Flaw

If I am one of those respectable citizens casting occasional glances at the square from an upstairs window, I have been able to watch it all simultaneously: the waiter staggering to the pharmacy, the pharmacist elbowing his way through the crowd, and the woman who had begun to give birth. The birth was only to be expected, since for some time the pregnant woman had simply been lying amid the suitcases. Her screams came from somewhere in the middle of the square and were lost amid the hubbub of other voices. But from an upstairs window she could plainly be seen, laid out on her own overcoat, her eyes shut tight, gripping the hem of her raised skirt as she yielded to the violent contractions. It had fallen to her lot to give birth right here, so she could not count on being screened from the curiosity of those watching from above, each of whom would have declared at this moment that the need for privacy was alien to the refugees, who were devoid of culture and lacked self-respect. If I am watching from an upstairs window, I consider this birth to be very poorly timed, and I disapprove of the fact that the authorities permitted it to happen.

In the meantime the pharmacist, who was being reprimanded by the leader of the guard for causing a disturbance, but who was twice as old as him and furthermore indispensable in his role, grew angry and turned his back, cutting the discussion short. He knew enough to understand that the forces of nature cannot be squeezed into the boundaries imposed by bureaucratic injunctions, nor can they be held in check by slogans about public order. At this point one might ask suspiciously where, in the pharmacist’s opinion, had the forces of nature come from in this crowded space surrounded on all sides by a backdrop painted on plywood boards. Yet those forces did their work in the space of less than a quarter of an hour. Before the snow began to fall, the first cry of a baby was heard. It was all over. A child had been born, according to the rumor that quickly made the rounds of the square and the apartment buildings. But no one had seen the child with his own eyes. The moment it had been given a diaper and wrapped in blankets, someone had passed it to someone else, and that was that. There was no way for the pharmacist to be in control of everything at the same time. The circumstances required too much of him; instead of the requisite knowledge, he possessed only a faint memory of dissection exercises carried out many years before as a student, and the vague recollection of illustrations from an obstetrics atlas he had once happened to glance at. His sleeves rolled up, covered to the elbows in blood and fluids, he was just reaching for a towel.

It was quite possible that nothing aside from a birth could have moved this crowd, which since morning had grown only too familiar with misfortune. And indeed the crowd was enthralled by the birth, and horrified by the disappearance of the child. Everyone who was able took part in the search; eye-witnesses to the birth felt especially duty bound to do what they could, so they brusquely demanded information from the blind man. For he was the one who, for no apparent reason, had pushed among them at the most important moment and had obscured their line of sight. He had been forced to hand his cane over to the guards, and without this indicator his condition was not sufficiently obvious for them to leave him alone. Through his dark glasses he could not have seen anything, so he recalled nothing either, even when he was shaken angrily by the lapels of his overcoat. He jerked himself free, not understanding what they wanted of him, and clutching his instrument case ever more firmly. This was suspicious, and so his interrogators did not rest till they had wrenched the case from his grip and looked inside. It contained a violin. Amid the ensuing tussle it almost got smashed. Finally left in peace, for a long time the blind man passed his fingers over the instrument, stroking it and kissing it, still unable to believe it had survived. Everyone else, though, would have preferred to see the violin go to hell and the missing child found. Ignoring all that was going on around her, the mother was demanding her baby. First in a whisper, seemingly exhausted by the exertions of labor, then soon afterwards in a terrible scream that gave people gooseflesh. Since the infant was nowhere to be found, they started urging the pharmacist to give her an injection to calm her down. In the end he had to comply. He liked to think of himself as a conscientious fellow, so he did not withhold the necessary medications from his own personal supplies, but he did so reluctantly and bitterly, mentally calculating how very much his own decency had already cost him.

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.

The student’s uncertain footsteps zigzagged along by the walls of the apartment buildings as he returned with nothing. His steps mingled with others left a moment before by someone quicker than him. The snow, which was gradually easing up, still covered them partially till they became entirely illegible. In places the indistinct outline of a shoe looked more like the imprint of a dog’s paw. At the corner it even took on the shape of a raptor’s talons, only to turn back into the shape of a regular sole. Following this trail, the student found himself in the school yard at the very moment when his men were raising a cheer in honor of the new commander of the order guard, who held the rank of general. The general had a fearful scar over his eye and in his speech the bluster of the leading character whose privileges he had always lusted after. Would he now wish to take revenge for his earlier humiliations, for example, a certain episode in which he was beaten about the head with a pair of boots? But what boots? All his indignities had been eclipsed by the dazzling braid, along with the attached memory of a golden string of successes adorning his whole life. The stern marshal with the piercing gaze in the picture frame would not be ashamed of such a general. Even the fact that he had a slight lisp was of no special significance, since from now on all he had to do was issue commands, and commands always sound convincing. The command “left turn!” sufficed for all the guards to turn their backs on the student in an instant; there was nothing but a clicking of heels and the creaking of the snow. Even if he’d tried to protest against this turn of events, now it was unlikely he, as a mere civilian shivering from the cold, could ever shout over the singing of the guards, which, when the order was given, had risen above the school yard immediately following the cheers. An army belt strapped round his ordinary jacket, the student looked rather foolish. His clothing hung shapelessly on his stooping shoulders. Only the general’s eyes rested on him briefly. It was a cold, mocking gaze that was hard to endure, so the student turned and walked away.

