Memory Wall

Memory Wall
Anthony Doerr

Set on four continents, Anthony Doerr's collection of stories is about memory: the source of meaning and coherence in our lives, the fragile thread that connects us to ourselves and to others.Set on four continents, Anthony Doerr's collection of stories is about memory: the source of meaning and coherence in our lives, the fragile thread that connects us to ourselves and to others.In the luminous and beautiful title story, a young boy in South Africa comes to possess an old woman's secret, a piece of the past with the power to redeem a life. In 'The River Nemunas', a teenaged orphan moves from Kansas to Lithuania to live with her grandfather, and discovers a world in which myth becomes real. 'Village 113' is about the building of the Three Gorges Dam and the seedkeeper who guards the history of a village soon to be submerged. And in 'Afterworld,' the radiant, cathartic final story, a woman who escaped the Holocaust is haunted by visions of her childhood friends in Germany, yet finds solace in the tender ministrations of her grandson.The stories in Memory Wall show us how we figure the world, and show Anthony Doerr to be one of the masters of the form.

ANTHONY DOERR

Memory Wall

FOURTH ESTATE • London

Copyright (#ulink_dcdcce51-4838-5770-9ff4-1c22ba3109e0)

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

This Fourth Estate paperback edition published 2012

First published in hardback by Fourth Estate in 2011

Copyright © Anthony Doerr 2010

Cover photograph © www.mat-taylor.co.uk/photography (http://www.mat-taylor.co.uk/photography)

‘The Deep’ was first published by the Sunday Times

Anthony Doerr asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 9780007367726

Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007367740

Version: 2017-05-22

For Shauna

Contents

Cover (#u14b529be-2663-545f-be5d-e3f3da3275ac)

Title Page (#ufc609c7d-fda7-5a44-a7a7-19223df6bfed)

Copyright

Memory Wall (#ulink_99865d4a-23a5-55d2-9490-8bd35cfb1c9f)

Procreate, Generate (#litres_trial_promo)

The Demilitarized Zone (#litres_trial_promo)

Village 113 (#litres_trial_promo)

The River Nemunas (#litres_trial_promo)

Afterworld (#litres_trial_promo)

The Deep

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Reviews

Read On… (#litres_trial_promo)

By the same author

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Memory Wall (#ulink_868693ac-edab-5837-90bb-203abca2777d)

TALL MAN IN THE YARD

Seventy-four-year-old Alma Konachek lives in Vredehoek, a suburb above Cape Town: a place of warm rains, big-windowed lofts, and silent, predatory automobiles. Behind her garden, Table Mountain rises huge, green, and corrugated; beyond her kitchen balcony, a thousand city lights wink and gutter behind sheets of fog like candleflames.

One night in November, at three in the morning, Alma wakes to hear the rape gate across her front door rattle open and someone enter her house. Her arms jerk; she spills a glass of water across the nightstand. A floorboard in the living room shrieks. She hears what might be breathing. Water drips onto the floor.

Alma manages a whisper. “Hello?”

A shadow flows across the hall. She hears the scrape of a shoe on the staircase, then nothing. Night air blows into the room—it smells of frangipani and charcoal. Alma presses a fist over her heart.

Beyond the balcony windows, moonlit pieces of clouds drift over the city. Spilled water creeps toward her bedroom door.

“Who’s there? Is someone there?”

The grandfather clock in the living room pounds through the seconds. Alma’s pulse booms in her ears. Her bedroom seems to be rotating very slowly.

“Harold?” Alma remembers that Harold is dead but she cannot help herself. “Harold?”

Another footstep from the second floor, another protest from a floorboard. What might be a minute passes. Maybe she hears someone descend the staircase. It takes her another full minute to summon the courage to shuffle into the living room.

Her front door is wide open. The traffic light at the top of the street flashes yellow, yellow, yellow. The leaves are hushed, the houses dark. She heaves the rape gate shut, slams the door, sets the bolt, and peers out the window lattice. Within twenty seconds she is at the hall table, fumbling with a pen.