Magdalena Tulli - In Red

The foundations had once rested against a stratum of frozen groundwater. Felek expected absolute discretion. He destroyed the drawings without showing them to another soul, crumpling them into the stove to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. Yet his workers quit one after another. Adaś Rączka learned the truth from Max Fiff by chance as they were scuffling one evening behind the factory, shouting “flunky!” at one another.

“You’re both losers, you and that boss of yours!” grunted Max as he sat astride Adaś’s belly, blood dripping from his nose onto the other man’s overcoat. “The whole town’s laughing at you because you built on ice!”

Adaś smashed Max in the mouth.

“Take back what you said.”

Max snarled and bit. A piece of ear came off in his teeth. The pain sent Adaś into a rage. He grabbed Max by the throat till his eyes almost popped out; Max turned blue and, coughing blood, took it all back.

Yet Felek Chmura’s warehouses collapsed with a crash anyway one night. When the sun came up the next morning they were gone without a trace. Onlookers couldn’t stop staring at the astonishing empty space.

“They used to be here,” they shouted, tracing the remembered outlines in the air with their fingers. “They were here and now they’re gone; it’s like in the circus.”

The telegram from Hamburg, in which the notary gave word that complaints had been brought regarding the promissory notes, reached Felek in the pink parlor. He was just lighting a cigarette, but then he put the lit end in his mouth and cursed prodigiously.

“What’s this you’ve brought me, you damn fool?” he shouted at Adaś.

Slotzki picked the crumpled telegram from the floor with his blotchy hand and began reading it aloud, squinting through his lashless eyelids. Felek snatched the paper from him. He elbowed the girls aside and staggered toward the door. Madame took him by the sleeve. Wouldn’t he stay for supper?

“Let me go, you painted ape!” He pushed her away unceremoniously and just as he had stood there, he tottered down the stairs.

“Drunk as a skunk,” declared Slotzki, drawing back the curtain as Felek tripped on the curb.

“Mr. Chmura, don’t forget your overcoat, your cap!” Adaś Rączka called after him. Windows opened and closed. Felek Chmura halted for a moment and took a deep breath. It was chilly. In the meantime the heavy door had already slammed shut. He rang and knocked in vain.

“Open up, you won’t regret it,” Felek called to the watchman through the locked door. “I’ll give you fifty thousand just for turning the key.”

But the door remained closed, and Adaś had disappeared. Felek Chmura sat down on the sidewalk and started crying. A wad of banknotes fell from his hand. The wind snatched them up and for a moment they fluttered above the street. One got stuck on the roof tiles, another sank into a puddle.

The next day Chmura did not get out of bed. In the kitchen, from early morning they made infusions of linden flowers, a homeopathic remedy the doctor had prescribed for his ailment. He would drink a cup and drift into sleep. He slept like this the whole day, quite unaware that his wife, Stefania, was packing her bags. At lunchtime, when he was in his deepest slumber, an English tea planter appeared at his house with an Indian servant in a white turban. Stefania’s cases already stood in the hallway. As the Indian carried them down the steps, Stefania slipped quietly into Felek’s bedroom and put her diamond ring in its velvet-lined box on the bedside table. Adaś Rączka ran after them into the street, but all he could see was the hood of the departing dorozhka. He chased it all the way to the port. There, gasping for breath, for a moment he watched from a distance as the English planter offered Stefania his arm. When they merged into the throng, Adaś spat and turned on his heel. Fearfully exhausted, he dragged himself along one step at a time, his hand in his pocket clutching the box with the ring.

Chmura was sick for a long time; the fever did not abate for a moment. He couldn’t stop shaking from cold, though the stoves were heated day and night. He ordered the room to be kept dark. He would not let anyone light a lamp; the door had to be cracked ajar to let in a little light from the hall. But when someone opened it too wide, the glare reflected off the edges of the furniture and Chmura would raise an outcry, accusing the servants of deliberately tormenting him by shining a light in his eyes. His eyelids were permanently lowered, and for this reason he didn’t notice the cigarettes missing from the box or the diminishing volume of liqueur in the decanter. He spent hours staring at the striped pattern of the wallpaper; meanwhile furniture — chairs, armchairs, sofas — was being removed from the drawing room. The bailiff pulled out the workings of the gold clock in order to weigh it; Felek was told about this by the servants as the doctor was cupping him.

“What did you all expect?” he mumbled to himself. He couldn’t even move. The cups on his back clinked against one another.

The sewing shops had to be closed and the seamstresses let go from one day to the next without any severance pay. A crowd of women in calico headscarves came from the locked gates to outside Neumann’s building. Their lamentations could be heard on the second floor through closed windows and lowered shades.

“Move along there, move along,” the policemen shouted. “How are there suddenly so many of you?”

Truly, the sewing shops of Loom & Son would not have been big enough for all of them at once. The oldest ones had gone blind during the war retying snapped threads, the younger ones slaving over long johns for civilians; the most recent arrivals had not entirely lost their sight when the boom ended. Some of them could still see a little — outlines, light — and shook their fists at the façade of Neumann’s house. Those who were completely blind simply pounded their white canes on the sidewalk.

“Stupid cows,” Felek exclaimed in anger. “What are they after? Money? How did I profit from them going blind, dammit?”

“We deserve something!” the seamstresses wailed.

“Sure you do!” he wheezed, sticking his head under the quilt. “A whole reel of nothing!”

But when he was informed that they had pooled their last remaining money, hired a lawyer, and brought a lawsuit against him, he laughed to bursting, he roared with laughter till his belly ached, shaking the heavy bed on which the bailiff had already placed his seal.

The firms with which he had business ties declared bankruptcy one after another. The stenographers, who had filled the offices with the clatter of typewriters and flirted with the pomaded interns, lost their positions just like that, and began to have the worst possible opinion about men. They hung about in gateways late into the night, smoking and accosting passersby. Nightclubs called the Tivoli or the Trocadero went out of business; the real estate market choked on a sudden surfeit, and gold could no longer be bought for cash. A policeman stood day and night outside Felek Chmura’s door.

The crash affected the entire town, as if a wind had blown sand into the cogs of the factory machines and swept displays from the store windows, after which it quieted down, leaving the channels of turnover frozen in lifeless immobility. Agents of the insurance companies bought properties once owned by Felek Chmura, at knockdown prices.

The dry rustle of banknotes still in his ears, he floundered in the arid hell of lost faith. And the whole town with him. One night, waking unexpectedly, he pulled the bell cord and ordered a sleepy Adaś to open the drapes. Raising himself in bed, he looked for his star over the town hall. There was no trace of it there.