The Journey (24 page)

The mourning party stands still, the heads stretch forward slightly, the eyes longingly gaze past the barrier, the wind causes a few tears, the funeral wagon already has turned the corner, no longer visible, the hammering of horse hooves echoing. Everything is kept hidden. All the details following each execution are taken care of. Each hanging is practical and quick. The cut fruit lie there, already cleaned, still warm, crisp with distorted eyes, the gallows rope wrapped around their throats. Nicely arranged, ready to be sold in a Sunday market. They were only criminals,
not people. Villains who have fallen to the level of rubbish. Military honors are denied them. Bored, Captain Küpenreiter removes the blue-and-white flags from his map. The press photographers are allowed in, Balthazar Schwind is granted a new roll of film. Everyone has to wipe his shoes first, since the prison administration does not trust that the freshly tarred road is indeed dirt-free. Each has to be inspected for lice and aphids, since the prevention of contagion must be maintained. Left or right, it doesn’t matter, both arms must be lifted, then both legs. Plague has broken out, but the serum from the Institute for Infectious Diseases has arrived, the authorities tracking as ever the course of the epidemic. After an injection the dead pose little danger. Thanks to the barrier, the inoculations are kept to a minimum.

“And here we have the executed! Use the fleeting nature of such sins to create a horrifying example that will do your readers good. You may look at the executed goods from all sides and photograph them, but under no circumstances are you allowed to touch them. No mementos may be plucked either, neither hair nor whiskers nor nails! You are in the presence of death. Control yourselves. Exchanging bodies is out of the question. The names on the attached foot tags are guaranteed to be correct. Copying any of them will be severely punished.”

The press photographers stand there rigid and are busy with their cameras. Each snaps a few pictures. Floodlights are turned on. The dead enter the dark grave, rolls of film head to the mortuary. There it will be developed, the Institute for Infectious Diseases having provided a good developer, not even the butcher Alexander Poduschka having a better one. The pictures turn out superbly, the spitting image says someone, and are developed on white, shiny paper, then enlarged painstakingly, almost to their natural proportions. Wonderful materials for study. The dead look so alive, almost like the originals. The city archivist has sealed them so that they neither get moldy nor are eaten by insects. It’s such a pleasure to look at them. The high school principal asks for a few of them since he finds them so useful to look at in class. The butcher Poduschka doesn’t get any because the readers of
The Leitenberg Daily
cut them all out. He has to pack the sausage into the holes in the paper, though it’s not his fault. The corpses are secretly cremated, but the photographs remain there in eternal infamy. Throughout the land one can buy them, carry them home, and
put them in the family album. There is now an excellent artificial glue for photographs that is made out of tar. And so the memory remains, set down for all of time, though the meaningless dead are long gone.

The mourning party turns around and breaks up into smaller groups that trail off into the wind. Ruhenthal takes in the living once again, the execution is called off and done for the day. It will be continued, yet nobody thinks about it for the moment. There is no time for grief, for life wants its own due, and for that reason the cadavers are taken away from Ruhenthal. The crematorium situated on clay soil in the middle of the meadow works well and reliably, and there hasn’t been the slightest complaint about it since it was opened. It works fast and is free of dust. The ashes are filtered and crushed and converted from morsels to crumbs, which are then spread upon tar and quietly pressed into it.

As soon as everything is finished and the remaining mourners have withdrawn, Caroline lets herself be helped by her son and daughter, though it deeply hurts her to do so. The husband belongs at the side of the widow at all times, not the children. But what happens when the man has hidden and run off? No good husband does that. Was Leopold a good husband? He was never there when you needed him, for indeed he was a person devoted to service who had no notion of love, or at least responsibilities toward loved ones. Slowly she shuffles along the path and says not a word. Caroline feels weak and is happy that the children are at her side, as they carefully lead her by the hand through the town. Then suddenly the gray silence is too much and the mother must say something.

“Now we are alone. We will all die here. There is no point in having any illusions, those were for your father. Soon our hour will strike as well. My hour, not yours. You must not remain here. Both of you can go back.”

“Mother, don’t talk that way, please! You know that I read
The Leitenberg Daily
from the day before yesterday, and in it they wrote …”

“They’ve written that for ages. That has nothing to do with us, us most of all, no, nothing at all! They’ve been writing that for two years already!”

“But one day it will be true.”

