The Journey (30 page)

Off in the distance one can hear the faint call: “Ruhenthal! Everyone off!” The light in the windy train station goes out. The baggage men flee and let the suitcases fall where they are. The stationmaster spits in anger. The switchman sees trouble coming. The telegraph operator has lost the connection. Those getting off fall head over heels onto the tracks and are bloodied. Anxiously the locomotive blows its whistle, its cries asking the night for mercy, though no mercy is given. The youngest daughter of the stationmaster appears at the window ledge in a white nightgown with a candle, looks at the confusion below, and begins to sing a little song:

As the daughter sang, everything was still for a moment, but now she’s gone, having taken the candlelight with her. The air is thick and sooty. There’s hardly any air to breathe. Only sharp, monstrous tears full of coal dust fill the entire world. The witch doesn’t giggle, she laughs.

You are alive in a flowing stream, surrounded by black reeds and black algae. Fishhooks also dangle in the thick foam. You can feel them distinctly when they pass nearby and come too close. But anyone who is hooked by them is also not saved. You are only made to squirm unmercifully. If you are nonetheless hauled out, then no amount of pleading helps, the fish will never again be let go, Frau Ilsebill
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simply won’t allow it, and the most helpless creature is addressed with the scornful words of the standard verdict against those forbidden to live within the fatherland. Then they cart you off and pull you through the tar and then feather you, and then drag you to the gallows. There the verdict is read again, the fisherman having to do as Frau Ilsebill has ordered, as he reads out:

“In the name of the law, bow down! You have violated the station platform and have falsely set foot upon it when my fishhook took mercy on you. With some effort I have yanked you from the black waters because you begged me to and lied by saying that you could fulfill all my wishes. Not a single word of that was true. You misled the authorities, you attempted to deceive them. You are no goldfish. You’re not even a fish. You are nothing more than the dirty little girl from the lake who must die.”

Zerlina listens to what the horrible fisherman says to her. Zerlina has to agree that she is not a fish, as she had hoped. She knows that she must relinquish her young life; she must cease. She can no longer live. She is a bit of madness who happens to have a name.

“Zerlina Lustig, former daughter of Leopold Lustig and Caroline, née Schmerzenreich!”

“Here!… No! I’m not here! I don’t know her, nobody knows her, she never existed, at least not in my life! She didn’t come, nor get on the train! Since her death she’s been sick! I can swear to it, Herr Fisherman and Frau Ilsebill!”

But no one believes her. Frau Ilsebill shakes with laughter. Why
should anyone believe anyone when all that is said is a lie? There is no truth. Herr Nussbaum in the Technology Museum removed it from the luggage. Whoever smuggles the truth into the final destination of the journey will have to answer to the severest measures of the state police and will be hanged three times over! Thus had Cross-Eyes yelled out to everyone when he discovered a tiny piece of truth tucked away in a purse. There is however none anywhere, for it is only an illusion. If there is any at all, it is only what has been. The apartment house is suddenly no more. There appears to be a foot scraper that wants to suck in the dirt, but then you fall helplessly into the barrel of tar. Frau Ilsebill opens up her beak, snaps up the stationmaster’s daughter, and flies off with her.

Did they kill your father? He loved little Bunny so much, that fat dog! No, the old man croaked peacefully like a dog, a natural death. Dr. Plato swears on bended knee that the fleas bit him in the ear. The neighbor prays that the Lord has taken him. It was a peaceful end in bed, which you can be assured of yourself. The spittoon was not disturbed. There was no raspberry juice in it, only a couple of drops of water, fresh and pure. You grabbed the cold hand and pressed it lovingly to yourself. No, it was murder, he could have lived longer. They shoved half-boiled barley into him. Whoever takes measures that shorten someone’s life by a single day is a murderer, and the law will hunt him down. But when will that happen? Just be patient, Frau Ilsebill, and wait for the law, for it will come sooner than you think.

Zerlina sits with the other girls and women in the workshop where boxes are assembled and glued. Simple, small boxes that will journey far and wide. Endless rows of boxes that trundle along and are stacked in towers until there are too many, after which they are picked up. The boxes are so light and airy, but the workshop stinks of glue and awful dust. It smells of bad conversations that go on endlessly for hours, rising and sinking away without ever finding an end.

