20

He woke up with a terrible headache just before sunrise. He had shed a few tears in his sleep and now these dried-up tears were stinging his skin. He had a stomach ache and, bizarrely, his fists were also hurting, as if he’d been sleeping with a clenched fist and his finger bones had crumbled.

As he got to his feet, he noticed the man lying still on the ground.

‘He can’t be dead, can he?’ he wondered.

He didn’t have the strength to respond. He realized that he has been absent from prison all night, and he’d never done such a thing before. The sheer thought gave him the shivers. He listened carefully for a few seconds, as if convinced that there should be dogs barking and boots plodding outside. He couldn’t hear a thing. So he hurried up to get out, to get some air, to get away, to run straight back. If he managed to smuggle himself back to his lift shelter perhaps his night-time absence would go unnoticed.

He breathed in the cold and clean morning air with all his might. He calmed down a little, and remembered snippets of what had happened the day before. He smelt his fingers and had an immediate urge to throw up. His entire being stank of rotten wood and vinegar. He looked around trying to figure out in which part of the prison he would possibly find himself. He started off striding towards what he thought to be the abandoned manège, and took the path seemingly peppered with rocks and gravel. He tapped his fingers in front of his face and had almost got pricked by his own beard.

‘I’m really unshaven,’ he said to himself.

He went past the holes he had carved the day before.

‘How insane!’ he observed.

Next, he made it to the pool, and all of a sudden felt a tremendous urge to see himself reflected in its murky waters. He decided to sit on the edge of the pool and wait for the sun to rise a little higher. His anxious mind had also calmed down. He now knew that he had nothing to fear since he was a free man. Yet he was experiencing a terrible unrest. He was afraid. He was a free man overwhelmed by fear, and that was that.

He looked at his reflection in the murky pool water. The first sunrays of the day had also plunged in there.

‘I look so ugly!’ he noted with sadness.

He would have liked to wash himelf but he was too cold. All he wanted was to slip back unnoticed into his prison pavilion, huddle up somewhere and forget about everything. He would have wanted to make sure that Franz Hoss wouldn’t scold him.

On his way, he kicked one of those algal mounds over, in anger. By now they had dried out and were soft and silky, and floated in the air like flakes. Then he kicked again and yet again, turning all mounds put up by the fugitive the day before upside down. For some unknown reason he was convinced that Fabius and Franz Hoss would have patted him on the back had they known what he was up to.

‘I’m an absconder!’ it suddenly occurred to him and he couldn’t stop saying this word over and over again: ‘A wretched runaway!’

He carried on, following his usual route towards the rows of interior courtyards. The day looked just as overcast by tattered clouds as the one before, and like the one about to follow next. As he got nearer to his pavilion, he was able to make out the hubbub of the usual morning routine. It seemed to him that he could hear Franz Hoss, or, rather, hear him scream. He had the impression of hearing the sound of slammed spyholes, together with clinking and the smashing of plates and mugs.

On his way, he bumped into a guard pushing a food trolley. The guard paid no attention to him and Kosef J didn’t say a word either.

‘Why doesn’t he say anything?’ he wondered, feeling a little resentful.

But then he replied to himself that no one had the right to say anything to him any longer.

‘This isn’t quite so,’ he replied again, somewhat later.

Right in front of the pavilion there was a kind of military cart. Two horses were harnessed to it. Fabius was slumbering on the box, looking cold. Kosef J had never seen this fairly spectacular vehicle before. He came to a halt and looked around, particularly pleased with the sight of the horses. He had never seen Fabius hold on to a harness before, so this made him smile. He was almost convinced that the cart’s actual driver had just taken a short break for a few minutes, and therefore asked Fabius to keep his place for a while.

‘Hey!’ Fabius shouted when he spotted Kosef J.

Kosef J was really pleased to hear this rather friendly yell.

‘Good morning,’ he replied.

He had instinctively opened his mouth to explain his lateness, the wasted night and other things but Fabius cut him short: ‘Would you care to join me?’

‘Sure,’ he said with a sense of relief, and climbed up to the box next to Fabius.

Fabius cracked the whip and the horses set off. Everything was so unforeseeable and happened so quickly that he no longer knew what to make of it. In a way it seemed as if Fabius had actually been expecting him, and now that he had come, they could finally leave.

‘This is stupid, really stupid,’ he scolded himself in his mind.

