The Wall

  After an hour I went into the lodge and heated up the rest of the risotto for Lynx and myself, and then made coffee to clear my head and smoked three cigarettes. They were my last cigarettes. Hugo, who was a heavy smoker, had inadvertently taken four packs with him into the village in his coat pocket, and hadn’t yet got round to laying in cigarette supplies for the aftermath of the next war. Once I’d smoked the three cigarettes I couldn’t bear it in the house any longer, and went back to the gorge with Lynx. The dog followed me unenthusiastically and kept close to my heels. I ran almost the whole way and came to a breathless halt when the woodpile appeared. Then I walked on with my hands outstretched until I touched the cool wall. Although I couldn’t have expected anything different, the shock was much more violent this time than the time before.

  The stream was still blocked, but the trickle on the other side had grown a little wider. I took off my shoes and set about wading through the water. This time Lynx followed me, hesitantly and reluctantly. He wasn’t afraid of water, but the stream was ice cold and went up to his belly. It unsettled me that I couldn’t see the wall, so I broke off an armful of hazel twigs and started sticking them in the earth along the wall. This activity struck me as the obvious thing to do, and most importantly it kept me busy enough to stop me thinking. So I tidily staked out my twigs. My path now took me uphill a little way, and I got back to the spot from where I could see the little farmhouse.

  The old man was still standing by the spring, his cupped hand raised to his face. The little bit of valley that I could see from here was filled with sunlight, and the air trembled, gold and green and clear, at the edges of the forest. Now Lynx could see the man too. He sat down, stretched his head into the air, and let out a drawn-out, terrible howling. He had understood that the thing by the spring was not a living human being.

  His howling tugged at me, and something within me tried to force me to howl along with him. It tugged at me as if it wanted to tear me to pieces. I took Lynx by his collar and pulled him away with me. He grew quiet, and followed me, trembling. I slowly felt my way further along the wall, and stuck one piece of wood after the other into the ground.

  When I looked back, I was able to follow the new border down to the stream. It looked as if children had been playing there, a cheerful, harmless spring game. The fruit-trees on the other side of the wall had already faded, and were now covered with gleaming, light-green leaves. From here on the wall rose gradually uphill to a group of larches in the middle of the mountain pasture. From here I could see two more cottages and part of the valley. I was annoyed that I’d forgotten Hugo’s binoculars. In any case I couldn’t see a single person, not a living soul. No smoke rose from the houses. The disaster must, by my reckoning, have happened towards evening, and surprised the Rüttlingers when they were still in the village or on their way home.

  If the man by the spring was dead, and I could no longer be in any doubt about that, then all the people in the valley must be dead, and not only the people, but everything that had been alive. Only the grass in the meadows lived now, the grass and the trees; the young leaves brilliant in the light.

  I stood, both palms pressed against the cool wall, and stared across. And suddenly I didn’t want to see anything any more. I called Lynx, who had started digging under the larches, and went back, keeping to the little toy boundary. After we had crossed the stream I staked out the road as far as the rocks, and then slowly returned to the hunting-lodge. After the cool, green gloom of the gorge the sun suddenly overwhelmed us when we walked into the glade. Lynx seemed to have had enough of the whole enterprise, ran into the house and crept into the stove door. As ever, when he was at a loss, he went to sleep straight away after snuffling and wagging his tail for a bit. I envied him this ability. Now he was asleep I missed the slight disturbance that he always emanated. But it was still better to have a sleeping dog in the house than to be entirely alone.