In the morning it had seemed that the thread of his story line needed simply to be tightened for it to keep all the other ones in check. But now, frayed and snapped off in the middle, it is of no more use. If he only could, the student himself would rip it out of the warp of the story, toss it down, and trample it underfoot in fury and contempt. Betrayed by himself as well as by others, he had no one else to count on. That was why, as he left the grammar school, his footprints could lead only to the apartment building at number five. On the way he stopped once and from under a layer of snow dug out his stick, which he’d lost in the morning and which had been lying in the gutter all day. He hadn’t noticed it because he had been holding his head so high; nor had his men, who had also been bursting with pride. Now, as he walked along with eyes fixed on the ground, he spotted it at once. It must have fallen out of the streetcar when the refugees tripped over it during their arrival. It could be used as a walking stick. And that was what he did, because he was exhausted. But he also felt tormented, and hence ridiculous; and he was utterly mocked, and thus in despair, having been plunged into ridicule by a barely noticeable individual who had unexpectedly pulled himself from the depths of indignity. He had been able to do this only through a fierce tussle on the borderline between ridiculousness and despair. Because it is out of the despair of the ridiculous and the ridiculousness of the desperate that there arises such a change of roles; it is possible only when good fortune produces another character even more susceptible to ridicule. Self-love leads one to shun banality and secondariness, even if it means going it alone, even if it has to be at someone else’s expense; and it makes one yearn for special means of expression — the firm tone, the disdainful glint in the eye, the supercilious pose — as if for one’s own salvation.

The student still finds it hard to believe that a figure with no merits whatsoever to his name had, out of nowhere, become the commander of the guard. Could this possibly mean that promotion to commander of the guard meant nothing? Deprived not only of the gold braid but also of the guard that he himself had created, demoted by circumstance to a position even lower than the rank-and-file guardsmen, he had lost faith in his lucky destiny, and pride had gone out of him like the air from a pricked balloon. Alas, without faith and pride he was of no importance. There was no cause within view that he might take up, no place where his presence might still have any meaning. His high boots reminded him of events that aroused his repugnance, so he gladly left them on the mat outside the door, along with the remains of the stench that still clung to the soles. He pulled off his belt too. All he wanted now was to lock himself in his attic room. There he is, lying exhaustedly on the bedspread. From time to time he still belches from the lavish meal, but when hunger comes he will not find so much as a slice of bread at home. He lights a cigarette, his last one, and the air over the bed grows opaque with smoke. The student cocks his head and listens. Footsteps on the stairs stop at the floor below. So for the moment no one is coming for him. He would prefer it if later too it does not occur to the general to shut him up in the shelter beneath the cinema. But he does not know what he’ll do with himself if he is left alone. He blows out smoke and stares through the window for such a long time it brings tears to his eyes. Outside is a clear sky cold as ice.

The residents of the apartment buildings willingly acknowledged that the resolute steps taken by the new leader with the rank of general exposed the underlying indecisiveness of the former leader with no military rank whatsoever, revealing his excessive scruples, his weakness for utterly civilian sentiments, and his lack of a sufficiently clear conception of what was proper and what was reprehensible. He had not been a true hero, prepared to do whatever it took to achieve an end that justified the means; this much was easy to admit after the fact. The first of the bold decisions by which the general showed he was a man of action was to keep the refugees in the shelter beneath the cinema, since they already happened to be there, standing in a crush just as they had stood earlier in the street-car that brought them, as they waited for someone to let them out. If I am the general, I do not think especially highly of my idea, but I have to accept that for the moment no better one is to be found. Because even if, with an exceptional effort, the refugees were to be deprived of the property, so problematic for the public, that was their lives, little good would come of it — for what on earth was one then supposed to do with a quantity of useless bodies so great it made one’s head ache? They would all still be sprawling about in that space, and their lifeless inertia would just make matters worse. There would be even more of a hurry to find a way out of an even more troublesome situation. In the general’s view, leaving the refugees in the cinema was only a partial solution, though that alone was a great deal better than the timid procrastination seen thus far — than ducking the necessary steps — than relying on the benevolence of fate, in the hope that a solution would appear of its own accord. In the interests of order, all that needed to be done now was to round up the orphans.

