that I have not sat idle. The old ideas that mean most to me in regard to the sociology of oppressed people, which always met with your approval, have naturally deepened over the course of time. They have ripened through some of my own experiences and intensive consideration. If, as one heard expressed everywhere in the first excitement over the new peace, they are serious about founding a new and more just order on earth, which many voices support in the postwar years, then one should recognize that my far-reaching plans at this moment are not at all inappropriate.

Please, say what you wish! Point me toward where most people’s interests lie today on the outside, how I might get started, how to rise up out of the depths, and, most of all, how to begin to be seen again. Perhaps you grasp what I mean. I don’t want to go on and on about it, and I trust your capacity to empathize. I trust that you won’t keep me waiting too long once this letter has reached you?

And here’s another request: Tell me as much about yourself as possible—I really need to know. All of it interests me. I even feel a bit lonely here and am hungry for news from old friends. Unfortunately, I also can’t keep from sharing with you, as I had wished, that things in this country right now seem a bit forlorn, if not hopeless. Too much is missing that one used to love—meaning some are no longer among us. But you shouldn’t be concerned about that. I can say to you with a bit of pleasure something that you’ll recall from when we used to translate the Latin authors: “Unhappiness and misery are the natural run of things when a country is consumed by war.” That’s the way it is. Old men of our circle who stayed behind here are, for the most part, no longer alive, some young men also having parted from us. Also, Franziska is gone. But, really, no more of such sad matters.

I’m taking good care of myself; I don’t let myself go and have not given up on life. And so it goes on. If you could see how I’m sitting here by an open window in the almost-summer-like foliage that still looks out unchanged at the wonderful vineyard, you would smile and shake your head and say, “That’s Arthur, just like I always knew him.”

Oh, there’s so much I could tell you, but it’s probably better if I close now. Not only concern for you demands it; one shouldn’t make the censor put so many holes through a letter.

Be well, my dear So-and-So, and write back soon! I will wait impatiently, but I know as well that the mails here don’t always run on time and things can be delayed.

Always yours,

Arthur

So, roughly, if I have rightly recalled the first draft, that’s how I wrote my first letter to someone outside the country after the war. That took me many days, because I kept discovering problems in my crimped, prim sentences, and I kept polishing them, though none seemed to improve. I only wanted something to come from my hand that at least could be answered, that was not too disturbing, while I also couldn’t stand for it to be stilted, and it had to at least be softened. I tried as best I could to patch back together what had been torn apart. When I was satisfied with the letter (meaning I wasn’t satisfied at all, but I could at least live with it), I wrote it out at Peter’s urging on several pieces of paper, though not trusting myself to send the letter off on its own, for I could not at all determine whether I had said the right things.
I suffered from a stifling uncertainty, even fear, that something harmful or otherwise inappropriate had slipped into my words. My condition was bad on many different levels, and denied me awareness of any understandable relation between my feelings and my words. I especially felt that in my lines there was nothing that really spoke to my situation. I wanted to avoid that, because I was afraid—so I thought—to shamefully expose myself and to evoke unwelcome impressions of myself in So-and-So.