The Wall

  But what I liked doing best was simply looking out over the meadow. It was always in gentle motion, even if I thought the wind was still. An endless, gentle ripple emanated peace and a sweet fragrance. Lavender grew here. Alpine roses, cat’s foot, wild thyme and a host of herbs whose names I didn’t know; which smelt just as good as thyme, but different. Tiger would often sit mad-eyed by one of the fragrant plants, and was quite unapproachable. He used the herbs as an opium addict uses his drug. His intoxications didn’t have any ill effects on him, though. When the sun had gone down I led Bella and Bull into the byre and did my usual work. Supper generally turned out to be quite meagre and consisted of the leftovers from lunch and a glass of milk. It was only when I had shot a deer that we lived quite luxuriously, until the sight of meat filled me with nausea. I had it without bread or potatoes, since I had to save the flour for the days when there was no meat left.

  Then I would sit down on the bench and wait. The meadow slowly went to sleep, the stars came out, and later the moon rose high and bathed the meadow in its cold light. I waited for those hours all day, filled with secret impatience. They were the only hours in which I was capable of thinking quite without illusions, completely clearly. I was no longer in search of a meaning to make my life more bearable. That kind of desire struck me as being almost presumptuous. Human beings had played their own games, and in almost every case they had ended badly. And how could I complain? I was one of them and couldn’t judge them, because I understood them so well. It was better not to think about human beings. The great game of the sun, moon and stars seemed to be working out, and that hadn’t been invented by humans. But it wasn’t completed yet, and might bear the seeds of failure within it. I was only an attentive and enchanted onlooker; my whole life would be too short to grasp even the tiniest stage of the game. I’d spent most of my life struggling with daily human concerns. Now that I had barely anything left, I could sit in peace on the bench and watch the stars dancing against the black firmament. I had got as far from myself as it is possible for a human being to get, and I realized that this state couldn’t last if I wanted to stay alive. I sometimes thought I would never fully understand what had come over me in the Alm. But I realized that everything I had thought and done until then, or almost everything, had been nothing but a poor imitation. I had copied the thoughts and actions of other people. The hours on the bench by the house were real to me, an experience of my own, yet they were not the whole. My thoughts almost always raced ahead of my eyes and distorted the true picture.

  Just after waking, when my mind is still paralysed by sleep, I sometimes see things before I can categorize and recognize them. The impression is frightening and menacing. It is only knowledge that turns the chair, with the clothes draped on it, into a familiar object. A moment before, it was something inexpressibly strange and set my heart racing. I didn’t carry out these experiments very often, but neither was it especially curious that I did carry them out. There was nothing, after all, to distract me and occupy my mind, no books, no conversation, no music; nothing. Since my childhood I had forgotten how to see things with my own eyes, and I had forgotten that the world had once been young, untouched and very beautiful and terrible. I couldn’t find my way back there, since I was no longer a child and no longer capable of experiencing things as a child, but loneliness led me, in moments free of memory and consciousness, to see the great brilliance of life again. Perhaps animals spend their whole lives in a world of terror and delight. They cannot escape, and have to bear reality until they have ceased to be. Even their death is without solace and hope, a real death. Like all human beings, I too was forever in hurried flight; forever trapped in daydreams. Because I hadn’t seen the deaths of my children, I imagined them as being still alive. But I saw Lynx being killed, I saw the brain swell from Bull’s split skull, and I saw Pearl dragging herself along like a boneless thing and bleeding, and again and again I felt the warm hearts of the deer cooling in my hands.

  That was reality. Because I have seen and felt all that, it’s difficult for me to dream in the daytime. I have a violent resistance to daydreams, and I feel that hope has died in me. It frightens me. I don’t know whether I will be able to bear living with reality alone. Sometimes I try to treat myself like a robot: do this and go there and don’t forget to do that. But it works only for a short time. I’m a bad robot; I’m still a human being who thinks and feels, and I shall not be able to shake either habit. That’s why I’m sitting here writing down everything that’s happened, and I’m not worried about whether the mice will eat my notebooks or not. Writing is all that matters, and as there are no other conversations left, I have to keep the endless conversation with myself alive. It will be the only report that I shall ever write, for when it is written there won’t be a single little piece of paper left to write on in the house. Even now the moment when I shall have to go to bed makes me tremble. Then I shall lie with my eyes open until the cat comes home, and her warm proximity will give me the sleep I long for. Even then I’m not safe. If I’m defenceless dreams can assail me, black dreams of night.

