The Wall (15 page)

“So, then, you believe,” asked Anna, “that the world is worth more than God?”

The young man fell silent and lifted his shoulders ambiguously. I didn’t want to get tangled up in such deep matters, such heavy words, but there was one thing I wanted to know from Peter.

“Things went well for you in the war, yes?”

“Yes, I suppose you could say that. Indeed, they did. I was neither in battle nor locked up.”

“And nothing happened to you?”

“No. Nothing at all, really.”

“And no loved one died, nobody disappeared?”

These questions bothered Peter, as he fidgeted in his chair, grabbed the coffee pot, and poured me some. But he didn’t give any answer. So I pressed harder.

“You said to me earlier on the street that you knew that many had died, especially older people. Do you remember? You weren’t at all affected?”

“Not a single old person of mine. Please don’t grill me! There was plenty of bad news in my family. My oldest brother was burned in a plane attack. I loved him very much. I will never forget him. But to always think about that? My God, what good does that do when one wants to live? I want to live. I don’t want to perish.”

“Ah, to perish—what that even means! But suffering, do you really know what suffering is?”

“I don’t think about that. I know all I need to know. Without justice, there’s also no life.”

“Not only without justice. You are alive or you’re not. Justice is something completely different and hardly has anything to do with life.”

“You should know that Peter’s wife is in prison. He’s working to get her free. She didn’t do anything. The way things are these days … I can’t say anything more.”

“I know little or nothing about the way things are these days. Just so that you know the truth, I arrived here today. Why, if I may ask, was your dear wife …?”

“Why was she …?” Peter repeated the question. “It’s always the same. It happens. Injustice never ends.”

“But she’s alive? You know that? You also know where she is?”

“Yes, I know, and I damn well shall set her free as well!”

“Look, then, all is not lost! You have something to live for. You even think you’ll succeed in the end. You just need to point out that an injustice has been done, that’s what I think, a terrible injustice. But you don’t have to worry about your wife being murdered. As bad as things are, she isn’t going to just disappear into thin air.”

“But the disgrace!”

“Oh, come on! There’s no disgrace in prison, and injustice disgraces no one!”

“No, it’s not prison or whatever you might think. Just pure disgrace. A pack of drunken victorious soldiers attacked women, even young girls. That doesn’t seem to bother the noble liberators.”

“And how do you know all this?”

“You’re so naïve! You just know it if you want to.”

“Really? Were you there and saw it all happen?”

“May I speak for Peter? Rape, hunger, abuse, and murder. Even children are not spared. Anyone knows who is at all interested.”

“That can’t be true!”

“Oh, it’s true!” Anna made perfectly clear. “I’ll tell you all about it, if you want to listen. The streets have indeed been cleared of trouble, but they’re all locked up in the stadium. But, I agree, unhappiness is not always inescapable. One can help out and do something. Peter will manage it; he’s smart. He’s allowed to visit his wife. It costs a lot, but it happens, for the guards are corrupt. In addition, one can also learn from them what’s gone on.”

I was then informed more precisely. The deeds of the liberators were laid out, Anna and Peter allowing me to forget the reason for my visit. Messengers. Torches burning, skulls cracked open and bodies spewing blood. Old people shoved into toilets, where they drowned. Children starving in prisons, wasting away amid the vermin until they died of neglect. It was all so horrible. But I was a lucky man, for I could now be happy that I was free and no one abused me. I had survived; what did any of these new troubles have to do with me? The tales of the horrors returned past terrors to me as present once again, all of it plausible, I not doubting any of it, though it was hard for me to listen to such beastliness, for it was something I no longer had to see, no longer had to suffer.

Before this day everything had been an evil saga, I told myself, and yet I thought, because I had been set free, it was all over. Only as the dark blazing power of the past did this saga hang over me and dog all my future days. There stood the bent figure of my father. He was almost naked, and in his right hand he held a lovely new shirt, like a loaf of white bread, and offered it as a modest gift to a splendid man on a leash who had the head of a dog. Father wanted to save Mother, who, with closed eyes and lips, stuffed in a gray sack, stood behind him.

