The Wall

  Then, suddenly, it was quite silent for a minute, and that silence was more oppressive than the noise had been. It was as if a giant was standing above us, his legs spread, swinging a fiery hammer to bring it crashing down on our toy house. Lynx whimpered and pressed against me. It was almost a release when the next flash of lightning came and the thunder shook the house. What followed was a violent storm, but the worst was behind us. Even Lynx seemed to feel that, since he jumped off the bench and crawled to Pearl in the stove door. White fur cuddled next to reddish-brown fur, and I stayed alone at the table.

  Now the storm had lifted, and swept away hissing over the house. The candles began to flicker, and it immediately seemed to me to get less sultry. The sight of the flickering candles made me think of cool, fresh air. I now began counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder. By this calculation the storm was still over the valley. The huntsman had once told me about a storm that had been caught in the valley for three whole days. At the time I didn’t really believe him, but now I thought differently. The only thing I could do was wait. I had spent the whole day bending over in the raspberry-patch, and fatigue was overtaking me. I didn’t dare lie down on the bed, but I felt myself growing so tired that the candle flames turned into a watery, wavering ring. It still wasn’t raining. That should have worried me, but to my astonishment I started becoming quite apathetic. My thoughts grew sleepily confused. I was very sorry for myself because I was so tired yet was denied sleep; I was very angry and bitter with somebody, but when I started awake I forgot who I’d been arguing with. Poor Bella passed through my mind, and the potato-field, and then it occurred to me that the windows in my apartment in the city would be open. I found it hard to convince myself of the absurdity of this thought. I said out loud, ‘Forget the bloody windows,’ and woke up.

  A crash of thunder rattled the pots on the stove. The lightning must have struck quite close by. I thought about the nights of bombing-raids spent in the cellar, and old fears set my teeth chattering. The air too was as thick and bad as it had been back in the cellar. I was about to tear the door open when the wind roared furiously around the house and the shingles on the roof started clattering. I didn’t dare lie down, and no longer dared sit at the table, because I didn’t want to slip back into that unpleasant half-sleep. So I started walking back and forth in the room, my hands folded against my back, staggering with fatigue. Lynx poked his head out of the stove door and looked at me anxiously. I managed to say something comforting to him and he pulled himself back in again. The storm now seemed to have been going on for hours; and it was only half-past nine. Finally the gaps between lightning and thunder lengthened, and I breathed more freely. But it still wasn’t raining, and the crashing of the wind wasn’t letting up. And then I suddenly heard, as if from a long way off, the ringing of bells. It was quite inexplicable, but in the howling of the wind I could clearly hear the bright note of a distant bell. If it wasn’t in my head, it had to be coming from the bells in the village. Since there were no people left, the storm must have been ringing the bell. It was a ghostly sound, something that I couldn’t be hearing; yet hearing it I was. I have experienced several more storms in the forest, but I’ve never heard the bell again. Perhaps the storm broke the rope, or the ringing was an illusion in my ears, tormented by noise. Finally the wind died down, and with it died the phantom tinkling. Then there was a sound as of someone tearing a huge piece of material, and water fell from the sky.

  I went to the door and opened it wide. The rain whipped into my face and washed the fear and sleepiness from me. I could breathe again. The air tasted fresh and cool and tickled my lungs. Lynx emerged from his cave and sniffed curiously outside. Then he gave a cheerful bark, shook his long ears and walked back with a measured tread to his white friend who, rolled in a ball, had gone peacefully to sleep. I put on a coat and ran with my torch through the wet blackness to the byre. Bella had broken free, and was standing with her forehead against the door. She bellowed pitifully and pressed herself against me. I stroked her flanks, which were rising and falling with fear, and she gladly allowed me to turn her around and tie her to the bedstead again. Then I opened the window. The rain could hardly get in here, as the spruce-trees protected the rear slope of the roof. After the terror of that night Bella had earned some air and coolness. Then I went back into the house and at last, at last, I found that I too was allowed to lie down in peace. The cat crept out from under the bed and came to me, and in a few minutes I was fast asleep. I dreamed of a storm and was woken by a thunderclap. It wasn’t a dream. The old tempest had returned, or else a new one had reached the valley. It was raining heavily, and I got up to close the window and wipe a pool of water from the floor. It was refreshingly cool in the room. I lay down again and slept again at once. I kept being woken by thunderclaps, and then going back to sleep. There was a constant alternation of real and dream storms; but around morning I’d reached the point where no storm bothered me. I drew the blanket over my head and fell at last into a deep and undisturbed sleep.