  It’s hard for me to find my way back in my thoughts to that summer in the Alm, which seems very unreal and remote. Lynx, Tiger and Bull were still alive back then, and I had no inkling what was to come. Sometimes I dream I am looking for the pasture and can no longer find it. I walk through thickets and forest, on bumpy slopes, and when I awake I’m tired and depressed. It’s strange, in the dream I’m looking for the pasture, and when I awake I’m happy not even to have to think about it. I would like never to see it again, never again.

  In August there were two or three more storms, but they were never very violent and lasted only a few hours. If something sometimes vaguely disturbed me, it was that everything had gone so well. We were all healthy, the days stayed warm and fragrant, and the nights were filled with stars. Finally, since nothing else happened, I got used to this state, and began to accept good things as easily as if I had never expected anything else. Past and future washed around a little warm island, the here and now. I knew it couldn’t stay that way, but I didn’t worry about it at all. In my memory, that summer is overshadowed by events that occurred much later. I can no longer feel how beautiful it was, now I only know it was. There is a terrible difference. That’s why I can’t draw the picture of the pasture. My senses have a worse memory than my mind, and one day they may stop remembering entirely. Before that happens I must have written everything down.

  Summer was already drawing to a close. Bad weather set in in the last week of August. It grew cold and rainy, and I had to keep a fire going all day. At that time I was using up too many matches, for the sticks burned away immediately whenever I left the hut. Bella and Bull stayed in the meadow. They didn’t seem to feel the cold, but looked less contented than they had in the summer. Tiger spent a miserable week in the hut, sitting on the windowsill and staring crossly into the rain. I completed my daily tasks, and quite slowly started yearning for the hunting-lodge, for my dressing-gown, the quilt and the crackling beech-logs. At midday every day I took the loden coat, drew the cape over it and went into the forest with Lynx. I wandered aimlessly beneath the dripping trees, let Lynx rummage around a little to keep him in a good mood, and returned shivering to the hut. As I had nothing else to do I went to sleep early, and the more I slept the more sleepy I grew. I was annoyed by this, and began to grow melancholy. Tiger wandered, crying plaintively, from the kitchen to the bedroom and tried to tempt me to play, but soon grew weary himself and gave up. Only Lynx wasn’t upset by the rain, and apart from our short expeditions he slept day and night in the stove door. Finally it even started snowing, in enormous wet flakes. Soon we were in the midst of the most awful snowstorm. I got dressed and led Bella and Bull to the stable. It snowed all night, and in the morning the snow lay four inches thick. The sky was overcast, and the wind blew cold. Towards afternoon it grew warmer, and a little rain fell. I now saw clearly that I couldn’t put off our return home too much longer.


  A week later I was woken by the sun on my face. It had actually turned fine again. The air was still cold, but the sky was clear and pale blue. The sun struck me as a little duller and smaller than before, but I’m sure I imagined that. The day was radiantly beautiful, but something had changed. The first snow shimmered from the rocks and made me shiver. Lynx and Tiger were already at the door, and I let them out. Then I led Bella and Bull to the meadow. The air smelt of snow, and it wasn’t warm until midday. But now I wanted to wait a while before bringing the animals down from the pasture; in fact it stayed fine until the twentieth of September. In the evening I had to look at the stars through the window, it was already much too cold outside. They seemed to have retreated further into space, and their light was colder than it had been in the past summer nights.

  I resumed my old life, went for walks with Lynx, played with Tiger and attended to my household tasks. But in a strange way I felt as if my illusions had been shattered. One night, when I was already starting to feel cold in bed, I realized that it was dangerous to wait any longer. In the early morning I packed the most necessary things in my rucksack, put Tiger in his detested box, fetched Bella and Bull from the stable and was ready to move. At seven o’clock we set off, and at eleven we arrived at the hunting-lodge. First I let Tiger, crying pitifully, out of his prison and locked him in the house. After they had drunk at the spring I let Bella and Bull graze in the clearing. The weather was still fine, and it was warmer here than up in the Alm. When I went into the house Tiger was already lying in the wardrobe, where he seemed to feel safe. Lynx greeted the hunting-lodge with joy. He understood that we had come home and accompanied me, yapping excitedly, wherever I went. I was busy in the house until late afternoon, and only after milking, and after I had brought Bella and Bull to their old byre, did I get something to eat. The fire was burning in the stove, a proper crackling fire of beech-logs, and the house smelt of air and washed wood. Lynx crept into the stove door, and I too went to bed, tired. I stretched out, extinguished the candle and immediately went to sleep.

