Authors: H. G. Adler
Some heretics are quiet and go their own way without bothering about the letter writers. Among them are nice people who don’t want any enemies. Others are those—it’s not easy to discover them, but nonetheless one senses their presence—who laugh at the letter writers, declaring with mockery that it is superstition and saying that foolish people should make themselves useful, and at least concern themselves with more everyday things than such a pack of received notions that only advance the ridiculous from generation to generation, all of it a barrier to any reasonable explanation. They maintain that a courageous government would ban such nonsense and penalize it. The letter writers feud with and hate these troublemakers, knowing that they enjoy the complete and full protection of the state, though they also fear the evildoers, for the hooligans among them threaten that one day they will raid a mailbox in order to search for the letters and expose this outrageous scam and shameful madness in a pamphlet in order to shine the hard light of day upon it. Yet none had risked doing so, for they were afraid of the law, which threatens the violation of the privacy of letters with harsh penalties. They also want to guard for certain against any such future action, and so all such mockery remains nothing more than a lot of hot wind that reveals its own powerlessness and only scares itself.
One would be pleased to know what happens with the countless letters through which the state pulls in millions each day owing to the high postal rates. What is not known is where the letters end up; only the postal administration could solve this puzzle, but not even the boldest of heretics is willing to question that, and the trust
in the honest work of the post office is boundless. The fact is that the number of mailbox pickups has continually increased in recent years; writing is increasing at all social levels, and the colder it gets. Only in the summers, which grow shorter each year, does this passion decrease a bit, but hardly does autumn arrive than it increases with multiplied fervor. Statistics about the number of letters mailed are not published. Conservative estimates indicate astronomical figures, and reliable experts on the economy assure us that a significant part of people’s means is dedicated to writing supplies and stamps, which for the welfare of the lower classes is critical. Even letter writers on the highest of levels who understand such things fear bad consequences as a result.
Through polls conducted to find out the general opinion of society, it recently and surprisingly came to light that today there are many letter writers who never use the telephone to help search for addresses, and that their number is increasing. Some people don’t have a telephone and yet still want to write letters. It indeed has not escaped anyone’s attention that there could be many reasons that people decline being connected to such a network, but it is assumed that these people are satisfied with their own addresses or they use a stranger’s telephone. But not everyone wishes to disturb his neighbor or to hurry across the street to an unpleasant phone booth. Others don’t like the phone itself, and find it to be soulless, or worry that the operator can overhear them, or avoid the loss of irretrievable time through long phone conversations. Others more mature with years decide, even when they have their own telephone, that they have now collected enough addresses, enough is enough, and thereby they write one letter after another with deeper devotion to those friends they already have. Often, they admonish the young, “Why do you keep writing letters to new recipients and thereby continually increase your troubles? Fewer is wiser. Too much writing results in a flighty and superficial nature. I’m telling you that to be frugal in the number of letters you write is a virtue. Only then can you really succeed in best serving the work itself and compose letters that contain in-depth accounts.”
As one can imagine, the letters differ in appearance in both content and form. From very short ones composed of halting words written in the style of telegrams—often barely the length of a line—to endless sentences that resemble serial novels in their length, you find all levels in between. Many writers reflect their innate or acquired artfulness, many dissemble and write in a consciously different manner than their nature dictates, turning grandiose phrases while sharing everyday events, or formulate tracts marching out in paragraphs like laws or mathematical or chemical formulas, while still others compose tiresome poems with heavy measures that resemble the language of sacred texts, or employ a philosophical diction that demonstrates their learning, their inherent sophistication, their righteousness, their pious nature, though, on the other hand, some formulate a strange and dead language, especially when they supplement this style through dictionaries and grammar, inventing their own language and constructing a secret code whose key is hard to find, also adding drawings and marvelous little pictures, attaching notes or enclosing them separately. They choose small and large formats, they use different inks and pens, having their own letter cases and small hand presses at home, as well as embossing machines for normal print and for Braille. They don’t use just paper but also bast, vellum, birch bark, silk, thin sheets of metal, and many other materials. Some use a stamped envelope with a return address and even include an empty sheet of paper for the convenience of the recipient, on which there is often a prepared response that the friend would have only to sign and return. What the content of the letters is can never be told. Both the general and the personal in lively exchange, sketches of nature or worries about love, homespun accounts and troubling questions, reprimands and confessions, requests and recommendations, familiar gossip and memory-laden reminiscences, essays on the everyday, trusted secrets, weather reports, business worries, announcements of happy or sad events, memories, nonsense, recipes, jokes, warm conversation, deep-seated fantasies—all of it makes up a vast and varied assortment.
