The Wall (36 page)

I’m sorry not to be able to give you better advice. I have written at such length in order to show you that there’s no lack of good will on my part. I only wish for you to understand it all well. I swear to you, if I had enough influence you would be here tomorrow, and the day after you would have a professorship. See to it that over there you find a position that is bearable, which can’t be that hard to do. You have no difficulties with the language there, and you’ll make connections in no time at all. People over there will still be interested in oppression. If I can be of any use to you through word or deed (e.g., with finding books, materials, recommendations, etc.), it will bring me great joy. I am also thinking of how else I might support you, but nothing has occurred to me. Write me when you need something. My means are, unfortunately, reduced, but they are enough to humbly serve you, be it cash (don’t forget to mention me to Dr. Blecha!) or anything else that you both might need. Though there’s also less here than you might think.

A friend who is planning to fly over today will be bringing along a can of aspic with black-currant jam. It’s exceptionally strong and rich in vitamin C. Take a spoon of it each day. As this friend has shared with me that he reckons that no proper shaving brushes can be had over there, I’ve also given him one for you. Let me know that it all arrives safely! If the rumor is true that our old teacher Herr Prenzel is still alive, please pass on my greetings. And keep your chin up, as always.

Always yours,

So-and-So

You looked at me patiently, Peter, seeming a bit derisive in a good-natured way. Then I held the letter out to you, or you took it—I don’t recall exactly—and you began to read, at first seriously, soon mumbling something, then individual words aloud, here and there like a psalm, and, as I recall, “principles”—“prince-eeee-pills,” you piped—and grimaced as you spoke. Other parts that moved you to immense scorn you also bastardized.
Such as: “Finally I degenerate to such stupidity, no matter how bitter it might sound, to sincerely con you into realizing that such an idiotology of the bent and stooped … certainly can’t be dumped here, no matter how I rattle on and keep rattling.” Not exactly brilliant, but you managed to succeed in brightening my grim, dismayed mood. After reading, you were really in fine spirits and took shots at example after example, full of droll and biting expressions used to nearly blast poor So-and-So to bits. Do you remember his letter?

“Tell me again, Arthur, why is the guy called So-and-So?”

“I’ll tell you. He couldn’t stand it when he had to say his name during ho-hum introductions. It was pointless, he thought, nor did anyone remember a name. Therefore he mumbled something incoherent: So and So. Soon many people called him that. Then he got upset about that, but then started to use it himself and was in the end proud of it.”

“A lovely friend, the fool, your So-and-So. Are you taking this drivel seriously? Come on, don’t be stupid. A kick in the rear, but gently, so that you don’t waste your time with him! It takes all kinds. Just wait, we’ll keep a spot warm in hell for him.”

“How can you say that? The letter doesn’t contain a single attack. On the surface, it’s all nice and smooth. He handles himself well.”

“Who says that we want to go after your dear friend? That’s not at all what I’m thinking. We’ll just latch onto him, you see, so that he cannot escape.”

“He should be the one to latch onto me!”

“He can do that as well. But afterward. It’s more important that we latch onto him first and for sure!”

“I won’t write him again. Such noble support he offers! Shaving brush with black-currant jelly. No, I won’t have anything to do with it.”

“Just let me take care of it.”

“This time you won’t change my mind. I won’t write to him again!”

“The question is
how
you will indeed write to him, your dear So-and-So! We’ll let a couple of days go by, and then you can write to him. He won’t get away from us!”

“He’s already gotten away from me, more than I have from him. I need funds … as soon as a nice round sum becomes available … if I just keep
after Dr. Blecha … No, I can’t just sell my dignity in order that So-and-So can sleep more easily with his renowned conscience.”

“Arthur, don’t be stupid! He has to vouch for you in order for you to get a visa! That’s the main thing, and we’ll certainly engineer it to happen! Everything done just right, so that you don’t have to pay a thing. As far as the oily nonsense in his letter, we won’t worry ourselves one bit.”

