Authors: H. G. Adler
Then the door was closed behind me. With instructions that I couldn’t make out, the jailer handed me over to an attendant, who grabbed my right hand painfully and dragged me off. He stopped in front of a cell, opened a low door through which a ten-year-old could barely walk upright, forced me to kneel down, and gave me such a swift kick that I fell facedown upon the slimy wet floor inside a cagelike room. It was no higher than the door that had already slammed shut behind me.
The cell was empty. I could only sit on the floor, unable to stretch out, because even diagonally the room was shorter than I was. There was nothing there to see except a quietly fluttering ventilator fan that was the only source of air, while from the ceiling a dull lightbulb hung at the end of a wire, barely bigger than the bulb of a flashlight. When I clumsily, but not too harshly, bumped the bulb, the light went out. Now it was dark, for the door was shut so tight that not even the barest of light got through any crack. I despaired that through my clumsiness I had robbed myself of the last comfort available to me in my dungeon, and so I tried with clammy fingers—for I was almost done in, and the thick air was miserably damp—to feel for the lightbulb, which probably wasn’t burned out but had just come loose. Soon I held the glass bulb in my fingers and gave it a twist, but it didn’t work. I grabbed the socket with my other hand, but with no success.
There was nothing to do but surrender to my misfortune, but the dark bothered me more and more, and I thought that if no other comfort was going to be supplied here the light, at least, should work according to prison regulations. All I needed to do was yell in order to get the guard’s attention, and he would come and fix the light. It was to no avail; no one showed up. No one cared about me—no one brought anything to eat or to drink, no blanket to protect me from the cold and damp. Not one thing was provided for my needs. I listened intently for any kind of noise, naïvely imagining that I heard the jangle of a key chain, and, more serious, the cries of someone being mishandled. But nothing broke through the abysmal silence, not even the rumble of the distant train, it was that deadening. All that could be heard was the soft fluttering of the ventilator fan. Although that was not too bothersome, it got on my nerves, for it continued on so monotonously.
What I had had on me or in my pockets had not been taken away, nor had I even been robbed of my watch. There then arose in me the urgent need to find out the time. I had always been one to keep an eye on the time, but never before had I wished so hard to follow its secret unfolding. I was pleased to be able to take my watch out of my pocket, but I couldn’t hear any ticking. I held it up to my ear, but there was no sound. No doubt it had broken when I was shoved into the cell. I couldn’t feel anything wrong with it on the outside, but I wanted to figure out what was broken as best I could, and so I tried to get the light to work once again. When I reached for the wire, I discovered that there was something the matter with it, for I got an electric shock, which, because of the damp, was so strong that it caused me to sit up. I hit my head hard on the ceiling and was dazed, almost falling unconscious, as I sank back down.
I had no idea how long this woozy state lasted, but it seemed to go on for an endless stretch of time. Everything I knew was reduced to nothing; my memory was so worthless that I no longer even knew why I had been placed in custody. I couldn’t account for the reason I was there. Fearful thoughts of being buried alive disrupted my sleep, and I never expected to see the light of day again. Deep pain bored into the hand that had suffered the shock. Certainly I had gotten a nasty burn that, if not cared for, would soon become infected amid all this filth. Perhaps the hand was lost, even if I was rescued. Indeed, there seemed little cause for hope, as, more than likely,
I would only be subjected to new and worse treatment, if not altogether abandoned here to languish in the dark.
Then I decided to change entirely; I wanted to be transformed, to stop being who I was. And yet such a total transformation was not in itself enough: I no longer wanted to be a human being. All consciousness had to disappear. For it was not enough that such a transformation should turn me into something other than a human being if that meant I still felt like a person who was full of memories of suffering that he could not bear.