  I was awoken by a dull crashing, a noise that I had never heard before, and I was immediately wide awake. It was eight o’clock in the morning, and I had slept in. First of all I let the impatient Lynx out and had a look to see what could be crashing, scraping and dragging so loudly. There was nothing to be seen in front of the hut. The storm had ruffled the bushes and bent a few branches, and there were big puddles on the path to the byre. I got dressed, took the milking-pail and went to Bella. Everything in the byre was fine. The crashing was coming from the stream. I went a little way down the slope and saw a yellow flood surging along, tearing with it uprooted trees, patches of grass and blocks of stone. I immediately thought of the gorge. The water must have come up against the wall and flooded the meadow by the stream. I decided to go and have a look as soon as possible. But first, as I did every day, I would have to do the work that needed to be done. I let Bella out of the stable. It was cool, the rain was quite light, and the flies and horseflies would leave her in peace. A big oak-tree had stood in the meadow by the forest. It had been lightning-scarred from an earlier storm. Finally, however, the lightning had claimed its victim. This time it wasn’t just a single mark, the old oak was completely shattered. It was a shame. Oak-trees were quite rare hereabouts. When I returned to the house I could hear a distant rumbling. The storm seemed still to be hanging in the mountains. Perhaps it was wandering from valley to valley, round and round, just as the huntsman had described.

  After lunch I went to the gorge with Lynx. The path there couldn’t be flooded, as it was too high up, but the water had surged over to the other side, tearing trees, bushes, stones and sods of earth with it. My friendly green stream had turned into a yellowish-brown monster. I hardly dared to look. One false step on the slippery stone, and all my worries would have come to an end in the icy water. As I had anticipated, the water couldn’t flow away quickly enough once it reached the wall. A small lake had formed; the grasses of the meadow by the stream floated slowly back and forth at the bottom. Along the wall lay a mountain of trees, bushes and stones, piled up in a pyramid. So the wall wasn’t just invisible, it was also unbreakable, for the force with which the tree-trunks and stones had hit it must have been unimaginable. The lake wasn’t as big as I’d feared, though, and would certainly drain away completely within a few days. I couldn’t see what things looked like beyond the washed-up piles; probably the yellow floods were streaming happily onwards on the other side. The rivers would swell, tearing houses and bridges with them, pushing in windows and doors, and drag the lifeless stone things that had once been people from their beds and chairs. And they would be left on the big sandbanks to dry out in the sun, stone people, stone animals, and between them gravel and bits of rubble that had never been anything but stone.

  I could picture all this very clearly before my eyes, and it made me feel slightly unwell. Lynx prodded me with his muzzle and pushed me sideways. Maybe he didn’t like the flood, maybe he also felt
that I was miles away and wanted to attract some attention. As always on such occasions I followed him in the end. He knew much better than I did what was good for me. All the way back he walked at my side, pushing me against the wall of the cliff with his flank, away from the crashing, scraping monster that could have swallowed me up. His concern finally made me laugh, and he jumped up with his wet paws on my chest, barking encouragingly, loud and happy. Lynx should have had a strong and cheerful master. I couldn’t always cope with his joie de vivre, and had to force myself to look happy, so as not to disappoint him. But if I couldn’t give him a very merry life, he must at least have sensed how fond I was of him, and how intensely I needed him. Lynx was extremely friendly, he needed a lot of love and was very fond of people. The huntsman must have been a good man; I never discovered a hint of bad temper or slyness in Lynx.