Yet the hunt carried out noisily by the order guard was unsuccessful. The children were not found. They proved smarter than the guards; in addition, they had little to lose. The guardsmen captured only one little boy with mourning black on his sleeve and under his fingernails, and that by chance, as he was stealing sugar for his pals from some kitchen. Caught by the lady of the house and her neighbors, to begin with he fought like a wild animal, kicking and biting, till he ran out of strength. Later he allowed himself to be led to the general’s staff, which was operating from the café at number one, and there, staring dully at the floor, he confessed to the clerk interrogating him that he had crawled through a window after removing the pane. The rest of his gang was stationed on the rooftops, serving under the command of a leader armed with a real revolver. For the information he had revealed, the boy concluded by demanding a bar of chocolate. If he had been questioned further, it might have come out that after the interrogation he expected to be set free. It was his hope to return in glory to the roof, where he would distribute pieces of chocolate to those older than himself. The general ordered him to be locked up in the storage area behind the cloakroom. The notary, who was now participating in the work of the staff, heard the boy’s statement. He went home to check in his drawer, and his worrying suspicion was immediately confirmed.

He had to inform his wife as soon as possible, so he waited for a single moment of quiet and calm — but in vain. In his apartment the storm raged unabated. His wife had quarreled with the maid about the chicken, the last wing from which had been given to the little girl when she woke from her long afternoon nap. A chicken had two lower quarters and two upper quarters. What had happened, then, to the carefully divided whole, of which three fourths were missing? As she conducted her investigation, the notary’s wife was already partly aware of the scandalous truth. It had already come to her attention that the concierge had seen the policeman — who would have thought it, looking at that pudgy, lumbering maid — slipping out of the house down the service stairs, his uniform unfastened, a portion of chicken in his hand. It was not that three quarters of a chicken had gone missing, though that in itself was an absolutely unacceptable loss. The point, briefly put, concerned much more significant moral damage, things that one could not close one’s eyes to, that were an offense to decency. The lady of the house had suffered terribly; her confidence had been abused and her home brought into disrepute. She did not have to tolerate vice under her roof a moment longer. She cared nothing for any other consideration; her conscience was clear.

But before the maid was given her notice, the son returned unexpectedly, frozen to the marrow, his nose and ears almost dropping off with cold, and with cracked glasses. When he appeared in the doorway the domestic argument, which had been going on since morning, dissolved temporarily in tears of relief. The lady and the maid spontaneously fell into one another’s arms. Without wasting a moment, they lit the stove, heated the broth, and mixed up some egg yolks and sugar. The little girl came running in and clambered onto her brother’s lap to warm his nose and ears with her sticky little hands. The notary, making a display of sternness, demanded the return of the revolver, which, however, proved impossible — the gun had remained on the roof, in the hands of the unpredictable news-boy from number eight, a notorious hooligan. All that could be done was to reassure the general that the chamber contained only a single bullet, as the notary knew best of all: he was keeping that bullet for himself, just in case he finally grew sick of life. One bullet was not a lot, but it was also far too much, since any person could be hit by it. For this reason the entire staff attempted to stop the general from acting; action seemed to all of them to be just as dangerous as inaction. In principle the loaded revolver ought sooner or later to be fired, though they were counting on the imperfect nature of the rules and the fact that from time to time they failed to operate. Maybe this rule too would not work — and even if it did, let it at least affect someone else. No one wished to part with life, including the notary, who had played the biggest role in bringing about the present situation and in fact was responsible for it. Each person had his own disagreeable notion of what might happen next. And because of all this no one knew what to do. To put an end to the disorder, a punitive expedition needed to be sent onto the roof. But the policeman had his own ideas; no longer young and carrying something of a belly, he preferred to announce over the megaphone that the newsboy’s misbehavior would be for-given and his morning fine annulled if he agreed to come down from the roof. Why would he not listen, having just a moment ago been betrayed by his friend? So long as he too had someone to betray, all was not lost.

