Flaw Page 10

  The clerks from the government offices maintained that since it was not possible to get rid of the refugees at once, temporary solutions needed to be found. For example, the construction of latrines. The concierges ought to help out in this endeavor, since they too would make use of them. The concierges preferred to lend their spades to the provisional authorities, who could have the refugees do the digging themselves. The only problem was that no one could agree on where the pit should be dug. The one place that everyone thought of was the flower bed in the middle of the square, which may already have been doomed to destruction; it had probably been trampled long ago, plowed up by heels and flattened under suitcases. But the commander merely waved his hand dismissively. In his view there was no point in wasting resources. Instead of turning the flower bed into a latrine, it would be better to spare it and plant new flowers once the situation was normalized. The refugees are forbidden from entering the courtyards, and there is no point in revoking this order without good reason. A state of affairs as perturbing as the present one is by its nature transitory, and so as the commander sees it, things will soon resolve themselves even without a latrine. The policeman, buttonholed by proponents of both solutions, has no intention of taking sides. He listens indifferently to the concierges’ complaints and the residents’ advice, merely nodding his head at the order guard’s loss of face.

  The commander still has no idea that his men are being laughed at behind their backs. He does not spare himself; he and his guards do what they can to improve the situation. Searching constantly for a good way out, he thought for some time about the entrance to the storm drain, as a literal exit. This new idea brought hope that it would be possible to lead the crowd out of the square, and perhaps even to send them off for good into the unknown, so that someone else, somewhere else, would have to deal with the whole problem. The commander sent two people to lift the iron grille and take a look inside. This they did without delay. But, as they ran up to report, under the grille no drain was to be seen. There was only packed sand, in which the trademark of the ironworks was imprinted like a seal.

  During this time someone well hidden from view had the leader of the guard in the sights of a revolver. It was the bigger of the two boys who had been sitting together like the best of friends on the roof of the government offices, concealed among the chimneys. He followed the commander right and left with the barrel, from time to time removing his glasses, which kept misting over. At these moments he had to do something with the revolver. Thrusting it into the waistband of his pants, a rather uncomfortable operation, he took out his handkerchief and wiped the spectacles. His pal plucked at his shoulder, asking for the gun, and though he was smaller he evidently expected to be given it in the end. In the meantime, the streetcar had pulled up at the stop and had unexpectedly shielded the order guard and its commander. The barrel of the gun, trembling slightly in the older boy’s hand, moved away from the streetcar at random, up to the level of the second floor, and all at once in the sights there was the silhouette of a woman standing in the window of an apartment at number seven – a mother of children and wife of the notary. The instant her profile appeared, her son hurriedly handed over the gun, as if it were burning him. Was he afraid that the finger could pull the trigger of its own accord, before the head forbade it? In the hands of the younger boy, the news seller from number eight, the barrel luckily swung away from the window and selected a new target, for the boy’s thoughts too were drifting towards different regions. The mongrel, principal cause of the wrongs he had suffered, had appeared in the sights. His finger on the trigger, he followed the dog’s every move, biting his lip harder and harder, till finally he lowered the gun and cursed, his voice breaking, because for some reason he was unable to shoot.

  If events take a different turn, towards more merciful solutions than could have been expected, it is only because the rules, like everything else in the vicinity, are not functioning properly. But even if they sometimes go wrong, they still remain permanently inscribed in the background, like the lines simulating perspective on the plywood boards: an immovable and always current system of reference. The censored fragments sawed out of the boards will change nothing here either – even if the lines are removed, they continue to be imagined. As for the gun, it could only belong to the notary. It was the son, impatiently awaited by his mother, who had taken it from their home. Some time ago he had managed to sneak in the back door while his father was gone and had removed the revolver from the latter’s desk drawer. As he tiptoed down the long hallway to the kitchen door, shoes in hand, he could not help noticing that the always open door to the maid’s room was now closed. For a moment he even stood outside it and listened intently, a look of astonishment on his round, boyish face. In the end he peeked through the keyhole. He could see a student cap tossed carelessly on a stool. Then he was able to go unhurriedly into the kitchen, where lunch was going cold in the pots, waiting in vain for its time to come. He took a couple of chicken legs, wrapping them in the personals page of the newspaper.

