Read Online The Wall by H. G. Adler - Free Book Online Page B

hiding?”
    A monstrous voice, grave and powerful, posed this question, a thunderous storm that drowned out the ever-wilder stomping to the right and left of the snapping cranes. I didn’t move from my spot, but instead just tried to shrink and duck down, though someone grabbed me under my arms as if to hold me and force me upward so that I appeared taller. Again someonecalled for Adam, though no one replied. I said nothing as well. “Why don’t you answer?” someone demanded. It wasn’t the one with the scraggly beard but someone who looked like my murdered father, except without his voice.
    “You are Adam. If you don’t answer, things can go badly. Don’t hold back, and the cranes will let these people go.”
    “I’m not Adam. How can I respond as someone I am not? That makes no sense and won’t be tolerated, for it’s not true.”
    “It is true, my son, for you are Adam!”
    I had to laugh that this false father mistook me for another. I simply couldn’t go along with his crazy notions.
    “My name is Arthur, not Adam. You’re wrong. I’m not Adam.”
    Then the other voice laughed, and many laughed along with him, for as far as they could see, I was lying.
    “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, irresoluteurges 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