The Melancholy of Resistance

by Krasznahorkai, László

  … and then it made no difference whether we bore left or right, we simply flooded every street and square, for one thing and one thing alone drove us and confronted us at every turn, a hollow sense of fear combined with resignation that left us with some hope of mercy; nor were there any orders or words of command, no attempt at calculation, no taking of risks and no danger, since there was nothing left to lose, everything having become intolerable, unbearable, beyond the pale; each house, each fence, each advertising pillar, telegraph post, shop or the post office, even the lightly drifting odours of the bakery, had become intolerable; intolerable too every precept of law and order, every petty demanding obligation, the continuous and hopeless expenditure of energy in the attempt to suggest that there might be some point to all this rather than be faced by the unyielding, indifferent, universal incomprehensibility of things; intolerable too the inexplicable ground-rules of human conduct. No amount of screaming would have helped us find a chink in the enormous armour of silence that slowly descended on us, so we proceeded without a word, hearing only the scrape and rumble of our own progress over the crisp and brilliant sharp frost, unstoppable and tense to the point of snapping, down those dark airless streets, seeing no one else, never stopping to look at each other, or if we did, only to note a hand or a foot, for we were a single body with one single pair of eyes, ardent for one single act of destruction, one single fatal impulse, impervious to entreaty. And there really was nothing to oppose us: heavy bricks swam effortlessly in the air to smash shopfronts and the dirty, blindly flickering windows of private houses, while stray cats stood as if rooted to the spot by the blinding light of reflectors and suffered passively, not moving a muscle, while we strangled them, and young trees allowed themselves sleepily to be turned out of their beds of cracked soil. But nothing could assuage the unconscious fury of our new and tragic understanding, our sense of having been cheated, our fear, for, however we looked for it, we could not find a fit object for our disgust and despair, and so we attacked everything in our way with an equal and infinite passion: we broke up shops, threw from the windows anything that was movable and ground it under our heels outside, and if we couldn’t move it, we smashed it to pieces with iron bars or pans of shutters; then followed hairdriers, bars of soap, loaves, coats, surgical boots, tins of food, books, suitcases and children’s toys, unrecognizable fragments of which we trod on so we could turn over cars parked at the side of the road, so we could tear down desolate signs and billboards, occupy and wreck the telephone exchange because someone had left the lights on in it, and we left the building only to join the jostling crowd at the gates once the two female telephone operators had also been trodden underfoot, lost consciousness, and slid down the wall like two used rags, lifeless, their hands slumped in their laps, while torn telephone wires hung in tangles from the blood-covered table and the switchboards lay in an unrecogizable mess on the floor, obscuring the view. We saw that nothing was impossible now, convinced that all common everyday knowledge was useless, understood that what we did was meaningless since we were only a moment’s victims in an infinitely vast arena, that from such an ephemeral position there was no way of estimating the precise magnitude of that vastness, for the force of sheer velocity can know nothing of the nature of a speck of drifting dust, for motion and object can have no consciousness of each other. We smashed and pounded everything we could lay our hands on until we arrived back where we started, but there was no stopping, no brake, the blinding joy of destruction impelled us to surpass ourselves time and again, so we trampled, always dissatisfied, always silent, over the remains of hairdriers, bars of soap, loaves, coats, surgical boots, tins of food, books, suitcases and children’s toys, so as to provide ever more material to lay over the roadside debris which now extended over the whole town, one patch of waste merging with another, and in order to breach the petty and false mire of submissiveness and resignation which sought to defend that which was indefensible. We found ourselves back in streets that led to the square in front of the church, with the impenetrable night all about us, our energies raging bloody and unchecked within us; we felt dangerously light of heart, aware of the intoxicating heartbeat of resistance; everything was a challenge, a kind of suffocating weight we had to shed. There was a point where a number of side-streets and alleyways converged on the main road, and at the far end of one of them we could make out three figures in the darkness (the vague outlines of a man, a woman and a child, as it turned out a few steps later) who, having spotted the threatening mob approaching them, were paralysed with fear, then tried backing up keeping close to the