Lower down, the doorways to the apartments are more imposing: two on each floor, with veneered double doors, handles that inspire respect, and gleaming brass nameplates on which the names of the residents are engraved with great care, once and for all, as if the idea of moving had never occurred to anyone here. From the nameplate it can be learned who the bed linen drying in the attic belongs to. It is the Fojchtmajers’. Sooner or later this name had to reappear in some sentence; all this time it was waiting patiently for its turn. Was the Polish Word publishing house and printing press not mentioned earlier? Its additional specialty could for example have been theatrical posters and programs. It goes without saying that these Fojchtmajers are not and do not wish to be connected in any way with the immaculately uniformed Captain Feuchtmeier of the navy of the Third Reich, also mentioned above, commander of a gunboat sailing the southern coast of the Baltic. The captain would resent the spelling of their name. But the Fojchtmajers’ name has grown accustomed to its spelling, and it should be believed that the spelling too has grown used to its sound. If the names of the captain and the publisher are juxtaposed here, the reason lies exclusively in the sequence of sentences. So the two names stand opposite one another; the initial F of the one stares at the final r of the other and vice versa, and together they impose on the story a somewhat problematic bipartite symmetry. And neither of them sounds Polish. And each is equally lengthy, and even slightly pleated, like a lowered curtain. Behind one of the curtains a gunboat of the Kriegsmarine pitches in the fog; behind the other is a throng of civilians, perhaps even Jews, half-transparent, with absent expressions. And why them in particular? This question, asked in a firm tone and requiring a response, relates to certain obligations imposed on the content by the two-part symmetry. The images should, for example, remain in equilibrium on both sides of unseen scales, thanks to their obviousness, which would be confirmed by statistics. This principle alas will not be upheld. The narrator does not consider it his responsibility. Evidently this crowd of extras was also in place and fate happened to pick them. Where did they come from? From nowhere. They are at home: They were encamped behind the curtain, in the hallways along which dismantled pieces of scenery are removed for storage after the final performance— the sheets of plywood with the backdrops of various landscapes and interiors in one place, the braces of untreated wood elsewhere. It’s possible that from the very beginning they were somewhere between the lines. At most it might be asked why they remain stubbornly attached to their hooked noses and their sadness. This rhetorical question requires no reply, and doesn’t leave the slightest space for it; but a reply forces itself uninvited into the very middle of the paragraph. It declares that they were given no choice. Existing as a semitransparent crowd and deprived of their own power to be one thing or another, in everything they have to fall in line with the words of the description. They are obliged to make do with the adjectives imposed upon them and, whether they like it or not, fill them with their own existence, as they fill the cars of freight trains that are terrifying to get into, but which it so happens they have to enter. Otherwise it will immediately transpire that their own existence is no longer possible.
Inside the apartment a telephone is ringing. It rings for a long time, insistent and plaintive. Nobody answers and it would seem that no one is home. Yes, one of the keys fits the lock. In the corner of the hall a colored rubber ball lies on the floor. The Fojchtmajers packed only the most essential things and left without warning, abandoning to their fate the sheets drying in the attic after being laundered, let’s guess, by the concierge’s wife. The concierge himself was drunk and didn’t even see them pulling away in their black automobile. In the hallway a few suitcases were left behind, along with a hatbox and an umbrella. They were unable to pack much into their cases and had to part with their phonograph and record collection, their Encyclopedia Britannica set, their twenty-four-place china dinner service, a fur that gives off the oppressive smell of mothballs, and albums of family photographs. Even the most essential equipment that they finally managed to pack, at the last minute had to be partially abandoned for the sole reason that the luggage would not fit in the car. Setting aside one suitcase after another, those about to leave no longer remember what they packed in which case. They hope that when they come back. . According to the principles governing the plot, they never will come back.
Upon cursory inspection, their apartment seems unexpectedly comfortable — much more so than the room with the balcony that the narrator occupied in the wing of the hotel set aside for permanent residents. The narrator notes the hard-wood floors smelling discreetly of polish; the lofty, sunny interiors; and the bathroom with a window and a large china tub. He can imagine their satisfaction when they first moved into this apartment, no doubt a good few years ago — long enough for them to have grown attached to its virtues. But now, it seems, they left it at a moment’s notice. The narrator lifts the telephone receiver and calls the internal number of the hotel’s front desk — he’s set on taking the apartment. As a consequence he wants to check out of the room with the balcony. From the receiver there comes nothing but a hollow silence suggesting in the best instance a problem on the line. It will be even better this way, without unnecessary formalities, the narrator concludes upon reflection. In the drawing room, on the turntable of the phonograph that those departing forgot to turn off, a record is still spinning with the irregular hiss of the needle. They were fond of American jazz bands. On a side table there is a circular tray; on the tray an open bottle of brandy and three emptied glasses, one with a trace of red lipstick. In a vase there is a pink rose, perhaps chosen by the person who also brought the matching box of chocolates lying next to it. So there was someone who came to bid them farewell, probably a man. Why should it not have been the owner of the trumpet living upstairs? A newspaper left behind contains reassuring news from the previous day. Clearly they gave it no credence. An inscribed cigarette lighter, a gift from the staff at Fojchtmajer’s printing press on some special occasion, had been hidden under the newspaper and remained there. If Fojchtmajer doesn’t buy himself some matches, he’ll have to ask strangers for a light.