And when the business was brought to a successful conclusion — when the tearful washerwoman took her recalcitrant son off to the basement of number eight, and the general got his hands on the revolver — at that moment the conspiracy of local and outside boys was finally broken up. What belonged here was once again separated from what had arrived from else-where, and this was the first step in coming to grips with the disorder. For all concerned it would have been safer if the gun had been returned to the drawer from which it was taken. But such a solution, incompatible with the general’s will, was no longer possible. As for other matters, in the opinion of the guardsmen they were looking better and better. The children from the orphanage had nothing left to wait for, crouching half frozen on the roof of the government offices. They began waving a less than clean white handkerchief as a sign they had had enough. Held at gunpoint by the general just in case, they came off the roof one by one down the fire escape stairs into a circle of guards. Then, hands raised and eyes on the ground, in a huddled group they waited under escort in the middle of the square to see what would be decided in their case. Observed from a distance against the background of the grammar school coats — for example, from a window overlooking the street — even the tallest ones didn’t seem so very big. Evidently not much was needed to put them in their place. The moment they began to get really cold they started to cower and sniff. If I am standing in the window, I believe that snuffling suits the orphans and matches their black armbands much better than running wild. The peaceful residents of the apartment buildings have a right to expect gazes fixed on the tips of shoes; they are entitled to count on quiet and humble behavior that does not clash insolently with the meaning of tight-fitting, frequently patched, threadbare little jackets. But in the question of the orphans, what on earth could be decided? They were taken to the shelter beneath the cinema, and that was all. There they could at last warm up, but on the other hand the crush was oppressive as they stood squashed between the overcoats of grown-ups. They could barely be heard as they whimpered about the lack of air.

If I am one of the residents watching from behind a lace curtain, the thought of the refugees locked up in the shelter does not worry me. Rather, I view everything as ending at its heavy door. The space that can be imagined on the other side doesn’t even belong to this story. All I know is that the problem has ceased to exist, and the foreign body has been removed. The original state of affairs, which had lasted happily before the refugees arrived, has been restored. Having burst so obtrusively into the very middle of a familiar space that was neither large enough nor sufficiently well supplied for everyone, they had nevertheless finally been excluded from it, once and for all removed from the field of vision. What a relief it was for the residents. In this manner, before their very eyes, the story was heading towards an auspicious conclusion. Not a hair on anyone’s head had been harmed and no one had suffered any wrong, aside from a few bruises and a certain amount of spilled blood.

In the meantime the row at the notary’s house, which had died down for a moment, flared up again. Along with the return of the boy there had once more arisen the issue of the chicken quarters that before had not added up, and though the equation was finally balanced, the solution of the mystery led to further suspicions and further revelations. There was no end to the shouting. An answer was mercilessly demanded as to how the boy could have passed down the kitchen hallway unnoticed and then come back the same way carrying the pieces of chicken, the revolver under his jacket. Where was the maid at that time? Why was the door of her room closed? Faced with such insistence from the lady of the house, the son eventually revealed what he had seen through the keyhole as he had been creeping into the kitchen: a student cap casually thrown onto a stool. And since the matter had come up, he tried to say what he had heard as he paused outside the locked door, but he was interrupted. It was already too much. Enough to give the maid her marching orders just like that, without discussion. Things had to end with a dismissal. Because if it was no longer a matter of circumstantial evidence but of a certainty, and if it wasn’t just the policeman but also the student, there was no knowing who else there had been. The maid would not say who else for anything. If that came out too — she had lost hope of being able to conceal anything at all — she would swear she had only been sewing buttons onto uniforms. The lady of the house was at a loss for words. Words were superfluous; all that was needed was to tip the contents of the maid’s trunk onto the kitchen table under the lamp to make sure nothing would be stolen — and such a possibility had to be taken into consideration since she had not shown a shred of decency. But no object from the household was found in the maid’s things — not even a certain silver spoon that had gone missing from its set a couple of days before. It was in vain that the lady of the house ordered the girl to turn out her pockets; there was nothing there either. After that she no longer knew where else to look. The matter of the spoon was of no consequence to the notary; because of the coup he had lost a great deal more, but since morning he had had time to come to terms with his losses, and by evening he was merely calculating what he still had. And his desires, like those mortally exhausted soldiers left in a hopeless position, were ready to surrender. When all of the maid’s assets and liabilities had been scrupulously reckoned up, at the end the value of the silver spoon was subtracted. And what turned out was what was supposed to turn out — that she was not owed anything whatsoever.

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.

The glow of evening heralds an approaching finale. It pulses beneath closed eyelids. The heavens will flame crimson until at some dark moment stars appear. It is only a certain quantity of silver nails, embedded in the fabric covering the vault and needed only to hold up the folds of satin, or rather of cheap, shiny sateen, the same material used in the linings of the overcoats. The nails have been hammered in firmly and permanently, yet all the same they can never be properly counted: they hide in the folds then wink mockingly from the edges first of one constellation, then another, proving that arbitrary boundaries mean nothing. The familiar names of groups of stars are nevertheless scrupulously listed on the invoices, without any reference to symbolic meanings: in the columns for amount and type of material, every metaphor is converted into small change. Does this mean that the stars are used only for successive, ever more artful abuses — that their very existence creates the groundwork for subterfuge? Are they otherwise unnecessary? Far from it. If the return of the silver nails were to be demanded in strict accordance with the invoice, there would be nothing to hold up the vast sheet of dark-colored fabric that is the lining of the sky. It would inevitably come fluttering down, revealing a structure of rough pinewood boards. But no one would even see it. The whole world would be thrashing about in the shiny folds, amid a fearful din of confused voices and scattered thoughts that would be lying everywhere like broken glass.

