Flaw

by Magdalena Tulli

  In the morning it had seemed that the thread of his story line needed simply to be tightened for it to keep all the other ones in check. But now, frayed and snapped off in the middle, it is of no more use. If he only could, the student himself would rip it out of the warp of the story, toss it down, and trample it underfoot in fury and contempt. Betrayed by himself as well as by others, he had no one else to count on. That was why, as he left the grammar school, his footprints could lead only to the apartment building at number five. On the way he stopped once and from under a layer of snow dug out his stick, which he’d lost in the morning and which had been lying in the gutter all day. He hadn’t noticed it because he had been holding his head so high; nor had his men, who had also been bursting with pride. Now, as he walked along with eyes fixed on the ground, he spotted it at once. It must have fallen out of the streetcar when the refugees tripped over it during their arrival. It could be used as a walking stick. And that was what he did, because he was exhausted. But he also felt tormented, and hence ridiculous; and he was utterly mocked, and thus in despair, having been plunged into ridicule by a barely noticeable individual who had unexpectedly pulled himself from the depths of indignity. He had been able to do this only through a fierce tussle on the borderline between ridiculousness and despair. Because it is out of the despair of the ridiculous and the ridiculousness of the desperate that there arises such a change of roles; it is possible only when good fortune produces another character even more susceptible to ridicule. Self-love leads one to shun banality and secondariness, even if it means going it alone, even if it has to be at someone else’s expense; and it makes one yearn for special means of expression – the firm tone, the disdainful glint in the eye, the supercilious pose – as if for one’s own salvation.

  The student still finds it hard to believe that a figure with no merits whatsoever to his name had, out of nowhere, become the commander of the guard. Could this possibly mean that promotion to commander of the guard meant nothing? Deprived not only of the gold braid but also of the guard that he himself had created, demoted by circumstance to a position even lower than the rank-and-file guardsmen, he had lost faith in his lucky destiny, and pride had gone out of him like the air from a pricked balloon. Alas, without faith and pride he was of no importance. There was no cause within view that he might take up, no place where his presence might still have any meaning. His high boots reminded him of events that aroused his repugnance, so he gladly left them on the mat outside the door, along with the remains of the stench that still clung to the soles. He pulled off his belt too. All he wanted now was to lock himself in his attic room. There he is, lying exhaustedly on the bedspread. From time to time he still belches from the lavish meal, but when hunger comes he will not find so much as a slice of bread at home. He lights a cigarette, his last one, and the air over the bed grows opaque with smoke. The student cocks his head and listens. Footsteps on the stairs stop at the floor below. So for the moment no one is coming for him. He would prefer it if later too it does not occur to the general to shut him up in the shelter beneath the cinema. But he does not know what he’ll do with himself if he is left alone. He blows out smoke and stares through the window for such a long time it brings tears to his eyes. Outside is a clear sky cold as ice.

  The residents of the apartment buildings willingly acknowledged that the resolute steps taken by the new leader with the rank of general exposed the underlying indecisiveness of the former leader with no military rank whatsoever, revealing his excessive scruples, his weakness for utterly civilian sentiments, and his lack of a sufficiently clear conception of what was proper and what was reprehensible. He had not been a true hero, prepared to do whatever it took to achieve an end that justified the means; this much was easy to admit after the fact. The first of the bold decisions by which the general showed he was a man of action was to keep the refugees in the shelter beneath the cinema, since they already happened to be there, standing in a crush just as they had stood earlier in the street-car that brought them, as they waited for someone to let them out. If I am the general, I do not think especially highly of my idea, but I have to accept that for the moment no better one is to be found. Because even if, with an exceptional effort, the refugees were to be deprived of the property, so problematic for the public, that was their lives, little good would come of it – for what on earth was one then supposed to do with a quantity of useless bodies so great it made one’s head ache? They would all still be sprawling about in that space, and their lifeless inertia would just make matters worse. There would be even more of a hurry to find a way out of an even more troublesome situation. In the general’s view, leaving the refugees in the cinema was only a partial solution, though that alone was a great deal better than the timid procrastination seen thus far – than ducking the necessary steps – than relying on the benevolence of fate, in the hope that a solution would appear of its own accord. In the interests of order, all that needed to be done now was to round up the orphans.

  Yet the hunt carried out noisily by the order guard was unsuccessful. The children were not found. They proved smarter than the guards; in addition, they had little to lose. The guardsmen captured only one little boy with mourning black on his sleeve and under his fingernails, and that by chance, as he was stealing sugar for his pals from some kitchen. Caught by the lady of the house and her neighbors, to begin with he fought like a wild animal, kicking and biting, till he ran out of strength. Later he allowed himself to be led to the general’s staff, which was operating from the café at number one, and there, staring dully at the floor, he confessed to the clerk interrogating him that he had crawled through a window after removing the pane. The rest of his gang was stationed on the rooftops, serving under the command of a leader armed with a real revolver. For the information he had revealed, the boy concluded by demanding a bar of chocolate. If he had been questioned further, it might have come out that after the interrogation he expected to be set free. It was his hope to return in glory to the roof, where he would distribute pieces of chocolate to those older than himself. The general ordered him to be locked up in the storage area behind the cloakroom. The notary, who was now participating in the work of the staff, heard the boy’s statement. He went home to check in his drawer, and his worrying suspicion was immediately confirmed.

