The Scar (30 page)

The dean nodded, bade him farewell, and when he was already in the corridor, suddenly said in a dreamy tone, “You know who had a native gift for teaching? Dinar. He had a distinctive gift: he never imposed ideas; rather, he compelled his students to think. Beyond that, for him it was a game, a passion, a pleasure.… No, Soll, there is no need to go pale: I am not saying this to rebuke you. But I have, you understand, neither the time nor the inclination to teach you myself, and so I was just thinking aloud: it would have done you good to study with Dinar.… However, there’s nothing to be done about that: you’ll have to venture it alone.”

With that the dean left. Only then did Egert fully realize that all around him there was a darkness so deep that it should have been impossible to distinguish a human face or clothing or books. Covered in goose bumps, Egert thrust his arm out toward the table. The books were there, but the leather binding felt cold, and the pasteboard felt as rough as sackcloth.

The books were titled
The Structure of Creation
and
Conversations with Young People.
The author of the first book was a boring, stern old man who set forth his thoughts concisely and clearly, but required constant effort on the part of the reader. The writer of the second book adored long digressions, which continued on in the notes. He addressed the reader as “my dear child,” and Egert envisioned him as an amiable, somewhat sentimental, rosy-cheeked, and corpulent fellow.

The pages of the pasteboard-bound book bored Egert, and he scrambled through the chapters of the leather-bound tome as if they were prickly thickets. His eyes finally became accustomed to daily reading and no longer teared up. In order to stretch his tired back Egert got into the habit of walking into the city every morning. He issued forth leisurely, with ambling steps and the look of a man who had not yet decided where he should direct his feet; nevertheless, every day his feet brought him by diverse paths to the bazaar that was situated not far from the university. There he wandered among the stalls, successively tasting bacon and cream, fruit and smoked fish, while amongst the flickering hats and headscarves he searched for the black-haired head of Toria.

She noticed Egert immediately, but she pretended that she was fully engrossed in her shopping and that she had no wish to turn her eyes to the side, not for any reason. Passing from stall to stall, pointing and bargaining, she gradually filled her basket with food, while Egert strolled nearby, never losing sight of Toria, but also never appearing directly in her line of sight.

Having finished her shopping, Toria would set out on the return trip. Every time, Egert had to overcome his awkwardness when, having run in an arc to get ahead of her, he happened upon her path home as if by chance.

Toria always received him coolly and without surprise; taking the curved handle of the basket from her arm, Egert was always covered in goose bumps.

They always returned to the university in silence. Casually glancing to the side, Toria would see next to her a round shoulder and an arm with a rolled-up sleeve. On this arm the basket seemed as light as a feather, and the muscles under the white skin, untouched by sunburn, played only slightly under its weight. Toria would avert her eyes and they would pass through the courtyard to the household annex, and just as silently, they would part ways in the kitchen, after Egert had received in reward for his labor sometimes a roll with butter, sometimes a dripping fragment of honeycomb, sometimes a glass of milk. Carrying away his loot, Egert would return to his room and, with a light heart, sink into a book with the hard-earned delicacy sitting ready at hand in anticipation of the moment when it would finally be eaten.

At the dean’s request, Toria did try to tutor Egert two or three times. These attempts, unfortunately, were a decided failure: both tutor and student went their separate ways annoyed and exhausted. The joint lessons were discontinued after one memorable episode when Toria, beginning to enjoy the philosophical discussions about creation and mortality, exclaimed, leafing through the pages, “But that isn’t so, Dinar, it’s—”

Stopping short, she met Egert’s terrified gaze and immediately said her good-byes. That evening the two of them, in different parts of the massive, dark building, abandoned themselves to the same oppressive thoughts.

In all other respects, a tepid neutrality now held sway between Egert and Toria. Toria taught herself to nod when she ran into him, and Egert learned not to blanch when he heard the light tapping of her heels at the end of the corridor.