“Zerlina, don’t be so sad! There’s no reason for such sadness.… Ah, forgive me, this time you have a reason. I forgot. I’m sorry, my pale Snow White. But he was old indeed.”

“They murdered him. He should have lived longer.”

“You yourself don’t want to live anymore and you’re young. How can
you complain about an old man whom God has taken in order that he be spared what we all have to suffer? Look here, Zerlina, how unreasonable you’re being, worse than a child!”

“You’re right that I don’t want to live, Vera! Everything here is wretched, hopeless! They will murder us all before they themselves are murdered. I’m tired of it all, I’m sick of it. Enough! Do you hear?”

“That’s no way to talk. You have to want to go on. Whoever doesn’t want to live has no hope. And whoever has no hope, he only has hell. We at least have a chance of surviving.”

“No one survives hell, or at least whoever survives it only ends up living in hell again. Therefore there is no hope worth having. It’s all a hoax, an illusion, which …”

“You’re wrong, Snow White! Have you not often said yourself that in Ruhenthal we were under a spell and really just sleeping? That one day the prince’s servant will come and trip over a shrub while carrying our coffins. Then the poison apple we were forced to bite will pop out of our throats. We’ll lift off the coffin lids, stand up, and live once again. Come on, snap out of it! Your dear father was an old man. He could never have lived a normal life again, as you keep insisting.…”

“Look, Vera, that is so because you don’t understand what I said to you, for there’s nobody here who understands, which is why I don’t want anything to do with you anymore. Life just doesn’t have any point to it. I don’t want to tell you any more fairy tales.”

“But Snow White …”

“Please, enough!”

“I don’t want to upset you. But Zerlina! Whoever gives up may nonetheless live, but it’s much harder, because he has nothing in which to believe!”

“I’m not talking about that! My father lived so well. He was a big kid. He had no idea how badly he had been treated. But I know it. I know what’s been done to us. I see it continually.”

“You are so unreasonable. You should be grateful that your father still has a grip on you. What could have been better for him than a relatively peaceful death after a long life?”

Zerlina is quiet. She should never have told these stupid women such fairy tales. She hears the talk around her as nothing more than senseless
noise that is melded together with the sound of work and other noises into a mountain of sound, though there is nothing peaceful about it, instead it’s disturbing and unsettling, a delusion that bedecks all of the boxes with a poisonous dust. Yet the delusion contains nothing, it is only a halfhearted murky shadow that dissolves into an untraceable odor. It smells of the night, of bare trees, vermin, rubbish, the thin layer of dust left by the fog, and all of it falls into the pits. No one knows anything more about it because nobody survives. The witnesses to this destitute journey waste away as well. Only a lone black flag waves above them, the tar of misfortune, the impenetrable shadow of the heavy night, plague having broken out, against which there is no cure as it rains, the muck breaking over the banks, it being hunger, everything that happened, the father, the train station, death, the rain, the murder, the journey, and the endless hunger.

Against her will, Zerlina thinks of Vera. Maybe she was right, but only if one could fight back and actually do something. When all you had to do was to keep gluing together boxes, there’s nothing more to hope for. It’s better to just leave, not wait any longer, say nothing to anyone, today, right now, drop back and turn around, where there’s no guard, past Herr and Frau Lischka, then quick across the courtyard and through a passage in the wall in order to arrive at more light and bricks. There you can go through, avoid the barrier without escaping, no, just through. Nobody will ask questions, because nobody asks questions when someone disappears without a word. Unhampered freedom has been guaranteed to the people since the end of slavery and serfdom. This natural right is unassailable and sacred, since it is taught in the schools, and it remains so as long as one does not relinquish it oneself. Zerlina has done nothing wrong. Therefore she is free. Each and every person in Ruhenthal is also free and has had his freedom taken away unjustly. There is no one who is not free. If someone wants to stop Zerlina, it’s against the law and morally wrong. Complaints would then be made to the minister of justice. Zerlina would inform anyone what the law says. There has been no trial at all. Cruel fate is not a proper verdict. Therefore it is also not necessary to dress like a criminal on the lam.

