I haven't much hope. How could I explain anything to you, compared with whom I am but a babbling babe?
Don't, don't talk like that. You'd do me a favor if you'd be a little more manly, more self-assured. What am I to do with a mere shadow of a guest? I'll blow him through the porthole into the lake. I need several explanations. You who roam around outside can give me them. But if you sit trembling at my table here and by self-deception forget the little you know, then you may as well clear out at once. What I mean, I say.
There's something in that. In fact, I am superior to you in some ways. So I'll try to control myself. Ask away!
Better, far better that you exaggerate in this direction and that you fancy yourself to be somehow superior. But you must understand me properly. I am a human being like you, I'm as many centuries more impatient as I am older than you. Well, let's talk about the masters. Listen! And drink some wine, to sharpen your wits. Don't be shy. Take a good swig. There's another large shipload there.
Gracchus, that's an excellent wine. Long live the master!
Pity that he died today. He was a good man and he went peacefully. Healthy, grown-up children stood at his deathbed, his wife had fainted at the foot, but his last thought was for me. A good man, a Hamburger.
Heavens above, a Hamburger! And you down here in the south know that he died today?
What? I not know when my master dies? You're really a bit simple-minded.
Are you trying to insult me?
Not at all, I do it without meaning to. But you shouldn't be so surprised. Drink more wine. As for the masters, it's like this: originally, the bark belonged to no one.
Gracchus, one request. First, tell me briefly but coherently how things are with you. To be truthfuclass="underline" I really don't know. You of course take these things for granted and assume, as is your way, that the whole world knows about them. But in this brief human life — and life really is brief, Gracchus, try to grasp that — in this brief life it's as much as one can do to get oneself and one's family through. Interesting as the Hunter Gracchus is — this is conviction, not flattery — there's no time to think of him, to find out about him, let alone worry about him. Perhaps on one's deathbed, like your Hamburger, this I don't know. Perhaps the busy man will then have a chance to stretch out for the first time and let the green Hunter Gracchus pass for once through his idle thoughts. But otherwise, it's as I've said: I knew nothing about you, business brought me down here to the harbor, I saw the bark, the gangplank lay ready, I walked across — but now I'd like to know something coherent about you.
Ah, coherent. That old, old story. All the books are full of it, teachers draw it on the blackboard in every school, the mother dreams of it while suckling her child, lovers murmur it while embracing, merchants tell it to the customers, the customers to the merchants, soldiers sing it on the march, preachers declaim it in church, historians in their studies realize with open mouths what happened long ago and never cease describing it, it is printed in the newspapers and people pass it from hand to hand, the telegraph was invented so that it might encircle the world the faster, it is excavated from ruined cities, and the elevator rushes it up to the top of the skyscraper. Railway passengers announce it from the windows to the countries they are passing through, but even before that the savages have howled it at them, it can be read in the stars and the lakes reflect it, the streams bring it down from the mountains and the snow scatters it again on the summit, and you, man, sit here and ask me for coherence. You must have had an exceptionally dissipated youth.
Possibly, as is typical of any youth. But it would be very useful, I think, if you would go and have a good look around the world. Strange as it may seem to you, and sitting here it surprises even me, it's a fact that you are not the talk of the town, however many subjects may be discussed you are not among them, the world goes its way and you go on your journey, but until today I have never noticed that your paths have crossed.
These are your observations, my dear friend, other people have made others. There are only two possibilities here. Either you conceal what you know about me, and do so with a definite motive. In which case let me tell you frankly: you are on the wrong track. Or you actually think that you can't remember me, because you confuse my story with someone else's. In that case I can only tell you: I am — no, I can't, everyone knows it and of all people I should be the one to tell you! It's so long ago. Ask the historians! Go to them, and then come back. It's so long ago. How can I be expected to keep it in this overcrowded brain?
Wait, Gracchus, I'll make it easier for you, I'll ask you some questions. Where do you come from?
From the Black Forest, as everyone knows.
From the Black Forest, of course. And was it there, around about the fourth century, that you used to hunt?
Man alive, do you know the Black Forest?
No.
You really don't know anything. The helmsman's little child knows more than you, probably far more. Who on earth sent you in here? It's fate. Your obtrusive modesty was indeed only too well justified. You are a nonentity whom I'm filling up with wine. Now you don't even know the Black Forest. And I was born there. I hunted there until I was twenty-five. If only the chamois had not led me astray — well, now you know it — I'd have had a long pleasant hunter's life, but the chamois led me on, I fell down a precipice and was killed on the rocks. Don't ask any more. Here I am, dead, dead, dead. Don't know why I'm here. Was loaded onto the death ship, as befits a miserable dead man, the three or four ministrations were performed upon me, as on everyone, why should they make an exception of the Hunter Gracchus? Everything was in order, I lay stretched out in the boat.
Translated by Tania and James Stern
The Great Wall of China
THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA was finished off at its northernmost corner. From the southeast and the southwest it came up in two sections that finally converged there. This principle of piecemeal construction was also applied on a smaller scale by both of the two great armies of labor, the eastern and the western. It was done in this way: gangs of some twenty workers were formed who had to accomplish a length, say, of five hundred yards of wall, while a similar gang built another stretch of the same length to meet the first. But after the junction had been made the construction of the wall was not carried on from the point, let us say, where this thousand yards ended; instead the two groups of workers were transferred to begin building again in quite different neighborhoods. Naturally in this way many great gaps were left, which were only filled in gradually and bit by bit, some, indeed, not till after the official announcement that the wall was finished. In fact it is said that there are gaps which have never been filled in at all, an assertion, however, that is probably merely one of the many legends to which the building of the wall gave rise, and which cannot be verified, at least by any single man with his own eyes and judgment, on account of the extent of the structure.
Now on first thoughts one might conceive that it would have been more advantageous in every way to build the wall continuously, or at least continuously within the two main divisions. After all, the wall was intended, as was universally proclaimed and known, to be a protection against the peoples of the north. But how can a wall protect if it is not a continuous structure? Not only can such a wall not protect, but what there is of it is in perpetual danger. These blocks of wall left standing in deserted regions could be easily pulled down again and again by the nomads, especially as these tribes, rendered apprehensive by the building operations, kept changing their encampments with incredible rapidity, like locusts, and so perhaps had a better general view of the progress of the wall than we, the builders. Nevertheless the task of construction probably could not have been carried out in any other way. To understand this we must take into account the following: the wall was to be a protection for centuries; accordingly, the most scrupulous care in the building, the application of the architectural wisdom of all known ages and peoples, an unremitting sense of personal responsibility in the builders were indispensable prerequisites for the work. True, for the more purely manual tasks ignorant day laborers from the populace, men, women, and children who offered their services for good money, could be employed; but for the supervision even of every four day laborers an expert versed in the art of building was required, a man who was capable of entering into and feeling with all his heart what was involved. And the higher the task, the greater the responsibility. And such men were actually to be had, if not indeed so abundantly as the work of construction could have absorbed, yet in great numbers.