The Wall (45 page)

“I just thought that we had talked about seeing each other again, no? And I even thought, That would be rather nice, don’t you think so? So, to get to the point, Fräulein Zinner, could we sometime soon …”

She didn’t think long before agreeing. But when? I thought to myself, She should decide that, as I don’t know when she is free.

“You know what, Herr Landau, are you perhaps free now? That would likely work best for me.”

“Yes, if you’re not already busy …”

“If I were, I wouldn’t be suggesting it.”

She asked where I was at the moment, and when I shared the name and address of my guesthouse she explained, which I knew already, since I had looked at the city map, that we were in luck, for I was only five minutes away from the Search Office. She wanted to tell me the way there, but I interrupted her, as I knew already which way to go. Then she asked if I could come right away, and I answered that I could be there in ten minutes. That was fine with Fräulein Zinner; she knew of a cheap restaurant that served good food. There you could linger after finishing your meal, which was rare for this country. If it was all right with me, she would like to invite me to dinner there. She had no patience for affectation, and so it was agreed.

I ran up to my room and got myself ready, trying to straighten out my reluctant hair as best I could. In front of the mirror, I realized that I had again neglected to get my hair cut. But there was nothing to be done about it now; perhaps I could improve this mess by wearing a nice tie.

I owned three splendid ties from before the war which bore the label “HAL—Haberdashery Albert Landau.” In a package that my father’s old
salesman had given me, I found these ties. “Herr Landau,” the man had said, “I’ve heard nothing from your father. He was afraid that they would come and search my house. But your dear wife gave me this package. She said I should take care of it as best I could, for there were things inside it that her husband had written which were irreplaceable.” Indeed, Franziska had saved my work, for I found everything, including my almost completed doctoral thesis, by which I hoped to become a lecturer, and in the middle of all those papers there suddenly appeared three ties, carefully wrapped, like new, myself having hardly even worn them or able to remember them. They were the only things still left of my old clothes, and they were also from the Reitergasse. When I was given them, several months had passed since my return, and I was no longer so sensitive about things almost long gone, yet I could hardly bear the sight of these ties. I felt them, pressed their heavy silk between my fingers, though they didn’t wrinkle as I gazed at them in earnest and worried that I was handling them too roughly. Then I wrapped the ties awkwardly in tissue paper and that night brought them home from the museum. I offered them to Peter, because they didn’t suit me.

Peter laughed at me, calling me an ass, since at first I had pined after lost things, but when chance placed them in my hand I behaved like an impudent child and wanted to give away the ties. I said that I knew I would never touch them. My words didn’t sway Peter, for he maintained that it would be much worse if he wore them, for then I would have to see them on him, to which I replied that it wouldn’t bother me all that much, for after a while I would get used to it. I fended off Peter’s suggestions and brought the stupid matter to a close. I firmly rejected all advice, but secretly I felt a pang of envy, feeling ever more unsure of my own position and having to keep from growing angry if I were to sway Peter with my lame talk. Despite his ribald, even coarse response to such imponderably fine matters of tact, he suddenly had an idea and most decidedly turned away the goods that had been offered him. “You have a box. Put them in it and then into the closet. Don’t look at them, and stow them away! Someday you’ll be glad.” I actually played agonizingly with the idea of giving the ties to someone else (Geschlieder would have been happy to have them), but instead I talked on in order to annoy Peter, who no longer listened to me but instead just yanked the ties away from me and put them in the box, which he carefully
closed and tossed into my drawer. There it remained until shortly before my departure. While cleaning out my desk, I found the ties, which pleased me, and so I carefully packed them.

