The Wall (73 page)

All of this spoke to me, it being what I felt as well. I should certainly not have mentioned the violin, but I would have been happy to continue talking about guilt and victims, though the waiter prevented that from happening as he carried in the entrées. Both portions were served at the same time, the meat on a plate, potatoes and vegetables in a bowl, only the salad served separately in two little bowls. The waiter began to serve the food, but Fräulein Zinner waved him away. She dished it out herself, and, despite my protests, I got the greater portion.

“You hardly have any roast!”

“You’ll manage it.”

I had to give in, and I saw how happy Fräulein Zinner was to be able to do something for me. As she noticed how good it tasted to me, she was so happy that she couldn’t contain it.

“I had hoped that it would please you. I watched you at Haarburger’s and saw what little interest you had in getting hold of such delicacies and eating them. It can make one very happy to be able to take care of someone.”

I didn’t respond at all, but instead let it pass and just looked up in gratitude. Fräulein Zinner caught my gaze and slowly chewed little bites of her food without paying attention to mine. Perhaps she ate so slowly out of kindness, in order not to finish much earlier than I did the heaped plate in front of me. That’s why it seemed best for me to eat as fast as possible, while still being polite, in order not to have to be chewing after she had finished her meal. I had never before observed someone as closely during a meal, for I had always before thought it unbecoming to dedicate so much attention to such an intimate activity. I had no idea why I was so keenly interested in how she handled her knife and fork, or even raised the food to her mouth, though I couldn’t stop myself, even though I didn’t feel it was right. I considered whether Fräulein Zinner didn’t remind me of someone, and searched my simultaneously aroused and benumbed memory. Why do people compare people with others? I asked. Each is without compare, it seemed to me. Yet that’s not true. In general, you could make comparisons
when the difference was not decisive, which accounts for the masses. Certainly this girl reminded me of no one, for I had encountered no one like her before, that which was familiar sitting across from me being nothing but the strange, the unknown, which attracted me. Why was I eating with this girl? The coming together of two people unknown to each other is a mere accident, and a world collapses as a result, everything falling, everything buried, sunken, filled in, though something foggy creeps along, a secretive strangeness, digging in the depths, uncovering something, lifting the discovery high up to the light and announcing, “Look, here is what was. It appears to be an ally who lived in the long ago, but not during our time.” To discover the strange in another is good fortune. It lessens the pain that lives in oneself, such discovery being the only joy.

My thoughts were disrupted by the waiter. The dessert table stood before us, set with little glass bowls filled with a soft colorful foam. I tried some, and it melted on my tongue and tasted of lemon. Fräulein Zinner looked at me somewhat absently, though she noted my pleasure. I broke the silence so suddenly with a question that it almost shocked her.

“Do cooking and housework interest you?”

“I’m a terrible cook and, to my endless worry, know nothing about running a home.”

She said this with such concern; I thought I even saw tears well up. Why had I touched on something so sensitive?

“That doesn’t matter,” I tossed back cheerfully, and blithely went on to say, “No one needs to know about such things. When it comes time, you learn on your own.”

She laughed somewhat tensely, as if a bit angry.

“Really? You think so? Your experience is amazing.”

“Ah, my experience! What are you thinking!”

She looked at me, full of concern.

“I always had other things to do than housework. You don’t do such things for yourself alone. You need to do it for others; otherwise, it’s senseless. When my brother—”

She fell silent. The waiter cleared the dishes from the table and brought the coffee. I was pleased that we would at last be rid of him. But Fräulein Zinner’s distress bothered me. The tables seemed entirely turned since the
office, and on the way here, when she was so certain and I was so helpless. Did I now have the advantage? What a miserable advantage it was if all it meant was that I had transferred my troubles to this girl without becoming any steadier myself. What had I done! The entire evening had failed, a bad beginning to desires never to be satisfied. I thought about how I could manage to collect myself, or, if that was not possible, at least subordinate my concerns and prop up Fräulein Zinner. Yet what I lacked was the strength found only when I tapped the strength of another. I consciously tried to subordinate myself, but I couldn’t. My dependence on other people had nothing to do with subordination.

