Flaw (14 page)

T
HERE WAS ONE RUMOR AFTER ANOTHER
concerning the disappearance of the director. Apparently, early in the morning he suffered a stroke on his way to work, the moment he heard about the putsch. His eyes flipped upward, then he fell headlong and did not get up. The ambulance, sirens blaring, took him no one knows where from or where to. He had also definitely been seen later on the square in the crowd of refugees: it was easier for him to hide in anonymity amongst them rather than take on an onerous struggle with the chaos brought about by the overthrow. Though on the other hand, as certain voices declared, chaos had reigned in the offices since time immemorial anyway; recent events had merely exposed it and revealed its dimensions to outsiders. From other, absolutely reliable sources it was known that around noon the director had been arrested at his home by order of the organizers of the putsch, who had to imprison supporters of the fallen regime. Yet on the other hand, it was also said that the new authorities pursued them in such a way that they would not be caught, and even made strenuous efforts to entice them over to their own side, offering cushy jobs that required nothing from them except an abandonment of all principles, an appropriate ruthlessness, and servile cynicism. The director had yielded to such a proposition, and for that reason he already had an office elsewhere, which by all accounts was much more imposing. And so even if it was true that in the early morning he had in fact had a stroke and had also been arrested, in light of further circumstances he could
expect no sympathy. Most people, including the clerks, came to the conclusion that he had gotten what he deserved.

The residents of the apartment buildings were constantly listening to the radio in the hope that out of the turbid waters of upbeat news they would be able to filter out a long-awaited droplet that would reassure them about the future. Against the current of the meager trickle of official information there flowed ever newer rumors about approaching final resolutions. Now it was an imminent landing by the allies to bring liberation; now it was Kolchak's forces, which somewhere out in the world would occupy the capital before suppertime and reinstate the legitimate government; now it was a band of partisans, armed to the teeth and promising to save the country from anarchy; now an international peacekeeping force was going to intervene and persuade the dictatorship to step down; now it was the arrival of the Huns, after whose passage not one stone would be left upon a stone. Ideas remained in constant circulation, bouncing against one another like marbles, but common sense rightly believed in only one thing: that lunchtime had already come and gone.

The helicopter expected after lunch was already circling, it suddenly seemed to the guards. Though only its faint outline could be discerned in the overcast sky. The airmen glanced up and shrugged: clouds were amassing over the square and soon it would snow. Yet even if the helicopter were actually to come, where was it supposed to land? Now the commander
of the guard had to solve the matter of the crowd occupying the entire expanse of the square – a problem that had already proved intractable for many hours. In fact, it seemed insoluble. The commander thought about it perpetually, as if in a fever, now inspired by the task of dreaming up a truly brilliant plan, now prey to irritation and disillusion. It would have seemed that the simplest thing was to lift the ban on crossing the line of the tracks and to disperse the crowd into the gateways of buildings as soon as the whir of helicopter blades was heard. But afterwards how could the refugees be pried from the courtyards, stairwells, and attics, and driven back onto the square? What sanctions could be imposed on the outsiders, and how could they be separated from the locals? What principle should be applied? The cut of their overcoats? The smell of mothballs? To put it differently, the commander did not know how to arrange things so that the square should be empty once again but that no one should be roaming the courtyards – that the crowd should disappear but not be freed. Temporary measures ought not to rule out a better solution when one was subsequently found. Various ideas were circulating on this subject too, but none of them seemed right. Even the simplest suggestion, involving the use of public transportation, was for obvious reasons impracticable. Nor was it at all clear where these people were to be sent, since it seemed beyond question that there was no place for them anywhere.

The waiter, meanwhile, was still trying to treat his wound,
stopping the bleeding with cold compresses. He had used up the entire stock of clean napkins from the back room of the café, and was already starting to worry about what he would say if he ended up after all having to explain this fact to the owner. He was of so little significance that there was no room for his problems. Because of the unexpected complication that had arisen, he had already begun to neglect his duties; he could not count on leniency. In this situation the easiest thing would be to relinquish wounded self-love like an additional piece of luggage when both one's hands are full. Forced to rely on his own resources, he shuffled restlessly about the back rooms without rhyme or reason, leaving bright streaks on the doorknobs and the paneling, and smearing dark red marks on the checkered floor tiles with the soles of his shoes. He was the very person who was supposed to clean up here – a character without any other functions, always available, and easiest of all to replace. Whereas those after whom he had to wash and sweep and launder tablecloths were for the café, just as for the whole world, the irreplaceable mainstay of the only order there was. The fox-trots blared out unsympathetically from the gramophone, driving the waiter with his suffering and his helplessness from the main dining room to the storeroom in the back, where his head continued to throb from the din. Had he been able, he'd have preferred to raise his head and join the merry uproar, laughing at everything along with those untouched by ill fortune. But no one ever saw him with his head raised. Out of occupational
habit, he was stooped in a permanent bow. Whether he liked it or not, he could not repudiate this abased body to which he had been chained.

