Flaw

by Magdalena Tulli

  It was hard to maintain order with nothing but one’s raised voice and bare hands. Several of them had grown hoarse at once. A directive was issued announcing the confiscation of all walking sticks, and sure enough all canes, including the white one, were deposited in the place indicated; subsequently, in the hands of the guards the canes became an instrument for control. These batons were almost as good as the one lost in the early morning by the commander, which had been exhaustively searched for but not found. In the situation the guards found themselves in, it was necessary time and again to swing their cane at someone, to give themselves confidence, which is never in sufficient supply. Looking around for their leader, the guardsmen suddenly noticed they were alone. The commander had vanished at some unknown moment, for some unknown purpose. He had disappeared without a word to anyone, and they could only hope that he was not far away, given how little space there was anyway. His subordinates could see that now orderliness depended entirely on their diligence – that is to say, the blows of their batons – and so things will remain, let’s say, for the next half an hour. Till the commander, intoxicated with power and success, will come running down the kitchen steps of the building at the back of the courtyard at number seven, hurriedly fastening the military belt over his jacket.

  No one knew when the airmen had woken up in the hotel. Their job involved inspecting air force bases, and after particularly enjoyable banquets they would sometimes wake in completely unknown places. Wrenched from sleep, for a while they had stared in stupefaction at the anonymous walls of the hotel room papered in a striped pattern that meant nothing to them. For a long time they twisted and turned in bed in their crumpled undergarments, trying to recall how they came to be here, but their memory had retained only the round zero on the roof of the streetcar they had stepped down from at dawn. So they cocked their ears and listened intently, not understanding a thing. They looked out the window and could not believe what they saw. Afterwards, they had probably shaved in the utmost haste, cursing as they nicked their skin and passing one another a stick of alum. Astonished that there was no one to order breakfast from, they drank what was left of the coffee in their own thermos flasks, and by a side table near the deserted reception desk they thumbed briefly through old newspapers whose rustling explained little to them. The adjutant’s portable short-wave radio refused to work; from that moment it remained utterly silent even when the general attempted to tune it. They found the front door locked shut. The staff had evidently fled to their homes. In order to leave, the airmen had to combine forces to break down the door.

  Soon afterwards they turned up in the local government offices, in uniforms buttoned up tight. They passed through a series of empty rooms till they reached the office of the director on the highest floor. The window there had opened of its own accord, and the lace curtain was fluttering outside like a white flag hung out as a sign of surrender. It could also be seen from the square, alone amid so many other flags dazzling the eyes with the bright national colors. A gust of wind had blown some documents off the desk and onto the floor. The officers stepped on them unceremoniously, as though they were waste-paper; they stood around the black telephone and took turns shouting into the receiver, trying to reach the headquarters of an airfield that only they knew. Amid the dry crackling on the line, they finally heard a distant, barely audible voice that promised to send a helicopter for them. It would come after lunch, they repeated to one another, not worrying for a minute about whether it would find the place. It was questionable whether they had properly understood everything, and whether the promise made by the unknown speaker would be kept. It was enough to look out the window at the sky to realize that meteorological conditions were unfavorable. The helicopter would have to make its way through a vast covering of snow clouds, a dense and unbroken mass whose dirty white coloring would have prevented the pilot from seeing not just the network of geographic coordinates, but also the sequence of dates on the calendar.

  The airmen settled themselves in armchairs and on sofas. They began to wait for who knows what, dislodged from the routine of their daily affairs and just as lost as the refugees on the square below. They yawned, stretched, brushed the office dust off their uniforms. They killed time in accordance with their rank: the general drummed his fingers on the desktop; the major whistled as he paced from wall to wall, his hands thrust into his pockets; the captain took out some marbles, and the lieutenant began making paper airplanes out of official documents and launching them from the open window, till his fingers got caught in the window frame, at which point he cursed and quit what he was doing. In spite of everything the airmen were better off than the refugees, if only because they were not dressed in dark padded overcoats, like the crumpled rank and file of the distant catastrophe, but on the contrary in well-made officers’ uniforms at the sight of which, at dawn that day, the policeman’s hand had of its own accord snapped to the shining peak of his cap. Elegance engendered respect. In a natural manner it guaranteed lightness and unlimited freedom for the airmen’s bodies, which consequently were, as always, prepared to rise effortlessly into space, let alone walk up an ordinary staircase to some floor of a local government building. The destiny of the accursed padded overcoats, on the other hand, was to descend from the steps of the streetcar ever lower, and to settle amid the smell of mothballs, which also drifted close to the ground, being heavier than clean air, while the closed circle of the tracks marked their implacable boundary. The overcoats had rapidly turned into a bedraggled, shapeless, padded sign of foreignness, a ballast that weighed on the shoulders only so that the crowd of new arrivals should once and for all sink to the cobbled floor of the square, as if they had drowned.

