Flaw

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Magdalena Tulli

F
L
A
W

Translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston

 

 

 

 

 

archipelago books

Copyright © 2007 Archipelago Books

English translation © 2007 Bill Johnston

Skaza
© 2006 Wydawnictwo W.A.B.

First Archipelago Books Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the prior written permission of the publisher

Archipelago Books

232 Third St. #A111

Brooklyn, NY 1215

www.archipelagobooks.org

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tulli, Magdalena.

[Skaza. English]

Flaw / by Magdalena Tulli; translated by Bill Johnston. – 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN
978-0-9793330-1-9

I. Johnston, Bill, 1960– II. Title.

PG
7179.
U
45
S
5713 2007

891.8'538–dc22

2007027843

Distributed by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
www.cbsd.com

Jacket art: Cover of ‘Everyman' Special Belgian Relief Number, November 1914. Courtesy of the Mortimer Rare Book Room, Smith College.

This publication was made possible with the support of Lannan Foundation, the Polish Book Institute, the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

Flaw

 

 

 

F
L
A
W

 

 

 

 

 

F
IRST WILL COME THE COSTUMES.
T
HE TAILOR WILL
supply them all wholesale. He'll select the designs off-handedly and, with a few snips of the shears, will summon to life a predictable repertoire of gestures. See – scraps of fabric and thread in a circle of light, while all around is darkness. Out of the turmoil will emerge a fold of cloth, the germ of a tuck fastened with a pin. The tuck will create everything else. If it's sufficiently deep, it will call into existence a glittering watch chain on a protruding belly, labored breathing, and a bald head bedewed with perspiration. One thing leads to another. The outward appearance brings with it certain attributes: gluttony, pride, and a disagreeable matter-of-factness that douses every impulse of the heart like cold water poured from a bucket. For each three-piece suit there have to be at least two linen kitchen aprons, one for the lady of the house, one for the maid. But there should only be a single gown, in finest taffeta for example. A second one would spoil everything. The plot would be over before it began, brought to a close by a premature scandal.

As for the maid, a length of flower-patterned calico will suffice for her frock. Half a dozen needlework samplers proclaiming banal and dubious bourgeois truths, and a set of baby linen composed of diapers and clothing – these are too trivial for the tailor to bother with, and besides, they are bound to appear anyway at the appropriate moment, spontaneously, owing their existence to a domestic sewing kit kept in a tin. With them will come all sorts of hopes, expectations, and calculations, and in time, by the very nature of things they'll start to acquire the leaden weight of disenchantment. Where school uniforms are concerned, the tailor's expertise will prove indispensable. But even if the matter is spread out over time, it will still eventually roll to an edge beyond which there will be nothing but disorderly collapse and blasts of failure. The only hope for happy endings lies in shortening the tale – in snapping off the story lines early enough, before they fray and grow impossibly tangled. And above all in avoiding climaxes that, like fire, once started will reduce every hope to ashes.

Things could stop at the tailor if, in a sudden rush of sympathy, he were to decide to spare the world the frenzy of desires and disappointments. He would need only to refuse to collaborate, to decline his advance – to abandon the job and run away, shouting at the top of his voice that all that can be seen does not exist. And everything else? If it exists, it is invisible. It's quite possible the world would still believe only its eyes and ears, believe in the weave of fabrics, in their rustle, in the gleam of buttons.
By night the soft rattle of the sewing machine is heard, and in the morning all will be ready. The tailor's shears impassively cut the cloth and the sateen for the lining. The needle pierces them over and again, drawing with it the thread without which the stitch would be useless. In the display window, next to an immaculate notary with a fur collar, there hangs a finished fraternity student – a shapely jacket with a disquieting emblem pinned to the collar. A rotund maid in a flower pattern, pressed for Sunday, a handful of brand-new airmen in a plausible shade of gray, a policeman in dark blue uniform cloth, a bridegroom black as pitch, and a snow white bride behind a chiffon veil. They are neither bad nor good; given their scant reserves of patience, they've been kept too long in abeyance, away from the scene of the action that is only now about to begin, living on dreams alone. They are strung on wooden hangers, with no ground beneath their feet, with no feet even, till the moment comes for them to take the first step. They are waiting for their time, unaware that their fate has been fulfilled in advance, in the tissue-paper sheets of the patterns.