I woke up abruptly from a light and restless sleep. I am not even sure that it would be accurate to define it as sleeping; perhaps it would be more precise to say that I had been awake for most of the time but would briefly fall into a semi-conscious stupor. When dawn finally broke, I stepped outside for a breath of fresh air, hoping to shake off the night gone by.
It was a Sunday. Those keen early risers had only begun to open their gummed-up eyes to the familiar tunes emanating from old transistor radios and the invigorating aroma of freshly brewed coffee, and there was not a living soul on the streets of my small town. It was drizzling. Small drops of rain hitting the rooftops produced a quiet yet distinct sound reminiscent of a xylophone playing a mystical oriental melody through the hum of the wind. As I was stepping out of the building, a flock of black crows flew over the trees in a panic, as if trying to escape an approaching cataclysm, and I noticed a large number of cats hiding under the parked cars as if from some ominous prophecy; only their green eyes could be seen sparkling like emeralds.
It was most certainly an unusual morning. It is said that our inner demons awaken after the night falls; that, as moonlight gently caresses our faces, our deeply buried fears begin to surface one by one, to swell and intensify until they are so firmly imbedded in our conscious self that they become an inevitable force governing our every action. It is also said that the only source of comfort during such moments is the thought of the ephemeral nature of our fears, the knowledge that morning will once again come to the rescue, that all anxieties will subside and that everything we had once feared will seem remote, irrelevant, perhaps even comical. This particular morning, however, lacked that therapeutic quality. This particular morning was wrapped in a veil of mystery and, perhaps, a covert malevolence. The only detail that detracted from the mysticism of my surroundings was my own presence – but then, my presence seemed mandatory, because how certain can we ever really be that a picture has any existence away from the eye of the beholder?
I did not know where I was going. I let my legs carry me, let the rain run down my cheeks, without caring much where I might end up. At one point it dawned on me that the sinister atmosphere surrounding me closely resembled the one that prevails in Puccini’s works and foreshadows the tragic twist of plot. Upon reaching the park on the corner of my street I stopped, let my eyes fall shut and deeply inhaled the smell of wet leaves. All of a sudden I found myself in Cho-Cho-San’s Japanese garden, and as the breath-taking view of Nagasaki Bay stretched out in front of me, the wind fiercely blew, shook the branches of Japanese junipers and carried the black earth towards the open sea. My escape to the magical world of Giacomo Puccini provided a degree of consolation, however short-lived, for when I opened my eyes again a moment later I caught a fleeting glimpse of something that seemed painfully familiar. I caught sight of a creature so conspicuous that there was no need for me to take one more look to know it was him. But I looked anyway.
He was standing on the opposite side of the street, in front of the old tinsmith’s workshop not far from my building, where the road forks towards the Roma settlement. With his hands in his pockets and his head slightly tilted, he stood motionless as a statue; all that was needed to complete the image was a pigeon on his shoulder. I couldn’t get a good look at his face, as he was only half turned towards me, but he seemed to be staring at a particular spot on the pavement, absorbed in thought, which is precisely the reason why I have chosen to define his appearance at the time as particularly unattractive and conspicuous. In fact, something about his pose seemed artificial. I could not think of any other reason why his gaze would be fixed on the pavement other than that he was looking for something, yet his unseemly, stiffened pose suggested a sort of bewilderment rather than an active, investigative state of mind. I picked up my pace, pretending not to have noticed him, as well as to be completely indifferent to the drops of cold rain whipping my face. Placing my confidence in something of a guardian angel, I began to repeat under my breath, Please don’t let him notice me, please don’t let him notice me, and only after I had moved past his static eye did I realize that he was actually looking at me. My heart jumped into my throat, charged with adrenalin just like the time our eyes collided in the grocer’s, the difference being that now I was certain my fear was justified; after all, I had sense enough to notice that for some peculiar reason our lives were interweaving and that over the course of time our mysterious connection was acquiring certain dimensions of a fatalistic nature. As reluctant as I was to admit it to myself, he and I now had a past, and I had a strange inkling that we would also have a future.
I walked past the nearby bistro and continued towards the settlement, when I suddenly heard footsteps approaching as if echoing and ruthlessly confirming my most recent thoughts … Good God, is it possible … is it possible that he is following me? I didn’t dare turn around, in fear of what I might discover. I kept walking at a fast pace, with the clear intention of losing him, but it felt as though the entire time I was wading through thick mud, because regardless of the distance I thought I had placed between us, the sound of the footsteps was growing ever more intense, and my legs, heavy as lead, were starting to betray me.
Upon reaching the Roma quarter, I decided to proceed right through it, naïvely hoping that he would eventually lose faith and give up the chase. I walked past a scrapyard of scattered boxes, past line upon line of laundry hung out to dry, past the stench of stale blood that lingered in the air like a memento of the fight from the night before. The evidence of human presence comforted me. I could hear the distant swearing of an infuriated woman, and even through all her yelling I was able to detect that every so often the footsteps would cease then continue a few seconds later, as though my stalker was occasionally pausing for some reason. For a moment this made me believe that he was near to giving up from exhaustion, until I realized that I was only being misled by false hope, for each time the footsteps would continue they would appear louder and more determined than ever before.