Thus Peter reassured me until my anger subsided. He understood so well. He had helped me with so many other such letters. No matter how many of them arrived, and no matter how different they all were, they almost always said the same thing! I also wrote many of them myself, more and more letters to those who once knew me, people that I was looking to contact, for now I was the one who wished to find them in the hope of recognizing myself through them, of living through them. Always the same worry, wanting to grope for and hunt down apparitions. Never was I too humble to ask. And then the answers came, letter writers from far off, creepy little worms from out there in the world, in a city that had been saved. I could read their joy, hopping little worms with very tiny hearts, unfortunate hearts, for that’s what it always said: “unfortunately,” each letter overflowing with it, all of them poor, consumed with worries and to be felt sorry for. They fished for my approval. I needed to understand, not resent them but grasp their need, advise them, share information, run errands for them, while, most of all, the worms yearned for my solace. Peter cursed like a fishwife whenever he thought I played the servant.
Then I no longer wrote at home but, rather, at the museum, where no one bothered me when I was alone in my office.

The office had become my main headquarters, where I ruled over my riches. I was laden with things that wanted to be with me, things without mind or being, the fate of sifted possessions, I now the proprietor. My ears were struck with lashing blows, legal property. I was entitled to them and they were mine, my hands schlepping a suitcase, my pockets stuffed such that my sides hurt, until I could toss away the coffins along with the dead and bury them here in the dingy cupboards. Yet why? My memory called out to me, Listen, the names, they are people you know. You need to go. They are waiting, and they are waiting for you there; you will recognize them. The comfort of your days lies in things that fulfill you, that
you possess once again. Only one who possesses things can be. Then my heart pounded, I grew warm, I propelled my feet forward, this raging stumble through erstwhile streets that had returned, the old row house washed pale by weather and tired, hoary plaster, often already flaking and crumbly, falling down when I knocked. Then through a gate, shadows closing in as soon as the latch clicked shut, then the smell, cinnamon dissolved in a watery solution and the mustiness of dirty clothes, the breath held, the steps climbed, as quietly as possible, yet weakness in the legs, sweat on the brow and down the neck, already the knuckle of the index finger scrunched up and the knock. Who would hear it? Better to ring the bell. Another past sound again reawakened, which draws shuffling steps from inside, the lock snapped with foreboding, mistrust soon eased by names. Hands extended, my heart no longer pounding but storming reluctantly into the dungeon, where Franziska and I hid our humble treasures. Bent over in my chair, matters pressing, there I am, there you are, a cloud of rambling laments, waves of sympathy. Where are the others? Silence amid the extended floors. Lost. Most of the things lost. No longer there. My parents’ collection. Little made it through, not even the clothes from the shop in the Reitergasse.

I didn’t complain about losses anymore. They were indeed a blessing, for as soon as from the wilderness in the first weeks I managed a return that was more survival than triumph, that which was familiar appeared now too familiar, accusing me because I had not recognized it, though it wasn’t me but someone different from me, the me that was bound to the familiar, dissolved in fear, the me that disappeared suddenly there with naked objects that drew the soul from the body, object and soul delivered, there on the transformed table, eyes falling out of the head, small shining tears, eyes clinging to thin strands that are tangled with one another and choke the eyes, then the head eyeless with two empty chasms out of which blood flows, slowly, yet unstoppably, gangrenous with age, an insurmountable separation of soul and heart, in between an impeding wall, the murky dead light.

Soul and entity having escaped and the heart lying down with the body, condemned to live—or soul and entity in the night and the heart with its body hounded like a shadowy fate through the ruins of the jagged city in headlong flight, where the heart jolts and is not pitied but, rather, catapulted back, damned to oblivion and, despite the strength of the heavings,
still caught among the jagged ruins, drowning in the smirking consequences of the temporal and a shiftless life that doesn’t exist, incapable of any avowal or sign, and yet forced inescapably to feel. If I don’t want what I want, I can sense it, and yet I can exist in a broken fashion, this indeed being a blessed yield, a shadow of Being amid its denial, the echo of a judgment that cannot be heard and which is broken off from the start, which in the silence of its desire does not wish to consummate itself, yet nevertheless is something gained, because the heart and Being of the alienated person do not have to split from each other, and because the eyes, even if they are hopeless and in the dull-witted clutches of a certain end, do not fall from their sockets and provide the inverted images that have emerged from the given world.

“Oh please, you must believe me, you are mistaken. Who could know better than I? That belongs to someone else; it always did. Don’t disagree! Her eyes never saw that, her hands never held it. Everything that she had looked entirely different. Recall for yourself, try to remember what she wore for necklaces. It had large amber stones, dark-blond drops of honey that smelled of the forest and the mountains. Not pearls! Certainly not! Please, not pearls! She didn’t like their watery sheen. Too damp, too strange and painful, she said. You have to believe it! She always spoke the truth. She couldn’t stand the feel of pearls, nor could she stand the sound when they slid through her fingers.”