wall, hoping to disappear in the dense darkness: but they were too late, nothing on earth could help them, and even if they had succeeded in concealing themselves so far in shady corners on what was probably their homeward journey, they could find no shelter now, their fate was utterly sealed, because there was no more place for them in the ruthless halls of justice where we operated, since we were sure it was our task to stamp on the dying embers of family, hearth and home, and they were dying in any case, all thought of ‘refuge’ being hopeless and superfluous; it was pointless seeking a hiding place, pointless trusting to the future; all joy, all childish laughter, all the false consolations of solidarity or seasons of goodwill had been clouded over, obliterated for ever. A few of us, about twenty or thirty in the front rank, set straight off after them, and once we reached the closed rectangle of the square in front of the church and had given the fugitive group a good looking over, we started making our way to them over the ruins and piles of rubble, and, though they were clearly trying to escape to the safety of one of the side-streets, their stiff postures showed they needed every ounce of their rapidly dwindling confidence not to break into a desperate run but keep up the appearance of people calmly making their way home. We could have reached them in a few strides if we really wanted to but that would have meant giving up the dark, as yet unknown, aura of magic or mystique, full of the tempting surprises, risks and dangers, of pursuit, which is the spell that haunts the hunter as he patiently tracks the hunted deer, and prevents him dispatching it until the animal itself is terminally exhausted and, reconciled to its fate, more or less offers itself up; so we did not charge at them immediately, but let them believe they might avoid danger and escape the annihilating effects of our close attention: that it would be like waking from a bad dream. Whether we were a real threat to them or if it was merely a laughable misunderstanding, that, of course, they couldn’t decide for the time being, and they probably continued in that state of mind for some few minutes before realizing it was no mistake, no misunderstanding, that they were in fact the objects of some as yet unclear menace, that it was undoubtedly them we were following, that they, and no one else, were the targets fixed on by this dour, unspeaking group, since, short of breaking down the doors of these bourgeois houses with their thick walls and trembling occupants, we could find no one in our path but them, these stray sheep far from the fold; by some peculiar ill-luck it was only they who could satisfy and, at the same time, increase our terrible hunger for adequate and properly punitive recompense. The child clung to its mother and the mother hung on to the father, who kept turning round, ever more frequently, ever more anxiously, walking ever faster: it was no use though, the distance between us did not increase, and if we did slow down now and then it was only so that we might move even closer to them the next time, because, strangely enough, we felt a wild excitement knowing how they must be swinging between waves of hope and disappointment. They took the first right turn down another side-street and by this time even the woman, who was now clinging to her husband with clear desperation, and the child, who kept glancing back at us with uncomprehending terror in its eyes, had been forced into a run, so they shouldn’t trip as they kept pace with the man, who was walking faster and faster and who, naturally, had not yet made up his mind whether to make a real dash for it, fearing that if he did so we too would be compelled to run, in which case he would have absolutely no hope of saving bo
th his family and himself at the moment of what, for them, must have been still unimaginable contact. The bitter, evil pleasure of seeing these three lonely shadows helplessly swaying ahead of us, not even knowing for certain what was in store for them, exceeded even the power of the spell cast by the sight of the smashed-up town, meant more than the satisfaction occasioned by all the pieces of useless stuff we had trampled underfoot, for in that perpetual holding back, in the sheer joy of deferral, in that infernal putting off, we savoured something wry, mysterious and ancient that lent our least movement a fearsome dignity, the kind of unimpeachable pride possessed by all barbaric hordes, even when they know they might be scattered far and wide the day after, mobs whose momentum is unstoppable since they have appropriated even the thought of their own death, should they decide to make an end, their mission done, having had their fill for ever of both earth and heaven, with misfortune and sadness, with pride and fear, as well as with that base, tempting burden which will not allow one to give up the habit of pining for liberty. There was a dull murmuring somewhere in the distance which quickly died away. In front of us a few stray cats were sidling through gaps in the fence into silent courtyards. It was freezing cold and the air was so dry it scratched