The narrator goes into the bedroom and opens the wardrobes; on the shelves he finds Fojchtmajer’s silk shirts and underwear, all ironed and folded in neat piles. He checks the springs of the top-quality mattress on the large double bed, sits on the armchairs that stand nearby in bright covers, and feels the incomparable softness for which they were chosen. They may not have been happy, but they didn’t complain; the softness of their armchairs reconciled them with their life, though not entirely and only up to a certain moment: After all, they had begun to look for a way out. In a framed photograph mounted over one of the armchairs Fojchtmajer is smoking a cigarette — the umpteenth in succession. His wife has no idea either how many he has smoked since morning — she makes no effort to count. She’s staring into space from over the other armchair; she has her own frame matching the one opposite, and in it she is smiling at her own thoughts. But no one will believe that she does nothing but smile the whole time. It’s possible to imagine them turning on the bedside light at three in the morning, resigned to the fact that they aren’t going to get back to sleep. In recent days especially they must have been tormented by insomnia: On the nightstands on either side of the bed there are empty phials of sleeping draught. They would make some tea and sit in the armchairs, teacups in hand, discussing the worrying suspicion that they would have to relinquish their polished floors and their phonograph and record collection, and they continually cast doubt on something that was blindingly obvious given the ineluctable way in which the future tense turns into the past. They even tried to joke about this process, but their jokes were not entirely successful; they were not funny enough for them to convince themselves that they were safely beyond the reach of grammar. And so in the end, exhausted by the anticipation of leaving and by visions of an uncertain future, they changed the subject, returning to a certain betrayal, because betrayal was at least something they were capable of understanding; to certain letters that he had once read though he shouldn’t have; and to lies that she could have spared him. They touched on the affairs of the Polish Word publishing house, which was stagnating below the break-even point, engaged in the hopeless resistance to particular ideas that were advancing victoriously across the entire continent; and the stock-market dealings that for many years now had absorbed all the available energy of his mind and heart, at the cost of love, naturally; and though she had to admit that up till now he had had good fortune, it had brought nothing but money. But was the income he could count on as a publisher sufficient, for example, to pay for her fur coat? Actually, never mind the fur coat — was it enough to pay the workers? In the end they fell silent, having no more to say. The man smoked a cigarette and once again considered the possibility that she may have been betraying him from the very beginning and that she had never stopped doing so; the woman was sobbing, holding a handkerchief to her eyes; and each returned separately to their solitary visions of the future. Perhaps the man was thinking that he would rather put a bullet through his brain than humiliate himself by seeking salvation at any cost. In the woman’s view such a way out would be madness. And so she thought that she didn’t want to know anything ahead of time. Whatever awaits her, she prefers to be taken by surprise by the course of events at the moment when there is no way out; this will spare her the need for overly difficult decisions. The Fojchtmajers had no wish to exchange well-being for hardship; she would have agreed with him that life is not worth it. What use to them is survival without comforts and entertainment? But at this point in their thinking there must have appeared a crack that was dangerous for the entire structure. Because if there are children, she thought — and he would have agreed with her — the struggle for survival is an obligation that cannot be neglected. Both of them, wife and husband, have to swallow it all, to the end, to the last drop of bitterness, without a glimmer of hope. Arrogance is not permissible here. It’s quite another matter with Fojchtmajer’s father-in-law, grammar-school teacher, lover of the quiet life and of good manners, veteran of the Great War, which the narrator is entitled to call the first, though in this way he also creates a second lying in wait behind the sentences. In his room, on the desk lies an obituary clipped from the newspaper: He departed just in time, readily taking advantage of the opportunity provided by a weak heart. Former grammar-school students gaze down from the walls as the narrator reads the rather wordy obituary, no doubt the work of one of them. They are lined up together, crammed forty to a frame, the first rows sitting while the back rows stand on benches. The photographs are also lined up, one year after another. All of a sudden one year tumbles to the floor with a crash. The pupils lie face down amid broken glass like fallen soldiers; on the wall nothing is left of them but a pale rectangle. A shock wave of future explosions radiates like ripples on water, reaching backwards into syntactical structures, causing them to quake. The arm of the phonograph slides off the record with a scraping sound and the turntable stops revolving. The narrator realizes that the apartment is unsuitable for him. The Fojchtmajers’ children, a boy and a girl, in a costly frame under glass, do not look frightened. They still lack the experience that would help now in evaluating the situation. But pastels respond badly to shocks; the irises turn imperceptibly paler, and a tiny amount of colorful dust settles on the glass, obscuring the outlines of eyelids and cheeks. John Maybe won’t wait until the walls come crashing down. He has too many crazy desires to be happy living in the ruins. Upstairs a door slams and his shoes clatter on the stairway: He’s running down, taking the steps two at a time. He has an American passport in his pocket and the chance of a contract, say, in Amsterdam; he carries his tuxedo in a metal-bound suitcase and his trumpet in its case; he falls asleep in trains immediately after they set off and dreams of nothing at all. He’ll toss the key to the apartment through the window hatch of the concierge’s lodge. There is also another key; it lies in a handbag belonging to his girlfriend, a budding chanteuse whose name — things cannot be otherwise — starts with a T.