The Wall (97 page)

Loudspeakers, music machines, and noisemakers created a wild revelry, but it seemed to me that it was drowned out by the booming applause of the conference participants in front of the stage. There was nothing I could do but bow, again and again, to the audience. I saw how they lifted Michael and Eva up from the crowd, the children waving handkerchiefs at me. Vainly I tried to shove Roy Rogers and Konirsch-Cassidy and all the members of their troupe in front of the joyous, screaming onlookers in order that at least a part of the applause go to them. That only worked a quarter of an hour later, when the pack were told to head inside the tent for the imminent start of the special presentation, at which Rogers and Cassidy carried me on their shoulders. Then the friends placed me on the stage inside, where I had to say a few words, though it was nothing more than repeated thank-yous. The relentless applause prevented a speech of any regular length. Then Herr Konirsch-Lenz unrolled his wallpaper once again with amazing alacrity, while Roy Rogers made his lasso twist and twirl as intricately as possible.

While this was going on, a wall slowly appeared between me and the onlookers. Certain that people were not paying as much attention to me, I
inconspicuously stepped down from the stage at the back. Only Frau Minna noticed what I was doing, but when I whispered to her that I was planning a closing act that I wanted to think over and prepare in peace, my behavior didn’t seem at all peculiar to her and she didn’t pay any more attention to me. I just waited until she was no longer near me the moment she was needed onstage. Finally I looked up, and she was nowhere to be seen. I found my way to the back of the tent and looked for an exit, though I found none. The canvas was thick and was not ripped anywhere. I could have used the pocketknife I won at the Wheel of Fortune in order to cut a slit in the tent wall, but that seemed too nasty a thing to do and not easy. I would have been found out straightaway and could have been arrested for it. That’s why I bent over and looked to see if there was any place where I could lift the tent and wriggle out from underneath. It was possible, but I had to crawl along the damp, dirty ground before I managed to force my way through.

Then I stood in the open air on the outer edge of the grounds on which the sociologists had met for the day. I wiped off my jacket and pants as quickly as I could. Then I heard the rattling of a chain. I looked around to see a dog lunge at me. At that, I ran away, deeper into Shepherd’s Field, so that I couldn’t be easily caught in case my escape was discovered. For the same reason, I avoided the usual entrance to the annual fair at Halstead Way. When I had finally run out of breath, I stopped and looked in all directions. Nothing seemed suspicious, nor was I being followed. I was left to myself and regretted only that Johanna and the children, as well as Anna, were not with me. I was concerned that they might be worried about me, while I also told myself that Johanna was smart enough to understand my secretly disappearing, which was nothing out of the ordinary for me.

In Shepherd’s Field it was quiet; the ruckus of the Sociology Conference was a ways off with the tents and booths, while in the middle of the neglected field, with its weed-free grass, there was nothing else to hear. Only a few people appeared here and there, lone strollers who were not at all interested in sociology and took me to be the same as they, which they were right to do. Some young people and kids romped around, chasing after balls or enjoying themselves in other games. A tall boy seriously worked at getting his kite off the ground and was plenty proud when I complimented his agile handling of the reel and the string. From the distance I heard the
piercing whistle of a locomotive and the rattling wheels of the train that raced along the rails. The metropolis was left behind, everything suffered having disappeared. There really wasn’t anything there, and that’s how it appeared to me. I couldn’t help feeling at ease.

Only the hour itself was there, and thus it was today and it still is today. Around me everything had run together, such that I didn’t know where I belonged or what I belonged to. “I’m here, I’m here!” This I called out loud. No one paid any attention, and that was good. Surely it would make it hard for anyone to sympathize, and even without this I had experienced enough ill will that I didn’t wish to cultivate any more. This was why I had to deny myself so much. I will no longer avoid my fellow man; nothing is gained by remaining as distant as I have been, in having so little to do with them. Carefully I will lie low and not increase the opportunities to come together with them, but the idea that I am a crank or arrogant is something I want to avoid. No, I am neither of those, nor do I want to be at all. I have no right to be, and I have gone to great lengths to affirm the idea that I am not in any essential way different from my fellow man. And yet I still fear that I will never succeed in simply seeming harmless; I exist too much at the mercy of others and have to hear again and again what I suddenly blurt out, and, to my sorrow, I will not remain silent. This hinders me, disturbs me; there’s no helping it. I have long since come to understand that it leads to nothing when I entrust myself to someone else.

