The Wall Read Online Free PDF Page B

secrets that the police couldn’t know about. I sighed and said to myself, “They want to know who I am.” In spite of the good common sense and the helpful tone that Johanna kindly tried to instill in my own confused senses, there was little time to spare. My unknown past lay like a heavy weight inside me, the world around me opening up like a yawning abyss before any thought of escape, the rights of the tolerated guest about to be challenged.
    The smartest thing to do would have been to disappear. Stupidly I let myself be led along, turning back toward that from which I had once fled, just like when I followed the call of my grammar-school teacher Herr Prenzel. As a schoolboy, I admired him and was gulled by the enticing letters with which he irresistibly lured me in. Before I knew it I was on the train, only a suitcase on the rack above. Soon we would be at the border. All the other passengers had already gotten off. Some had warned me to get off as well, while there was still time, before that sinister border gobbled me up. I pointed arrogantly to my passport: “This is all I need, it will protect me, nothing is going to happen!” People shook their heads and smiled skeptically or mockingly. Then they disappeared. But then it was too late to change my mind: with helmets, rifles, and pistols, the border police boarded both ends of the long train in which there was no one left but me.
    As I saw the men noisily climbing onto the train, I retreated to my compartment and sat down on the hard seat. I needed to look completely harmless, a harmless traveler with a clear conscience. But already the men stood outside, one of them ripping open the door and pressing inside along with another, while the others stood stiffly outside the compartment. The two inside pressed so close that their legs rubbed against my knees. I could hardly move. “Passports, please!” growled one. He spoke in the plural, as if I weren’t the only passenger there. Just as I was used to from earlier trips, I had had everything in order ahead of time—my passport, wallet, ticket, currency receipt, and whatever else was needed to assure that all was inorder—but now I rummaged nervously inside my coat pockets and could find nothing, the disengaged impatience of the men unnerving me even further. At last I managed to produce my papers, but I was still nervous, my fingers unable to sort out the contents of my pockets, the passport falling from my hands and onto the dusty floor. A policeman bent down to get it, and though I tried to get it back from him while begging his pardon, he waved me off energetically with his hand as he lifted it up in triumph and began to pore over it with the others. He looked it over thoroughly with his colleagues, page after page, they whispering something to one another now and then that I couldn’t understand because of my worry. Then they handed the passport to the men outside in the corridor. They studied the document in detail, marking it with red and blue ink in various places. But then everything suddenly seemed to take a turn for the better, as they pulled out their rubber stamp and pressed their hallowed endorsements onto the passport with satisfaction.
    I now expected that at last I would be getting back my precious document, a huge hairy hand closing its cloth cover and stiffly holding it out to me. However, pressed between the policemen as I was, I couldn’t reach out to get the passport. One of the policemen on my side took pity and reached for it himself, I myself almost feeling what it would be like to have it back in my own hands. Then one of the men who had seemed satisfied and had stepped back now said something, and once again it was decided that the passport needed to be inspected more closely. The policeman in my compartment, who I thought was accommodating, turned away so forcefully that his cartridge belt banged painfully against my knuckles, causing me to cry out.
    “A wimpy little passenger, what a