In the dingy warehouse the master craftsmen are calmly playing cards for a diamond necklace taken from the notary’s safe; it lies on the table in an open velvet-lined box. No one is going to claim it now. They have no worries about their own business. All the principle installations are in their hands and all will continue to turn a profit for them. Only their perpetually smoldering anger at being condemned to a life without women suddenly ignites within them as they fling down a king on top of the queen of hearts. The masters regard their clandestine exploitation of the back area as their one and only privilege, barely sufficient compensation for the incomprehensible restrictions placed upon them; they will not stop at anything to protect it. Anyone who sought to prevent them would have to be prepared for the worst — for a mad escalation of losses, and destruction that can scarcely be imagined before it happens. It makes no difference to them whether anything remains intact, and the only thing they will insist on is the principle of having their own way. Anyone who cares about more than profits and losses, in turn, has to bend beneath their steadfast indifference, since in indifference lies strength, while in attachment there is only weakness. If this is my story, I am forced to negotiate, to accede to humiliating compromises, to make concessions, without losing hope.

From a certain point of view there are no made-up stories. Towards the end, all appearances to the contrary, each one turns out to be true and inevitable. Each one is a matter of life and death. Anyone who spends time in its unseen back area has to accept all the shared and ownerless pain it contains, spilling this way and that — because the channels through which it flows are all connected. It may be that every character curses the place that has fallen to his lot, certain of having been cheated. Events are followed with suspicion, like the questionable numbers popping out of lottery machines. But the more profound one’s despair and doubt, the more powerful the belief that some almighty and impartial higher authority will render judgement, weighing wrongs and making amends for suffering. And if for some reason this is not possible? They would accept even bare-faced injustice and malicious disrespect more trustfully than helpless silence. If this is my story, they will forgive me all my transgressions. Helplessness alone will prove to be truly unforgivable, because it alone offends every one of the characters, upsetting their sense of purpose and wounding them by depriving them permanently of hope. As the ending approaches, there is no one left to take on the weight of all the failures and humiliations that were too much even for those most used to carrying them. If this tale belongs to me, at the present moment I merely squeeze my eyes shut so as not to see anything at all. Am I not the very last character of all here, the one who in the end must assume the entire pain alone?

As the conclusion of the tale draws near, the singing of guardsmen rises over the square. The singing calms anxiety and clouds thought. It brings a waking dream to the choir, and to the first floors and the balconies as well. While the guards keep singing, they dream of courage and of brotherhood unsullied by the filth of personal calculations. The songs have no power of their own but draw strength from the stillness. They are able to ring out so resonantly because the other sounds of the world have suddenly fallen silent. A sentry watching the door to the shelter pokes the snow sleepily with one of the walking sticks confiscated from the refugees. Let’s say he happens to have been issued the white cane. Yet this is of no significance — there will not be any further occasion for him to use it to impose compliance. At some point he is bound to be surprised by the oppressive quiet in the place where previously there had been a muffled hum of voices. He cautiously opens the sealed entrance and looks into the cellar that his commander ordered him to guard. It is empty, completely empty from one end to the other; no one is there, though the air is thick with the smell of mothballs and breathing. The sentry cannot believe his eyes. He calls his comrades and his superiors, he calls the policeman, he runs to the general himself. Those who were confined there have vanished without a trace, even the children from the orphanage, even the notary’s maid — yet the padlock on the door was untouched. Encircled by his staff, the general examines the padlock closely as an incomprehensible curiosity. Each person separately has the fleeting impression they are dreaming, for there is no other way to explain what they are seeing with their own eyes. But common sense is unable to rebel in the face of the evident.

Nothing can be reversed; what is done cannot be undone. A disturbing sense of unease sweeps over all those involved, as if they suddenly felt someone’s eyes on their backs just when they were sure that what they were about to do was no one else’s business. They are immediately struck by some unspecified fear, even though they had already gotten used to other people being afraid of them. After all, everyone knows that only the dead pass no judgment and acquiesce humbly to everything. So now it must be accepted that an action which would in no way have offended the dead might well be denounced by the survivors. They cannot be expected to forgive it all easily: the deliberately sealed vent, the spades, and the sacks of quicklime prepared ahead of time. Their outrage, it would seem, broke free at the same time they themselves did; it will take an unpredictable course, and each of the guardsmen wonders where else it will lead.