  Hugo, who didn’t drink himself, had laid in a little store of cognac, gin and whisky. I poured myself a glass of whisky and sat down at the big oak table. I had no intention of getting drunk; I was in desperate search of a medicine to drive the dazed numbness from my head. It occurred to me that I thought of the whisky as my whisky, so that I no longer believed in the return of its rightful owner. This gave me something of a shock. After the third sip I pushed the glass away disgusted. The drink tasted of straw soaked in lysol. There was nothing in my head that I could make sense of. I had convinced myself that overnight an invisible wall had come down or gone up, and in the state I was in I was quite incapable of finding an explanation for it. I was neither concerned nor desperate, and there would have been no sense in forcing myself into either state. I was old enough to know that it would get me sooner or later. The most important question seemed to me to be whether only the valley or the whole country had been affected by this disaster. I decided to accept the former- theory, since then I could still hope that I would be released from my forest prison in a few days. Today it seems to me that I hadn’t believed in that possibility even then. But I’m not sure. In any case I was sensible enough not to abandon hope at first. After a while I noticed that my feet hurt. I took off my shoes and socks and saw that I’d got blisters on my heels from walking. The pain seemed to arrive at quite an opportune moment, because it distracted me from fruitless thoughts. After I’d bathed my feet and smeared ointment on my heels and stuck plasters on them, I decided to organize the hunting-lodge in the way that seemed most manageable. First of all I moved Luise’s bed out of the bedroom into the kitchen and put it by the wall so that I could see the whole room and the door and the window. I spread Luise’s sheepskin by the bed, in the secret hope that Lynx would choose to make his bed there. He didn’t do this, incidentally, and went on sleeping in the stove door. I took the bedside table out of the bedroom as well. It was only some time later that I moved the wardrobe into the kitchen. I closed the shutters in the bedroom and then locked the door leading out of the kitchen. I locked the upper rooms as well, and hung the keys on a nail beside the stove. I don’t know why I did all those things; it must have been instinctive. I had to be able to see everything and protect myself against attack. I hung Hugo’s loaded shotgun beside the bed and put the torch on the bedside table. I knew that all the measures I was taking were directed against human beings, and they struck me as ridiculous. But since I had only ever been threatened by human beings before, I couldn’t adapt too quickly. The only enemy I had ever encountered in my life so far had been man. I brought up my travelling alarm clock and my watch, and then fetched wood, which lay stacked, cut and chopped up under the verandah, into the kitchen and piled it up beside the stove.

  Evening had fallen in the meantime, and the cool air swept down from the mountain into the house. The sunlight still lay upon the glade, but all the colours were slowly growing colder and harsher. A woodpecker was tapping in the wood. I was happy to hear it, and the splashing of the spring that flowed thick as my arm into the wooden trough. I laid my coat over my shoulders and sat on the bench. From there I could see the path into the gorge, the huntsman’s hut, the garage and the dark spruce-trees behind it. Sometimes I imagined I could hear footsteps in the gorge, but of course I was always mistaken. For a while, quite absently, I contemplated a few enormous wood-ants passing by me in a hasty little procession.

  The woodpecker abandoned its tapping; the air grew cooler and cooler, and the light bluish and cold. The little patch of sky above my head turned pink. The sun had disappeared behind the spruce-trees. The weather report had been right. As I thought this I was reminded of the car radio. The window was half open, and I pressed the little black button. After a moment I heard a gentle, empty hum. The previous day, to my annoyance, Luise had listened to dance music throughout the journey. Now I would have collapsed with pleasure to hear a bit of music. I twisted and turned the buttons: nothing but a distant, gentle hum that might only have come from the mechanism of the little box. I should have realized even then. But I did
n’t want to. I preferred to convince myself that something in it must have broken during the night. I kept trying, and all that emerged from the box was that humming noise.

  I finally gave up and sat down on the bench again. Lynx came out of the house and put his head on my lap. He needed attention. I talked to him, and he listened carefully and pressed himself against me, tail wagging. Finally he licked my hand and tentatively beat on the ground with his tail. We were both afraid, trying to give each other courage. My voice sounded strange and unreal, and I allowed it to drop to a whisper, until I could no longer distinguish it from the splashing of the spring. The spring would often frighten me. From a certain distance its splashing sounded like a conversation between two sleepy human voices. But I didn’t know that as yet. Without noticing, I stopped whispering. I shivered under my wrap and watched the sky fade to grey.

