In the meantime the pharmacist, who was being reprimanded by the leader of the guard for causing a disturbance, but who was twice as old as him and furthermore indispensable in his role, grew angry and turned his back, cutting the discussion short. He knew enough to understand that the forces of nature cannot be squeezed into the boundaries imposed by bureaucratic injunctions, nor can they be held in check by slogans about public order. At this point one might ask suspiciously where, in the pharmacist’s opinion, had the forces of nature come from in this crowded space surrounded on all sides by a backdrop painted on plywood boards. Yet those forces did their work in the space of less than a quarter of an hour. Before the snow began to fall, the first cry of a baby was heard. It was all over. A child had been born, according to the rumor that quickly made the rounds of the square and the apartment buildings. But no one had seen the child with his own eyes. The moment it had been given a diaper and wrapped in blankets, someone had passed it to someone else, and that was that. There was no way for the pharmacist to be in control of everything at the same time. The circumstances required too much of him; instead of the requisite knowledge, he possessed only a faint memory of dissection exercises carried out many years before as a student, and the vague recollection of illustrations from an obstetrics atlas he had once happened to glance at. His sleeves rolled up, covered to the elbows in blood and fluids, he was just reaching for a towel.
It was quite possible that nothing aside from a birth could have moved this crowd, which since morning had grown only too familiar with misfortune. And indeed the crowd was enthralled by the birth, and horrified by the disappearance of the child. Everyone who was able took part in the search; eye-witnesses to the birth felt especially duty bound to do what they could, so they brusquely demanded information from the blind man. For he was the one who, for no apparent reason, had pushed among them at the most important moment and had obscured their line of sight. He had been forced to hand his cane over to the guards, and without this indicator his condition was not sufficiently obvious for them to leave him alone. Through his dark glasses he could not have seen anything, so he recalled nothing either, even when he was shaken angrily by the lapels of his overcoat. He jerked himself free, not understanding what they wanted of him, and clutching his instrument case ever more firmly. This was suspicious, and so his interrogators did not rest till they had wrenched the case from his grip and looked inside. It contained a violin. Amid the ensuing tussle it almost got smashed. Finally left in peace, for a long time the blind man passed his fingers over the instrument, stroking it and kissing it, still unable to believe it had survived. Everyone else, though, would have preferred to see the violin go to hell and the missing child found. Ignoring all that was going on around her, the mother was demanding her baby. First in a whisper, seemingly exhausted by the exertions of labor, then soon afterwards in a terrible scream that gave people gooseflesh. Since the infant was nowhere to be found, they started urging the pharmacist to give her an injection to calm her down. In the end he had to comply. He liked to think of himself as a conscientious fellow, so he did not withhold the necessary medications from his own personal supplies, but he did so reluctantly and bitterly, mentally calculating how very much his own decency had already cost him.
The father of the family shouldered his way through the crowd like a madman. He thrust people aside left and right, looking into baskets and bundles. His three other children trotted along behind him, the youngest clinging to his coat so as not to get lost; he was preceded by rumors of a missing baby. His desperate search led him in ever-widening circles, and more and more people joined in; after the father passed by, the crowd rippled in a manner even more wearing than during the scourge of the street trade. It was for this reason that the commander of the guard laid hands on him in person and twisted his arm back so as to force him in a different direction.
This was no time for foolishness. The line of guards in their grammar school coats with the official armband on the sleeve was already pushing the crowd towards the cellars beneath the cinema, of necessity lashing out with their sticks, for otherwise they would never have managed to drive anyone away from their belongings. Although the residents watching from the windows of their apartments had complete respect for property, violence was justified by a higher need: if these people had been permitted to burden themselves with their luggage again, the evacuation would have taken forever. True, during the operation the guards were laughing. And in this way, some people laughing, others frightened and anxious, together they gradually lost all their confidence and were helplessly plunged in the same despair.
As far as orders were concerned, all was plain: the center of the square had to be cleared immediately. Otherwise the helicopter presently circling in the clouds overhead would never have been able to land. It would have had to fly away empty, returning where it came from. Sending the helicopter back — which would be entirely the fault of the crowd, and of that sluggish inertia so hard to overcome — would have turned the whole hierarchy upside down. No amount of compassion for second-rate padded overcoats could have justified disrespect for an officer’s uniform; in this matter every one of the locals admitted that the commander of the guard was right. In the end he had found it extraordinarily easy to recover the free space, despite the fact that for so many hours it had seemed an impossible task. All that had been needed was to remove the bundle of keys to the cinema from the photographer’s drawer. In the space of a short moment there wasn’t a soul on the square; all that remained of the newcomers were the ownerless suitcases. Anyone who wanted could have taken them. And all those who had given their stockpiles of cigarettes to the refugees in return for a piece of porcelain now felt cheated and robbed. The recent presence, turned so suddenly into absence, was remarked on with all the more malice because while the crowd had still been encamped on the square, not all the locals had managed to express their opinion about its ways, make appropriate comparisons, or conclude that they were savages from goodness knows where and that destruction would inevitably ensue from their presence here. All at once it had become too late to say one’s piece on this subject. No sooner had the square been vacated than to everyone’s astonishment it turned out that the flower bed had survived unscathed. By some miracle the crowd had kept off it, not trampling it even when they were retreating under the blows of batons. If I am one of the local residents, in my opinion the guards deserve a special commendation for this circumstance. When it was all over, the policeman emerged from the gateway of number seven clutching a half-eaten chicken wing. The first snowflakes were falling on the yellow flowers.
And now the rounded shape of the helicopter suddenly loomed out of the swirling clouds, stirring up a wind that almost blew the flags off the façades of the buildings, and knocked hats and grammar school caps from heads as if they weighed nothing at all. In the café the helicopter’s roar had been recognized at once, from the moment it began to superimpose itself over the blaring sounds of the fox-trot. The gramophone abruptly fell silent. The airmen hurried out onto the square, just in time to watch the helicopter land on the basalt cobblestones in front of the local government offices. Its blades spun slower and slower till they came to a complete stop. The general was the last to emerge from the café; he was not wearing his greatcoat or even his cap. Evidently he did sometimes forget things after all, thought the commander of the guard, and his heart pounded with joy that he would now have the coat, and the cap as well, as an unexpected bonus he could never have dared count on. Wearing the general’s cap and greatcoat, he would have everyone under his command, including the pharmacist; the latter would regret having treated him like an idiot. The policeman too, who from now on would be obliged to stand at attention when he saluted him, and to deliver written reports. For what were threadbare suits, an ill-fitting police jacket, shabby local autumn coats, an overcoat with a fur collar, or even his own well-cut jacket with the metal insignia on the lapel compared to the general’s woolen cloth and gold braid? Not to mention dark padded overcoats from goodness knows where — numberless, shabby, and of no value whatsoever.