The Wall (88 page)

The dreamy background was familiar to me, for it was suffused with deep runnels much like the mountainous land back there. There stood mighty trees, their leaves gone, though they didn’t look naked, since their branches crisscrossed again and again and were covered in thick layers of ivy. Various things grew about—wild meadow shoots, evergreen copses. Thus we took in a good part of the valley, but as we drew away from moss-covered
grounds near the brook and toward the road, which for a little ways ran high above the Taf-Fechan, we came under the protective barrier of the high hedges. A feeling of home enveloped us, so that I dared speak only in a whisper there. Above, the landscape was bleaker; it was only right that the nearby summits we could see were called the Black Mountains, or the Fforest Fawr in Welsh. The earth fell in black folds, the black rocks stretching out; even when one gazed off into the distance, all the contours and flat spaces seemed to consist of black. The hillsides rose up treeless, whereby the modest hills carried the powerful feel of a rambling range of inaccessible sharp peaks. All that could be seen were some houses or farms and trees springing up alongside the running water; otherwise, the land rose and fell bare and empty of vegetation, only thinly covered with a layer of sparse grass. Only when your gaze turned away from the distance and looked nearer to home more closely, much more intently, was there revealed a many-layered, labyrinthine network of carpeted green, grasses, durable steady growth, and moss that looked shorn. The grazing animals had nibbled almost everything to the ground, be it the numerous sheep or also cattle, as well as calm horses striding along, lovely and awkward little ponies with thick hides and long hairy legs, their hooves draped with funny bearded tufts. They were green and black and gray and silver, together and in turns, a strange harmony that was both odd and pleasing to me. I would have gotten used to them in a few days and knew: what was here and what happened here was altogether different from what I had had back there. No longer did the mountain woods belong to me, nor that time from years ago; nor was there anywhere that was home, me realizing that I couldn’t call a single speck of earth my home. I was expelled and banished, my curse a self-deception, there being no curse at all. It had to do with the acceptance of the expulsion from the paradise of my childhood and youth, my departure from there only the inevitable consequence of a force long ago set in motion. It was fine to still miss the mountain woods, as well as the landscape stretching out from them, but it was also over and done with, for now Johanna was at my side.

We walked for at least an hour in silence. What we had beheld in recent days, about the people that we knew, about the happy and the grim commotions we had endured—we had talked about that enough already. Now
mighty adventures had to be set in motion, down into the depths, without direction, both backward and forward at once. But we also had to hold off these adventures; we needed to wait and blindly feel our way ahead in order that we be granted a way through, inscrutable, and yet attainable.

A reverberating whistle sounded. Not only did the old Roman roads wind through the valley, a slow, puffing train had also settled here that ran from the nearby coal-mining district to the south and right through the Black Mountains and the gardenlike meads and along Llangorse Lake and right through the middle of rich pastureland and on to the bishop’s seat of Brecon. We spent a few hours there yesterday, in a lovely pub, where, as the only foreigners, we had our midday meal, the people looking at us curiously with eyes wide with surprise. Now a train from the north puffed along, a sleepy locomotive in the lead and pulling just two cars right on by us, clanging like a bunch of slicing knives, though soon it just hummed, then once again louder with a rumbling sound when the train crossed a high bridge over a ravine. Then it was quiet once again, everything fading away and enchanted, only a plaintive whistle that faded away in a wistful tone, searching for any place and footing that might be available, even if we hardly knew it and had nothing in common. We are no longer what we were, we are no longer what we were, ran the constantly receding rhythm of the train, continuing to run inside me for a while.

Soon we came to a little station, it containing an enclosed peacefulness that reminded me of a mountain hut. So remote and unattended that it felt as if it promised sanctuary, it serving the local line of the national railway, diffidently dreaming away, only a couple of times the rare arrival stopping. Pontsticill in big letters was what it said on the helplessly useless building, where not a person was to be seen within its walls or nearby. In fact, there really wasn’t anything surrounding it, the station simply plunked down in the middle of nowhere, as if it were the midpoint between other destinations. The train that had rumbled past us had never, I believed, stopped at this forsaken place. The tracks had disappeared.

