The residents of the apartment buildings were constantly listening to the radio in the hope that out of the turbid waters of upbeat news they would be able to filter out a long-awaited droplet that would reassure them about the future. Against the current of the meager trickle of official information there flowed ever newer rumors about approaching final resolutions. Now it was an imminent landing by the allies to bring liberation; now it was Kolchak’s forces, which somewhere out in the world would occupy the capital before suppertime and reinstate the legitimate government; now it was a band of partisans, armed to the teeth and promising to save the country from anarchy; now an international peacekeeping force was going to intervene and persuade the dictatorship to step down; now it was the arrival of the Huns, after whose passage not one stone would be left upon a stone. Ideas remained in constant circulation, bouncing against one another like marbles, but common sense rightly believed in only one thing: that lunchtime had already come and gone.
The helicopter expected after lunch was already circling, it suddenly seemed to the guards. Though only its faint outline could be discerned in the overcast sky. The airmen glanced up and shrugged: clouds were amassing over the square and soon it would snow. Yet even if the helicopter were actually to come, where was it supposed to land? Now the commander of the guard had to solve the matter of the crowd occupying the entire expanse of the square — a problem that had already proved intractable for many hours. In fact, it seemed insoluble. The commander thought about it perpetually, as if in a fever, now inspired by the task of dreaming up a truly brilliant plan, now prey to irritation and disillusion. It would have seemed that the simplest thing was to lift the ban on crossing the line of the tracks and to disperse the crowd into the gateways of buildings as soon as the whir of helicopter blades was heard. But afterwards how could the refugees be pried from the courtyards, stairwells, and attics, and driven back onto the square? What sanctions could be imposed on the outsiders, and how could they be separated from the locals? What principle should be applied? The cut of their overcoats? The smell of mothballs? To put it differently, the commander did not know how to arrange things so that the square should be empty once again but that no one should be roaming the courtyards — that the crowd should disappear but not be freed. Temporary measures ought not to rule out a better solution when one was subsequently found. Various ideas were circulating on this subject too, but none of them seemed right. Even the simplest suggestion, involving the use of public transportation, was for obvious reasons impracticable. Nor was it at all clear where these people were to be sent, since it seemed beyond question that there was no place for them anywhere.
The waiter, meanwhile, was still trying to treat his wound, stopping the bleeding with cold compresses. He had used up the entire stock of clean napkins from the back room of the café, and was already starting to worry about what he would say if he ended up after all having to explain this fact to the owner. He was of so little significance that there was no room for his problems. Because of the unexpected complication that had arisen, he had already begun to neglect his duties; he could not count on leniency. In this situation the easiest thing would be to relinquish wounded self-love like an additional piece of luggage when both one’s hands are full. Forced to rely on his own resources, he shuffled restlessly about the back rooms without rhyme or reason, leaving bright streaks on the doorknobs and the paneling, and smearing dark red marks on the checkered floor tiles with the soles of his shoes. He was the very person who was supposed to clean up here — a character without any other functions, always available, and easiest of all to replace. Whereas those after whom he had to wash and sweep and launder tablecloths were for the café, just as for the whole world, the irreplaceable mainstay of the only order there was. The fox-trots blared out unsympathetically from the gramophone, driving the waiter with his suffering and his helplessness from the main dining room to the storeroom in the back, where his head continued to throb from the din. Had he been able, he’d have preferred to raise his head and join the merry uproar, laughing at everything along with those untouched by ill fortune. But no one ever saw him with his head raised. Out of occupational habit, he was stooped in a permanent bow. Whether he liked it or not, he could not repudiate this abased body to which he had been chained.
What if he did not stop bleeding? Since help for the baker had been found at the pharmacy, the waiter eventually went there as well. Too late. A card was stuck on the glass door announcing that the pharmacist had been called away on urgent business. The waiter could see out of only one eye; when that eye saw the pharmacy was closed, he turned pale. He sat on the step, determined never to move from that place. If he had died there someone would have had to remove the body, which would have been rather heavy and, with its decease, absolved of all responsibility. True, it was the only body he had, but death severs such attachments too. It was difficult for him to argue with the general belief that the birth of a child was more important. But he was angered by this obdurate bias on the part of the majority, its condescending pity for small pink beings whose vulnerability inspires hypocritical emotions, until they grow up become ugly, turning drab like everything around them. The pity of the majority is reluctant to make sacrifices: custom dictates that its noble impulses are paid for by those it overlooks. Those who, for example, are entirely thrust aside in their drabness and have not even gained entry to the pharmacy. The waiter felt weak and for a moment he thought he was beyond help. But by good fortune the wound quite unexpectedly stopped bleeding; so he stood up and without further ado left to clean up the back rooms of the café and remove all traces of the embarrassing scenes of humiliation and fear he had experienced there. It was easy enough to take a damp cloth and wipe away the bloodstains from the floor and the door handles. Only the tailcoat would not come fully clean. That was a true wrong and a serious blow. It was hard to say whether the waiter would be able to hold on to his job in a dirty tailcoat. And if not — what would he wear, and what would he become?
If I am one of those respectable citizens casting occasional glances at the square from an upstairs window, I have been able to watch it all simultaneously: the waiter staggering to the pharmacy, the pharmacist elbowing his way through the crowd, and the woman who had begun to give birth. The birth was only to be expected, since for some time the pregnant woman had simply been lying amid the suitcases. Her screams came from somewhere in the middle of the square and were lost amid the hubbub of other voices. But from an upstairs window she could plainly be seen, laid out on her own overcoat, her eyes shut tight, gripping the hem of her raised skirt as she yielded to the violent contractions. It had fallen to her lot to give birth right here, so she could not count on being screened from the curiosity of those watching from above, each of whom would have declared at this moment that the need for privacy was alien to the refugees, who were devoid of culture and lacked self-respect. If I am watching from an upstairs window, I consider this birth to be very poorly timed, and I disapprove of the fact that the authorities permitted it to happen.