Even when the three guests read the headlines to one another across the café, things were scarcely any clearer. The analyses printed in the paper were fraught with contradictions. And since everything had been turned upside down, the waiter permitted himself in a lisping voice to add his two humble cents’ worth to the brief dialogue that developed among the tables, because he knew he was not the loser here. In his pocket he had some loose change – to be precise, three coins he had been given by the guests and had kept for himself, pleased that in the general confusion he had gotten the newspapers for free. Determined above all to look after number one, he was counting on being given the day off: any minute now the proprietor would call and tell him to close the café for the day. The student too seemed to be observing the commotion on the square through the window of the café. In fact, though, he was looking higher up, gazing over the throng at the still sky, which was a promising blue without a single cloud.
An icy chill on the back of the notary’s neck reminded him it was too late for anything now. His skin prickled, and a moment later he felt a pain in the vicinity of his heart. So he returned home, dragging his feet. On the stairs he stopped at every few steps and clung tightly to the balustrade. When he finally made it to the second floor, he ought to have said at least a word to his alarmed wife. But he lacked the strength; he merely took a wad of banknotes from his wallet and ordered the maid to stockpile supplies. Then, for the longest time he fiddled with the dials of the radio. Other than commentaries from far off in foreign languages, eloquent and uninformative, he found nothing but hissing and crackling. If I am the notary, by now everything has started to bother me. My shoes pinch, my collar chafes against my neck, and the daylight dazzles me. I pull down the blinds and turn on the night-light. The new turn of events, which might have seemed unexpected, had in fact for weeks and even months been in the background as an unpalatable but likely possibility. As frequently happens, life had gone calmly on, right alongside a particularly ominous eventuality. If it only failed to materialize as fact, the cost of precautionary steps taken against it would afterwards seem excessive, and the immoderate, pathetic decisions made by the notary would be said to have been driven by panic. Yet what if, on the contrary, with the passage of time it transpires that the greatest and most unforgivable error was a lack of caution? Whatever course of action one takes, one always emerges either a spineless prevaricator safeguarding himself from the worst or an irresponsible risk taker; it’s terribly hard to avoid extremes, not because of a person’s own nature but because life is so poorly balanced. The burden of responsibility for the well-being of oneself and one’s family is the burden of questions without answers. It all arises from the fact that in matters of the greatest weight, only guessing is possible. Up till yesterday certain special ways out were still available; certain loopholes were still open for those most worried. Now, however, they have suddenly been closed, slamming shut all at once with a thud. And in this way the notary and his family have found themselves in a trap.
The student lay impassively on the made-up bed in his cramped attic, smoking a cigarette and blowing perfect pale blue smoke rings towards the ceiling. He too had a radio and was hearing the same hissing and crackling, but in his view it seemed perfectly natural and indicated a desirable turn of events. Having just finished a substantial breakfast, he was not worried about flour or sugar; he gazed at the clear sky through the skylight, confident that he would also be able to eat his fill in the future, which only now was starting to be truly promising. The student must have had a sense that whatever awaited others, the thread of his own story would find itself on top, like a strong cord just right for tying all the rest into a bundle.
Foodstuffs quickly ran out in the local stores. With the help of the concierge, the notary’s maid carried home the last sack of flour, a hundredweight of potatoes, and a slab of lard. For those who had not been quick enough, a black market sprang readily into being with all its extortionate prices. The props that ended up there, all those extra, previously unanticipated sacks of flour and sugar, were prepared in haste, as it were, under pressure of circumstances that were getting out of hand. Those whose job it was to fill the sacks hurriedly reached for plaster and sand, this time in wholesale quantities, in the hope that before the truth emerged, subsequent events would render it unimportant.
The notary asks himself why he failed for so long to take any action, since he was one of those most alarmed. His heart utterly refuses to obey him, now faltering, now pounding away. Why had he not gotten rid of those damned government bonds in time, even at a loss? Why had he not closed up his practice, placed his capital in Swiss francs, and liquidated ahead of time the apartment on the second floor of number seven? He’s already managed to forget certain crucial circumstances, and so he is unable to comprehend how, as one who bears responsibility for the welfare of his family and for his children’s future, he could have permitted himself such a risky delay when he knew all along what needed to be done. He never intended to flee to the frozen north, rather to the warm south. And it all came to nothing precisely because he would have had to order a lightweight, bright-colored suit suitable for a lightweight life in bright southern lands. He put the whole matter off till later, until the time when in the place of the movie theater they would open a new fashion store with off-the-rack clothing. The local inhabitants did not understand that this was not possible. If it had been permissible to choose one’s attire according to one’s own preferences, to be one thing or another as one wished, the story would have fallen apart the moment it began.
As early as ten fifteen, when he took the first telephone call in the café, the notary was asking himself why life was so hard. Hard, and at the same time without meaning, and furthermore cruel, because carrying its weight served no purpose. Since it was without meaning, why could it not be made easier? The notary sensed that the moment was approaching when he would be forced to accept conditions of surrender, and would cease wiping flecks of blood from the bathroom mirror. It was only desires, like half-crazed soldiers assigned to an impossible position by a staff error, that were resisting the invincible forces of inertia, when the whole rest of the army was in retreat.