  When we arrived at the hunting-lodge we were both soaked to the skin. I lit a fire and hung my clothes up to dry on the rack over the stove. I stuffed my shoes with the driving manual rolled up in little balls, and set them to dry on two wooden planks.

  Meanwhile the grumbling in the clouds continued, coming sometimes from the right, sometimes from the left. It sounded angry and a little disappointed, and went on all day. All in all I had suffered little damage from the storm. Some of my trout would surely have perished, and that was the worst loss that the storm had caused me. But in time they too would recover and multiply. A few shingles hung loose on the roof, and I would have to repair that damage as soon as possible. I was a little afraid of that, for I suffer from vertigo to some extent, but vertigo or not, I simply had to get up on the roof and mend it.

  In the open space in front of the hut I had stacked a pile of timber that I was going to chop into little pieces. The raspberry-harvest and my sweet tooth had interrupted that important work. Now the wood was soaking wet, and I would have to wait until it could dry in the sun. The rain had swept the sawdust into the path in little streams, three narrow, orangey strips that slowly disappeared into the gravel. The path through the gorge was also washed away, but not as badly as I had feared. When it was possible, I would have to sort it out. There was so much that I had to do, chopping wood, harvesting potatoes, digging fields, fetching hay from the gorge, mending the path and repairing the roof. Hardly had I begun to hope that I would be able to relax than I was faced with a new task.

  It was already mid-August; the short mountain summer would soon be over. It rained for another two days, and the storm was still grumbling very quietly in the distance. On the third day white mist hung down as far as the meadow. Not a single mountain could be seen, and the spruces looked as if they’d been cut down. I drove Bella back to the meadow, as the cool and damp weather seemed to do her good. I cleaned the hunting-lodge, did my sewing for a while and waited for better weather. On the fifth day after the storm the sun suddenly burst through the white veils of mist. I know this precisely, because I noted it in my diary. Back then I was still fairly communicative, and often jotted things down. Later I was more sparing with my notes, and shall have to rely on my memory.

  After the big storm it stopped being so warm. The sun was shining, and my wood was able to dry out, but the landscape suddenly assumed an autumnal character. The long-stemmed gentians blossomed on the wet sides of the gorge, and cyclamen grew in the shade of the bushes. Sometimes the cyclamen blossom as early as July in the mountains, and that is said to presage an early winter. In cyclamen flowers the red of summer combines with the blue of autumn into a pinkish purple, and their fragrance recaptures all the sweetness of the past; but as you inhale it for longer, there is a quite different smell behind it: that of decay and death. I have always considered the cyclamen a strange and rather frightening flower.

  As the sun was shining again, I set about cutting timber. It was easier for me to chop than to saw, and I made quick progress. But this time I didn’t wait until the ground was covered with a mountain of logs, but every evening I cleared the chopped wood under the verandah, and stacked it up neatly there. I didn’t want the rain to take me by surprise this time.

  Quite gradually I managed to introduce a system into all my tasks, and that made my life a little easier. Disorganization had never been one of my faults, yet I had rarely found myself in a position to carry out one of my plans, because as sure as fate somebody or something had always turned up to ruin them. If I failed now, it would be my own fault, and I could hold only myself responsible for it.

  By cutting timber, in fact, I missed a very fine Indian summer. I didn’t see the landscape at all, obsessed as I was by the thought of stacking up a big enough supply of wood. Once the last log had been stored under the verandah I had a stretch and decided to treat myself a little. It’s strange, in fact, how slight my pleasure is every time I complete a task. Once it’s out of the way I forget it, and think about new things to do. Even at that time I didn’t allow myself much time to recover. That’s how it always was: while I was slaving away I dreamt about how I would rest quietly and peacefully on the bench, but as soon as I finally sat down on the bench I grew restless, and started looking out for new work to do. I don’t think this was due to any particular industriousness, since by nature I’m rather lethargic, but was probably through self-protection, for what would I have done otherwise but remember and brood? That was exactly what I mustn’t do, so what was there to do but more work? I didn’t even have to look for work, it turned up insistently enough of its own accord.