  He had to inform his wife as soon as possible, so he waited for a single moment of quiet and calm – but in vain. In his apartment the storm raged unabated. His wife had quarreled with the maid about the chicken, the last wing from which had been given to the little girl when she woke from her long afternoon nap. A chicken had two lower quarters and two upper quarters. What had happened, then, to the carefully divided whole, of which three fourths were missing? As she conducted her investigation, the notary’s wife was already partly aware of the scandalous truth. It had already come to her attention that the concierge had seen the policeman – who would have thought it, looking at that pudgy, lumbering maid – slipping out of the house down the service stairs, his uniform unfastened, a portion of chicken in his hand. It was not that three quarters of a chicken had gone missing, though that in itself was an absolutely unacceptable loss. The point, briefly put, concerned much more significant moral damage, things that one could not close one’s eyes to, that were an offense to decency. The lady of the house had suffered terribly; her confidence had been abused and her home brought into disrepute. She did not have to tolerate vice under her roof a moment longer. She cared nothing for any other consideration; her conscience was clear.

  But before the maid was given her notice, the son returned unexpectedly, frozen to the marrow, his nose and ears almost dropping off with cold, and with cracked glasses. When he appeared in the doorway the domestic argument, which had been going on since morning, dissolved temporarily in tears of relief. The lady and the maid spontaneously fell into one another’s arms. Without wasting a moment, they lit the stove, heated the broth, and mixed up some egg yolks and sugar. The little girl came running i
n and clambered onto her brother’s lap to warm his nose and ears with her sticky little hands. The notary, making a display of sternness, demanded the return of the revolver, which, however, proved impossible – the gun had remained on the roof, in the hands of the unpredictable news-boy from number eight, a notorious hooligan. All that could be done was to reassure the general that the chamber contained only a single bullet, as the notary knew best of all: he was keeping that bullet for himself, just in case he finally grew sick of life. One bullet was not a lot, but it was also far too much, since any person could be hit by it. For this reason the entire staff attempted to stop the general from acting; action seemed to all of them to be just as dangerous as inaction. In principle the loaded revolver ought sooner or later to be fired, though they were counting on the imperfect nature of the rules and the fact that from time to time they failed to operate. Maybe this rule too would not work – and even if it did, let it at least affect someone else. No one wished to part with life, including the notary, who had played the biggest role in bringing about the present situation and in fact was responsible for it. Each person had his own disagreeable notion of what might happen next. And because of all this no one knew what to do. To put an end to the disorder, a punitive expedition needed to be sent onto the roof. But the policeman had his own ideas; no longer young and carrying something of a belly, he preferred to announce over the megaphone that the newsboy’s misbehavior would be for-given and his morning fine annulled if he agreed to come down from the roof. Why would he not listen, having just a moment ago been betrayed by his friend? So long as he too had someone to betray, all was not lost.

  And when the business was brought to a successful conclusion – when the tearful washerwoman took her recalcitrant son off to the basement of number eight, and the general got his hands on the revolver – at that moment the conspiracy of local and outside boys was finally broken up. What belonged here was once again separated from what had arrived from else-where, and this was the first step in coming to grips with the disorder. For all concerned it would have been safer if the gun had been returned to the drawer from which it was taken. But such a solution, incompatible with the general’s will, was no longer possible. As for other matters, in the opinion of the guardsmen they were looking better and better. The children from the orphanage had nothing left to wait for, crouching half frozen on the roof of the government offices. They began waving a less than clean white handkerchief as a sign they had had enough. Held at gunpoint by the general just in case, they came off the roof one by one down the fire escape stairs into a circle of guards. Then, hands raised and eyes on the ground, in a huddled group they waited under escort in the middle of the square to see what would be decided in their case. Observed from a distance against the background of the grammar school coats – for example, from a window overlooking the street – even the tallest ones didn’t seem so very big. Evidently not much was needed to put them in their place. The moment they began to get really cold they started to cower and sniff. If I am standing in the window, I believe that snuffling suits the orphans and matches their black armbands much better than running wild. The peaceful residents of the apartment buildings have a right to expect gazes fixed on the tips of shoes; they are entitled to count on quiet and humble behavior that does not clash insolently with the meaning of tight-fitting, frequently patched, threadbare little jackets. But in the question of the orphans, what on earth could be decided? They were taken to the shelter beneath the cinema, and that was all. There they could at last warm up, but on the other hand the crush was oppressive as they stood squashed between the overcoats of grown-ups. They could barely be heard as they whimpered about the lack of air.

