Chapter 6.

I knew that the news of a hole in the wall would bring great joy to my fellow students in the underground movement of Students Against the Wall (SAW), a revolutionary grouping for whom the wall had always represented the epitome of oppression.

I inevitably found some of them at the café near the university, smoking with a scholarly attitude. I approached them and announced without prologue: “There’s a hole in the wall.” Voices fell silent, and all eyes turned to me. “Where?” asked a political science graduate, the tacitly designated leader of all disruptive SAW actions. I invited my classmates to follow me, while the graduate ordered us to do so drawing as little attention as possible. “If what you say is true, such an event could have unpredictable and uncontrollable consequences,” he clarified.

We left the café without seeming to hurry and walked with measured steps through the village, but as we approached its limits, we quickened our pace and almost ended up running towards the place where I had spotted the hole. It was still there, impenetrably obvious.

Students scrambled to look through the opening. They would then stand back in awe and speculate on the significance of this event for the future of the village, gesticulating nervously and cutting each other off. We decided that we should start by studying the hole methodically, and to do so we would need to bring along all sorts of tools. A few volunteers went back to the village to fetch the supplies, and returned accompanied by another dozen people. The secret of the hole did not last a few hours.

We had barely begun our measurements when some fifty villagers crowded around the opening, pressing against the stone and squealing with impatience.

Eventually, a smart one with a pocket mirror made his way through the crowd, accompanied by a tall, slim fellow citizen with particularly long arms. The latter held the mirror out through the hole. The crowd grew silent. The tall one turned the mirror to the left, to the right, then in circular motion in all directions. He contemplated for a long time, then finally announced that there was nothing out there but the seemingly endless wall. Everyone wanted to see for themselves, and the little mirror was passed from hand to hand delicately like a relic.

By evening, the news had spread throughout the village, and hundreds of people were now queuing up to look through the miraculous aperture. Later, it was the turn of an official delegation from the town hall to visit the hole. Public officials, architects, councilors and other experts held a heated debate at the foot of the wall, while the villagers cheered the arguments of one side or the other. There were talks of enlarging the opening to allow passage to the other side, and even of weakening the wall to the point of collapse. This bold idea, supported by the SAWs, spread like a wildfire through the village.

Shall the wall be demolished? Yes – go to Chapter 10. No – go to Chapter 8.