I rocked back and forth inside my cage, banged against its walls, and became smaller and smaller as a result. I felt a buried strength within me, then I began to dig with my hands. The ground gave way and I touched small clumps of earth, but I could feel that they were breaking up and so I pressed on. It was dirty and tiresome work, but my limbs grew stronger the more I tried, my forehead and my mouth, especially, taking on incredible force. It eventually became clear that I had struck some small stones and roots, impediments that threatened to halt my progress. Yet my focus remained unshaken. By pummeling, scratching, twisting, and biting, I pushed through the mass in front of me and broke it into bits, so that I slowly, yet steadily dug on. As a result, I did not so much move forward as find that I was able to stand taller. It was the urge to stand up and possibly reach the light that spurred me on. I became ever thinner and more pliant, like a badger or a mole, but much more flexible. I had turned into a caterpillar.
At the moment I realized that I had turned into a caterpillar completely, I pushed hard through the dense gravel and was greeted by an unexpected shaft of daylight, which blinded me. Because of the glaring light, I pressed my eyelids together. Exhausted, I sank down. Then I blinked as I ventured to look around, though only for a few moments, because it hurt to do so. I then regretted renouncing all human feelings, though of course I knew that my crazy urge had not been fulfilled. I realized that one would rather die than forsake the roots of his human existence. I had not forsaken my human nature at all; it had just become wretched, my extremities reporting that I was nothing but a raw suffering hulk, and, above all, a body filled with sensations and thoughts that had never disappeared. Instead, they had balled themselves up quite densely, like clumps that had frozen together, simply because they could no longer be shared with others; nor was there another
being to appreciate them. A person does indeed remain a human being, but the world around him no longer takes him for a human being when he is scorned by all groups, and he hardens as a result, concerned with himself alone, unloved and unrecognized.
Such desolate thoughts haunted me as, miserably, I failed to extricate myself from the earth. And so I thought back to everything that had happened recently. I knew that my effort to escape was probably fruitless, for I couldn’t escape the reach of the police. In fact, I heard someone calling me from back in the cell, demanding that I respond and appear immediately. “Arthur Landau! Arthur Landau, report to interrogation! If he’s hiding and doesn’t crawl out right away, then drag him down here straight off!” I sensed the bloodhounds circling, and that my trick had come to an end. In my despair, I rallied all my strength and stood up with a sudden leap. I then shook off the earth and found my footing. And there I stood, in the middle of a garden. It seemed familiar to me as I rubbed my eyes and looked around me, blinking, for I couldn’t believe what I saw. And yet there was no doubt—there I stood in the middle of my own garden. Johanna could not be far off. Magically freed, I wanted to give a fervent shout of thanks. But good as everything seemed to be, my voice had hardly any strength. Upset, I realized that I had celebrated too soon, for the house and garden were surrounded by police officers, their weapons drawn and pointed at me. Then I released a terrible cry, and Johanna shook me from my dream.
That was only one of the many dreams that plagued me, but this one returned again and again, though in slightly different forms. In my room, I bent over my books and writing and couldn’t work, instead staring only at the request to appear before the immigration police, while my inability to shake the nightmarish imaginings that haunted me further undermined my sanity. Johanna wanted to phone the police in order to calm me. It bothered her to see me so intensely upset. Yet when she made such well-meaning suggestions, I was the one who would snap at her and point out that, no matter how insensible my fears were, any such inquiry with the authorities would only make us look ridiculous. Secretly, I also feared that perhaps a harmless disclosure that might be made in the process could lead to more serious trouble if further questions were asked. One should never ask an official anything if it can be avoided, for it will only lead to suspicion. Don’t
attract attention—that’s the central motto of the hunted and the weak, and whoever has survived such persecution without losing his head should never risk having the earthly powers take interest in his activities and freedoms.
