Adam (short story)

"Adam" is a short story first published in Cosmopolitan in April 1954 and reprinted in Welcome to the Monkey House in 1968 and Complete Stories in 2017.

Plot Summary

At midnight in the Chicago lying-in hospital, two expectant fathers wait. Mr. Sousa learns, sullenly, that his wife has given birth to their seventh daughter. The other, 22 year old Heinz Knechtman, is, like his wife Avchen, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. The rest of his family was killed by the time he was ten years old. Their first child, Karl, named after his father, a cellist, died in a displaced persons camp in Germany. Now, sitting in the waiting room for twelve hours, he has thought back on all his deceased relative and after whom they might name this new child. A nurse comes in, pronouncing his name as "Netman", as do most Americans, to tell him his wife has had a son. Ecstatic, he greets Dr. Powers when he enters, who says he's been awake for thirty six hours and is entirely blasé about the birth. A similarly disinterested nurse presents his new son to him behind the glass of the nursery. Still joyous, he leaves the hospital but passing through the lobby with its row of empty telephone booths, realizes he has no one else in the world who would care about the birth of his child.

He goes to a nearby tavern, where he finds Sousa chatting with the bartender. Knechtmann excitedly shares the news about his new child, however both are underwhelmed by the news of the child, whom he has decided to name Peter Karl, after another dead family member. He buys both men a brandy and proposes a toast to his child as well as Sousa's new daughter. The bartender then proposes a toast to the White Sox and begins talking baseball with Sousa, ignoring Knechtman, who quietly leaves. On the way to the train station to return home, he runs into a coworker out for the night with a woman, excitedly telling them about his son. His coworker tries to appear interested, but clearly has other things on his mind. Arriving at his apartment at two in the morning, Knechtman tells himself bitterly—and in German, which he swore he'd never speak again—that no one cares about a new child because "[t]here are too many of us, and we are all too far apart", before falling asleep in his clothes. The next morning, he joylessly takes the train back to the hospital. However, upon seeing his wife, he returns to feelings of love and gratitude as she reflects that "[t]hey couldn't kill us" and that their baby is "the most wonderful thing that ever happened".

Adaptations

This story was adapted by Robert Bassing as "The Road Ahead" for the sixth episode of the third season of The Ford Television Theatre. It aired on November 11, 1954 and starred Rory Calhoun, Faith Domergue, and Paul Langton.