Flight Without End

XVIII

When he awoke next day, it was Sunday.

Ultra-modern bells, fashioned out of war material by gun-factories converted to peaceful purposes, called the world to prayer.

The house smelled of coffee. At breakfast Tunda was informed that it was caffeine-free coffee, which did not harm the heart and pleased the palate.

The conductor was still asleep. Artists need sleep. Klara, however, even in her married state, had not forgotten the healthy usages of her parental home. She awoke like a bird with the first rays of the sun. Wearing thin rubber gloves such as surgeons use she wiped the dust from the religious objects.

Tunda decided to go for a stroll.

He went in the direction from which came the occasional sound of tramcar bells. He walked along quiet streets with gardens in which well-dressed boys and girls on bicycles wove harmonious loops. Servant-girls returned from divine service to flirt. Dogs lay haughtily behind the grilles like lions. Closed venetian blinds evoked the holidays.

Then Tunda came upon the old quarter of the town, with its coloured gables and wine-cellars with Middle High German names. Shabbily-dressed men came towards him, evidently workers who lived among these Gothic characters but probably earned their living in the pits of international owners.

Music sounded. Young men armed with sticks, marched behind fifes and drums in double-column. It sounded like the music of ghosts or some militarized Aeolian harps. The young folk marched with serious faces and without saying a word; they marched towards an ideal.

Behind and beside them, on the pavements and in the middle of the road, men and women kept in step; it was their way of taking a walk.

All were marching towards the station, which looked like a temple. Porters squatted on the stone steps like numbered beggars; the engines whistled with holiness and reverence.

The double columns fell out and disappeared into the station.

At this point the supporters turned back, slackening their pace, their faces transfigured, the echo of the whistles still in their hearts. As if they had fulfilled a joyous duty, they could now devote themselves to Sunday with a clear conscience.

Along the streets scuttled painted prostitutes, off duty. They conjured up thoughts of death. Some wore glasses.

A group of cyclists sped by ringing their bells. Men with dignified bearing and childish clothing, carrying rucksacks, hiked off to the mountains.

Odd, scattered, gleaming firemen strolled with wives and children.

The attractions of grand, double-bill military concerts were announced on bill-boards by district ex-servicemen’s associations.

Behind the great plate-glass windows of the cafés whipped cream towered before epicures in wicker chairs.

A comically misshapen dwarf sold shoe-laces.

An epileptic lay twitching in the sun. A crowd of people stood around him. One man expounded the case as if he was giving a lecture to students; the thesis of his exposition was that the man should always stay in the shade.

Young men passed by in small groups with caps that were much too small, black-wrapped faces and glassy eyes behind glassy spectacles. These were students.

In the distance roared the Rhine.

Then other men arrived, with students’ caps made out of paper.

These were not students but chimney-sweeps, washed clean, who had organized some festivity.

Elderly gentlemen took dogs, and elderly ladies, for walks.

Verdigrised church steeples rose up in the distance. Singing rang out from the wine-cellars.

Shadows suddenly grew dense over the city, a brisk downpour descended, women in white revealed their frilly petticoats like a second summer of linen.

Black umbrellas were hoisted over shining bright clothes. It all resembled a dreamlike, somewhat precipitate, wet funeral.

Tunda became hungry, forgot that he had no money, and entered a wine-cellar. When he saw the prices on the menu he decided to turn back, but three waiters barred his way.

‘I’ve no money!’ said Tunda.

‘Just tell us your name,’ said a waiter.

When he did give his name, Tunda was treated as if it were he who was the conductor.

He began to be impressed by his brother.

A hunchback entered the establishment, wretched and ill; with imploring eyes and timorous shaky legs he slunk from table to table, laying a handbill on each.

On the handbill Tunda read:

Dance and gymnastics.

Physical training: relaxation and muscular exercise.

Elasticity, vaulting, impulse, walking, running.

Jumping, eurhythmics, spatial perception, choreography.

Harmonious movement, eternal youth.

Group improvisation to musical accompaniment.

He ate, drank and went out.

The street now seemed unfamiliar. The wet stones had dried quickly. There was a rainbow in the sky. The trams went ponderously by, packed with people seeking nature’s embrace. Drunks tripped over themselves. The cinemas opened their doors. The commissionaires, in gold-rimmed caps, stood shouting and distributing handbills to the passers-by. The sun lay on the upper stories of the houses.

Wizened old women walked through the streets in cloth bonnets trimmed with tinkling glass cherries. The women looked as if they had emerged from old chests-of-drawers which Sunday had opened wide. When they stepped into the wide squares in the late sun, they cast oddly long shadows; there were so many of them that they resembled a procession of legendary old witches.

The clouds that passed across the sky were made of mother-of-pearl, like shirt-studs. They stood in an enigmatic but clearly perceptible relationship to the thick amber cigarette-holders which a large number of men held between their lips.

The sunlight became more and more intermittent, the mother-of-pearl more pallid. People were crowding back from the sports-grounds, bringing sweat in their train and releasing dust. Motor-horns moaned like run-over dogs.

Prostitutes appeared in dark doorways, pulled along by St Bernards and poodles. Spectral caretakers, glued to their chairs, glided out of doors to savour the Sunday evening.

Young working-class girls shrieked, workers walked in their Sunday-best, with green hats, in lopsided suits, their hands feeling heavy and superfluous.

Soldiers passed like walking advertisements. The scent of dead flowers recalled All Souls’ Day.

High above the streets arc-lights swayed precariously, like storm-lanterns. Balls of paper swirled in dusty parks. A hesitant wind arose, gust after gust.

It was as if the town were quite uninhabited, as if — on Sundays only — the dead came on leave from the cemeteries.

One imagined yawning waiting tombs.

When it was evening Tunda went home.

The conductor was giving a small celebration in his honour.