At the general’s request, the residents were questioned with regard to the disappearance of the refugees. But here too the inquiry ground to a halt. No one had seen a thing, though as the general kept repeating, and after him the policeman and the guards, it wasn’t possible that so very many witnesses should have failed to notice the departure of such a large crowd. Then someone was lying, the general was forced to conclude, and someone perhaps was guilty of treachery. What if the treachery were to go unpunished; what if the guilty party avoided being unmasked and, even worse, stood there saluting the general with a click of the heels as if nothing had happened? Yet the details of this affair, the question of the unaccountable disappearance of so many people at once, baffled the minds of all those who attempted to fathom it. If this is my story, I will allow them to drop the matter, exhausted as they are by their futile inquiries, as a mystery that for them cannot be solved.

Evidence of the fleeting presence of the refugees has remained only in the pictures taken by the photographer. Here a little girl looks directly at the lens; only her eyes can be seen from behind the pillow she holds in her arms. Here people with empty jars form a line for water, snaking round the shut-off faucet; here the orphans in patched clothing reach for a basket of rolls, licking their lips in anticipation. In the background is the crowd, always the same, dragging their suitcases along and stooping under the weight, sitting on them, not allowing themselves easily to be separated from their belongings. If these people were asked their opinion now, they would surely agree that it would have been best not to take any luggage with them at all. But who could have known ahead of time, they would add with a shrug. They would not have liked the photographs taken on the square, where they had found themselves against their will and where their feelings had been trampled underfoot. For sure they would have wanted the photographer to destroy the pictures along with the negatives. If they had found out that, on the contrary, he intended to sell them for a handsome sum to certain astute press agencies, they would have been indignant. Seeking to prove that those pictures contained images taken out of context, false and of no value, they could have shown numerous private photos from their wallets, on which, it had to be admitted, they came out incomparably better. And the earlier pictures, in which they appeared in the fullness of their good looks, good health, and prosperity, would be a proper memento of them. Their eyes gazed into the future without a trace of terror; their clothing was brand-new and not yet disheveled by fate. This is what ought to have remained as their visiting card in the present story when they themselves had already left it. But from the very beginning the refugees’ opinions were not consulted in any matter, and now that they are gone, they count for even less.

Alas, if someone had hoped that after their disappearance the frost would ease up or the guards would turn back into schoolboys, subsequent developments were to disappoint them. It was the armbands on the school coats that created the guards, and they are easier to put on than to take off. Now the threads of local stories, which in the view of the residents ought to have been the most important, had suddenly been snapped off at a random moment as if in themselves they were of no significance. The notary had managed to drag himself out of bed in the morning, but he had not even made it to his office. The policeman had begun his rounds but hadn’t finished them. The maid had prepared lunch, but the family had not gathered round the table. After disposing of the remnants of the foreign story that had encroached on the local tale, the latter ought to have continued smoothly on. It would have been nice to believe that nothing had happened. Or that what had taken place was a transitory and inconsequential interruption in the course of more important concerns, such as family life, work, and secret passions. But the desired return to the point of departure ceased being possible when the story of the notary lost its original cohesiveness. After the obstacle that blocked its advance was removed, the story itself no longer had any meaning. This slackening off makes itself felt ever more acutely. The notary falls asleep in an armchair, and his desires yield to the forces of inertia, like the aforementioned soldiers wearied by a hopeless fight who finally leave their fortress under a white flag of surrender. The policeman, who from morning till evening has done everything he could, dozes off on a kitchen stool while the water cools in the basin in which he is soaking his corns. The singing stopped some time ago, but it still rings in the ears. The residents won’t even notice when they drift into the sleep they emerged from in the morning. Bodies in one place, clothing in another — arranged tidily on hangers, and no longer needed here. An unbroken quiet will take over, like inside a glass ball in which, after a vigorous shaking, everything returns to its place.