our throats. The child started coughing. By now—their route clearly having led them out of town rather than homeward—the man too recognized that their situation was increasingly hopeless; occasionally he hesitated before a possibly familiar entrance, but only for an instant since it wasn’t difficult to calculate that by the time someone opened the door to their knocking or ringing and they stepped inside to evade their pursuers, we would have caught up with them—not to mention the fact that they would have to accept that this transparently childish recourse would solve nothing, for he was forced finally to realize that whatever they did, whatever they tried, they were lost. But just as a hunted beast keeps going to the end, he too refused to surrender; you could see that the father, charged with the protection of his dependants, was desperately contriving ever new strategies, each hope that glowed then rapidly faded directed some uncertain manoeuvre which was almost immediately abandoned as useless, each plan failed, all hope false. Suddenly they took a sharp right down a narrow street but by now we were sufficiently acquainted with the town (some of us, in fact, were local people) to forestall him; five or six of us ran round the block and by the time they reached the main road we had blocked off the way to the police station which left them with no alternative but to head for the railway station instead, looking ever more harassed, ever more terrified by the persistent dumb detachment that followed them. The man had picked up the exhausted child, then, at the next corner, he passed it on to the woman with one rapid movement and shouted at them, but the woman, after disappearing down another street for a few moments, quickly hastened back to her husband as if recognizing that she was unable to assume sole responsibility for flight together with the child, clearly feeling that she could bear anything but to be eternally parted from him. The fact that we seemed to be pushing them in some specific and sinister direction completely confused them, which was the only reason they gave up the notion of turning off down some potentially valid escape route back towards the town centre at the next comer, perhaps hoping that should they reach the railway station unscathed they would find secure shelter there. We were steadily catching up with them, ever more electrified by the pursuit while they were growing ever more tired, so that slowly, even in the darkness, we could make out the shape of the man’s bent back, the long fringe of the woman’s thick scarf, the handbag that kept bouncing off her hip, and the furry ear-flaps of the child’s hat which had come untied and were occasionally rising and falling with the icy wind as they stared terrified back at us and could, in their turn, see us clearly with our heavy overcoats, our muddy boots, in one great mass as we proceeded towards them, and here and there a few of us with dead cats slung over our shoulders or iron bars in our fists. By the time they reached the empty square in front of the station only ten or eleven paces separated us, so they had to sprint the few yards remaining in order to tear open the heavy entrance gates and rush down the silent and deserted hall with its blind, curtained counters, but whatever hope still remained in them was immediately crushed because there was not a soul in sight, each door and window bore a clumsy lock, the waiting room was a hollow echoing box, and if they hadn’t noticed a faint light burning in the staffroom, their story and ours would have come to an unavoidable end right there and then. But it wasn’t to last much longer anyway, for when we heard a window creak open on the side of the building and spotted the shadow of a man running almost certainly for help, crossing the tracks and disappearing under one of the carriages of a long goods train in an attempt to vanish right under our noses, three of us immediately left the others to deal with the lock on the frail little door of the staffroom and set off in pursuit of him, then, having reached the little group of houses scattered behind the tracks, separated and approached him from three directions at once. The squeaking of his boots and the way they kept sliding along the ground, not to mention his loud, sibilant breathing, were perfect indicators of his precise position, so it wasn’t too difficult to corner him once we passed the buildings, which appeared to be frozen in sleep, and reached the ploughed fields behind. By now the man himself realized that he was trapped; he carried on running a little way down deep furrows that were cold and hard as steel but then it was as if he had come to a brick wall that left only the route back, and so, as if bracing his back against the night sky behind him, he turned round and faced us …

