“Well.”
“One of the students made notes … made notes of what was in the books in the library that you wanted me to get.”
“This is not enough, my friend.”
“This all that I could get, Brother Fagirra.”
“I fear that the End of Time will bring much sorrow to you.”
The cheeks of the young fellow, recently so round, became sunken: “No. Please. Just give me another chance!”
The man with the tattoo on his wrist only raised the corners of his lips: “It is good. From this day, you will report to me about everything that happens at the university.”
* * *
Egert dashed through the crowd, deaf to the curses of the upset hawkers, insensible to the fingers snatching at his tattered shirt or the irritated pokes he received while running past. He ran away from the square, from the university with its wide window where the face of Toria remained, still white as a ghost: Toria, the fiancée of the student he had killed. Flee! This was an evil, unlucky portent; he should never have come to this city. He had to get to the gates as quickly as possible; he had to escape from the net of these narrow, winding, overcrowded streets.
But the world of this enormous city, indifferent, satisfied, and lazily festive, had already possessed Egert as if he were its own rightful victim. It seemed to Egert that the city was gradually digesting him like a massive stomach, desiring to dissolve, destroy, and absorb him into itself.
“You, tramp, step aside!”
Huge wheels roared along the cobbled pavement; an arrogant face in the velvet semidarkness of a carriage sailed over Egert’s head, and lowering his eyes, he saw an opalescent beetle flattened into a disk in the furrow left by the wheels.
“You, vagrant, get out of the road! Out of the road!”
Housewives joyfully called out to one another from windows, and from time to time a cascade of slops descended onto the pavement: then the exchanges turned into bickering.
The merchants were slaving away.
“Here, I’ve got combs, bone combs, turtle shell combs! And look at this miraculous potion: Smear it on your head and your hair will grow; dab it on your armpits and the hair will fall out!”
“Barbers! Jars, leeches, bloodletting! Razors! We’ll shave you!”
A mob of street urchins were taunting a modest young lad who was dressed as neat as a pin. Beggars were huddled along walls covered with bas-relief sculptures; the wind played with the tattered ends of their rags, and their motionless, outstretched palms seemed like the dark leaves of an outlandish shrub. Penetrating calls of “Alms, alms…” hovered over the street, although the parched lips of the beggars hardly moved at all; only their eyes, dreary and yet at the same time covetous, caught the glances of the passersby: “Alms, alms…”
Away, away, off to the gate! Egert swerved onto a street that seemed familiar to him, but it betrayed him; it deposited him at a stone-dressed canal that ran straight away to either side. An odor of fungus and mold rose up from the green water. A wide bridge bulged over the canal. Egert had no memory of this place; he had never been here; he had definitely gone astray.
He decided to ask the way to the city gates. The first person to whom he dared to turn was a dignified, amiable housewife in a starched cap; with delight and in detail, she described the route to the city gates to him. Following her instructions, he passed through two or three alleyways, diligently walked through a populated intersection, turned where he had been ordered and suddenly came out near the very same humpbacked bridge that ran over the very same canal. Water striders were gliding along the surface of the stale water.
Remembering the misleading words of the woman in the starched cap, Egert again gathered his courage and asked a lean, poorly dressed young maidservant for help. She blushed, and by the furtive pleasure in her modestly lowered little eyes, Egert suddenly realized that for this pitiful creature he was not at all a filthy beggar, but a presentable young man, even a handsome man, potentially a lover. For some reason this realization brought Egert not pleasure, but pain; the girl, in the interim, had seriously and painstakingly explained to him how to get to the gates, and her explanation was completely contrary to the instructions of the housewife in the cap.
Hurriedly thanking the somewhat disappointed serving girl, Egert once again set out on his way. Looking around intently, he walked past a chandler and a pub, past an apothecary with live leeches in jars and bottled tonics, and past a button manufacturer with a shop window that dazzled the eye: hundreds of silver, mother-of-pearl, and bone circles ogled him from the display. He walked through a gloomy alleyway, sided by the looming, blank walls of houses. It turned out to be the territory of a procuress: in the semidarkness, first one then another sweet-eyed face approached Egert and, unerringly identifying him as a bum and not a prospective client, indifferently turned away.
