Flaw Read online

  Whatever one might think of the story taking place around the square, it was conceived as a light and smooth thing, and this fact bothered no one. It could have been told in a restrained tone of voice, without any trembling of the hands, without the need to touch on any weighty issues. Even if it contained a small amount of pain, this pain was shot through with comicality. And if a policeman appeared in it, it was only because of his amusing qualities – in other words, so he could strut about in his ill-fitting uniform. The handsome student was needed for balance, so the maid should also have someone to be sweet on. Everything was fashioned to a middling size, so there was no danger of choking on one’s laughter, nor of shedding a single tear. The suffering in the story did not assume the kinds of dimensions that would exhaust one’s reserves of sympathy, giving a lie to the belief that these are unlimited. Did it bother anyone that the notary pinches the maid, that the maid has a crush on the student, or that the policeman has eyes for the maid? What of it that the notary’s tired, overweight body refuses to obey him, or that the student is shown in a less than complimentary light by the professors’ comments in his grade book and by the excesses of behavior in which he has distinguished himself? What of it that the policeman, worn down by constantly being passed over for promotion, no longer has a heart for his duties and contents himself with an outward show of conscientiousness? No one minded about the cream cakes in the glass display case, even if one or another of them turned out to be inedible. There were no complaints.

  It would be best for the newcomers to go away again, allowing the continuation of a story to which they did not belong. But it seems instead that because of them, all local matters will have to take a new turn. For when the streetcar stops again outside the government offices, more and more new arrivals start climbing down in an endless stream, struggling with unwieldy packages and tugging teary-eyed children behind them. And since it had fallen to their lot to leave so abruptly, and they did not know if they would ever return, they had to put on their winter overclothes. If they had been asked about the smell of mothballs, they would have said they hadn’t had time to air their things.

  The windows of the local government offices would offer the best view of the scene below, with its ever-increasing numbers of dark padded overcoats and the accompanying bundles, trunks, and suitcases. The first few dark specks against the background of the sidewalk rapidly spread into a large ink stain. Looking down from above, one could see how many of the new arrivals were already encamped on the square and how many were still emerging from the streetcar. A trembling old woman is having trouble negotiating the step, but she has no need of anyone’s assistance since a first grader in pigtails is with her and will help her down. Alas, there is no bench for the grandmother to sit on, though that is all she wants. A blind man in dark glasses taps at the step with his white cane before cautiously placing his foot on it. With one hand always occupied, he was able to take with him only a single small piece of luggage, which is actually just a violin case, and it would be hard to say what he packed in it – food, a change of underwear, or an instrument. Following the blind man, a flock of children pours out of the streetcar, black mourning bands on their arms. They jostle one another noisily. They’re from an orphanage, which evidently also collapsed. The black is fresh in some cases; other armbands have faded. Each was probably sewn at some time in an impulse of the heart by a compassionate aunt shaken by the sudden misfortune in the family. She would have liked to be of more service, but she lacked the strength, and since she was unable to take the orphan in, she merely attached the child’s mourning to his sleeve with black tacking, and so it remained.

  The discolored black moves no one; it becomes commonplace when seen on every second arm. The inhabitants of the apartment buildings have paused in their gateways and are staring at those who no longer have a home. It may be that as they do so they feel something in the manner of sympathy, but if I am one of these observers moved by their own goodness, after a moment I have to turn away in embarrassment. Sympathy that is utterly devoid of readiness to help seems to me discomfiting and unnecessary. It’ll occur to me rather that our hearts are too soft, that’s the problem. Besides, is pity not pathetic in itself? Who is the pity for? For an overabundant multitude in which each figure bears some mark of unsightliness corresponding to imperfections in their clothing. The idea that these blemishes conceal faults of character suggests itself automatically. The first impression is unfavorable. They are too big or too small, too skinny or too fat. The more of these figures there are, the more clearly the ugliness can be seen to be distributed among them in equal measure.

  Multiplied by a sufficiently large number, the defects of appearance encumber the entire crowd like collective guilt. And the newcomers are as numerous as the inhabitants of the square; the latter will feel overwhelmed and powerless in the face of the distressing change that the mild morning has brought them without any warning. They begin to fill with resentment, because they see that above all they themselves are the victims. The change has been imposed at the cost of space that is rightfully theirs. To say nothing of the fact that their flower bed, the centerpiece of the square, has no hope of surviving intact. But to the painful question of why the refugees are encamped under their windows in particular, there will be no reply. If this is my story, I observe the development of events with distaste and resignation. It wasn’t the purpose of the streetcar to bring this wretched crowd. And now what has happened has happened, and cannot be changed.

