The Scar (25 page)

Egert’s head rang.

Having expressed her strangled fury in the blow, Toria regained the ability to speak, and the words were accompanied by another blow. “Scum! Don’t you dare!”

It is scarcely possible that Toria herself knew at that moment just what it was that Egert should not dare to do. Having fully lost the power to control herself, she lashed out at the scarred face in a frenzy.

“Don’t you dare! Scoundrel! Wretch! Get out of my sight!” Desperate, spiteful tears flew from her eyes in all directions.

“Toria!” Dean Luayan seized his daughter by the hand. She struggled with him briefly; then she convulsed into hysterical weeping, and falling on her knees to the floor, she gasped through fitful sobs, “I detest him. I … de … test … him.…”

Egert stood still, unable to take even a step. Blood flowed down his lips and chin from his broken nose.

*   *   *

He sat at the edge of the canal, where he could watch the arched bridge from below: the mossy stones flecked with water; the solid brickwork; the underside of the railing; the clattering wheels; the tromping feet; the boots, shoes, and bare soles, gray from dust; and again wheels, hooves, shoes.…

From time to time he lowered a bedraggled handkerchief into the water and applied it to his nose. The flow of blood had calmed, but at times it began to flow once more. The sight of it caused Egert to shudder involuntarily.

He watched the smooth surface of the stagnant water and remembered Toria crying.

He had never seen her tears before. Not even when Dinar died; not even at the burial. Though, truth be told, Egert had not actually been at the burial; he knew about it solely through the words of others.

She was not one to cry in front of witnesses. It was evident that her pain was quite unbearable, and it was equally evident that this pain had been inflicted by Egert, who was born into this world only to cause Toria suffering. Heaven, he would happily rid the world of his presence; he just did not know how. The Wanderer had left him no way out.

Egert flung the handkerchief, by this time only a filthy rag, into the canal. He had to return to the university. He absolutely had to find the onetime lodger of the Noble Sword. He must convince the strange and dreadful man; he must implore him: he would beg on his knees, if need be. Just, dear Heaven, let him remove the curse; otherwise Egert would go out of his mind.

Struggling to stand up, he elbowed his way onto the bridge. He started back from a passing cart; then he slowly went along a street that was already long familiar, trying not to walk out into the middle of it and constantly peering about to see if there was any danger. The marks of Toria’s blows still blazed on his face.

Passing through the square where the stone Spirit of Lash gleamed on a pedestal, Egert diligently avoided a small group of silent people attired in the same kind of robes as the Spirit wore. Intent gazes from under those brooding hoods seemed to alight upon him for a second, but in the same instant the gray figures turned and walked away.

A massive cloth rose, the emblem of a guild, swayed over the entrance to a perfume shop; the bloom of this noble flower, which was actually more reminiscent of a head of cabbage, hung listlessly from a thorny, copper stem. Jars and phials were frozen in the wide windows like soldiers lined up by rank. Egert’s head spun from the thick, sweet smell that wafted from the wide-open doors. He hurried past the shop, and suddenly froze. A strange, unfamiliar sensation imperiously commanded him to stop.

In the shop, somewhere in its fragrant depths, a heavy object fell with a crash, breaking into pieces; directly after this a child’s voice cried out thinly and the sound of swearing could be heard. Then a lanky gentleman with a fastidious expression on his face paraded out the door, wiping off his soiled sleeve: apparently an irate customer. Then the owner of the shop—Egert recognized him by that compulsory rose, tattooed on the back of his hand—pulled a boy out the exit by his ear. The boy was about twelve years old and obviously an apprentice.

Such scenes were hardly a curiosity in businesses, but especially so in artisans’ quarters. Easily ten times a day, a person was thrashed here, and the passersby did not pay any special attention to the bawls of those who were being disciplined: they were content to allow the educational process to take its own course. The young apprentice had committed an offense, apparently a serious one, and the owner was moved to anger in earnest. Frozen in place five steps away, Egert saw how the hand that held the whip clenched nervously, and the rose petals on the tattoo stirred slightly from this barely perceptible movement.

