The Scar (17 page)

He turned and laboriously walked away. At an intersection he asked directions in turn of two passersby: affable and wishing him well, they each pointed him in exactly opposite directions.

Gritting his teeth, he started walking, deciding to rely only on instinct and luck. Having passed by a few blocks, he suddenly noticed a pair of street urchins who were obviously following him, though still at a safe distance.

He looked back with increasing frequency. The grubby, determined faces of the urchins flickered in the crowd, all the time getting closer and closer. Cowering inwardly, Egert swerved once, and then again and again, but the urchins kept pace with him, walking ever faster, their hungry mouths widely and insolently grinning. By now an entire horde was merrily following Egert.

Egert kept increasing his pace. The usual terror had already blossomed within him: it squeezed his throat with cold jaws; it stuffed his rebellious legs with cotton padding. Egert was keenly aware that he was a victim, and it was as if this awareness had been imparted to his juvenile pursuers. It impelled them to chase him.

The hunt had begun.

Egert was not at all surprised when the first stone hit him in the shoulder blade. Quite the contrary: he was relieved that he no longer had to wait for that blow because it was already inflicted. But the first stone was followed by a second and a third.

“Yoo-hoo!” They merrily mocked as they jogged along the street. The passersby looked around, displeased, and then went about their business.

“Yoo-hoo! Hey, Uncle, give us a bit of smoke, just a pinch. Hey, Uncle, over here!”

Egert was almost running. Only a small remnant of his pride prevented him from simply taking to his heels.

“Hey, Uncle! You, with the hole in your pants. Look over here!”

A few small pebbles accurately pecked at his legs, his back, and the back of his head. A minute passed and his pursuers had caught up to him; one of their dirty hands grabbed his sleeve, and the shabby threads holding it together ripped.

“Hey, you! What, you don’t want to talk to us?”

Egert stopped. They surrounded him. Most of the boys were around eight years old, but there were a few who were a bit older and two or three who might have been as old as fourteen. Grinning expansively, showing black pits in the place where some of their teeth should have been, wiping snotty noses on their sleeves, staring with hostile, narrowed eyes, the gang of hunters took pleasure in Egert’s bewilderment, which was all the more sweet since the eldest of these hunters barely stood as tall as their prey’s armpit.

“Uncle, buy us a loaf. Give us some money, eh?”

Something sharp pricked him from behind, either a pin or a needle. Egert jerked, and the horde broke out into merry laughter.

“See that? See how he jumped?”

They pricked him again. Tears of pain welled up in Egert’s eyes.

A strong man, an adult, was standing in a circle of urchins who were young and weak but reveling in the sense of their ability to act with impunity. Who knows how, but these little beasts had unerringly exposed Egert as a coward, as a victim, as prey, and they were inspired to carry out the unwritten law by which every victim is tried and found guilty.

“Do it again! Make him hop! Silly uncle! Hey, where are you going?”

The last prick of the needle had been intolerable. Egert plunged straight though the gang, knocking one of them from his feet. As he ran away, stones, clumps of mud, and taunts flew after him.

“Oi-oi-oi-oi! Get him! Go on, get him!”

The long-legged Egert could run faster than even the most brazen urchin in the city, but the street wound about, turning into blind alleys that teemed with closed gates. The hunters dashed in front of Egert, cutting across his path from the routes known only to them, flinging stones and mud, screaming incessantly, chirruping and hallooing. At some point it began to seem to Egert that all of this was not really happening to him, that he was watching someone else’s abominable nightmare through thick, cloudy glass, but then a stone struck him painfully in the knee, and a different, bitter, overwhelming emotion surged through him, replacing his detachment: This is how it is now, this is his life, his fate, his being.

Finally, he somehow pried himself away from his pursuers.

He found himself in a blighted slum, where a wizened, toothless old crone, holding an enormous snuffbox under her nose, pointed her crooked finger farther into the labyrinth of muddy alleyways. As he traversed them he felt a blunt, apathetic weariness that also dulled his fear, and then he felt fleeting joy at the sight of a square and the city gates.