  Enjoying rare privileges, the airmen seemed nevertheless not to notice them or to appreciate them – for them and for many others, these privileges were unquestionable and only too well deserved. But it was precisely for the uniforms that room was found in the soft armchairs – not for the bodies, which were able to relish comfort only when the opportunity presented itself, though they were filled with their own characteristic pride and an illusory belief that the world lay at their feet. In reality it lay at the legs of their uniform pants, and at their polished regulation boots. What would the general’s protruding belly, or the adjutant’s skinny ribs, have been without the insignia of rank? No sign, no indication that could have guided fate, was written on their delicate pink skin. Any integument seems an equally suitable costume in the face of sudden death or lucky survival, in scenes of adulation or abasement. The body has no influence and thus is of scant significance. And since this is the case, despite the neatly trimmed mustache, despite the cool glint of confidence in the eye, despite the bold gestures and the courteous loftiness coloring every utterance in a natural manner before it leaves the lips, bodies alone are at home in any situation. They belong just as well in comfortable armchairs or at a large desk with phone at hand as they do on the bare pavement down there below, where there is no access to a telephone even in matters of the utmost urgency. What, therefore, could give a body importance and define its capabilities, if not that most important circumstance: the quality of the fabric and the cut of the garment?

  The image of the refugees emerging from the streetcar in their dark overcoats, victims of an unknown disaster who from a sudden twist of narrative lost not just the roof over their heads but also the freedom to regulate their own affairs and due respect – this image, then, from the very beginning called for an appropriate counterbalance. And so the presence of a few fine-looking officers seemed to all those witnessing the events, especially the defenders of local law and order, to be no accident – rather, it was a historical necessity that in its own way was obvious and well-grounded in realities familiar to everyone, against the background of the yellowing plaster. And since the officers were seen entering the government building in their immaculate uniforms, no one doubted that they knew best what needed to be done next.

  Thus, by virtue of his rank and t
he braiding he wore, the air force general was obliged to receive a report from the commander of the order guard. He even clapped him on the shoulder, offered him a cigarette with a classy mouthpiece, and attempted discreetly to find out what on earth was going on here, since from the very beginning he’d been unable to make head or tail of it: in his story, from which he had come and to which he intended to return, the best military order prevailed, and he was unaccustomed to anything else. He was willingly given exhaustive explanations, from which he understood even less. The guards, who were lined up two deep in the hallway, at an order from their commander raised an appropriate cheer, upon which a dust-covered picture fell off the wall. And since he was expected to, the general personally gave the at-ease. He could have demanded much more – the soldiers would eagerly have obeyed any instruction whatever that was lit up by the golden sheen of the braid on his collar. But he did not deign to issue any other orders.

  The column of guards had barely marched away, their boots clattering on the stairs, when a line of petitioners formed outside the director’s office. For instance, the baker in his white apron was prepared to bake rolls for the refugees right away, so long as he received an official guarantee that his costs would be reimbursed. He presented one part of his calculations then and there, writing columns of figures on a sheet of paper; the other part he would not share with anyone, keeping it to himself as a trade secret. What had happened was that in the morning he had bought large quantities of flour for his reserves, but upon opening the sacks he found the contents to be of dubious quality, and he was seeking to get rid of it as quickly as possible in a manner advantageous both to himself and to others. The air-men refused to speak with the baker about the estimate, which they did not understand, being above all unaccustomed to occupying themselves with such details. They gave instructions for the rolls to be baked immediately. To emphasize the fact that this was a matter of duty, the general even pounded his fist on the table, after which, considering the matter closed, he ordered the baker to leave.

  The pharmacist appeared requesting a special allocation of dressing supplies from the government stores, in case for instance there were disturbances, which, he suggested, could not be ruled out in view of the influx of outsiders. His application appeared to have a legal basis: he backed it up with the argument that victims of disturbances never pay for their own treatment. In such a case, he was unwilling to cover the costs from his own pocket; and the general was forced to admit that there was no reason why he in particular should be expected to put himself out. Since the pharmacist knew which storeroom the dressing materials were kept in, the necessary keys were brought from the custodian’s office and the door was officially opened. But the storeroom proved to be empty; there was only one solitary packet of bandages lying in a corner, and in place of sterile gauze, on the shelf they found a carton of chocolate bars, one of which moreover had been opened; someone had taken a bite out of it and wrapped it back up in crumpled silver foil.

  The third person to enter the director’s office was the notary. Cognizant of the fact that the resolution of his problem did not lie within the purview of the officials, he merely wished to report the disappearance of his son. He quoted the policeman, who had said there was nothing he could do in the matter. At this point one of the airmen, perhaps the one who was continually yawning, recalled that a moment ago as he was looking out the window he had seen two boys, a bigger one and a smaller one, crossing the roof of one of the neighboring buildings. The general listened attentively. He took the worried father respectfully by the elbow and led him to the window. For a short while everyone stared intently at the roofs. But there were no boys up there. The information given by the yawning officer seemed vague and not particularly plausible, and he might even have been thought to have imagined it. And so no progress was made in the notary’s case, and his anxiety went unassuaged.

