With the teachers, it was like they were trying to analyze them in detail. But there wasn’t much we could tell them, because in our eyes all the teachers were alike. Besides, what was the point of dwelling on the teachers when it was all about the film breaking off when the power went out? Some of the boys did their best to tell them about the man in the film, and about Mary. That he kept trying on hat after hat. But they interrupted as if that was of no interest to them. At one moment apparently one of the military guys even smiled, though it wasn’t me being questioned at the time. In my opinion, first they should have watched the film, and only then questioned us. And it should have been stopped in the same place it was for us. Maybe then they would have understood how a revolt can break out. You don’t think they’d get it? You reckon they’d think it had to be more than the film? Or that they wouldn’t understand how it could all be about the hat? I have to disagree with you there.
In any case, they wouldn’t listen to anything about the film. And as far as the revolt itself was concerned, they asked us for instance what we shouted, they told us to tell them if not the exact words, because we might not remember, then at least the gist of what was said. They also asked each of us what each boy did during the revolt. As if each person could be doing something different in the middle of a revolt. A revolt means everyone does everything together, and no one’s aware of what they’re doing individually. One person shouts, and everyone thinks they’re the one who shouted. Or like one person’s at the front of the crowd, but everyone will think they were at the front. It’s like in a war, one man dies and all the others think they’ve died as well. If someone is alive it’s only because there has to be someone who remembers that the others died. Running away is the only thing you do on your own.
Maybe they got something out of us after all. You know how things are in that kind of questioning. You don’t want to say something, yet you don’t even realize you’ve already said it. You have nothing to confess to, but between the lines you confess all the same. In general, in questioning what they ask is more important than what you answer. The questions contain the answers they’re looking for. Your guilt is already in the questions, even if you don’t feel guilty. Whether you say you don’t remember, or whether you say nothing, you confess. Especially with silence, because that way all you’re doing is confirming your guilt. Inside you is enough guilt for every possible question. Even those that no one has ever asked, and maybe no one ever will. Because what is a person if not a question about guilt? The only good thing is that at least he rarely demands an answer of himself. It’s just as well, because he wouldn’t be able to give it.
On top of everything we were afraid they’d arrest us all, so we could have accidentally given various things away. They asked us for example about the ringleaders, as one of the army guys called them. He explained right away that that meant the ones who had led us, who had been the most eager, who had shouted the loudest and the most, that we should give their names. Each of us gave a different name, so maybe it turned out we were all ringleaders, because they didn’t arrest any of us.
But the matter couldn’t end there. And it didn’t. You know who they arrested? That’s right, the music teacher, who’d done nothing wrong whatsoever. Maybe someone had let slip that we were going to hang him. That was enough for them. That was enough of a clue. Because no other clue led to anyone else. True, later on word went around that he’d been under an obligation to inform them about anything that happened in the school. And he’d failed in that obligation. But you know what it means to say “word went around,” so none of us believed it. How could it have been him, the music teacher. A guy who was almost always drunk, aside from anything. What could he have seen or heard when he was drunk. His eyes were permanently misted over, his ears must have been filled with other sounds. The sounds might have been in his eyes too, because often he didn’t know which way he was going. There were times he couldn’t find his own room. He needed to be led there. You had to take the key from his pocket, open the door for him. Help him off with his hat and coat and shoes. Lie him down on the bed. Who knows, we might have been no more to him than sounds he kept trying to put together in a way that made sense, and when he couldn’t it wasn’t his fault but ours.
Would you have believed it? There you go. But that’s what people said. And the worst of it was that no one knew anything, no one said anything, but the rumor went around as if the information had come into being of its own accord. Where does such a thing come from, can you tell me that? Maybe there’s something like the spontaneous generation of words, what do you reckon?
When we heard they were taking him away we ran to the rec room, grabbed whatever instruments we could, whether or not they were working, and we stood on the parade ground the way he’d arranged us that time as an orchestra, in any case more or less like that, it didn’t really matter. The ones who didn’t have instruments also gathered around us, because the whole school turned out. When they led him out, we all took up our instruments as if we were about to start playing. But we didn’t play, we just stood there.
He was walking with his head down, he didn’t even look at us. They put him in the back seat of the car, one guy on one side of him, another guy on the other. They were just about to set off when he jerked forward and shouted:
“Long live music, boys!”
7
You didn’t know him? That’s too bad. Did you know the Priest maybe? I don’t mean an actual priest. That was just what we called him, the Priest. He even let me call him that, though I was a lot younger than him. A welder, he was. We worked on a building site together. Because I was thinking that if we found some people we knew in common, maybe we’d find ourselves too, the two of us, at some time or other, some place or other. I sometimes think of somebody I used to know, and he leads me right away to some other person I knew, then that person leads to someone else, and so on. And I’ll be honest, there are times I find it hard to believe I used to know one guy or another. But I must have, since they remember meeting me someplace, at such-and-such a time. One guy, it even turned out we’d played in the same band years ago, him on the trombone, me on the sax. Though he’s dead now. But people we know can lead us all kinds of ways, even to places we’d never want to go.
One guy abroad told me about these two brothers he used to know who’d fought on opposite sides in a civil war. Brothers on opposite sides, you can imagine what ruthless enemies they must have made. But the war was ruthless too. People killed each other like they wanted to drown each other in blood. Civil wars are much worse than ordinary wars, as you know. Because there’s no greater hatred than the kind that comes from closeness. So when the war ended they continued to be enemies. They lived in the same village, but they wouldn’t allow their wives to talk to one another, or their children to play together. And it goes without saying that they themselves never spoke a word to each other. But they both used to go to the same bar. It was another matter that there was only one bar in the village. They’d sit at separate tables, drink their beer, read the paper. If there was only one newspaper, when one of them finished reading it he’d put it back where he got it, even if his brother’s table was nearer. The other one did the same thing if he was the first one to read it.
But the one who finished reading first didn’t leave. He went on drinking his beer, as if he was waiting for his brother to finish reading. Almost every day they’d show up at more or less the same time, as if they knew when they were supposed to come. They drank their beer, read the paper, the second one after the first one or the first one after the second one, then when their glasses were empty they’d leave. The second one after the first one or the first one after the second one, just the same. It never happened that one of them finished his beer sooner and left. They didn’t have to sneak glances, you could easily see the beer in their glasses. Or maybe because they were brothers they had the same rhythm? In any case they drank at the same pace. And that seemed to show they hadn’t stopped being brothers. Because as for words, the war had killed the words in both of them for good.