  The sheer numbers of this uninvited mass would have appalled the clerks of the government offices if they had not previously abandoned their observation posts by the windows overlooking the square. They would have watched the green of the lawn disappear entirely from view, everything blocked out by the overcoats – a profusion of dark cloth, black and navy blue, beneath which was the unseen padding, and beneath that the smooth lining. Nor was that all: beneath the lining there were successive layers of fabric, all the way down to fustian undergarments. The material made of different kinds of fibers disturbs the purity of the space – it’s crammed together tightly in its excess, which accompanies the excess of characters. Under cover of an opaque curtain of mixed shades and textures, the newcomers may well end up trampling the flower bed. Looking down on the square at the present moment, the clerks, and especially their bosses, would have had to ask the official questions: who are these people, where are they from, and what ought to be done with them? Should they be dispatched without delay back where they came from, or, on the contrary, should a room be set up in the offices where they can turn in their applications and be issued residence permits bearing treasury stamps and a seal with the national emblem? But there is no one left to wonder what should be done with the crowd, which has gradually taken over the entire expanse of the square and is now sitting about on suitcases amid the lingering smell of mothballs, waiting for who knows what conclusion.

  An order announced by megaphone has settled the matter of pedestrian traffic: from now on nonresidents are prohibited from crossing the boundary line of the streetcar tracks. What more could be demanded of the policeman in the face of so many adverse circumstances, which his absent superiors have left him to deal with on his own? It will not be at all easy to immortalize them in his daily report. He’s already done everything within his power. He did not forget to check the identification documents of the newcomers, or even to prepare a short memo, at least concerning the first family that arrived, before his pencil broke. Did he not ask searching questions about the children from the orphanage? He even managed to establish that before they were brought here on the streetcar they had been left to their own devices by their irresponsible or perhaps helpless guardians. If I am the policeman, no coup d’état will release me from duties that have become onerous to me, nor will it relieve me of the nuisance of having to submit reports. Nor do I know, or want to know, about the destruction that cannot be seen from here, unless my superiors inform me about it in a separate memoran
dum setting out exactly what is expected of me. Considering his meager salary, the policeman still manages to maintain an exemplary orderliness on his beat, while everywhere around him promotions are being handed out to arrogant striplings with no experience and no accomplishments, people whose only strong point turns out to be their handwriting. Nor will things be different this time; the policeman will be kept from advancement by superiors with the same taste for calligraphy as their predecessors, whose star has just fallen and been extinguished.

  This is where the painful heart of the matter lies: in poorly formed letters and spelling mistakes. In the inflexible yet obscure principles of grammar. Thoughts flounder unhappily among them, straightforward yet entangled. There exists an exception to every rule, and so no rule can be relied upon. Every evening, with the same chewed-up pen in his hand, the policeman laboriously composes his clumsy sentences; the nib creaks torpidly, and ink spatters on the sheet of foolscap. It’s all for nothing. His only reward is scorn and disregard, and perpetual injustice done to him and his family. After all these years of service there has been no raise, even though he has a wife and children to support. His uniform allowance goes towards the costs of daily life, and even so he’s barely able to make ends meet. On top of everything, he even has to pay for the ink out of his own pocket. Since this is how things are, the policeman with his rather watery gaze cannot be expected to see through the falsifications in the invoices circulating far beyond his reach, nor to notice the actions of the true perpetrators of the confusion, since there has not even been a notification from which he could have learned about the existence of the back areas. How then could he have perceived the connection between it and the catastrophe brought about deliberately so as to kick over the traces? All the more, then, the policeman cannot be expected of his own volition to gather evidence in a matter for which the arms of even the highest-ranking functionaries are not long enough, and their eyes too slow; or that he alone will set the bureaucratic machine in motion. He would have to be mad to exert himself to such extremes.

  By midday there was not a single wedding picture left in the window of the photographer’s studio. The portrait of the movie actress in the white fur coat had also disappeared, and in its place there was a brand-new display: a greatly enlarged and therefore blurred picture of a man with a row of medals on his snow white marshal’s uniform. Instead of a lingering glance from beneath long lashes there was a piercing, supercilious gaze that penetrated the viewer like a bullet from a shotgun. When it was already clear that the political upheaval had turned into a dictatorship, this photograph was put on special show, as if a new kind of service were being offered. The owners of the local stores, which had been emptied of goods, felt obliged to order a copy. One could also buy the picture already mounted. In this way, properly framed, it was seen in every shopwindow round the square, without exception, in every case draped with ribbons in the national colors decorated with artificial posies, and propped up behind with brown glass bottles. If a fly were accidentally to have fallen into one of those bottles it would have remained there, drowned in the remains of stale beer. Amid static and white noise, radio sets kept announcing a speech that would be broadcast soon, at twelve o’clock precisely. Even those who had no radio understood that they were not to miss this address. Before the intently awaited voice was heard, for some time the sky was crisscrossed by the trajectories of sharp glances from beneath the military cap that had been duplicated ahead of time in the photographer’s darkroom. They intersected above the square, above the streetcar, above the crowd in their warm overcoats huddled together on suitcases and listlessly chewing their last remaining food. In the meantime, one concierge after another stopped the policeman and complained that the refugees were continually disobeying the ordinance, crossing the iron ring of the tracks, and furthermore with bad intentions, namely, to pee in a gateway. So with a heavy sigh, for he had had enough, the policeman finally ordered the faucet in the middle of the square to be turned off – if the newcomers don’t drink water then at least they won’t need to pee.

