Or rather they could have been better, but someone was evidently against it. And so the narrator is obliged to begin a paragraph in which the desk clerk’s cry will ring out and be broken off suddenly, breathless, at its highest point. Shortly, in the background will be heard the wailing of police sirens and ambulances, first in the distance, then closer and closer. It will prove necessary to mention the portable posts between which plastic tape bearing official diagonal stripes is strung, closing off part of the sidewalk around the entrance; also the crowd gathered behind this makeshift barrier, and the civilian officials of the investigation team picking their way through broken glass. And since all these circumstances have been brought up, it won’t be possible to steer clear of what is most important: a series of shots from an automatic pistol that brought down the two workmen in their blue overalls as they were trapped between the panels of the revolving door. They fell where they stood; only their hands slid down the glass lingeringly, as if in slow motion. Their fingers grasped helplessly at the sharp edges of the bullet holes, leaving disquieting red streaks — an image that is disagreeable and also in its literalness somewhat ridiculous. And all this amid office buildings where work goes on in a frenzy of boredom and routine from morning to night only so as to have money; the more that’s earned, the broader the scope for desires, which are uncomplicated and quickly fizzle out. The image is blurred; a misty suspension of rain falls slowly, enveloping the adverbs of time, place, manner, and purpose in every sentence. No meaning can be discerned in this image, especially if the evening newspapers suggest that the shots missed their presumed target. Accustomed to descriptions of paid murders, readers of the press will surmise the existence of a hired killer who was most probably shooting at a speeding car. The bullets are said to have found their victims at random, which ought not to surprise anyone. It’s all the same to the world who happens to be in the line of fire, one person or another; which person is which is a matter of indifference to it. In certain circumstances a knight can perish at the hands of a bishop or vice versa; but the difference between them in essence will remain unclear and doubtful, explainable only in terms of movement and direction. The latter, as everyone knows, moves diagonally across the whole board, so long as nothing stands in its way; while the former dodges, attacking the other pieces surreptitiously out of the blue. Yet it can’t be understood why one is one and the other the other, which authority decided it would be so and why; they could just as well have decreed that from now on the opposite will be the case. And since a complete reversal of roles changes nothing, it’s all the easier to comprehend that it makes no difference to the bullets either. Afterwards, staring at the corpses, the onlookers succumb to the illusion that the inertia of death is a perfect match for precisely this body lying forlornly on the sidewalk, and so in the end they walk away reassured. Violent scenes always have their complement; after the culmination of tension the crowds pour into movie theaters, stores, and cafés humming with idle conversation about pleasant trivialities. And finally there comes the moment of relaxation that everyone deserves, when the tape and the official posts are no longer needed, the shards of glass all swept away, and in the immaculate panes of glass the rider and the rearing horse beneath him rotate again as if on a merry-go-round.
Looking behind the paragraphs for a path leading beyond what is visible, the narrator has found only confusion. Behind the paragraphs things are the same as everywhere else, only in disarray: broken glass, jumbled sounds. So let’s gaze at the raindrops striking the windowpane — now they are in the foreground. There’s no escape, and it may be necessary until further notice to move amid pieces of scenery set up ahead of time in between which not even the slightest gap can be discerned. Wherever one looks there are walls, floors, and ceilings, earth and sky. Scattered here and there is the sadness of unfulfilled desires and the sadness of desires fulfilled, each equally opaque. There’s always something that a sensitive body wants and something it doesn’t want, and it yields just as easily to euphoria as to despair. Since nothing can be done for it, at the very least it avoids protruding edges and is cautious when handling knives. The defenseless skin solicitously conceals some secret truth: a greedy stomach, delicate intestines, a few liters of blood that can be discharged in the blink of an eye, spilling beyond recall — and above all, the incessantly beating heart, which may never know peace till it bursts. In such conditions the charming little flowers on the meadows of bedding fabrics lend the pillow an ironic quality. But the body, trustful and yearning for sleep, is unaware of this. As for the white batiste that simply cries out for lace, it only seems not to impose its own essence on bedrooms: Whiteness is at root a provocation, and lace impresses with an ephemeral innocence about which it can be said merely that sooner or later it may be soiled, and it’s easy to imagine pillows trampled by heavy boots, lying in mud, perhaps stained with blood. But the body refuses to hear anything about this. Nor does it wish to know about the blindness of bullets, nor the cold gleam of a steel barrel, nor the plump worms that live somewhere down in the earth.
One might now expect a question asking who this narrator in fact is, unabashedly permitting himself conclusions of this kind. Whether he also has a body to bear, whether he has feelings and desires, and what gender he is. The attempt to determine gender in particular is always reasonable. Here there are only two possibilities for defining all beings, with or without a body. The narrator is a man; he cannot be anything else. This is imposed by grammatical forms, especially those of the verb, though of course they are not the only things that follow so naturally after the word ‘narrator’ — pronouns should also be mentioned. Their testimony is consistent, and therefore irrefutable. It’s not enough to say that they reveal the truth, since in fact they create it. The narrator knows that grammatical forms submit to his will only reluctantly, to a degree limited by their own routine way of manifesting themselves; moreover he can never be certain that it isn’t they who are making use of him. The scrap of existence that fell to his lot should not exclude the possibility of experiencing feelings, though these kinds of feelings don’t have to be — and why should they? — the slightest bit nobler than is generally accepted. All he can do is remain to the end hidden behind the screen of the third-person style, which protects his feelings from idle curiosity arising from boredom. The passing moments stir emotions in him like a current of water stirring a muddy riverbed. They leave behind a turbid deposit, a trace of longing. It is promise and hope that turn into longing, a sign that the moment has already gone — weightless, incorporeal, possible only as a parting without farewell. White tablecloths, the aroma of coffee, a stray shaft of sunlight in a glass of beer bring temporary consolation, but they cannot assuage the longing.
And the four characters of this story — at least one too many — shouldn’t count on anything more as they wander through the murky space. Wasn’t this supposed to have been a short tale of betrayal pinned on a three-sided frame? The fewer the characters, the simpler the narrator’s task. He could still pretend that he has forgotten about the desk clerk, and ignore her existence the way he ignores the leather armchairs in the hotel lobby. But all that was needed was a moment of distraction, the confusion that arose as he was gazing at the smooth and clear panes of glass, seeking a good way out for himself, for additional, redundant figures to appear; they’ve already dispersed among the walls, among the furniture, considerably more than the four which should have been consented to at once, like it or not. Moreover, the narrator may be sure that if any one of them is overlooked, gaps will emerge and the story will stop running smoothly. It’s too late now to get rid of the hobo with the earring, the retired gentleman with rheumatism, or the little boy. And also the workmen in overalls, even if appearances suggest that from where they were sent by an unfortunate combination of circumstances, they will no longer return. They can’t be expected to content themselves with the gentle presence granted to those who are dead and are reconciled with death, free of resentments or hidden intentions, their silence concealing nothing. Even less can a courteous passivity be counted on from the alleged paid killer, and there is no hope that he at least, lurking unseen, can be excluded from the subsequent course of events.