Authors: H. G. Adler
These observations proceeded until we encountered an old man, who looked at me inquisitively and appeared to recognize me. I was unsure and didn’t remember him at all, though I greeted him warmly as if I knew him. Landau, the man said happily, it’s Landau; then I recognized the voice. It was Professor Hilarius Prenzel, my old high-school teacher. He was happy to see me, thinking that he would not see me alive again, for he thought that before the war I had fled abroad. Manners dictated that I introduce the Levers to Prenzel. I wanted to quickly ask for my teacher’s address, and I promised him I would visit him soon. No, no, insisted my professor, for he would not accept that I was unavailable right now. In order to do something with the man and woman, I assured him I would and tried to say goodbye. But Prenzel wasn’t willing to give me any consideration and wouldn’t let me go. I turned toward Herr Lever while making silent gestures explaining that I was meeting someone after many years, and he finally assured me that a few minutes didn’t matter. Prenzel could not believe how I had changed, but a good teacher recognizes his students even after decades. Everything had changed, he said sadly, the entire city, only the empty shells of buildings still there, which soon no one would recognize, a fading history that was hardly
perceivable any longer. Only a few of his students were supposedly there, some having emigrated, others having been hauled off or gone off to war, whether killed or captured, hardly any more left, and whoever was there had to or wanted to leave. And did I know anything about my classmates? No, nothing, no more contact, nor did I know what had happened to them, only Arno Seiler. Yes, Arno Seiler, he remembered him. Whatever happened to him? Unfortunately, not much. He became political, then was killed. And the students from other classes? Recently, a letter from So-and-So—that’s Leonard Kauders. He had sent along greetings to Prenzel. Oh him, that’s nice, for he was the best in his class at history, though he wasn’t always that good with dates. Thank him for the greetings, and return my warmest. Everything has changed, Landau, everything, really everything. And Prenzel himself, did he have to leave? No, he could stay because of his wife, and there was also a nice nephew who had influence.
That was comforting news that I took as a chance for me to leave. Yes, I would be in touch, I promised for sure, but now I had to hurry off. During this conversation, which had at first made them uncomfortable, Herr and Frau Lever had slowly gone on ahead, then stopped and looked back expectantly at me. I tore myself away from Prenzel, who called after me, “Landau, you yourself are a piece of a past that no longer exists. Be well!” Ah, that old saying of his, which I hadn’t heard in a long time, long gone, and yet still there—a passage that still resounded in my ears! Exhausted, I suppressed a sense of disorientation as I reached my museum guests. Herr Lever waved away my apology and began to go on again about how little had changed. If you looked around here, who could say that it wasn’t just yesterday that you had been here, and that’s why everything seemed the same as ever. He was quiet a moment, before he went on reflectively, saying, Yes, if you were here the entire time—the old man being someone who looked like someone who was here when the foreigners came and later left—then it probably felt completely different, which is why you needed to hear such opinions. After the encounter with Prenzel, I was even less prepared to share my own views—which were never at all fixed—with the couple from Johannesburg, and so I just talked in vague general terms, saying how it seemed changed, or not changed, one could take it any which way, which made it hard to say what it was really like; it depended on how you looked at it.
Herr Lever wasn’t satisfied; my evasions bothered him. I should not
be so reserved, here, have a cigarette, and would I say that I could feel as comfortable in the city as I used to? I let on that you really couldn’t say, in general, and then, of course, there were the people. Certainly, the people, he said pensively, that seems the essential question, for they have been scattered across the world. The world used to be so large when people lived in a city and hardly ever left it, but now the world is indeed small, because people travel all over, home now being on the road, the good fortune of the airplane and the fast pace of news, but then you see the city, and once again everything is there, the question being whether one was ever away. I thoughtlessly agreed. I had heard similar talk so often, all of it riddled with helpless surprise, and that it was hard to see that something had collapsed, if only because the empty shells of buildings, as Prenzel knew, were not just carted away as rubble but, rather, the stones were still cemented together with strong mortar. And so out of the distance there arrived the weary, needy look of the former inhabitants, who wanted to see the old school, where there were neither old teachers nor the old students—alas, Prenzel brought this truth home to me even more sharply—while the visitors, with their clumsy halting steps, but otherwise not unafraid, were happy, not looking at all embarrassed and carrying themselves as if they knew everything, and wanting me to take note of that. I just needed to confirm that their overbearing confidence was justified. It was all quite correct, and, as for any doubts—no, I only had to reassure them.
