The Wall (83 page)

“Me cross? My dear Dr. Landau, what can you be thinking? But it’s distressing … or no … well, yes … distressing, and I don’t understand, you’re right. But what am I to do with you? If you want to stay at the museum, you have to pull yourself together. Otherwise you’re a debilitating, negative force.”

“Shall I resign on the first?”

“No. You can’t think that I want to get rid of you. Pull yourself together, just pull yourself together!”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“And, again, we’re not talking about your contributions. Nor should you be hurt when someone points out your mistakes.”

“For example?”

“For example, when you betray our interests to others.”

“I didn’t know that I had!”

“Oh, are you dense or do you not really know?”

“No.”

“How, then, can the English scarecrow, this Mackintosh or whatever her name is, show up as if she were in a furniture store, unless she had been informed, you being the most likely source?”

“The Englishwoman didn’t learn anything about it from me, whether directly or indirectly.”

“She entered the building, mentioned your name to Geschlieder, which she then repeated to me, and with Schnabelberger she almost threw a fit because no one would sell her any furniture. Again and again, she kept demanding to see you. I have to speak to him; she had been recommended to Dr. Landau. Finally it was made clear to her that nothing but old prayer books and such stuff could be sold, and even that not to private citizens. For such deliverance, we were grateful, especially when nothing more was said about it. In addition, you are not the chief or the director, who can decide such things. Which is why it should not be the case that our visitors should be asking to deal with you.”

“For heaven’s sake, did Herr Schnabelberger not tell you what I said to Mrs. Mackintosh?”

“Of course.”

“Then you can see, you can’t help but see, that your accusations hold no water.”

“But you can’t tell me that you had nothing to do with it.”

“Indeed, I can. I had nothing to do with it at all.”

Only after long effort did I succeed in freeing myself from any suspicion that I had given out information about the museum to anyone, even foreign diplomats, in such an absurd manner. When I finally succeeded in convincing Frau Dr. Kulka of my innocence, she had something else that was bothering her.

“Okay, then, let’s forget about the shameless Mrs. Mackintosh. But how did the couple from Johannesburg get the idea to ask about paintings? You certainly must have chatted a bit too much with them!”

“I’m not at all interested in the Levers.”

“That makes it even more curious!”

“It came out accidentally while we were talking. You know, when Herr Schnabelberger gave me a tour of the place when I was hired, it so happened that those were the very first paintings I saw. On the back of the frames, I wrote ‘Eugene and Emmi Lebenhart, Ufergasse.’ That stuck in my memory. When Herr Lever said that he used to be called Lebenhart, it just slipped out. I didn’t mean for anything bad to happen.”

“Yet that is what happened! I know your views, and you agitate our people to the utmost. We have no interest in giving visitors crazy ideas that then result in our maybe having to hand over goods that are then lost not only to us but to the republic as well. Don’t you understand that?”

“I understand, but it’s not right of us.”

“But then there’s your own ideas about returning the goods! Of course, everything of value in the museum belongs to us all!”

“But then we are treading a fine line.”

“What do you mean?”

“By taking in what the murderers stole.”

“Really.… Do you really think so? But you’re barking up the wrong tree with that!”

“Why, then, do we have laws about restitution, if I may ask?”

“Well, then, in the hope that you’ll finally understand, yes, there must, of course, must be such laws. One has to offer people every opportunity. But only one chance, and nothing more than that. What’s more, the law is for practical and essential items, not for paintings and many such things like we have. If we just give it away, then no one is served. In all earnestness, not even the so-called owners, and certainly not us. When I say that, I certainly mean more than you and me, for I mean the republic, the entire people. We can do something with it. And thereby we serve the building of the socialist society, and that must remain our goal.”

Frau Dr. Kulka kept on talking to me for a while, telling me that we shouldn’t let ourselves be led by sentimental concerns, and not just because there was often a tragic past tied to our valuables, weighty histories about which it was best not to know. What is past is past, and now we had to think of the future, of the building of peace and freedom, which depended on the common welfare, and this was the sense in which I finally needed to consider the museum and its message. Someone who handled things as impulsively as I did was a nuisance, no matter how noble his views, and while I worked with almost excessive diligence, at the same time all my efforts ended up for naught and left everything in disarray. Frau Dr. Kulka compared me to a builder who each day erected his wall brick by brick in long rows, after which I would hurry by with a crowbar and knock out some bricks down low, such that the entire structure collapsed.

