The Wall (34 page)

Consumed by such doubts I turned to Peter and subjected myself, more indulgently than I should have, to his judgment, he being someone who was often afflicted with cleverness. He was indeed good-natured, sincere, agreeable, but also a small, even narrow-minded soul. He also led a life that often bothered me. He was inclined to random lies and little dishonesties, though these things were probably also harmless and even forgivable. Sometimes it had nothing to do with anything bad but was, rather, just a meaningless fib shared while bragging, for which one couldn’t get at all mad at Peter. And yet if he was really annoying, Anna—who through Hermann was distantly related to him—had to talk to him and straighten him out, not holding back any reproaches, eventually getting to his more forgiving nature and engaging it. I granted him no real power over me, for I guarded myself against it, but I still surrendered too much of myself to him. His certainty, which felt good to me, must have replaced or stood in for mine, as he had a hold on me, causing my strength and will to fail, he fighting with the authorities on my behalf, helping me to find my way, clearing away anything uncomfortable, and I can attest that it would have been hard to survive the postwar years even halfway well without him. Peter was stateless, which at that time was a rare piece of luck for him, just as his family background served him as well after the war as before the years of occupation, because through his father he is still a part of the people persecuted and oppressed in the name of victory, while through his mother, on the other side, he is part of another people in whose name many similar, yet more intense, nasty things were done earlier. Thus Peter has escaped many dangers, having successfully held his own during all the confusion of the war, but now having to free his bride from prison and to find the most convenient means of getting her across the border and home. His luck or his cleverness often helped the much less endangered Anna and also was of use to me.

Sometimes it feels wrong to have relied and counted on Peter so
much, although I condemned his shenanigans. They were outrageous, but I couldn’t do without him. What Anna did for me, what I let her do, was worth so much more to me, though I didn’t tell her about many of the woes that I suffered, for I didn’t want to overburden her. But Peter always took care of things, I have to admit, for he was tireless. Nothing that I asked of him was too much. Very often it was me who lacked the ego, the kind of versatile, practical approach necessary for all situations, and a stand-in for the man I was not. Peter also served as a stand-in rooster among the hens he strutted about with, and which he even occasionally offered to me, though when he told his stories about his girls I found it disgusting. Since I shared a room with him, it was sometimes hard not to know, but Peter, who spared me with a quiet smile, always had a solution. Once he went out with his most recent choice, letting me know the time that I should stay clear of the room, sometimes putting me up with friends of his for the night. I went along with it all and was ashamed, the more so as his bride, whom he several times visited on the sly during lucrative ventures, had asked me, when she said goodbye before crossing the border and returning home, to keep an eye on Peter and make sure that he “didn’t stray,” as she described his hardly loyal ways. That’s why I spoke to him in good conscience and pretended to be his guardian in carrying out the most pitiable role I’d ever taken on. If he was in a good mood, he listened to me and acted as if he agreed with everything I said, but when I finished talking he shook my hand trustingly and too strongly and presented me with a broad smile spreading across his entire face. Thereby I became helpless, without anything with which to respond. He undermined my ethos and forced me, without ever verbally agreeing, to look on at his activities with patient good will and leave him alone for at least a week.

That was the guy, sixteen years younger than me, who controlled me and turned me into a willing witness to his strange way of life. It was as if I didn’t exist. What Johanna experienced later and had to endure, since there was nothing else left for her to do if she didn’t want to leave me, this I had given over to Peter consciously. I handed over to him what I was not, in order that I could be, and therefore my gratitude to him remains intact, even if I never wish to see his face again. Most likely, I will be spared that. It points, however, to a great difference between my relationship with him
back then and the way I am with Johanna. Johanna makes it possible for me to exist, if only through her. Because she takes on my weight, carries me along, and lends me at least the shadow of an existence. It was different with Peter, who really lived for me. He didn’t at all worry if I could be something but, rather, he was simply me. It was all for me, and this resulted in an abysmal dependency, because everything he did for me was more than just done in my stead; it was I in the midst of his being. I couldn’t answer for it, because there was no answering for it, especially as I had no chance to determine it, except in very limited ways, even though he used me as justification for his behavior.