  He kept turning the spiral-bound squared pages of the notebook as he devoured their contents, and so, having reached the end of the account, he turned over again and found himself back at the beginning, where, recalling his disturbingly guilty self of the day before and recognizing today’s much more frightening figure in that fragment of corrective text which seemed to lead back to its beginning, he too started again in the belief that what didn’t go down properly the first time might be fully absorbed the second time around: most importantly so that he should be able to overcome the as yet terribly repulsive aspect of the whole, the essence of which seemed to lie in the impression that every sentence kept recurring; secondly, so that, like a colt accommodating itself to the pace of his mother, he should tie himself as closely as possible to the headlong rush of the dark, galloping narrative; and lastly, so that he should be able to understand more completely its deeper significance, which was directed specifically at him, and thereby double his strength, so he might be able to join his comrades in ‘the war that was raging outside’. He read through it twice more, but was forced to suspend his studies at that point as the lines were increasingly running into each other, and in any case he felt certain that if he couldn’t quite ‘conquer his disgust’ and ‘find strength’ in the experience, not entirely, not just at the moment, he had nevertheless located the hidden ‘import’ of the little he did understand with deadly accuracy. So he put the notebook into his pocket, rubbed his arms and legs, and then desiring to master the obstinate trembling that no amount of resolution seemed able to moderate, he got up and took a walk among the washing machines, but since this was of no great obvious help in the matter, he quickly abandoned the project, made his way over to the entrance, opened the door and, raising his eyes to rooftop level, gazed into the empty space beyond. He stared into nothingness, into the strangled dawn whose soggy light did not so much flood as soak through the eastern sky, and he did not care that it signalled the beginning of a new day, but was focused on one thought: ‘There is a war going on out there, and it’s only worth waking to the dying night if you are prepared to be utterly ruthless’; a war—he kept scanning the rooftops—where everything is engaged in a conflict that has no rules; a war in which one side must continually besiege the other, in which to aim at anything but victory was pointless. It was a struggle in which the only power to remain standing was that which looked for no reasons, which was content to accept that the whole
thing should remain without an explanation, because—and here he remembered The Prince’s advice—it simply didn’t exist; and thinking this he fully acknowledged for the first time the justice of Mr Eszter’s contention that chaos really was the natural condition of the world and, this being eternally the case, you simply couldn’t begin to predict the course of events. It’s not even worth trying, thought Valuska, and wiggled his aching toes inside his cold boots; it’s as pointless to predict as to judge, since even the words ‘chaos’ and ‘outcome’ are entirely redundant, there being nothing one can posit as their antitheses, which further implies that the very act of naming is enough to put paid to them, for ‘there is simply one damned thing after another’—this was etched into their very meaning - so any connection they might appear to have with each other is wholly based on a series of confusing contradictions. He stood at the open door, gazed into the pink light of dawn, and saw for himself how everything out there actually was ‘one damned thing piled on another’: the bottom layer consisted of the intercom at the gate, the whale, the curtains at Mr Eszter’s house, the pots he carried the food in, the gun, the smoking cigar, the old woman who wasn’t able to back away, the taste of cheap brandy and the high-pitched shriek of The Prince’s voice; next came his bed at Mr Harrer’s; then the hall with its brass doorknob at the house in Wenckheim Avenue; and on top of the pile, a broadcloth coat, the dawn, these rooftops, and he himself complete with notebook in pocket; everything crushed in an enormous press, ground down, chewed up, torn to pieces by each other, everything real, everything unpredictable. It was one war, one battle, one conflict after another, a state—Valuska gazed at the crushed terrain in front of him—where each event was self-evident, and it wasn’t as if there was anything surprising about this, he could accept it all perfectly naturally, even, when to cap everything in this heap of chaos, a tank suddenly appeared accompanied by a troop of about a dozen soldiers. He had been aware of the thrumming of its engine for some minutes, but had only a brief glimpse of it as it gently brushed aside the newspaper-stall, for he immediately retreated from the doorway back amongst the washing machines, then, after taking a moment’s thought, quickly made his way to the far end of the showroom where, by pushing at a back door that was light enough for even him to open, he found himself in the shop yard. Some people might have suggested that he was frightened by the clumsy tank, but Valuska would not have believed them for an instant, for the truth was that he didn’t feel adequately prepared, and his sudden decision simply allowed him to draw breath. ‘Must gain time,’ the thought rattled round his