The Wall (89 page)

“Are you happy?” she asked out of the blue.

I looked at her long and hard, said nothing, laughed, and moved closer to her.

“We are very much together, Johanna. You are so good to me.”

“And the dead?”

“We live from the dead, Johanna. Everything living comes from the dead. When they pass away in peace, it’s forgotten, in the sense that through greater awareness we do not have to suffer a terrible shock to our consciousness. We talk about parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and can follow a complete chain all the way back to the first people, back to Adam and Eve. But if one’s parents and loved ones have been swallowed up by a distant, ambiguous, and often unknown death, then naturally we succumb to a horror that we can hardly overcome, and by which we are eventually bested, one’s own family chain having been severed, and this horror can never be overcome. It weighs upon us because it is not there. Because we cannot bury it away in our souls. Thus there is no way for us to forget, for now our knowledge is meager, and with that our consciousness remains constantly on edge. For it cannot console us.”

“What shall we make of it together, my dear?”

“We must live like the first human beings, Adam and Eve in the far fields after their sin.”

“Yet that can’t happen. That would not only be blind but also impossible.”

“You’re indeed right; I don’t mean it literally. But we have a duty to begin again, and in this duty we are like the first human couple. What our ancestors realized, built and also misconceived is, for people like us, so
beaten down and destroyed, there is nothing left but a brave new beginning to set in motion many things and plans erupting within our hearts. I don’t mean by this that we should smash to pieces everything that remains and let our souls rot. On the contrary, we need to preserve what we can preserve. You know, Johanna, those I know and who know me, they don’t want to hear that I call myself a conservative and feel myself to be one. When I briefly mentioned it to So-and-So, he doubled up with laughter, and then showered me with his derisive scorn. But it is indeed so, every tradition—though, of course, with this I am by no means talking about evil that’s bred, the sum of which can be referred to as natural and developed over time, no, not that at all—in every tradition that really is ancient, the most inner essence of the shared existence, no matter how it transforms itself, is sacred to me. From that we should drink, absorb with every fiber, guard as the most valuable treasure, care for and preserve and share with those who come after us in ever more pure and noble fashion.”

“Where, then, is the new beginning? How will it all come together?”

“The new beginning? You see, Johanna, with every heart that survives the Lord sets forth the creation once again. That is always true, and for every person. But it is hardly known and only rarely sensed. We who almost do not exist any longer feel it stronger and perhaps deeper. For the fact that we exist is a miracle. We who are no longer tolerated nor should be thought of and yet nonetheless remain, we who are not a miracle, but who are seen and thought of only as a miracle, we who are on this side and, as I know you understand, we who, no matter how much we lean back to the other side, never reach it, nor can reach it, as we can hardly recall it anymore and have only the blessing of memory in order to say something about the past, which is entirely lost. Memory, Johanna, which you honor, for I’ve heard you say so, that is the sacred tradition that I honor as well. It is the culmination of everything, as long as we do not lose hold of it and serve it faithfully. The new beginning that we commence with our faith and our works is indeed a repetition, yet, above all, it is a new beginning, the commitment and sacrifice to the future, the daily prayer, the journey toward a destination, and we can only know we’re headed toward a destination, Johanna, for we can only hope and wish for the destination, but we don’t know it and cannot reach it. It’s not what is achieved but, rather, what
awaits us that matters. Do you understand what I mean? Ah, I shouldn’t be lecturing you!”

“I don’t know if I understand it all, Arthur, and yet it says a great deal to me. You must speak, and speak freely. It’s all a part of you, and it is you yourself, and I need to hear it.”

I rummaged in my coat pocket and pulled out a little leather box and held it out to Johanna.

“This is for you, dear.”

She fiddled with it in her hands, the clasp not opening, and only after several tries finally giving way. The pearls lay within, dull silver, sitting there somewhat embarrassed and shy, Franziska’s pearls, which she never wore, a gift from her father, she once said, which I remembered now, but she only liked to wear amber or turquoise, and kept the valuable jewels in a box that she hardly ever touched. I also could see the hands that after the war had brought them and given them to me. There was no more amber, no more turquoise to receive, they were lost, but the pearls in the leather box lined with tissue paper slid from my hand into the case; I could no longer look at them. There they rested until I risked taking them with me, as Anna advised. Safely I had carried them through all the borders.

“Do you like them, Johanna? You said that you are very fond of pearls and had to leave them at home. On the morning of your departure, your mother removed them from your neck.”

