The Tidings of the Trees Page 6

  For three or four days—in late August of that death-bringing year—I walked through town with a smile on my face, wondering what characteristics I’d have to acquire now, straightaway, after the recent news whose words kept blurring in my brain. — At the factory that Monday an unexpected assembly was convened during the lunch break. A speaker, some man I didn’t know, announced the news in an agitated voice, standing on a chair with his left foot planted on the edge of a marking table…between the lines, his flimsy explanations seemed to beg us to sympathize with the measures taken by the Party and the government. His words barely reached me, seeming to boil away far above me in the haze beneath the hall’s ceiling. They merely confirmed a situation long anticipated, yet declared impossible; the astonishing thing was that suddenly it was supposed to be reality. For about ten days I went on working, jaded and unmoved, then one afternoon I switched off the machine and left the factory. Outside a few drops of rain had fallen, but quickly dried; for days the rumble of thunder had circled the town, but the atmosphere found no release. Burned-smelling air washed the roofs in continuous waves; the sky seemed to smolder, sometimes appearing almost black. And there was a barking in the distance like artillery salvos. Sweating with haste, I hobbled through the burned-out streets—I’d been absent from work for three days, but that was nothing new—and tried to think what had to be done now. Perhaps I should immediately turn criminal, so as to be expelled from this suffocating space as soon as possible…or become a fascist or something of the sort. Excellent…better still, perhaps, an agent of the secret service. And so my thoughts raced, but nothing struck me as a really certain remedy. Some people, it seemed, had quickly slipped through gaps in the border…I didn’t dare try. I had to admit it was too late: I’d missed the last train; I’d slept away my life. There was no place for me in this country, and its borders had been closed. It was late afternoon, and for more than an hour I’d been perched on the branch of the cherry tree; with great care I’d placed the noose around my neck and pulled it tight; I couldn’t find an end to my thoughts.

  It makes no sense, I thought over and over, it makes no sense to cut a process short like that. If I must give my assessment: the country has turned into a hotbed of misfortune—misfortune and stagnation—and doubtless it will all soon come to a head. So if I go on living under these conditions, precisely by maintaining my existence I’ll degenerate in the quickest way possible. Without hope of change there’s no prospect of emerging unscathed. Misfortune ages you, I said to myself. The constant simulation of nonsense causes habituation, until even in your own mind it seems perfectly persuasive. That sort of trick requires oppression, and this backwater will breed plenty of it. Will that plenty be enough?… Certainly it will, if only you firmly believe so. And so I can already imagine no worse affliction than continuing to live in this cloaca. What could be a greater affliction?… Only the misfortune of some West German Communist now left out in the cold, outside the Iron Curtain. If I had the option of joining the West German Communist Party, I’d put in my application right now…but to do that, I’d have to be outside. I have no choice but to eke out the misfortune and stagnation in here…and act as though things might turn bright again someday.

  At that I removed the noose from my neck… before abandoning my perch in the tree, I heard the thunder grow louder; it was approaching, and the first storm gusts swept in. They raised banners and strands of dust from the plain like black and gray-red flames; flickering wildly they moved in from all sides, taking my breath away. I fled across the ash field, where darkness was gathering; and the plain was whipped up like a sea above which aimless storm gusts tumbled.

  At the table in the shed I had a long mental struggle, disappointed at my cowardice. In the deafening racket of the metal walls, in the mad light of the lamp that swayed above me and played me for a fool, I was so lonely that I felt hot rage rise within me, bringing tears to my eyes. — It was inconceivable to me that I should belong to a people of whom so many were surely faring likewise! said Waller, shaking his head to himself.