“Who knows what the real truth is? It’s all humbug!”

“You can’t talk that way, Mother. You have to control yourself, if only for us.”

“What for? There’s no longer any point. You’re both grown-ups. Wasn’t the old man right after all?”

“You’re upsetting Zerlina. One has to believe in something in order to keep on. Good never dies. Evil will meet its end.”

“Evil never dies either. For us it’s just begun.”

“Stop bickering! I need to go make my little boxes and I don’t want my head full of such worries. I can’t stand it anymore! You keep yanking me back and forth! It’s enough already, really enough! Moreover, Mother, we still need to give something to Nurse Dora. I want to give her my colorful scarf with the small narrow edging, or half a loaf of bread. Also a bit of bread for the roommate who said prayers.”

“Give, give, nothing but give! They’ve all gotten something already! We just don’t have enough to keep giving!”

“I’m fed up! Ugh! I am completely fed up!”

“Zerlina, of course I’ll give something, my child. Get a hold of yourself, please, at least in front of the people on the street! What will they think of us? I will give them bread if I have any to give.”

“I don’t care what others think. I’m fed up, that’s what I said! They let the old man starve! We didn’t do enough for him.…”

“Don’t say that! We did what we could. We went hungry ourselves in order to save a bit for him. As a result I’m a wreck. And I don’t even want to tell you how you look. In any case, it would be best if you didn’t look in a mirror.”

“They killed him! That’s what I told Dr. Plato. They executed him! I know it. They could have saved him. He could have saved himself if he stole like the others, but instead he let himself be robbed.”

“You’re talking nonsense, Zerlina! What happened has happened. We should not fight on this day of mourning. Paul, what are you going to do today?”

“Nothing. Tomorrow I’ll go back to the firing range.”

“Good, Paul, let’s walk Zerlina to her boxes.”

“No, no! Please just leave me alone! I can’t do it. So please just let me go and be merciful! I have to go my own way alone. I have to be by myself and think other thoughts. As long as you are at my side, that’s not possible.” Zerlina kisses her mother. “You are a poor devil, Mother. There’s nothing you can do for me. But you don’t understand. You will never understand,
but that I wish you from my heart. It is better, a thousand times better, if you never grasp it. To forget, and never to know what can’t be forgotten. In times like these, that protects the soul from misfortune. Be well! Paul, be well!”

Zerlina breaks loose and goes her own way. Paul looks after her, observing her hasty feet, left right, left right, her feet hurrying and her nose cold, feet hurrying, unhappy feet. But one must never look into the future, the plague memorial is already too old to even have a future. One can only wait, just as the street sweeper waits for fresh trash. Leitenberg will surely continue, left, right, in the future. Ruhenthal, however, will descend into sleep. A different sleep than now, a sleep beyond sleep, not just a deep sleep. Paul takes his mother under the arm and brings her to the front door of her building. His mother lives there; Paul is quartered elsewhere. Perhaps something was said along the way, though Paul cannot remember precisely what. He had to look down at the ground in order not to stumble, left and right. Before the front door he hears the brittle voice of a stranger. Perhaps it was Katie Budil’s voice.

“Thank you, Paul, thank you. You’ve helped us so much. You are a good son. Please let me be now!”

Paul walks off, a tall, thin youth, his legs heavy and clumsy, feeling lifeless. It looks as if he is counting each step. Caroline looks after him for a good while. Why is he so sad? It can’t be only because of the father. Paul doesn’t belong here. Young men don’t belong in the city of the dead. Old people can stand that for a while, and when they die it’s not that tragic. The young should be elsewhere or should hide. Here among the old they are lost and can do nothing to help them. They don’t want to believe the worst, because they simply cannot, and yet that’s the way it is. Their faith is only the courage to have faith. Through that there is a future despite all else. And so the days roll on, as if blown away by the wind. If Caroline can just go to sleep, that is good, but it would be better if she did not have to wake up the next morning! A life lived by arbitrary grace. So you live without living, only the eyes bring pain. Yet you can’t be so serious. You forget with time. Above all, forgetting is the forward course of life, for there’s no such thing as remembering more, nor do you become more clever, for all that happens only in school. Yet you are easily fooled and then do not see how things really are. You are diminished more and more through life’s
changes. At the beginning you are deceived, then later disappointed, meaning that the deceptions fall away like powder after a fancy ball. There are no hopes, when Caroline thinks hard about it, because instead there are only deceptions that you wear like makeup, as life goes on pleasantly and all its many unpleasantries remain hidden from you in order that they not be discovered all at once if you were to stand in front of a mirror. Whoever cannot hide anything will soon be unhappy and will stand there with empty hands. Everything is taken away. People will go after anyone who has something. Then comes flattery, beseeching, and begging, though Caroline would go crazy if she gave away anything. Zerlina is the complete opposite, which is why there is nothing left of her but her naked soul. That doesn’t go far in Ruhenthal. Here you are not given anything, and most certainly so if you give too much away. Caroline is clever. She leaves nothing in the open. The money is well hidden. Many times her place has been searched but nothing is ever found. The thug who was led around by cross-eyed Nussbaum had looked at her hard and demanded the truth.

