H. Adler - The Wall

“We virtually buried you,” Frau Dr. Kulka claimed when Herr Saubermann allowed her to speak. “You have changed so much that you either don’t exist or someone totally different now lives.”

“Yes,” explained Herr Schnabelberger, forgetting to ask permission to speak. “You have survived completely. It’s just as you want. You now belong to our panoptical museum as a coffin. You also happen to stand here before us, and you feel fine. That’s all that a person can wish for.”

“So it is!” the Professor asserted joyously. “Precisely! So the coffin is nothing but you as old Adam. You are separated from it as if by a wall and walk about in seeming freedom as an honorary member. A rare achievement. I believe it is even unique.”

I ran my hands lightly over the coffin.

“I bequeath you this box,” I said barely aloud and for no special reason. “I give it to you this very day. Where, indeed, are all the wreaths and flowers? It all needs to look good in order to serve your approach.”

“A very fine remark,” the factory owner and director of the panopticon agreed. “We’ll take care of the flowers.”

“And pearls, many pearls …” I whispered.

The moment seemed to have arrived to leave the museum. I was ready to leave the conference as well. Unfortunately, that was not possible, for as an honored guest one is trapped within his paradise and cannot shrink from it, but Kratzenstein was ready to leave the people of the panopticon in order to get me some fresh air. I held out my hand to the workers, and as I left the museum booth I had to sign a special page of the visitors’ book, which had also been hauled out of the hermitage. Once we were outside, I heard a shrill roar that could only have come from Roy Rogers. I wasn’t wrong, as the Professor confirmed, explaining that this blossoming enterprise had been transformed into an Institute for Quick-Change Artistry, which had grown in essential ways such that it now displayed the greatest achievements of the Sociology Conference. A visit was really called for. From the esoteric scientists’ slide I had been lured over to Roy Rogers, and so we found our way there, where in front of the entrance most of the people I knew had gathered, they having been relieved of their responsibilites for the purposes of taking a special tour. A shimmering spectacle then proceeded, one like my ears had never before had to endure. A level of noise was reached that could hardly be taken in by my hearing. That’s what I said to myself while truly dazed, though the sound did not oppress me. I also attributed this to the fact that I could already see Roy Rogers, the incomparable man with the assistants already familiar to me. He held forth with his famous skills, while the onlookers were herded into the tent accompanied by constant hoopla and boisterous calls.

Roy Rogers had found a partner equal to him who was billed as the quick-change artist of all time; he was a fast painter, a paperhanger, a prize shot, and much more that was rattled off. He was introduced as Hopalong Cassidy. He spread out a roll of wallpaper and held it up across from Roy Rogers, who tossed shimmering daggers and knives at it, though all the weapons bounced off the wallpaper that was quickly swung back and forth, and on which, through the unexplainable magic of Roy Rogers’s knives, the word “Kolex” appeared in bright red. I had already been amazed to see the brand name Kolex in the panopticon, where it seemed to me ingenious, but here it had such an odd effect that the word appeared to me new and unknown and I couldn’t remember it, for I had no time, as I was still breathless and besotted with the brilliance of the free performance. Roy Rogers drew his two pistols and wildly shot at the wallpaper, releasing pops and smoking clouds. Once he had emptied his guns, the word “Kolex” disappeared. “Unbelievable!” I heard someone next to me call out. “Unbelievable! It has to be a trick, but one I’ve never seen before!” It was Oswald Birch who said this, and I agreed with him.

Then I looked up at the stage again, where I recognized my greatest benefactor and supporter. Hopalong Cassidy was my unforgettable friend Siegfried Konirsch-Lenz, while the lady who had helped him with rolling out and rolling up the wallpaper was Minna, his wife. By then Konirsch-Lenz had also noticed me and waved cheerily to me, called me by name, praised me to those gathered as the man of the day, and vigorously motioned for me to join him onstage. I hesitated and had little desire to follow the worthy request, but because of the entreating calls from the mouths of those above — the gathering also supporting this wish and urging me not to dally — I finally climbed up. Siegfried Hopalong embraced me and kissed me before all the onlookers, Roy Rogers doing the same. At the same time, Roy playfully threw his lasso over me, while Konirsch-Lenz kept loosening and tightening it. Then all the other artists onstage greeted me, among them two tall girls, Patricia and Petula, who were introduced to me by their mother.

Loudspeakers, music machines, and noisemakers created a wild revelry, but it seemed to me that it was drowned out by the booming applause of the conference participants in front of the stage. There was nothing I could do but bow, again and again, to the audience. I saw how they lifted Michael and Eva up from the crowd, the children waving handkerchiefs at me. Vainly I tried to shove Roy Rogers and Konirsch-Cassidy and all the members of their troupe in front of the joyous, screaming onlookers in order that at least a part of the applause go to them. That only worked a quarter of an hour later, when the pack were told to head inside the tent for the imminent start of the special presentation, at which Rogers and Cassidy carried me on their shoulders. Then the friends placed me on the stage inside, where I had to say a few words, though it was nothing more than repeated thank-yous. The relentless applause prevented a speech of any regular length. Then Herr Konirsch-Lenz unrolled his wallpaper once again with amazing alacrity, while Roy Rogers made his lasso twist and twirl as intricately as possible.

While this was going on, a wall slowly appeared between me and the onlookers. Certain that people were not paying as much attention to me, I inconspicuously stepped down from the stage at the back. Only Frau Minna noticed what I was doing, but when I whispered to her that I was planning a closing act that I wanted to think over and prepare in peace, my behavior didn’t seem at all peculiar to her and she didn’t pay any more attention to me. I just waited until she was no longer near me the moment she was needed onstage. Finally I looked up, and she was nowhere to be seen. I found my way to the back of the tent and looked for an exit, though I found none. The canvas was thick and was not ripped anywhere. I could have used the pocketknife I won at the Wheel of Fortune in order to cut a slit in the tent wall, but that seemed too nasty a thing to do and not easy. I would have been found out straightaway and could have been arrested for it. That’s why I bent over and looked to see if there was any place where I could lift the tent and wriggle out from underneath. It was possible, but I had to crawl along the damp, dirty ground before I managed to force my way through.

Then I stood in the open air on the outer edge of the grounds on which the sociologists had met for the day. I wiped off my jacket and pants as quickly as I could. Then I heard the rattling of a chain. I looked around to see a dog lunge at me. At that, I ran away, deeper into Shepherd’s Field, so that I couldn’t be easily caught in case my escape was discovered. For the same reason, I avoided the usual entrance to the annual fair at Halstead Way. When I had finally run out of breath, I stopped and looked in all directions. Nothing seemed suspicious, nor was I being followed. I was left to myself and regretted only that Johanna and the children, as well as Anna, were not with me. I was concerned that they might be worried about me, while I also told myself that Johanna was smart enough to understand my secretly disappearing, which was nothing out of the ordinary for me.