Aleksandar Tisma - The Book of Blam

HE IS DEPRESSED. He has lost the need to rebel, shout, and show that there is no connection whatever. He has lost the third eye. The scene has returned to normal: an impressive hall with Levantine religious motifs, a stage where an orchestra plays, benches where an audience listens and enjoys inner experiences. Nothing more. A beautiful hollow space, an empty palace with a new purpose. The blood of the massacred has been wiped clean. Everything is clean, everything beautifully lit. There is nothing for him here.

Trained not to interrupt, he waits until the end of the second movement to take advantage of the short pause, rise — the noise he makes blends into the general murmur — and move toward the aisle. The people in his row make room for him, surprised; several stand, looking after him and whispering, but he is unperturbed, certain he will never again appear like this among them. From the aisle he heads for the exit, alone but accompanied by the music, whose lilting harmonies once more fill the void. The farther he goes, the softer it becomes; it is like an escort, like a pair of eyes resting on his back. Funkenstein’s? He did not notice Funkenstein on his way out, but Funkenstein may well have noticed him, and he would have been as puzzled as the others. Though maybe not, if he had the same thoughts as Blam, if he knew what was going through Blam’s head.

Out in the vestibule, at the makeshift cloakroom, Blam puts on his coat, half expecting Funkenstein to follow, to leave the hall and join him, though Blam does not want him to. He turns. No one in sight. Nothing but the glorious gilt-trimmed walls tapering into vaults around the cupola, and the music softly playing. Well then, he thinks with a mixture of relief and understanding, Funkenstein has stayed behind, the victim of his “adoration.”

He passes through the wide-open door of the synagogue into the dark. It is cold, the wind is blowing, the streets are virtually empty. He heads for home, crossing New Boulevard at the blinking light and turning into what is left of Jew Street. Here there are a few strollers, couples, looking at shopwindows and clutching their coats and hats against the wind.

Main Square lies before him like a dark stage, the Mercury and the cathedral rising opposite each other in the background like a set. Lit only by the street lamps, they blend into the night sky, except for an occasional bright dot of a window. It is as though their tops had been destroyed, as though the terrible heat of a weapon had melted them and, upon cooling, they had taken on a new asymmetrical, ungainly shape, the shape of ruins. It is a scene from the coming war, the site of his future summons. “Miroslav Blam,” they will say up in the mansard or down in front of the building or out in the square. Or they will call out a number they have given him. He will step forward and put his neck in the noose or take his place before the firing squad. He will not dodge death this time; he will close the circle he left open; he will enable a death to happen that must happen; he will reveal another murder, another murderer, another victim — in a man in whom they would not have been revealed, a man who might not even have seen them in himself — as all his people had done before him, thus committing, as he now realizes, an act of the most profound truth.