“Tell me, Fräulein Zinner, have I done something terrible?”

She looked at me with surprise, in need of clarification.

“Perhaps not terrible,” I continued, “for I wouldn’t say that, just something disagreeable, something not quite right, which just isn’t done.”

“Don’t fret so! You’re a big boy.”

“That’s kind of you to say. I have been so regularly knocked off balance since I’ve been here that I fear that I am agitated by countless and often insignificant things. Instead of being reassured, I end up robbed of my last bit of confidence. But I don’t wish to burden you with all that, and I am thankful that you grant me such freedom. I need a foothold, but I am left to grope and stumble or I stand before a wall that is flat and fends me off and does not buttress me. But don’t think badly of me because of it! It’s a halting unease that makes me say all these twisted things. That’s not really who I am. For I believe I can overcome any difficulty. If you’ve survived, you often end up astonished at yourself; you confront yourself, curious, shy, cautious, you really question yourself, for you still can’t quite believe you are the same person, whether you even exist. Sometimes I think, Yes, it’s indeed so. Such moments are not at all significant, but quite the contrary, since everything is insignificant and vague, as the answer dissolves within the question. But when you simply go on living, then it’s only natural that life doesn’t consist of fully conscious hours but, rather, of little conversations that trickle along or small continuing activities, since the unsettled being is best suited to some kind of orderly routine. Thus when the question ceases to knock at your insides, at your very fiber, and yet nonetheless is there and continues on, there exists a mild tension that, without any great surprise, can upset
you at any time and leads to an accommodation with the self-evident. Then everything becomes unquestionably interdependent. Not in an immense fashion or essentially so, but it does seem to me beneficial. Whether that is a basis for a life, I really don’t know.”

“But it is an accommodation. You say so yourself. One must accommodate oneself. That’s what you mean to say?”

“That’s what I would say. Yes, you’re right. Do you recall how at the Haarburgers’ I tossed out the question whether one could marry a man with my past? You responded quite vigorously to that. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“And was your answer genuine? Do you still stand by all that you said then?”

“Every word.”

“That’s good. So, then, you would marry such a person? What with all the uncertainty involved?”

“Yes.”

“That is absolutely crucial. Have you thought about what that would actually mean?”

“Just give me the chance!”

Fräulein Zinner chuckled heartily and caused me to laugh as well.

“Then, Fräulein Johanna, could you marry me even now?”

“Why not?”

“I’m not the man for you.”

“You should let me decide that.”

“I have no life to speak of.”

“So you can’t marry me, either?”

“Who told you that?”

“I’m free to say so myself.”

“Go on! You at least have to marry in the hope of some kind of security.”

“One marries for thousands of reasons. I would marry whom I liked, if he will have me.”

“You mean me?”

Moved, Johanna fell silent, yet she quickly recovered and looked as if—or so I imagined—as if she were in her office handling professional matters for visitors. Johanna was completely impenetrable, together and in control,
yet warm. Her quiet authoritative manner pleased me very much. Yes, I became aware of how much she pleased me for the first time, such that I was not bothered by feeling faint or by fitful moods, which always held the potential to overwhelm me, but instead could concentrate on courting her with zeal. I was free of heavy-handed flirtatiousness. I looked at her tenderly, half from the side. Her face, calm and imperturbable, as if I had said nothing audacious at all, gave me no sign as to how I should behave, whether I would be heard or not. One thing I knew: I could not stand a setback now. I nodded and spoke quietly but beseechingly.

“With me there’s nothing to be had but my powerlessness.”

Johanna turned to me attentively, but otherwise nothing about her changed, which provided me with the barest of openings. I talked on in almost a whisper.

