The Wall by H. G. Adler

just doing their job. Assiduously they went about their business, doing it with diligence, and if my heart were not consumed with the fear that at any moment these heroes might relieve me of my bodily existence, I would have marveled at their dauntless zeal. Out of cowardice I avoided them and stayed out of the front row if I wasn’t able to crouch in a corner somewhere. I just didn’t want to attract attention and only hoped through fate, through some invisible entity and sheer luck, to escape my own murder. Did I in fact succeed? Doubt still eats at me even today. Others around me died because they were killed; I died because no one noticed me. Is there any difference? During those six years, my memory was strained. Because I was hidden away, it was stretched to the limits, drunk down with the agreeable arrogance of my youth. That gave me strength to cling to life,wanting to remain true to it so that it would have mercy on me and stand by me. I continued to hope. It wasn’t clear what I hoped for; I just remained within myself and waited for morning to come, just for it to be there, and then another morning, always another morning.
    And so I went on. The days passed, though I never noticed that with each day I became weaker. The murder of my companions consumed me, yet I had no idea that each died for me, and that with each I died as well. Did I brood over my own fate? Time melted away inside me. Before I knew it, beneath the foamy froth of this roiling madness my very being had become pale and thin, shrunken to a fragile husk that resulted from my being fed nothing but a few meager morsels. I was given just enough food to keep me alive and alert enough to feel hungry and to crave more bites of food. I was denied them, and so I dreamed of them, which nourished me and granted me a steely strength. The deeper I sank, the more I distanced myself from myself, withdrawing from the reduced means of existence that maintained me and yet continued to weaken me as well. But still I defended myself against all the dangers that threatened me from without and from within, helped on by believing that protection and rescue were possible. Thus I prayed throughout, praying myself always away, really away, and into this intense engagement with the unknown I disappeared. The transitory wore me away. On the day they announced that the war was over, there was nothing left but a snakeskin, a dried, brittle skeleton that I could discern through tender self-regard, though I the living animal had slipped away, gone without a trace, no longer to be found. I tried to tell myself that the damage was not real but rather only a deep numbness: Patience, you will live again. In the meantime, I felt it best to live as if I were healthy and sound.
    People back then were used to all types, therefore I didn’t stand out. It was hard to distinguish between murderers and the murdered. Wherever I showed up and was soon asked something or was drawn into the everyday buzzing chatter, I was completely unknown. A cold disengagement was almost everywhere buried beneath the hectic pace of a destroyed world that fed upon itself through a kind of empty jubilation in which the walking dead were discussed in a matter-of-fact tone, as if they were standing right there. I joined in the cozy warmth, and it felt good. The day of the new powers seemed to have dawned, the fanfare of freedom boiling over intoexplosive noise. I was spared having to prove that my heart was still beating. You just spit out your name without anything to back it up—documents and witnesses were not called for—and before you knew it a civil servant was warmly extending his unwitting hand to you. That was all that was needed for the superficial passing of any given day; you just waved a piece of paper and everything was fine, a smile accompanying it, though no one bothered to actually look. Soon the scrap of paper was no longer any good, but I wasn’t worried at all, for you were either