Flaw (9 page)

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.

Just like the space, the sequence of events here bears the marks of a drastic shortcut. And as usual in such circumstances, it's a question of money. It was out of economy that the shortened perspectives of space and time arose. The cost of the whole enterprise is enormous even without the refugees, and the profit negligible. The losses that have been sustained thus far because of botched work, fraud, and deliberate sabotage – unbelievably brazen abuses carried out with absolute impunity – encourage the curtailing of expenses, though the latter will always end up being too high. Space is not cheap, but time costs the most. The more lazily it flows, channeling out its meanders, slowly revealing multiple strata beneath the ground and permitting events to gradually mature, the higher will be the final bills for sunlight. The refugees are refugees; their fate is sealed and is plain to see for everyone but themselves – there is no place for
them, neither here nor back there. In this matter a miracle is the most they can count on. Then would it not be better if all that is ordained for them were to happen at once? Such is the inevitable conclusion of dry calculations which cannot be doubted and which also, in the final reckoning, can serve the interests of the refugees themselves, by sparing them hours of suffering.

Time works to the advantage of the local people, though without their being able to claim any credit for the fact. They can pick and choose, rooting around in open suitcases, haggling, then paying. They lug home cheaply acquired still-lifes in heavy frames, table lamps with shades and a canary in a cage. The handles of plated silverware jut from their pockets. Feverishly animated, yet with absolute self-possession, they were fully aware that the appearance of other people's property on the square was a unique opportunity – the best bargain of their entire life lay within arm's reach. The more laughable foreignness became as it manifested itself in the cut of overcoats, the more it excited and attracted in the gleam of metal, in high-quality wood and immaculate porcelain. In light of the empty shelves in local stores, every carton of cheap cigarettes from someone's emergency reserves was worth a silver cigarette case. Anyone who wanted could even have bought a gold medal for bravery and pinned it on their autumn coat.

It was right there in the middle of the square that the school custodian, appointed messenger, went looking for the missing clerks. The latter, however, felt no sense of obligation, having
learned from the radio that the government had been ousted. In the endless buzzing and crackling that had preceded the communiqué, the wily senior civil servants had recognized an approaching time of confusion. They foresaw that from now on until further notice, inactivity would be rewarded, while any manifestation of conscientiousness could meet with chance retribution. When the custodian found them, they shrugged and quickly slipped away into the crowd. Only two of the junior clerks obeyed the summons with a naïve readiness. Embarrassed by the circumstances in which they had been caught unawares, one with a crocheted napkin in his hand, the other carrying a box of lead soldiers, they straightened their jackets and their crooked neckties and let themselves be led to where new duties were supposedly awaiting them. Yet this does not mean at all that they returned to their offices and their hard chairs at desks by the windows overlooking the flower bed. Following the custodian, they calmly passed the gateway with the damaged emblem and continued on to the café at number one. The waiter had not received any instructions from the proprietor, so the café was closed and at the same time open: open for some and closed for others, its blinds half down. At an agreed-upon signal – the custodian rapped on the windowpane, rat-a-tat-tat – the key in the lock on the inside turned with a creak.

Before the two clerks gave the waiter their hats, the student stood from his table and greeted them; he had known both of them for a long time, having been, let's say, at school with them.
One of the clerks had, for example, a brother-in-law in the fraternity, while another was impressed by the metal insignia on the student's lapel. Only fifteen minutes earlier the latter had pushed his pant legs into tall boots and buckled a military-style leather belt round his jacket, which instantly destroyed the charm of his shapely and well-made civilian attire, but on the other hand gave his clothing an air of insolent arrogance that would not stop at anything. Before the student decided how tight to fasten the belt, in his attic he had spent a long time staring at himself in the shaving mirror, an operation that required complicated maneuvers, including many turns to the left and right as if he were on parade, so that from the fragments of reflections he could finally obtain some notion of the whole. The clerks had to agree that he deserved all the official and private assistance he could get, given the duties he had taken upon himself in the present situation. He smiled to himself at the very thought of how much now depended upon him. He dismissed the custodian right away – he was to go back to his post. The waiter danced around him, exercising his profession to the full, anticipating the other man's wishes. Before the clerks appeared, the student had managed to knock back a glass of sweet liqueur; they drank one more glass together as a toast to the new order, all on the house.