The alleyway led Egert onto a circus; in its center was a statue on a low pedestal. The head of the statue was covered by a stone hood. Recalling the people in gray, who had terrified him in the main square, Egert hesitated to walk closer to the statue and read the inscription carved in the stone:
The Sacred Spirit Lash
He had heard about the Sacred Spirit when he was a child, but he had imagined him to be more majestic than this. Regardless, he did not have any time for reflection at the moment. Drawing a deep breath, he once again asked for directions, this time from a young, mild-mannered lemonade vendor. According to the lad, the city gates were but a stone’s throw away. Inspired, Egert walked on along a wide but not very busy street. He passed by the house of a bonesetter, which had a pair of crutches of considerable size pegged to the door; past the house of a horse doctor, which had a sign decorated with three horsetails; and past a bakery. Finally, bewildered, he walked out at the very same arched bridge over the musty canal.
It seemed as if some unknown force was grimly determined to keep Egert going around in circles. Overcome, he leaned against the wide stone railing; somewhere over his head a shutter smacked loudly against a wall and a window swept open. Egert looked up.
A girl stood in the small, dark window. Egert’s vision darkened as he saw cheeks, pale as if carved from marble, dark hair, a constellation of beauty marks on her neck. He winced, and then in the next instant he realized that this was not Toria, that the face, gazing indifferently out the window, was round and pockmarked, and that the hair was the color of rotten straw.
He turned and laboriously walked away. At an intersection he asked directions in turn of two passersby: affable and wishing him well, they each pointed him in exactly opposite directions.
Gritting his teeth, he started walking, deciding to rely only on instinct and luck. Having passed by a few blocks, he suddenly noticed a pair of street urchins who were obviously following him, though still at a safe distance.
He looked back with increasing frequency. The grubby, determined faces of the urchins flickered in the crowd, all the time getting closer and closer. Cowering inwardly, Egert swerved once, and then again and again, but the urchins kept pace with him, walking ever faster, their hungry mouths widely and insolently grinning. By now an entire horde was merrily following Egert.
Egert kept increasing his pace. The usual terror had already blossomed within him: it squeezed his throat with cold jaws; it stuffed his rebellious legs with cotton padding. Egert was keenly aware that he was a victim, and it was as if this awareness had been imparted to his juvenile pursuers. It impelled them to chase him.
The hunt had begun.
Egert was not at all surprised when the first stone hit him in the shoulder blade. Quite the contrary: he was relieved that he no longer had to wait for that blow because it was already inflicted. But the first stone was followed by a second and a third.
“Yoo-hoo!” They merrily mocked as they jogged along the street. The passersby looked around, displeased, and then went about their business.
“Yoo-hoo! Hey, Uncle, give us a bit of smoke, just a pinch. Hey,
Uncle, over here!”
Egert was almost running. Only a small remnant of his pride prevented him from simply taking to his heels.
“Hey, Uncle! You, with the hole in your pants. Look over here!”
A few small pebbles accurately pecked at his legs, his back, and the back of his head. A minute passed and his pursuers had caught up to him; one of their dirty hands grabbed his sleeve, and the shabby threads holding it together ripped.
“Hey, you! What, you don’t want to talk to us?”
Egert stopped. They surrounded him. Most of the boys were around eight years old, but there were a few who were a bit older and two or three who might have been as old as fourteen. Grinning expansively, showing black pits in the place where some of their teeth should have been, wiping snotty noses on their sleeves, staring with hostile, narrowed eyes, the gang of hunters took pleasure in Egert’s bewilderment, which was all the more sweet since the eldest of these hunters barely stood as tall as their prey’s armpit.
“Uncle, buy us a loaf. Give us some money, eh?”