I don’t know how a relationship such as that between me and Peter could otherwise occur. A friendship, if that means a high measure of affection and trust, never existed between us. Back then, my desperate state on the first evening set everything in motion, which then evolved within a few days to almost the closest of relations that I had ever had with another person. I still see Peter approaching as I lay on the pavement in my misery, until he stood there before me and reached out his hand. He pulled me up, he being strong enough to do so, me at his mercy, entrusting myself to the guidance of a stranger who had charge of me and my things as long as I was in his country. He occupied me, but he didn’t control me. Do I still know how it was? It was indeed so: he held me with a strength inside of which I was weak, where everything quivered away incapacitated, but my frailty, this state I had come to feel at home in, this Peter hadn’t seized at all. That was what separated me from him and prevented his helpful grasp from becoming too unbearable. That’s how Peter could do a great deal for me, and yet not everything. That also explains how my relationship with him could so quickly and easily dissolve, as if it never existed. All it took was for me to leave the country. If Peter had not helped me so much, I would still be stuck there today, provided I was still alive, wasting away among my senseless days in the museum.

Three years after my departure, which involved almost insurmountable difficulties in order to get away from there, Peter also left the city and country as part of an adventurous escape. Certainly it all went much more peacefully than my well-regulated departure. Because of what had happened to me in the war, I had forfeited all my papers, most of which could be replaced
only through a lot of running around and even some clever bribery. Peter took care of it all. Passes were filled out and granted, with random stipulations that prevented me from entering any civilized country simply because of my mother tongue. Peter knew how to get around anything, for he wheedled, swindled, and juggled questionable documents until at last I had a passport, without which I never would have been issued a visa to the country I wished to travel to. Also, Peter was the one who taught me what to do in order to get hold of the coveted visa. Without him I would have had to keep hiking, just as on the mountain trip with Anna, hiking over the border, at peril because of my frailty, from one non-country to another, leaving almost everything behind—my writing and the squalid memories on which my heart hung. How easy it would have been to remain stuck there and fall into the hands of the border patrol. Alas, that anxious dream that still haunts me today, caught in the border’s meshes until squeezed of breath … Always the desire to escape and the anxiety before the escape, the pressure to escape and the impossibility of escape! Then the need to shoo away doubt that you existed, that you were alive and could make something of yourself …

Peter had spared me the hardest decision. Can it be that he only delayed it and burdened me with it forever? I will never decide, for it’s long been decided. It could also be that Peter simply made it easier for me by rendering me stateless, handling it all selflessly. Or not? Did he not want me to stay? No, such ideas meant nothing to him. So I really believe he did it out of selflessness, for he got nothing out of it by acting for me. It must have been clear to him that with my departure he relinquished me and all rights to me. He did it. He wanted to use me, not to annihilate me. It was his most touching act, to sacrifice me; it was a genuine surrender. That’s why it would be unjust of me to lay out his shortcomings. When amid Johanna’s protection I maintain his memory, I wish only to be grateful to him, no matter how difficult things are. It would be deplorable to point to his weakness in order to avenge myself for having abased myself before him. Peter, can you hear? Would you like a letter from me so that you can better recall?

Dear Peter, I have long held off writing you a letter and am only now doing so because Johanna also agrees that I have to overcome such hesitancy. But now it’s a moot point, because I will not write to you in the way I should have then, except for a few stupid lines after my arrival here, which
you never answered, followed by the printed notice, which I went ahead with against the wishes of Johanna, in order to announce my marriage to all the world. You acknowledged such news somewhat frivolously with witty good wishes. I was angry with you. No, I won’t write to you, although I am in fact doing so, for you are no longer alive for me and have no effect upon me. I’m pleased to learn, as Anna shared with me, that you have married a girl, even if it’s not the former bride whom you left behind at home, and that you are living a prosperous life in New Zealand, while, hopefully, in between you have also become more mature. Publicity people with thousands of lurid ideas, such as yourself, are certainly in demand over there. If that isn’t at all the case, I still know that it’s no doubt easy for you to sell your talents as advantageous to others, such that they are proud to take advice from you. And so things are excellent for you.