They immediately faced many more tasks than glasses; flipping through the notes he had hurriedly penciled on rustling paper napkins, the student listed a significant number of jobs
that needed doing, and it goes without saying that these were not inconsequential personal matters but quite the opposite, public affairs of great weight. The most urgent of them seemed to be the establishment of a volunteer guard for maintaining law and order. Its core was to be constituted by a handful of grammar school pupils waiting obediently by the cloakroom. They were the same ones who had earlier helped to set up the amplification for the radio address. The undertaking had not been especially successful, though the crowd gathered on the square had been too busy with other matters to notice. Before the speech came to an end, the loudspeaker gave a wheeze, burned out, and fell silent. This was its response to dangerous modifications being carried out by one of the boys. Let's say it was the smart aleck in round glasses who had quickly turned the radio up and converted it by adding a megaphone. Though it ended up being destroyed, he was still proud of what he had achieved. The smart aleck in round glasses is the notary's son, whose mother is waiting for him so impatiently. He's in no hurry to go home. He did an honest job to deserve the prize awarded to him and his pals: the special privilege of standing sentry, that is to say the assignment of admitting volunteers, one after another, into the recruitment office set up inside the grammar school.

It's entirely possible that it was actually situated in the biology lab, among rows of dusty jars containing specimens in formaldehyde. Many things could be seen there that would
later give one nightmares: a horse's stomach in cross section, no longer capable of digestion; the innocent heart of the horse; its cloudy, tormented eye. But the commission to which the commander of the newly formed unit appointed the two junior clerks did not even look in that direction. They handed around cigarettes and lit up from one another like brothers in arms in the trenches. They scattered ash everywhere and told each other vulgar stories as a sign that now everything had changed, and that they themselves already knew this and had nothing against it. Quite the opposite, they liked the new state of affairs much better than the old one. The more uncertainty they felt, the louder the choruses of laughter exploded over and again. But whenever any one of them glanced out the window, he recovered his faith in the purpose and meaning of the whole enterprise, because volunteers were gathering outside the gate, already in uniform, wearing the same grammar school overcoats they wore every day, with the twin rows of metal buttons. They had learned from one another about the recruitment; each of them clutched in his sweaty hands an application written on a torn-out page from an exercise book. Many still had their school satchels on, though they were embarrassed by this, sensing that the contents were too incriminating. Especially the notebooks with correspondence between their teachers and their parents: these diminished not only their own dignity but also that of the selection commission and the honorable service they were seeking to enter. At the sound of a handbell lent to
the commission by the custodian, they came and went without asking any questions.

Since there were more than enough candidates, the clerks did little more than skim through their scribbled applications, which all ended in a request that the undersigned be accepted; they slid the letters casually to one another across the tabletop, amid the ashtrays, while the commander dozed in his seat for a short while after his sleepless night, a thin ribbon of saliva dripping from the corner of his mouth. The contents of the application were of no significance. They took only the older-looking boys who were already starting to sprout mustaches, sending the smaller ones home and making an exception only for a handful of special cases who, for their contribution to the operation involving the loudspeaker on the square, had already been issued with armbands as order guards – these were white and bore the round stamp of their office, thus raising them in importance over all the rest. Among these individuals, however, one more exception was made, for the son of the notary. In the presence of everyone he was forced to remove the official stamped armband from his sleeve, after which he was dismissed without a word of explanation, even though he too had made his contribution, and was by no means one of the smallest. Convinced that there had been a mistake, almost in tears, he afterwards hammered on the door of the biology lab. He was still making a fuss when the commission locked themselves in the room and began to tidy their papers. Finally, at a command
tossed over someone's shoulder, his pals who had been accepted into the guard grabbed him by the arms, frog-marched him down the stairs, and threw him out the gate.