I would have liked to respond, but it seemed pointless. I gave in and promised with a dry mouth not to give any more tours to anyone and to share only information that my superiors passed on to me on behalf of the trustees. I had long since decided to leave the country, but at the moment, while having to solemnly swear my allegiance to Frau Dr. Kulka, I also swore to myself, no matter the obstacles, to get out of there, even if the plans I had in mind proved untenable. Away from here, away! I almost said it aloud, but I bit my tongue and pressed my lips together, which the director took to be as good as a spoken promise, since she had cleared the air. With the salutation “Now let’s be friends!,” the guardian of the thievery concluded her lecture. Frau Dr. Kulka said goodbye and walked off; I could hear her high heels echoing sharply as she quickly descended the stairs.

I opened the door and wanted to call out to her, “Away from here, away!,” but I just whispered it. This had nothing to do with being clever or careful; an immense pain had choked off my voice. I closed the door again and could now do nothing but wait, having realized that at any moment Anna would arrive. She shouldn’t see what kind of awful time I’d just been through. Away from here, away! I paced back and forth in my little room and kept hearing the same phrase repeated: Away from here, away! It wouldn’t be dark for a while, yet the sky had dimmed, the light dirty and sullen, not at all that of late summer, stale fumes pouring through the open window. I wanted to close it, but when I saw how depressing the panes that had not been cleaned in a while looked, I let it stand open—Away from here, away!—and began to pace back and forth restlessly again, picking up the wrapped purse and carrying it to the other end of the room before turning back without it, then turning back—away from here, away!—to pick up the purse again, put it down elsewhere, just a bit farther, and so on and so forth in an extremely drowsy manner. Away from here, away!

Where was Anna? Look at your watch. Don’t look at your watch. No watch. Before the invention of time, waiting, not a waiting period, just waiting. Wait on, wait on! I had to sit down, without a watch, without time, just sit and wait. I was tired; my nerves were frayed, then they cramped up—I was painfully done in. Away from here! My past was to blame for it all. How was it possible to get through it without any knowledge of time? What I had suffered; what had I suffered? Just wait! I still went back and forth on whether any of the blame rested with me. About my fate, as was said, I could do nothing. Once it had arrived, it was inescapable. I should have got out earlier with Franziska, away, but there was no way for her parents to get out, and so we couldn’t leave but had to stay; not leave them alone, just wait. Responsibilities had to be met, and if I wasn’t able to save anyone I didn’t wish to remain on the earth another day, but I should have handled it differently back then. Was there time? Only waiting, waiting it out; how could I flee? But that I stayed behind, no one could forgive me that, not those who never had to flee and never wanted to or could think what someone like me had gone through, that there were consequences that resulted which kept me from ever staying on the usual track.

Oh, what escape was there? Only to there, only to there! Why was I
shamefully hiding from myself that I was changed as a result of what I had been through—Away from here, away!—someone whose past was nothing more than a graveyard, a place of rest (oh, how I felt it to be a place of rest without rest), and who had to separate himself from others, unable to join in, his perceptions different from those of others, his life one of waiting without arriving, bestowed with a different measure and grounding. He has left behind all of his dwellings, knows nothing more than the meager trove of memory, but cannot grasp anything that was once his, though he comes to understand that a remembrance exists when thought, and that it should not be remembered, but thus is a remembrance welling up, out of which something is said. I have seen what wells up inside me, not having fled it; I was there, on the spot, having reported. And thus one is no longer a part of the world that he once took to be his own. He has not fled in order to be, to be there! But, rather, that he remembers, that he exists, where he is and to see what has welled up, and by which the world still suffers.