  Where the revolver in the drawer came from will never be established. It could have lain there dormant for years. When a warm human body comes close, a single moment suffices to wake it up. The gun’s very shape is, for the hand, a meaningful sign. But meaningful in a special way that seems on the surface to be removed from reality, foreign to the innocent language of everyday things, for example, bread knives and soupspoons. Yet one touch is enough for all the fingers to know instantly where they belong and what this is about. The middle and ring fingers close around the grip; the index finger quickly finds the trigger. It’s entirely possible that the revolver, by its nature a symbolic object, becomes literal only when it is brought to life by the sufferings of a secondary character, by his fevered and angry thoughts. Those thoughts too are looking for release, since no grievances or reparations have been provided for here, and no one knows what to do with such an excess of ill feeling. All one can do is drown in it.

  It is impossible to combat the illicit weapons that have proliferated secretly, beyond the control assured by the invoices. Individual items surface at rare moments, in secluded corners, when a romance has turned imperceptibly into a crime story, a farce into a drama. On the basis of the invoices it’s easy to declare the opposite belief, asserting that guns do not exist at all. It would have been better if this were true. If what was in circulation were only painted props made of wood and cardboard, with pretend bullets. But the secondary character, filled with festering resentment, will never be satisfied with this. He knows too much about things to be taken in. In the cylinder of the revolver taken from the drawer, fortunately, there is only a single round. This gun can be fired just once. But, as would be true anywhere, one shot will be enough to move things forward with a bang, in the least expected direction. On the other hand, there are many ways to prevent the shot even at the last moment, so long as the glint of an oxidized barrel is spotted in time. The gun is once again shaking in the hands of the older boy as he waits patiently for the streetcar to pull away and expose the school yard on which the commander is presently receiving reports from his men. The newsboy, his dirty cheeks streaked with tears, is greedily chewing a chicken leg. The notary’s son is already starting to get bored. The streetcar remains at the stop outside the grammar school for so long that it eventually becomes clear it will never leave.

  If I am the driver, I realized a while back that something is up. To begin with, I just stare through the windshield at the places where the rails are joined together, but then I get out of the car, determined to take a closer look. I see that the rails have not been fastened to the baseplates the way they should. Actually, there are no baseplates at all; the rails are barely held together with figures-of-eight twisted by hand out of thick wire and fixed in place with nuts. Unable to believe my eyes, I go up to the next joint. Its nuts have fallen out; someone evidently couldn’t even be bothered to tighten the bolts properly. At the next joint the wire figure-of-eight is snapped
. I prod the rail with the tip of my boot and watch it tip over. So that’s how they laid the tracks! But who did it? That the driver cannot know. And when? Before hand, that much is clear even to him. In the recent or distant past. In a past that seems, like cause and effect, to be linked to the present moment but does not belong to it at all. Just as the rails need wooden baseplates, the base of an agreed-upon past is needed by events, but only so as to stabilize their course. It holds them permanently on the right track and removes various doubts that otherwise might lead to a derailment. As long as it continues to do its job, the characters submit to the illusion that they understand the sense of everything in which they have become embroiled.

  So it remains only to admit that at dawn the streetcar set off, emerging from nothingness – that is the whole truth, and there will be no other. All accomplished facts preceding this moment must do without scenery, without backdrops or props. They are something understood, partly optional, added to the story like a misleading footnote, a sham appendix to the memory allotted, for example, to the notary along with the three-piece suit, or to the streetcar driver together with his driver’s cap. The moment this person got out to look at the tracks, it transpired that he wasn’t even dressed appropriately in a costume made of uniform fabric, but was wearing a plain off-duty suit of imitation wool. And when it comes down to it, the truth is that had it not been for the pathetic surprise that jolted the streetcar from its rhythm of riding and stopping, bringing it to a halt at a random point on its orbit, a uniform would have been unnecessary all the way to the end. Nor would the embarrassing circumstance ever have come to light that the suit is poorly made: the jacket too tight, the pants with uneven legs, one too long, the other too short, while, as if out of mockery, the side seams are held together with tacking thread. So long as everything proceeded the way it was supposed to, through the windshield one could see only the service cap, and even that indistinctly. And as for the cap, nothing was wrong with it.

