He replies that no one has offered him money for anything, that he's not selling his pictures to agencies or private individuals. He is only taking them for his own pleasure.
The last thing they do is give him a piece of paper stating that they've confiscated the film from his camera. Then they let him go.
That evening he complains to the woman he's living with about losing his film. Unfortunately, he had shots of the demonstration on it, along with the wedding pictures. He thinks he's in real trouble.
'You should have been more careful,' says his girlfriend. The second piece of good advice he's been given today.
'I'm being as careful as I possibly can,' he says testily.
'Maybe you should do something about it.'
'What do you mean?'
'There's a woman, one of my customers,' she says. 'Her husband works in the film archives. He chooses films for the government types and bigwigs to watch. And he picks films for the Castle.'
'Why are you telling me this?'
'Apparently he likes films about animals, and especially about snakes,' she says, stressing the word 'he', to leave him in no doubt that she means the man whose primary
residence is the Castle. 'If they sent him one of your films, maybe he'd go for it.'
'I don't give a damn if he'd go for it or not.' 'But he might be able to help you.' 'Don't you think he has other things on his mind?' 'Well, maybe not him. The fellow from the archives must know lots of influential people. He might be able to arrange something.'
'Stop right there. I don't want to hear any more.' 'I only thought…' She falls silent. He gets up from the table and goes into the other room. For a while he paces up and down like an animal in a cage. Then he stops at the window. He looks out at the metal fence. Cars are parked behind it, among piles of scrap metal. The fence reminds him of the fence on the border. He turns away and thinks of a woman he once loved, the only woman he was ever really fond of. He sees her in a white nurse's uniform walking down the long hospital corridor. He calls her by a name that has a foreign sound to it. He calls, he almost pleads: Ali, Alina. But the woman walks on, not hearing him, or at least pretending not to hear him.
II
A narrow grid of sunlight falls into the cell. When the gavel came down and they gave him the rope, they shoved him into a better cell. Now, when Robert stands on his toes, he can even see some hilltops out there. But they've stuck this Gabo character in with him — a halfwit pervert who molests and then murders little girls and howls with terror when he thinks of what's coming, and on top of that his stupid face reminds him of that idiot Míla who got him into this mess in the first place and then goes and dies, leaving him to take the rap. When they give a guy the rope, they leave him alone. So he doesn't have to beat metal or polish glass beads. . but it also means he's got nothing to help him drive out the boredom, drive out the thoughts that plague him.
Like Gabo, he was issued with one book, several magazines and a chess set. They can forget the chess set because neither of them knows how to play. Gabo's old cellmate had tried to explain the rudiments of the game, but nothing can penetrate that thick skull. Gabo can't read either, so once he's made his bed and washed himself, there's nothing left to do. From morning wake-up to lights out Gabo paces up and down the cell. The only time he stops is to swallow a couple of mouthfuls of grub or straighten his slippers or gape at his own enormous freckled paws, the ones he used to strangle those pathetic little girls. Sometimes he mumbles a few words about how he did it, but without regret, absent-mindedly, as though he was talking about somebody else, or about something completely unimportant. More often, he starts wailing in a high voice like a dog howling, or like a siren blowing.
It's enough to drive you crazy, but the strange thing is Robert gets used to it after a while and stops paying attention. He tries to read. Fortunately, one book can last him a whole week. What the inmates' library has on offer is strictly anodyne. The librarian usually sends historical novels, so for the first time in his life he is learning about something that has nothing to do with his life. Savage landscapes, ancient codes of honour, banquets, tournaments, torture chambers, executions, romantic love, strange foreign names like Robespierre, Gandhi and Anne Boleyn. What fascinates him about Anne Boleyn's story is that if the king wanted to get rid of an inconvenient wife, he didn't have to strangle her, he just had her head cut off. He tries to convey this new insight to Gabo, but Gabo doesn't see what he's getting at. If only he didn't remind him of Míla and of everything that happened, everything they so hopelessly screwed up. He tries to persuade Gabo to listen to the whole story over and over again, because even that idiot should be able to understand that their plan was flawless and it was Míla who ruined everything. They keep an eye out for a bus full of brats. No one will dare shoot at that. They easily get aboard with their hunting rifles, and he shouts a line at the driver that he's been dying to use ever since he was last in prison, when the thought of it
kept him going. 'Put your fucking foot down! We're going to the border.'.
Little girls start screaming behind him, but he doesn't even bother to turn around. He just watches where they're going. They're at the barricades in half an hour, and when they open the little window they unload a few rounds into the guardhouse so the sentries will know they're serious. They get the message fast and start running about, scared shitless, begging for Robert and Míla to be patient till the brass come.
Then some general in civvies shows up and starts trying to butter them up. They should have blown him away, wiped their arses with him, but Míla — damn that son of a bitch — starts talking to him. Either he's lost it or it makes him feel good to have this general cringing in front of him, a miserable private, promising the fucking sky if he'll just let the kids go. And then more brass show up and they all swear on their honour — their honour, for Christ's sake! — that they'll let them cross the line, and they'll even let them have the driver — one hostage ought to be enough, right? — and Míla really does lose it. Well, they both do when they believe them, those double-crossing bastards who'd never spoken the truth in their lives, not even by accident. And he let it happen. He forgot that when he broke his leg, when they stabbed him with a knife in a fight, when they didn't let him eat for two days in the kids' home where he'd been left to rot, no one ever lifted a fucking finger for him, no one thought of him as a human being — and he was no older and no worse than these brats on the bus. But it actually makes him feel good when they talk to him, make promises, call him 'Sir'. So they go along with it and let the kids out of the bus. Then the barrier swings up, and they cheer, but those double-dealing swine block the road further on with an armoured car and, before they know they've been had, flames start spewing at them from all sides.
It's something he's only seen in films, but a steady stream of flame actually pours from the gun barrels. He catches only a glimpse of it before he hits the floor, and Mila's body falls down beside him, Míla screaming like a madman, and more in surprise than terror he sees a row of
holes popping across the windscreen, the cracks in the glass zigzagging in all directions, and he watches the glass collapse and sees the driver's body go rigid behind the steering-wheel and then slide down beside Míla, drenched in blood. The full horror hits him and without a thought he edges to the door, rolls down the steps, right up against the door, and later he realized that was what saved him because those motherfuckers were raking the bus high, shooting into the windows and through the seats. So he curls up against the closed door, shouting, 'You motherfuckers, you motherfuckers,' though he can't hear his own voice over the din.