Roby, Frau Berend’s son, was completely neglected. By day, he was never in the house. He played on street corners or roamed. When he came back, he was a chloride yellow, as stiff as a brush, and his big wooden shoe clattered over the floorboards. After his supper of a slice of smoked herring and a slice of bread and greasy margarine, he’d call the cat and they’d go off to play. I sometimes looked him up and down: his spotty face, his pigeon chest, his pointy shoulders piercing his jacket like over-long stakes, his large round blue eyes, almost always blank and gawping, his fraught, faded fair hair, and skin covered in rough down. Tattered long underwear poked out from the legs of his pants. The huge hard black shoe hung off the rickety spindle of a leg, making his whole body look lopsided. You couldn’t look at it without your hair standing on end: it seemed a monstrous artifact that might snap at any second. His life went in fits and starts: he was sometimes swept up in frantic activity, he blanched and shook and beads of sweat dotted his forehead and nose. Then he seemed driven by a mixture of fear, anguish, and daring. His ears glowed while his hands felt icy cold. That phase passed and he sank into docile torpor. He couldn’t take his dreary eyes off the shiny things he could see and his mouth sagged blissfully. From my bedroom I heard him play with the cat. Now and then an incoherent word reached me. However, I never heard him laugh. I’d hear his wooden shoe clump intermittently over the wooden floor when he stumbled down the passage. The bangs echoed morosely. Yet again I thought the bone in his leg must have broken. But you’d suddenly hear his short, croaky coughs, see his translucent chest, or hear the cat’s furious squeals and Roby’s cruel, perverse gleeful whoopees. That’s how they whiled away their time.
One night I caught them playing with paper balls. I suspected they were the lieutenant’s letters and thought it didn’t augur well. By this time the lieutenant had returned. He now wore a blue suit and, in contrast, his hat was such a sour chemical green it brought the taste of acid to one’s lips. I wasn’t mistaken: the paper I’d see in Roby’s fist was from the letters edged in black. The next morning they were strewn along the passage in the shape of balls and scraps of paper. Frau Berends let out a frightful howl the moment she set eyes on them, a tragic silence filled the house. Roby was out all day. The cat disappeared and was nowhere to be seen. Frau Berends had bounced it off the wall in the morning with a massive kick. I heard it: the sound of a slightly deflated ball being booted with gusto and encountering an obstacle in its path. The cat meowed miserably for a time and was never seen again. That evening Roby hobbled through the door, whistling. The lieutenant was at home and had been shut up in the kitchen with Frau Berends for ages. When I heard the boy come in, I switched off my bedroom light and half-opened my door to watch what was inevitably going to happen — without being noticed. Roby hadn’t taken a couple of steps down the passage when I heard the kitchen door swing open — Roby was in the rectangle of light in the dark passage, a sudden swath of light that hit me like a bolt of lightning — and a hand grabbed his shoulder. Taken by surprise, Roby turned his head, a look of unspeakable terror on his face. He had no time to do anything else. A brutal thwack lifted his body up and sent it flying through the door as if blasted by a gust of wind. Then the door shut silently and for the moment I heard nothing more. Nonetheless, I tiptoed down the passage, scared stiff. I soon heard words being whispered and the clatter of a chair falling over. A second later a muffled crash shook my whole body. It was obvious something had smashed against the wall — probably the boy’s head. I heard other blows. Anguish took my breath away. They were blows in concert and on target. I walked to the kitchen door, put my hand on the handle, set to go in. I didn’t dare. My legs were shaking and I had to keep my head up to stop myself from falling. It was horrific! I don’t remember how long I stayed like that by the door, full of indignation and pity.
Finally, after a long, depressed silence, I heard the familiar mumble of muffled words. I leaned against the wall and eased myself along the passage. I’d taken very few steps when the kitchen door swung open and Roby came out in despair. His cap was tilted over one ear and his clothes were rumpled; he seemed dead to the world, but his eyes were wide-open in terror, and his face was contorted by a kind of rage as if he wanted to cry and couldn’t. Blood was streaming from his temple and down his cheek. He stood by the door, shell-shocked. Before the door closed I glanced into the kitchen: the retired lieutenant was grinning and wiping a handkerchief over his forehead. At that point the boy must have seen something strange — my shadow perhaps — because I saw him take a leap and grab the key to the staircase door.
I hurried into my room to collect my hat and coat. I instinctively felt something disastrous would happen that night. I rushed into the street to catch sight of Roby turning the first corner. I decided to follow completely at random. I hadn’t been out of the house for a couple of weeks, and when the first rush of excitement was over and the cold hit me, I felt my eyes go on the blink and my legs struggle. There was a bitter chill in the air, snowflakes were falling and the black mud in the street had frozen. Roby was walking at a pace. Because of his huge shoe I sometimes thought he must be hopping along. My weakened state made me think for a second that I couldn’t possibly pursue him: my eyes glazed over, my head was in a spin, my whole body in a sweat — I almost fainted. I made a real effort because I thought I should go wherever it was necessary. Roby was thirty steps ahead of me. I don’t know what streets we walked down. The dark houses had a short strip of front garden. A crack of light shone in the odd window. Streets were empty and badly lit. For a second I thought I should call out. I soon desisted, thinking it would be counterproductive. As soon as he heard his name, I decided, he’d be off like a flash. We walked like that for perhaps a quarter of an hour. We finally came out onto a street with more life. There was a lurid ball of light — like the eye of a dragon — in a pharmacist’s. Roby was visibly tired and slowed down. Then he did something shocking: he looked round several times — perhaps to see if anyone was following him — and stopped in front of a shop window. It was the tawdry glitter from a cheap jewelry shop. Fifteen paces behind I saw his face light up. I saw him in profile: one hand in a pocket, the other holding a handkerchief over his wrist. His cap hung round the nape of his neck; he was shivering and his shoe hung limply on that wretchedly livid bone. He seemed to have got over his previous attack of rage, and if his eyes had glistened, you might have thought he’d calmed down. He gawped at the shop window. Then he began to walk more slowly. The few people in the street looked black. In the light from the streetlamps the snow rained down like confetti. The black lines of the trees against the glowering sky seemed straight out of a child’s drawing. The yellow trams, with their misted windows, left a pink spongy glow in their wake. We were in Berlinerstrasse, near Bayerischer Platz. Roby had just entered the square and I saw him linger for a moment by the deserted entry to the subway. Some windows gave off those blurred purple-mauve pumpkin hues that suggest a touch of domestic sensuality. Inside those tepid goldfish bowls everything must be a single color and the inmates must navigate between feather pillows, soft mattresses, bird wings, and sweaty morbid acts.