Zerlina leaves without anyone stopping her. She sings a song about a happy wanderer. It was not right of Paul to squash all noise. Zerlina touches the wall, tapping it in hope, yet with determination. She presses at
the wall with a key. The mortar is as crumbly as old cake because it is weatherworn and helpless to hold itself together. She rubs the wall with the key as the dry mixture of sand, dissolved chalk, and water crumbles away. The egg-yellow dust piles up on the earth. Soon the space in between is wide enough that the teeth of the key can fit between two bricks. The bricks themselves also give way. The key serves as a pickax as the bricks allow themselves to be taken apart.

“What are you doing there, Fräulein? You’re ruining the wall, stop it!”

“I’m making a hole. I’m about to leave.”

“You want to escape? That’s out of the question!”

“I’m not escaping. I have no intention to do that whatsoever. I’m simply leaving as quietly as I can and am taking along anyone who wishes to come. You’ll simply have to accept that, sir.”

“You’re crazy. Nobody leaves here. It’s simply not allowed. You must remain! You must remain or end up planted in the grass!”

“But I don’t want to. I’ve stayed here way too long already, almost two years. I’ve had enough of it already. I need a change of air, sir! You indeed look a bit pale to me as well. Without a change of air the plague will spread. To stay here any longer is dangerous to one’s health.”

“All that about the plague is nothing more than a rumor told in the latrines. I can assure you that you need not be afraid of anything. Should it happen that you come down with the plague or any other contagious disease, you will be quarantined. Then any danger will be prevented.”

“You are in my way. I am leaving. I’ve thought about it and I know the way.”

But Zerlina does not leave. The small hole that she has bored through the wall is no deeper than a finger. The wall has caused some nasty abrasions and yet stands solid and unshaken. Zerlina turns around. She lets it go for today. Tomorrow she will come back and bring along a file with which she can better bore than with the key. She will also remember to bring a hammer in order to knock out an opening that she can squeeze through. She won’t be put off or stopped. Then she will march off and follow the country road that Paul has told her about up through the hills. Soon she will leave the main roads, and soon she will be in the woods and will look for a place where she can hide herself until the end of the war. She will make a camp amid the moss and cover herself with brushwood.
The fields and woods and meadows will supply her with nourishment. She will live like a little rabbit and feed on nourishing grasses and fruits. There won’t be any danger of feeling lonely, but rather the threat of inclement weather. Whoever is careful can gather many riches for the heart and spirit, the time soon passing into eternal memories.

Zerlina says to herself: I was there. I lived it and survived it. There is danger everywhere, but it can be dealt with and disappears. Today, now that it’s all over, it’s an indestructible good. Be happy all of you who live an orderly life today, though I really pity anyone who did not share my fears, for they have missed out on one of the deepest fears. But also to know none of it is lucky. Is it possible that there exists such an ability to forget? If so, then such horror never existed, only the confused heart that strayed too far and was overcome with sinful horrors that pulled it into the abyss. There the emptiness of sleep encompassed it and covered over everything. Yet darkness protected everything. Endless grains of sand trickled into the black tar and came to rest in the soft mud of the rumbling journey. Now they attained eternal peace as the persistent flow ceased and all the grains bonded together forever. A smooth path ran above the surfaces worn smooth as a mirror. On wheels that turned easily, coaches that rode on springs glided by silently. Buried beneath were slumberers who rested on feather pillows, but who did not feel constricted, because their thoughts while sleeping were always fixed on the blissful approach of the journey’s end, everything so far having been filled with a future that had no end.

Today no longer exists for Zerlina. She does not sense that things go on happening around her. She only lives for tomorrow and is free and healthy. The plague has spared her body. Left and right, everyone is sick and writhes with pain. Nurse Dora’s rooms are overfull, she can do nothing, Dr. Plato no longer risks helping the sick. Ulcerating sores break open, a disgusting stream spews out of all the rooms, down the stoop and into the yard where the drains are stopped up. The city health workers show up anxiously and vainly poke away at the drains in an attempt to release the deadly stream.