Panorama (68 page)

Now it’s late enough that Josef has to leave the show, needing to go to the gardener and his helpers in order to thank them, for he has to appear grateful, he unable to enjoy himself without passing on some kind of consideration, he needing to at least say how much he enjoyed himself, many thanks, the castle ruins are impressive, too bad the hill isn’t a bit higher, for then the tower would allow you to see all of Cornwall, but oh, the prison, that really pleased me, I’ll never forget it, it is only a shame that not everyone knows about it, perhaps an even bigger inscription about the sufferings of George Fox would be helpful. After that Josef would have to
praise the view, many aspects of it being remarkable, but though it is sweeping, it doesn’t go on forever, and in the end Josef doesn’t approach the gardener.

Josef thinks back to Landstein Castle, where the past and the present were inextricably linked quite differently from here, history remaining unknown there, no inscription, no sense of duty demanding that people be provided with the residue of the past, no park full of flowers there, while here in Launceston there was nothing but the enclosed garden design, from which all sense of the wilderness had been stripped, which is why it was so upsetting and peaceful at one and the same time, Josef always wanting to rise up against it, but then it eased his senses, he immersing himself in the surroundings that no longer possessed any suffering, everything here having been tidied up and protected by certain measures, though the possibility of some kind of harm suddenly bursting forth was still an open one, as each guest still had to behave himself, otherwise he would not be allowed in and would have to leave this country so full of history. And yet Josef cannot quite accept that he has been swept up by a powerful force coursing through the park, for all around it no longer seems as peaceful, which is visible only to Josef, it being good that no one is nearby to notice his stupor, for he cannot control his mounting concern that many voices are calling out and disturbing his sleep, which once seemed so safe, he having to take care that he is not caught, it being easy to grab hold of him since he is so weak, the steps going down that lead from the tower to the lower rooms of the castle, where Josef could be locked up in one of the cellars, no one knowing that any such thing had occurred. But those are ghostly thoughts, ridiculous and childish, for the inhabitants of Launceston walk within shouting distance below in the street, no one wanting to threaten Josef, and all of this simply a result of his imagination getting caught up in confusion. He thinks how his childhood was a bundle of anxieties, and how easy it was for this never quite conquered sense of dire concerns to erupt again, since only by the thinnest of veils is a person separated from past experiences that were once his present, though he must resist their shadow and not give in to them by allowing his senses to be broken, he needing to distance them within his own soul if he wants them to cease. Only then can he gain his own sense of security, reassurance calming him down, and perspective restored once again such that
the heart can know the real truth. The only question is whether that can last, for the everyday world demands its measure of backbreaking work as soon as the outer danger is no longer unquestionably apparent, the wonderful power of the imagination lasting exactly as long or as short as the threat itself. Josef realizes that during the years of terror it was easier to maintain a certain composure than in times that are not as rough, for when dissatisfaction creeps in one is caught up in demands and feels pulled in many directions at once, without really knowing why. A person ends up turning this way and that to fulfill all such demands, but soon he notices how few things actually work, the result being insecurity. Yet should Josef withdraw? Launceston is a quiet town, for centuries the inhabitants here having been spared any terror that has been stamped into the lives of others. When the world fell into its great cataclysm, this place was forgotten.

Apart from practical reasons that forbid it, Josef cannot live in Launceston, he is such a stranger that everything here that could protect him would quickly fall apart, and the allure of his anonymity would soon pass, thus causing him to have to share in the fortunes of this place and the various plights that only the stranger is spared, since he knows nothing of them. Only the stranger can stride through such a small town in the sound belief that everyone lives here in peace, avoiding enmity as well as nasty rumors, the community governed in exemplary fashion, everything clean and orderly, the houses well appointed, flowers and fruit growing in the gardens, as can happen only in a blessed locale, the population amiable, everyone talking in the musical tones of the local vernacular, the Celtic influence pressing through it all, the saturated weight of an ancient culture traceable right up to the present. Meanwhile, in the surrounding villages one is greeted by none other than genuine farmers, tall serious men in country clothes who quietly smoke their pipes in dignified fashion as they drive along the cattle they care for, the wide-open farmland dappled with many colors, filling the mountains with their lit pastures, the entire area a single garden. Josef doesn’t wait long to do what he needs to do, for soon he will be locked out from it all once it’s noticed that he’s an intruder who should move on, extended hangers-on not being wanted here, especially people with Josef’s past, it being better to head for London if he wants to settle in this country. There he can live inconspicuously in the city that is not a city,
but instead a sea of settlements, a disorganized, endless string of settlements, such that this sea has an indistinct countenance, a sea of houses and yet no homes, everything there unrelated and indistinguishable, the only kind of person found being the stranger, about whom no one asks, he allowed to wander through the numberless streets and to ride in the public transport, while places like Launceston want to remain themselves and don’t want gypsies like Josef.

