Moving Parts (7 page)

The narrator leaves without waiting for the already familiar continuation. Now he is walking cautiously. Most important is that his gaze should not stray, taking with it the entire series of subsequent sentences; as long as he is passing the dark red fire extinguishers in the cold light of the neon lamps everything is just as it should be. It would seem that it's simply a matter of attention. Concentration is needed to keep a tight rein on the forces of disorder, to impose the necessary rigor, and to prevent objects from descending into the anarchy to which the unstable criteria of order incline them. But soon the narrator comes upon the chest full of limp, dirty green gas masks. He picks one
up and breathes in the smell of perished rubber. A few yards further on, some steps appear; and here once again are those old hotel sofas and the grille, stubbornly blocking the way. The gas mask falls from his hands and hits the ground with a pathetic slap. Now he admits he's lost; he decides at once to call the front desk from the windup ebonite phone. He recalls the professional smile of the desk clerk and her impeccable diction. Without pleasure he also remembers the good day he was wished, and the jar filled with candies that no one takes. There's no lack of words – the narrator has at least as many of them on hand as there are candies in the glass jar; but he can find no word with which to start. And for this reason, in the end he doesn't even reach for the receiver. The condition of the plumbing and wiring indicates that the maintenance staff never visits the lower floors. Not even the maids come down; the gas masks must have been lying here for years, probably since what was once called the Cold War by the papers of the day, which are still moldering in faded and tattered piles against the walls. In the nature of things the daily routine does not reach far; there exist domains outside the responsibility of the hotel management. Nevertheless, the narrator's mind cannot come to terms with the impossibility of summoning the elevator. Yet that mind, in rebellion against the obvious, has no way out but unconditional capitulation. Having betrayed itself, it will begin to search the memory for an overlooked stretch of the way, wondering for example if the corridor with the fire
extinguishers doesn't lead off from the landing, a dozen or so steps up from where the mind bears a painful scar torn out of space. The memory, prepared against better judgment to consider in all seriousness a solution such as moving the elevator half a floor up, with a suspect alacrity offers the recollection of a dozen or so steps allegedly descended; this remembrance is dim and in the light of day might well have vanished in the blink of an eye like a badly developed photograph. In the face of a glaring inconsistency bearings are lost and space disintegrates into fragments that do not match. Now the narrator must quite simply climb those steps half a floor to the elevator without which he will be unable to find his way, and which he can locate only outside his field of vision. But after the first few steps, his foot is suspended over a void and his hand freezes on the twisted handrail that suddenly turns downward, from this point accompanying other, invisible stairs that descend into a dark abyss. Water drips into it continuously; the plash can be heard. Too many steps are missing to be able to go on; all he can do is stand in place, without a single thought in his head. For in that head, too, something has caved in, leaving a gap just as vast as the one that has just appeared beneath his feet. Doubt belongs to the present tense and the present tense only; it blossoms upon it like a poisonous lily on the clouded top of a pond. At this point the narrator would do anything he can to extricate himself from the dark well of the present tense. Yet it seems that nothing whatsoever can be done; there's no sign
even of a straw at which a drowning man might clutch. Perhaps the right thing to do would be to plunge into the water, take it into his lungs, and come to rest on the silty bottom – no other course can be seen. But that also is impossible. The balloon of longing keeps the mortally suffocating mind on the surface. From the very beginning, though, the narrator's position has been so unfavorable that he has nothing to long for. And thus, since he has nothing, he longs for the street cut off by a pane of glass from the hotel lobby; he longs for the country lane that can be seen over the garden fence; he longs for everything that is unattainable. The only thing that this time he has not yet tried is to look for another way out. Picking his steps unsurely, he finds his way to the attic; the old