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Go to the Wall

Norm Hudson

    I darted behind the bush. They hadn’t spotted me. Yet.
    The spotlight swept its relentless rampage across the face of the wall. The friendly enemy. Built to protect us. From them. Propaganda told us that. Suckers that we were. We succumbed to it. Keep them out. Keep us in. Keep us safe.
    We had been at the beginning. Safe from travel. Safe from information. Safe from contact. Safe from communication. In a walled safe. Freedom free. Slowly suffocating.
    Then came the communication. When they found out. Found out you were not one of them. When someone heard you speak in the supermarket. And reported you. The verbal abuse. Followed by the knock at the door. The contact with the authorities. The grilling for information. The accusations of spying. The drugs to extract information. And finally the travel. The last journey. To the wall. Red with the blood of the butchering by the firing squad.
    They didn’t know about me.
    Born there. On my birth certificate. Once proud to be a patriot. Booing in bonhomie every time my parents and I had crossed the border on holiday. Before it closed. Before the rise of nationalism. The encouragement of division. And hatred.
    No one knew my father wasn’t one of them. My father. Who’d moved across the border to marry my mother. Both now long dead. Leaving me. Alone.
    I hated them. Hated them for what they would do if they found out. Make me wear the flag of my father’s country. Make me the butt of derision on my infrequent days out. Make me dread the knock at the door. The arrest. The torture. I, who’d been more patriotic than many people. Silently so. Proudly so. Before the wall. And the firing squad.
    I’d seen the others. The others herded into sombrely silent electric vehicles and driven away. Never seen again in the late twenty first century. Some stood against the wall and shot. Others experimented on with drugs and surgery. Shadows of their former selves.
    They’d laughingly called it independence. But what they really had wanted all along was dependence. Dependence on the state. At first. Then forceful compliance.
    I had to get out. Before they came for me.
    I contemplated the distance of the run. And the time between the sweep of the spotlight. I’d make it to the foot of the wall before the next searchlight. Then I’d have to rely on my camouflage clothing to edge myself into the earth and hope the spotlight would spare me.
    I got the grappling hook ready and, as the spotlight made its final sweep of the blood-spattered wall, I ran, cowering low, as if that would protect myself from the cacophony that would arise if the spotlight and I collided.
    I was scarcely aware of no sound as I threw the grappling hook over the wall. I couldn’t afford to wait for the shot in the back that would send me back down into the earth of the country I’d learned to despise as the spotlight stripped me of any nationality.
    I scrambled up the wall, reached the top and threw myself over just as the spotlight made its next sweep of the wall.
    I was free.
    I heard the sirens wailing as the spotlight gripped on to the grappling hook. I’d had no time to give it its freedom.
    My new country was alien to me.
    I realised that after two weeks spent there. There was no wearing of a badge, no abuse, no arrests, no grilling, no injections, no restriction of travel and no journey to the wall. There were also no friends. No relatives. No one.
    That’s when I decided to go to see Uncle Sebastian.
    Uncle Sebastian had moved countries. Way before the wall. It had been a surprise to everyone. He had been such a patriot.
    He was pleased to see me. I was his only living relative after all. Even though I hadn’t seen him since I was a baby.
    “I didn’t expect ever to see you again,” he said.
    At last I thought. A sympathetic soul. A relative. Someone I could relate to. He’d understand.
    No more hate. No more aggression.
    I slowly removed the gun I’d been carrying all along. The pistol I’d planned to use on my aggressors and, as a last result, on myself, if I was caught.
    I laid it on his sideboard.
    I was glad to get rid of it. To be with a sympathetic soul. A fellow country man. To be free.
    “I don’t need this anymore,” I said.
    His eyebrows raised a fraction but he said nothing. He crossed to the sideboard and poured two whiskies. He handed one to me.
