The Wall

by Marlen Haushofer

But I don’t think that’s very important.

I’m afraid that much that I remember will be different from my real experiences.

but it wasn’t much use to me before.

he should go out stalking with Luise the following evening. She intended to shoot a roebuck;

the thing by the spring was not a living human being.

Since Lynx died I have carried it with me wherever I go.

more sensible to have gone to the village with Hugo and Luise.

suddenly I was the owner of a cow.

considerations such as these were absolutely no use.

my cow

back in May

finally unafraid of illness and death.

Insomnia only began to bother me much later on.

Later, when I knew how much I could rely on him, I completely lost this fear.

Actually she wouldn’t have needed a name at all, as she was the only cow in the forest, perhaps the only cow in the region.

Why would she say this when she saw other cows past the line

I still couldn’t believe that my children were dead too,

When I woke up on the tenth of May I thought about my children as little girls, skipping hand

never mourned for them, only ever for the children that they had been many years before.

The wall was a riddle, and I would never have managed to leave a riddle unsolved.

and it is out of that fear I am writing my report.

But even the woman who marked the diary with the word “Inventory” on the tenth of May has become very strange to me.

Imagination makes people oversensitive, vulnerable and exposed. Perhaps it’s a form of degeneracy. I have never held the shortcomings of the unimaginative against them, sometimes I’ve even envied them. They had an easier and more pleasant life than everyone else.

Since Lynx died that’s got a lot worse.

I shall try not to deviate too often from the diary entries.

the last charcoal burner had disappeared from the forest a long time since.

The animals were all I had now, and I began to feel like the head of our curious family.

maybe the cat knows me better than I know myself, and knows what I could be capable of.

Since Lynx died, the cat has grown closer to me. Maybe she sees that we are entirely dependent on one another, but she was jealous of the dog, without being able to show it.

my only friend in a world of troubles and loneliness.

Someone might come up to the window, looking like a man and hiding an ax behind his back.

Going crazy

There are a lot of arguments against this,

Who? Arguing with herself?

back then, in June.

the best water I’ve ever drunk.

Still remembers the outside world

and while I was there I looked through the wall. The man by the stream had fallen over and now lay on his back, his knees slightly bent, his cupped hand still on the way to his face.

hasn’t contacted me yet.

Of course somebody would find me if there was no wall over there, in fact, I had to tell myself, they would surely have found me long since.

On the long walk back I thought about my former life and found it unsatisfactory in all respects. I had achieved little that I had wanted, and everything I had achieved I had ceased to want.

gradually I’m beginning to understand that I can never go back.

I no longer play that game. One

Even now I’m nothing but a thin skin covering a mountain of memories. I don’t want to go on. What will happen to me if that skin gets torn?

Sometimes I thought I must be going mad;

It would be funny if, after years of never-ending troubles in the forest, I were to die from an abscess on my tooth.

Today I have a great big bean garden.

Sometimes, long before the wall existed, I wished I was dead, so that I could finally cast off my burden.

That was the price we paid for our ability to love.

Her blue eyes had turned green after a few weeks,

in the end, we die as all animals do.

It isn’t honorable to be born and to die, it happens to all creatures and has no meaning beyond that.

They should only have been prevented, in the interest of the greater order, from making their invention a reality.

She is angry

Now the day of the last match seems palpably close.