copies of the Financial Times are lying in place beneath the sloping ceiling. Here space is predictable and the ground sure. The narrator descends to the landing. Through the window of the living room he watches out of the corner of his eye as Feuchtmeier desperately tries to stop Irene. She pulls her arm free without looking at him and walks quickly away; in a moment she'll drive off in the car that is still standing in the driveway in the sun, the keys in the ignition. And she'll pick up the tightrope walker Mozhe in his striped T-shirt on which a dark red stain is spreading. The narrator's gaze does not linger on them; everything there is in any case determined in advance. He thinks about jumping out of the kitchen window on the other side of the house and walking away across the fields. The boy is not asleep at all. He knows
or does not know about the scene taking place on the terrace; probably he knows, though he certainly would prefer not to. He's kneeling in the kitchen in a puddle of spilled milk. Covered with chocolate and ketchup, he's building a tower of innumerable cans of tuna, Strasbourg pâté, tomato paste, and sliced pineapple in syrup. The battery of canned goods is a symbolic image of the plague of excess that has afflicted Feuchtmeier's home. The boy is rocked by hiccups; evidently the chocolate or the ketchup has disagreed with him. Through the kitchen window a fence can be seen. On the other side of it a man in blue overalls is standing. Standing and waiting. The sunlight shining through the iron fence posts makes the same striped pattern on his clothing and on the ground. A small white cloud passing across the sky darkens the glare only for a moment. Blades of grass sway, while over them flutter colorful butterflies. The man waiting is in no hurry; it's clear that he has all eternity, and will always be able to reach into his pocket and take out his wallet, in which there is a picture of a little girl taken a long time ago, let's say somewhere in the Balkans. If he were to be permitted to say all that's on his mind, in a moment it might turn out that for example the little girl's mother – her picture is also tucked away in the wallet – remained in those parts with an infant whose picture they unfortunately did not have time to take. Where they are now is not exactly known; in any case they're in a place from which there is no way out – in some deep pit, amid a host of others lying rigid under lime and earth.
The man in the overalls has no intention of asking for pity – he will demand only what in his opinion is his proper due. It does not matter to him that his wishes cannot possibly be granted. The tower of cans comes crashing down. This is the last sound of this sequence, and it is heard on the terrace too. Now everything will start again from the beginning. And so the partner of the tightrope walker Mozhet, whose affairs are connected in an invisible yet fateful way with the scene taking place on the terrace, must once more sit in the dentist's chair, again with aching heart. Let it be the dental clinic next to the travel agency – why not? No one is presently in the waiting room, and the dentist has lots of time. He likes his patient, so he's telling her funny stories. In his opinion the damaged molar is dead and cannot hurt while it's being drilled; that is why a needle with anesthetic has not appeared in his hands. The open drawer of the filing cabinet containing patients' records reveals that Mozhe's partner's last name begins with a T. The door to the waiting room is open to let in a breeze – the day, as already established, has been hot since morning – and if the next patient were waiting, he would see the top of her head with its closely cropped red hair on the headrest of the dentist's chair. The body must bear a pain it does not understand; nothing should hurt since the tooth is dead. If it were possible to strike from the score the loud crash presaging repetition that sounds in the Feuchtmeiers' kitchen every time the tower of cans falls down, it would prevent needless suffering. And the dentist would order
an X-ray instead of repeating the painful mistake over and again. But did he really not order the X-ray? It's lying on the table, in an envelope bearing the patient's name. She is called Touseulement, Yvonne Touseulement. Things could not be otherwise, since her tightrope walker is Mozhe. His name declares his freedom; it announces that maybe he will do one thing or another, but is not forced to do anything. He maybe will appear or disappear; maybe he will leave her. Her name, on the contrary, condemns her to subordination and exclusivity; whatever happens to her, nothing else is possible. Hence for him – maybe her, but for her – only him.