  After I’d pottered around in the house for two days, doing my washing and sewing, I set about fixing up the path. Armed with picks and shovel I went into the gorge. There wasn’t much that I could do without a wheelbarrow. So I opened up the path with the picks, spread the gravel evenly and tamped it firmly down with the shovel. The next cloudburst would wash out new gulleys, and I would fill them up again and beat them down. I could really have done with a wheelbarrow. But Hugo had never thought about wheelbarrows. He had never anticipated having to improve paths with his own hands either. I think he’d have been happiest buying a bunker, and he didn’t dare to do that only because it struck him as an unsociable thing to do and he set great store by not seeming to be that way. So he had to settle for half-measures which were something of a game, designed to assuage his fears a bit. He was well aware of that, of course, because he was a thoroughly realistic man who sometimes had quite consciously to give his dark fears something to feed on, so that he could work and live his life in peace. Wheelbarrows, as I said, didn’t seem ever to have had a place in his dreams of survival. That’s why the path is in such bad condition today. All I ever do is distribute the loose stones as best I can, but as time passes they get washed away, and the bare rock shows through. I would be able to mend the path well with gravel from the stream; it’s just a question of transport. I suppose I could fill a sack with gravel, and drag it to the path on beech-branches. Perhaps fifteen sacks would do it; it’s hard to say exactly. Perhaps I’d have taken it on a year ago. Today I don’t think it’s worth it. Even dragging the hay home in the dry bed of a stream is less hard work than pulling fifteen sacks of gravel up to the path.

  On the sixth of September I had a look at the potatoes and found that the tubers were still too small and the plants were still green. So I had to suppress my hunger for a few more weeks; but the sight of the little tubers gave me new hope. The fact that I hadn’t wasted the potatoes, but planted them, was the basis of my relative security today. As long as no meteorological disaster destroyed my harvest I would never have to starve.

  The beans too were almost ripe, and although not all of them had grown they had multiplied. I intended to plant most of them back as seeds. My work was beginning to bear fruit, and it was high time too, because after mending the paths I felt very downcast. As it rained for a few days, I got up only for the tasks that had to be done, and stayed in bed the rest of the time. I slept in the daytime too, and the more I slept the more tired I grew. I don’t know what was wrong with me back then. Maybe I was
lacking important vitamins, or it was simply overwork that had weakened me. Lynx didn’t like it at all. He kept coming to me and prodding me with his muzzle, and when that got him nowhere he jumped up with his front paws on the bed, and barked so loudly that sleep was unthinkable. That time I hated him for a moment as one hates a slavedriver. Cursing, I got dressed, took my gun and set off with him. It was high time in any case. We didn’t have a scrap of meat in the house, and I had given Lynx the last precious noodles. I managed to shoot a weak roebuck, and Lynx was pleased with me again. I feigned a little enthusiasm, put the buck over my neck and went home. Back then, after giving it a great deal of thought, I shot only weak bucks. I was afraid that the deer, only a little depleted in my hunting-ground so far, would increase, and in a few years find themselves caught in the trap of a forest stripped of vegetation. To anticipate that future predicament somewhat, I shot only bucks where possible. I don’t think I was wrong back then. Now, after only two and a half years, I see more deer than I did before. If I ever leave here I shall dig the hole under the wall so deep that this forest can never become a trap. My roe deer and red deer will find either an immense, fertile meadow or sudden death. Either would be better than imprisonment in a forest stripped bare of vegetation. Their plight is vengeance for the fact that all beasts of prey have been extinct here for years, and the deer no longer have any natural enemy apart from man. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can picture that mass exodus from the forest. But it’s just a dream. Evidently people never stop daydreaming.