Johanna removed the chain from its velvet cushion and looked at the beads without a word, stroking them as they rustled and shimmered, then she poured them into the palm of her hand, a cone-shaped glistening mound piled on trembling ground. Then she closed her fingers around them, the pearls now invisible. Only from the side, spilling out from her little finger, did a little tail brashly stick out, which I observed while smiling. Johanna sensed my amusement and quickly opened her hand, ashamed, the jewels there among the shadows of her fingers a pale, shining, disorderly clump of gems. With two fingers Johanna took hold of the left end and pulled the entire chain out, grabbing the other end with her right hand and pulling it out so that before us stretched a long, gorgeous double row at eye level, and then she brought them closer to her face until the pearls lay like a satiny
bow just below her nose and, opening wider, passed over her eyebrows, her temples, behind the ears, and then over her head.

Johanna bowed her head slightly, the chain shifted and clattered softly, then she stretched it out far from her face, a finger running right and left and looping the pearls around it, the center lowering to form a broad sinking point, forming a rounded bow. Johanna was pleased, that I could see, but she didn’t thank me and didn’t say anything, but just smiled under lowered eyelashes, her mouth open a little and uneven, one corner sunk deeper than the other, the lips barely parted, teeth not showing. I didn’t look directly at her, but I didn’t turn away; instead, I tried to draw closer or to look past Johanna, but that didn’t work, and so I blinked. Something had begun, that I knew, though I didn’t know what and didn’t want to think about it, as within me it bubbled up like delirium, myself unable to breathe, a mild pain in my foot making itself known, doubtless the last effects of the injury from the suitcase that had fallen on my foot shortly before I arrived in the metropolis and which had provided me with a painful memory in the weeks since, though I had not felt it for many days. Then I remembered the last apple from back there, Anna’s goodbye gift, which had rolled out of my suitcase. I couldn’t help feeling that I now needed an apple as something to carry from the past into the future and which could bind the two together.

I opened the knapsack and didn’t look at Johanna in order that she not get mad the moment I violated the ironclad decision made earlier. Then I had the fruit in my hand, striped with yellow and red, cool and with a soft lovely glow, a wonderful orb with sunken poles at either end. I held it, covering only half of it with my hand as protection, though I didn’t intend to take a bite of the apple. Then I tried to glance at Johanna again. In her eyes there were tears, very clear and bright, though she wasn’t crying but instead the teardrops were involuntary. The pearls hung perpendicular from a hand toward the ground. Our glances met, the pearls and the apple both unacknowledged signs in our hands. The hands that were free reached out to each other, but the fingers didn’t grasp one another, only the backs of the hands lay against one another, betokening a bond: pearls, hands, apple.

Who knows how long we sat there? The coolness of the ground increased, the dampness rising; it was only a few days after New Year’s, there being no way to ignore the season, as we felt the frost coming on. Through
leather and wool it pressed and deepened, but my foot no longer hurt, only immense stiffness filled my limbs, smoky puffs of breath blowing from our mouths in the intense chill of the air. Above us the clouds moved in again, long, sinuous strains racing over summit and hill alike, though the silver-blue sky peeked through here and there. It wasn’t long before the clouds lowered around us and wrapped us in thick veils and a dense enclosure soon surrounded by streams of sunlight. Nonetheless, we were bathed in light, the milky threads of cloud strongly lit through, though containing a brilliance of their own, the ridges and basins of the land soon retreating into darkness, here in the country of the Black Mountains, even the grass turning black, the lambs that slowly moved about below on the slopes now dark gray.

We had warm clothes on, but since we had been sitting for so long they no longer kept out the weather. If we didn’t want to freeze completely, we couldn’t stay any longer and finally had to get up, though each of us was too shy to make the first move or suggest that the other should, so we continued to sit there undecided. It could have begun raining, the air above getting more and more damp, while from the ground the dampness rose like quiet hidden flames. The apple in my left hand had turned into a frozen ball, my fingers around it so stiff that they hurt. Had the pearls in Johanna’s involuntary iron grip turned to frost? I grabbed her by the hand and pressed it gently, she closing her fingers tight with her thumb stretching over them. Through such vigorous rubbing we awoke from the numbness that endangered our souls, looking more intently at each other, our gazes no longer lost in a dream but also unwavering, consciously looking into the depths, such that we knew that we would be there for each other. For the first time, we beheld each other in our shared togetherness and our foregone separateness, it becoming clear what held us together and apart, us understanding what we would have to seek and what avoid, sensing the overpowering shudder of what had been passed on to us, the undiminished power of the deep inheritance and flooding surge of an ancient beginning, the break of a new day, the wish for children perhaps having overcome Johanna in that moment much as it did me, something which earlier I only rarely felt and never yet to such a degree.