    By the time I’d told him the whole story, we’d had more than two.
    His speech was slurred and his eyes had lost their previous piercing quality. My initial tenseness had turned to a tap of tears that I’d managed to drain down inside me and control so there was no outward sign of the deluge that drowned me inwardly.
    He swirled the liquid round in his glass.
    “Bloody politicians! That’s what it is! Always has been and always will be!”
    I nodded in agreement. I tried to slide into the sofa like Uncle Sebastian had done. To relax.
    He went on, his right hand continuing to swirl the solution in the glass.
    “That’s why I left, you know. Bloody politicians wouldn’t give us what we wanted.”
    “What you wanted?” I repeated, raising the glass to my lips. Maybe Uncle Sebastian was right. Maybe whisky was the solution. The solution to everything. I could already feel it numbing my nerves.
    “Bloody independence! That’s all we wanted!”
    “Independence?”
    My voice was a gargle of garbage.
    “You wanted independence?” I repeated.
    “Yes but they wouldn’t give it to us so I left.”
    “You left?”
    I felt like my own inquisitor.
    “Your mother didn’t agree with me, you know,” he said.
    I thought of my mother, unusually silent over the subject of Uncle Sebastian. My mother subjected to humiliation for marrying one of the enemy, arrested, grilled, tortured and finally sent to the wall.
    And I thought of Uncle Sebastian. Leaving. It had been the right thing to do. If only my mother had left with him. She’d have been here now. Enjoying the good life. In the sun. With me.
    “Didn’t agree with you about leaving?” I said.
    “She thought we should stay and fight for what we believe in.”
    Mother had fought all right, I thought. Fought for freedom.
    He slung a slug of whisky against the back of his throat as if it was threatening him. The whisky ignored the threat and only served to loosen his lips still further.
    “I didn’t believe her then,” he went on, “after that first vote.”
    “When you left?” I said.
    He nodded and lowered his gaze into the liquid in the glass.
    He’d done the right thing, I thought. If something goes to the wall, you get out.
    The word wall brought a wobble of insecurity.
    “I never took citizenship, you know,” he said. “I was always a patriot.”
    Like I had been I thought. A flood of feeling for a fellow countryman flowed over me.
    Uncle Sebastian and I would be fellow ex-pats living in peace. The rest of our days.
    “That’s why I did it the second time,” he said.
    “Did it?” I slurred.
    The room had a golden amber glow. Of safety. Security.
    The second time?
    That seemed strangely sinister for some reason I couldn’t recall.
    “Voted for independence,” he said, sliding down on the sofa as if he could almost slither into an unknown escape route.
    “For here?” I said.
    “For there,” he said. “I realised your mother had been right. You should always fight for what you believe.”
    “For independence? You voted for independence? The second time?”
    “Yes. And we got it, didn’t we?”
    There was a pout of pride as he rose from the sofa like a whale surfacing from the sea threatening to swallow everything in its vicinity.
    The reality of what he’d said sent a doubt of disbelief that drowned the amber glow.
    My Uncle Sebastian had voted for independence in a country he didn’t inhabit. A vote that had ventured to lead to the rise of nationalism. And the wall.
    “I need a drink,” I said, as I walked to the sideboard.
    “Your mother should have agreed, you know,” he said. “Instead of fighting.”
    The whisky I’d poured out gazed back at me surrounded by its wall of glass. Trapped. With only one way out.
    I was right to do it. If something goes to the wall, you get out. The whisky knew that.
    I knocked it over. The whisky. The wall of glass The liquid ran free.
    Like my hand. The hand that grasped the gun.
    I turned it on the friendly enemy and fired.
    Mother was right. You should fight for freedom. Fight your own family. Fight your own government. Fight your own country. If that’s what it takes. For freedom.
    That’s why I’m going. Going back. Going home.
    I’ll find new friends. Both sides of the border. Friends who’ll fight for freedom. And this time we won’t fail.
    There’s just one place I won’t be going. Not if I want a get out.
    I won’t be going to the wall.

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