In the meantime, melons, pumpkins, gourds, and squash appeared in the stalls in the city, the heat of the day gave way to the chill of the night, and the studious youths, sunburned and plump from home cooking, gradually began to return to the university.

The annex was revivified. The dust was chased from the corridors, halls, and auditoriums. The cook returned and commenced her work, so there was no longer any reason for Toria to walk to the bazaar every day. A cleaning woman fluffed pillows and feather mattresses, and down flew about in clouds, as if a horde of geese and ducks had gathered in the university courtyard for a fateful battle. In the mornings two or three youths with bundles over their shoulders usually gathered in front of the grand staircase: these were prospective students who had traveled to the university from far-off cities and townships.

Mouths agape, the newcomers gazed upon the iron snake and the wooden monkey, became embarrassed whenever someone asked them a question, and hesitantly followed Dean Luayan, who invited them to join him in his study for an interview. After the interviews, a portion of the prospective students, despondent, set out on the return trip home; Egert suffered and felt despicable as he watched those who were turned away: any one of them was far more worthy of the standing of a student than Egert.

It must be said, however, that the summer days spent behind books had yielded their own modest fruits; in the domain of academia, Egert felt himself to be somewhat more confident, although he was certainly not going to set the heavens aflame with his brilliance. In exchange for
Conversations with Young People,
he received from the dean a book of monumental proportions and extravagant title:
The Philosophy of Stars, Stones, Herbs, Fire, and Water, as Well as Their Incontrovertible Relationship to the Features of the Human Body,
and in addition to this weighty tome, he received
Anatomy,
which was full of graphic and colorful illustrations.

These illustrations shocked and horrified him, and at the same time they aroused an unprecedented interest in him. Egert marveled at the intricate network of veins, the extraordinary arrangement of bones, and how the liver, seemingly enormous and quite brown, resembled those he had seen at market. In his innocent simplicity, Egert had always thought that the human heart looked exactly like those little hearts that were drawn in the corners of love letters, and he was shocked when he saw on the page that complicated knot, resembling bagpipes, with all its chambers and blood vessels. The dreadful skeleton, which only lacked a scythe in its hand to be truly terrifying, lost all its horror as soon as Egert delved into the study of the minute explanatory inscriptions that accompanied it: detailed and meticulous, these commentaries completely dispelled all thoughts of death, evoking instead reasonable and practical questions.

While Egert was studying
Anatomy,
Fox returned to the university.

Their reunion was heartfelt and boisterous; Fox’s copper hair had grown down to his shoulders, his nose was burned by the sun and peeling like a boiled potato, but neither solemnity nor gravity had been added to his habits. From his knapsack appeared an entire smoked goose with dried plums, a string of black blood sausages, home-baked scones, and a variety of vegetables, prepared in diverse ways. At the very bottom of Fox’s sack was nestled an enormous bottle of wine, thick as blood. The food, which Gaetan’s loving mother had collected for her son, intending them to last at least a week, was demolished within a few hours. Fox was, without a doubt, a slacker and a trickster, but in no way was he a miser.

The very first sip of wine turned Egert’s head. Grinning inanely, he watched as the room filled with familiar students. Soon there was no room left, not on the beds, or at the table, or on the windowsill. They were all laughing, clamoring, and recounting tales, licking greasy fingers and proclaiming toasts, gulping wine straight from the bottle. Having laid waste to Fox’s knapsack, the students, as ravenous as young locusts, decided to go out into the city; Egert no longer had any money, but all the same he decided to go out with the rest of them.

They visited At the Rabbit Hole and then dropped by Quench; at the latter tavern a dashing company of guards was drinking, apparently just off duty. Egert was rattled by their close proximity, but the city guards hailed the students complacently and without any distaste whatsoever, and the intoxication that had earlier spun Egert’s head around accepted their company and even dulled his habitual fear.

The two groups swapped bottles, toasts, and amiable taunts; then the troop of guards took up that ancient pastime of all armed men: they started throwing daggers at a target that was painted on the wall. The students quieted down, watching; the most skilled with a knife of all the guards was a broad-shouldered young man with a predatory look, whose hair was tied back with a leather cord. A short sword hung on his belt. Egert examined the sword with interest. No one bore such a weapon in Kavarren.