Father began, “Listen, my friend, behind me is Eva, the mother. She bore two children. A daughter who was taken from her at birth, and a son, who is alive somewhere. Spare this mother!”

The man with the head of a dog looked at the old couple, and the begging old man displeased him. The dog’s head nodded a snide disrespectful reply. Why should he spare her? He had bashed the heads of children against walls and not learned to spare them. The father knew nothing of the dog head’s bloody hands and proffered the shirt, stroking it with trembling hands to smooth it out, in order that it lay spread before him like a virgin snowfield, though the dog’s head stared at his victim with fierce disdain before he stamped it into the ground, staining it with shit and blood, until it was no longer a shirt at all. Then the dog’s head stared at his victim up and down. But the father had no other gifts, and pointed with his arms toward the ground, where the ripped-off sleeves of the shirt, two burst stems, lay stretched out and rigid, hardly recognizable.

“I can give you no more, but only serve you. If you give me flax, I will spin and weave and dye it. Then I’ll cut you a new shirt and sew it for you.”

The dog’s head stood his ground: he didn’t need any clothes. He was fitted out from head to toe, he was the armored power, ready to murder and gobble up anything in its path. Such power had no mother and therefore knew no mercy. It stepped forward, at first slowly and hesitantly, then suddenly stomping for real and pummeling the ragged sleeves of the disgraced shirt. The father still wouldn’t yield, and stood like a solid wall, yet he was pushed aside; his limbs collapsing, he sank to the ground. The dog’s head lashed out and pounced on the silent mother. “Eva, Eva!” he said. “Your old man can’t protect you, Eva. Your children are murderers; your own blood betrayed you. There is no end to hate. Brothers and sisters are at each other’s
throats and, never satisfied, they gobble up father and mother.” Then the dog’s head killed the mother, such that she no longer was and was gone for good. The world had become motherless.

Then everything went dark, only the sharp eyes of the locomotive glaring as it raced through the grim night, the raging dog’s head hissing through the deathly afraid, sleeping lands. I lay chained up on the open coal car behind the locomotive, which pulled the thundering unmanned train over clanking bridges and through echoing gorges and could do nothing to stop it. The power of the locomotive was massive, but I lay on the coal, half deaf and my back rubbing raw, and then it started to rain, hopeless streams of tears. I surrendered helplessly, there being no lever to reach for to stop the relentless forward motion. Then, hissing, it began to climb the mountain, where, way off, an immense gate inscribed with huge letters rose up. At first I couldn’t read what it said, but soon enough I saw it shine brightly: “Welcome to Peace!” A wild roar rose up, voices mixed in, something unintelligible was sung, glowing tatters of lofty music, but also the abominable shriek of saws, drills, rattling motors, mechanical valves—all of it getting louder and louder. After we were finally through the gate, suddenly it all went silent, everything dark, nothing more to hear or see.

I didn’t know whether I was meant to go on, nor did it seem up to me to decide. Yet, since peace was promised me, I also now had to win my freedom, and so I sought with my last strength to break my chains. I almost managed it, but the chains were too strong and wouldn’t burst. Then I strained painfully to see whether I could vanquish the darkness—if, indeed, there was peace. My eyes darted about. I saw, I saw, it worked, and mine was the victory! Something pressed back at me, at which I wearily turned my head to the side, which made it easier, while on my hands I could still feel the clamps, though I quietly sensed that it almost allowed me to rest. The space around me was suffused with a mild light, amid which a question was posed.

“Are you feeling better?”

“What do you mean, better? Why am I lying here?”

It took a while before I came to and reluctantly learned that I had taken ill. I had been placed unconscious on the divan and treated with wet cloths and cologne.

“What trouble have I caused you?”

“None at all,” said Anna. “Not if you’re feeling better. What do you need? A cognac? Coffee? I have the real stuff. Scrambled eggs? A doctor?”

“No, no, I’m fine. I’ve taken up too much of your time. I have no idea how that could have happened, nor how you’ve had to put up with such difficulties.”

“Please, let’s have none of that!”

“Good, good. But I mustn’t bother you any longer.”

I stood up, feeling a bit chilly.

“It is certainly much too late. I really need to be getting home.”