  If I am one of the residents watching from behind a lace curtain, the thought of the refugees locked up in the shelter does not worry me. Rather, I view everything as ending at its heavy door. The space that can be imagined on the other side doesn’t even belong to this story. All I know is that the problem has ceased to exist, and the foreign body has been removed. The original state of affairs, which had lasted happily before the refugees arrived, has been restored. Having burst so obtrusively into the very middle of a familiar space that was neither large enough nor sufficiently well supplied for everyone, they had nevertheless finally been excluded from it, once and for all removed from the field of vision. What a relief it was for the residents. In this manner, before their very eyes, the story was heading towards an auspicious conclusion. Not a hair on anyone’s head had been harmed and no one had suffered any wrong, aside from a few bruises and a certain amount of spilled blood.

  In the meantime the row at the notary’s house, which had died down for a moment, flared up again. Along with the return of the boy there had once more arisen the issue of the chicken quarters that before had not added up, and though the equation was finally balanced, the solution of the mystery led to further suspicions and further revelations. There was no end to the shouting. An answer was mercilessly demanded as to how the boy could have passed down the kitchen hallway unnoticed and then come back the same way carrying the pieces of chicken, the revolver under his jacket. Where was the maid at that time? Why was the door of her room closed? Faced with such insistence from the lady of the house, the son eventually revealed what he had seen through the keyhole as he had been creeping into the kitchen: a student cap casually thrown onto a stool. And since the matter had come up, he tried to say what he had heard as he paused outside the locked door, but he was interrupted. It was already too much. Enough to give the maid her marching orders just like that, without discussion. Things had to end with a dismissal. Because if it was no longer a matter of circumstantial evidence but of a certainty, and if it wasn’t just the policeman but also the student, there was no knowing who else there had been. The maid would not say who else for anything. If that came out too – she had lost hope of being able to conceal anything at all – she would swear she had only been sewing buttons onto uniforms. The lady of the house was at a loss for words. Words were superfluous; all that was needed was to tip the contents of the maid’s trunk onto the kitchen table under the lamp to make sure nothing would be stolen – and such a possibility had to be taken into consideration since she had not shown a shred of decency. But no object from the household was found in the maid’s things – not even a certain silver spoon that had gone missing from its set a couple of days before. It was in vain that the lady of the house ordered the girl to turn out her pockets; there was nothing there either. After that she no longer knew where else to look. The matter of the spoon was of no consequence to the notary; because of the coup he had lost a great deal more, but since morning he had had time to come to terms with his losses, and by evening he was merely calculating what he still had. And his desires, like those mortally exhausted soldiers left in a hopeless position, were ready to surrender. When all of the maid’s assets and liabilities had been scrupulously reckoned up, at the end the value of the silver spoon was subtracted. And what turned out was what was supposed to turn out – that she was not owed anything whatsoever.

  Besides, the maid had no use for money – she would probably only have misused it if she’d been given it. She had been trying to save for her wedding, but who would marry her now that she had trampled her honor in the mud? If after all this she found employment anywhere at all without letters of reference, which the notary’s wife was regrettably unable to provide, she would have board and lodging as part of her position. But without a job she was once again an outsider here. The day when the streetcar had brought her and her trunk so that, with advertisement in hand, she could apply for the post with the notary’s family – that day continued to exist only in her imagination, like a calendar page lost among kitchen recipes, false by the very nature of things. The maid had no idea where she would go now. So she sat in the empty streetcar, with the same trunk as before on her lap, as if she still trusted that the streetcar would eventually move off and take her back where she had come from. But there was no return.
Tears streamed down her face and froze on her cheeks. She sat there, expecting goodness knows what, till she grew cold. Then she asked the sentries of the order guard to let her into the shelter under the cinema. The sentries, with mock respect, opened the creaking door, from which there came a gust of stuffy air, then slammed it behind her again.

  During this time other subordinates of the general were seeking in vain to establish who owned all the sacks of quick-lime, sand, and plaster that were stacked in piles in the auditorium of the cinema. Who had transported them there and who had unloaded them? Who had bought the cinema with a view to converting it into a quality fashion store with ready-made apparel? This was not known even to the general, though at one time he had been familiar with all the rumors circulating round the tables in the café. At this moment he was unable to resist an expressive gesture at the mention of the elegant store – a fluid motion of both hands evoking the suggestive idea of the female form, for he had already heard somewhere that the place was supposed to sell underwear. Women’s underwear, that is. The general raised his thick eyebrows knowingly and gave a wink with the eye that was not swollen. That told his listeners everything they needed to know: corsets fastened with hooks and eyes, suspender belts, close-fitting winter woolens, cabaret slips in black and claret, brassieres with bows, and so on. When thinking of the aforementioned items of attire, guffawing was thoroughly appropriate.