Knives and daggers whacked into the wooden wall, some closer than others to the center of the target, painted by some dabbler in the shape of a crooked apple. The guards became excited and began to play for money. The broad-shouldered young man, the owner of the short sword, was well on his way toward lightening the purses of his comrades, when one of the guards voiced the thought that it would be a good idea to challenge the tipsy students to a competition.

After a bit of embarrassment on the part of the students, some of them decided to stand up and defend the honor of the university. Fox scurried about, handing out advice and trying to nudge the next knife thrower as close as possible to the target, at which the guards were rightly outraged and pushed him back to his former position, which was marked out by a chalk line. Unfortunately, the knives thrown by the students’ arms resolutely refused to stick into the wall: slamming into the target sideways, they disgracefully flopped to the floor accompanied by the laughs and jests of the guards. However, the taunts fell short of offense and a full-blown quarrel.

The students lost three bottles of wine, a pile of silver coins, and Fox’s dress hat: being a gambler by nature, so little did he want to admit the defeat of his group that in the end he was throwing knives himself. Every toss was preceded by a hot-tempered bet and soon Fox was deprived of all his money and his well-made leather belt.

Not the slightest bit disconcerted, Fox would probably have bet his father’s apothecary, had not his eyes at that very moment fallen upon the languid form of Egert, who was blissfully enjoying the general merriment and sitting complacently on the edge of a bench.

“Hey, Egert!” Instead of his belt, Fox had tied up his trousers with a cord. “Is there some reason you aren’t playing for your own people? Perhaps you’d like to give it a toss, or is their money too good for you?”

Smiling self-consciously, Egert stood up. At that moment the despondent students, whose defeat was apparently shattering and complete, really did seem to be his own people, almost his family; furthermore, he suddenly begrudged the loss of Gaetan’s belt.

The broad-shouldered guard with the cord in his hair smirked, handing Egert a dagger. Egert measured the distance to the target with his eyes, squinting, and at that moment it was as if he switched on a long-forgotten but still faultless ability.

His hand weighed the dagger, determining its center of gravity; the blade came alive, twisting in Egert’s palm like a small, nimble animal. The tip flashed in a searing arc and with a crunch embedded itself in the very center of the painted apple.

The tavern hushed from astonishment; a stunned cook peered out of the kitchen.

Egert smiled as if apologizing; the guards exchanged wondering glances, as if they did not believe their eyes and had to check if their companions had seen the same thing: maybe they’d all gotten really drunk? The students were simply frozen, their faces stretched long in shock; Fox broke through the general bewilderment.

“But how did you do that?” he asked in a deliberately drunken voice.

The broad-shouldered guard stepped forward resolutely, shaking a purse. “I’ll put up the money. Best of five, what do you say?”

Egert again smiled guiltily.

After that, everything happened quickly. In a silence that was broken only by the subdued gasps of the audience and the dull thuds of blades hitting wood, Egert won back Fox’s belt and hat, all the money lost by the students, and even the money that the broad-shouldered youth had won off his comrades. Egert’s eyes and hands acted almost independently, executing a long-familiar and pleasant task; daggers danced in Egert’s hands, spun round into a glinting fans, flew up into the air and then fell into his palm as if they were glued there. He threw them almost without looking, like clockwork, and they all rushed toward the exact same point: soon a hole, studded with wooden splinters, appeared in the center of the lopsided apple.

The broad-shouldered guard with the cord wound in his hair turned respectfully to Egert. “I swear to Khars, this lad has not spent his whole life wiping books on his trousers, oh no!”

Finally, Egert’s excitement ran dry: unintentionally glancing at the dagger in his hand, he suddenly saw it as a murder weapon and winced at the thought of lacerated flesh. However, no one noticed his distress, because the company of students had long ago recovered from their shock and exchanged it for exuberant high spirits.