“A person like me is poor and can make no promises. His existence, shot through with despair, is nothing but an open wound. Perhaps at heart he can feel grateful, but he can promise no income. It’s not at all advisable to get tangled up with him. Whoever is smart will avoid him. Whoever loves him will have many bitter and weary hours. He has only himself to offer, and that is little, for otherwise there is nothing. He is faithful, not out of virtue but because of his nature. He is affectionate, even tender, but headstrong, and his intensity doesn’t recommend him, as it can be horrible. He broods a great deal, and in his peculiar thoughts he develops his own path forward on which he cannot recommend that anyone travel along with him. Sometimes he is sad and almost melancholy, and then it’s hard for anyone to distract or rouse him. Yet he is grateful, perhaps, and that he has said already. He also does not easily forget, and some things he never forgets, but he doesn’t hold a grudge, and he fights against bad will and is forgiving. His work is probably of little worth, but he feels it is important, and he loves it. He is a widower. He loved his wife very much; he has not forgotten her, nor will he ever forget her. If he should ever marry again, he will make certain that the dead do not come between him and his new wife, nor will he stand between the living and the dead, and it will be up to the wife not to stand between her husband and those who have passed on.”

Johanna listened to all of this while remaining outwardly calm, simply sitting there, not a word of it seeming too much for her and nothing seeming
to disturb her, though her breathing slowed to a standstill. She didn’t let herself be confused, no matter how surprised she was; I could have kept on in the same vein without at all disturbing her. Yet I couldn’t expect that she would have some kind of response to what I said, no matter how much I might have wanted or hoped. I sipped my coffee and set the cup down a bit too loudly.

“Tell me, Johanna, what would you say if I really did want to marry you? In all seriousness? Will you marry me?”

“Yes.”

We said nothing. I would have loved to sit next to her, but I didn’t have the courage; it would have been too forward—what foolish fears! But that was the way it was. It was not necessary to switch places. I had to stay where I was, and she had to remain across from me. That was for the best. I was too overwhelmed from the success of my proposal; also, Johanna must have realized that she had been steered into giving her immediate consent. Though it seemed strange to have achieved such a forced victory, it still felt like the most natural thing in the world, there being no other outcome imaginable. It wasn’t love that had brought us together, for we had not spoken of love; most likely, neither of us having even thought of it. Instead, an unfathomable desire had hauled us out of the abyss of our yawning loneliness, the two of us having been brought together from across a great distance. It had happened. We sat there silent, serious, almost like two stones, neither of us daring to think that we should embrace, our thoughts instead traveling far off into the distance across which neither of us had to explain ourselves to each other. We had said too much; now we had to remain much more reticent about what now—and perhaps always—would risk sounding highly superficial. A deep affection for my quiet friend welled up inside me, but it warned against my expressing how I felt out loud. The future was inconceivable; I did not at all feel capable of predicting any direction for the challenges that lay ahead. After a long while, I stirred myself to ask a question.

“What happens now, Johanna?”

“We will see. We are on our own and are answerable to no one on earth.”

“Nothing is certain, Johanna.”

“Except that we are certain. I will do anything I can for you. You can trust me.”

“It will be hard for you.”

“All the better.”

“That is easily said.”

“And slowly done. Don’t worry!”

“No. I won’t. I trust you, and your gentle spirit.”

“Thank you.”

“We should marry soon, if you don’t have anything against it.”

“Soon, for sure, my dear. There’s no sense in waiting. I’ll stand by you, and when it gets too hard, too hard for you, my dear, then don’t forget that you have me, that I’m there for you.”

My dearest said all this with halting warmth. Johanna soon relaxed without becoming any less serious, and effused a lovely glow. Her eyes brightened, the corners of her mouth softening. Suddenly and unexpectedly, she called the waiter over and asked him for the check. She quickly paid, having treated me, though I would have felt better if I had paid the tab. But now it was too late, so I let it happen. After the waiter thanked us, I apologized for my lapse.

“It all comes out of the same pocket now,” she said simply.

I asked whether we should stay, but Johanna looked me over and decided that quiet was what I needed. I stood up, somewhat wearily, and got the coats. I then realized for the first time that I needed to help my wife, my soon-to-be wife. Maybe that’s why I held the coat so clumsily, such that the waiter wanted to jump in to help, though Johanna didn’t want me to feel ashamed.