Something sharp pricked him from behind, either a pin or a needle. Egert jerked, and the horde broke out into merry laughter.
“See that? See how he jumped?”
They pricked him again. Tears of pain welled up in Egert’s eyes.
A strong man, an adult, was standing in a circle of urchins who were young and weak but reveling in the sense of their ability to act with impunity. Who knows how, but these little beasts had unerringly exposed Egert as a coward, as a victim, as prey, and they were inspired to carry out the unwritten law by which every victim is tried and found guilty.
“Do it again! Make him hop! Silly uncle! Hey, where are you going?”
The last prick of the needle had been intolerable. Egert plunged straight though the gang, knocking one of them from his feet. As he ran away, stones, clumps of mud, and taunts flew after him.
“Oi-oi-oi-oi! Get him! Go on, get him!”
The long-legged Egert could run faster than even the most brazen urchin in the city, but the street wound about, turning into blind alleys that teemed with closed gates. The hunters dashed in front of Egert, cutting across his path from the routes known only to them, flinging stones and mud, screaming incessantly, chirruping and hallooing. At some point it began to seem to Egert that all of this was not really happening to him, that he was watching someone else’s abominable nightmare through thick, cloudy glass, but then a stone struck him painfully in the knee, and a different, bitter, overwhelming emotion surged through him, replacing his detachment: This is how it is now, this is his life, his fate, his being.
Finally, he somehow pried himself away from his pursuers.
He found himself in a blighted slum, where a wizened, toothless old crone, holding an enormous snuffbox under her nose, pointed her crooked finger farther into the labyrinth of muddy alleyways. As he traversed them he felt a blunt, apathetic weariness that also dulled his fear, and then he felt fleeting joy at the sight of a square and the city gates.
The gates were closing.
The doors were slowly crawling toward each other. At the bottom of each door he could plainly see three guards, flushed from the strain of pushing them closed. A small shred of sky and the ribbon of the road were visible through the swiftly contracting opening.
What is going on? Egert thought.
With his last strength he ran across the square, but the gap was still narrowing, and then the gates closed with a crash. A chain clinked, threaded through the steel rings of the doors, and as solemnly as a flag, an enormous black lock was raised up onto the chain.
Egert stood in front of the magnificent steel gates decorated with figures of dragons and snakes. Their raised snouts were turned toward him; they watched him morosely and vacantly. Only now did Egert fully comprehend that the doors had been pushed shut, that night was approaching, and that the gates usually remained closed until morning.
“You, there!” The stern bark compelled him to cringe. “What do you want?”
“I must go out,” he mumbled inaudibly.
“What?”
“I need to go through, out of the city.”
The guard—a sweaty, round-cheeked man who did not seem malicious—smirked. “In the morning, my friend. You were late; that’s the way it is. And really, when you really think about it, why would you want to go out there at night? You never know what might happen. So, my boy, you’ll just have to wait. We’ll open the gates at dawn.”
Without saying another word, Egert walked away. It no longer mattered to him.
In the morning the gates would get stuck, or the sun would not rise, or something else would happen. If the unknown and hostile force, the force that had been toying with him all day from the time of his fateful meeting with Toria, if that force did not want Egert to leave the city, then he was not going to be able to leave of his own free will: he would die a beggarly death here, the death of a coward.
The square in front of the gates had emptied. Egert urgently wanted to lie down; it did not matter where, just so long as he could lie down, close his eyes, and not think about anything.
Barely moving his legs, he shuffled away from the gates.
A noisy cavalcade of five or six young horsemen on well-groomed steeds flew toward him from a wide side street. With a practiced eye, Egert absently identified the breed of each horse and noticed how splendidly each of the riders kept his seat. He stood still, waiting for them to pass by, but one of the youths, who was riding a tall, raven-colored stallion, broke away from the company and rode straight toward Egert.
This happened in the blink of an eye—and for all eternity. Egert lost the ability to move.