The wardrobe that I managed to put together after the war was meager and a mixed bag. Decent new things were not to be found, while, in accordance with what was due me as a survivor, I rarely received anything useful in the shops, sometimes nothing at all or badly made versions of discontinued goods that wouldn’t hold a crease. Some things I had to take from Anna in order not to upset her, mostly clothing, though it was painful for me to walk around in Hermann’s clothes, my skin on fire with them, it being almost impossible for me to wear them. I also got some things from those who had disappeared, though in most of them I looked like an ill-fit beggar whose poor Uncle Alfred was too rotund, it being a shame what I had to put up with. Then I had a few things that were better which were given to me here and there, whether handed out through charity organizations or sent from abroad. Uncle Karl Strauss from America—I never wrote to him, but Peter had dictated a letter to me—wanted to ease his conscience by sending a package that contained many things that didn’t fit, nor were even good for trading with others.

Thus I arrived in the metropolis poorly outfitted, where luckily I didn’t stick out, or at least I so imagined, because not much depended on my appearance. In addition, most of the people here seem dressed shabbily enough. But now I cared about how I was dressed, as I wanted to look dapper, more meticulous than I was at Haarburger’s. I looked for what best suited me, for I would be with Fräulein Zinner and didn’t want to appear pitiable or too poor. I needed different shoes, So-and-So having sent me a good pair when he was once in a good mood, then the lovely ripped sweater that Anna had knitted for me out of reserves of fine old wool, though the most important was what tie I would choose. It was then that my three new ones stood me in good stead, I having not yet worn any of them. I lay them on the bed in order to have a good look at them. They lay there almost untouchable, humble and patient, seductive and repellent at the same time, while I felt gratitude welling up, my fingertips stroking the silk, their history no longer mattering to me, as I was lost in the inane idea that in the paltry male garb of the century only the tie was used to display any flare and
convey one’s personality. Smugly I said to myself, “They’re just the trick for your shaken self-confidence.”

Finally I selected a tie that seemed to me the most sumptuous and stoked my vanity the most, a dark-red one, made of heavy silk with a touch of yellow in it. Carefully I tied the knot; it didn’t sit right. Then I did it again in front of the mirror, which is not my habit. The knot swelled up like a big piece of fruit. An Adam’s apple, it occurred to me, and I laughed, though I quickly looked away from the mirror in order not to see my contorted mouth. I was ashamed of my vanity; but what good did it do, for I couldn’t just do things halfway. I shook off with annoyance the faint disgust with myself that rose up with my having so shamelessly primped myself. I almost jumped with crude pleasure, it seeming as if the inert wall of my feelings was pleasantly taken by surprise, or, better yet, that I had tricked it, for already I new that such an onslaught could not last very long without being punished and avenged. If I can just get through today, I thought, then I’ll be pleased and will face the consequences later, for I had committed treason by trying to overstep my own poverty, my position in the world having been given up in order that I could strut like a peacock in borrowed finery for a few hours—indeed, innocuous finery whose glow burned within me. The red fabric that I had wound around myself was so tight around my throat that it could strangle me. Was that Adam’s second fall, the fall caused by the consciousness of his sins? I pressed a hand between my collar and neck; it was an unusual grip that reminded me of my mother when she reached into her high-buttoned blouse in order to straighten out her necklace. I pulled at the collar in order to reassure myself that there was enough space to breathe freely, even if I suddenly swelled up. Then, struck by it all, I told myself how childish and pathetic this game was, and debated whether to choose a more modest tie made of artificial silk or wear this one; but indeed I would stick with the sumptuous one, it was decided.

I finally turned from the mirror and saw my father before me, a depressing old man with tears in his eyes for the lost son and a hand lifted as blessing. I couldn’t bear such despair any longer, either my father’s despair or my own, and so I closed my eyes in order to free myself from this vision. It worked. I saw nothing else before me. Then I grabbed my hat and coat and quickly left the room. When I closed the door, it slipped from my hand
and shut with a thud, something my father would never have done. He was gone. I no longer stood within his power, though I was also no longer under his protection. As I passed through the hall below, my glance fell upon my watch, and I was shocked to realize that I had wasted at least ten minutes with the tie and other stupid things in my room. I should have been at Fräulein Zinner’s a while ago, and I was worried whether she would be upset by my lack of punctuality, since nothing is worse than to have to wait for an appointed visitor. Impatient and brusque, as I thought she was, she had perhaps given up on waiting and had already gone home.