I then could have said something, or even should have, since we had run
the gamut of the superficial to the intimate that day and now understood each other so well; and yet I didn’t do it. I wasn’t sure if Johanna expected me to; perhaps she was also not sure if I expected something from her. Yet I had to do something; I had to betray the moment and decide something. Thus I started to stand, but no, I could not, for it was not so easy, my legs being too heavy, the joints stiff. I had to let go of Johanna and swing my arms in order to lift myself up, but after a couple of tries I could get only as far as my knees. Johanna sat there without saying a word and looked at me tenderly. It could have been that she felt for me and was surprised at me at the same time; the look she shot me was a double one, sincere and direct, but also unreadable and shifting. With strong strokes I rubbed my legs in order to get the blood moving. This helped, for I could finally stand and breathe deep. Then I helped Johanna, it being easy to do so, it really being presumptuous of me to think she needed my help, for she really didn’t.

“Do you like the pearls?” I asked softly, without hesitating.

“Can I keep them? Are they mine?”

I nodded. Johanna fiddled with the gold clasp, the three black pearls gleaming darkly. Soon the pearls were around her neck; for a moment I saw the lovely face of my mother before me, after which I thought of the mother of my dearest, and then of Franziska’s shadow. From the place where we had sat, I picked up the papers and some rubbish, burying it all under stone, lifted the knapsack, and stuck the box for the pearls into it, wondering for a moment whether I should make the apple disappear, but then thought better of it, closed tight the laces, and went over to Johanna. We were ready.

“I know the direction in which we need to head, Johanna, but I don’t know the way. Can you take the lead?”

“There is no way. We just walk on ahead. Downhill. It’s not far to Vaynor.”

We took the steepest path, making our way with powerful steps. Soon we were warm and took a more measured gait.

“Did Franziska wear the string of pearls?”

“Hardly, my dear. I don’t believe I ever saw them on her. She liked to wear amber most of all, sometimes turquoise, as well as large Bohemian garnets, which I no longer have.”

“Sweetheart, forgive me, but we had a marvelous day! We had the loveliest
day we’ve had since we’ve known each other, and I am wearing Franziska’s barely worn pearls. Still, will you be so good and tell me something of Franziska?”

“Franziska … my darling, I had a dream about her. I’m almost not inclined to share it, for it could be wrong to do so, more of an image conjured by me than a true spirit. I don’t know if I should tell it.”

“Don’t be afraid! But, if that’s the way you feel, you don’t have to say anything. I don’t wish to interfere. The legacy is yours, it’s yours, and I respect that.”

