Panorama (67 page)

“Don’t you recognize me? You once stopped here. Why won’t you admit that it was really nice here with me? Three years ago you were here for a couple of months. Then you went away. Then the cherry trees in front of the gate blossomed, the countryside was ravaged by war, but spring returned. You wandered off to the nearby city, which was in ruins. Amid the rubble you found refuge. White and black soldiers tramped through the destruction, the inhabitants intimidated by them. You got sick and couldn’t take care of yourself. Everything in you was also destroyed. Had enough? Then move on! Head this way and that, in order to find your way. These memories aren’t good for anything, they’re extrinsic and contain nothing of your experience. You are now too old. You know it when you look back. They never completed the railroad. The countryside is exhausted, the traces of its humble life erased, yet the hills are still there, the little village by the river, though you had forgotten it. Then they loaded you on the train. Why did you resist? You didn’t resist at all, except to take care of yourself until you were transported, the train slowly rolling along, locked down so that you couldn’t escape. At first the familiar landscape passed slowly by through the valley of the Moldau then the plains, over the Georgsberg, where the legendary Krok dispensed the land to the Bohemian princes. You should have had a chance to say goodbye to your homeland, for there was no way to know if you would outlast the Conqueror. You kept up your hopes, you had no idea of the threat. There was an unbelievable giddiness, as though someone had freed you of the idea that the journey and banishment spelled
your annihilation. Go back further! You lived in your fatherland and resigned your position at a cultural center. You left your home and traveled about the world. You believed victory would be yours, and that anything in between would easily be overcome. You also believed whoever strode on confidently would reach his goal. Did you never think that no one awaited you? That you were nothing but an intrusion? Anyone is in some ways superfluous. You always took yourself too seriously. You don’t seem to be cured, your appetite remains insatiable. Do you still want to educate the young? You resigned as a tutor. Don’t you see that no amount of will can overpower the world? Will can only destroy you. Whenever anything is too much for you, you fall asleep. The gong sounds, the window is opened. Below on the street you stand amid the whirling noise of the night, but the sounds of the struck gong above in the tower hurry you along. You act as if nothing has happened, because you are frivolous and want to enjoy yourself. But what did you once say about symbols? Sunbeams shimmer on the wind. You stand upon the fallen castle and gaze off into the woods. You don’t let yourself think about how shallow you have always been. Why did you pass so sadly over the bridge? I won’t go any further with you in order not to sadden you any more. There is still much to say. You didn’t want to become a doctor, for you didn’t believe in helping others. You have settled in wherever you have been and taken each place as your own, but did you never consider yourself a stranger? Not even in the park? In the ruins? In the fields? Always you were a stranger. You didn’t realize it for a long time. Now that you know it, you don’t want to change it. And so it’s done. You will have to take care of yourself or I’ll demolish you. I have already given you many signs. You say that they haven’t bothered you, but words fall easily from your lips.”

Josef knows that he has been awash in delusions, that they are always about him, for everything that happens around him that he can follow withdraws from him whenever he wishes to seize hold of it, for though he had been given so much, it was only lent to him, though he didn’t want to possess it, instead his consciousness was only filled with more memories. Josef needs to rest, for though he never wanted to that badly, now everything is finally weighing him down, now being the time to rest, he cannot continually just walk through life like an actor playing a part, no matter how appealing it may be to dream one’s own existence, or does such a disguise exist only
in order to protect oneself from the world? Neither solitude nor the company of others can be fully realized, always there are threats to each which keep one from attaining the smallest of goals, even though one may want to pursue them, certainly yes, though one cannot pursue them, not in the least, for that which is attained is mirrored by that which is destroyed, making one seem ridiculous in the face of it.