The boy was firmly wedged between the powerful knees of the owner. Egert saw a small purple ear beneath a tuft of flaxen hair, round, frightened eyes, and the pink expanse between his lowered trousers and his lifted shirt. The boy submissively awaited his punishment, but Egert suddenly felt low, melancholy, and queasy.

The owner struck, and Egert was immersed in a wave of pain.

He stood five steps away, yet in some mysterious fashion the pain of an unknown boy descended upon him with such force, it was as if he were suddenly without skin, peeled like a carcass under a butcher’s knife. Another feeling was added to the sensation of pain, a feeling that was not a whit better than the pain: Egert suddenly realized that the owner took pleasure in whipping his apprentice, that he was venting all his accumulated frustration on the boy, that it did not matter at all to him now who he was beating, just so long as it was strenuous, just so long as it went on for a long time, just so long as it could soothe his ravenous soul. Egert had no time to ponder how this agonizing new sense had appeared in him, nor did he have time to wonder at it: he vomited all over the pavement. Someone nearby swore, the blows continued to rain down, and Egert realized that he was about to faint.

He fled in whatever direction his feet would go, then he walked, and then he plodded along, barely able to shuffle his feet. From every window, from every entrance to a courtyard, from every side street he felt pain; it ran high, like water from an overflowing well.

These were only echoes: intense or weak, keen or sluggish. Someone was crying, someone was accepting blows, someone was inflicting them, and someone was suffering from the desire to hit someone without knowing who. A stench fell from one of the windows onto Egert: a man, skulking in a darkened room, was thinking about rape, and his desire was so avid that Egert, however hard it may have been to drag his feet, ran away. In another window, despair had taken up residence: impenetrable despair, which would soon lead to a noose. Egert groaned and quickened his pace. In a tavern people were brawling; a chill tugged at Egert’s skin from the alien vehemence, the obscure, insensate passion of heavy fists.

The city loomed over Egert like a fetid chunk of porous cheese, mottled with the pits of windows and alleys. Violence emanated from all sides in waves. Egert could sense it with his skin, and it sometimes seemed to him that he could see ragged clots of it quivering like aspic. The violence was entwined with pain, and pain required violence; at times Egert’s blighted senses blurred and refused to serve any longer.

Some intuition or miracle finally led Egert to the university. Someone hailed him as he neared the entrance, but Egert could not answer. Fox caught up to him, looking stunned.

“Hey, Egert! What in Heaven happened to your face? It looks like it’s been crushed!”

Mischievous eyes the color of honey twinkled sympathetically: Fox had also received such injuries more than once. Gazing at his round, childlike face, Egert suddenly realized that Fox really was sympathizing with him, and that in this sympathy there was not the slightest hint of pretense.

“Don’t worry about it, brother.” Gaetan grinned widely. “Your face isn’t some expensive piece of pottery. Smashing it up now and then can only make it stronger!”

The university building seemed like an island of inviolable tranquillity in a sea of wickedness. Egert leaned against its wall and smiled wanly.

*   *   *

Porcelain beads, which had slipped off the thread of a broken necklace, bounced across the dean’s desk. The bulk of them were lost amongst the papers, but a few of the colored beads fell off the edge of the desk and came to rest in the cracks of the stone floor. Slowly, unreflectively, yet with a precision worthy of a better cause, the dean gathered them up and placed them one by one in his palm. A second after each bead hit his palm, a June bug awkwardly buzzed up out of his hand.

The heavy bugs crawled on the ceiling, flew out the open window, and returned. Toria had been sitting in a corner for a long time, her disheveled hair hiding her face.

“Contrition is beneficial,” noted the dean with a sigh, letting the next insect up onto the ceiling, “but only to a certain degree. Even the deepest lake must have a bottom. Otherwise, where would the crabs go to mate?”

Toria remained silent.

“When you were ten years old”—the dean scratched the tip of his nose—“you got into a fight with the village boys. The mother of one of them then came to me to complain: You had knocked out two of his teeth. Or was it three? Do you recall?”

Toria did not even lift up her head.

“And then”—the dean raised an instructive finger—“he ran to our house every day, asking you to go first on a fishing trip, then to the forest, then wherever. Do you remember?”