Does the construct of my life work in this time? Alas, time and life. I don’t want to raise old doubts. It is indeed a construct, that’s the right word, and it will have to do. It is an undeveloped existence that attempts to assert itself with such a pointless new beginning, as if it were simply the consequence of a developing condition, an aging link that is connected to an existing chain that cannot be severed, which stretches visibly out ahead of me, and which, I can perceive, goes on even further, a row of continually secure dwellings, as has been extended through many generations, the magic of ancestry, father and son, myself in between, its beginnings hidden so deep and distant within unrevealable ancient times that one cannot know them, nor must know them. Up to now, my attempt to exist was an unsuitable undertaking grafted insultingly onto ruin for the sake of a bit of importance, pieced on to nothingness. That’s how it seems to me. But that is said
with too much bitterness and ingratitude. Nonetheless I have not become cold, nor do I lack for feelings, for in fact I am overflowing with them, even if they, too, often just die and nothing comes of them. Thus I am pulled in many directions and continually stretched further and further, such that sometimes I seem to reach as far as infinity; only the middle is missing, the familiar middle, which I can neither create nor grant myself. The threefold home of the ancestors, the countryside, and what was familiar have all been destroyed. That which was once obvious is gone, myself now wandering and living as a guest. That’s a dangerous task.

What does the house on West Park Row mean, or Johanna and the children, and how do I square it with my stop in midflight? Without giving myself over to the measureless depths of sorrow, there is no way for me to manage to achieve solid footing or even affirm it, which is clearly demanded of me, for I am expected to affirm and defend just such. None of that can happen without stability. Without stability there is no way to secure any situation; instead, it becomes just a changing set of circumstances. They disappear and I can’t maintain them, nor can they maintain themselves. Nothing that once was still is, nor will it still be. Everything in me is broken, I myself am broken, but amid the rubble the wall remains, and before it the readiness to answer should the question reach me. Also remaining is the expectation of the question, a groundless hope that still persists. That alone maintains the possibility of stability.

For everything else, after what I’ve experienced, it may be too late. If I say something, see something, know something, then it is nothing that can be affirmed; it doesn’t last, no matter how much it wishes to endure and appears to be affirmed, but it is never firmly held within the mind or invoked through prayer and innocent belief. Before I know it, it dissolves, leaving me uncertain and groping in the dark. This, then, leaves me in an unbearable state, and all I can do is hold myself together. I simply have to be, because I am, and I have to do something for Johanna and the children, because I have to press on with nice gestures and a friendly demeanor and not let up. There’s no other choice but to affirm myself, rather than to be affirmed by people, and certainly not by the higher authorities. No, just I myself, really just that, perhaps not to affirm myself to myself but just to affirm myself, not I myself but just to affirm something. This is indeed a surfeit of a small,
humble daring, and as a result of it, all objects come into question, no longer being just this or that, but rather unaffirmed, just questions in themselves. I remain before them, becoming weak and tired as a result, until I risk the monstrous and shove them out of the way.

Because I didn’t flee at the right time, I have to continually flee; no one and nothing can change that. How diminished I am as a result! A man of intellect who is nonetheless exposed, be it the man or the intellect, for either is less than existence. A survivor, condemned to cling to a signpost in the deadly snowstorm of misery, and when the snowstorm had cleared all the others were frozen, the signpost split. On the post, no destinations were legible any longer, the path itself lost, steps taken to the right and to the left, forward or behind, never once revealing the slightest trace of other footprints, while the feet can wander all about the traversable ground, except even the ground itself is not certain, no matter how surprisingly it holds up the weight of the one who walks on it.

