The Wall

by Marlen Haushofer

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.

Not that I’m afraid of becoming an animal. That wouldn’t be too bad, but a human being can never become just an animal; he plunges beyond, into the abyss.

He shredded everything he could get hold of in the hunting lodge, and sharpened his claws on the legs of the table and the bedposts. I didn’t mind that, though. I had no valuable furniture, after all, and even if I had, a living cat would have been more important to me than the most beautiful piece of furniture.

I often look forward to a time when there won’t be anything left to grow attached to. I’m tired of everything being taken away from me. Yet there’s no escape, for as long as there’s something for me to love in the forest, I shall love it; and if some day there is nothing, I shall stop living.

Sometimes my thoughts grow confused, and it is as if the forest has put down roots in me, and is thinking its old, eternal thoughts with my brain. And the forest doesn’t want human beings to come back.

I find it hard to separate my old self from my new self, and I’m not sure that my new self isn’t gradually being absorbed into something larger that thinks of itself as “We.”