In the meantime, however, the general is unable to regain his composure. What he ordered to be locked up should have remained so, period. The general is not fond of surprises, especially those that require additional explanations, because as a seasoned soldier he is well aware that additional explanations never make sense and serve only to pull the wool over people’s eyes. All he can do is blame the sentries. The absence of the crowd is nothing but a special form of presence, and what has changed is in essence of secondary importance. Since the refugees are no longer here, they must be somewhere else, that much is obvious. But if such is the case, where are all those people now? Where is the woman in the white fur coat, where is the pair of newlyweds, their wedding outfits sprinkled with confetti? That the general does not know. Nor does he know where the schoolgirl in pigtails is, along with her elderly grandmother, who wanted all along just to sit down comfortably somewhere, nothing more; or the blind man with the violin in a case. And above all the family that in the confusion had lost its newborn baby. If the general wanted an answer from me to the question that was tormenting him, he might receive one, but he would not believe it. I close my mouth and will not say a word to the general. For sure? What if I am pressured? What if a peremptory command is issued, backed up with the irrefutable argument of a cold gun barrel on the back of my neck? I admit this would come as a shock. But even then, no. For the privilege of not opening one’s mouth it is worth paying any price. To the very end there is hope, however slim, that resistance will triumph. That by some miracle the mechanism, imperfect by its very nature, will once again jam before the fatal click of the firing pin. As the story comes to an end only one thing is worth counting on: the failure of the rules, and a beneficent confusion that will blunt the inexorability with which effect follows on the heels of cause.

Baffled by the mystery without a solution, the general above all wants to know the truth. But the truth, long ridiculed and rejected, would now sound like a bad joke. Did it not circulate in its time in the form of a rumor about taxicabs that were supposed to come for the refugees and take them to a better place? At that time too it failed to convince the general. This is a sign that it is not meant for him. Yet it does exist. It declares that the refugees are now living in America. Even if it were not obvious why it should be America in particular, still the inquisitive residents would have no choice but to accept this fact. How the crowd got there is a more complicated affair, though at the same time, on the contrary, the simplest thing of all. The answer may be difficult or easy, depending on who I am.

So then, if I am the baby born at the wrong time — and could I be anyone else? — the answer is easy, and I know all there is to know about this matter. I’m thoroughly familiar with every detail and every expense associated with it. Everything here belongs to me: the glints of light on the windowpanes, the yellow of the plasterwork, the white of the clouds, the smell of soapy water, the heaviness of the basalt cobblestones. But there are only as many of these possessions as will fit in the heart and the mind. In order to communicate with the people carrying out the work, such things have to be converted into money — the rustling harmonies of banknotes. I use my slender means sparingly — they have to cover general costs like the decoration of interiors, and lighting, and the maintenance of the installations, not to mention the personal needs of notaries and their wives, children, maids, and concierges. And also of pharmacists, bakers, custodians, and clerks. And thugs smashing windows with sticks — even they must not be overlooked. And since the available resources are by the nature of things in short supply and there is not enough of anything to go around, the men in overalls are always disappointed by the scant possibilities for lining their own pockets on the side. Every story is ravaged by tensions; every one is destroyed by the flaw of contempt. Sooner or later someone who will end up paying for it all will come along. Whether I like it, or not, the homeless crowd, now dressed one way, now another, passes through every story that can be set in motion.

The nature of the whole is at fault; it knows no equilibrium. Paved with the best of intentions and propped up by the fractured dictates of conscience, the world in the end always begins to fall to pieces in one place or another. Every collapse turns out to be a catastrophe for someone; after each one, frantic cries for help fly one way or the other. The iron laws of acoustics render them inaudible. It is hard to renounce inattention, that sated, self-absorbed aversion to details. An overly close knowledge of things always entails obligations of some sort. I have to do all I can to open the emergency exits in time. As far as exact solutions are concerned, they are not complicated. All that is needed are a few steps and a section of corridor. A tunnel will be necessary for the taxicabs to get through. The masters, of course, can make one available, though they do not have to. Aside from the services listed in the invoices, I expect others from them of a confidential nature, out of courtesy. I acquiesce in every matter of lesser importance. Squirming with frustration, I turn a blind eye to botched work, underhand dealings, and impunity. I pay without making demands. I accept fraudulent accounts at face value, as long as they agree to open up their tunnels at the required time. Aware that I have no choice, the masters dictate the conditions.

The fallen angels of the back area hold themselves in high regard because of certain special talents they have picked up in the course of their perpetual machinations, as they chased around after small-scale profits and knowingly exploited the nature of things, which have a constant tendency to pass and be gone. For all their faults, the workmen excel at their trade. They have acquired to a fault the art of handling inanimate matter: they are casually able to combine it with nothingness, to mix what exists with what does not, to blend the one and the other into a homogeneous product, an indissoluble amalgam. Through the years of their nonchalant practice, constantly juggling with materials and invoices, they have achieved perfection. Without them neither the creation of America nor its upkeep would be possible. Matters of life and death depend on their idle and capricious good graces. Yawning, they do what is necessary, at the last minute, more worried about counting pallets and cases, because that is the only thing truly important to them. The back area has no room for pity or compassion.