There seems to be a boundary of authority our sensible self dares not cross but instead chooses to give way to its antagonistic collaborator, that hidden part of our nature, which then leaps to the rescue in the form of an uncontrollable inner impulse. I presume it is for that reason that I could not explain, were someone to ask me, why I had stopped so abruptly between a line of towels and a line of socks, turned to face my stalker and looked him straight in the eye.
We stood across from each other about three metres apart, dripping wet in the pouring rain, and it was as though time stood still. It was quite clear that neither of us had the intention of looking away, which meant that I was once again faced with the opportunity to examine his outlandish appearance and all its particulars. As he was standing in that utterly unreal environment looking like a wet rat, an unbelievable scene was unravelling before me: while his right eye remained stationary and expressionless, his left eye revealed an entire spectrum of varying emotions – from initial astonishment through to suspicion and hesitation and finally to downright desolation and despair, as though imploring me not to judge him. I felt a deep yearning to find out what was hidden under the mask of that man, under his extraordinary physical being, his eyes that didn’t match, which at the time struck me as a visual paradigm of man’s dual nature. I subsequently came to learn that in his case this exceeded the merely visual, and now I can say with confidence that this was an individual governed by contradictions, polarities, a character in perpetual disarray. The compassion I suddenly felt for him produced a feeling of nausea caused by the stinging awareness of my own hypocrisy, for I did not have the slightest intention of reaching out to him with some noble gesture and gratifying all that empathy.
Although my growing curiosity towards him was becoming insatiable, it required significantly less effort to convince myself that it would be best if we parted ways. And it was as though he could read my mind, because he suddenly made a 180-degree turn and vanished from view, leaving me alone again,
wondering if it was all but a dream.
Just then, my thoughts were interrupted by the patter of bare feet. A young woman in a nightgown ran towards me to collect the rain-soaked laundry. Shortly after, a toddler in nappies peeked from under one of the sheets, curious to see who was on the other side. The woman took the child in her arms, and I gave them both a disarming smile, which they reciprocated. Feeling a heavy load lift from my heart, I headed home at an easy pace, when a terrifying realization began to dawn on me: the creature had left behind a trail, and what a trail it was! On electrical poles, rubbish bins and the corners of buildings, marking my exact route and rubbing my nose in my earlier compassion and bad judgement. Moritz, you stupid, stupid man! Fooled once again …
Although he was no longer physically present in the vicinity, numbers, the colour of freshly spilled blood, served as a warning of his omnipresence in my life and lurked in ambush wherever I turned: first a nine … then a one … followed by a three … and finally a big seven, painted on the old birch tree in front of which he had been standing when I first laid eyes on him.
There was only one place I wished to go after such a course of events. The journey there, not the least bit pleasant, dragged on like a year of famine. The rain had penetrated the worn-out soles of my shoes and my icy-cold feet were ripping my stomach in half. The endless chattering of my teeth made my jaw contract in a spasm that spread to my temples like a drop of black ink in water, but at least I drew comfort from the thought that I would soon see her. It was about seven thirty or eight. I pondered the likelihood that she was still asleep, imagining that she had got drunk on Pinot Noir the night before and had passed out on the sofa and that the fabric was leaving a ribbed impression on her cheek. I also considered the possibility that she was not alone; nevertheless, it was worth the risk.
The flat she was renting was housed in one of those ornamented, perfectly contained Austro-Hungarian edifices from the end of the nineteenth century, located on a quiet tree-lined street. Whereas the building is still occupied by families of good standing, a few decades ago flats here were reserved for the élite – high officials and those in influential positions. I often wondered how she could afford a flat at such a location, probably underestimating the amount of money someone in her profession could make.
As I approached the building I was beginning to distinguish the outline of Noémi’s balcony and recalled the time I tried to throw myself off it, drunk as a mule, singing ‘Drei weiße Birken’ at the top of my lungs until Ilka from the fourth floor appeared with a rolling pin and clear instructions from her mistress Frau Kappelhoff to turn me into steak tartare.
There was no laundry on the line stretched across the balcony, and the door to the flat was shut. When I reached the building I rushed up the stairs, suddenly overcome by a sense of panic that I had come in vain, that she was out of town. My desire to see her was so intense that I would have gladly endured a triple serving of beatings from Ilka if only to find Noémi at home.