It’s good to rest in the park at Launceston, it being a place that does not reassure the self, but rather lightens the load upon it by reigniting the senses and returning one’s thoughts to life itself. The sufferings of the world lie in the fresh and the dried-up wreaths that from time to time are replaced, all of it well arranged, the people of the town below knowing that they don’t have to climb the hill to see for themselves that it’s been taken care of, the fate of the inhabitants of Launceston the only thing that really matters in these parts, if only because Josef is allowed to remain a stranger, and because he doesn’t really need to know anything about this place, because he senses the benefit involved in his being free of all the fortunes of the citizens of Launceston, because all that is required of him is that he not cause any trouble, as he is otherwise free of any ties and able to leave at a moment’s notice. Josef doesn’t need anything, finally, there’s nothing that he wants, and yet he is still granted so much, for he is a stranger, and there’s nothing better one can do for a stranger than to let him be. Indeed, a park with various inscriptions has opened for him and silently allows him to enter, the paths laid out beautifully, each grain of sand and every blade of grass maintaining the open access enjoyed by every visitor, he feeling his gratitude for the unwritten laws of this place, much care expected of everyone, almost to the point of curbing freedom, but that is not the intent, no, as there is a wonderful opportunity involved in allowing one to walk around freely in a prison.

When you quietly pass the time, you can empty your mind, the surroundings insignificant as you close your eyes and dream, although even with open eyes you don’t have to take in anything. So much freedom suits you, and that’s what makes you start to think how you want to live, what will best suit you. This is a powerful word that reveals its evanescent validity only in the panorama, but Josef will abandon it at closing time at the latest, when the guard comes along ringing his bell. Before then there is so much that causes Josef to drift away from the world. Nonetheless he must think of
other things, namely the unattainable and therefore never the known, but such worries are idle as long as the present is still certain. Memories don’t have to be sought after when experience is enough, and thoughts of the future are idle, the view easily giving rise to them, there being no thoughts of the beginning or end in the panorama, for what’s certain is that it will unfold despite these, and in the end it cannot be controlled. Thus there develops a readiness for acceptance that is often condemned in human history, it being called passivity or fatalism, but Josef finds such characterizations almost comical, they have nothing to do with the truth, instead representing only a rebellion on the part of the uncertain, who because they are never at ease can never see eye to eye with others. Yet what can one really do? Only the gravity of a playful obsession engages with such alienation and is surprised only when the gates are closed which no hand will open again. While asleep Josef still knows that when he is awake he will not be much different from anyone who never plays to the audience, but he also cannot wait forever and just let everything happen, though he will not be like those who are only able to stew in their own sorrows, they being the ones who indeed never can stem the tide of things and are unable to lift themselves out of their narrow confines.

Josef experiences a deep confidence, for he feels a peace that he has never known, not even in those years when he thought himself versed in deep dark secrets, though they were only trumped-up vanities that he succumbed to and thought important. Now for the first time he has vanquished the charming errors of his early years, even though they are still so strong in his memory. Just as Josef has seen himself pass through many transformations, so, too, his gaze has passed over the world, noting how much it has changed, the great hopes that existed at the end of the war and which were tied up with the downfall have already and easily been trampled under, the war instigated by the Conqueror having lasted six years, the world at first unwillingly, then slowly mobilizing to repudiate his unbearable demands, the prison house of Europe broken open and laid to waste, the shouts of liberation and brotherhood stomped out, humans soon growing weak and now everything lost, the game not yet over, but one player has been closed out, only a little more than three years having slipped by and the misery that has hardly passed now reduced to a myth, for new pressing concerns always turn
the too-weak heart full of its greedy demands away from the horror of yesterday’s atrocities.

There are many lives that a person lives, thinks Josef and, even if almost everything in him prevents him from doing so, he can do nothing in this garden but submit to it, the only liberation lies in the power of forgetfulness, not loss, there being no liberation possible through weakness, since weakness merely buries the past. They have to learn that one day that which has been entombed will be dug up, and then there will be mourning and a sorrow without end, but the power of forgetfulness will stride through many changes and be continually conscious of its own moment, which will lead it into innumerable new realms. Then perhaps there will no longer be any more disruptions, then everything will be continually meaningful, and the heart won’t grow weary as long as it keeps beating, a continual process that will be strengthened by the quiet, while suddenly one will be carried forward, everything seeming so much easier than it ever was before, a steady stream, and there will clearly arise an inexhaustible happiness, not just a easy happiness that tries to avoid sorrows, for it will be a happiness free of sorrow, a happiness of permanence, because it will never forsake itself, since it will be childlike and genuine, attaining an equilibrium. Perhaps this is only a dream, the musings of a never-satisfied demeanor; perhaps it’s all idle thinking, but perhaps not, if only this sleep will last long enough.