A LONG MOTORCADE OF TAXICABS filing quietly along will appear at the end of this story. All the cabs are full. Slowly, rocking through the darkness on overloaded springs, they are driving straight to America. In this way the refugees finally end up in an earthly paradise, or perhaps a posthumous one — in this matter they will never be entirely sure. They find themselves at the feet of immense mansions made from their own dreams turned into stone, amid vertiginous skyscrapers and sleek towers that soar upward one next to another, their steel needles piercing the sky, with an unparalleled lightness, like all that the ground cannot control. Having miraculously survived, they gaze at themselves in mirrored windows and the glistening bodywork of limousines, dressed in used American clothing from Salvation Army stores. What became of the clothes made for them by the tailor? In those outfits salvation would have turned out to be as shabby as the clothes themselves. Those garments were failures from the start, of no use for anything. The tailor himself knows best how he cursed at them, so he will not miss them either. Now it is of no importance what happened to them. They may be moldering on an American trash heap, though it is more likely they were wedged in between layers of caustic quicklime, stiffened and burned through. In light-colored trench coats and hats pulled over their eyes, in striped pants, in backless dresses, elbow-length gloves, and feather boas, the new owners of this attire begin a new life, realizing they could no longer insist on the old life and the old clothing.

It would be most comfortable at this point to stop at the obvious advantages of such a turn of events, and resist any temptation to dig deeper. Especially not to inquire what all those people do in America, how they make their living, and what hopes they have. Even if it were the smallest America one could possibly have, made up of no more than a handful of skyscrapers and a few streets, maintaining this immense construction with all its wonders requires unbelievable sacrifices. The exorbitant costs incline one naturally to a simple-hearted optimism. It is not easy to accept a fiasco when such large investments are involved. Yet it’s plain that America came from the same hands that bungled everything they touched. Hands that never missed an opportunity for a swindle.

Besides, the sequence of events has a perpetual tendency to stray from its anticipated course, and to yield to disconcerting complications. For example, the notary’s maid, now with short hair and wearing lurid makeup, is to be seen every evening entering the brightly lit bar on the corner, toying with one of her long gloves. She sits on a bar stool, crosses her legs, and lights a cigarette in a long holder. She is not unhappy. The place is filled with music; its mirrors gleam and gold paint glitters everywhere. The men sprawling on the sofas are all lawyers, handsome young bachelors working in the firms of notaries and attorneys or the offices of judges. So she never complains, having her regular clients; and when one knows the whole picture, it’s obvious she could not have found a better situation.

If other details were inquired into, it would transpire that the children from the orphanage support themselves by nighttime robberies; during an argument about a wad of green five-dollar bills, they wave switchblades at one another. But they never lack for American chocolate, the sweetness of which eventually assuages their anger; they have it in abundance, the regular sort or with flavored fillings, any kind they could wish for. It may also turn out that the woman in the white fur coat, now thrown on carelessly over her lingerie, has been forgotten, and is drinking to her reflection in a hotel mirror. But all she needs to do is take the elevator down to the casino and play the roulette wheel as many times as it takes, betting on the red or the black, for her to have everything one would expect in the dressing room of a famous artiste: fresh flowers, open bottles of champagne chilling in ice buckets, canapés with caviar brought in on a silver tray by the liveried bellhop. The blind man is likely playing his violin in second-rate restaurants, cheated by the cloakroom attendant night after night. But on sunny mornings the chords of his own compositions fill the entire space, capturing the ups and downs of life and giving them the meaning they lack; the silvery notes soar all the way up to the fantastical copings of the skyscrapers. The schoolgirl and her elderly grandmother are warming themselves in the sun on a little deserted square squeezed between the insurance companies and the banks; they always have every bench to themselves. The newlyweds have been involved in divorce proceedings for many years now, and meet only in the courtroom. The husband, his temples flecked with the first signs of grayness, is supposed to marry the beautiful daughter of an American millionaire. The wife is about to open a large store selling bridal wear; it’s filled with dazzling white chiffon gowns with veils, and tuxedos black as pitch.

The mother of the family is tranquil, as if the injection she was given to calm her down never stopped working; the father is slaving to death on the production line of a huge auto plant. He wants to secure a better life for his ungrateful children than he himself has had. But the children are already hurtling recklessly towards their future calamities. This family alone has not been given a better fortune by America. Their grief was probably too great. They brought it with them, and though they do all they can to forget it, they cannot. The kind of pain that fell to their lot can never be eased by any medication, even death.

Happy endings are never happier than is possible. It might seem that, like a springtime thaw, they bring the promise of a new beginning, but the truth is otherwise. They merely lay bare the rotting matter of dashed hopes. Fortunate turns of events bring no relief, consumed as they are by the mold of unintentionally ironic meanings, and shot through with the musty despair of past seasons. And it is from them, these endings which end nothing, that new stories will grow.