Authors: H. G. Adler
What do the visitors think about when they look at the little bit of dungeon left? Slowly it dawns on them, yes, this is where it happened. The reckoning lasts for a moment, yet they don’t dwell on it, it doesn’t affect them and in fact it doesn’t matter, Josef perhaps overly sensitive when he finds that it does affect him and causes him to sink into his old suffering again and believe that the strange and long-dead suffering here is his very own, even though it’s unhealthy to think so, lunacy, if not presumptuous and out of line. Much better is the fact that someone has hung a wreath from an iron bolt, a nice demonstration of thoughtfulness that seems reverent and touching, rather than simply strange, even if somewhat inept and in any case helpless. Josef would like such commemorations to effect a deep transformation, for posterity cannot simply weave a wreath for such suffering, because even if it is not one’s own one can surely empathize with past suffering, yet it no longer burns in your heart like a glowing thorn from having survived those times of extermination, though Josef feels the general suffering before him, which through someone else’s memory results in the hanging of an ornament, thus turning the strange suffering into a comfort, whether it be far off or in the past. Also, the wreath hung in honor of the Quaker elder will soon decay, it already having dried out while hanging from its iron bolt, which indeed makes it touching, such commemoration now a responsibility, as the wreath needs to be replaced, someone showing up to do it and taking the old one down, which is not allowed, that being a desecration, but it’s done nonetheless and the wreath is tossed away, which is completely improper, for at least he would sit there quietly after a new
wreath is put up. Josef realizes how unreal it all is when one gets involved with past suffering, most pieties being disingenuous, since they mix the pure feeling of the honored ones with a certain strangeness that they can never penetrate, and which they never fulfill and know that they don’t, veneration an odd game in which nothing is so sacred that it is spared.
Now the dungeon is empty, everything completely desolate, though no longer sunk in darkness, for it is half destroyed, the four walls still rising, though they are broken here and there, neither roof nor ceiling arching over the prison, daylight fading, night just beginning to encase the ruins in silent darkness and renew each evening the fleeting hours of the once continual darkness so fitting to imprisonment, though no visitor can witness it, because the town fathers close the site for the night, even though historically there’s no real reason to do so, but historically this is what has been done, no one should see the darkness firsthand, the darkness that is history, all that is past, no need to think of it beyond what the visitor’s imagination can conjure already. The town fathers are right to forbid the night, for night is dangerous, people here have no relationship with the night, as they want the day to be eternal, for it values anything that has been secret and brings it into the light so that it can be seen by anyone, and seeing is valued by human society, or so one generally thinks, which is why we have symbols, or so we are told. But it doesn’t work, because sorrow is everlasting and is nestled away forever just out of the reach of day, no matter how much light shines on it, but sorrow is locked up and kept invisible, such that evil is not taken seriously, there being nothing that is evil. It’s right that plants should grow amid the dungeon, no one having worked harder to make things thrive than the gardeners here, but it is fresh growth, a lush profusion of leaves that possesses its own time, it being protected, since no one can enter the dungeon, although entry is not forbidden, though the visitor sees that a bar prevents entry into the prison, it being unbelievable that such a peaceful place once hid a prison. Thus, outside in front of the prison one composes one’s thoughts, for there is nothing for the viewer to see on the inside, and so what else can he do? It won’t do any good to barge in, there is nothing there to see that can’t already be seen from the outside, the plaques having already let everyone know what there is to know.