“If that’s the case, Johanna, then I can tell you. I lay asleep in bed and believed that I had woken up. I was not in Vaynor, nor in the metropolis, nor actually back there. I was in no place I recognized. But I was somewhere far off, in an apartment that belonged to me. And then Franziska was there, quiet and radiant—everything about her was radiant, her clothes, her hands, and her face. But, above all, the face, and most of all the forehead above her eyebrows. That glowed the most, even more than her glowing hair and eyes, which indeed were open but looked as if they gazed through a veil. She came very close to me, pressing close to my bed. I thought that she wanted to sit down next to me, so I tried to sit up in order to show her how happy I was that she was there. But with sweeping, half-lifted arms she waved me off. Then I remained still and turned my head more strongly in her direction. She didn’t sit down, but instead got very close, standing next to the bed such that her clothes rubbed against it. I couldn’t touch Franziska but only behold her, my hands remaining under the blanket, and it being impossible to pull them out from there. She looked at me tenderly, very kindly, with a sympathetic and also animated sorrow. She was otherworldly, sad, and majestic, though she was also confident and not full of despair. I felt guilty before her, for she was not alive, she was just there, and I felt that anything alive had to feel guilty in the face of everything dead, the guilt of living in the face of the departed and the sublime, which we often call the eternal. I wanted to share my deepest feelings with Franziska, but I didn’t want to say it aloud, I just wanted to somehow share it. Nor could I speak. Somehow I shared it with her, without words and speech, as well as without looking at her or giving her any sign; the only way she could know was because she understood me, and because I felt nothing else but this. She gazed at me
intimately, not all-consuming, yet intently. Then she said, ‘You mustn’t worry!’ I didn’t worry, or at least not any longer, but then an irrepressible sadness filled me to the core, for I had left Franziska. I had left her without asking her permission, deeming it all right to be without her. That was a betrayal; I had become unfaithful. You need to know in order to understand, Johanna, that ever since the day the murderer’s hand separated us, separated us forever, as she was asphyxiated and her defiled noble body was burned to ashes, I never thought of or looked at another woman, even Anna, with so much as the slightest desire, until I saw you. Then it was obviously clear to me from the first moment, and that is why when we sat with Frau Saubermann and Herr Buxinger at the Haarburgers’ I was so bold as to speak to you despite all reason and my own will, reaching out to you in hardly a subtle fashion. Yet back to the dream. But wait. Before I go on with my story, I must tell you about a visitation that I experienced during my escape from over there and which was similar to my dream but also completely different. During that one, I spoke to Franziska and asked her, ‘Will you let me go?’ Or no, it was not during the journey but after, a few weeks later in the guesthouse, just before the first time I called you and visited you in the Office for Refugees. You already meant a great deal to me, for otherwise why would I have asked Franziska this question? But, nonetheless, it was different, as you will soon hear. She let me go; her voice was clearly audible, yet only her voice. I had not asked Franziska but simply posed the question. But it was Franziska’s voice, clearly, no mistaking it, that answered me, saying that she had let me go, whether I existed or not. Yet now, in this dream, it was different. I had left Franziska. It had to have been so, because I could do no different, but it was, in fact, my choice; I had done it on my own. I felt the hot demands of lust that lead to adultery. Franziska knew so, for alas, she knew everything. She observed me with resonant kindness, her gaze penetrating my skeleton and lifting it up. She spoke with a level yet muffled voice: ‘I have protected you. I am now leaving you. You are free, you are free. You will now follow your own path. May the blessing of grace attend your fortunes!’ I wanted to grab hold of her hands before she disappeared, a mixture of sorrow and shame and bitterness roiling inside me. But I could not grab hold, since my hands lay continually immobile under the blanket, nor could Franziska grab hold of mine, for she had withdrawn, the separation
having been announced. She looked at me again in an incomparable way that I could only call benevolent, though I have never seen a look quite like it from anyone living or dead, even in a dream. Franziska moved her head slowly and gently, her eyes almost shut, as if to say ‘No.’ Then she lifted a hand and held it high above me, giving clearance, saying goodbye and blessing, all of it together, and then she walked away, adorned in exalted splendor. She didn’t walk toward any door but rather only to the opposite wall that had no door, and which appeared to retreat from Franziska for a while, as if the room were expanding. During this she often turned to look back at me, always with a loving, departing expression, and I knew that she was not of this earth, and that as soon as she reached the wall she would step through it. I bent my head strenuously in the direction she moved, but the wall was opaque glass and Franziska walked inside it. The divider remained transparent enough, such that she turned toward me more and more often and smiled abstractly in the direction of my bed and nodded as if to indicate something to me, as if I were still a part of her realm. She remained lit up, but in her passage through the wall the distance was more shadowy, otherworldly, thinner, and, to me, disembodied and blurry. Also, it was harder and harder to see through the wall, it becoming more and more hazy, the wall fading, giving off only a vague idea of itself, and all at once, with a last look and a hand raised high, the figure stepped through the wall while turning away and leaving with its back to me. There being nothing more to see, I was alone, abandoned, lying in the room in severe, heavy darkness, my gaze always directed toward the wall, which was hardly recognizable, although gradually it appeared to be closing in from the distance and returning to the dimensions of the middle-sized room that had been there at the start of the dream. Loneliness rose up sharply within me and closed about my throat, such that I grew anxious. I couldn’t see anything else, my eyes sank in a sea of tears, and as I torturously closed my eyelids in order to stop the burning stream, the thought of my mother occurred within me. Without looking at me, she sat sewing a shroud. I said
a
shroud, for I didn’t know whose it was, my father’s or mine. We were indeed both there, Father and I. I called out to Mother. She didn’t hear and continued sewing, a bloody band painfully adorning her neck. Then I called to Father, asking him to have Mother turn to me, but he refused. I insisted that he do so in a last attempt:
‘Father and Mother, I’m here, your only son, your other child, your only daughter having died many years ago in the days of limited sorrows, which now, in the days of endless loss, no longer exist.’ But neither reacted to my words. Then I held out an apple as an offering, an apple like this one in my hand. No one took it, and so I set it down. Father and Mother were buried in darkness. I had to find Franziska again, so I opened my eyes wide, the stream of tears having stopped, the sockets painfully dry as sand, but nothing visible, for Franziska was now behind the wall forever. With her departure I felt eased, but extremely unhappy about where I was. Then I thought of you, Johanna, but I didn’t know where you were. I was worried about you and me, and I wanted to look for you, but I had no idea where I might find you. And then I woke up. Next to me you lay in a deep slumber, no movement at all except your quiet, even breathing. Then I knew that our bond was still not complete, and yet that it could be completed, and so I lay closer to you, but without waking or disturbing you, and soon fell asleep. That’s why I brought the pearls along today. I wanted to give them to you the day we got married; that’s what I planned, but I couldn’t then, and then I waited and waited. Now it’s right, now at last.”