head much as the tank rattled out there in the High Street. He had to ‘steel himself to the task’, for if he eventually succeeded in this enterprise what was there to stop him in some way taking part in the perpetual conflict out there? Some people might have suggested that now, as he was climbing over the yard gates and starting to run down a narrow alley, he was exactly like the figure described in the man’s notebook, and might have provided proof of this by pointing to his hunted expression and the exhaustion evident in his every movement which gave him the appearance of someone utterly crushed, and he might have answered, no, not at all, these were merely appearances, he was not at all crushed and not in flight from anything, it’s just that, for now, he was avoiding open conflict. Until yesterday, when he was still doing his endless rounds, he had never known—for he had never needed to know—where precisely he was at any given time, while now he was perfectly aware of his position, and therefore also of where precisely he was heading, something he calculated by taking careful stock of everything around him. In this way he emerged from the alley into a little street, which was the right decision, and this became the principle of choice thereafter, to prefer alleys and narrow streets and never to venture out on to the wider roads, indeed avoiding their very vicinity, or, if he absolutely had to cross over one, he did so in the manner of the cats that used to hang about lampposts at night, peeking out, appraising the situation, and only then slipping across. He proceeded, now creeping, now dashing, then slowing uncertainly down, prepared to stop at the slightest alarm, and even though he was always aware of his position and what he should do at the next crossroads, he had no ‘ultimate destination’ for he did not think he was fleeing from anything behind him, nor, most importantly, towards anything in front of him; in other words he fully accepted the paradox implied in the conclusion that his movements had direction but no aim. And he had absolutely no intention of deluding himself in this respect but accepted the necessity of all such things in so far as all such things existed in their own natural state of chaos, that is to say he too must act on necessity and do what he had to do, as he would do, just a little later, soon, in a very little while, as soon as he had had an opportunity to ‘take a deep breath’, gird his loins and gather his strength, the only thing to concern him being that this opportunity was continually delayed on account of always having to creep and run and slow down, which allowed him not a moment’s rest. He would have refused to believe that he was being hunted, or even that he was one among many being hunted, but he had to admit that ill-luck was certainly dogging him whichever way he turned because he kept bumping into them however he tried to avoid this; he could never be free of them, sooner or later they crossed his path, and eventually he began to feel as though he was running down a labyrinth with no exit. This started in the town centre when in one half-hour he almost ran into them three times, first in Jókai Street, then Arpád Street, and finally at the junction where Forty-Eight Avenue joins Petöfi Square. Each time he was saved by pure chance, by some deep gateway, or, in Petöfi Square, by the baker’s yard, and soon he developed enough presence of mind to avoid them by ducking into the nearest convenient shelter as soon as he spotted them, thereby persuading himself that this was proof of his cool-headedness, his ability to cope without flinching as the soldiers and tanks passed by. He retraced his steps to the fork at the Korvin Passage, took a right, then made a large detour behind the law courts (and the prison), and had almost reached the safety of a web of narrow streets that extended eastwards from the meat factory when, suddenly, he once more heard the unmistakable grinding, thrumming, squealing sound of an engine near by and saw a troop of soldiers at the end of Calvin Street in front of the chemist’s, and it was simply good luck and—as he had to admit with a little pride—his own improving reflexes that prevented them catching sight of him as he peeked out over the rim of an ornamental fountain at the other end. For he immediately ducked and flattened himself against it, hardly drawing breath in case they should decide to make an incursion, God knows why, down Calvin Street; then he ran as fast as his legs could carry him, uphill, through the side streets, and made his mind up to enter the old Roman town, where he hoped to shelter for a while, a strategy that seemed quite attractive until he almost collided with the iron monster at the next corner. This was the point at which he began to feel it made no difference which way he chose, the tank could read his mind and would always anticipate him, but he was unwilling to surrender to the nagging if immediate conclusion that this was a sure sign that they were pursuing him: he was not ‘the man in the notebook’, his ‘fate wasn’t sealed’, nor was he, he protested, some kind of ‘hunted deer’ with the tank and the