Flaw (15 page)

And now the rounded shape of the helicopter suddenly loomed out of the swirling clouds, stirring up a wind that almost blew the flags off the façades of the buildings, and knocked hats and grammar school caps from heads as if they weighed nothing at all. In the café the helicopter's roar had been recognized at once, from the moment it began to superimpose itself over the blaring sounds of the fox-trot. The gramophone abruptly fell
silent. The airmen hurried out onto the square, just in time to watch the helicopter land on the basalt cobblestones in front of the local government offices. Its blades spun slower and slower till they came to a complete stop. The general was the last to emerge from the café; he was not wearing his greatcoat or even his cap. Evidently he did sometimes forget things after all, thought the commander of the guard, and his heart pounded with joy that he would now have the coat, and the cap as well, as an unexpected bonus he could never have dared count on. Wearing the general's cap and greatcoat, he would have everyone under his command, including the pharmacist; the latter would regret having treated him like an idiot. The policeman too, who from now on would be obliged to stand at attention when he saluted him, and to deliver written reports. For what were threadbare suits, an ill-fitting police jacket, shabby local autumn coats, an overcoat with a fur collar, or even his own well-cut jacket with the metal insignia on the lapel compared to the general's woolen cloth and gold braid? Not to mention dark padded overcoats from goodness knows where – numberless, shabby, and of no value whatsoever.

At the last moment a junior clerk ran from the government offices with the portable shortwave radio, which had been left behind. He intended to hand it to the airmen through the door of the helicopter, but it was too late, as the blades were already turning again. The pilot, barely visible behind the frost-covered windshield, wore a leather flying jacket and dark glasses. The
helicopter's sides were coated with a thin layer of ice. But one only had to look more closely for a moment to see that the outside of the fuselage was made out of sheets of thick corrugated cardboard covered with silver foil. This realization alone gave rise to all kinds of doubts. It was hard to imagine how the helicopter could have survived as it flew high over the earth, perhaps from far away, with no ground beneath its landing skids, in dense clouds; or how the pilot had prevented it from crashing the moment it took off. But the officers in this story were paid their salary not for flying so much as for knowing how to refrain from asking questions and how to get by without answers. The ease with which they were prepared at any moment to hop into the cockpit, and their impressive immunity to doubt, were valued highly. The airmen earned their livelihood from not being tied to the ground, either by attachment or by fear. Unquestionably it was only their unparalleled nonchalance that allowed them to stay up in the air along with their aircraft. They were unsuited to anything else. It was quite possible that over there, in their own story, they flew exclusively in dummy craft like this one. Piloting them with a sure hand, they performed rolls, loops, and spirals whose frivolous elegance convinced the viewer that everything was in perfect order, and that the only thing needed to fly was sang-froid and an unshaken confidence in one's lucky star. And indeed nothing more was necessary. As the commander stood with the guard of honor and saluted the helicopter, as the order was given and the guardsmen gave
a farewell cheer, and the residents of the apartment buildings, who had come out onto the sidewalks, began waving their handkerchiefs – the helicopter suddenly rose into the air and vanished in the clouds. Only one piece of corrugated cardboard, its foil covering torn and aflutter, fell from the sky right at the onlookers' feet.

Then the snow began coming down in earnest, continually covering up traces. Its pure white buried the poorly constructed streetcar tracks and the smeared excrement. It went on for a good quarter of an hour or longer, till the supplies in the clouds were used up. When it had all fallen the clouds themselves disappeared, but now there came a harsh frost. Those who know about the explosion that rocked the marshaling yards in the morning will not be surprised by the frost: the compressor that by chance survived the crash had been turned on after the transformer was repaired. Impenetrable forests began to sprout on windowpanes, and this unexpected vegetation, silver like the coins lost earlier by the unfortunate newsboy from number eight, cut the residents of the apartments off from events taking place on the square. Though in fact, on the square hardly anything was happening. The commander's footprints could be seen cutting across the middle, from when he had crossed to the café to get the general's greatcoat. The steps were long and brisk, because the commander was fetching something that might as well have belonged to him. But in the cloakroom there was no sign of the coat. In the place where it had hung
before, a painful void stung the eyes. The waiter had gone too. His ruined tailcoat remained, hanging over the back of a chair. There was no one in the café and no one in the back rooms. Only the gramophone with its big trumpet recalled the fact that not long ago a party had been going on: a record was still spinning silently on the turntable. It was an expensive model of a kind that no one in the neighborhood owned. It too had probably come from the refugees' belongings. For some unknown reason a woman's hat with a feather lay in the corner. The front door, which the student had not bothered to close properly, was banging in the wind. Icy gusts made the white tablecloth flap; at the edge of the table there was still a pile of dirty dishes left over from the shared lunch – empty glasses, plates with scraps of pork knuckle, and dried smudges of chocolate mousse in the glass bowl. The unfinished tea had gone cold in the cups.

The student's uncertain footsteps zigzagged along by the walls of the apartment buildings as he returned with nothing. His steps mingled with others left a moment before by someone quicker than him. The snow, which was gradually easing up, still covered them partially till they became entirely illegible. In places the indistinct outline of a shoe looked more like the imprint of a dog's paw. At the corner it even took on the shape of a raptor's talons, only to turn back into the shape of a regular sole. Following this trail, the student found himself in the school yard at the very moment when his men were raising a cheer in honor of the new commander of the order guard, who
held the rank of general. The general had a fearful scar over his eye and in his speech the bluster of the leading character whose privileges he had always lusted after. Would he now wish to take revenge for his earlier humiliations, for example, a certain episode in which he was beaten about the head with a pair of boots? But what boots? All his indignities had been eclipsed by the dazzling braid, along with the attached memory of a golden string of successes adorning his whole life. The stern marshal with the piercing gaze in the picture frame would not be ashamed of such a general. Even the fact that he had a slight lisp was of no special significance, since from now on all he had to do was issue commands, and commands always sound convincing. The command “left turn!” sufficed for all the guards to turn their backs on the student in an instant; there was nothing but a clicking of heels and the creaking of the snow. Even if he'd tried to protest against this turn of events, now it was unlikely he, as a mere civilian shivering from the cold, could ever shout over the singing of the guards, which, when the order was given, had risen above the school yard immediately following the cheers. An army belt strapped round his ordinary jacket, the student looked rather foolish. His clothing hung shapelessly on his stooping shoulders. Only the general's eyes rested on him briefly. It was a cold, mocking gaze that was hard to endure, so the student turned and walked away.

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.