In the meantime the story line concerning the narrator continues to develop in a gently descending line. The narrator ought to note that the narrow wooden stairs creak underfoot, while the door swings shut of its own accord behind his back. So this is the cellar. It's spacious; high on the wall there is a vent, but it's barred. In this place Feuchtmeier keeps a set of winter tires bought cheap in an end-of-season sale, and another set that he used last winter and is still perfectly good. He keeps old, worn-out, forgotten hockey skates here, and shiny, never-used diving equipment. Is Feuchtmeier a diver? He thought once about taking it up, that's all. In the cellar Irene keeps an exercise machine – a stationary bicycle with gleaming speedometer. Once it occurred to her that it would be good to ride for fifteen minutes a day far away from the traffic. Protected by a plastic cover, her fur hangs on a coat rack; it was also bought cheap at
an end-of-season sale and has never been worn. Feuchtmeier's winter jackets are hanging there too, also in plastic covers, and his overcoat, turned inside out and showing its gray-striped lining. The same one that on another occasion would go missing at the airport, along with the opalescent marble that lives in the pocket. On the shelves lie tools: an electric drill, a circular saw, hammers, chisels, files, pliers. He had need of them long ago, when he was decorating a little room with wallpaper in tiny pink rabbits. Nearby is her sewing machine and a large wicker basket full of skeins of light blue wool, supplies that she may never use up, bearing in mind that the last time she drew from them was when she was knitting baby socks. The narrator's gaze suddenly chances on a large mirror in a gilt frame that has been consigned to the cellar. It's easy to guess that it was too showy for the Feuchtmeiers' taste. It's a little dusty, but all the same everything can be seen in it, the whole interior filled with abandoned emblems of out-of-date notions and unrealized possibilities. Can anything else be seen? Has the mirror reflected the material body of the narrator? Of course, this sort of question is simply waiting its turn; several others have already been given a wide berth. The male figure captured in the oval of the mirror as if in a trap moves hurriedly aside before further questions follow about age, eye color, clothing. The narrator is hurt. He had expected his privileges to be respected, and believed that everything concerning his private life would remain confidential. Whatever he says now will sound suspicious: Could he possibly
have something to hide? And so he feels deceived, exposed to prying looks. Best of all he'd like to back out of the whole undertaking posthaste. He doesn't think much of it anyway; he allows himself to be critical of its conventionality, and its artificial character irritates him. He could break free of it very easily if he were to leave this house. At a smart pace, without looking back, across the terrace even. There he might bump into Feuchtmeier, who has just caught the lighter in midair after Irene has tossed it to him. What would come of such an encounter? The smashing of the three-sided frame on which the story is pinned would cut it short. There'd be nothing more to tell. Somewhere in the neighborhood there ought to be a stop of the suburban rail line running directly to a large central station where in each corner of the main hall there stand trash cans full of half-eaten rolls and paper cups containing the remains of coffee. Amid the snarling automobiles, clanging trams and crowds hurrying along the streets it would be possible at once to start a new life as a hobo, and in this simple way hop over into a different story and live or die in it with no responsibilities. But also without privileges – as any old character. For a moment he is even sure that this is what he wants and that the one who appointed him will agree willingly to release him from all obligations. Except that the door has slammed shut and the narrator is no longer able to get out. Now he regrets his haste; he regrets the fact that he turned out to lack the perseverance to sit down on the stairs three floors above and remain
there till he achieved his end and the elevator and its shaft returned to their place, even if he had to wait forever. On the floor above, the tower of cans tumbles down once again, but here the noise is muffled and hollow, like the distant echo of a storm. And in this way the narrator is detained in a dead zone of the story, amid dust-covered accessories.

In the silence that falls at this moment, there might for example ring out a short wave of simplehearted, premature applause. But it would die down at once embarrassedly, as sometimes happens during a concert when the musicians fall still for a moment to gather strength before the next movement. The piece being played by the orchestra will not come to an end until, with implacable consistency, there sound within it all the events that can possibly be contained by the form imposed upon it, no one knows by whom. And so it is not hard to comprehend why the subjects must continue to be developed, though if the question were asked differently – what are they developing for, to what end, what circumstances other than the fee paid to the musicians call into being the movement of the bows, and what patent thing necessitates the vibration of moist air in the brass loops of the trumpets – no answer could be found. It might equally well be asked why ships ply the ocean waves, why the circus audience holds its breath or bursts out laughing, why and for what is the sickly sweetness of chocolate, the banal literalness of pineapple slices in syrup, and the coarse smell of carbonated drinks. It could also be asked why Feuchtmeier
lives and why Irene lives – after all, they're unable to be happy, though they need considerable amounts of water, electricity, and gasoline to satisfy all their wishes, and considerable amounts of coffee with cream, light cigarettes, and red wine. And it isn't even possible to stop at such questions. It must be asked further: Why does the acrobat Mozhe or Mozhet live, recklessly balancing on the tightrope, or his partner Touseulement, who every evening throws herself into the void without hesitation as if life held no value in her calculations, though she assigns no little importance to the durability of the fillings her dentist gives her. It should be asked why the retired university professor clings to life when he is tormented by rheumatism and has one foot in the grave; or the hobo with the earring, used to going without dinner, without a roof over his head, without a bank account. Or others – let's say it straight out – everyone, including the passers-by hurrying along. And so questions should be asked, and asked over and over. The characters fear these questions like death itself; they tremble before them, holding on if only to the handle of a china teacup, since it's easy to foresee that things are unlikely to end with questions alone.