Magdalena Tulli - Flaw

Besides, the maid had no use for money — she would probably only have misused it if she’d been given it. She had been trying to save for her wedding, but who would marry her now that she had trampled her honor in the mud? If after all this she found employment anywhere at all without letters of reference, which the notary’s wife was regrettably unable to provide, she would have board and lodging as part of her position. But without a job she was once again an outsider here. The day when the streetcar had brought her and her trunk so that, with advertisement in hand, she could apply for the post with the notary’s family — that day continued to exist only in her imagination, like a calendar page lost among kitchen recipes, false by the very nature of things. The maid had no idea where she would go now. So she sat in the empty streetcar, with the same trunk as before on her lap, as if she still trusted that the streetcar would eventually move off and take her back where she had come from. But there was no return. Tears streamed down her face and froze on her cheeks. She sat there, expecting goodness knows what, till she grew cold. Then she asked the sentries of the order guard to let her into the shelter under the cinema. The sentries, with mock respect, opened the creaking door, from which there came a gust of stuffy air, then slammed it behind her again.

During this time other subordinates of the general were seeking in vain to establish who owned all the sacks of quick-lime, sand, and plaster that were stacked in piles in the auditorium of the cinema. Who had transported them there and who had unloaded them? Who had bought the cinema with a view to converting it into a quality fashion store with ready-made apparel? This was not known even to the general, though at one time he had been familiar with all the rumors circulating round the tables in the café. At this moment he was unable to resist an expressive gesture at the mention of the elegant store — a fluid motion of both hands evoking the suggestive idea of the female form, for he had already heard somewhere that the place was supposed to sell underwear. Women’s underwear, that is. The general raised his thick eyebrows knowingly and gave a wink with the eye that was not swollen. That told his listeners everything they needed to know: corsets fastened with hooks and eyes, suspender belts, close-fitting winter woolens, cabaret slips in black and claret, brassieres with bows, and so on. When thinking of the aforementioned items of attire, guffawing was thoroughly appropriate.

But the general too was mistaken. Just as there had never been any cinema here, neither could there ever be such a store. The past into which the cinema had disappeared, and the future from which the store was supposed to emerge, can exist here only as crazy imaginings. The pages of the calendar, both those already torn off and those that remained, in their entirety possess less solid reality than exists on the painted plywood boards with their ostensible perspective. Since the owner of the sacks of quicklime was not found, the general, acting under conditions of emergency, requisitioned these unclaimed items so the order guard could make use of them. Once the initial decision had been made — to confine the refugees in the shelter — he did not hesitate to take the next step, which followed logically from the first. Doubts, fears, hesitations, cowardly attempts to involve others in troubling matters that a person ought to solve alone, like a man — such things were incompatible with the gleaming braid on the general’s coat. To gain the respect of the public there was no need whatsoever to inform them of every step; quite the opposite, one should assume as much responsibility as possible, then lapse into firm and scornful silence. Once the worst has been overcome, a flash of braid is enough to allay various belated misgivings on the part of more delicate consciences. That was why the collar of the general’s greatcoat was embroidered with gold thread. The young clerks from the local government offices, dazzled like everyone else, realized in the face of this brightness that their opinions were no longer needed. From that moment on they kept their mouths shut. They merely stood at attention, heels together, permanently ready to obey.

If I am the general, I have little to say to them. What’s to be said here, when the situation is clear: there is a shortage of space. Why prolong the unnecessary suffering of stomachs laying claim to their dubious rights, the superfluous effort of lungs using air that was not theirs to breathe, or the futile beating of hearts filled with pointless resentment. Why consent to an existence that serves no worthwhile purpose but merely pays homage to the chaos of the transformation of material, the perpetual circulation of hope and despair, and in no respect, either figurative or literal, fulfills the requirements of orderliness. The general was calmly smoking a cigar he had found in the pocket of the greatcoat. Nothing had yet begun; for the moment the guards were only starting to bring buckets and spades borrowed from the concierges of the apartment buildings. The absolutely new idea for restoring order was a simple one. It required no preparations except the sealing up of a few ventilation shafts. Would the subsequent use of quicklime not be entirely advisable? The blotches of swirling fabric in every possible shade of dark blue and black would be swallowed up by a dirty white, which itself would then melt into darkness. Here and there a glint from house keys that had fallen from someone’s pocket, or a vial of heart medication no longer needed. Blue and black are helpless when confronted with the grayness of the quicklime in which they are to dissolve. Between the sticky, caustic layers, bodies are forced to renounce utterly the space of their life. In that place it becomes evident that life is a joke and death has no meaning, rendered buoyant as it is by large numbers. Numbers make no impression on the general, because he knows his duty. A sense of responsibility necessitates extreme measures. The refugees are a separate matter. They will die and will forget everything. Their sufferings will vanish with them. No acrimony will poison the future. As they depart they will take with them their unconsidered opinions about what happened to them; they will be ill disposed towards those who remain behind, and filled with painful disillusion. They will take with them their resentment at not being able to demand compensation for their losses, forgetting that those losses were no one’s fault. Without them the world will be better: cleaned of an accumulation of wrongs and reckonings, of distressing events and outdated cares, for a short moment it may even be capable of sympathy, close to a short-lived perfection, as if brand-new.

The general will not stop at anything, that much is sure. He seeks to carry out his duty conscientiously, then immediately to cast from his memory the details of what it fell to him to do. He would have found it especially intolerable to be called upon to explain his actions. But is he not afraid after all that at some point in the future some higher authority will take an interest in the matter of the shelter beneath the cinema? Perhaps someone will open it one day? Perhaps their spades will encounter the remains of fabric and padding, eaten away by quicklime? But what higher authority, for goodness’ sake, and what future? The true nature of the highest authority is permanent absence. Besides, where would they come from, when here even the director of the local government offices is missing, and a few yards from the square the space is blocked off by city landscapes painted on sheets of plywood?

Now things must move faster, as the general too is in a hurry. Having already been derailed from its course, the story has entered on a different track. The same one that every story ends up on unavoidably sooner or later, because it is the track of the world, always ready to give direction to whatever is moving without purpose or destination. In the quiet of early evening, the story is already heading straight towards violent and cruel events, as if there were no one to take care of it. If this story belongs to me, I am powerless to change its course or turn things back. But insofar as I have any influence at all, this is the last moment to consign to oblivion all that the refugees spoiled with their incursion; to forgive them their inconvenient existence and their resulting tendency to occupy space; to justify the persistent efforts of these characters to disappear somewhere, the beating of their hearts, and the spasms of their defenseless stomachs. Things have gone so far that I have no other way out than to admit I belong to this crowd, and to shoulder the troublesome burden of affiliation. There is no escaping it.