  Something pressed damp and cold against my face, and woke me with little cries of joy. I put the light on, and then took the grey, dew-damp bundle into my arms and pressed it to me. The cat really had come home. With a lot of grrus, guarrs and miaows she reported the experiences of her long, lonely summer. I got up and filled her bowl with warm milk, which she fell upon greedily. She had lost a lot of weight, and she was unkempt but seemed to be quite healthy. Lynx came over and the two of them greeted each other with something like affection. Perhaps I had always been unfair to the cat in thinking her cool and stand-offish. On the other hand a warm oven, sweet milk and a safe place in bed are worth a bit of noise. In any case we were all happily united, and when I lay in bed again and felt the familiar little body against my legs I was very glad to be home again. It had been beautiful in the alpine pasture, more beautiful than it could be here, but I was at home in the hunting-lodge. I thought back to the summer with something like unease, and was glad to have returned to my usual life.

  Over the next few days I didn’t have much time for the animals. Every morning I climbed up to the Alm with Lynx and brought back a big rucksack full of household equipment. It was less arduous than it had been in May, because this time it was downhill. Only the butter churn left a few blue marks on my back once again. When, before entering the forest, I turned around for the last time, I saw the meadow once more, rippling in the autumn wind beneath the high, pale blue sky. I was already out of place in the great breadth and stillness. I knew it would never again be as it had been that summer. There was no good reason why, but I knew it with great certainty. Today I think I knew it because I didn’t want anything to repeat itself. Any intensification of that special situation would have placed me and my animals in great danger.

  The way downhill led beneath dark spruces, along bumpy paths, and the little patch of blue above me had nothing in common with the sky over the alpine pasture. Every stone in the path, every little bush presented itself as familiar, beautiful, but a little ordinary compared with the gleaming snow on the rocks. But this familiar ordinariness was what I needed to live, if I wanted to stay a human being. In the pasture something of the cold and breadth of the sky had seeped into me and had imperceptibly distanced me from life. But that was already in the past. While I made my descent into the valley, the butter churn wasn’t the only thing that weighed painfully against my shoulders; all the worries I had dismissed revived. I was no longer freed from the earth, but toiling and overburdened, as befits a human being. And it seemed a good thing to me, and I gladly assumed the heavy load.

  After resting for two days I visited the potato-field. The plants were dense and green and weren’t starting to turn yellow. I had to spend a few weeks getting by with meat and flour, but I didn’t have much flour left. I cooked nettle-spinach, which wasn’t as good as it had been in the spring but still filled the stomach. Then I went to look for my fruit-trees. The damsons, which had blossomed and grown in abundance, must have dropped in the summer. On the other hand there were more apples than the previous year, and a large amount of crab-apples. I had to wait for that harvest as well. I ate an apple, but it was still green and gave me stomach-ache.

  My second autumn in the forest had arrived. Cyclamen blossomed in damp and shady places among the hazel-bushes, and the gorge had a blue lining of gentians. The wind veered from east to south, bringing disagreeably warm air with it. Perhaps I had left the alpine pasture too early after all, but I knew already that very bad weather would follow the foehn. I felt tired and irritated, carted hay to the garage, and was happy that I’d chopped so much wood in the spring that I was spared that task at least.

  Finally the rain came, but it stayed moderately warm. I had to light a fire in the evening, but you have to do that here. I stayed in the house and altered the old suit that Hugo had worn in the hut to fit me. I sewed very badly and ineptly, but then it didn’t have to be a masterpiece. This task, which I disliked doing so much, occupied my hands alone. My thoughts set off for a stroll. It was pleasant to be in a warm room. Lynx slept in the stove door, the cat slept on my bed, and Tiger sent a ball of paper from one corner to the next. He was almost fully grown now, and already bigger than his mother. His fat tom-cat’s head was almost twice as wide as her delicate little one. After our return the old cat had greeted Tiger with hostility, until he, perhaps out of fear, had given her a good hiss. After that they tolerated, or rather ignored one another, and each behaved as if they were the only cat in the house. Tiger hadn’t recognized his mother. He had, after all, still been small when we’d moved to the Alm, and the old cat had stopped paying him any attention long ago. The wet weather meant that it grew dark early, and to be economical I went to bed early. I didn’t sleep as well as I had done up at the pasture, where the very air made me tired. I woke two or three times in the night and tried not to think, so as not to drive sleep away entirely. I didn’t get up until around seven o’clock, to go to the byre. Bella and Bull had settled down again completely, although Bella was giving less milk since switching to the inferior fodder in the clearing. But I hoped that would improve when she was fed on hay.

