Shortly after the introduction of newspapers, it became readily apparent that some kinds of government announcements were more effectively disseminated by the traditional channels of communication, namely town criers, whereas others had much more impact through the medium of print. This variation was of course related to the nature of the announcement and whether its audience was to be found primarily among the illiterate masses or among the elite.
Whether spread by ear or by eye, however, the qorrfirman aroused instant horror. But it could only be grasped fully if ear and eye worked together to transmit its meaning to the brain. Perhaps that was the reason why people who first heard it proclaimed by a town crier rushed to buy the newspaper in order to read it, while people who first learned of it in the press left their papers on cafe tables or public benches to hasten to the nearest square to await the crier’s arrival.
An old feeling, which people had perhaps forgotten about in recent years, suddenly began to seep back into the atmosphere. The feeling was fear. But this time it was no ordinary fear, like being afraid of sickness, robbery, ghosts, or death. No, what had returned was an ice-cold, impersonal, and baffling emotion called fear of the state. Bearing as it were a great emptiness in its heart, the fear of the state found its way into every recess of the mind. In the course of a few hours, days at most, hundreds of thousands of people would be caught up in its cogs and wheels. Something similar had happened six years previously, when there had been a campaign against forbidden sects (the latter had nonetheless managed to reemerge since then). An even earlier precedent came from fifteen years before, when they’d unraveled a huge plot, which at first appeared to involve only a narrow circle of high officials but which came by stages to wreak its horror on many thousands of households.
People’s natural inclination to erase collective misfortunes from memory made them forget — or believe they had forgotten — the peculiar atmosphere that arises just prior to a major outbreak of terror. Between the first hint of the threat and the first blow struck, in the time when the hope that the horror will not truly come, that evil might be thwarted and the nightmare extinguished, people are suspended in a state of paralysis, deafness, and blankness that, far from placating terror, only serves to aggravate it.
They thought they had forgotten, but as soon as the drums rolled and the criers bawled out the first words of the Blinding Order, they realized they hadn’t forgotten a thing, that it had stayed inside them all the while, carefully hidden like poison in the hollowed-out cavity of a ring. As in times past, before their minds had quite caught up with what was really going on, their mouths went dry and gave them a foretaste of what was to come.
It was clear from the start that what was now being put into place would be even more abominable than the campaign against forbidden sects and all previous episodes of the sort. That was because the new campaign’s target was something so abstract it could never be quite pinned down. All the same, everyone grasped the impact it was bound to have. Even when the ax had been supposed to fall only on specific circles, as in the case of the campaign against the sects, or on isolated officials, as in the affair of the anti-state conspiracy, everyone, and all their relatives too, had felt its effect. This time, though, given that the issue related to something as manifestly indefinable as the maleficent or beneficent quality of a person’s glance, and insofar as said quality pertained to something as universal as eyes (everybody had eyes, nobody could claim exemption on grounds of not being concerned), this time people were sure that the new campaign would be of unprecedented scope and violence. It was obvious that the vicious whirlwind would flush out every single suspect and whisk every last one of them off, without mercy, to their fatal punishment.
In homes, offices, and cafes, people spoke of nothing else from early Saturday morning. But just the way things had happened during previous campaigns, this time, too, people talked about the Blinding Order in a manner completely at odds with the dark foreboding that it aroused in their souls. They treated it in an offhand, almost entertaining way. Apparently, people thought that as far as their personal relations were concerned, lightheartedness was the best way to ward off the least suspicion that might have lurked in their own hearts or in others’ that the order might be directed against them as individuals in any way whatsoever. All the same, in the midst of conversations and laughter, a moment would come when eyes would meet and glances freeze into razor-sharp shards of ice. It was the fatal moment when each speaker tried to fathom his interlocutor’s mind: Does he really think I have that kind of eyes?
These tense interludes would last barely two or three seconds. One speaker or the other would relax his stare, and then laughter and chatter would resume with even greater jollity. The discussions mostly focused on the same issue, an issue most people pretended not to take to heart on their own account. Just what were evil eyes? Was there a reliable way of identifying them?
There was a wide variety of opinion on the matter. People referred to the traditional view that the evil eye was to be found typically among light-colored irises and rather less among darker hues, but everyone was also aware that eye color was not itself a sufficient means of diagnosing misophthalmia, especially as the problem arose in a multinational empire where some ethnic groups had eyes — as well as hair and skin — that were more or less dark than others. No, hue was certainly not an adequate criterion, it was just one factor among many others, like squints, or the unusually large or small size of the eyeballs, which could similarly not be considered determining factors. There could be no doubt about it: no single trait, nor any particular combination of them in an individual pair of eyes, offered definite proof of the presence of misophthalmia. No, it was something else, something different. . A peculiar combination of the intrinsic nature of the eye and of the trace its glance left in surrounding space. . Of course, it was rather hard to detect, especially because the order mentioned no specific sign that might be of use in the matter. But if the order itself did not stoop to such minutiae, the special commissions that had been set up in more or less every locality must obviously have been given instructions and precise directions in order to identify this maleficent force and to ward off erroneous interpretations and possible abuses.
At that point in the conversation, people usually stifled an anxious sigh and turned back to lively, light-hearted topics.
That’s how it was in office chatter, in cafes infested with informers, or even in homes when visitors were present. But when people found themselves alone, they would rush to wherever they could find a mirror and stand there for minutes on end. People with dark eyes tried to convince themselves that their pupils were sufficiently dark to clear them of all suspicion. People with light-colored eyes tried to convince themselves of the opposite. But the people who stared longest at the mirror were those with squints, or eyes reddened by an allergy, or by high blood pressure, or by some other ocular irritation, as well as people with eyes bleary from jaundice, bloated from toothache or drink, down to people who suffered from a cataract.
Apart from those who were already blind, nobody could be quite sure he was exempt from the order. As everyone soon realized, that was the source of the qorrfirrnan’s mortal power.