soldiers as his ‘hunters’. No need to prove this, he thought, as he made his way back past the cemetery of the Holy Trinity; it was not as if he had any difficulty in deciding whether they were ‘a real threat or merely a laughable misunderstanding’, for he didn’t ‘hesitate occasionally’ before ‘a possibly familiar entrance’, but simply pricked up his ears every so often to listen out for the sound of an engine and kept going, exhausted it was true, but not ‘terrified’ or ‘resigned’ and, most certainly, not like ‘a hunted beast’, ‘helpless and forlorn’. He did, however, have to admit that it had been some time since he had made a conscious choice in the matter of his direction, and rather than nearing a place of potential rest he seemed to be getting ever further from it, and, no use denying it, there was somethin
g disturbing in the otherwise insignificant fact that the place he seemed to be approaching was indeed the railway station, though, he thought, the similarity ended there, and so, since these contrary thoughts continued to disturb him, he decided simply to throw the notebook away, for it would surely be a serious mistake to waste any part of his remaining strength. By this time he was about a hundred yards from the station and even compared to how he had been feeling before he seemed in pretty bad shape: his boots were hurting his feet and so as to save himself any more agonizing pain, he was obliged to put most of his weight on his left leg, his chest ached every time he breathed, his head was pounding unbearably, his eyes were burning, his mouth was dry and because (who knows where and when) he had lost his postman’s bag, he could no longer cling to that for comfort, so it was not surprising that, dizzy and cramped as he was, he should have thought he was imagining things or had heard a ghost when the voice of Mr Harrer whispered at his back from one of the gateways he had just passed. Harrer didn’t actually say anything but made a simple noise, ‘Psst! Psst!’ then excitedly beckoned Valuska over, tugging him violently through the gate, and, having taken a peek out towards the station, stood there, unmoving and silent for a full half-minute or so. ‘My dear friend, I cannot help you, we haven’t seen each other, we haven’t met, and if you’re caught, you must tell them you haven’t seen me or heard from me since yesterday; don’t try to answer now, just nod to signal you have understood, though …’ Harrer gabbled all this into his ear a little later while Valuska still thought he was obliging a ghost and it was only the smell of his breath that seemed extraordinarily familiar, he couldn’t think why. ‘We know exactly what you’ve been up to,’ whispered the ghost, ‘and if it were not for that good woman, Mrs Eszter, a lady, God bless her, you’d be in real trouble because your name is on the list, and that would be the end of it but for the good lady’s kind heart. You have a lot to thank her for, everything, you understand me?’ Valuska knew he should be nodding but as he didn’t in fact understand anything he shook his head instead. ‘They’re looking for you! They’ll hang you!! You are capable of understanding that, aren’t you?’ Mr Harrer had lost his temper and looked as if he desperately wanted to clear off as fast as he could. ‘Listen! The good lady told me to go and find the poor unfortunate, meaning you, and though she didn’t then know for sure that you were on the list, it wasn’t too hard to guess you would be, since everyone knew you’d spent the whole night roaming the streets with them; find him, she said, because if the soldiers get to him first they won’t wait to hear his excuses, they’ll hang him just like that. Do you undertand?!’ Valuska nodded uncertainly. ‘At last. Now pull yourself together and get out of here, anywhere will do, north or south …’ Harrer pointed into the vague distance. ‘You give them the slip, you hop to, you vanish from town, now, immediately, and be grateful to her, the lady, God bless her. Now go, be careful by the station, but follow the tracks and stick close to the trains as they’re not guarding those. Understand?’ Valuska nodded again. ‘Good, I should hope so. Your task is to get to the tracks, I don’t want to know the rest, I’m not even here, you get to the tracks and keep going, no messing about, no delay, but stick to the tracks, right? You go as far as you possibly can then take shelter in some barn or whatever, then we’ll see what we can do, the good lady said.’ ‘Mr Harrer,’ Valuska whispered, ‘you don’t need to worry on my account, I’m perfectly fine now … what I mean is, I know everything … I’ll go right away and wait for the word … I only wanted to say that I am a little tired and could do with a rest somewhere, because …’ ‘What are you talking about!’ the other interrupted him. ‘A rest! You want to wait here with a rope around your neck? Listen! Personally, I don’t care, you do as you like, we haven’t seen each other, not a word about me having met you … ! Understand? Then nod! Now go!’ With that the ghost slid out from under the gate, as if he had addressed that last remark to himself, and by the time Valuska was fully aware of it he had disappeared. The fact that this Mr Harrer was so unlike the Harrer he had known, and that his appearance was rather like the materialization of some unlikely spirit, was not something he should wonder at (‘There is, after all, a war on …’), Valuska realized, but the memory of the whispered words, ‘They’ll hang him,’ struck a sudden terror into him, exacerbated by his being left alone, and he was so oppressed by it that when he quit the shelter of the gate and set out for the station, he had to confess that his vigilance was nowhere near as intense as it had been, in fact it was at a dangerously low level. He felt dizzy again and swayed a few steps until the dire words ringing round his head (‘They’ll hang him’) began to die away, then he stopped, banished the image of the reappearing tank from his mind, and concentrating solely on the rail tracks, said to himself—he couldn’t say it to Mr Harrer now—‘Everything will be all right.’ It’ll be all right, he continued, walking towards the station, because, surely, everything would work out the way Mr Harrer suggested, leaving town straight away, not for ever, but just until order was restored, following the tracks, leaving the soldiers behind. He reached the square, which seemed to be entirely deserted, flattened himself against the wall, and examined every corner with even greater care than usual, then, having judged the moment to be right, took a deep breath and crossed the square at a run so that he could duck down the opposite street, after which he could skirt by the signal box and reach the tracks themselves. He succeeded in crossing over and was quite sure no one had seen him, but, just as he was about to run again, somewhere beside him, below him perhaps, from the very foot of the nearest wall, a weak little voice shyly addressed him (‘Sir … We’re here …’). There was nothing threatening in it but it was so unexpected that he instinctively leapt back into the road, and in so doing, caught his right foot on the edge of the pavement, and for a moment it seemed he would fall flat on his face. With considerable difficulty, arms waving all over the place, he managed to remain on his feet and turn round, and though he did not recognize them at first he couldn’t believe his eyes when he did, thinking it was not like the meeting with Mr Harrer, these really were ghosts. The police chief’s two children stood by the wall, both wearing outsize trousers that concertina-ed round their ankles and the same police tunics they had put on for his benefit on that never-to-be-forgotten occasion; now, once again, they were staring at him, saying nothing, then a sob broke from the smaller one and the elder furiously raised his hand to silence him, if only to disguise his own state of mind. It was the same police coat, the same two children, but they bore no resemblance to the two he had left in the over-heated flat yesterday night; nevertheless he went over to them, did not ask them anything but simply told them to go home. ‘Now … immediately!’ Immediately, Valuska repeated, and it was only the tone of his voice that told them there was no time for explanations; so saying, he took them by the shoulders and tried gently to shift them, but they resisted, refused to budge, as if they hadn’t understood. The smaller one kept sniffling and bawling while the bigger one answered in a choking voice that they couldn’t leave here as their father had woken them at dawn, made them put these clothes on and fired his gun at the ceiling, commanding them to wait in front of the station, shouting how everyone was a spy or a traitor, and that there was a purge going on, then slammed the door on them saying he had to defend the house as long as he was able. ‘But we’re so cold now,’ snivelled the elder one. ‘Mr Harrer was here before but he paid no attention to us, and my little brother keeps shivering and crying and I don’t know what to do with him. We don’t want to go home, please take us with you till Dad comes to his senses!’ Valuska took a good look at the square then ran his eyes down the street, finally concentrating his gaze on the pavement at his feet. A few inches from his toes he discovered a small brown pebble around which the concrete seemed to have completely worn away, and which therefore seemed to be supported by nothing. He flicked at it with the side of his boot and the pebble rolled away, and after skipping once or twice settled on its flatt
er side. He didn’t bend down for it but couldn’t take his eyes off it either. ‘Where’s your bag?’ the younger one asked him, forgetting to sniff for a second, then picking up where he had left off. Valuska did not answer him but watched the pebble, then quietly said, ‘Go home,’ indicating the direction with the slightest movement of his head, and waved his hand for them to go. He himself set off in the opposite direction, no longer feeling empty but melancholy instead, turned past the signal box to tell them not to follow him and thereafter ignored them—and so the three proceeded, moving past the sleepers, one sniffing, the second tugging at him so he should not fall behind and the third, some ten steps ahead, limping on his left foot, in complete silence.