Authors: H. G. Adler
It doesn’t bother the children; perhaps they are insensitive or they don’t have such sharp noses. And so they blithely run around outside with the
kids from the neighborhood. Who knows where they got hold of the tattered white pieces of linen that they chase after the first cabbage butterflies with, though they are too clumsy to catch one. A young band of foolhardy robbers, they have nothing to worry about; they have it all, they exist, and they have been allowed to feel self-evident and remain satisfied with that. Much presses at their souls, be it stirring passions, ambition, envy, tweaked cravings, burning greed, and yet it’s all harmless, none of it doing them in, but instead only driving them on. They squat down on the ground and no longer care about butterflies or other animals, then they toss marbles, gambling for rolling loot. And so they fan out, insatiable cravings driving them on as they explore and roam about until they are dirty, tired, and hungry. Then they are waved in from doors and windows, the rowdy bunch hauled back into the houses or voluntarily heading home, the mothers already busy arranging and cutting what from the day’s bounty no longer conforms to more modest restraints. Swallowed up by the house, hemmed in by protection and comfort, at night the children drift off into the secret world of sleep, renewed and enriched, until they burst forth from its capsule to enter a new day. But nothing bad happens to the children, for no matter how much they are cut or knocked about, or sometimes hurt themselves, their inner world is never depleted. They have themselves, no matter what happens; that which is self-evident does not betray them when illness or an accident consumes their life. For they have memory, full and complete; their worries are met head-on and do not rob them of the certainty of their being. Memory …
Whenever I remember, that’s not the way it is for me. Instead, I am lost in confusion, I cannot form any picture of myself, I get no further than mere attempts to do so. I reflect and try very hard to seize hold of my past, but Father and Mother cannot be found; the image of them is unavailable to me, so that I don’t even know if they exist. My own childhood, and yet how am I to access it? Bewilderment is all I know, as no actual memory is allowed. Johanna is all I can rely on, for she knows and tells me what is necessary, as if everything were all right. She talks to me and comforts me, pointing to things: “Look, look, it exists, it exists!” She points to my hand and says, “Hand,” to my forehead and says, “Forehead.” How wonderful this helpful denotation, this naming of names, and how through such invocation
the multiplicity of all things manifest is gained. At night, she leads me to the little beds in the children’s room and says their names again: “There they are. Just look at them—your son, Michael, your little daughter, Eva.” The little slumbering bodies are gently covered, only the heads sticking out from the blankets that long to cover them, sometimes a hand as well, all rosy with five fingers folded together, maintaining a sure grip upon some dream or carefree oblivion, the children alive, their quiet breathing protecting them within a sleep lovingly observed, and from which awakening is promised. Your children—so Johanna confirms in a subdued monotone meant to disturb no one, though she also affirms that their sleep is deep; the children don’t wake up even when roused. How wonderful this sounds. I have Johanna to thank for these children, little strangers who do not belong to me, who are cut off from me and, because of what I’m able to understand, separate. But indeed they are mine, though alas not mine, yet still my legacy, my gift to a memory that I myself cannot fully share, West Park Row in a strange city, in a strange land. Johanna stands between us, the go-between, who moves me to hidden tears, the guide who asks no questions but, instead, mercifully acts on my behalf. But how can I live up to such caring intervention?
Empty, the wall before me, empty, no way to know whether it is permanent. From the cracked-open sash of a window on the fourth floor of the apartment building on the other side of the street, two old ladies look out, their faces lit up by the sun, a hand scattering crumbs or scraps (it could easily be the crushed shells of peanuts) onto the street below. Black with a couple of white spots, its stiffened tail sticking up, the cat snakes its way between them, embracing this human domain made all the more secure by this housemate. Alas, these women, perhaps they are vexed by unfulfilled wishes, perhaps worries eat at them, but probably it’s not so bad. They have the leisure to act so, for it is not just the cat that is wrapped in contentment; the women purr with satisfaction as well. I know very well they have reason to, because with shopping bags chock-full they head home from Simmonds’s. Do the women remember? Certainly! They are comfortable in their own skin, the whisperings of the radio granting them confidence and a shine to their cheeks. Their mouths open, the lips flap away, roundabout talk that, even when not entirely taken in, is still understood. Like the children, these
women have nothing pressing before them; they simply are, and that’s the way it is.