  Finally I went back to the hunting-lodge and made a fire. I later saw that Lynx had gone to the gorge, and stood there motionless, waiting. After a while he turned around and trotted back to the house, head lowered. He did this the following three or four evenings. Then he suddenly seemed to give up. I don’t know if he just forgot, or if, in his dog’s way, he realized the truth before I did.

  I gave him risotto and dog biscuits, and filled his bowl with water. I knew that he was usually fed only in the morning, but I didn’t want to eat on my own. Then I brewed myself some tea and sat down at the big table again. It was now warm in the hunting-lodge, and the oil-lamp cast its yellow glow over the dark wood.

  It was only now that I realized how tired I was. Lynx, who had finished eating, jumped up and joined me on the bench and watched me long and attentively. His eyes were reddish-brown and warm, a little darker than his coat. The white around the iris gleamed damp and bluish. Suddenly I was very glad that Luise had sent the dog home.

  I put the empty tea-cups away, poured warm water into the tin bowl and washed myself, and then, since there was nothing else to do, I went to bed.

  I had closed the windows and bolted the door. After a little while Lynx jumped down off the bench, came over to me and sniffed at my hand. Then he walked over to the door, from there to the window and back to my bed. I talked to him for a good while and at last, after a sigh that sounded almost human, he sought out his sleeping place in the stove door.

  I let the torch burn for a while, and when I finally turned it off the room seemed as dark as it could be. But it wasn’t all that dark. The remains of the fire in the stove cast a weak, flickering glow on the floor, and after a while I could make out the outlines of the bench and the table. I wondered whether I should take one of Hugo’s sleeping-tablets, but couldn’t bring myself to do it, afraid that I might miss hearing something. Then it occurred to me that the terrible wall might slowly move closer in the silence and darkness of night. But I was much too tired to be afraid. My feet still hurt, and I was lying stretched out on my back, too tired to turn my head. After everything that had happened I had to prepare myself for a bad night. But once I had come to terms with this thought I went straight to sleep.

  I didn’t dream, and woke up refreshed around six o’clock, when the birds started singing. I immediately remembered everything, and closed my eyes in terror, trying to sink back to sleep. I couldn’t, of course. Although I had barely moved, Lynx knew I was awake, and came to my bed to greet me with a happy wag of his tail. So I got up, opened the windows and let Lynx into the open. It was very cool, the sky was still pale blue and the bushes wet with dew. A bright day was dawning.

  Suddenly it seemed quite impossible that I would survive that bright May day. At the same time I knew I had to survive it, and that I had no means of escape. I had to stay quite calm and simply get through it. It wasn’t the first day of my life that I had had to survive like this. The less I resisted it, the more bearable it would be. The dazed state of the previous day had entirely vanished from my head; I was able to think clearly, as clearly as I ever had, but when my thoughts approached the wall it was as if they too bumped up against a cool, smooth and quite insuperable barrier. It was better not to think about the wall.

  I slipped into my dressing-gown and slippers, walked along the wet path to the car and switched the radio on. A gentle, empty hum; it sounded so strange and inhuman that I switched it off straight away.

  I no longer believed that there was something broken in it. In the cold light of morning it was quite impossible for me to believe that.

  I no longer remember what I did that morning. I only remember standing motionless beside the car for a while, until I was startled by the damp seeping through my slippers.

  Perhaps the hours that followed were so terrible that I’ve had to forget them; but perhaps I only spent them in a state of numbness. I can’t remember. I only know that I came to again around two in the afternoon, when I walked through the gorge with Lynx.

  For the first time I didn’t find the gorge charmingly romantic, but merely damp and gloomy. It’s like that even at the height of summer; the sunlight never touches the ground there. After thunderstorms the fire salamanders creep out of their stone lairs. Later, in summer, I was sometimes able to watch them. There were so many. I often saw ten or fifteen in a single afternoon; glorious creatures mottled black and red, more like certain flowers - tiger-lilies or Turk’s caps - than their relations, the plain greyish-green lizards. I have never touched a salamander, while I’m happy to touch lizards.