In awe, we walked on arm in arm, the quiet road not causing us to hurry, it feeling as if perhaps we weren’t walking at all but rather that the road just slowly moved beneath our feet. We approached some houses, not even a village, much smaller than Vaynor, though it had a name, a sign saying
Dol-y-gaer. Quietly we wandered through, thus remaining unobserved. What were the people doing behind those walls? Only a child rapped against a windowpane and shouted, though he didn’t meet our gaze and hardly noticed us. After only a few steps more, we had left Dol-y-gaer, this being another non-place. Peacefully there lay, as if embedded in the bottom of a large kettle, green and slate blue, a lake. Johanna knew that it was called Pen-twyn, and said that it was man-made, its waters functioning as a reservoir for many cities of the country. A little while later, we then reached two farm buildings on its shore, at which point we left the road.

It had stopped raining and was brighter than it had been in recent days. We turned left and climbed uphill, scrambling over two or three barrier hedges and eventually arriving in a damp pasture. Frequently we looked back, the lake smooth as a mirror, only looking darker from farther away, less watery, more metallic, its waters having secretly swallowed up the light, a rich denseness, viscous and filled with unfathomable depth. The little houses on its shores looked toylike, toylike, as well, the embankment with its rails, toylike above us the blank sky that pressed its whitish blue between the swiftly moving clouds that billowed up white and drifted soundlessly. The sun sequestered a hillside here and there in soft yellows, wandering out over the lake as well, its lit-up surface dazzled by its soft glittering, its rays soon reaching our slope, pushing on farther, striated by shadows that distinguished depths and heights that were gray but also patiently anticipated the unfolding wonder.

We eventually reached the top. Since we had climbed vigorously, the weather continually opening up the skies and then clearing off, and since the air in this windy land hardly stirred, we were warm. Only the stunted plant growth made it look like winter; otherwise the time of year didn’t seem at all evident, it smelling of late autumn or early spring, the view of the mountains almost making it feel like summer. The soft, pearly mist, the treeless barren hills, the sloping summits and sharp peaks with their dark cliffs transformed the Black Mountains—a moderately high range that, some miles north of here, barely rose to twenty-five hundred feet—almost into a high range of triple the height and five times the length, as the peaks appeared much grander and more distant than they really were. Thus we climbed along as if in alpine meadows and pastures. Beyond lay a runnel
with a little creek running through it, no more than an arm’s length across, while to the left we saw a mountain that was also only a hill, yet still looked much larger than it was, and which we wanted to climb. Johanna called it Twyn Croes, though certainly she didn’t know the name. It hardly took us half an hour to reach the top. I regretted that we didn’t have a map, but Johanna explained the view to me as well as she could.

“When we go down again, and hopefully soon, you should have Betty tell you, for she knows better than me. She knows every corner of this country. She’s proud of that, and happy when someone asks her about it. We’ve walked in a sort of semicircle, for we’ve come back some ways by climbing the heights that we didn’t wish to leave. Now the man-made lake in Pen-twyn is to our north. You see the road along which we were walking; it’s a Roman road. Near Pen-twyn it forks in two. The road to the right runs pretty close to the train to Brecon. The left branch climbs sharply higher and runs directly north. Without hardly wavering, it leads to Brecon. Betty is always amazed by the raised mounds of Offa’s Dyke, and proudly points to them as if she had built them herself. Do you see them? The steeply rising mountains toward the left in the distance are the Brecon Beacons. They are the highest peaks of the Black Mountains. Somewhat craggy, but the view from them is nice if you’re lucky. Toward the north side, from which you can see Brecon deep below, they fall off even more steeply. Farther left, where the heights are softer, I don’t know my way around as well. But the valley before it—you can only guess where it is from here—it’s very deep and particularly beautiful. The colors there look almost as if one were in Italy. I love it. It’s called Cwm Taf, and the brook that flows there is named Taf Fawr. At Cefn—you saw it when we went for a walk with Betty on the first day here—it joins up with our beloved Taf Fechan. There you also see the hollow where Merthyr Tydfil lies, and which then grows smaller. That’s the Merthyr Valley. Behind that range are the mountains of Aberdare. Straight ahead of us we can almost see Vaynor. I don’t think it can be more than three-quarters of an hour away. Then there is our old familiar Morlais Hill, which blocks the view of Merthyr behind it.”