  The baker too was in a quandary. He couldn’t decide whether it was better for his business to make as few of the aforementioned rolls as possible, or if it made more sense to use up all the flour at once. He could bake only a small amount, just enough to satisfy the general’s order, but if after the director came back it turned out that the authorities would refund the costs, he would be left with the bitter regret of having missed the opportunity to liquidate the whole lot – all those damned stockpiles of adulterated flour that he had mistakenly bought. On the other hand, the baker was worried that if he used up all of his poor-quality supplies and the refugees ate everything, and then the authorities refused to reimburse him, it would be a complete waste of the money he had spent so rashly that morning, in the grip of the prevailing panic. In the end, caution led him to bake only a small batch of rolls exclusively for the children from the orphanage. The airmen were said to have supplemented this gift generously by distributing one bar of chocolate per child; word of this spread quickly, preceding the handout itself. Upon hearing about the chocolate, certain of the locals tapped their foreheads to indicate the absurdity of the notion, as they had when the taxicabs were supposed to come, and they asked sarcastically if the chocolate too would be American. Others actually already knew it was.

  But all the same, it did not appear. No one was able to explain where it had gotten to. It had vanished and that was all there was to it. The clerks were left with only a single bar, the one that had been opened and bitten into; this was plainly insufficient for the children and it was better to give it to the custodian, as a reward for his labors. And the only thing to come of it was that some of the more impetuous orphans began arguing about whether the chocolate that had passed them by had had a flavored filling or not. Those who knew best of all began giving out kicks. Others did not long remain in their debt, because they too were disappointed. In the view of the local residents, the orphanage children should have understood that what they did not have anyway beforehand could never truly belong to them. They were expected to stand in an orderly line and quietly take one roll each from the basket. But things happened differently. The stronger ones elbowed their way to the front unceremoniously, paying little heed to the black mourning armbands they wore on their sleeves. Because of the rolls, though also perhaps as a result of the chocolate, something had gotten into those children; their eyes shone as if in a fever. They cheated, came back when it was not their turn, and reached into the basket two or even three times. And before the last child in line had received his ration, the first ones, to the general indignation, began throwing rolls at one another, right under the nose of the baker, his family and neighbors, the policeman, the concierges, and the residents watching from behind lace curtains.

  In the face of such a scandal, the baker dropped the basket. His own magnanimity stuck in his craw, since instead of the thankfulness he deserved he had found himself mocked. If I am him, I feel doubly deceived: first because of the flour, and second because of my feelings. One would have expected the hungry to be satisfied with what the full refused to eat. That whoever is fed out of pity would not make demands – the quality of the flour being none of their business. That a hungry child, especially, would gladly accept a roll. A rumor started circulating that the orphans were evidently not going hungry. They ought to, then. That would cure them of an arrogance unseemly in their situation, and would teach them respect for bread. The residents responded to this wicked ingratitude with a pained sigh and a vertical furrow of concern on their brow, as the rolls kept hitting the pavement with a dull thud, as if the baker had simply made rocks. Crushed by the burden of this moment, he pushed among the children and began taking back his rolls, snatching them from dirty hands. And one of the rocks flying to and fro overhead happened to strike him on the temple. His white baker’s apron was instantly soiled with blood. Those nearby called for a doctor. Yet from the very beginning there was no mention of a doctor living on the square or practicing here. Situations requiring medical intervention were not anticipated at all. The dazed baker was led across the middle of the square directly to the pharmacy. T
he refugees parted silently for his escort in their grammar school overcoats, lowering their gaze at the accusatory stares. Up till this moment they had been complaining about the cordon and the turned-off faucet, but what they saw now was much plainer – the good-will, the ingratitude, the blood. When the baker reappeared his wound was already dressed, red slowly seeping through the bandage round his head.

  Since the orphanage children refused to say which of them had thrown the roll, under the supervision of the order guard each one received a whack of the birch on their hands. The school custodian was selected to carry out the punishment, since the birch belonged to him and he was adept in its use. True, the orphans cheated insolently in this matter too. The smallest ones presented themselves first, but then amid shouting and crying they went back a second and third time, continually pushed to the front of the line by the older, stronger children, as before without any regard for the faded signs of mourning on the sleeves of their little jackets. Justice was painful and at the same time not especially discriminating; the custodian did not concern himself with counting the blows to the hands, but only did what he had been ordered to by those more important than himself. What else could matter to him? The most cunning orphans thrust their hands into their pockets, and in this way got off scot-free. All around, so much anger had accumulated that someone had to be punished, if only for the crash, for the morning panic and the shoddy goods available in wholesale quantities on the black market. Who was supposed to carry the tribulations of the whole world, if not the orphanage? And in accordance with the universal rule, the tribulations of the orphanage were in turn borne by the weakest children – those who could find no one less important than themselves on whom to cast the shared burden.