His legs grew into the pavement of the square, became numb, put down roots: thus must a tree feel, watching the approach of a lumberjack. The horse cantered easily, beautifully, as if on air, but the ground shook loudly from its strong, murderous hooves. Egert saw the black muzzle of the stallion, its wild eyes, the string of saliva hanging from its lower lip, and its chest, as wide as the sky and as heavy as a hammer, was ready to crush him with one blow.
He felt the steam of hot breath in his face, and slowly, so slowly, as if underwater, the stallion rose up on his hind legs.
Egert stared as the glossy muzzle froze right in front of his face. The hooves were thrown up, and the round heads of nails gleamed on newly shod, well-made horseshoes. Then the horseshoes flew up over his head, and the horse’s belly opened up before Egert’s eyes: the belly of a well-cared-for stallion, with a shaggy crest running down the middle. The horseshoes above his head were kneading the sky, preparing to descend from the heights and splatter the contents of a human head across the cobblestones.
Egert’s mind collapsed; he was aware of nothing for the space of five seconds.
As before, Egert was standing in the middle of the square. The patter of hooves and trills of laughter were fading away down an alleyway, and a fine trickle of warm urine was leaking down Egert’s leg.
Death would be better than this.
The guards were snorting with laughter behind him, and their laughter reverberated inside Egert’s head. All the will of Egert Soll, all his remaining respect for himself, all his mutilated yet still living pride, and all his being screamed, slowly writhing in the inferno of this inconceivable, incredible degradation.
The vacant sky above his head and the empty square beneath his feet both whirled like grindstones, and these two black stones scraped against each other as if wishing to grind to dust the bones of this man who had dared to come between them.
Egert, said his will and his pride. This is the end, Egert. Remember the slimy filth on your face, remember the girl in the coach.… Remember your true self, Egert Soll, remember and answer this: Why do you, a man, consent to live in this repulsive, perpetually fearful manner? You have come to the edge: another step, and all your life, all your bright reminiscences, all the memories of your mother and father will curse you, will disown you for eter
nity. While you still recall what a man should be, put a stop to this despicable monstrosity that has possessed you!
The guards had long ago settled down and forgotten about Egert. Night had already set in: gloomy, moonless, lit only by a few streetlamps. Under one of these streetlamps loomed a wide, squat bit of masonry; it was a well, from which travelers who had just arrived in town usually watered their exhausted horses. Now it was completely lifeless.
Egert walked over to it. A waft of frigid air arose from the well, but Egert forced himself to gaze down into its humid depths. The circular, mirrorlike surface of the water reflected the dim streetlamp, the black sky, and the human silhouette that looked like it was cut out of a soot-black sheet of tin.
He worked quickly. He found a fragment of cobblestone nearby, as cold and heavy as a tombstone. He needed to tie the stone to his neck somehow, but he did not have any rope and his belt kept slipping off it. Fussing and sniveling from terror, Egert finally unbuttoned his shirt and stuffed the cobblestone into the cavity. The feel of the cold stone against his bare chest caused him to squirm.
Holding the stone to his chest with both his arms, he once again walked over to the well. He stood next to it for about two minutes, panting. The city was sleeping; somewhere in the dark heights an unseen weathervane screeched in the nighttime wind, and from afar could be heard the cry of the night watch, “Rest in peace, honest townsfolk!”
May you rest in peace, said Egert to himself. Clutching the stone to his chest like a beloved kitten, he swung a leg, stiff as a board, over the side of the well.
He sat on the stone masonry at the top; he exerted himself again, and his other leg, rebellious and numb, hung over the water. Egert swung around so that his stomach was on the edge of the well; his legs dangled inside without any purchase. Now all he had to do was brace himself and push off from the wall of the well with his hands and knees; then his body would fall over backwards, splash into the water, and the stone secreted in his bosom would immediately drag him to the bottom. The water would wash away all Egert’s fear and degradation, all he had to do was …