  The weather very slowly turned cold and cheerless. I went to the forest with Lynx every day, and when the rain eased off I tried to catch a few trout. One afternoon I caught two, only one the next afternoon, and that one with my hand. I don’t know whether fish sleep, but that one must have dozed off in its pond. Fishing had gone very quiet. The trout wouldn’t bite any more. Even though I couldn’t respect the fishing seasons, I wasn’t catching anything anyway. The arrival of the foehn had led to an early rutting season for the stags, and for that reason too my sleep was disturbed. It seemed to me that there were now more stags than there had been the previous year. My fears were confirmed; they were coming over to me from the other hunting-grounds in which they could multiply unimpeded. Some day, failing an immoderately fierce winter, the forest would be overrun with de
er. Even today I can’t say how things will develop; but if I dig my way under the wall I will perform that last task very thoroughly and build a proper gateway of earth and stones. I couldn’t deny my deer their last chance of survival.

  The wind finally turned again, and now came from the east. It grew really fine once more. At midday the air was so warm that I could sit on the bench in the sun. The big wood-ants became very industrious again, and marched past me in black and grey processions. They seemed to be extremely purposeful, and wouldn’t be distracted from their work. They lugged spruce-needles, little beetles and clumps of earth and toiled away. I always felt a little sorry for them. I could never bring myself to destroy an ants’ nest. My attitude to the little robots vacillated between admiration, fear and pity. Only because I was looking at them with human eyes, of course. To a giant super-ant my own actions would probably have appeared extremely puzzling and peculiar.

  Bella and Bull spent the whole day in the clearing, tugging, a little unenthusiastically now, at the hard, yellowish grass. They definitely preferred the fresh, fragrant hay that I gave them in the evening. Tiger played near me, but stayed away from the ants, and Lynx set off on little expeditions into the bushes, from which he came back every ten minutes, looked at me quizzically and, after a word of praise from me, disappeared again, reassured.

  For almost the whole of October the weather stayed fine. I now made the most of the promising climate and doubled my wood supply. The entire house was now covered with stacks of wood as far as the verandah, and looked like a fortress with little windows peeping out like arrow-slits. The woodpiles sweated yellow resin, and the whole clearing was filled with its odour. I worked on peacefully and evenly, without overtaxing myself. I hadn’t managed that in the first year. I simply hadn’t yet found the right rhythm. But then I had very slowly learned a little more, and adapted to the forest. In the city you can live in a nervous rush for years, and while it may ruin your nerves you can put up with it for a long time. But nobody can climb mountains, plant potatoes, chop wood and scythe in a nervous rush for more than a few months. The first year, when I still hadn’t adapted myself, had been well beyond my powers, and I shall never quite recover from those excessive labours. On top of that, I had been absurdly proud of each new record I broke. Today I even walk from the house to the stable in a leisurely wood-lander’s stroll. My body stays relaxed, and my eyes have time to look around. A running person can’t look around. In my previous life, my journey took me past a place where an old lady used to feed pigeons. I’ve always liked animals, and all my goodwill went out to those pigeons, now long petrified, and yet I can’t describe a single one of them. I don’t even know what colour their eyes and their beaks were. I simply don’t know, and I think that says enough about how I used to move through the city. It’s only since I’ve slowed down that the forest around me has come to life. I wouldn’t like to say that this is the only way to live, but it’s certainly the right one for me. And so many things had to happen before I could find my way here. Before, I was always on my way somewhere, always in a great rush and furiously impatient; every time I got anywhere I would have to spend ages waiting. I might just as well have crept along. Sometimes I became quite clearly aware of my predicament, and of the demands of that world, but I wasn’t capable of breaking out of the stupid way of life. The boredom that often afflicted me was the boredom of a respectable rose-grower at a motor-car manufacturers’ congress. I spent almost my whole life at just such a congress, and I’m surprised I didn’t drop dead with weariness one day. I was probably able to live only because I could always escape into family life. In the last few years, in any case, it often seemed to me as if the people closest to me had gone over to the enemy side, and life became really grey and gloomy.