The Wall (49 page)

“You really shouldn’t do that. Thank the eternal ones that you have these pictures; it’s a blessing. If you actually think I am capable of envying you in the slightest because of them, then please throw me out!”

I went over to the coat rack where Fräulein Zinner had hung up my things, took down my coat, and slipped into it. She was pale as a ghost, didn’t pay any more attention to the pictures, and stared at me intensely as she leaned against the desk, an arm arched behind her for support.

“Herr Landau, you’re right, if you’ll allow me to say so. I deserved that. I’m being egotistical and thinking only of myself. But you’re welcome to go of your own free will, not because I shoved something onto you.”

“And you want to stay here?” I asked sadly with my hat in my hand. “Come along with me!”

“May I really?”

“You should! You invited me.”

She seemed relieved, her demeanor relaxed, but she still didn’t stir from the desk, and looked at me uncertainly.

“Shall we go?” I asked encouragingly.

“Are you really feeling all right now?”

I had to smile, and wanted to say, “You are a dear, sweet child.” But I held back.

“I feel just fine. If you were to look a bit more happy, it would make me feel even stronger.”

Then at last she smiled, stepped closer to me, and held her purse in her hand. Then she remembered something and cleared away the tray with all its things, at which I had to empty a half-full glass of wine. After that, the chair and anything that would remind one of my visit had to be straightened out. The only thing Fräulein Zinner had missed was the card file. I walked over to the drawers and was about to close them, but my effort failed miserably. I laughed while motioning apologetically, and Fräulein Zinner laughed even louder as she rushed to help. One shove and the drawers were effortlessly shut. There then seemed nothing left to prevent our leaving, though at the last moment she discovered that my coat was dirty.

“You must have rubbed up against something somewhere. I can brush that away in a snap.”

“Yes, the wall. There are traces left there. I leaned against it.”

She walked over to a cabinet, returned with a fabric brush, and scrubbed hard at me, but the spots were stubborn and impossible to get out.

“The wall must have been wet. I’m afraid I’m not having much luck at
getting them out. The coat will dry out overnight, as long as it doesn’t rain. Then with a dry brush you can easily sweep away all the dust granules. Do you have a brush, Herr Landau? You can take this one.”

I had to laugh again, and assure her that I owned a brush, but that I could be a bad boy who didn’t take good care of his things. Then I was made to promise to make sure not to forget to clean my coat first thing the next morning. Then, finally, we left. We quickly descended the stairs; our steps echoed, but that didn’t bother me, and I was happy to leave the Ivanhoe building and its Search Office. We also didn’t stop to greet the porter, as was normally done when leaving work; I was afraid that Fräulein Zinner would get caught up in conversation with him again.

The darkness in the streets seemed to have grown more dense, and it was colder as well. Soon we had walked in so many different directions that I no longer knew where we were. I felt uncertain and extended my good will and faith to my companion. I would have to do anything she asked me to, for I was too defenseless to resist the slightest attack. Yet why did I think anything bad would happen? I could just run away from her and immediately disappear into the dark, after which I would be able to find my way and ask someone for directions. After all, I had an address, a room in a guesthouse for which I had paid, and so because of that there was no reason to be anxious. No one lets those who pay in this world perish; no one leaves them alone, and they are taken care of much sooner than those who are miserable, who have to beg for what they need, but who have no shelter and therefore remain lost.

What idle anxiety I allowed to overcome me instead of patiently trusting someone who meant well! Fräulein Zinner really did mean well, and she knew where she was going and had a restaurant in mind, so it was up to her to get us there without any digressions. She was headed the right way, and there was no need to worry, not now, for everything was out of my hands. The endlessly confusing city had, under the protection of a savvy guide, lost its power over me; thus I could let myself be led, clandestine and clueless, through any area. I would have liked to talk, but since my companion remained silent I didn’t say a word as I walked through the strange streets. It was better to know that she was near, right next to me, than to just pay attention to what she was saying, which would hardly have put me at ease
in the accumulating darkness but instead made me anxious. She was me. Because this was so, I had to take care, nor could I endanger this subtle dependency with any kind of provocation that would suddenly break it. Once, I stumbled so clumsily at an intersection while stepping down from the sidewalk onto the street that my ankle cracked and I felt a stabbing pain rise up my leg that was not awful but irritating. I didn’t say anything to Fräulein Zinner, yet she drew closer and took my arm, very gently yet firmly, just like a nurse helping a convalescent with his first steps.

