The Wall

Toward the end of June, the protagonist notices that the cat is changing. She grows a little fatter and oscillates between wanting to be petted and being very standoffish. Toward the end of the month, the protagonist hears some sounds from the cupboard and discovers that the cat gave birth to two kittens. One, with stripes like its mother, is dead, though the other, fluffy and all-white like an Angora cat, is healthy. The cat proves to be a proud and faithful mother, showing off the kitten to the protagonist and only leaving to hunt at night for a short period of time.

The protagonist names the kitten Pearl, and as Pearl grows up, she proves to be a beautiful, yet innocent cat. She loves Lynx and spends time with him. Lynx, at the direction of the protagonist, is very protective of Pearl. The protagonist loves Pearl, but realizes that Pearl is too delicate for the wild and dreads the day she will eventually go outside.

Over the course of this first summer, the protagonist is more concerned with the animals than the wall, but as the season comes to an end, the reality of her isolation becomes apparent. She takes stock of her supplies, and realizes that she is using them too quickly. Her matches will only last five years, reminding her of the need to survive. She also thinks of the animals’ needs, and soon takes a scythe to harvest a nearby meadow to provide Bella with hay. It takes her three weeks to complete the harvest, but the protagonist finds that she enjoys the work.

The protagonist stores the hay in a barn for it to dry. When she finishes the harvest, she cries, wondering where she would be if the need to provide for the animals didn’t drive her to work. Lynx tries to comfort her, always in tune with her emotions, and she soon cheers up. She starts sawing wood to stock up firewood for winter, and takes advantage of the nettles growing around her potatoes to add to her diet.

By the end of the summer, the protagonist takes pride in her work and considers her hands to be her greatest tools. With her changing responsibilities, she stops perceiving herself along gender lines. She realizes that societal expectations defined her identity and her course through life, pushing her into marriage and motherhood. She laments that she never learned skills for survival, and that even after so much time within the wall, she still struggles to do simple tasks. She thinks of herself as her own teacher, and though she writes an account of her time within the wall, she believes that no one will ever read it. Instead, mice will eat it.

The protagonist learns about the nature around her and takes advantage of it, harvesting raspberries and using the stream as a water source. One night, a violent storm rolls in, with loud thunder and violent wind and rain. The protagonist does her best to comfort the animals, and watches as Lynx and Pearl wait it out together. When she wakes the next day, she checks on Bella before going to investigate the sound of intense rumbling. At the wall, a giant puddle is forming, with water from the storm rushing down the stream but unable to pierce the wall. She looks out and realizes that all of the other lodges and village could be swept away.

After the storm, the temperature cools. The wood the protagonist saws dries out. At the beginning of September, she checks her potato harvest. The potatoes are not quite ready, but she is confident that she will be able to keep growing them. She continues to stick to her daily routine, finding purpose in her work to fill her empty days. She hunts some deer, but does not want to hurt them. She decides that if she ever digs her way out past the wall, she will make the opening wide enough for the deer to escape as well.

In the present, as the protagonist writes her account, she thinks of her own death, inevitable and fated to be lonely. She does not fear it. She works through the winter, comforting Bella and wishing for a new calf for her. She keeps the fire in the lodge going, and looks after the cat, alone now that Lynx is gone. She identifies closely with the cat, and thinks of Pearl and the cat’s other kitten, Tiger, whom she both loved but are now gone.

Returning to her account, the protagonist remembers her first September at the lodge. Pearl began going out, and caught her first fish. When she came back to the lodge with it, the protagonist praised her and could tell she was proud. The protagonist also harvests some cranberries, and returns to the Alm, a three-hour walk away, where she finds a butter churn. On her way back to the hunting lodge, she looks through her binoculars out toward the village, and sees it is still deserted and frozen.

By October, the protagonist harvests the potatoes and beans. She immediately turns the fields over, in hopes of keeping the weeds at bay next harvest season. She finds some apples trees, and picks as many apples as she can. She works to gather straw for Bella for the winter. At the end of October, it snows, and while the cat wants nothing to do with it, Pearl watches the flakes with curiosity.

Winter soon sets in, though a few days later, a foehn—a warm, dry wind that blows down through the Alps—sweeps in. The wind bothers the protagonist and Lynx, but it draws both Pearl and her mother out into the forest. The protagonist worries about Pearl all through the night. When Pearl does not return the next day, the protagonist and Lynx go searching for her, with no luck. Pearl’s mother returns, and that night, so does Pearl. She crawls into the lodge, injured, and dies at the protagonist’s feet.

The protagonist mourns Pearl, and thinks of her often. She believes Pearl loved life too much and was too innocent for the world, dying though she did nothing wrong. She buries Pearl and the foehn passes. She spends her winter with the other animals, and often goes out walking with Lynx, either to adventure or hunt. On one such walk, she encounters a fox, and thinks of how it could be the one who attacked and killed Pearl. She wants to take revenge, but does not think it is her place to decide the fox’s fate, so she chooses not to intervene.

As the winter deepens, the protagonist spends more time inside and with Bella. Bella grows fatter and produces less milk, making the protagonist wonder if she will soon give birth. She struggles to sleep, her worries constant and her dreams filled with people now dead. On Christmas, she goes to hunt with Lynx, there being no snow, and thinks of how strange it is for there to be no snow on Christmas. She remembers Christmas with her daughters and realizes that Christmas and all of its symbols will fade away without humanity, making her vital to its survival.

The protagonist notices that her wood supply is dwindling and begins sawing and chopping more, though she cuts her leg in doing so. She needs to stitch it, and it leaves a scar. The cat hates the cold, though Lynx loves it, and as the winter worsens, the protagonist thinks of the deer. She leaves some hay outside for them, to ensure they do not starve. One day, she stumbles upon an injured deer, its leg broken, and kills it out of mercy, though she hates committing the action. It is the first of many deer she finds dead in the snow that winter.

In January, Bella begins to show signs that a calf is nearing. One night, she bleeds a little, and the protagonist remembers a time she once saw two men deliver a calf, and convinces herself that she can help Bella in the same way. The protagonist stays with Bella overnight, watching her and comforting her as she paces back and forth, groaning in pain. When she begins giving birth, the protagonist helps, reaching inside Bella during a contraction to help ease the calf out. The calf is a male.

The foehn returns and the cat grows restless. She leaves for a few days, and at night, the protagonist hears a strange animal cry from the forest. After a few days, the cat returns, disheveled, but calm, and curls up with the protagonist. Bella cares for her new calf, and the protagonist finds that she feels slightly left out of this new little family.