dragged himself over to a wall and lay down in the darkest corner of the courtyard. He was used to this watchful hovering in semi-sleep. His body, wrapped in damp, foul-smelling rags, quivered and winced at every noise that came out of the darkness. Although he was trying to rest his eyes, they kept opening, peering into the void lurking inside him. He was walking, was running in his semi-sleep; he could feel his feet sinking in the sodden earth or pounding painfully against the macadamized road, which stretched to infinity. More and more, it seemed, someone else was living inside him, someone he would never know. His body was inhabited by a different consciousness, which kept eluding him, slipping away and always hiding from him. At first it had come merely as a beautiful thought, an illusion that helped him escape reality. When things were at their worst and he felt he might go mad or die, he would cling to the beautiful thought and run far away. Thus hours, days, would go by while he lived as if he had abandoned his body. He would be digging ditches in the muddy snow, burying the dead, starving and marching and sleeping on bunks with people whose faces he never saw and whose names he never learned – but that was only where his empty, emaciated, battered body was living. He himself, meanwhile, would be somewhere else, following the beautiful thought, which protected him and led him down other roads, far from reality and even further from his memories.
But now that he was, as it were, outside, far away from all that and very close to home, he sensed that the illusion, the beautiful thought, had led him astray, almost too far astray. Now, as he was genuinely trying to fall asleep, he was again on the road. He struggled against the beautiful thought and especially against that music, the seductive sound of a violin, inviting him to leave one last time, to go away and vanish completely.
10
His eyes twitched and opened wide into the darkness at a rustling sound, very close by, which came from the white gravel that covered the little path around the building. He recognized this sound from the years before the war, when he himself had walked over this gravel to see the younger Ascher on social or business visits. The path was always carefully raked and clean. There were never any leaves or gaps, which was surprising, considering how many people came and went here every day.
He was lying next to the wall, absolutely still and covered to his ears by the damp army overcoat, with his hat beneath his head. He first made out the sharp step of a man, who, he was sure, was wearing boots. But there was another step, too, lighter and shorter, woven into the sound. From the way it came precisely mid-stride with the sharper, longer step, he was sure that two people were walking side by side. They were walking without hesitation, as if they were familiar with the path and knew where they were going. Although at first he was terrified, convinced that it was him they were looking for, his anxiety soon subsided: the two people, he was now sure, were a woman and a man, who were walking on their own path with their thoughts somewhere else. They were driven, he felt, by something that had nothing to do with him or the world, which was still enveloped in darkness.
By the time they hurried past, even though they were very close, he was completely calm, as if it was an earlier time, when people would pass each other on this well-tended path with pure thoughts, concerned only for business and the welfare of their families. In their footsteps, too, there had been no greed, fear or arrogance, but only concern, focus and full concentration on life. In the step and bearing of these men in simple black suits and the obligatory head covering, usually a hat, who walked on the gravel without leaving marks or gaps, even if they were shuffling along in light shoes and the sound could be heard as far as the street, there was something that made one think of chosenness, consecration or simply total devotion. Here, in this small Pannonian varaš, in the middle of nowhere, far from everything, people would ask themselves: devotion to what – to God or business?
A bell chimed midnight – it was the same small bell in the Lutheran church that had long ago imprinted itself on his body. Whenever it chimed, he would glance at his tiny pocket watch and reset it. The clock on this church had always been considered precise. The local elite set their watches by it. Labourers and small tradesmen worked to its rhythm, even if the great majority of them were Catholics and, one might say, adhered to a different reckoning of time. Nonetheless, everyone agreed that the somewhat newer and more modern German mechanism installed in the Lutheran clock was trustworthy. The Protestant ethic, in its shopkeeperly and tradesmanlike manner, as expressed particularly in the qualities of industriousness and precision, had spread unconsciously and persistently to the life of the local middle class. It was visible in the way you comported yourself and the people with whom you played cards or chess. The vocabulary of humility, absolution and even piety, as taught by the Catholics, had been pushed to the margins, far removed from coffee-house conversations and expelled from the hearts of the ladies of town. All the high-flown rhetoric that had captured the souls of intellectuals, small industrialists, tradesmen and the eternally overlooked artists had now become the only possible politics. With its precision, mechanical consistency and inhuman persistence, that dubious, mendacious spirit known as modern times had possessed the minds of these poor, foolish people.
Then, a single swing, a single stroke later, the bell rang out in the Catholic church, too. The difference, of course, was insignificant, negligible in fact, but for the town, which had been half asleep for decades, here amid the endless fields, forgotten by politics and, for many, by God himself, that difference was suddenly important, even fateful.
But maybe midnight had not struck, maybe the clocks had not even moved since they had been deported, exiled from a world that seemed ever less real to him. It could all be a dream, a spell, sorcery performed by old witches and wizards with hands forged from mud. He had heard it said that if you had a heart made of ashes you could trick people, persuade them that the world was a desolate land of pain and suffering, where only evil prospered.
For as it is written: earth to earth, ashes to ashes. And now, for the first time he asked himself: Would the sorcery ever end? Was the moment of awakening at hand?
He pondered these things as he lay there alone and abandoned, with that thought which he would never be able to express.
11
He saw him when he stepped into the light. He was wearing a big white shirt, loose over unbuttoned trousers, and clutched a pair of high boots in his left hand, and an overcoat of soft leather hung from his shoulders.
Moist breezes, dissolving in the milky morning, settled in the courtyard. In the distance one could hear dogs barking and the neighing of weary horses, as if the animals were tugging at heavy chains. At the first muffled bang, the man sat down on the doorstep and hastily started putting himself in order. He pulled his narrow boots on over his trousers, and knocked his heels a few times firmly against the ground. Although there was no echo, only that muffled bang from a rifle still hanging in the air, this pounding of human feet conveyed a certain resolve, maybe even vengeance, which was impossible for him to conceal. It was then that the sole person observing him noticed something else the man could not conceal, not from anyone – the entirely human, congenital deformity of his body. Namely, he was a hunchback, which Franz Schwartz noticed now as the man tried to straighten up. Under the long, leather overcoat, which was clearly too big for him, his condition was all the more evident. The man leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette. He took quick drags and puffed out thin clouds of smoke. He was enjoying this cigarette as if it was his last.
Even before he dropped the cigarette in the mud and crushed it beneath his heel, he rapped nervously on the window, but no one responded.
He’s waiting for her and they don’t have much time, Franz Schwartz said to himself. Only now did he recall the two people who had spent the night on the other side of the wall. He had nearly forgotten that he wasn’t the only guest at Ascher’s house. In his groggy, aching head, still suspended somewhere between sky and earth as if it was not attached to his battered body, fear was the only thing nagging him now. He knew he had to find a hiding place as soon as possible, even before that peculiar couple left the house