Peter offered to take me home, but Anna felt—and she was right—that I was still too weak, and maybe later would be better.

“Tell me, is it very far? Where, in fact, do you live?”

“I can’t say,” I whispered sadly, and then once more, “I can’t say. Yet I’ll find it, nonetheless. It can’t be that far. Around the corner. Behind the wall. If I could just get going …”

“But only if I accompany you,” said Peter.

“Why, because of what happened earlier? You’re too kind. But, really, I’m all right. All that way, a gate, welcome … peace …”

“What’s that? It seems to me you don’t have an apartment. Come with me! I have a good couch free in my room. Shall we?”

I looked gratefully at Peter.

“If it’s no bother. Naturally, just for tonight.”

“As many nights as you wish, until you find something good for yourself.”

It was late. Peter was ready to go, and I was just as ready myself, yet I still wasn’t steady on my feet.

“Why don’t you stay tonight. Tomorrow we can talk about it all.”

“You couldn’t take in a stranger,” I replied.

“A schoolmate of Arno’s.”

“I really wasn’t friends with him.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“And you just have this one room.”

“That doesn’t matter at all.”

“But your husband. What will—”

“I’m a widow.”

“A widow …?”

“The war.”

“I see. But what about the other tenants? If it got around—”

“Not to worry. You’re being childish.”

“You don’t even know my name.”

“You never introduced yourself.”

“No, I didn’t.”

That’s all I said, rather than set things straight.

“You seem to have had a rough time of it. Yet I don’t need to know your name.”

“You should.”

“As you wish.”

“It’s difficult. The name is difficult for me to say. There’s too much attached to it. Too much of the past on top of everything else. But I have to say it.”

“Give it time!”

“You know there are people who forget their names, their addresses, everything.”

“Yes, I’ve heard of them. That must be terrible.”

“Terrible? Not at all, for it would be nothing but a boon. When you have had everything taken away, there’s nothing to know. I could well imagine that one could begin over again. Such people are taken into a city, asked nothing about what used to be, and the authorities give them papers with fresh names.”

“You could just change your old name.”

“I could, that’s right. But that doesn’t help. You still know the old one, and that still troubles you. One has to begin completely anew. Nameless, in order to get a proper name. Neophilius Neander.”

I had to laugh, but I didn’t feel well when I did. I was tired, and yet I stood and looked around the room, only because I was confused. No one was tempted to extend this conversation, and Peter asked if he could help with anything. He wanted to leave, as it was almost midnight. No, Anna didn’t need anything. Then it was agreed that Peter should come the next day, but not too early. My immediate future would be decided then—whether
I would move in with him, and my entire situation. Peter reached out his hand to me, his grip trusting, yet too strong. Confused, I thanked him, and he smiled boyishly, yet in a leathery manner. He left behind the apples from the street, for they indeed belonged to me, or at least that’s how he felt. I protested. Yes, I had some apples earlier today, but they disappeared long before I fell. Peter didn’t continue to insist that they belonged to me, but they also didn’t belong to him. Lovely apples, he said. Anna should have them. Then he left, whistling low, and didn’t say anything more. It occurred to me that Peter was one of those carefree people who suddenly and with no particular purpose show up in a streetcar or a train compartment when it’s fairly crowded or completely overfull, such that you have no chance to flee when he begins whistling in your ear.

Anna walked her guest out the door, saying that I should make myself comfortable, it wouldn’t take long. I thought that she would wait for the elevator with him, but as she quietly closed the apartment door behind her I knew that I would be alone for longer. At first I looked around a bit, the books attracting my attention. Upon closer inspection I noticed that only the spines were wiped clean, whereas the rest of the books were dusty and had not been read. I felt like reading, as I was no longer tired. I had already run my thumb along the spine of a brown volume and pressed my middle finger at the top of it. Then I changed my mind, I had lost all desire. How about a philosopher? No, I didn’t want that. I pulled my hand back and saw the soft flecks of pale dust pressed into the length of my fingertip, the mark of a rummaging bookishness. It was strange. I had to rub awhile before the flecks were wiped away. Then I sat down in an armchair that filled a corner of the room.