Billiards at the Hotel Dobray. Dusan Sarotar
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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.
He 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