Flaw (13 page)

In the meantime the orphanage children were already busy with something else. Seizing the opportunity, they were prowling the unwatched courtyards while the concierges were minding the front of their buildings. In threes and fours, they hurriedly emptied the trash cans they found there. Up to their knees in the contents, they sought remnants of food. They picked out kitchen scraps and stuffed themselves. The things they ate upset their stomachs, and soon they were dirtying entrance-ways,
landings, and anyplace they happened to be. It was as if they were deliberately provoking the residents, especially those in the buildings overlooking the street, who, according to the universally respected order of things, had the right to give a wide berth to all that was revolting, including by-products of the pure elixir of their life. To see excrement at every step was a true plague, compared with which the isolated incident involving the drifting smell and the ochre smear on the sidewalk was a matter of no consequence.

But if I am one of the residents watching from behind a lace curtain, I realize that the problems did not begin with the children from the orphanage, nor do they end with them. The very presence of the newcomers living right there on the street is already scandalous to me. It's hard to remain calm as one watches them settle on their suitcases, each of them arranging a small area of the square with their own belongings. One is snoring as he sits and dozes; another has taken off his shoe and sock and is examining his blisters. The body stinks – this truth too must finally be uttered. Its dirty nature cannot be kept under control with continuous hygienic procedures involving hot water, soap, brushes large and small, handkerchiefs, nail files, jars of vaseline, and bottles of scent. All of this takes up a great deal of space. There is a need for closets, shelves, and cabinets. Thus the body, deprived not only of a roof over its head but also of everything else, cannot expect sympathy, but on the contrary it must become an offense against decorum, the disgrace of
the neat and respectable community of residents. Then what on earth are they to say when, casually multiplied by the hundreds, the body swells into a crowd. If, then, I am any one of the residents, I feel sorry only for the concierge who is tugging the policeman's sleeve to complain about the disorder.

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.