The gates were closing.

The doors were slowly crawling toward each other. At the bottom of each door he could plainly see three guards, flushed from the strain of pushing them closed. A small shred of sky and the ribbon of the road were visible through the swiftly contracting opening.

What is going on? Egert thought.

With his last strength he ran across the square, but the gap was still narrowing, and then the gates closed with a crash. A chain clinked, threaded through the steel rings of the doors, and as solemnly as a flag, an enormous black lock was raised up onto the chain.

Egert stood in front of the magnificent steel gates decorated with figures of dragons and snakes. Their raised snouts were turned toward him; they watched him morosely and vacantly. Only now did Egert fully comprehend that the doors had been pushed shut, that night was approaching, and that the gates usually remained closed until morning.

“You, there!” The stern bark compelled him to cringe. “What do you want?”

“I must go out,” he mumbled inaudibly.

“What?”

“I need to go through, out of the city.”

The guard—a sweaty, round-cheeked man who did not seem malicious—smirked. “In the morning, my friend. You were late; that’s the way it is. And really, when you really think about it, why would you want to go out there at night? You never know what might happen. So, my boy, you’ll just have to wait. We’ll open the gates at dawn.”

Without saying another word, Egert walked away. It no longer mattered to him.

In the morning the gates would get stuck, or the sun would not rise, or something else would happen. If the unknown and hostile force, the force that had been toying with him all day from the time of his fateful meeting with Toria, if that force did not want Egert to leave the city, then he was not going to be able to leave of his own free will: he would die a beggarly death here, the death of a coward.

The square in front of the gates had emptied. Egert urgently wanted to lie down; it did not matter where, just so long as he could lie down, close his eyes, and not think about anything.

Barely moving his legs, he shuffled away from the gates.

A noisy cavalcade of five or six young horsemen on well-groomed steeds flew toward him from a wide side street. With a practiced eye, Egert absently identified the breed of each horse and noticed how splendidly each of the riders kept his seat. He stood still, waiting for them to pass by, but one of the youths, who was riding a tall, raven-colored stallion, broke away from the company and rode straight toward Egert.

This happened in the blink of an eye—and for all eternity. Egert lost the ability to move.

His legs grew into the pavement of the square, became numb, put down roots: thus must a tree feel, watching the approach of a lumberjack. The horse cantered easily, beautifully, as if on air, but the ground shook loudly from its strong, murderous hooves. Egert saw the black muzzle of the stallion, its wild eyes, the string of saliva hanging from its lower lip, and its chest, as wide as the sky and as heavy as a hammer, was ready to crush him with one blow.

He felt the steam of hot breath in his face, and slowly, so slowly, as if underwater, the stallion rose up on his hind legs.

Egert stared as the glossy muzzle froze right in front of his face. The hooves were thrown up, and the round heads of nails gleamed on newly shod, well-made horseshoes. Then the horseshoes flew up over his head, and the horse’s belly opened up before Egert’s eyes: the belly of a well-cared-for stallion, with a shaggy crest running down the middle. The horseshoes above his head were kneading the sky, preparing to descend from the heights and splatter the contents of a human head across the cobblestones.

Egert’s mind collapsed; he was aware of nothing for the space of five seconds.

As before, Egert was standing in the middle of the square. The patter of hooves and trills of laughter were fading away down an alleyway, and a fine trickle of warm urine was leaking down Egert’s leg.

Death would be better than this.

The guards were snorting with laughter behind him, and their laughter reverberated inside Egert’s head. All the will of Egert Soll, all his remaining respect for himself, all his mutilated yet still living pride, and all his being screamed, slowly writhing in the inferno of this inconceivable, incredible degradation.

The vacant sky above his head and the empty square beneath his feet both whirled like grindstones, and these two black stones scraped against each other as if wishing to grind to dust the bones of this man who had dared to come between them.

Egert, said his will and his pride. This is the end, Egert. Remember the slimy filth on your face, remember the girl in the coach.… Remember your true self, Egert Soll, remember and answer this: Why do you, a man, consent to live in this repulsive, perpetually fearful manner? You have come to the edge: another step, and all your life, all your bright reminiscences, all the memories of your mother and father will curse you, will disown you for eternity. While you still recall what a man should be, put a stop to this despicable monstrosity that has possessed you!