What if he did not stop bleeding? Since help for the baker had been found at the pharmacy, the waiter eventually went there as well. Too late. A card was stuck on the glass door announcing that the pharmacist had been called away on urgent business. The waiter could see out of only one eye; when that eye saw the pharmacy was closed, he turned pale. He sat on the step, determined never to move from that place. If he had died there someone would have had to remove the body, which would have been rather heavy and, with its decease, absolved of all responsibility. True, it was the only body he had, but death severs such attachments too. It was difficult for him to argue with the general belief that the birth of a child was more important. But he was angered by this obdurate bias on the part of the majority, its condescending pity for small pink beings whose vulnerability inspires hypocritical emotions, until they grow up become ugly, turning drab like everything around them. The pity of the majority is reluctant to make sacrifices: custom dictates that its noble impulses are paid for by those it overlooks. Those who, for example, are entirely thrust aside in their drabness and have not even gained entry to the pharmacy. The waiter felt weak and for a moment he thought he was beyond help. But by good fortune the wound quite unexpectedly stopped bleeding; so he stood up and without further
ado left to clean up the back rooms of the café and remove all traces of the embarrassing scenes of humiliation and fear he had experienced there. It was easy enough to take a damp cloth and wipe away the bloodstains from the floor and the door handles. Only the tailcoat would not come fully clean. That was a true wrong and a serious blow. It was hard to say whether the waiter would be able to hold on to his job in a dirty tailcoat. And if not – what would he wear, and what would he become?

If I am one of those respectable citizens casting occasional glances at the square from an upstairs window, I have been able to watch it all simultaneously: the waiter staggering to the pharmacy, the pharmacist elbowing his way through the crowd, and the woman who had begun to give birth. The birth was only to be expected, since for some time the pregnant woman had simply been lying amid the suitcases. Her screams came from somewhere in the middle of the square and were lost amid the hubbub of other voices. But from an upstairs window she could plainly be seen, laid out on her own overcoat, her eyes shut tight, gripping the hem of her raised skirt as she yielded to the violent contractions. It had fallen to her lot to give birth right here, so she could not count on being screened from the curiosity of those watching from above, each of whom would have declared at this moment that the need for privacy was alien to the refugees, who were devoid of culture and lacked self-respect. If I am watching from an upstairs window, I consider
this birth to be very poorly timed, and I disapprove of the fact that the authorities permitted it to happen.

In the meantime the pharmacist, who was being reprimanded by the leader of the guard for causing a disturbance, but who was twice as old as him and furthermore indispensable in his role, grew angry and turned his back, cutting the discussion short. He knew enough to understand that the forces of nature cannot be squeezed into the boundaries imposed by bureaucratic injunctions, nor can they be held in check by slogans about public order. At this point one might ask suspiciously where, in the pharmacist's opinion, had the forces of nature come from in this crowded space surrounded on all sides by a backdrop painted on plywood boards. Yet those forces did their work in the space of less than a quarter of an hour. Before the snow began to fall, the first cry of a baby was heard. It was all over. A child had been born, according to the rumor that quickly made the rounds of the square and the apartment buildings. But no one had seen the child with his own eyes. The moment it had been given a diaper and wrapped in blankets, someone had passed it to someone else, and that was that. There was no way for the pharmacist to be in control of everything at the same time. The circumstances required too much of him; instead of the requisite knowledge, he possessed only a faint memory of dissection exercises carried out many years before as a student, and the vague recollection of illustrations from an obstetrics atlas he had once happened to glance at. His sleeves rolled up,
covered to the elbows in blood and fluids, he was just reaching for a towel.