The suit jacket is already back on the wooden hanger, its sleeves hanging limply at its sides. The notary pulls off his shoes and his necktie. In this manner his office moves further away and vanishes for good. He has just remembered something and has rung for the maid. He wants to know if his son has come back home. He has not. And what about his wife, is she up yet? She’s sitting by the window in her dressing gown, watching out for their son, from time to time wiping the steamed-up window with her handkerchief, as if the mist from her own breath were keeping him from view. His wife is being overly dramatic, so the notary believes. The boy has long outgrown his soft cotton baby clothes, and now he needs his independence so as not to become a victim of fate. If I am the notary, in times long gone I too became the victim of fate, for no more profound reason than the softness of cotton and the cut of clothing that my mother continued to regard as suitable when even younger children were dressed in a more grown-up fashion. The memory of that ancient embarrassment, like other memories, was assigned to the notary along with his top-quality wardrobe; it was sewn into it like the stiffener in a shirt collar. Unfortunately, it always reemerges at the sight of his son with his round glasses and his hesitant smile. It does not make the wielding of paternal authority any the easier. Bringing up a little girl is a lot more enjoyable.
So what is the girl up to? She’s fallen asleep on the sofa in the living room, tired after a long cry. For some unknown reason, the maid delivered this information in a disagreeable and resentful tone before returning to her work. To minding the pots. To the personals in last week’s newspaper. She reads them furtively, ready at any moment to hide the paper from her mistress. She’s ashamed of wanting a better fate for herself. Her eyes swollen, she struggles through the tiny print, her index finger pushing the sluggish syllables along
. She would get married at the drop of a hat, before dinner even. She would leave the pots on the stove – let them burn. The miraculously acquired provisions, gotten by dint of long waits in long lines, she would abandon just like that, leaving them where they lay in the pantry. She’s had enough of the life that fell to her lot along with the linen apron. There’s no lack of lawyers. They don’t have to be notaries. Some are judges; others, more handsome, are attorneys. She doesn’t aim so high; in the columns of advertisements, she’s looking, for example, for a sign from a modest law clerk who doesn’t have to be well off. He needs only to be seeking an honest and thrifty partner; prosperity will follow in due course. The maid forgets too easily that she is lacking the most important thing: the right costume, which is indispensable if her fate is to change.
Could she possibly be sobbing again? No, she’s not the one who is crying. It’s the washerwoman’s son, the newsboy, in his hiding place on the roof of the building at the back of the courtyard. He too is evidently having a hard time, though like anyone he only wants what’s best for himself. The less significant someone is, the more unseemly their self-love appears to all those around them. But even the scrawny mongrel who slinks along by the wall and lives on scraps – even he brazenly wishes for the tastiest morsels for himself. He does not value his miserable life so very much as to hold back always in fear of the stick. Just an hour ago he managed to get hold of a loop of sausage and gulp it down on the spot. And if someone promptly let him have it with a walking stick, it wasn’t to rectify the damage, because it was too late for that, but rather out of the natural exasperation that second-rate figures can cause by the very fact of possessing their own will and their own desires.
Scuttling away with a yelp, the mongrel accidentally tripped the newsboy. The papers went flying in front of the entrance to the local government offices at the very moment when the clerks were stampeding out of the building. Nothing could have stopped them. They were not in the least afraid of their director, especially since he had been the first to abandon his duties – he hadn’t been seen in the office all morning. The washerwoman’s boy tumbled to the ground along with the newspapers. His cap fell off; a handful of coins and two or three battered cigarettes fell out of one pocket, a prized penknife and a large bolt for fastening streetcar rails out of the other. The cigarettes were trampled underfoot, and the penknife vanished instantly. The boldface news headline under the banner, ending in an exclamation point, immediately attracted attention. The government clerks picked up the soiled papers, some bearing heel marks. The newsboy’s knees were bruised and grazed. He took a long while getting up; during this time his newspapers disappeared just like his penknife, and his money went missing. While one coin rolled across the pavement and fell into a crack, another came to a stop under someone’s boot; there was no sign whatsoever of his wares. The passers-by were wrapped up in their own affairs and may not have noticed the newsboy’s fall, but they would not have ignored a coin without an owner; their very consciences would have made them bend down and pick it up. All this took place very quickly. Before the newsboy knew what was happening, he was out of business. A moment earlier he had been standing in the middle of the crowd, jostled on all sides, wiping his nose on his sleeve. If I am the policeman, there’s nothing more for me to do here, and I can simply stand at the street corner in my ill-fitting uniform and watch the incident with an absent stare. Yet if I am the newsboy, I’m going to have to pay for those newspapers – to hand over the last pennies that down in the basement of number eight my mother takes out of a worn purse which has seen better times. While he is still stunned by the accident, it’s hard to predict whether his dismay will spill like oil from an overturned lamp and explode in flames of anger, scattered embers of which are always aglow here and there. The newsboy, sore from his fall and robbed by those more respectable than himself, was still stifling his tears yet already in the throes of a powerless rage. He was still in possession of the large bolt from a streetcar rail and would gladly have made use of it, for instance hurling it at one of the windows of the government offices.
