Magdalena Tulli: Flaw

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.

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.