  For a long time I stared at the shadows that loomed crazily from the walls, at the spectral reflections in the windowpane that seemed like grotesque faces, sliced by the swinging light of the lamp. As the storm gradually calmed, the howl of shame within me began to quiet down, slowly becoming immaterial. I recalled the purpose of the papers in front of me, which also seemed thrown into turmoil on the little desktop: it was impossible for me to describe the events’ full force while they were still at their peak! And twenty years had not been enough for me to reach this insight. — For twenty years I’d refused to make peace with the moment when, helpless and shivering, I’d climbed down from that cherry tree! And in all that time I was unable to set down a second sentence because the first one seemed wrong to me…and for all those years I was unable to write, struck dead by the hissing stroke of that infamous pendulum. And only now did I think I knew the next sentence that was called for.

  The shame is over! — That was the sentence. Now I regret that the witnesses of my defeat, the cherry trees, have vanished. And now it’s easy to confess that one day I woke up in the ash; and the speechless storm above it is over. The destruction we once perpetrated has passed its height, transformed into a gentle flow that smooths everything out; gradually the black billows chased up into the sky are returning to their place. The objects describe themselves in the sinking of the ash that covers them, in the flattening of their fury, in the shift from hate to melancholy…the days’ glow withdraws beneath the evening clouds. Night falls, and all through the long night I wait for the ghosts of the cherry trees to reappear before me. — I stared out at the plain’s dark edge, and sometimes white smoke deceived me, branching and then standing still; for some seconds it stood out against the burning-down horizon. — I’ve seen it before me for hours tonight, my head already resting on the tabletop, emptied, but now, somewhere above me, there’s another sentence that’s possible. It’s the thought that the cherry trees are finally revealing themselves, in their pale feather-light ash, as fleeting as the blossoms of these trees in recollection…in the filmy, barely noticed recollection behind the faces of my former companions: snow-white, soul-white, so ghostly was the trees’ blossoming against death. One more time their shadows glowed forth, red before the rising sky, then trickled away into pale nothingness.

  It was dark in the shack; I didn’t know whether I had these sentences on paper; at some point, I thought, I’d set them word for word on the rustling lines. I still seemed to hear the dust scratching and scraping. I could make out nothing, saw only the bands of dust and ash that had spread across the pages…the thoughts were already swimming in my brain; in the very next moment the sentences might sink away. It turned pitch-black; I got up and jiggled the cord of my lamp; the light began to flicker, and the lamp went on again at last. Quite right, I’d actually turned the light on hours ago…again I took the pen and searched the paper for a place to pick up the thread, but once more the overhead lamp went out. Angrily I kicked the outlet, and the light flared again. At that, blinded in the constant flickering, I thought I saw a tree branch thrust its twigs through a crack in the door and reach for the cord: the connection was broken, the light went out for the third time…for the fourth time! — I’ve had enough of your stories, I muttered. With my foot I jiggled the plug until I had light again. But the branch—no doubt about it, it was a piece of firewood from the stack outside the door, remnants of the cherry lane—the twig, its end shaped like a hand, came creeping up once more. Through the narrow crack left open between my weary leaden eyelids, I saw the twigs grope for the outlet: it went dark again. The sentences I’d wanted to write were in an obscure corner in the back of my brain; they slipped further and further into the margins. I decided to go to bed at last. — Dozing off on the uneven, dust-covered bedding in the corner, I thought I heard voices outside the shed door, an utterly incomprehensible muttering, a quarreling and scolding; outside, the gray of dawn began, and a m
uffled ringing and chiming filtered into my dreams. Metal struck metal, as though somewhere out there loosely hung metal rails, a great number of them, were moving in the morning breeze and knocking together.

  WOLFGANG HILBIG (1941–2007) was one of the major German writers to emerge in the postwar era. Though raised in East Germany, he proved so troublesome to the authorities that in 1985 he was granted permission to leave to the West. The author of over twenty books, he received virtually all of Germany’s major literary prizes, capped by the 2002 Georg Büchner Prize, Germany’s highest literary honor.

  ISABEL FARGO COLE is a U.S.-born, Berlin-based writer and translator. Her translations include Wolfgang Hilbig’s The Sleep of the Righteous, “I,” and Old Rendering Plant. She has been the recipient of a prestigious PEN/Heim Translation Grant, and her novel Die grüne Grenze was a finalist for the 2018 Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse.