Yet there was something wrong with the contract from the very beginning; a hidden catch was only to have been suspected. The smell of coffee, the softness of pink stuffing, and an envelope full of money — all this in exchange for simply being present, for a scrap of testimony, almost as a gift? Since either way the narrator had no choice, they could have insisted on much more from him. And so it was not for his presence alone that he was given so many splendid promises, but for the torment of responsibility, for a burden beyond the endurance of a front man, for the inevitability of a failure in which he had gradually become embroiled. But the powers that be, it seems, have already ceased to associate any plans with his person. He still has the safety of the Fojchtmajers’ apartment; he paces the hallway from wall to wall, with clenched fists, kicking the suitcases lying abandoned in the middle of the floor. Of the mirror in a gilt frame, not a word will be said. The narrator turns his gaze away from it in vexation. The rubber ball gets in his way, bumping into the abandoned luggage and bouncing against it time and again. It has to be held firmly underfoot and punctured with the scissors; the air escapes with a heavy sigh. Powerless anger, as is common knowledge, turns to doubt and despair. In the end the narrator sits on one of the suitcases. The situation offers no prospects for him other than those furnished by false contrition. In his pocket he has a notebook with telephone numbers. He’s just about to reach for the receiver when his gaze falls on the severed cord. If even this doesn’t prevent him from making a connection, the deciding factor will be a busy signaclass="underline" He who allotted him his task is not waiting for his call but is already talking with someone else about something else. It gradually becomes evident that the narrator’s position has undergone a change. It has worsened, considerably so, though only a few paragraphs earlier he believed it could get no worse.Overcome by concern for his own skin, he even considers running away, at first not entirely seriously; to test the waters, he imagines searching for another hiding place after leaving the comfortable apartment, the address of which must surely be known to those up there, just as they have the phone number. And what if it isn’t a story about betrayal? A frightening thought. From one moment to the next, escape increasingly seems to him the only sensible solution. Without his documents, left in the hotel room with the balcony, without money, without plans for the future, without much in the way of hope, he tries one more time to retreat across the attic filled with white bed sheets hung out to dry and through the dark back rooms of the bar, the same route by which he came here from the train station. But the trapdoor leads invariably to the roof. Below, the doctor from the ambulance is pushing his way through a crowd of onlookers to write the death certificate; here and there can be seen the dark blue uniforms of the prewar Polish police. The narrator gingerly makes his way to the opposite side of the roof. Looking down over the eaves, he notices a car, a silver hatchback, which at this very moment is pulling up with a screech of brakes in front of the apartment building. It must be said that they didn’t make him wait long. The car mounts the sidewalk with one wheel; out of it jump two men in gray-green uniform jackets thrown straight over blue denim overalls. With a disconcerting emblem on their caps, and with cocked guns, they hesitate in front of the entrance. It’s clear that this is the first time they have appeared in these military outfits, and they’ve not had time to figure out how they should behave. The sergeant accompanying them is the last to get out of the car. For a moment he juggles an opalescent marble in his hand as if he were still making up his mind about something; then he steps forward. In the premature colors of the Wehrmacht they run up the unseen stairs. Evidently there were not enough dark blue uniforms to go round, as they were needed at the same time to complete the picture of confusion on the other side. For a long time they search the unlocked, deserted apartment; in the end they burst into the attic, amid the bed sheets blocking their view. They drag them off the clotheslines and trample them underfoot in their hobnailed boots. They poke into every corner. In the meantime a police captain is calmly studying the windowsills in the trumpeter’s apartment with a magnifying glass, looking in vain for a trace of a woman’s heel. He has gone through the handbag she left behind and has found her purse, compact, notebook, and a card from the dentist’s. The dentist has been located immediately and brought to the scene of the accident to confirm the identity of the victim. Concealed on the roof, the narrator cannot see what is happening on both sides at the same time; this is prevented by the ridge of the roof, which divides the space in two. And so on one side there is a five-door silver-gray hatchback with sunroof, on the other the dark blue police. Sounds come from both places at once, but do not inter-mingle. On one side is a diffuse hum of voices, on the other the shouts of the soldiers, the clatter of boots and the sudden report of a gun. But there is no tunnel by which the sound of the shot could reach the other side of the story and be heard by the plainclothes police captain and the dark blue policemen bustling about there. One of the privates in gray-green opens the trapdoor and looks around on the roof. It’s not clear whether he has missed what he was sent for, or whether for some reason he would rather pretend not to have seen anything. A long time passes before they reappear on the street, dragging the gramophone to the car. The sergeant gives them an earful and urges them to get a move on. They go back inside, bring out the suitcases that had been abandoned in the hallway, and return once more for the portrait of the children, perhaps because of its valuable frame. The sergeant carries it out carefully, since pastels don’t respond well to shocks; while the two privates follow behind with armfuls of Fojchtmajer’s silk underwear and shirts. Now they’re getting into the car. They turn on the engine but don’t set off at once; first they help themselves to some chocolates from the pink chocolate box. They can be seen through the open roof of the car, passing the box around. Where will they go? Before the car disappears around the corner of the street, the sergeant in the army cap will turn back and without taking aim — nonchalance is permitted, since here nothing depends on meticulousness — will fire his pistol in the direction of the chimney from behind which the narrator is peering out. A dry crack is heard; the narrator’s body suddenly jerks as if struck by a whip. The bottle of brandy he has taken falls from under his arm. It rolls down the tin roof and shatters loudly on the cobblestones somewhere below.