  Bit by bit, for the moment only outside the streetcar tracks, what the concierges called order began to be restored. But true order was still a long way off. For example, no one gave a thought to the abandoned government offices. Since there were no clerks at the desks, someone else had to take matters into their own hands. A handful of grammar school boys, rounded up on the way by the student, dragged the radio set in its heavy casing from his tiny room in the attic. They set it up on a tall stepladder and turned the volume up to the maximum. The refugees confined within the circle of the streetcar tracks had nowhere to hide from the chaotic stream of hisses and crackles that immediately poured from the loudspeaker. On this very stream, a moment later there flowed the anticipated speech, foaming with rhetorical questions and filled with meaningful pauses and exclamations fired in salvos. The grammar school custodian, who had lent the boys the ladder and an extension cord, was not in the habit of judging the rightfulness of truths proclaimed over his head, which always drop on their victims from on high, as ruthless as the winged predators with hooked talons that appear on the national emblem. He allowed the speech to pass him by in its entirety, an approving yet distracted look on his face. But he did not stint in his praise for the radio set, and repeated to anyone who came along that in comparison with that miracle of technology any other radio was nothing. Lastly, to the powers that had just fallen he addressed a question tinged with irritation and marked by a slight nasal tone, like all grievances – to wit, why had there been no speeches and no amplification of this kind before?

  In the meantime the crowd was swarming round the flower bed, straining within the boundaries to which it had been confined, and too numerous to be able to follow all the orders and prohibitions: every few minutes one or another group, borne on a wave, suddenly and against their own will found themselves beyond the cordon, like castaways. Driven back by the fists and boots of the concierges, they had to summon their last reserves of strength to swim against the current and submerge themselves anew in the throng crammed within the line of the tracks. The limits imposed on the newcomers were the official price for their unacceptable presence, and expressed the silent demand that they do their best to disappear without delay. This, however, was beyond their capabilities: the body has its substance, which even with the best will in the world is not able to melt into thin air from one moment to the next. Lacking sofas, armchairs, bedrooms, and dining rooms, each refugee could not have occupied less space, but even that was too much. As for the local people, in the policeman’s view they would have been well advised under the present circumstances to stay at home. But if they refused, nothing could be done about it. Listed residents who paid their rent and their taxes had certain rights. So it was hard to put an end to the barter that had been the start of all the ebbings and flowings the crowd was barely able to cope with around its edges. In the rapid transactions a beautiful past was readily exchanged for the illusion of relief, which comes at once but does not last long. On the other hand, in order to acquire someone else’s past for a song, one had only to go to one’s reserves and give so little of them that there was no question it was worth it, and so nobody hesitated for long.

  Before the speech came to an end, the tureen with the gold band had been traded for a loaf of stale bread. The newcomers agreed to this price quickly and compliantly, as if they had been hungry for many days, whereas in reality – if one can speak here at all of reality – only a few hours earlier they had still been eating breakfast in their own home. Yet it was unimaginably far away, in another story, and the table from which they had eventually had to get up no longer even existed now. It had vanished along with the empty shells in the eggcups, along with the coffee-pot and the butter dish. The bread crusts had survived: the children, making faces, had thrust them in their pockets when their mother wasn’t looking. But the crusts too had already been eaten, and now the children were complaining they were hungry. So it was unclear
how the hours should be counted, since even the dining room clock, despite having been wrapped carefully in tablecloths and placed in the trunk, had ceased ticking. The unexpected severing of the threads of the story they had inhabited had changed all sorts of things. From that moment continuity in their lives was lost, the more so because time had proved to be relative while space had suddenly collapsed. What sort of journey was it of which it could be said only that it had a beginning and an end? A beginning in a luggage-filled hallway, an end at a streetcar stop, and in between nothing, nothing whatsoever, just the void that extends between one story and another. A closer look at the overcoats, for instance, would reveal that they were of no worse quality than the local light autumn coats. Not conforming to the requirements of local custom, the overcoats had remained in accord with the background that had now vanished, and that they went with much better. But without a natural backdrop, they were no match for local fashions, which were self-assured because they belonged here, and were unshakable as anything self-evident always is. The newcomers’ overcoats were pointed at in scorn because of their overbroad cut, excessively padded shoulders and too-wide collars, details that on foreign ground could not be defended from mockery. In fact they were also old-fashioned, though only insofar as the reality they had previously been immersed in had permanently gone out of style. Beneath many of the collars torn in a tussle with some concierge there still lingered the scent of good-quality cologne. Traces of wear and tear appeared on them at an accelerated rate; hence the cuffs, for instance, which in normal circumstances are the first things to grow threadbare, were in excellent condition, and where a button had gone missing at the neck, freshly snapped threads could be seen.