  Confronted with the evidence, the driver is forced to accept that since the start of the day the streetcar has lacked any kind of solid support beneath its wheels, while at times it was loaded beyond all measure. If I am the driver, I toss a mocking question into the void: how could it all have held together the whole day? But there will be no reply. He can merely shake his head and purse his lips. Deeper down, around his diaphragm, something else is gathering that cannot be suppressed: a powerful, acrid wave of empty laughter. So the driver stands by the tracks, looks at the streetcar, and laughs like a madman till his cap falls from his head. There is no reason for him to return to his seat. But if he has not actually gone mad, sooner or later he’ll calm down, grow solemn, pick up his cap, and dust it off. After looking into the emptiness of one’s own fate, it is hard to push on.

  An airman hurrying from the gateway of number seven bumped into the streetcar driver. He apologized without stopping even for a moment, because he was in a hurry to return to the café at number one, where the gramophone was still playing at full volume. Nothing got on the driver’s nerves so much as those fox-trots, whose lively rhythms poked fun at his despondency. He walked up and down the car for a while, sitting in one place or another. Evidently not one of the many sitting and standing places was meant for him. He smoked a cigarette on the front platform, then wandered about next to the car, staring ever more distractedly now at the pantograph, now at the wheels, and now at the round zero, as if seeing it all for the first time. Then he began hesitantly to move away. His legs would have liked to take him home, but his mind could not decide which way it was supposed to be. So, walking off, he had to come back again, circle the streetcar, and head off at a brisk pace in the opposite direction. He looks down the streets leading off the square. Their pavement cannot be trodden upon. Every step is in vain, whichever way it leads. He can only aim a kick at a painted board and hear a dull, echoing thud in response. The distance is pure illusion – paint and plywood, nothing more. It’s true that there is little space here. Perhaps other stories contain more room, but even so, there’s no doubt that in each of them one would eventually come up against a wall, knocking one’s forehead on a board upon which a distant prospect appears to extend. The driver kicks the backdrop over and again. He will keep kicking it furiously till a cardboard patch falls off and reveals a hole that has been sawed out. He’ll manage to crawl through the hole; his cap will eventually vanish from sight. He is evidently destined to wander henceforth between stories, in the marshaling yards, amid the red-brick walls; to pass by the rusty platforms of mechanical hoists; to step on empty bottles abandoned in the grass. He will not find his way home, that much is certain. No road leads there.

  THERE WAS ONE RUMOR AFTER ANOTHER concerning the disappearance of the director. Apparently, early in the morning he suffered a stroke on his way to work, the moment he heard about the putsch. His eyes flipped upward, then he fell headlong and did not get up. The ambulance, sirens blaring, took him no one knows where from or where to. He had also definitely been seen later on the square in the crowd of refugees: it was easier for him to hide in anonymity amongst them rather than take on an onerous struggle with the chaos brought about by the overthrow. Though on the other hand, as certain voices declared, chaos had reigned in the offices since time immemorial anyway; recent events had merely exposed it and revealed its dimensions to outsiders. From other, absolutely reliable sources it was known that around noon the director had been arrested at his home by order of the organizers of the putsch, who had to imprison supporters of the fallen regime. Yet on the other hand, it was also said that the new authorities pursued them in such a way that they would not be caught, and even made strenuous efforts to entice them over to their own side, offering cushy jobs that required nothing from them except an abandonment of all principles, an appropriate ruthlessness, and servile cynicism. The director had yielded to such a proposition, and for that reason he already had an office elsewhere, which by all accounts was much more imposing. And so even if it was true that in the early morning he had in fact had a stroke and had also been arrested, in light of further circumstances he could expect no sympathy. Most people, including the clerks, came to the conclusion that he had gotten what he deserved.

