The Wall

by Marlen Haushofer

A colossal task was completed; a task that had lain before me for months like an enormous mountain. Now I was tired and happy. I couldn’t remember having felt such satisfaction since my children were little. Back then, after the strain of a long day, when the toys were cleared away and the children lay in their beds, bathed and dried, back then I’d been happy. I was a good mother to little children. Once they grew bigger and went to school I failed them. I don’t know how it happened, but the bigger the children grew the more insecure I felt with them. I still looked after them as well as I could, but only very rarely was I happy around them. Then I became very dependent on my husband again; he seemed to need me more than they did. My children had gone away; hand in hand, their satchels on their backs, their hair blowing about, and I hadn’t known that that was the beginning of the end. Or perhaps I’d had an inkling. Later on I had never been happy again. Everything changed in a wretched way, and I stopped really living.