His daughter whispered through the curtain of her hair, “It is very easy for you to talk, but Dinar…” She fell silent to keep herself from crying again. The old book and the forgotten drawing had aroused her dulled grief, and now Toria was once again revisiting her loss.

A massive June bug crashed into a shelf, fell to the floor, lay there senseless for a second, and then took the air once more with a methodical buzz.

“You know very well, my dear, how much regard I had for Dinar,” said the dean quietly. “I had become accustomed to considering him my son, and in many ways he was. I bitterly regret the life you will not have with him, the books he will not write, the children you two will not have. He was a wonderful boy, kind and talented, and his death was an absurd injustice. But now imagine Soll, if you will. I know that even the name is unpleasant to you, but just think: Soll could have concealed that book. He could have thrown it out or given it to the scullery maid for kindling. He could have sold it, after all. But he decided to return it to me, and through me, to you. Do you understand what kind of courage this decision of his required?”

“Courage?” Toria’s voice was no longer shaking from tears, but from contempt. “That is ridiculous, like…”

“Like the dancing of a jellyfish on a drum,” coldly completed the dean.

Toria fell silent, perplexed.

The dean pensively followed the reeling of the insects along the ceiling with his eyes, muttering the words to an old children’s song under his breath.

“Jellyfish dances for us on a drum, but Mole gets shellfish for dinner.…” His hand came down sharply on the desktop, as if he were swatting a fly. “Yes, you are correct; it is absurd. But we are now remembering Dinar, and I for one do not think that he would revel in his hatred so, were he in a similar situation. I just can’t imagine it. Can you?”

Toria nearly leapt at him. “That’s a dirty trick, Father!”

The dean sighed again and shook his head, as if wishing to say to his daughter: And how else can I convince you? Toria sprang up, tossed her hair behind her back, and met the tranquil eyes of the dean with her own tearstained eyes.

“A dirty trick! Dinar is dead, laid out in the ground. And no one, except for me, has the right to judge if he would have behaved one way or another. Dinar is mine, and the memory of him is also mine. And this … Soll … he dared … He is a murderer. How you can allow him to … I cannot see him. I cannot think about him. I do not wish to know anything about him. How could he dare to touch Dinar’s things? How dare he even look at them? But you…” Toria sobbed and fell silent.

The June bugs circled the ceiling in a strict order; the dean sighed and wearily raised himself from behind the desk.

Toria seemed too small in his arms, trembling and soaked like a lost kitten. He hugged her hesitantly, wary of offending her: after all, she had not been a child for a long time. Toria froze for a second and then burst into tears, shedding her tears directly into the dean’s black chlamys.

A few minutes passed by; having cried herself out, Toria quieted and began to feel a bit ashamed. Backing away, she spoke to the floor. “You are a good man, Father, and it is obvious to me that you pity Soll, and that you are interested in his situation. But he was a courageous villain, and now he is a cowardly villain. That is in no way better: it is worse, Father. He does not belong here. He’d be far better off among the acolytes of Lash!”

The dean winced. Just yesterday the rector expelled some unlucky boy, the son of a copyist, who’d spied on the university and had even fallen to theft. They said he went right to Lash’s tower. The dean pitied the boy, but he could not forgive him.

He tenderly traced his finger along the book spines, scratching at one that was covered in fur. He asked in a low voice, not turning around, “All the same, I think … Why did the Wanderer treat him so? What for? Why should he care if there is one more vagrant and one less bully?”

Toria drew a faltering breath. “You know very well that there is no way for us to determine why the Wanderer behaved one way and not another, but I think he acted justly. If I were to meet him, I would clasp his hand and bow to him.”

“By all means”—the dean nodded—“you can clasp his hand for whatever reason. Just don’t argue with him.”

Toria smiled sourly.

“Yes, well,” continued the dean without much pause. “At one point I greatly desired to meet the Wanderer, but I am now happy that meeting never occurred. Who knows what might have happened, had he decided to receive me.”

Slumping her shoulders, Toria walked wearily to the door. At the threshold she turned slightly, as if she wanted to say something, but she remained silent.