The pearls lay there pathetic and only in their closed box; they were ashamed of themselves amid the lush brown velvet, which, quiet and forgotten, smelled sweet. The box didn’t know what to say and turned this way and that, the top quietly snapping open and shut. The string of pearls wound itself in ever-tighter circles, shivering. Someone would surely want them, but, distressed, I refused to help. I hardly looked at them and held up a hand to guard against jewelry and little boxes. Across from me, the other head hanging there nodded. A small chin and gray hair.

“That’s right. She loved to wear amber. But there’s no amber here. Unfortunately. No amber came through. There are pearls, a property ready to go. Lovely large pearls, real pearls. Much more expensive than amber. Whoever has pearls can exchange them and get a lot of amber for them.”

The old man’s tender hands laid them out, shoved them forward on the hand towel, fingered the pearls, closed the lid of the box, and snapped
shut the lock fastened to it. The figure got up almost soundlessly, looked for something in a drawer, something crackling with an acute, sharp sound. The white satin sheet unfolded, covering the table like a hanging flag, light and shadow bathing its pure surface, four fingers bent over the trembling sheet, the second hand lifting the little box, the sheet spreading out under it, watchful eyes following the ark that quietly floated upon the combing waves of light, thumb and middle finger steering it roughly toward the middle, which at last was reached, a delighted look, not at me but at the almost finished display, both hands then working powerfully, twice folding the fabric, the ark drowning in ample snow, more folding, two wings lifting up tautly and sinking down once again, the pale bird now flying aloft, though the hands grasp it and hold it, one palm extended flat, holding it, though it did not struggle, it being patient or asleep, a dark-red thread creeping, long and lugubrious, the free hand already having seized hold of it and laying it down upon the white surface, then both hands turn quickly and twirl the small weight until it was wrapped and tied, the trimmer only saying a brief word as he cut the thread, the bundle finally exhausted. It lay there finished and could rest, the eyes still above it, though soon they withdrew cautiously. Behind the table they rested. Desire slept and knew nothing of the darkness.

I indeed no longer looked on and also bowed out, trembling with blue fear, for it went on, the process not over, the other head suddenly rising up, steps heard, determined, if also quiet, no, not a stagger, a long retreat, yet shortened and turning away, a searching that rustled. I knew nothing and wanted nothing. My heart stood still, though I couldn’t remain so. I had to look, intently, and the old hand then back again, trembling, poor Father, weeping bitterly, yet why Father? It’s not his time, no, no time at all, but the watch, the watch, and gold, nothing but gold on all sides, the heart of it still always still, not a beat, the watch having no language, not Father’s speech, me not believing the strange workings, a monogram that I didn’t recognize. Nevertheless, I had to listen, for the watch was mine.

“There was also a chain with it. Unfortunately, I don’t have that. The watch and chain came together, lying here with me for months, both of them at risk. It was all supposed to be given away. Two days earlier, your father, as you already know, was still here. He said, ‘I didn’t do anything.’ Like a child. I said, ‘No, you didn’t do anything. Only what was good.’ He said,
‘That’s of no help to me. I have to go away.’ I didn’t believe it. However, he showed me a note. There it was, written out. The place, the day, the hour, and an immense threat. Your father also said, ‘It’s forbidden for me to show it to anyone. Nonetheless, I’ve shown it to you, so that you won’t forget me.’ I said, ‘They’ll ship you back, because it’s a mistake. You’ll see soon enough. You’re also too old.’ He said, ‘No, I’m being sent away. Me and my wife. No one is too old.’ And so I had to believe it, though I didn’t believe it at all. Which is why I said, ‘It’s terrible, but soon things will be good again.’ Your father said, ‘No.’ To which I answered, ‘In three months it will all be over, then you’ll be back again, you and your wife. Then we’ll celebrate.’ Again he said, ‘No.’ I could say whatever I wished and all he would say would be No and No and No. Then he wanted to look at the watch. I brought it out. He took off the chain, a heavy, thick chain. I don’t know what he did with it. The watch he left here. He said, ‘Someone once gave it to me as collateral and never redeemed it. I’ve hardly worn it.’ Thus the watch remained with me. There it is.”