Free The Wall by H. G. Adler

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 thekids 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 invocationthe 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