You no longer have me, that’s true, but be comforted—oh, you are already comforted—because that’s no loss. With Johanna, who best helps me to see what I can expect, I have found great good fortune, even if she is not blessed with those qualities which will bring our union certain supreme material success. Johanna has two children, to whom she is the best of mothers. She does only what she can, though she would be the first to admit that she cannot do all the things you could do. Some months before our boy was born she had to give up her job, and since then she has mainly busied herself with taking care of the house, while I am always with her. Two do-nothings—that’s not your style. Your wife no doubt makes a tidy sum, true? I would hardly recognize you! With us, it’s different. I can’t speak about such matters with Johanna, for she’s very sensitive; and she has every right to feel hurt. Nor is it exactly true that we’re do-nothings, certainly not Johanna, for she never quits. Children are work, and a husband like me doubles the load. So I remain a do-nothing who sits and looks on as time passes, watching it go by.

I love most to sit at my desk and pretend to seem very busy, the walls protecting me as I look furtively out the window. It’s a broad window, with five panes, that looks quite posh, it almost seeming a treasure. From there nothing in the street escapes me. I see many people, children who frivolously don’t pay attention to the cars racing by, kicking their balls from one sidewalk across to another and then suddenly jumping into the roadway without
thinking. I also look across at the windows opposite, where birdcages hang, the yellow companions flitting around inside the bars and belting out their song with powerful throats. I look into the windows and at the street full of faces that have long since become familiar, such that I could tell you at any time just what kind of mood each one is in. This lingering and gazing is my main occupation, nothing very productive, but it suits me well. The people who know me have a keen sense of how deplorably and dissolutely I pass the time, and they judge me and feel sorry for poor Johanna, who is touched by such sympathy. She is mainly of the view that my observations are valuable. She praises my efforts and the days well spent and protests when I’m criticized. May her sincere belief in me always remain! She maintains that it’s not my fault that I’ve been denied the proper attention and support, and she’s angry about it, for hardly anyone notices. My knowledge and capability lie fallow, and I am unjustly denied the kind of engagement I deserve. Clearly, Johanna cannot come to terms with it all.

If you were here you would, I’m guessing, soon make fundamental changes. The snooty ladies and gentlemen, who represent everything counter to what I already stand for, you’d set straight in no time by making them see what asses they are, while I am a genius. You would make something of me; I have no doubt of that. Nevertheless, I’m glad that you’re not here and that, as a result, I am—you love strong words—a complete wreck. That’s always preferable to me than being at the vineyard, spoiled by you. I realize things should be much different for the children, but they hardly go without. They are growing and are healthy; they have what they need.

Dear Peter, but how can you exist without me? You must miss me; we talked so well. But no, there’s no need for such worry, because certainly you don’t need me. Whoever exists doesn’t need someone else. Like a dachshund, you certainly follow the trail. Don’t you remember? You didn’t need me there either but, rather, it was always the other way around. Do you recall how you used to shake with laughter, as finally, after many weeks of tense waiting for a response from So-and-So, a letter arrived? You handed it to me as I came home late one night. You hadn’t opened it, although I allowed you to open any mail addressed to me. I told you that it didn’t bother me at all. As I pounced with curiosity on the letter—a long epistle typed on a terrible machine with a miserable colored ribbon—you went into the
kitchenette and brewed some coffee. You could deal with any unpleasantry and always worked to hold yourself in check whenever you wanted to oblige me. “Call me when you need something,” you said, and shuffled off to the foyer and the bathroom. Then you were right there, with a jaunty step, the moment I called you. The coffee was done, you filled two cups, I should drink some right away. I must have been quite confused, which amused you. You were a rascal, yet you also displayed your funny sympathy, slapping me on the back as if to reassure me that it couldn’t be that bad, as I reread the letter—which I had rushed through in my excitement—one more time, slowly, from beginning to end.