This sudden departure made him feel dizzy again. It was obvious that they were heading to town. To town! While he was still dressed in his old clothes . . . and was looking worse for wear than ever.

‘What if Mum sees me?’ it crossed his mind.

He tried to look Fabius in the eye. He wanted to make sure that all this wasn’t just a joke. But Fabius didn’t look like someone who was joking. He was grumpy and mumbled into his beard, as ususal. Every now and then, he’d lift the whip and whack the horses on the rump. He’d whack them for no reason since the cart carried on moving at the same pace as before.

‘He enjoys flogging horses,’ Kosef J mused.

They left through the main gate. Then they made their way onto a gravel road winding towards the horizon defined by the outlines of roofs, trees and spires.

‘Would you like some?’ Fabius asked offering him a piece of bread.

Kosef J’s entire stomach turned.

‘No, thanks,’ he said placing his hand on his mouth.

‘It’s hard,’ Fabius explained, taking the bread back and biting into it.

‘Whose horses are these?’ Kosef J asked, mawkishly.

‘They are old,’ Fabius pointed out.

Kosef J had a slight inkling that the old guard hadn’t answered his question but let it drop.

Fabius decided to whip the horses again. He’d swear and mumble between his teeth, then begin to tell a very confusing story. Something about horses that grind their teeth.

‘Get it?’ the guard said, ‘they’d live longer but they have nothing to chew with.’

He didn’t get it, so Fabius explained again. Greedy as they were, the horses would keep on grinding their teeth. They’d wear their teeth down ahead of time, because they’d mindlessly gnaw and chew on everything. They’d continuously gnaw on pretty much anything, from wood to their harness, so their teeth would wear down in a few short years and then they’d die of hunger because they simply would have nothing left to chew with.

‘Get it now?’ Fabius asked again. ‘The heart works, the legs work, everything works, except that they have no teeth left.’

‘Is he talking to me?’ Kosef J wondered. Something in the guard’s manner, he was unsure what exactly, made him feel suspicious.

‘This is bad,’ Kosef J responded.

‘It is,’ Fabius agreed and Kosef J felt a pang in the chest.

These curt answers reminded him of the fugitive, but also of the fact that just recently he also thought of himself as a runaway. Could it be that Fabius’s short answers were intended to make him, Kosef J, understand something special? He was almost certain that the old guard was in the know.

In the know of what?

He knew everything. He knew of the abandoned courtyards, the rubbish heaps and the fact that the fugitive would find shelter there. He also knew that he, Kosef J, would regularly wander about those parts. And even that he’d chat to the fugitive, and help him to make holes and remove the pool algae and rummage in the rubbish. Yes, Fabius knew. He knew that Kosef J had given that man a pair of boots and a loaf of bread.

‘If he knows, why is he so quiet?’ he wondered.

With his hand holding the whip, Fabius pointed at the horizon: ‘A house had burnt down over there.’

‘When?’ Kosef J asked.

‘Last night,’ Fabius replied serenely.

Kosef J regarded this news as a bad omen. He was now even more awestruck and the thought that Fabius would put him to the test came back to haunt him. The fact that a house had burnt down in town, the very night he had been absent from prison for the first time, sounded like a reproach. He felt somewhat guilty for this fire, seeing this as an unfortunate coincidence, and in his mind he rebuked the fugitive. Only this fugitive with his rabbit traps could have been behind this.

As they got nearer the town Kosef J noted with horror that he had started to recognize places. He recognized each and every bend in the road and each and every tree. They got to the barrier at the edge of town and he recognized it, too. He recognized the man that was in charge of lifting the town barrier and he recognized the booth where he’d take shelter. Nothing seemed to have changed in all the years that he hadn’t set foot there. The road was the same as before, paved with small cubes of granite. The pavements were the same too, narrow and paved with pebbles from the river. The houses on the edge of town all had the same green fences and the same red roofs. Everything seemed to have frozen in time, even the dried leaves of grass seemed identical to the ones from the day when Kosef J had left town through the very barrier that the watchman had now just lowered behind them.

How close this town had actually been to him all this time! Kosef J found it really incredible that the town should stay the same, just as dusty as before, and just as close yet inaccessible as always.

He’d take a good look beyond the fences, into the deserted courtyards and would come across the same old objects. He’d soon catch sight of faces that should have aged in time, but oddly enough, they looked exactly the way they used to look like all these years ago.