Finally, the day of our appointment came. We left Eva two doors down with Mrs. Stonewood, then dropped Michael off at school before riding twenty minutes on the city train. When we came up out of the station it was cloudy, and we walked along slowly. I smoked a cigarette, and every step that took us closer to our destination felt heavy. It was an older, somewhat ostentatious brownstone that we had been summoned to, not the modern building of the immigration department that I well knew stood in the middle of the city. Johanna took me firmly by the hand and pointed to the front garden: cowslips, snowflakes, and tender yellow plants, none of which looked afraid. I forced a smile and agreed that it was nice to have blossoms protected by the police. Johanna said something imprudent, but only with the intention of shaking me out of my stupor with her animated observation that one could be thankful for a country where even the police had not lost the appreciation of the good things in life. This well-meant attempt at diversion made me uncomfortable. The good things in life. A pompous term, which I found tasteless. “You mean flowers, sweet animals, and little children,” I replied sharply. Indeed, the hardest of hearts can’t help being softened by them. The authorities carry out their nasty business without restraint, and take joy in bringing any criminal under the protection of their legal powers. They are prepared for any horror and will murder, if they are allowed to, for they want to perpetuate the right to kill. But then they go all soft and wipe away a tear when they see a little cat that has hurt its paw. Pity is an abominable virtue when it’s a cover for mean-spiritedness. I stood there and didn’t want to move an inch, and spoke as loud as seemed appropriate. Angrily, I wanted to step from the walkway and trample the blossoms in the next bed. “What’s gotten into you?” Johanna asked, and I couldn’t bear the look she shot me, myself at last laughing over the miserable madness that I had yammered on about, feeling ashamed. Willingly, I let myself be led on.
We were shown to the first floor. A hall with huge windows and a balcony door served as the waiting room. At the smaller end of the room, near the entrance, a uniformed policeman presiding over a large battered table
responded cheerily to our greeting, and asked to see our summons and papers. Then he pointed to where we should take a seat among the chairs lined up in wide arcs on three sides of the hall. Already many sat there waiting in what must once have been a very handsome room. All that was left of it was its height, the whitewashed silk coverings that were pulling loose from the walls, and the precious, though somewhat broken plaster on the ceiling that had also been whitewashed. Otherwise, it looked meager and barren, the floor covered with gray felt that had holes in it. Sadly the chairs stood there, one hardly matching another, many of them rickety, and not one of them without a stain. An unlit iron stove—it was good that we had coats with us—stood somewhat near the policeman’s table, the exhaust pipe winding in a crooked fashion out through the lead-covered upper part of a window. Not on the table but rather on a chair near the door was a telephone surrounded by tangled wires, one of which led off through a door panel in order to make some unknown connection somewhere else. Originally, the hall had been larger. Now it was divided by a paper wall constructed of thin laths. This barrier wasn’t quite square with the corners of the walls that ran lengthwise, such that the window side was longer than the other side. Oddly and irregularly, this offensive barrier infringed upon the cold, bleak room, slicing through the ceiling ornament as well.
Men and women of various ages who had been gathered there were tossed together and could see how they filled to bursting the badly arranged, miserable space. But they never came together as a single body. Each sat with his own thoughts and each had a different goal, each being from a different world, be it the fragile little mother, or the hefty young man with swollen cheeks and sullen eyes, or the nicely dressed young lady with dainty feet, or the pointy-nosed pale intellectual. There they sat all together, whether sour or concerned, apathetic or arrogant, good-natured or crude, nothing shared between them but the power of the immigration police, who had only to send off their brief notes in order to haul in little men and little women, this being how they were treated for a number of hours amid their daily business, brought together submissively from every quarter and every major city here in this waiting room, themselves the lost, who can be in the right only by meekly following orders in the hope that their always precarious good standing might last forever.
There was hardly any noise. Only the policeman up front dared say anything aloud whenever a new visitor entered and looked about at the others, clueless and dense. Our guard being good, he called out in a husky voice until the new arrival figured out what to do and was at ease, though still without hope, shuffling over to a vacant chair. Sometimes a second policeman, to whom our guard whispered something, got involved. Usually it was our man who called out the names—four or five at a time, as a rule—when people’s turn came, butchering the foreign ones so badly that confusion would arise. That was harmless fun, pleasing the policeman enormously, for the time went by so slowly, and except for calling out the names, there was hardly anything else to do but now and then pour tea from a huge thermos into an ugly green cup or light a cigarette whose ashes he tapped into an old-fashioned inkwell.