But how was it in the prison? There is nothing to be seen that provides
a clear picture, appearances show only that it must have been lonely and oppressive, the prisoner unable to enjoy the flowers, or the view of the Cornish countryside, the prison a chasm meant to punish, one that should have caused a complete conversion, though that didn’t happen, and so it became a source of shame for the oppressor. It’s a pity for his posthumous reputation that today it’s so peaceful here, for that is not what he sought, but fleeting history has easily whisked away the sins of the powerful Conqueror and precariously transferred them to the control of those he hunted down and tormented. Does Josef indeed understand these ruins? No, he doesn’t, he values the present and doesn’t linger amid the strange memories that mean so much to the English, particularly the people of Launceston and the Quakers, but which to Josef are foreign, he unable to know anything of it, he not a part of it and just here to enjoy the quiet and the view. No one in Launceston knows Josef except the hostess in The Red Bull who took down his personal information in the thick guest book of the small hotel, where peppered cabbage is served up morning, noon, and night, just as it appears to have been served for centuries, the hotel quite old, the door originating from the beginning of the fifteenth century, as a plaque informs one, though who knows how things looked then when the stubborn Quaker was locked up in the castle above and fed only bread and water by the prison warden, while the prisoner would have been happy to have a bowl of cabbage from The Red Bull served up to him each day, though that hardly happened, George Fox perhaps never having heard of this inn that stands no more than ten minutes away from his dungeon. Josef, however, can enter whenever he likes, the door to The Red Bull always open to him, he having only to pay in order to have the right as a guest to sit in the solarium, where he can have a small snack and a drink, or read the paper or a book, no one there to bother him with their views, for the people talk quietly and are discreet, they being quite civilized, only the old worn clock dicing up the time with resonant thrums, striking every quarter hour with four breaking chimes. Josef finds their intrusive beats to be bothersome and hopes that the Quaker elder was spared them, but perhaps he loved clocks and found their disturbing beats a comfort in the dungeon, yet Josef never liked loud clocks, he always wanting the one in the underground hall to remain quiet, he now able at any time to escape the bongs of an English clock, as there are quieter
rooms for the guests, or Josef can go to his room, though it’s not all that homey there, it being an affront to the customs of the land to spend the day there, the room only a place for sleep and unconsciousness, Josef avoiding The Red Bull except at night and during meals.
Josef feels like a stranger and knows he needs to remain so, for he needs for once to be at peace within himself. It’s not his fault that he can’t quite do so, for that is only because he is alive, he is here, and he is always here, which is not an illusion that stubbornly persists, no, it is indeed true and is also so in sleep, everything part of the sleeping state that fills Josef and surrounds him. That’s why it’s fine that the place has a foreign history that Josef hardly knows, and which is not necessary to know any more of beyond what he read on the plaque and considered, it calling out to every visitor to be read and appreciated. For certainly Josef is also free to ignore the plaque, but that would be ungrateful, since this indeed is all there is, there’s nothing more to learn, there’s nothing else to know, what the town fathers pass on to the general public is indeed the proper proportion of what has been left behind, namely matters of historical interest, for which there is also the town library or the Quakers themselves, who might have more information to share. Josef doesn’t need particulars, he’s willing to believe what’s written here and trusts the town of Launceston’s own valuation of the truth, they have made sure that all the dates are exactly right, after which the inscriber took the carefully prepared text and dutifully and reliably carried out his handiwork, someone making sure afterward to compare it with the original before it was installed, the pride and satisfaction in Launceston immense, everyone pleased at last to have the Quaker’s broken past restored, the inhabitants of Launceston now able to quietly go about their daily business, the park with its tower and castle ruin turned over to the care of the gardeners and the attendants.
