a dozen people with that gun, he was not the least bit afraid. He was gazing at the pistol, but the woman, whose entire body was struggling to support its invisible weight, a weight multiplied by despair, did not warrant even a glance from him.
‘Forget it, Nenika, just forget it. You can see how easily something might happen,’ the hotelier Laci tried to calm her; he was still holding the wicker bottle and a full glass of spirits. But his soothing words only strengthened her determination to do something she had never believed herself capable of doing. All her life she’d been swallowing insults, hiding invisible wounds inflicted by strangers who pointed their fingers at her and gawked behind her back. No one suspected that even she sometimes felt pain. Laci, perhaps, was the only one who had ever heard her cry, but he, too, eventually had to accept that it was all part of the job. There would be new guests arriving the next day; the broken pieces had to be picked up and pitchers refilled, and if you did it all in a friendly, obliging way, with that unmistakeable hotelier’s smile, so much the better for business. Once you master the ethics of the profession and abide by its principles, not even bruises hurt so much. It never really made sense to him, but he had unwittingly learned this from the Jews, of whom there had once been many here. In their shops and pubs, and even among the regular guests at his hotel, there had been those he took as a yardstick. Always precise, always obliging, always unyielding. And, especially when it came to business, slow to take offence. Money knows no feelings, although it always arouses them, feelings of every sort – Laci took this lesson to heart. Abide by this rule and you’ll be all right, he had often whispered to the women, to apprentices and even to himself, whenever he found it difficult to accommodate the drunks or the whims of gentlemen who were never in any hurry to leave.
But now, he realized, wasn’t the time to bring up his simple if outdated ethics. He knew he should do something, but he didn’t have the strength.
8
The chicken eye hanging in the sky was gazing fixedly at the varaš. It was sharp and shiny, like some unknown celestial phenomenon. One felt its presence, its mysterious pull and power, its ability to suck up anything caught in its gaze.
Franz Schwartz, former shopkeeper and camp prisoner now returning home, was walking down Main Street in the shade of the mighty plane trees. After that weary company of men had gone their separate ways, he had met no one else. They had disappeared in the narrow lanes, even as the sad music, too, which the musicians had left in their hearts, inaudibly dwindled away. The only thing growing was the chicken eye in the sky. No one could say if it was swelling from the warmth of the fortune teller’s hand, still cradling the coffee cup on the steps of the Hotel Dobray, or if something much greater, something fateful, was at work.
If she had not heard a woman’s desperate voice coming from inside the hotel, the fortune teller would have probably kept staring at the sky a long time, but as it was, she lowered her eyes for a moment and looked up the street towards Faflik’s coffee house, as if searching for new steps to move to with all her weird thoughts. That’s when she spotted the stooped shape in the long, rumpled officer’s overcoat, which appeared and then disappeared in the row of plane trees. The woman became agitated; from the rattle of the porcelain in her hands it was clear that this strong woman was overcome by fear. Unable to see the creature’s face, which was hidden beneath the brim of an overlarge hat, she thought the shadow was moving only in her head. Everything told her that this image meant misfortune; perhaps death itself had wandered into this godforsaken town. And now that it was here, it would stay here until it took what belonged to it.
The windows were slightly open in the hotel. The wind, which had been slowly rising and whirling up the dust on the road, had without a sound almost shut them. But one of the red scorched curtains had become trapped in the casements and was hanging out of the front of the building. That was the first thing Franz Schwartz noticed when he reached the large intersection in the middle of town. He was standing on the side of the street opposite the hotel, right next to Ascher’s shop. Now there was nobody on the hotel steps. The great chestnut trees, which concealed the building’s main façade, began to stir. Their abundant, lush spring leaves were fluttering, and their blossoms, newly opened, flew everywhere like a flock of birds. The tiny chicken eye in the sky was swelling into an enormous storm cloud. Now for the first time Franz Schwartz, too, looked up. This low, deep, wide sky, which here had always been home to him and which he knew so well, looked menacing. Storm clouds were multiplying out of the dazzling expanse, and behind their foaming edges, the sky glowed red. Dust gusted up on Main Square, too, and disappeared like smoke down Radgona Road. It was then that in the head of Franz Schwartz, former Jewish shopkeeper and deportee, who had just now come back to the town, the sounds of a lost violin, the rumble of thunder and the muffled bang of an officer’s light pistol were all mixed together. But he was unable to make any of it out.
9
It was dark in the courtyard of Ascher’s house. To the newcomer’s eyes, the only bright thing was the water, which lay in great puddles wherever he turned. He could still hear the raindrops aimlessly striking against the gutters and pouring through many holes onto the veranda. In the extension to the building – the residential part, with two large rooms and a kitchen in the middle – a dim light was burning. In the main part of the building, with the shop, which faced the Hotel Dobray, nothing could be seen. Blackness hung beneath the long eaves, as if night had wrapped itself in cobwebs to keep the stray cats from ripping it apart.
This was the home of Šamuel Ascher, who was lying somewhere on the Count’s land in Rakičan Park. Franz Schwartz had earlier been standing behind a corner of the building, hidden from the eyes of the rare passer-by; he was afraid because he did not yet know who he could show himself to. He knew only what he and Šamuel had heard on their travels: that the war would soon be over. Everybody was saying it was just a matter of days, ten at the most; that was all the victorious Red Army would need to rout the Germans and the Arrow Cross from Hungary and penetrate the heartland of the defeated Reich. People who in the evenings had at their disposal a contraband or confiscated radio also knew that the world had already been divided anew, that in the fashionable setting of Yalta, the Big Three had drawn a line in chalk. Europe, still bleeding, was chopped into two halves, as if the elder brothers, after the death of the father, had each staked his own claim. But clearly, just as sisters and younger brothers tend to be forgotten on such occasions, so, too, it had been forgotten that, for some time now, Europe had consisted of more than just two or three parts.
A light must have come on somewhere. The water in the large puddles, which a little earlier had merely been shimmering, was now lit up. He could distinctly see the last raindrops falling into the black lakes. It was nearly impossible to get to the extension without crossing through water. And he could feel his last strength leaving him. The world seemed to be drowning. He was afraid to take a step, to stride across the courtyard through the puddles and find somewhere he could sit down for a moment and shut his aching eyes. Blind, muddy eyes were staring at him. And there was a hissing in his ears – the rain, pounding somewhere in the distance, was burrowing into his consciousness. He was giving in, sinking. Like a well-trained animal, he lifted his arms high into the air and dropped his head towards the ground. Again he was a captive, disinherited and humbled. He walked as if through water. He was still fully conscious and knew there was no one giving him orders or chasing him or threatening him, but the voice echoing somewhere inside his head was stronger and he could no longer resist it. Something was mightier than any will of his own, as if it was grafted into his bones. Franz Schwartz, camp prisoner, Jew, former wholesaler, hands raised in the air, was sloshing, splashing and trudging through the puddles like a sleepwalking child.
On his weary, ravaged, bony face, covered in a thin, bristly beard, there appeared the barely perceptible outline of a smile. The corners of his mouth were extended and a bloody, swollen tongue was visible between his broken teeth. Whatever his watery eyes then saw, as they widened and opened into the night, he would probably never remember, but that mysterious gleam, which flickered and melted in his eyes, as if in those black lakes – this, certainly, must have somewhere remained.
