Magdalena Tulli - Flaw

So it remains only to admit that at dawn the streetcar set off, emerging from nothingness — that is the whole truth, and there will be no other. All accomplished facts preceding this moment must do without scenery, without backdrops or props. They are something understood, partly optional, added to the story like a misleading footnote, a sham appendix to the memory allotted, for example, to the notary along with the three-piece suit, or to the streetcar driver together with his driver’s cap. The moment this person got out to look at the tracks, it transpired that he wasn’t even dressed appropriately in a costume made of uniform fabric, but was wearing a plain off-duty suit of imitation wool. And when it comes down to it, the truth is that had it not been for the pathetic surprise that jolted the streetcar from its rhythm of riding and stopping, bringing it to a halt at a random point on its orbit, a uniform would have been unnecessary all the way to the end. Nor would the embarrassing circumstance ever have come to light that the suit is poorly made: the jacket too tight, the pants with uneven legs, one too long, the other too short, while, as if out of mockery, the side seams are held together with tacking thread. So long as everything proceeded the way it was supposed to, through the windshield one could see only the service cap, and even that indistinctly. And as for the cap, nothing was wrong with it.

Confronted with the evidence, the driver is forced to accept that since the start of the day the streetcar has lacked any kind of solid support beneath its wheels, while at times it was loaded beyond all measure. If I am the driver, I toss a mocking question into the void: how could it all have held together the whole day? But there will be no reply. He can merely shake his head and purse his lips. Deeper down, around his diaphragm, something else is gathering that cannot be suppressed: a powerful, acrid wave of empty laughter. So the driver stands by the tracks, looks at the streetcar, and laughs like a madman till his cap falls from his head. There is no reason for him to return to his seat. But if he has not actually gone mad, sooner or later he’ll calm down, grow solemn, pick up his cap, and dust it off. After looking into the emptiness of one’s own fate, it is hard to push on.

An airman hurrying from the gateway of number seven bumped into the streetcar driver. He apologized without stopping even for a moment, because he was in a hurry to return to the café at number one, where the gramophone was still playing at full volume. Nothing got on the driver’s nerves so much as those fox-trots, whose lively rhythms poked fun at his despondency. He walked up and down the car for a while, sitting in one place or another. Evidently not one of the many sitting and standing places was meant for him. He smoked a cigarette on the front platform, then wandered about next to the car, staring ever more distractedly now at the pantograph, now at the wheels, and now at the round zero, as if seeing it all for the first time. Then he began hesitantly to move away. His legs would have liked to take him home, but his mind could not decide which way it was supposed to be. So, walking off, he had to come back again, circle the streetcar, and head off at a brisk pace in the opposite direction. He looks down the streets leading off the square. Their pavement cannot be trodden upon. Every step is in vain, whichever way it leads. He can only aim a kick at a painted board and hear a dull, echoing thud in response. The distance is pure illusion — paint and plywood, nothing more. It’s true that there is little space here. Perhaps other stories contain more room, but even so, there’s no doubt that in each of them one would eventually come up against a wall, knocking one’s forehead on a board upon which a distant prospect appears to extend. The driver kicks the backdrop over and again. He will keep kicking it furiously till a cardboard patch falls off and reveals a hole that has been sawed out. He’ll manage to crawl through the hole; his cap will eventually vanish from sight. He is evidently destined to wander henceforth between stories, in the marshaling yards, amid the red-brick walls; to pass by the rusty platforms of mechanical hoists; to step on empty bottles abandoned in the grass. He will not find his way home, that much is certain. No road leads there.

THERE 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.