“The main thing, Herr Lever, is that you’re happy here. It really doesn’t matter whether it changed or not.” Frau Lever said this in a cheery manner, as if she wanted to intercede between me and her husband. “In the end, it’s all just a matter of opinion.”
While talking thus, we reached the hermitage. I unlocked it, turned on the light, and the couple stumbled a bit, as most strangers did, on the steps into the foyer, where they were greeted by old copper pots and washbasins with outstretched arms and open splayed hands ready to receive alms. Like everyone else I had brought here, the guests stood there looking somewhat lost. The result was an unease that was slowly lifted only when I began to talk and explain. But this time I didn’t hurry to do that; instead, I drew out that feeling at a slow pace in order to present their lighthearted curiosity with something quieter and more modest. That happened of itself as soon
as I struggled to lock the door from the inside, as otherwise it was not easy to do, which then helped me to feel better about displaying my power over all visitors in the process. Herr and Frau Lever soon felt this as well, stepping uncomfortably across the stone floor one foot at a time, whispering softly in order not to disturb me, and looking curiously at basins and boxes that returned their gaze in a particularly dead manner. Sometimes more venturous guests wanted to part the heavy red curtain in the main hall, but then didn’t feel quite right in doing so, choosing instead to risk a few steps to the right and down the narrow passage that led to the old cemetery.
Once I had let enough time pass, I called out cheerfully to the chastened guests that, well, now we can begin. With a sweeping gesture, I pushed back the curtain and the visitors stepped forward with pointed, awkward steps. Usually this was when people would begin to sneeze, cough, or blow their noses because of the dry air, resulting in a look of mild admonishment from me. Then they would hold a handkerchief over their mouths and swab it around. However, if entering the hall didn’t affect their breathing, then they hardly ever cleared their throats. At the ready, as there was no point in dawdling, they kept their eyes on me as if waiting for a sign that they were free to move about and not feel anxious anymore. I then proceeded to casually tell them something about the history and the style of the hermitage, during which I pointed with an outstretched hand at the arched ceiling, painted a light blue, and the fine white stucco. I managed to do this in such a compelling fashion as to cause the hard-nosed guests to bend their heads back and dutifully look up. Then I would talk on, now with an ever-stronger emphasis and also somewhat faster, pointing out the windows installed above on the right, then the balcony way up on the left, the heads turning as I did. Herr and Frau Lever did this as well.
Devilishly, I added, “As for the building itself, you can see that nothing at all has changed. It’s been well taken care of, and during the war it was even cleaned and repainted.”
Herr Lever lowered his head and looked at me. dumbfounded.
“That’s unbelievable.”
“You can see so yourself,” I responded firmly. “In a certain sense, you’re right. Nothing has changed. Some things have even been improved for the better.”
“How is that even possible?”
“Quite simple. The conquerors not only made history; they also loved the old history and tried to conserve it.”
“The conquerors did that? The same who—”
“Precisely the same, my friends. Does that surprise you? Here the conquerors have provided an indisputable service. The living were killed, and their past in stones, images, books, and objects, as set down by their ancestors, was collected, taken care of, and brought to life.”
This well and truly surprised Herr Lever, who stopped and grabbed hold of his wife’s purse.
“Just think, Mitzi, isn’t that marvelous? Isn’t that amazing?”
Frau Lever clasped her chin with her thumb and forefinger.
“Marvelous!” she chirped enthusiastically. “Really, I think so, too.”