So it goes, year in and year out. The urgency rises, matters get more pressing. Nonetheless, to this day not the least change has been made in this immense activity and its emotional costs, the marvel of which is difficult to express. Whoever considers it realizes that very little has changed, perhaps even nothing. Letters are written, but perhaps too few are written, or maybe too many, and it could be that one should never have begun writing them at all. You continually await a response, whether annoyed or undaunted, and sometimes you say aloud, “If only a single writer could get a single response, even if it was just a word, an empty page!” But, as experience tells us, you cannot expect that a response will ever come; the countries get larger, the borders are farther, the urgency rises tremendously, the desire for news persists bitterly into nothingness, while, at the same time, loneliness gets ever deeper and larger. It’s pointless, today more so than yesterday, and tomorrow likely more so than today, but this doesn’t keep cold humanity from waiting with determination and concentrated patience for the great miracle to occur.
Winter gets colder and longer each year. Now the assertion is casually made that the desire for a response increases with the cold, because it is believed that by attaining the longed-for relationship with one’s friends the ice age will pass. The letter writers are mistaken, but they cannot admit it to themselves or to one another, for they wish to live and affirm themselves, they want to survive and achieve something, they having persevered from generation to generation, which has encouraged them to think that eventually they will be saved. They sit at home in their lairs and wait to be called, dreaming of the day when they can leave behind the awareness of good and evil, and at last be able to say to the unknown familiar recipient of their letters, “Lord, where are you?” But, as long as the Lord does not answer, each person affirms each day the truth of the ancient legends—namely, that each letter is like that first attempted toss of a stone at a lost Paradise.
When I first wrote down this story it was not as clear, least of all to me. I had conceived it as an allegory of a general fate that certainly said something
about my own disposition but was not particularly attached to it. Meanwhile, my relationship to this story had evolved. It had conveyed something about me, I had grown fond of it, and I’d learned something from it. There was a lot that was still missing from it, and that I had to accept without totally giving in to such judgment, for it was important not to let my efforts go to waste. To give in but not to give up—that’s what was needed. To slam into the wall as if it were not there, to flatter and play about with it, as if it would let itself be conquered, yet to acknowledge it and not doubt such knowledge of it, accepting that it’s pointless to do so and will probably always be pointless. To exit the most secret depths with great vigor, as if victory were assured, and let myself be battered and defeated, pushed back, back into the hidden recesses! To hope for nothing and then to invoke the wondrous as if what I had never dared hope were already guaranteed. To write letters but not to expect an answer, though not to waste one’s desires by the hour writing to false idols but, rather, only to make a plea out of a continually obsessed conscience, a plea directed at someone beyond all borders.
This I did not grasp when I first arrived in the metropolis. I had left the country of my home and my parents, and it was right to do so, for I didn’t belong there anymore, as everything there had been destroyed, everything that I loved and needed, it all giving nothing back to me but, on the contrary, taking much more away by shutting me out, and because I knew that it faced a coming perdition that I believed I did not have to partake in, or could prevent, since it was no longer my perdition, nor should it rob me of my success, dignity, and existence, myself craving the chance to gain these very items in order to live again. This alone was a mistake. I also didn’t want to search for anything in the areas bordered by the mountain woods but, rather, far away from the shadows cast by extermination, in order to find a way to break free, to live, to accomplish something. This I failed to do. Whether that was good or bad I had no idea back then. Only Johanna could see from the beginning how it was with me, but she hid it from me, for she wanted to spare me. She also did not share her views with others, as she was afraid to hurt me through such insinuations.
