Die Wand Page #3

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I suffered in the forest.

Once, perhaps during the first winter,

I saw a fox standing by a stream.

I could have shot him.

I carried the gun with me.

But I did not.

Pearl died because one of their ancestors

was a breeding Angora cat.

From the beginning she was

destined to be a victim.

Should I punish this beautiful vivid fox?

Pearl's death was an injustice.

And I was a victim of that injustice.

Should I pass that injustice on

to the fox?

The only creature in the woods that

can really do right or wrong, is me.

And only I can practice mercy.

Sometimes I wish the burden of

that decision would not lay on me.

But I am a human.

And I can only think and act like a human.

Only death will set me free.

When I think of winter, I always see the

tired fox standing by the stream.

A lonely, adult animal

walking a predetermined path.

It seems this picture is important for me.

It stands only as a sign

for something else.

But I can not recognize its meaning.

So.

Yes, my Bella.

Yes, you are beautiful.

Bella became chubby again,

but I still couldn't know

if she expected a calf.

After all,

what we have experienced together,

Bella has become more than my cow,

a poor, patient sister, which handles her

destiny with more dignity than I do.

In the night I could hear the wood crack

in the cold.

I burned a lot of wood, but I shivered

and could not sleep.

Sometimes a log crackled

and went out again,

and I felt sick.

I knew the reason was

I had to kill, again and again.

I imagined what a person may feel,

who liked killing.

I did not succeed.

I got a goose flesh on my arms,

and my mouth became dry in disgust.

You had to be born, probably.

I could bring myself to do it

as quick and clean as possible,

but I would never get used to it.

For a long time I lay

awake in the darkness,

and thought of the little heart

in the chamber above,

frozen into a block of ice.

After the sever cold broke,

a wave of humid, warm air closed in.

Bella was restless, and I had

to check on her ten times a day.

At 11 January Bella was bleeding a little.

It was after the evening feeding,

and I decided to

I set up in the Barn for the night.

Come on, Bella! Hard!

Hard!

Come on, Bella, come on!

So much had happened in the recent past.

Pearl had been killed,

a little bull was born,

deer were frozen, and the predators had

a fat winter.

I myself had a lot of excitement

behind me, and now I was tired.

And when I closed my eyes,

I saw snow mountains on the horizon,

White flakes, falling on my face

in a wide, bright silence.

There were no thoughts, no memories,

just the great, silent expanse of snow.

I knew this thought for

a lonely human was dangerous,

but I couldn't find the strength to

fight against it.

Luchs didn't leave me in peace for long.

Again and again he

nudged me with his nose.

Sighing, I got up and

tended to my daily work.

Now Luchs is no longer

my friend and guardian.

And the desire to enter the white,

painless silence

is sometimes very heavy.

I have to pay attention to myself and be

stricter than I was before.

Luchs was my sixth sense.

Since he died,

I have felt like an amputee.

Something is missing and it always will be.

I don't just miss him for the

hunting and tracking game

It's not that alone.

The worst thing is I really feel

alone without Luchs...

The question of moving to the pastures

occupied me from day to day.

This task seemed terribly painful,

even if I took only the bare essentials

with me and lived barbarically

on the mountain pasture.

After I realized I had

long ago decided to move,

when I saw the green meadows

of the Alp for the first time,

I became more quiet.

And on 25 May came the day

of departure from the cabin.

The road was very well maintained

but it still took hours

to reach the pasture.

It was about noon.

I was completely exhausted.

Less from the physical effort

but nervous tension.

Something new started. I didn't know

what would that be.

But my homesickness and concern

for the future slowly faded away.

I began to like the beautiful pasture,

strange and dangerous.

But like everything strange,

full of secret allurements.

It was a strange feeling,

to look over a wide area,

with no mountains or trees in the way.

It wasn't immediately pleasant

or liberating.

My eyes had to

get used to the expanse

after having spent a year in

a narrow valley.

While I was on the mountain,

I did not take notes.

I dutifully counted the days,

but didn't notice important events

such as the hay harvest.

The memory of this time

has remained fresh,

and it's not hard for me to write about it.

The summer scent, the thundershower,

and star-glittered evenings

I will never forget.

For the first time in my life

I was appeased.

Not satisfied or happy,

but appeased.

It was as if a big hand

stopped the clock in my head.

Sometimes my thoughts confused me.

My mind would return to it's old thoughts.

Back then, in the second summer,

I didn't release it.

The boundaries were strictly drawn.

It is difficult for me,

to distinguish between my earlier and

my new self when I'm writing.

My new self,

of which I'm not sure

that it won't be slowly absorbed by

a larger We.

But even then

the transformation started.

The mountain pasture was to blame.

In the buzzing silence under a big sky

it was almost impossible to

be content with such isolation.

A small, blind, stubborn life,

which didn't want to fit

into a larger community.

Once it had been my pride and joy

to live such a life.

But on the mountain pasture it

seemed pathetic and ridiculous.

An inflated nothing.

On 16 October,

having returned from the pasture,

I resumed by notebook.

Throughout most of October

the weather was beautiful.

I used the favorable time

to doubled my wood stock.

At All Saints it became suddenly warm,

and I knew

that this could only be the beginning

of winter.

On 1O December

I found a strange note:

"Time goes by so fast."

I do not remember

having written this note.

I don't recall what occurred on that

10 December

and let me write below "fresh snow"

the words "collected hay":

"Time goes by so fast"

Did time really go by that fast?

I can't remember and

can't report about that.

It's not true at all. Time seemed

to pass very quickly...only, to me.

it seemed that time did not move,

but I moved in it.

Sometimes slowly,

sometimes at a breakneck speed.

I work, I drive things forward,

and I forget the passage of time.

And then, just as suddenly, I stop,

and time is moving passed me again.

I'll have to get used to it.

To its indifference and omnipresence.

Since Luchs is dead,

I feel that very cleary.

I sit at the table

and time stands still.

I can't see, smell or hear it,

but it surround me on all sides.

Its silence and stillness is terrible.

Fundamentally, these thoughts are

without meaning.

I pity animals and people,

because they are thrown into life

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