Often, I feel like someone who has been left behind, shaking with astonishment and almost buckling before the fact that, despite everything, “I am” and “I was” are the same, the same and yet etched by time, by the tides of time, and by time’s lessons. That is simply unthinkable, and nothing can change it, for not only are things missing, the cellar empty, the prayers having erupted, there was also no call that said “Hear Me!” anymore, everything unheard, no one heard any longer, no subject and no object by which I am able to recognize myself, though they still say remember, remember! Not only my family from back then—Away from here; oh, remember, was it a family?—but almost everything else is missing. What a cabinet full of harm is shut here, and almost everything missing, whereby generally people open up their gaping chasms and, however faintheartedly, still bridge them. The wall is too high and too wide, but no shoring up of memory that, out of the need to bear witness, rises up shakily, no people from back then who would also be people I know today. Sure, I know some here and there—what is taking Anna so long?—which poor memory still links to my past, but that is poor memory, the links becoming far too shaky for me to travel along. What good can it do, for example, if I find someone today who knows the city of my earlier life and even comes from it, when he is not a part of the circle in which I grew up and which held me, So-and-So, and so and so,
already having left. Or, once again, I happen to meet someone I once knew in passing, but she doesn’t remember anything, or she recalls everything differently than do I and can’t remember anything that could mean anything to me. Such people, whom I both fear and am amazed at, make me uneasy; when I’m around them, I feel completely exposed.

Why is Anna taking so long?

No matter how well things go with people, soon a threshold is reached at which we must separate, there being no way for me to get away, and a gap in the unfolding of our already distant relations betrays what seems at first to be seamless, this being the years in which we were not together, in which nothing happened that could allow us to feel something shared. Then there is something missing between us, and I am indeed satisfied that, through careful explanation, we can dispense with every last experience we might have shared. The lack of such connections, which I mourn, is the continuity of life that separates me from my postwar colleagues. Certainly there are thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, who feel the same, but these loners cannot find one another, since they suffer the same life on their own. They come from many races and many places, and they have experienced different fates and must seek different partings of the ways until all are stamped by a different coin, strangers to themselves and certainly strangers to one another, and, most of all, strangers to and alienated by the millions for whom the continuity of life was never broken, because they were not hurt as badly or could save something, the possibility of visiting familiar places not out of the question, the nearness of a relative or that of a sympathetic friend, a little box of family pictures, a bundle of sacred letters, a chest of tantalizing books that were sent out—not stolen and not rotting—a childhood diary filled with sprawling script, propelled by the hope of a horizon that is arrived at.

But when all of this is gone, unreachably far away, in part no longer possible, in part no longer perceivable, then only halting memory holds them, compelling me now to remember, it becoming clear to me that man cannot live by intellect alone. In fact, intellect has been overvalued, because man too crudely engages with the sensory and drowns in it. Man beheld everything in abundance—things, devices, and the infinite set of possessions that he got lost in. Then man got used to it and knew the treasures
that he observed in his mind, no longer needing to savor them, although he often desired more from them or, worse yet, longed for other things. That’s when it became clear that man did not appreciate what intellect is and what comes from it. Then avid admonishers appeared who warned against such supposed plunder, saying that it was fleeting, wanting to make the precious riches seem foolish, the truth being that they were despicable, meanwhile showering the intellect with lavish praise. Many were uncomfortable with this, beginning to feel hunger amid the amplitude of their disappearing possessions, their self-awareness crumbling to nothing, as then they praised intellect with faces enraptured. Though the people themselves, however, were bereft of earthly goods they could number, they were nonetheless always taken care of, the beneficiaries of manifest actual property they had inherited, earned, and never entirely forsaken amid their meager misery. None of them were robbed of their last threads, managing to get through much that was terrible, horribly stripped of so much, denied their human rights, yet still finding a way to remain, somehow sustained, returning to vouchsafed goods, once owned, and again bestowed upon them, and yet not wanting any overabundance, no longer everything, only a little allowed again, and certainly not everything as it used to be but nonetheless welcoming something of it, having indeed inherited something. If this was not allowed, then they were no less shrewd at bartering, scoring something they longed for. When they remembered, the past and the present blended together, there being no essential difference between the two. If they preferred not to remember, or not much at all, things went badly for them, revitalized only by the knowledge of the wrong done them and comforted, they being the bridge over which they walked, striking out on a new beginning and prepared for a new order.