But every transformation of the forgotten leads to error. No direction provides a reliable sense of things to come, and the roads of time continue to become lost in confusion; dreams gnaw away at them and mock the certainty of hours. Then there are no more hours, the realms of past and future are shattered, not to be recovered or put back together, nor do they lie agape before each other, for only a demented mind would still cling to the idea of them. The run of things is twisted and destroyed; there is nothing left to retrieve.

I stand here at a loss—at a loss the peace, at a loss the restlessness itself. I pass my time in an empty present, as I turn about and ready myself. Where am I? Where today? Convoluted sorrow, which I break down, nothing of it remaining, the wind having scattered it, nor is there any more sorrow, it being all gone. I don’t wish to exaggerate and portray my anxiety-ridden existence in lurid darkness. Not to make it too all-important, but also to know that one has nothing more than oneself. But what do I have?

I manage, nonetheless, to remain somewhat reasonable. In my world I have tried to make sure that the guilt that never quite leaves my person has at least lessened in the past two or three years. I don’t give other people much of a chance to have much to do with me anymore. My problems, whether they can be assuaged or remain unsolvable, I no longer turn to others
with, and I have succeeded in extricating myself from their involvement. Thus I have robbed myself of the last opportunity to find a place among my contemporaries, to feel that I have a function as a member of society, even if it is only that of being a recognized witness to what I have lived through. I no longer hope for that, even if I should make it to fifty.

Once I had been denied almost any ties to the community, I was a relic of a person. Then I also had to relegate this relic to the inconspicuous. That had nothing to do with humility or frugality. Strangely no one expected that I would be depressed or suffer at all; on the contrary, they in fact expected me to be self-reliant, demanding that I produce something and lift myself up in the way that a man was meant to do. In no way did I measure up to such clever people, and so I don’t want anything to do with how they think of me.

I have to rely much more on myself than on others. Thus I repeat to myself once more what I have come to realize: Without thinking of myself as any more important, if I am ever to exist, I know indeed that I can never let myself step outside myself; I live within my own border. It would be an implicit offense not to recognize that.

I have been forced into my isolation; I have not wanted it, for I always wanted things to be different. Rejected by all, alienated by people and their coveted status, I have been relegated to a place of my own. No one wants anything to do with me, nor do I want anything from anyone. That’s why I’ve tried to keep separate how I survive and not follow unseemly ways. That I am essentially reliant on myself and have to worry about myself on my own—this causes enormous difficulties, such that from within everything looks so paltry, and I have nothing more than just myself, and that is ever little. Often, I ask myself whether there is anything more. That this may still be the case, despite everything, each moment confirms.

I don’t separate myself from what I am not and yet nonetheless am of, that which I cannot escape or run from, for it is my imprisonment. That is neither important and essential nor unimportant and inessential. It hisses in my ears, causes horrible and sometimes also multiple sensations, pressing into me, lifting me, holding ready a thousand horrors, bowing me down and plunging me into weeks of weariness, days and nights blurring together that can hardly be distinguished from one another, because they have been
mixed dully together and dipped in a stagnant brew. Then I am almost sick and drag myself around exhausted, feeling myself reduced to my own echo, such that an earlier life—this being my own earlier life—slips over me and leaves me with my senses reeling and it wanting to supply my sluggish fish-mouth with a strange speaking voice. But all of this is me myself, a tunnel in the same mountain whose shafts toss about in an earthquake.

Suddenly I am able to rally, a single movement of the hand enough to order me out of the dungeon of my breast, myself shaking and breaking into a coughing fit. Then usually better days follow, only a razor-thin fear remains and soon embeds itself as a small, smoldering desire coursing through my head from sleep to sleep, and that knows neither source nor goal.

On such days I have the desire to listen to music, uninterrupted music, almost feeding upon it. I myself have never played music, but I have always loved listening to it. Unfortunately, for many years that was only rarely possible. I never had the time, and thus music was drowned in wishes. Now it appeals to Michael. He always loved to sing, and at the age of three he had warbled many little songs quite well. Then it had inspired the boy to take up the violin. That is the newest, most important event in my house. Johanna and I thought about it a great deal, for the cost of a good teacher, which is the only thing Johanna would have, frightened us.