The guards had long ago settled down and forgotten about Egert. Night had already set in: gloomy, moonless, lit only by a few streetlamps. Under one of these streetlamps loomed a wide, squat bit of masonry; it was a well, from which travelers who had just arrived in town usually watered their exhausted horses. Now it was completely lifeless.

Egert walked over to it. A waft of frigid air arose from the well, but Egert forced himself to gaze down into its humid depths. The circular, mirrorlike surface of the water reflected the dim streetlamp, the black sky, and the human silhouette that looked like it was cut out of a soot-black sheet of tin.

He worked quickly. He found a fragment of cobblestone nearby, as cold and heavy as a tombstone. He needed to tie the stone to his neck somehow, but he did not have any rope and his belt kept slipping off it. Fussing and sniveling from terror, Egert finally unbuttoned his shirt and stuffed the cobblestone into the cavity. The feel of the cold stone against his bare chest caused him to squirm.

Holding the stone to his chest with both his arms, he once again walked over to the well. He stood next to it for about two minutes, panting. The city was sleeping; somewhere in the dark heights an unseen weathervane screeched in the nighttime wind, and from afar could be heard the cry of the night watch, “Rest in peace, honest townsfolk!”

May you rest in peace, said Egert to himself. Clutching the stone to his chest like a beloved kitten, he swung a leg, stiff as a board, over the side of the well.

He sat on the stone masonry at the top; he exerted himself again, and his other leg, rebellious and numb, hung over the water. Egert swung around so that his stomach was on the edge of the well; his legs dangled inside without any purchase. Now all he had to do was brace himself and push off from the wall of the well with his hands and knees; then his body would fall over backwards, splash into the water, and the stone secreted in his bosom would immediately drag him to the bottom. The water would wash away all Egert’s fear and degradation, all he had to do was …

His muscles seized up. Desperately attempting to suppress his terror, he tried to unclench his blue fingers, but they clawed at the masonry with a death grip. If only there were someone there who could crack a whip at his hands! But Egert had no one to help him, and the stone in his shirt pressed against the wall of the well; it prevented him from reaching out to his fingers with his teeth and biting them to force them to unclench. Just a bit more strength, just a bit …

But then his terror of death finally tore through the barrier he had momentarily erected in his mind.

Egert clung to the wall of the well with his entire body—his elbows, the soles of his feet, his knees—unable to recall or command himself. He surged upward, gasping for air, willing himself to tear out of his own skin and flee, flee, save himself! Stifled by fear, he tumbled out of the well onto the ground. The cobblestone skidded out of his shirt and Egert, still frantic, crawled away, trembling and weeping.

A guard glanced out of the striped kiosk by the gate and, not seeing anyone or anything, calmly ducked back inside. “Rest in peace, honest townsfolk,” resounded from the watch.

Leaning against a lamppost, Egert finally managed to pull himself together. Only now did he acknowledge the profundity of the trap he was captured in.

He had no mastery over himself. Terror made his life unbearable and his death unattainable. He could not escape. All his mortal years, all his long life until old age he would be afraid, afraid, and he would grovel and betray himself, and he would suffer shame and hate himself, and he would rot alive until he lost his mind.

“No!”
Egert’s soul screamed. “No.”

His shirt had already lost all its buttons. Egert cradled the cobblestone to his chest like a mother holding her beloved child, dashed toward the well, and leapt for the edge.

He stopped short with a fraction of a second to spare. Catching a glimpse of the dark water below, the fear of death broke his will as easily as a child breaks a match. It allowed him to come to his senses only when he was already on the ground, shaking and squirming like a newborn rat.

He wept and gnawed at his fingers. He called out to the heavens for help, but the heavens remained dark, as is sometimes the case at night. He wanted to die: he tried to force his heart to stop by strength of will, but his heart paid him no heed and beat as before, albeit irregularly and painfully.