It was quite possible that nothing aside from a birth could have moved this crowd, which since morning had grown only too familiar with misfortune. And indeed the crowd was enthralled by the birth, and horrified by the disappearance of the child. Everyone who was able took part in the search; eye-witnesses to the birth felt especially duty bound to do what they could, so they brusquely demanded information from the blind man. For he was the one who, for no apparent reason, had pushed among them at the most important moment and had obscured their line of sight. He had been forced to hand his cane over to the guards, and without this indicator his condition was not sufficiently obvious for them to leave him alone. Through his dark glasses he could not have seen anything, so he recalled nothing either, even when he was shaken angrily by the lapels of his overcoat. He jerked himself free, not understanding what they wanted of him, and clutching his instrument case ever more firmly. This was suspicious, and so his interrogators did not rest till they had wrenched the case from his grip and looked inside. It contained a violin. Amid the ensuing tussle it almost got smashed. Finally left in peace, for a long time the blind man passed his fingers over the instrument, stroking it and kissing it, still unable to believe it had survived. Everyone else, though, would have preferred to see the violin go to hell and the missing child found. Ignoring all that was going on around her, the
mother was demanding her baby. First in a whisper, seemingly exhausted by the exertions of labor, then soon afterwards in a terrible scream that gave people gooseflesh. Since the infant was nowhere to be found, they started urging the pharmacist to give her an injection to calm her down. In the end he had to comply. He liked to think of himself as a conscientious fellow, so he did not withhold the necessary medications from his own personal supplies, but he did so reluctantly and bitterly, mentally calculating how very much his own decency had already cost him.

The father of the family shouldered his way through the crowd like a madman. He thrust people aside left and right, looking into baskets and bundles. His three other children trotted along behind him, the youngest clinging to his coat so as not to get lost; he was preceded by rumors of a missing baby. His desperate search led him in ever-widening circles, and more and more people joined in; after the father passed by, the crowd rippled in a manner even more wearing than during the scourge of the street trade. It was for this reason that the commander of the guard laid hands on him in person and twisted his arm back so as to force him in a different direction.

This was no time for foolishness. The line of guards in their grammar school coats with the official armband on the sleeve was already pushing the crowd towards the cellars beneath the cinema, of necessity lashing out with their sticks, for otherwise they would never have managed to drive anyone away from their belongings. Although the residents watching from the
windows of their apartments had complete respect for property, violence was justified by a higher need: if these people had been permitted to burden themselves with their luggage again, the evacuation would have taken forever. True, during the operation the guards were laughing. And in this way, some people laughing, others frightened and anxious, together they gradually lost all their confidence and were helplessly plunged in the same despair.

As far as orders were concerned, all was plain: the center of the square had to be cleared immediately. Otherwise the helicopter presently circling in the clouds overhead would never have been able to land. It would have had to fly away empty, returning where it came from. Sending the helicopter back – which would be entirely the fault of the crowd, and of that sluggish inertia so hard to overcome – would have turned the whole hierarchy upside down. No amount of compassion for second-rate padded overcoats could have justified disrespect for an officer's uniform; in this matter every one of the locals admitted that the commander of the guard was right. In the end he had found it extraordinarily easy to recover the free space, despite the fact that for so many hours it had seemed an impossible task. All that had been needed was to remove the bundle of keys to the cinema from the photographer's drawer. In the space of a short moment there wasn't a soul on the square; all that remained of the newcomers were the ownerless suitcases. Anyone who wanted could have taken them. And all those
who had given their stockpiles of cigarettes to the refugees in return for a piece of porcelain now felt cheated and robbed. The recent presence, turned so suddenly into absence, was remarked on with all the more malice because while the crowd had still been encamped on the square, not all the locals had managed to express their opinion about its ways, make appropriate comparisons, or conclude that they were savages from goodness knows where and that destruction would inevitably ensue from their presence here. All at once it had become too late to say one's piece on this subject. No sooner had the square been vacated than to everyone's astonishment it turned out that the flower bed had survived unscathed. By some miracle the crowd had kept off it, not trampling it even when they were retreating under the blows of batons. If I am one of the local residents, in my opinion the guards deserve a special commendation for this circumstance. When it was all over, the policeman emerged from the gateway of number seven clutching a half-eaten chicken wing. The first snowflakes were falling on the yellow flowers.