Why must I rise above my own memories as they rise below me? And my own, what does that mean? Where is it that I stand? How free the view, the world open, but soon you bump up against the horizon’s border, and once again you see that there is another border much farther off. No, there’s no such border, it’s only an idea, but not one that can be grasped; only the law identifies you, demands that you stop. But where the laws of heaven and earth do not hold sway you brush up against a command, a command that overshadows you, announcing that you may not, you may not do something. That’s true for you as well, Johanna. It’s true for all of you, though it rarely catches up with you, and therefore you rarely realize it.
Now both ladies are gone; they both left at the right time so that they didn’t have to see it, having been warned, a task having called them away, they leaving behind the street where now they could not have helped seeing the gray height of the wall that does not disturb them in the cushioned horror of their living room. They are in their own home, one made familiar by the cat that has already jumped down from the windowsill, busying themselves before their glass cabinet with the colorfully kitschy porcelain. Soon they will eat, though they won’t taste any danger on their tongues as they stick to their customary routine, they being blessed and able to unwind, they having been given what defines them. Meanwhile, it’s different for me. If indeed I’m alive, it’s due only to my reflection. Light and shadow overlap each other, an image emerges, breathed into and called forth: “Now exist!” I am that image; to the degree that it speaks to me, I respond, appearing before the wall, which functions as protection, because before it I can exist and rise to become a figure that is visible and casts a shadow, though within myself I remain an indeterminate entity.
The wall before me has never disappeared; I have known it for many years, not knowing when it first sprang up, though I didn’t always see it. Only when I peer forward intently and want to believe that I exist do I see it. Otherwise it does not appear to exist; for hours, often days, even many weeks on end, I do not notice it. Nor does the wall stand always at the same spot, for suddenly it will loom up where I would never have expected it. Sometimes it shimmers with wetness, almost like the flowing crest of a
wave, then at other times it rises up dogged and heavy, composed of piled-up, dense patches of fog, though always it’s the same wall. Whenever I feel invigorated and brave, I stride toward the wall, farther and farther, and yet it always stands before me. It is never far from me, but I have never gotten all the way to it. Indeed, I rush toward it, wanting to reach it, storm it, and overtake it, yet no matter how much I tirelessly try, it always remains there across from me, securely fixed and implacable. Wall of my vicissitude that often from an insatiable distance lures me onward, until I collapse before it exhausted, abandoning my pursuit. Then I kneel before it once again, wanting to sacrifice myself before it, but it only scorns such a desire. It does not care about me; it merely appears, rises, towers, admonishes, warns, even threatens, though remaining furtive, fooling the eyes, retreating silently, slowly, and steadily, drawing me toward it or holding me back, sometimes offering resistance and yet wandering off. Tirelessly this game repeats itself. I don’t own the wall, but it belongs to me alone, it having been created for no one else, meaning nothing to anyone else, neither good nor evil. Nor can I show it to anyone, prove it to anyone, or explain it, for it remains inexplicable to me as well, it being my wall, and only my wall, as it doesn’t belong to those who simply are self-evident, who hardly ever come up against it.
It’s thus that I realize that I don’t belong to human society. I and the wall, we are alone, we belong together; there is nothing else that I belong to—what any academic would call an asocial existence. If I have been granted a consciousness, it doesn’t allow me the possibility of sharing a basic understanding with others who sense they are conscious. I am not part of any continuum that allows those who are self-evident—so they maintain, at least—to discover something in common or at least assume it. But what makes others tick? They run along their way, driven by their senses, intentions, wishes, and duties, they remember, which in turn nourishes them along their journey’s path. Does memory not lie at the root of all society? Yet I suspect that people each have their own wall. If this is so, then my belief is confirmed that the much lauded continuum of those who are self-evident actually doesn’t exist, that it’s only a dream, the conjuration of those who simply appear to be self-evident which vaults over the abyss of that which is not at all self-evident. Could not the continuum be evidence of a mighty past, the conscious symbol of a golden age, the myth of paradise,
an exalted state of innocence or a dreamy fairy-tale existence that has been carried off but still stands separate before us, a looming, unreachable wall that, as an inscrutable archetype, perpetuates our descent from a society that once existed but has long since been lost?