Besides, because of my aggressive behavior and my outwardly healthy look (one saw this in many who had survived the same conditions that I had experienced in the war), people believed in my vigor. However, because of
this belief people found it easy not to be concerned with me at all. All one had to do was be nice to this Landau character, and that was all it took, for he didn’t really need any help. Those who first called themselves my friends, such as So-and-So and others in the country, pulled away from me more and more with each passing month. Some avoided me; others beat about the bush, put me off, or informed me that I really needed to learn the ropes, that I would first have to learn how things worked here, and that it would have been better if I had come over before the war or at least immediately after it. But if I was now in the country and wanted to stay there, then there was no way that I should stay in the metropolis, where it was too expensive and hectic, since people with even more talent and skills than myself could not make a go of it. Academics had to live in shameful conditions, or they carried on doing undignified jobs, so who was I to think that as a nonresident I could simply get a post as a sociologist?
If I listened patiently to all of this and tried to appease the one giving such advice, then the allegations doubled, whether it be about what made me think to come here in the first place or that perhaps America was an option, but here, no way. As if I hadn’t explained it all a hundred times before, I would then carefully lay it out so that they could finally understand. They would nod, say yes, now they understood, but it was too bad that I didn’t go back where they needed me in the museum. Then they would pretend to sympathize with my view that, because of the chilly relations that had descended after the recent revolution, one lived as if in jail over there. Nonetheless, they would suggest that I saw things too bleakly, as there were certainly thousands of people there who were not at all unhappy. There must be millions of people who stayed behind, so it couldn’t be all that bad, and I shouldn’t take it all so seriously and needed to keep from getting caught up in so much talk about politics, nor should I totally rule out returning. Well, then, one really shouldn’t talk about it if it’s so upsetting. What I should really do is see to it that I regroup, as they called it, to quickly move to a little town where it was cheap and I could support myself and Johanna by teaching German or by entering some other useful profession, while, by the way, it would have been a lot smarter for her not to have given up her job months earlier than she really had to. Recalling Johanna’s condition—namely, when she was pregnant with Michael—they felt that I
was irresponsible and were angry with me. To have a child as a have-not, that was criminal and crazy. I should just make sure to push on soon overseas to America, for there the rich Uncle Karl could help us.
After many months of pointless pleas and begging, I finally succeeded in getting Professor Kratzenstein to meet with me. However, he didn’t invite me to his apartment but instead met me at the offices of the International Society of Sociologists. I appeared punctually with several of my works in hand, as had been arranged. The building is situated in a quiet, genteel street. An attendant greeted me from his desk at the foot of the stairs and said to himself when I told him whom I was there to see, “Professor Kratzenstein? That’s too bad.” Today he apparently had no time at all, one meeting after another, in addition to which he had an unexpected visitor from Rome. The attendant would have been happy to set me out on the street, but I insisted so forcefully and continuously about having an appointment today and at this time that he finally gave in and called the Professor’s secretary. After a long discussion, I was to go up. As another attendant led me up the white-carpeted steps to the second floor and along a long hallway to the room, I shouldn’t have felt any sense of triumph, for the woman acknowledged that I did indeed have an appointment, but, unless I was willing to make one for a different day, I would have to, as she said emphatically, wait a good while, as the Professor was really overwhelmed today, and was in an important meeting and was not to be disturbed. How long I’d have to wait she couldn’t tell—perhaps an hour, maybe less, but it could also take longer. Afterward, there was also a meeting that could not be moved, but the beginning of it could be pushed back a bit, and before it started the secretary, wishing to answer my pressing request, promised to see if the Professor could give me a quarter of an hour. The secretary offered me a chair, and so I sat there lost in the middle of the room and could only look on as she worked away at her typewriter.