The Wall
           

            “Why are you still standing up against that wall, man?” said Thomas Eberhardt a little too loudly for the mere four paces separating him and the wall.

            The wall—a sheet of red brick shimmering in the wind and covering all that the eye can see. The plaster hugging each brick switched from a rainy white to a dull grey half way up. There were always shortages of supplies. City renovations were begun every morning and abandoned by late afternoon. Half-finished foundations, homes, and holes dotted the city landscape. But someone wanted this wall up, and up it went, stretching more than three stories. Mortar was still drying atop the topmost bricks.

            “Ryerson?” barked Tom. “Man, you’ve been like that since morning.”

            Or maybe the top half had grayed from pure shame, the bottom half remained strong despite of itself. The wall stretched far to both sides, meeting up eventually with a barbed wire barricade. But the wall was enough. It had a claustrophobic charm that kept one rooted to the ground and half a groan away from soiling oneself. Look to one side, and the distinct feeling that the other side was slowly curling inward, trapping you, slithered up your left leg and threatened to bite.

            “Come on, I need your help. My nose itches. And after that you can do my groin.” Tom and Jonas Schroeder shared a chortle.

            Mark Ryerson did not move an inch, did not to even open his eyes which had been shut since sunset, but did extend his half-grin a centimeter up the wall. His lips moved as if he was dying of thirst but no words could be discerned from his slow chirps.

            “Eh ti durak![1] Hey! Leave him alone,” cried Sergei in a self-indulgent Russian accent. He was slouched on the ground and dressed down to a long sleeve shirt and tethered pants. His boots were missing, revealing a single grey sock. Though dressed worse than anyone, the Soviet had a constant look of warmer times upon him. Though he also managed to retain his hat, it slipped off his head as he swayed up to standing.

            “Why you still harass? If you better than him, if you not just another crazy dog, why you here?”

            The cold breath of this man hung longer in the night air, forcing Tom to really stare. His eyebrows loomed out almost as far as his nose, drooping onto his eyes, obscuring their brightness. The wrinkles seemed to extend right into the iris, adding at least twenty years in sad wisdom. How silly that this man should have got here. How silly that after all the late sober nights this man crawled into his sleep, this could not have been one of them.

            “The trick to living is not to think too much about the past, lest you become too kind, and thus, taken advantage of. But also not to think too much about the future, lest you become too aggressive and take advantage of someone,” spoke Mark.

            “Wait a minute. He’s French?” said Tom, flicking a dirty thumb behind him. “Man, what is it you’re doing here with your hands trussed behind your back?”

            There was no answer, nor would there ever be any. Mark was indeed French. He had been part of a small resistance of fresh soldiers who instead of surrendering like the rest of their training camp, decided to desert the army in order to fight. The occupying Germans easily rounded up the stragglers, beating and killing most.

 

           And the monsters came with their skin of leather and plastic, draped in black. Those glassy eyes, perfect circles, the size of billiard balls, glaring at you with all the power of your own reflection. Heavy breathing out of elongated snouts like manhole covers. The deep sewage of the soul hidden beneath the uniform of death and ambiguity. If only they had faces, the realization of the end might not have been so bad. For some of the faces would surely be a classmate from grammar school, or a football pal that lived down the street. But no. There was no arguing, no reaching the synthetic flesh of ideals marching on. These were no more people than statues—statues, long cramped and rusty from sitting in the same position all these years. Their machine guns seemed more human than they. At least the muzzles reached out and threatened to know you at any second. The guns were alive, mobile at any second, ever changing, always with increasing excitement and tension.

 

 

[1] Eh you fool! (Russian)

 

2006