“And there, where the smoke is rising?”

“That’s already in the middle of the wastes of coal country. Dowlais, a poor and miserable place, an ugly town—that I know. It looks as if all the
violence of the war took place there. Nothing like that happened in Dowlais, but that’s what misery can do. The area has been depressed for years, for the men have no work and have to be taken care of by the state their whole lives. The coal mines stretch out farther to the east, valley after valley, one after another, a brook running through each, as well as the railroad next to it, and high-piled black mounds of coal waste. Tredegar, Ebbw Vale, Brynmawr are some of the names.”

“I’m amazed that you can remember such difficult names. I doubt that I could.”

“It took me some effort. Betty badgered me to get them right. Well, is that enough for now?”

“Yes, Johanna. It’s enough for today. We’re near a border here, and borders have always meant something to me. But this time I want to remain on this side of the border.”

“Not in the coal country?”

“No, not in the coal country. Not in any country. Just here.”

“So, then, no longer in the metropolis?”

“That’s unavoidable.”

“I can speak to Betty. Maybe it is avoidable.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Betty wants to help me and will do anything I ask her, if she can. Several times she’s suggested that I should move closer to her. Perhaps she can use us to help her with her baked goods or find something else for us.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“No, Arthur. But I can.”

“No. That wouldn’t be for me. Unfortunately. There are no prospects here for my work. My escape can’t end up landing me in complete isolation.”

“I’d be with you, Arthur.”

“Of course. I know. I’m so grateful you are. But I meant something else by this.”

“I understand. You have to follow your own path.”

“You understand me so well, my dear. Opportunities have to be followed up on. I already know so many people, and each week I meet new ones. There has to be something right for me. My efforts can’t continue
to go for naught. True, at the moment everything is still uncertain, more uncertain than ever. But must it remain so? Is there no way for me to break through the wall? Can’t I finally be a person among persons? I believe, dear, it will happen. Together with you—when you’re not afraid of my uncertainty, my abyss, I can achieve something. Oh, to achieve something! I’m filled to the brim with things I want to do, books and essays to write, lectures to give, to articulate my ideas and thereby attract the interest of a small number of worthy people, as well as good friends for the both of us. Do you believe that can happen as well?”

“I will do anything you wish. I’ll stand by you, whatever happens. I love you so unutterably and have limitless faith in your future, in your integrity, and your great strength.”

“Don’t go too far, Johanna, not too far! The darkness inside me will still shock you. My weaknesses weigh on me and can at times almost consume me entirely.”

“I’m not afraid of anything, Arthur. Maybe I’m a dumb fool and have a thousand senseless anxieties of my own, but I am not a child. I’m not blind to the danger. That’s why I offered to talk to Betty. She is simple and not fraught with problems, but she has the wisdom of the heart, and because of that she is kind.”

“Then let us be grateful that we have her backing. But let’s not ask anything of her, anything that will guarantee our life or my life in this border land. Let me sink into the metropolis. It’s immense, labyrinthine, sinister, and I have yet to figure it out. But it has a mysterious neutrality, completely different from the big cities I knew back there. One doesn’t belong to this city but, rather, lives with it, independent, almost free, hardly touched by it, and having nothing to do with one another. It feels as if I can never be entirely lost in its lostness. I can be unhappy in the thick of it, but there I feel the unhappiness much less than if I lived in Vaynor and climbed Twyn Croes with you each week. I have no home and seek no home. Yet the metropolis, with its couple of dozen neighborhoods—it, at least for the foreigner, is not a home but rather a habit. And not even the entire city, just the neighborhood in which one settles.”

Johanna didn’t say anything in response, murmuring something inaudible that still felt loving. She took me by the hand, then soon let go again
and looked for a little spot where we could rest awhile. It took some time before we found a place where we could sit on the half-dry ground. Johanna took from me the knapsack—the same one that I had bought before the journey to the mountain woods—and set out something for us to eat. She did so gracefully, less energetically than Anna, she being somewhat dreamy and inward and yet, of course, confident, as if it were a matter of serving invited guests. We ate almost all the good things we’d brought along in the bag. All that remained was a piece of chocolate and two apples, which Johanna insisted that we save for later.