Josef is at peace with everything here and is even happier here than at the hotel, for he feels better in the park and more readily engaged, sensing a deep connection between the setting and himself, he feeling safer than he has ever felt before, on more solid ground, as if it were a home of his own, although he is only a guest, albeit a welcome stranger, welcomed with ample friendliness, which allows him to feel at home, he knowing for the first time that it is possible to feel at home anywhere once again, a feeling almost forgotten,
as if there were a sunken golden city beneath the castle, with its cathedral and its famous stone bridge running between two towers above a stream. A home and the feel of home, something Josef has not been granted for some time, a painful expulsion that is now chosen, as Josef feels forever cut off from everything back there, where he cannot be, where he does not want to be, where he is supposedly answerable to many layers of public authorities, even after the Conqueror was incinerated, the authorities still feeling they have the power to debate where he should reside, and then he reached the island, passing more than a year of uncertain status here as well, but in the castle grounds of Launceston all such limitations fell away, no one asking him for his papers at the gate, for at last he was simply allowed in. Josef is not demanding anything, he expects nothing more than to be allowed to simply be here, which he appreciates in itself and feels grateful that he has been accepted as someone familiar to this site. He is pleased that no entrance fee is charged for this prison, that it is a free prison, unlike the Spielberg in Brno, or like torture chambers and towers and dungeons throughout the world which people ignobly and shamelessly charge to visit, though no one has a right to demand the merest of coins for the chance to see wretched sites of degradation. That it’s different here likely has to do with the fact that initially Launceston was not a prison but rather a castle that William built and which belonged to several powerful kings, a dungeon also having modestly been incorporated into the castle in order to have a bit of pain contained within its walls and close by, an inconspicuous chamber to the wayside, while the arches and halls of the castle were decorated with the vain pleasures of guest artists, these remaining undisturbed, for, indeed, it is good when a castle has a dungeon, even if in our more fastidious times people complain that, be it the Tower of London or the Bastille, they were also dungeons, though recently such places experienced a sad transformation, helped on by the modern jails that take such torments out of the home of the oppressors that build them.
Josef sleeps, though it is not a normal sleep, he is still conscious. He looks inward and can almost see himself entire, though he doesn’t know whether he can entirely penetrate within, it remains uncertain whether one can know oneself completely, because while it certainly seems impossible to know all else, even one’s true self can seem distant and unknowable. Most
likely nothing is what it is in and of itself, the past exists only within humans, yet in the outer world it is not manifest, which is why in the deepest sense it doesn’t exist, all efforts to conjure it being devices, meditative attempts. It involves only groping in the dark amid uncertainty, nothing true any longer, though it should not be taken as untrue, that can be dangerous for the soul, as one needs to surround oneself with fictions, to look around oneself, which only means to look within oneself. There he will find images that one cannot say if they exist within or are projected without, though they indeed exist somewhere, even if they cannot be precisely placed, the images visible, though they cannot be approached, oneself simply a witness to these images, a witness to oneself, since it’s in the nature of Time that one cannot exist at all, for Time controverts reality, and so Time is always in counterpoint to Being, which is hardly or only partially bound to Time, for even though physical reality doesn’t altogether disappear, space is still devoured by Time. All times and Time itself encompass all spaces or any single space, both being conflated with each other within man’s consciousness, since consciousness needs Time and has no space, while Being needs space and has no Time.
Josef is alarmed by the possibilities resulting from such wayward thoughts, but he can’t keep himself from falling into such thoughts, while as soon as he immerses himself in a thought he wants to rebel against it, but that doesn’t work, for it is always with him, a panorama he cannot escape, himself invited in, no entrance fee required, it taking no effort at all, he is already there, his spot ready and waiting, the only question being whether he wants to open his eyes, though the answer is easy for Josef, he not wanting to protect himself from himself, even when no one is looking. Who in Launceston cares that he has quietly and inconspicuously traveled across the sea? A stranger is allowed to show up unnoticed, he can travel by train or by car, he showing up one day, The Red Bull taking him in, everything in order, it being only for a few days, Josef needing no permission to visit, he knowing neither the town fathers nor their constituents, they knowing nothing of him, Josef nothing more than a chance visitor in Launceston, not a conqueror who wants to build a castle but someone who will leave quietly, carrying his little bag to the train and in the process passing the ruined castle once again. Then everything is over, the chance encounter dissolves in
the end, the history of Launceston and Josef undisturbed by each other, the place not remembering the visitor, though Josef picks up a few postcards and maybe never looks at them again, he certainly throwing away the hotel bill before he climbs onto the train that stops briefly in Launceston proper, Josef then traveling on, leaving Launceston behind after a few minutes, other places appearing, places from the past, where certain acts were committed, where events unfolded, moving ever forward and back again. Which is why it’s good that all of this takes place during sleep, for it’s comforting, they being images that remain for a brief while, a little bell rings, attention, a new image is on the way, or an old one, it’s hard to tell, the overview is lost, nothing but heightened momentary views that continually greet and confront one.