And so we moved on. I don’t know how long we walked. It could be that it was not long, but it seemed endless to me, the way my feet unswervingly pressed on ahead while my body remained behind or slowly followed, much heavier and more inept than my eager feet, though my head was the heaviest as it glowed in the cold, unable to keep up with the reduced speed of the torso, such that the unfortunate skull almost fell all the way back, an unwitting stranger who was being dragged along unwillingly. Poor head, which was hardly made for such strain and which would have been grateful just to be left alone, it being better to have a carefree rest than to have to suffer such wanderlust. Finally it succeeded, the head remaining alone as the body and limbs plowed on through the storm of haphazard streets without stopping and finally—who knows where?—sank into the far distance. The head, however, leisurely followed its own path. It didn’t need to figure out where it was amid the dense streets, neither here nor in a different city, it needing such a small little spot that it always found one, able to hide itself in the narrowest of corners in order to wait for what doesn’t come, and then, contrary to expectations, it does; or, at least, not exactly what is expected is there but nonetheless something that could be expected and indeed was at least as good as what was expected. The head indeed didn’t have to expect anything, not once, and therefore could do many things, such as forget or be forgotten. Who worries about a head that only marginally and harmlessly lives and has no body? No one bothers with such a thing, for even an attentive street sweeper would, at the most, smile, though it wouldn’t occur to him to toss a lonely strange head into the rubbish.

I was a self-sufficient head that needed nothing, only a feeling of weakness overtaking me, although I stayed quiet and rested on a soft spot. It was too soft, I soon noticed without alarm, because I sank into it, and because
of this descent I couldn’t hang on with either my mouth or my eyelids, as at first they could hardly move and soon not at all, nor could I shove my tongue between my lips, the wall of teeth closing before it, the tongue growing ever more dry and sticking hard to the gums. It was then that I felt all was lost. Such a head could not live for long, too quickly having been cocksure to be able to live without a body. It was all over; it had been too stubborn and too gullible, and as a price it had to die. Yet in a last moment of despair it braced itself against perdition, the memory of the head of the executed anatomist Jessenius causing a ray of hope to flare up, since it is said that his friend the executioner immediately placed the head on the severed body and then the mouth opened, though it didn’t release another word. But in following this particular example the head ripped open its mouth and managed to call out, loud and clear, the ears hearing, “Franziska!”

Then the eyelids managed to open. I could see, I lay there, and I could feel my body again nearby, including the limbs, still severed, yet near, almost attached, everything healed, only far off and deep a pain that stabbed in the foot or the knee, the memory of a fall surfacing—yesterday, I must have fallen, sometime yesterday, on a street in a city. Yet if it was all collected together, healed or unhealed, that bothered me less, if only it was so. I still didn’t dare believe it to be true, for it had all dissipated to such a degree, and I could feel so little and so dully. I still needed to wait it out until everything awoke together. But I could see around me and even turn my head, the room appearing to me at once strange and familiar. Franziska was nowhere to be found. I could have called out for her again, but I grasped that she wasn’t there. Instead of her there moved an unknown woman about the room who appeared not to be surprised that I was lying in bed. Occasionally she looked over at me, just quickly and then away, inconspicuously kind, then carrying on with her tasks unconcerned, as if it was all the most natural situation in the world. I no longer dared do anything; I simply wasn’t capable of anything decisive. By and by, I felt better and more alive; the window was open wide, and brilliant sunshine spilled into the room, bringing with it muffled sounds from outside. It all felt warm and wonderful as it pressed against my bed.

“How did I get here?”

The woman, dressed in a light summer dress, remained where she was, laughed, and looked straight at me, and knowingly.

“Already awake? Or do you need to sleep a bit more? You can have breakfast in bed. It’s all ready.”

Breakfast? That sounded very nice. But in the house of a stranger? How could I eat it and, above all, in bed? I didn’t say anything, hardly moved, and just looked at the woman gratefully and beseechingly.

