Magdalena Tulli - Flaw

The policeman’s official diligence has its limits: it’s possible he would close an eye and pretend not to have seen such an act. In fact, considering the extent of the disturbances already alluded to, present here in the form of newspaper accounts, the sound of one smashed windowpane would be an inadequate finale. Even a dozen broken windows would have meant equally little. Then let’s say that the bolt hit the national emblem mounted over the entrance to the government offices. The sharp sound of a police whistle would confirm such a turn of events. As will become apparent at once, the emblem was not made of real metal; proof could be seen in the shards of gilded plaster strewn across the sidewalk, the crown knocked off along with the head, the beak elsewhere. Since it’s come to the destruction of a symbol, the same one for which the policeman once risked his neck in the trenches, the offense will prove to be a lot more serious. In such a case the boy would have to be dragged by the ear straight to his mother, the washerwoman at number eight. Let her sign the police report and pay a fine; if she doesn’t have the cash, let her borrow it from a neighbor. When the news-boy pulls free and runs away, the policeman will not give chase. He’ll promise himself through gritted teeth that he will not let this go unresolved. No kinder solution will be possible.

The clamor and confusion were nothing but a distant echo — and only one of many — of a catastrophic upheaval that was the start of all the troubles. Without it there would have been no political crisis, no crash or subsequent panic. Yet this upheaval could neither be seen nor heard; there was not a word about it in the papers. This is because it took place beyond the circle of the streetcar rails, beyond the ring of buildings that the eye could trace, in the marshaling yards used only by the workers in overalls. There the eardrums of the masters and apprentices were almost bursting.

AMID THE OMINOUS TURMOIL, which rings with nothing but false notes, I don’t need to listen intently, or even to guess, in order to know only too well what has happened. With eyes closed one could tell that the catastrophe was brought about by the machinations of those who have too much to hide. Without ever having seen those supposedly abandoned warehouses, the breeding ground of shady business, one could predict every element from the masonry to the roof tiles and not be wrong in a single detail. Hence the walls of blackened red brick and the permanently unwashed windows coated in gray industrial grime. Even if the occasional one is missing its glass, any pale ray of light will still be instantly swallowed up in the dust-clogged air. Electric bulbs glow dimly, powered by current that has been diverted here illegally; in the gloom they barely illuminate piles of cardboard boxes, wooden crates, and burlap sacks. Nor is there any need to open these packages to know what they contain: bars of brass for engraved nameplates, lengths of genuine mahogany veneer, real marble tops for café tables, and even window frames and copper plate for sills. Underneath are heavy cases with the familiar silver nails, unimaginable quantities of which keep being listed, though later on it’s impossible to find out what they have been used for. The scale of the undertaking has evidently warranted the surreptitious addition of a narrow-gauge rail line. The siding cuts among the filthy shops, making it easier for the men in overalls to transport the goods that have been put into a second, illicit circulation among stories. It’s thanks to the small freight cars that a feverish trade has arisen, the culminating success of which will be a pure profit distilled from the turnover — bottles of untaxed alcohol locked up somewhere in a storeroom. It is a certain thing that at the moment of the great crash, the shops too shook to their foundations. It’s even possible that the odd bottle broke; yet all the others survived, packed in cases in their dozens.

The tremor was accompanied by the ringing laughter of the masters and apprentices. The object hurled from high up with such a din was not even a homemade bomb. Rather, it had the weight and dimensions of the missing safe — exactly those, to a T. Yet it struck precisely at the solar plexus of the infrastructure, at the underground bunker hidden beneath the turf, in which the valve of a gas tank used for heating was right next to some electrical equipment and the compressor of an air-conditioning unit. As a result a hole was smashed in the ceiling, a transformer was crushed, and several pipes burst. The series of electrical discharges had catastrophic consequences, though, as had been planned, the far-reaching impact of the subterranean explosion did not affect the red-brick warehouses. The shocks traveled far, perhaps along the water lines. Whoever conceived the plan probably supervised the operation in person. Not alone but in the company of the overalled workmen, who made off-hand comments on the course of events, detecting from the color of the smoke and the sound of the explosions that the compressor alone must by some miracle have survived. In that case, they joked, instead of heating there’d be cooling. As they spoke, bandying strong words, they drew on filterless cigarettes and spat out shreds of tobacco. With a malicious pleasure they applauded the echoes of a disaster that demolished their own labors. Nothing captures hearts and minds quite like the monumental ebullience of destruction. Effortlessly multiplying the losses of the owner and employer, they gave him an appropriate seeing-off: let him regret not sitting quietly while everything except the safe was still in its place. As for me — because I was the one the safe belonged to — it was true that I began to regret things at once.

A discreet silence would at least have made it possible to spare the installations, the buildings, and the pavements. What can be better than silence when truth leads nowhere? The masters have common sense enough not to expect me to believe in their good intentions. But they don’t give a hoot; they’re not in the least afraid, since they’re satisfied that once again they’ve succeeded in not giving themselves away. After all, didn’t the safe appear again at once, though empty? Did they not offer the required show of goodwill, eloquent expressions of false earnestness that for the sake of balance they must have laughed at in private? In the cross fire of questions, one after another of them would have presented his explanations, hesitating and stammering like would-be polyglots who only out of necessity are speaking in a foreign tongue. They would have maintained with hand on heart that the safe had been left in one of the warehouses by a simple oversight; that they had suspended it on the arm of a crane for the sole purpose of installing it in its rightful place without delay; and that everything that happened subsequently was a regrettable accident which was no one’s fault. As they were prepared to testify, the reinforced door was opened by the impact of the fall, and its contents, in their view, were swept away by the wind. It all scattered, no one knows where to: title deeds to local apartment buildings in the names of various clients of the photographer or parents of one or another grammar school pupil; certificates of treasury loans left in safekeeping by the school custodian and the policeman; security deposits for the rentals of stores; wedding rings waiting in pairs for the big day; various IOUs, the top one bearing the extravagant signature of the student, though it’s easy to imagine that there are no funds to cover it; and finally, thick and thin bundles of government bonds. In a word, everything that was of value in the entire neighborhood, and to top it all, a satin-lined box containing a diamond necklace of unknown provenance. And now it’s all gone with the wind. Interrogated on this subject, the masters would even have turned their pockets inside out as proof they had not taken a thing.