It is remarkable to come to your senses, and here and there encounter something familiar in which you find a blessing. For how is it that one comes to survive his own destruction? What always succeeds doesn’t do so on its own merits. It’s arrogant to speak of one’s own success, since it’s merely allotted to one or another, while to do so is only an attempt to give shape to the inexplicable run of events because at some point they seem to make sense. All that’s certain is that Josef is not satisfied with remaining just an observer, he wants to be an active observer, he seeing his life up to now as a kind of primary school that has led him from contemplation to action, he having devoted a great deal of time to it, or it was granted to him, he having been dealt with mercifully, as what happened to him was a lot less worse than he could have expected. As a result, Josef was split between the Josef who looked on and the Josef who spoke, these being two different natures that have formed within him and are not always in accord with each other,
one trembling before the other, and both rarely able to agree with the other, such that one no longer knows much of the other, after which they separate, hardly able to understand each other any longer, out of touch, one making fun of the other, who then condemns the other in return. Josef thinks for a moment that he stands at the end of a process, but he quickly dismisses this notion, since he recalls how often he similarly thought that he had arrived at a certain conclusion, only to find himself once again on a path that seems to be approaching an end but which then turns off, often in the blink of an eye, which is enough to change his entire perspective, the path running on, and Josef having to accept that not once has an especially important stage of his life brought him any closer to the supposed end point. In his early years Josef not only had believed in decisive or transitional points in his life but his early death also seemed certain. Now however, after surviving the killing grounds of the hecatombs he smiles until he almost has to cry when he considers the childish dreams of consummation that seemed the crowning glory of his meager existence, he deeply moved by it all, though he did not die, for they were only warnings that this path certainly didn’t lead to the eternal, but rather that one had to reckon with one’s own death without impertinence, Josef hearing this memento mori and humbly accepting that all that was left to him was the vanity of thinking that one could make sense of one’s future. The staggering, playful conclusions of his younger years were a natural consequence of youth, but the manifest events of more recent years pointed to a more probable end, though meanwhile Josef has come to value readiness more than sheer resignedness, and in this he has found solace and certitude in the will to persist.

What affects Josef today is not some great turning point in his life, for life doesn’t change, and such a belief leads only to awkward expressions of an overreaching spirit that insatiably gathers all events together into a dubious sense that imparts a precarious arrangement to them, while in actuality they remain the inscrutable unfolding of reality that frays the tattered threads of thought. And so Josef no longer sees things in this manner, but certainly there is a part that remains a kind of expectation, and every expectation works as a preparation, each rung of life repeating the same set of experiences, however deeper or more rich, while what appears to change are thoughts and feelings that are seemingly unrepeatable, although they soon
resurface as memories. But what Josef is experiencing now is indeed a turning point, no, a reversal, it perhaps being best to think of it as a convolution, earlier everything having come at him from the outside as a continuous stream of stimuli, a kind of visitation from the many that touched upon the one, while now it was the opposite, the one seeking the many, the observer marking his surroundings, whereas before appearances affected contemplation. That could not continue, you need to point to and attest what you want to make of experience, and this requires that you look into your surroundings, it no longer being good enough to simply look on, but instead you have to examine closely, the panorama now turned around, the right to impartial observance is now forfeited, the spotlight is on and there is nothing for it but to wait and see whether it suits others to come and observe as well, but nonetheless impartiality has been destroyed. Until now there was an appeal to being anonymous, and even if generally no one was willing to admit it, so it was indeed, you paid a little fee and enjoyed yourself as if it didn’t really matter what you did. Now even the highest fee isn’t enough to successfully enter the panorama, Launceston Castle the last image of what is the irrevocable end of the show, the role of the guest now over, it now being enough to point out what he has learned and accomplished for himself, he ready to give up his seat or open his own panorama. Josef doesn’t yet know how he will begin, but he doesn’t believe a simple reversal is possible. As good as it is to be alone and unknown, he still has to gather and also look at the images as they slowly pass by, but it’s important to realize that there really are no new images, something that already reminds him of the past, when his grandmother put her arm around him and said, “It’s over, my dear. We’ve seen that one already. We have to go.”