The policeman’s official diligence has its limits: it’s possible he would close an eye and pretend not to have seen such an act. In fact, considering the extent of the disturbances already alluded to, present here in the form of newspaper accounts, the sound of one smashed windowpane would be an inadequate finale. Even a dozen broken windows would have meant equally little. Then let’s say that the bolt hit the national emblem mounted over the entrance to the government offices. The sharp sound of a police whistle would confirm such a turn of events. As will become apparent at once, the emblem was not made of real metal; proof could be seen in the shards of gilded plaster strewn across the sidewalk, the crown knocked off along with the head, the beak elsewhere. Since it’s come to the destruction of a symbol, the same one for which the policeman once risked his neck in the trenches, the offense will prove to be a lot more serious. In such a case the boy would have to be dragged by the ear straight to his mother, the washerwoman at number eight. Let her sign the police report and pay a fine; if she doesn’t have the cash, let her borrow it from a neighbor. When the news-boy pulls free and runs away, the policeman will not give chase. He’ll promise himself through gritted teeth that he will not let this go unresolved. No kinder solution will be possible.
The clamor and confusion were nothing but a distant echo – and only one of many – of a catastrophic upheaval that was the start of all the troubles. Without it there would have been no political crisis, no crash or subsequent panic. Yet this upheaval could neither be seen nor heard; there was not a word about it in the papers. This is because it took place beyond the circle of the streetcar rails, beyond the ring of buildings that the eye could trace, in the marshaling yards used only by the workers in overalls. There the eardrums of the masters and apprentices were almost bursting.
AMID THE OMINOUS TURMOIL, which rings with nothing but false notes, I don’t need to listen intently, or even to guess, in order to know only too well what has happened. With eyes closed one could tell that the catastrophe was brought about by the machinations of those who have too much to hide. Without ever having seen those supposedly abandoned warehouses, the breeding ground of shady business, one could predict every element from the masonry to the roof tiles and not be wrong in a single detail. Hence the walls of blackened red brick and the permanently unwashed windows coated in gray industrial grime. Even if the occasional one is missing its glass, any pale ray of light will still be instantly swallowed up in the dust-clogged air. Electric bulbs glow dimly, powered by current that has been diverted here illegally; in the gloom they barely illuminate piles of cardboard boxes, wooden crates, and burlap sacks. Nor is there any need to open these packages to know what they contain: bars of brass for engraved nameplates, lengths of genuine mahogany veneer, real marble tops for café tables, and even window frames and copper plate for sills. Underneath are heavy cases with the familiar silver nails, unimaginable quantities of which keep being listed, though later on it’s impossible to find out what they have been used for. The scale of the undertaking has evidently warranted the surreptitious addition of a narrow-gauge rail line. The siding cuts among the filthy shops, making it easier for the men in overalls to transport the goods that have been put into a second, illicit circulation among stories. It’s thanks to the small freight cars that a feverish trade has arisen, the culminating success of which will be a pure profit distilled from the turnover – bottles of untaxed alcohol locked up somewhere in a storeroom. It is a certain thing that at the moment of the great crash, the shops too shook to their foundations. It’s even possible that the odd bottle broke; yet all the others survived, packed in cases in their dozens.
The tremor was accompanied by the ringing laughter of the masters and apprentices. The object hurled from high up with such a din was not even a homemade bomb. Rather, it had the weight and dimensions of the missing safe – exactly those, to a T. Yet it struck precisely at the so
lar plexus of the infrastructure, at the underground bunker hidden beneath the turf, in which the valve of a gas tank used for heating was right next to some electrical equipment and the compressor of an air-conditioning unit. As a result a hole was smashed in the ceiling, a transformer was crushed, and several pipes burst. The series of electrical discharges had catastrophic consequences, though, as had been planned, the far-reaching impact of the subterranean explosion did not affect the red-brick warehouses. The shocks traveled far, perhaps along the water lines. Whoever conceived the plan probably supervised the operation in person. Not alone but in the company of the overalled workmen, who made off-hand comments on the course of events, detecting from the color of the smoke and the sound of the explosions that the compressor alone must by some miracle have survived. In that case, they joked, instead of heating there’d be cooling. As they spoke, bandying strong words, they drew on filterless cigarettes and spat out shreds of tobacco. With a malicious pleasure they applauded the echoes of a disaster that demolished their own labors. Nothing captures hearts and minds quite like the monumental ebullience of destruction. Effortlessly multiplying the losses of the owner and employer, they gave him an appropriate seeing-off: let him regret not sitting quietly while everything except the safe was still in its place. As for me – because I was the one the safe belonged to – it was true that I began to regret things at once.
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