“Do you want something else? Is there anything I can do for you?”

Why was someone being so kind to me, while I had neglected Franziska so, as well as who knows who else? I brought out a hand from beneath the blanket and rubbed my cheeks and forehead. The woman had turned away; she was full of concern, or she had simply given up bothering with me since I had remained stone silent. I propped myself up a bit in order to be able to better look around the room, and then I knew where I was.

“Good morning, Anna. Is it so late already?”

“Not too late for someone who came home just last night. It’s nine o’clock.”

I jumped up from the couch and hurried to the bathroom. Again, or as always, my leg hurt, but after a while the pain went away, only the kneecap burning. I felt awake, or at least much more awake than on the day before, nor was it hard to get my bearings here. I was so at ease and satisfied, as one can feel only in friendly surroundings. The long evening before, with its conversation running deep into the night, was still very memorable, the bathroom and the entire apartment feeling comfortable to me in particular ways, such that I was myself again. Everything seemed to be set up to serve me, to help me get my bearings, yet without belonging to me. Only Anna’s little household meant something to me, it feeling like when you are in a hotel and everything is laid out for your pleasure. How well everything is set up, I realized, and pushed away the thought of ever having to give up this comfortable setting. But then the notion arose again and made me anxious, thinking that I couldn’t stay here, not this soon, though I would have been happy to let myself be taken care of. What else was I supposed to do? It bothered me as I recalled that I had left my bag at the train station and had to pick it up today. Indeed, to have to walk along the street and stare at the two colors of the patterned granite tiles of the sidewalk seemed a heavy imposition. A walk through the streets could in no way lead to good memories but, rather, only hopeless memories of childhood that still simmered inside my gutted soul.

It wasn’t right of Anna. I should never have come back here; it was no homecoming. It was nothing but a nightmarish mistake, the kind of thing you foolishly do at the end of a war. You travel somewhere and expect something, hoping for a hand that will open up, inviting you and showing you what to do, until at last you’re at peace, though your rights will have been long lost. If I had already reached my goal in coming to this city, then I wanted to stay in this building, in this apartment, this being the only reasonable place to stop. It was astonishing that there was an apartment in which I was allowed to be a guest. The fact that Peter had encountered me on the street and brought me along was a hint that I wouldn’t be sent on. What calmed me here was the situation that no one could have prepared for me ahead of time; namely, Hermann Meisenbach and Anna, the two of them living here the whole time and wanting to be happy together, and then someone brought me along. That was something; it was a sign that people shouldn’t disappear. In the distance a cuckoo called, nowhere to be seen, as carefully his wings beat among the branches, myself at home in my tended nest. Now I could stretch, but it was also good not to stir but rather to wait, always to wait. In between, something could happen, maybe come out of nowhere, late-breaking developments, nothing anyone could see, and then all of a sudden a welcome result. I listened inside my cave; it was completely quiet if I didn’t move, only an image arising that was very old and exalted: Adam at the expulsion. Adam and Anna, I heard someone say, clearly, Adam and Anna, the dreaming Adam without the apple, Anna having crept off on tiptoe. She didn’t want to disturb his summer with a cuckoo’s call, so that he wouldn’t feel any pain in his poor knee. I listened closely and asked, “How shall I begin, so that today I don’t have to give up my refuge and then have to live alone in this city in perpetual misery. How shall I slog across its pavement after the fall with my wounded knee?” In the bathroom I felt good; I would have been happy to be locked in there, and yet how brief even the longest stay had to be. Suddenly, the next moment a future arrived with painful power. To have a plan, that was indeed pointless. I couldn’t dally anymore; it was rude and could bring suspicion down upon me, something that, as far as I knew, should now have been in the past, because I indeed wanted to settle down, wanted to be able to say that it was my apartment, it’s always been mine, I had only been threatened, but now the time is here
when everything will be good and right again. I am the master of the house here and will tolerate no one who denies my wishes. Everything here is mine; I recognize it all once again. Then, obviously, I will have to live here alone, yet that would mean giving up Anna, for no one would then take care of me. I would be openly hanged from some floor, and then the regained property would mean nothing at all.