She appeared at the door sooner than I had expected. She was wearing a light-green kimono with a missing belt, so she had to wrap her arms around her waist to keep it in place. The smell of fried eggs that drifted from the kitchen was a sign that she was alone after all, as she never cooked for customers. I felt relieved at this thought and found it fit to conclude that, with her hair falling freely over her shoulders and wearing not a trace of makeup, she was more beautiful than ever before. It’s been a long time, Noémi …
She looked at me as if expecting me to justify my unannounced visit. No words could have illustrated the magnitude of my desire, and I had no intention of lying. I simply stood there watching her, creating for myself a sort of overture. The delicate fabric of the kimono permitted my eyes to follow the curve of her hips and breasts and to take notice of her erect nipples, which she unskilfully tried to hide by crossing her arms over her chest under the pretence of the garment’s impracticality. This came as something of a surprise, considering the number of times I had seen her nude. My gaze then moved upwards, following the outline of her neck and jaw line. The rain had just stopped, and the sun’s first rays timorously penetrated the lace curtains, illuminating her flawless complexion and giving her lips a fresh, rosy tint. The warmth I once again felt in the area of my stomach and below drew me towards her like a powerful force until I came so close that I could see every minuscule pore on her face, every infinitesimal speck and blood vessel. This was when I realized that she actually looked different from how I remembered. Countless tiny, newly formed lines around the eyes had shaped her expression to suggest the sort of inner maturity that can be achieved only through personal affliction and that commands a degree of respect or civilized distance at least.
In line with these observations, a daunting suspicion began to form in my mind that the many blessings of her newly acquired wisdom would hardly encourage dealings with a loser like me. But a mere couple of seconds later, I could feel her sweaty palms around my neck and her warm tongue in my mouth.
Once again Tobias chose not to leave the room during the break. The third member of the Committee – the elderly and rather peculiar gentleman – was the first to return and remained quiet in his seat. His gaze was directed towards the small, high window to his right. Being the only source of natural light in Chamber C of the Second Wing, it cast a pearly white sheen over the right side of his face.
The others walked in a few minutes later. When the Prosecutor appeared, following the Presiding Officer, Tobias astutely observed that his tie was adorned with two white crumbs and that a third crumb – the largest among them and suspended from his beard – performed nimble acrobatics in concert with his movements. The woman in the reseda-green dress followed behind him. She carried herself differently from the way she had before the lunch break, exuding a newly discovered femininity, her walk as poised and delicate as a prima ballerina’s. Perhaps, thought Tobias, she had managed to exchange a few words with the Prosecutor in the canteen; perhaps the Prosecutor discreetly but intentionally brushed the edge of his tray against her buttocks while they were standing in line to pay.
When they had all taken their seats, the Presiding Officer invited the Prosecutor to continue where he had left off before the lunch break. The Prosecutor enthusiastically rose from his chair and headed towards the centre of the room. With a full stomach, he was primed to take on new professional challenges.
‘What were you doing on the official premises at the break of dawn on 12 March, Mr Keller?’ he promptly asked Tobias.
‘The same as any other time of day,’ replied Tobias. ‘I was observing the development of Case 414 on the monitor – in other words, the life path of Moritz Tóth. Following the life paths of my subjects is a fundamental part of my duties.’
‘Certainly. But why did you choose to appear at your workstation so early in the morning on that particular day as opposed to any other?’
Tobias needed a moment to evaluate the question in his mind. He was not entirely sure why he had chosen that particular day rather than any other to arrive early, but he was well aware of the reason he had arrived early in the first place.
‘I was hoping that an opportunity would arise which would allow me to assist the subject … to lend him a helping hand, so to speak.’
The Prosecutor was somewhat surprised by the emotion, if only a hint of emotion, in Tobias’s voice. Not only was he puzzled over the origins of such a sentiment but he was also unsure whether Tobias spoke in earnest or merely in pursuance of a strategy devised during the break to win the sympathies of the Disciplinary Committee. It seemed of crucial importance to the Prosecutor that he establish the correct scenario so that he would know which card to lay down, but, unfortunately, tuning in to the emotions of others was something at which he had never been adept.
‘You say that you wished to lend the subject a helping hand, and I trust we have all been made sufficiently familiar with the fact that this opportunity did indeed finally present itself, as we are
with the particulars of the so-called assistance you provided. But do you not consider it vain on your part to exert your influence on the subject freely and at your own discretion rather than by directing him to the Guidelines on page 249 as dictated by the Regulations?’
This was the question the Prosecutor finally decided to pose to Tobias by reason of his natural aptitude for taking the offensive.
Tobias could not believe he was being lectured on vanity by the Prosecutor.
‘I have already specified one of the two reasons why I do not believe in Article 98a of the Causal Authority Regulations with regards to inertia. The other reason is that by freely exerting his influence, the adviser imposes his will on the subject to a far lesser degree than if he were to direct the subject to the Guidelines on page 249. The adviser’s free exertion of influence through the Extraordinary Activity Device is restricted to the physical circumstances on the ground – or on the scene, if you will – and the decision on how the subject will adapt his subsequent actions to those circumstances is left to the subject entirely. Such a scenario keeps the adviser from imposing a final solution on the subject as would be imposed had he chosen to direct him to the instructions, which is why I consider my influence on the subject in this case to be far more virtuous than if I had acted in accordance with Article 98a.’
‘Virtuous, you say? If I correctly understood the reasoning presented in the Decision to Initiate Disciplinary Proceedings, you were the one who set the trap for the cyclist in the form of a sizeable pebble that caused him to collide with the hydraulic digger. Hence, you were the one responsible for the fact that the intermediary took notice of something he was never destined to discover, thus imposing your will not only on him but also on the subject Moritz Tóth as the final destination on the path of influence!’
The Tragic Fate of Moritz Toth Page 4