I can talk about most anything with Johanna, but even this protector between the self-evident world and myself balked with tender consideration at following along whenever I wanted to implicate her in this mystery. She always firmly stood her ground when I began with it and she could no longer hold me off. “I grant you your wall, Arthur. I know that you need it. It’s the protection granted you by nature.” I pressed her, asking whether she believed that it’s real. “That’s not up to me. It’s real for you, and therefore let’s leave it at that.” Only compassion persuaded Johanna to grant the existence of my wall for my sake; she was not convinced that I was talking about something real, about the true embodiment of my very being, which, after all, is nurtured and nourished by Johanna alone. Myself between Johanna and the wall—that is my plight, which the most fervent talk cannot reveal and betray to anyone. Only the wall listens calmly and without repercussions, but it answers none of my prayers; it is simply there, though it has never yet considered me worthy of contact. Johanna believes she has no wall; I don’t dispute this, for I recognize that she is not in any way in touch with her own ungraspable mystery, although through me she has drawn close to it for good.
When years ago I spoke with Johanna about the wall for the last time, which I have kept myself from doing ever since, I insisted on inquiring whether she herself didn’t recall something similar. She at first avoided the question, but when I protested she replied.
“I can’t see far enough to see a wall—I mean, your wall. Believe me, for that you need to be farsighted.”
“I’m nearsighted, dear.”
“Because you see the wall. That makes you nearsighted, that’s what gives you this feeling. But I’m nearsighted because I can’t even see as far as your—forgive me, I mean a, or at least any, wall.”
“But what indeed do you see in front of it?”
“In front of the wall? I already told you, I don’t see any wall. What I see is simple, a narrow wall-less perimeter. That’s why I feel my way forward.
You, however, have the gift of seeing something, a border; you don’t have to feel your way.”
“I can’t feel my way at all. You know that. I depend on you, on the wall, on everyone and anyone. It’s terrible. I’m dependent and yet I’m totally alone. Those who think they know me don’t know me at all. Forgive me if these words hurt. It’s a confession that simply slipped out.”
“Arthur, I’m no match for you. I can only follow you, I’m here only for you—to watch over you, to listen to you, to be grateful for your riches.”
“Riches? I don’t have—”
“No, don’t say a word! Oh, why are you laughing? Let me say something for once! I’m not good for anything except helping you. It’s my great purpose in life, even more important than the children. Perhaps it’s my only purpose. But I don’t dare question you. What others wanted to take away from you—namely, freedom—that, you see, is what I want to give you.”
“Freedom …?”
“And that means that I can’t get mixed up in your affairs when they are beyond me. You try so often to bring me before your wall, which doesn’t want to reveal itself to me.”
“Reveal itself? No, it doesn’t reveal itself. If it did, I would know what to do. Everything, everything would be different. It is the impenetrable. It is fate.”
“Yes, exactly that. Though I feel not just fate alone but also a disguise. And a disguise is protection. I honestly believe that the wall is your protection. It separates you from your past, from all the horror. The fate that has transpired, what has been overcome … I know, you don’t like that word, but forgive me, I know no other way to say it. The most horrible things that you have survived and experienced are now beyond one’s grasp—for you, for me, perhaps for all human beings. You can no longer get at it, a curtain hides it. That is perhaps a wall less severe. If you say it’s fate, that holds a double meaning for me. It is also an enormous grace.”
I was touched that Johanna tried so hard, always attempting to extract the uncanny from the storm of my agitation and bring it to lee, then to soothe it, and with a confidence that always hoped to make it dissolve for me into something blessed. For that I must be thankful, for it holds me together. A benevolent undertaking, and often a solace to me, when, especially
in the early years of our marriage, it diverted my all too emotionally charged daily existence into tolerable channels for the first time. Nevertheless, this encouragement, this conciliatory manner of Johanna’s, is never a cure but, rather, something that calms me and works for a limited time. Yet the way that Johanna manages again and again not to tire of this ultimately futile effort and to remain patiently supportive is astounding. No, the wall is not conquered or explained through such gentle tact, nor is it properly identified, although this interpretation is lovely and has often fascinated me. Certainly, if I have a past a wall stands between it and me, that I can’t deny, but it’s not my wall, not the entire wall before which there is no complete resolution and no real decision that is valid, much less valid for good.