H. Adler - The Wall

“Adam and Arthur, they are the same. Go forth and do as you have been bidden to do.”

No one told me what to do but had only called for Adam. Nor did I hear the thunderous voice again. Instead, the ghastly cranes fished out ever more victims from the heaps that somehow got no smaller, given how thickly packed together they were. Around me there was no end to calls for me to answer as Adam, but I could do nothing to stop them, as I had no authority. But I also didn’t want the situation to continue to deteriorate because of an error.

“If I can replace Adam, I will,” I shouted loudly.

“No, you can’t do that!” replied the cool voice of a doctor. “Next, please!”

I was off the hook, let go with a single stroke, the patchy beard and the false father having disappeared. Soon I was forgotten and left, to my surprise, on the edge of the seething cauldron of flesh. I no longer believed that it had an end and that one could escape from it. Certainly I had saved myself because I didn’t answer to Adam, but I didn’t feel well, and the truth that I had spoken seemed hollow and base. The admonition to “Try!” lingered on the wind, because how could I exist if I didn’t dare try to?

Then I was pushed more and more to the side until I could go no farther. Very high and gray stood the wall. What else could I do? My limbs grew weak, my will was drained and leaked away in wormlike, irresolute urges that powerlessly waited for me to say what to do next. “I can’t do anything for you, really, because I can’t do anything for me. I’m useless. My age remained indeterminate in the hours spent in that inconclusive trial.” Sadly, I spoke out loud, but the wall didn’t move, and I had grown too weak to try to push my way through it. Nor did I have enough left in me to try to move to the left or right or behind me. To take control of one’s fate, I thought, is an audacious wish, and I had unintentionally done so with mine. No one likes me; he who does not exist cannot even die. Slowly memories began to bubble up, and I needed to climb up in order to avoid drowning. Higher and higher I climbed, but the wall remained the same. It was forbidden to rest, for my memories pressed hard at me and threatened to drown me in a flood.

I looked on at the children in the street on West Park Row and all around the neighborhood, my son, Michael, among them, particularly loud as usual, his voice even rising above the noise of his playmates. The day was heavy, and you could smell the sweet, rank odor from the sewers so badly designed that sometimes their disgusting discharge fouled the air of the entire area, creating a terrible nuisance nothing could be done about, since they had been poorly installed four or five decades earlier. There is no way to alter them without rebuilding them from the ground up, and the millions that it would take to do that are not available. Therefore things have to remain the way they are. The sanitation inspector assured me, hopefully and a bit sadly, that it would one day be taken care of, though he also felt that perhaps I was a bit overly sensitive, the rest of the neighborhood’s inhabitants never having complained about it at all. Nonetheless, I could rest easy, for unpleasant as these odors may be, his nose confirms that they are certainly no danger to anyone’s health, because in a sanitary and sound sewer system the sewage is disinfected and regularly monitored for its chemical and biological content. The man advised me to buy some Ozono, an odor-killing solution that had been shown to work most anywhere, only a couple of bottles placed in the apartment being required to guarantee relief. I took his suggestion, and ever since I’ve been freed from these miasmas, though out in the open I still have to put up with the stink when, at certain hours, the heavy air persists.

It doesn’t bother the children; perhaps they are insensitive or they don’t have such sharp noses. And so they blithely run around outside with the kids from the neighborhood. Who knows where they got hold of the tattered white pieces of linen that they chase after the first cabbage butterflies with, though they are too clumsy to catch one. A young band of foolhardy robbers, they have nothing to worry about; they have it all, they exist, and they have been allowed to feel self-evident and remain satisfied with that. Much presses at their souls, be it stirring passions, ambition, envy, tweaked cravings, burning greed, and yet it’s all harmless, none of it doing them in, but instead only driving them on. They squat down on the ground and no longer care about butterflies or other animals, then they toss marbles, gambling for rolling loot. And so they fan out, insatiable cravings driving them on as they explore and roam about until they are dirty, tired, and hungry. Then they are waved in from doors and windows, the rowdy bunch hauled back into the houses or voluntarily heading home, the mothers already busy arranging and cutting what from the day’s bounty no longer conforms to more modest restraints. Swallowed up by the house, hemmed in by protection and comfort, at night the children drift off into the secret world of sleep, renewed and enriched, until they burst forth from its capsule to enter a new day. But nothing bad happens to the children, for no matter how much they are cut or knocked about, or sometimes hurt themselves, their inner world is never depleted. They have themselves, no matter what happens; that which is self-evident does not betray them when illness or an accident consumes their life. For they have memory, full and complete; their worries are met head-on and do not rob them of the certainty of their being. Memory …

Whenever I remember, that’s not the way it is for me. Instead, I am lost in confusion, I cannot form any picture of myself, I get no further than mere attempts to do so. I reflect and try very hard to seize hold of my past, but Father and Mother cannot be found; the image of them is unavailable to me, so that I don’t even know if they exist. My own childhood, and yet how am I to access it? Bewilderment is all I know, as no actual memory is allowed. Johanna is all I can rely on, for she knows and tells me what is necessary, as if everything were all right. She talks to me and comforts me, pointing to things: “Look, look, it exists, it exists!” She points to my hand and says, “Hand,” to my forehead and says, “Forehead.” How wonderful this helpful denotation, this naming of names, and how through such invocation the multiplicity of all things manifest is gained. At night, she leads me to the little beds in the children’s room and says their names again: “There they are. Just look at them — your son, Michael, your little daughter, Eva.” The little slumbering bodies are gently covered, only the heads sticking out from the blankets that long to cover them, sometimes a hand as well, all rosy with five fingers folded together, maintaining a sure grip upon some dream or carefree oblivion, the children alive, their quiet breathing protecting them within a sleep lovingly observed, and from which awakening is promised. Your children — so Johanna confirms in a subdued monotone meant to disturb no one, though she also affirms that their sleep is deep; the children don’t wake up even when roused. How wonderful this sounds. I have Johanna to thank for these children, little strangers who do not belong to me, who are cut off from me and, because of what I’m able to understand, separate. But indeed they are mine, though alas not mine, yet still my legacy, my gift to a memory that I myself cannot fully share, West Park Row in a strange city, in a strange land. Johanna stands between us, the go-between, who moves me to hidden tears, the guide who asks no questions but, instead, mercifully acts on my behalf. But how can I live up to such caring intervention?