“Herr Doctor,” her husband said in a factual manner, “the human soul is unfathomable. It’s the same for us in Africa, where there are whites, blacks, and others.”
I just nodded humbly and didn’t allow myself to get distracted by such words of wisdom, but instead led the guests from exhibit to exhibit, explaining what was in the display cases. The manners and customs, beliefs and conceptions of an extinct people saved at the last hour for posterity by its surviving members, who had already been handed a death sentence. Their destruction had been suspended in order to preserve these wonderful and lovely objects for the sake of scholarship, for the sake of history, the mother of all scholarship. But the extinction of the people, no matter how much effort had been devoted to it, was not as completely successful as had been wished for; as with every human endeavor—much as with the Tower of Babel or even the original couple desirous of knowledge—this one was not met with complete success. All such actions are in vain. That’s what the proudly ambitious men of history must recognize, and thus had the annihilated survived their own destruction, surviving history itself as well, their own history, the murderers disappearing, unable to haul off or destroy the collections of objects, which served as history’s revenge, the treasures remaining behind, thrown together in heaps. The still-living members of the people overcome by history who were employed to work in the storage holds of their history could not, once they were free, fulfill the death
sentence handed down and let themselves be lost amid the general vortex of the victory over the conquerors, letting history be history, laughing into their sleeves, though some returned to the oaths they had taken to preserve such things as memorials, their work as scholars having provided them with a living, they being ready to do it again, themselves feeling it was right, though, at the time, their souls were too numb to shudder while reflecting on the madness that lurked behind each item. They knew only that it meant money, a paid job. And so they squatted and scurried about again in the stored materials of their surviving history, although their eyes were as empty of history as their hands and speech. Thus they bored their way through history or trampled upon it, for they hardly knew anything.
Herr Schnabelberger and Frau Dr. Kulka belonged to this lost group that had nonetheless survived and found themselves here again, though they were different from the rest. They had grown accustomed to their charge without being too horrified by it, though they had tasted the blood of history in their mouths and felt a sense of revenge. These two, along with the other guardians who, in service to the conquerors swallowed the paltry morsels of servitude and had now gathered together again to serve the commemoration of the celebration of the near-successful destruction that had recently occurred, were not interested in the administration and public display of history; instead, a board of trustees was established that made clear what the job was, this singular opportunity needing to be maintained and developed in the kind of professional manner that was required. Which was why they employed some returnees, such as me. The hermitage, an old house of prayer, had already been turned into exhibition spaces during the war, and that’s where the lives of the extinct people were now preserved in images. Yet neither the collected objects nor the labels explaining them nor the informative plaques were enough to do this, nor even a completely fitted-out kitchen and a dining room, such that every visitor could exclaim what a wonderful achievement it was, a terrific success, this being how these people had really lived. Now that I understand them and can imagine it all, one can’t help being grateful for such effort and cost, how splendidly it rises above such destruction and thereby conquers it, thus allowing us to be rid of it. No, that had never been enough, for you couldn’t just gawk at the dead and imagine them; they had to be seen as alive, and that was how one had
to have them. To this day, art and ingenuity remain essential traits of human beings; that was also true for the well-informed conquerors and last trained members of those who would become extinct. Then they and the conquerors pulled together a collection that they advised upon, and then one of the heads gave a speech:
“You’ve done a beautiful job so far. We are very pleased. But it’s not enough. Nor is it right to let you show us how you live, what you do, and what you know of your ancestors. For soon that will be of no interest to us, nor to the future. Your time is limited, and afterward we will be sad and will no longer have you. That’s unbearable. You must exist, even when you don’t exist, but it must not cost too much, which you will agree, nor can it take too long, as we’re in a hurry and you have no time. We have read in your ancient book that your Lord created humans from a lump of clay. Go forth, do as instructed. Do not, I advise you, breathe life into its nose! You are clever, so think it over. You must not disappoint us! Not at all.”