  The residents of the apartment buildings were constantly listening to the radio in the hope that out of the turbid waters of upbeat news they would be able to filter out a long-awaited droplet that would reassure them about the future. Against the current of the meager trickle of official information there flowed ever newer rumors about approaching final resolutions. Now it was an imminent landing by the allies to bring liberation; now it was Kolchak’s forces, which somewhere out in the world would occupy the capital before suppertime and reinstate the legitimate government; now it was a band of partisans, armed to the teeth and promising to save the country from anarchy; now an international peacekeeping force was going to intervene and persuade the dictatorship to step down; now it was the arrival of the Huns, after whose passage not one stone would be left upon a stone. Ideas remained in constant circulation, bouncing against one another like marbles, but common sense rightly believed in only one thing: that lunchtime had already come and gone.

  The helicopter expected after lunch was already circling, it suddenly seemed to the guards. Though only its faint outline could be discerned in the overcast sky. The airmen glanced up and shrugged: clouds were amassing over the square and soon it would snow. Yet even if the helicopter were actually to come, where was it supposed to land? Now the commander of the guard had to solve the matter of the crowd occupying the entire expanse of the square – a problem that had already proved intractable for many hours. In fact, it seemed insoluble. The commander thought about it perpetually, as if in a fever, now inspired by the task of dreaming up a truly brilliant plan, now prey to irritation and disillusion. It would have seemed that the simplest thing was to lift the ban on crossing the line of the tracks and to disperse the crowd into the gateways of buildings as soon as the whir of helicopter bla
des was heard. But afterwards how could the refugees be pried from the courtyards, stairwells, and attics, and driven back onto the square? What sanctions could be imposed on the outsiders, and how could they be separated from the locals? What principle should be applied? The cut of their overcoats? The smell of mothballs? To put it differently, the commander did not know how to arrange things so that the square should be empty once again but that no one should be roaming the courtyards – that the crowd should disappear but not be freed. Temporary measures ought not to rule out a better solution when one was subsequently found. Various ideas were circulating on this subject too, but none of them seemed right. Even the simplest suggestion, involving the use of public transportation, was for obvious reasons impracticable. Nor was it at all clear where these people were to be sent, since it seemed beyond question that there was no place for them anywhere.

  The waiter, meanwhile, was still trying to treat his wound, stopping the bleeding with cold compresses. He had used up the entire stock of clean napkins from the back room of the café, and was already starting to worry about what he would say if he ended up after all having to explain this fact to the owner. He was of so little significance that there was no room for his problems. Because of the unexpected complication that had arisen, he had already begun to neglect his duties; he could not count on leniency. In this situation the easiest thing would be to relinquish wounded self-love like an additional piece of luggage when both one’s hands are full. Forced to rely on his own resources, he shuffled restlessly about the back rooms without rhyme or reason, leaving bright streaks on the doorknobs and the paneling, and smearing dark red marks on the checkered floor tiles with the soles of his shoes. He was the very person who was supposed to clean up here – a character without any other functions, always available, and easiest of all to replace. Whereas those after whom he had to wash and sweep and launder tablecloths were for the café, just as for the whole world, the irreplaceable mainstay of the only order there was. The fox-trots blared out unsympathetically from the gramophone, driving the waiter with his suffering and his helplessness from the main dining room to the storeroom in the back, where his head continued to throb from the din. Had he been able, he’d have preferred to raise his head and join the merry uproar, laughing at everything along with those untouched by ill fortune. But no one ever saw him with his head raised. Out of occupational habit, he was stooped in a permanent bow. Whether he liked it or not, he could not repudiate this abased body to which he had been chained.