  That day, on the second of May, I didn’t see them. It hadn’t rained, and I still had no idea that they were there. I got out quickly to escape the damp green gloom. This time I was better equipped, with mountain boots, knee-length socks and a warm cap. The coat had been a nuisance the day before; it had dragged along the meadow while I was marking out the boundary. I had taken Hugo’s binoculars with me as well, and in my rucksack I had a thermos-flask of cocoa, and sandwiches.

  Apart from these, as well as my little penknife (for sharpening pencils), I’d taken along Hugo’s sharp jack-knife. I couldn’t use it, because it was too dangerous to cut down branches with; I would only have cut my hand. Although I was reluctant to admit it to myself, I carried the knife for self-protection. It was something that gave me a deceptive sense of security. Later on, I often left it at home. Since Lynx died I have carried it with me wherever I go. At least I now know precisely why, and no longer convince myself that I need it to cut down hazel-branches. The wall was, of course, still where I had marked it, and hadn’t shifted nearer to the hunting-lodge as I had imagined in the evening. It hadn’t moved back, either, but I wouldn’t have expected that. The stream had returned to its usual mirror surface, so it had clearly found it easy to penetrate the loose rock. I was able to cross it, jumping from stone to stone, and then followed my toy boundary to the vantage point by the larches. There I broke off fresh branches and began marking out the wall again.

  It was an arduous task, and my back soon ached from all the bending. But I was almost obsessed with the idea that I had to get the task finished as best I could. It comforted me and brought a bit of order into the huge, terrible disorder that had invaded my life. Something like the wall simply could not exist. In marking it out with green sticks I was making my first attempt–since it was there –to assign to it an appropriate place.

  My path led over two mountain pastures, through a young growth of spruces and over an overgrown patch of wild raspberries. The sun was burning, and my hands were bleeding, torn by thorns and splinters. Of couse I could only use the little sticks in the pasture, while in the thickets I needed real posts; here and there I marked the trees near the wall with my pocket-knife. All this held me up, and I made very slow progress.

  From the top of the raspberry-patch I could see almost the whole valley below me. Using the binoculars I could see everything very clearly and sharply. In front of the coachmaker’s cottage a woman sat motionless in the sun. I couldn’t see her face, her head was lowered and she seemed to be asleep. I watched for such a long time that tears came to my eye
s and the image dissolved into shapes and colours. A sheepdog lay unmoving across the doorstep, its head on its paws.

  If this was death, it had come swiftly and softly, almost lovingly. Perhaps it would have been more sensible to have gone to the village with Hugo and Luise.

  Finally I tore myself away from the peaceful scene and went on planting my branches. The wall now dipped into a meadow, with a one-storey farmhouse in it; only a little small-holding such as one often finds in the mountains, not like the big square farms in the open countryside.

  The wall divided the little meadow behind the house, and had cut two branches off an apple-tree. They didn’t look as if they’d been cut off, incidentally, but rather as if they’d been melted, if you could imagine melted wood.

  I didn’t touch them. Two cows lay on the other side of the wall in the meadow. I looked at them for a long time. Their flanks weren’t rising and falling. They too looked more asleep than dead. Their pink nostrils were no longer damp and smooth, and looked instead like prettily painted fine-grained stone.

  Lynx turned his head and looked away into the forest. He didn’t break into that terrible howling, but simply didn’t look, as if he’d decided not to take in anything on the other side of the wall. My parents had once had a dog that turned from mirrors in a similar way.

  While I was still watching the two dead animals I suddenly heard a cow mooing behind me, and Lynx barking excitedly. The noise whipped me round, and then the undergrowth parted, and out of it, followed by the excited dog, stepped a living, mooing cow. She walked straight up to me and bellowed out all her pain to me. The poor creature hadn’t been milked for two days, her voice sounded quite hoarse and raw. I immediately tried to relieve her. As a young girl I had learned how to milk for fun, but that had been twenty years ago and I was completely out of practice.