“Hand it all over! If you tell us straight off where everything is you can go scot-free!”

“I don’t have anything. How then am I supposed to produce it?”

“You have two minutes to think it over.”

The thug whistles and looks at his watch while Cross-Eyes looks at her as if he were ready to bite her head off. Time’s up and the fool screams, “We’ll search through everything. If I find anything, then you …”

“I don’t have anything. I swear it.”

They then rummage through everything. The contents of her bags fly out in arching bows. Every piece is minutely inspected. Curious onlookers gather around in circles, the family also stands by, worried, though everyone is chased away eventually.

“Powder! Where did you get powder? You’re already white enough and certainly don’t have to powder your nose.”

“Indeed, my nose is always so shiny. I have always powdered it.”

“Shut your mouth or I’ll have you up on charges before you know it.”

The powder is dumped out. Perhaps a piece of gold could be hidden in the powder. Underwear lies crumpled on the floor, food could be wrapped up in between. The cake has been cut into small pieces. The heels of shoes are banged. A needle is used to poke into the cover of a suitcase. Fingers
probe the seams of dresses, looking for money that’s been sewed into them. No success, all effort has been wasted. The thug becomes enraged: “I haven’t found anything! You must be hiding something!”

“I don’t have anything. I’d be happy to give you something, if I had anything. But I’m afraid where there is nothing, then …”

“What’s that? Shut your mouth!”

Even the body search turns up nothing. Caroline knows better ways to hide money. Whoever tells the truth loses. And so you have to be clever. Which means talking only when it’s of use, just as in cards. First you bid, then you pass, and then you trump! Everything can be taken out of its hiding place, though one has to be careful. Whoever goes too far will pay for it. You’ll be locked up and beaten. Above all, you have to hide your thoughts and feelings, otherwise you will give yourself away and stand there with nothing left. How hard that was for Zerlina! Without that, no one can be helped, and all that’s left is disappointment. Given the way of the world, Caroline has to meet it head-on. Only fools want to make the world better. In the end such idiots are the laughingstocks; that is the only reward their goodness deserves. One just has to be happy to survive without being stomped on. Leopold is dead, whom Zerlina takes after, though less so Paul, who is somewhat different. The song is over, the band has stopped playing. Caroline had not always sung along, for the tune was often too difficult to carry. Leopold was a good man, but still he only thought of himself. It never occurred to him to think about what a young wife might need. Caroline didn’t need much, certainly not luxuries, and she certainly didn’t need to be pampered, but a bit of care and attention would have been good nonetheless.

Leopold was blind in both eyes, for he saw neither wife nor children. Only the patients. “Caroline, you don’t understand. Women have no sense of professional responsibility,” he had yelled when she dared to disagree. Leopold kept everything hidden inside. They all do that, one after another. His candor was made possible only through a naïve game of hide-and-seek that he played with himself. He had cut himself off and didn’t know himself, but rather only a few basic principles. He had lived by them for decades. If you asked him something, you knew in advance what the answer would be. He was a child whom Caroline had to take care of without getting anything in return. Nor had he ever worried about Paul and
Zerlina. Of course he had been happy when, as children, they looked so sweet and wore such pretty clothes, but it was Caroline who had always taken care of it all, Leopold never having worried his head about any of it. “Children are women’s business. A man cannot busy himself with such stuff. The patients are waiting.” What were they all to him? Certainly not people, only patients! But everyone is a patient, even when medicine knows nothing of their ills because they are so deeply embedded that they cannot be found.