It’s curious that Launceston had indeed recently taken in strangers for a long while, though they were not there of their own free will, they were German prisoners of war who were placed here in a camp, where they walked around in British or more often German army uniforms,
POW
painted on the backs of the jackets, mostly in white letters, the outfits often spotted with color here and there and with patches of other material sewn on. Many of the prisoners of war were put to work in agriculture, Josef thinking about the men with curious interest and mild lament, and how they must have felt adrift here and sometimes bitter as they marched through the streets and byways of the old town, filing into the plazas in groups and astonished by the offerings in the shops, their dull gaze drifting across the unfamiliar surroundings. What kind of memories and what kind of hopes and what kind of apprehensions did the men who were allowed to freely walk around experience? They must certainly have thought their fortunes unjust, feeling conflicted about their lot, not knowing why they were granted all this and what for. Often they were practically homeless, just as Josef has been, or at least since then. Many prisoners were also displaced persons, having come from Romania and the Baltic countries, a good number also coming from Bohemia, and some of them had lost all of their loved ones or didn’t know what had happened to them. This causes Josef to think quickly and longingly and sadly about where his relatives and friends are, his relatives having been crushed and killed, there being only a few friends left and all of them scattered, the others ground up and killed. The prisoners didn’t know what was going on elsewhere, their heads were lowered out of shyness, rubbing their hands in embarrassment as they stood in front of the noble church dedicated to the penitent Mary Magdalene, a lovely Gothic building, rich with ornamentation from top to bottom and covered with figurative reliefs, the prisoners slipping through the heavy Gothic gates to the
town, some also not too shy to make the easy climb to the castle park, where they lay down on the grass where Josef rests today. How comfortable the prisoners must have felt in the commissioned boots in which they had trod through the fighting fields of Europe and North Africa, while with such frightening glee the murderous places had once been called battlefields, these men having been on just such battlefields, traveling there in armored vehicles through the fields and sowing death and destruction in the countryside, the Conqueror having ordered it, they obeying, whether they wanted to or not. But they didn’t know what they were doing, even when they thought they did, they really didn’t know, nor did they know what to do in Launceston, why their fortunes had led them to this Cornish backwater and to such a remote land of plenty, as they forged plans for the future and thought about their families, gathering provisions that were sent back to their devastated homeland.

Then the prisoners of war disappeared from Launceston, they being released, though Josef still sees them, having visited the barracks where their camp was, seeing them in the fields and in town, hearing the soldiers talk, their coarse language still in his ears, but now they are gone, having headed back home, even if in many places they had been hounded from house and home, somewhere still serving as a home for them, somewhere a place where they are taken care of. Josef knows the prisoners of war are no less strange to him than the people of Launceston, since for him all people are remote, he unable to approach them, even though he would like to talk to them and even exchange pleasantries, but he is not a part of them and remains distant, there being no tie between them, neither joy nor sorrow. For who really knows another, even if one suffers under him? Each person is beyond the border of those closest to him. Any kind of closeness, brotherhood, or camaraderie lasts only up to a point in dreams, it being imagined as a wish or a demand, and yet it should come about. There should be something that binds one person to another, something that requires no dictate to set it in place or force it to happen, for that would be bad, because the urge should come from inside, though it must also be something that is not simply asserted by one’s ego but which instills something into this ego in order that it also exist in the other without killing itself. This, however, is inconceivable, even in feeling, it being the human equivalent of the panorama
that no amount of will can allow one to escape this situation, the panorama therefore a great danger in itself, perhaps just another name for the root of all evil, it perhaps being best not to let oneself look or let oneself be seen. For then the panorama is the defeat of one’s humanity, it being inhuman, an addiction, a curiosity that can’t be satisfied, but also a sacrifice of all sanctity, since each is unmasked within his neighbor’s panorama as well.

In the history of humankind there has never been a time in which this circumstance was any different, even when one imagines some cultures or earlier times having had a different consciousness that was more collective and potent. Even then the individual was separate from all others. He felt it perhaps more easily, for though some conflicts were spared him, the basic conflict has existed ever since each person became self-conscious. How can one sink beneath oneself or climb above oneself in order to overcome the insularity of the observer and the observed? For this there were no sacred teachings, the lessons ignored this conflict, since no one yet dared ponder that which, when falsely pondered, led to madness, namely that which was self-evident, but which, when properly pondered, leads to the most solitary duress. Instead it was best left untouched, though perhaps this given was not consciously known, the self too powerful to acknowledge it, even when it realized its own powerlessness, yet the understanding of one’s powerlessness related only to the transitoriness of the one who realized it, perhaps also to his own imperfection, but never to the irreconcilability of being one being among many others.

Despite this Josef presses on, wanting to guard against such thoughts and instead to dip into the satisfaction of not knowing, though this will never be allowed him. He smiles at his limited education and knowledge, for he can find nothing that will help him, he recognizing that he must resign himself to it all, scaring himself, as he knows he must wipe out his own nature in order to change it, he realizing that Johannes’s tower mysticism has nothing to offer him. For Johannes never faced the kind of difficult question that plagues Josef in the midst of the panorama from which he cannot turn away, he drinking in with his gaze and his heart what the images offer up, though he cannot penetrate them, either, he being able only to take them in and complete the magic trick through which he heedlessly identifies reality with what happens, on which his own existence seems to depend, he projecting
himself into the panorama and finding himself pleasantly surprised to see that he exists. Then some sort of oneness seems to have been attained, but it is a oneness founded on loneliness, there being no one else but Johannes at one time, and now the panorama. Thus this path offers no solution, so long as the conception itself doesn’t provide a solution to this ancient dilemma.

There may be a timely advantage to being spared this conflict, because then everything is much easier and schematically simplified, which lends one a certain contentment, such a person hunkering down in his booth, the cabinet satisfactory for observing the panorama in front of him, as he remains inside and sees only a few things that he absorbs, such that a harmonious connection with the universe appears to be maintained. Much more frequently encountered than the followers of Johannes are the frenzied, such as the Frau Director or Professor Rumpler, who are constantly on the move, though they don’t feel bothered by the fact that they are just observers in the panorama, even observers with closed eyes or eyes that shift away, fidgety guests sitting on their stools in the observation room full of restless visitors who cause so much trouble that they disrupt the attention of the other onlookers, for although the fools manage to keep all eyes on them, they have no more to say than do the others, though they hardly know that.