I walked along the streets and was happy that they were not crowded, but what didn’t help was the darkness of the strange metropolis, which only increased my already deep uncertainty and nervousness. In this country of coal, no lights burned in the side streets because of a shortage of coal. I was worried that I would get lost and was only reluctantly willing to ask someone for directions, since I often found that the advice I got was not all that good. How different it had been back there, where, no matter where you were, you could ask someone and he would be eager to help and send you on your way, whereas here it had usually been my experience that, because of my terribly heavy accent, I either couldn’t be understood or I didn’t understand the answer, or people reassured me that they themselves were not from around here, having just arrived and not being familiar with the area or something similar—it was a city full of strangers, there seeming not to be any natives—or it happened thus, which was the most painful for me, that I was shown the way, but such that even intersections and corners that I should watch out for were listed, though they would prove not to be there. Then I would end up lost in some neighborhood that hardly anyone walked through, not a soul to be found anywhere to take pity on me, making sure not to let go of my flashlight as I fervently pointed it at houses, garden fences, and street corners, never finding addresses or house numbers, wandering around for hours before someone finally helped me find my way out of my quandary.

Back there one can no longer live, I thought, and here I’m forbidden to live or am simply not wanted, a hopeless life of confusion in which the best city map, here known as an atlas, is of no use, since the almost endless flatlands were broken up into individual fields across one hundred and twenty
pages on which I found it hard to locate myself, and the tiny printed names of the streets, especially in the dark, could hardly be deciphered. It was cold, a bad winter having settled in, but I wandered about in my confusion feeling hot and sweaty, miserable and hopeless. Yet today it wasn’t quite as bad, for I had learned my way so well in the past days that it was hard for me to lose my way. At every intersection and turn I stopped, considered, and reckoned where I was in order that no mistake got me into trouble. Thus I succeeded at reaching my destination without any trouble after a while, which to me felt like too long a time, though it couldn’t have lasted more than eight minutes. It was Ivanhoe House, a somewhat neglected magnificent building; the massive portal stood open, behind it the hall laid out with heavy marble tiles and lit up.

I stood before the gate for a moment because I had gotten hot. I didn’t want Fräulein Zinner seeing me so breathless, with a knocking heart and weak knees. Yet it was late; I couldn’t wait any longer, even if my condition was hardly any better. I walked on. An old porter looked out from his booth and tried to stop me before I even told him what I wanted, saying I should come back tomorrow, as office hours were already over. I was so shocked that I immediately stopped. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t find the words to make myself convincingly understood in the foreign tongue. The man waited, disinterested, for a little while and then, as if I hadn’t heard right, repeated his shocking announcement.

“You must be wrong, I’m expected!” I said out loud and yet meekly.

“That’s different,” he said, nodding. “You should have said that from the start.”

The man was an old codger; how was I supposed to say anything to him, since right away he had overwhelmed me with his surly speech? He looked me over carefully, yet in a friendly manner, and seemed to be waiting for me to say something further. I, however, was also waiting, for I didn’t want to get myself into more trouble. So I forced him to ask a question himself.

“Who are you here to see?”

“Fräulein Zinner, International Bureau for Refugees, Search Office, Section …”

“She’s certainly already gone. Try again tomorrow, but before five!”

I doubted it was my fault that I had missed my appointment.

“That can’t be possible! I am expected! I just spoke to her on the telephone twenty minutes ago!”

“That’s different. You should have said that in the first place.”

Again the porter nodded approvingly and wanted to know my name. He turned to a telephone and dialed carefully. It took a while before he reached Fräulein Zinner, but then he announced that everything was okay, he being as happy as I was, for he was pleased at his accomplishment and that I was the beneficiary.

“On the fifth floor!” the porter said, calling out the room number. “The entry to the right. You’ll find it. Normally you could take the elevator, but after five it doesn’t work. It’s turned off.”