‘Where are we going, in fact?’ Kosef J finally mustered the courage to ask, after he realized that he didn’t even have the slightest inkling as to their destination.

‘To the bread factory,’ Fabius replied.

This response scared Kosef J beyond belief, to an extent he hadn’t imagined to be actually possible. The road to the factory led past his house! He could already see the bend beyond which his house would appear on the horizon. He suddenly turned around and looked back. Had he been able to jump out of the cart and run back, he would have chanced that. He looked at Fabius again, trying to figure out whether he knew all this. Fabius was in the middle of whistling some stupid tune, and he obsessively kept repeating it over and over again. Every now and then the old man would cough and spit, trying to get rid of a hair strand stuck to the tip of his tongue.

‘That’s my house,’ Kosef J pointed out.

‘Really?’ Fabius replied.

Kosef J started to feel as if a claw was being thrust deeper and deeper into his throat. He turned around, looked towards the bend in the road, then looked back again. Next, he almost stood up in the cart, then sat back. He huddled up so tight on the seat as if he was trying to go unnoticed. He kept peeking left and right, fearful of the thought that people could spot him from their windows or courtyards.

Yet no one took any notice of him. Only a dog barked as the cart went past, so Fabius had another excuse to start swearing.

‘What would my mum make of this?’ the thought crossed Kosef J’s mind.

They reached that fatal bend and the road revealed itself exactly as Kosef J recalled it. It was the same old narrow street, flanked on either side by ditches, and he found the houses he had known since childhood emerge one by one in front of him.

‘What could she possibly say?’ he wondered, looking around feeling ever so tense and terrified. What if his mother would happen to be standing by the window or working in the courtyard, doing the laundry, as she’d normally do? What should he say to her then? Would it perhaps be better to ask Fabius to stop for a moment? Should he perhaps call out from the street? What should he say to her though? He swore between his teeth, for letting himself be dragged into something he disliked so profoundly. He gazed at Fabius with a look bordering on hate.

‘This is where my mother lives,’ he said as they passed his house.

‘Really?’ Fabius replied.

‘He’s mad,’ Kosef J concluded upon this response, but then specified that it was actually him, Kosef J who was in fact the mad one. He had been released precisely because he had gone mad, and, as a result, from the others’ point of view he had ceased to exist.

‘Still, this is my house,’ he mused.

‘It looks as if there was no one there,’ he noted, looking back and swiftly checking out the empty courtyard and the windows dressed with white curtains.

‘I must get off, I must,’ he screamed within himself.

But he didn’t budge. He looked back one last time, somewhat ashamed. Fabius didn’t say a word. He didn’t even appear curious about the house they had just passed, and which belonged to Kosef J.

‘Swine,’ the latter ventured to conclude. ‘Had it been his house, I would have taken a look.’

He felt overwhelmed by an excruciating hate. He no longer tried to cover up. He’d sit on the cart seat holding his head high, with a determined look on his face, wanting to be seen, and awaiting to be seen. He started to deliberately look out for people, aiming to shout out and attract someone’s attention.

‘I’m here, you losers,’ he said to himself.

‘Shall we go for a beer?’ Fabius asked, disrupting this silent dispute.

‘A beer?’ he jumped up. ‘Sure.’

They made it to the bread factory and were about to enter the forecourt when a tired worker stepped out, trying to shake the flour out of his hair. Without uttering a word he opened the cart doors and pulled the empty crates out. A rather light-footed Fabius jumped up and produced an armful of hay from under his seat. He put it in front of the horses, and despite swearing at them he patted them on the muzzle, and said to Kosef J.

‘Let’s go, Mr Kosef.’

They crossed the street and headed to the beerhouse. Kosef J walked like a sailor on dry land, staggering and wobbling along. He could feel the ground of his home town under his feet, and this was an incredible sensation for him. He entered the beerhouse, yet he couldn’t quite believe he was actually doing this.

‘This is too simple,’ he said to himself. ‘It can’t be this simple.’

There weren’t many patrons in the beerhouse—mainly old people gathered around a few tables in groups of two or three. The newcomers took a seat at another table and found themselves being studied with a curious look. This didn’t last long, only for half a minute, perhaps less. By the time the two pints Fabius had ordered made it at their table the patrons’ curiosity had long been appeased. They knocked back the beer, and Kosef J wiped himself on the mouth with his sleeve.

‘Goodness, I’m a new man,’ he said to himself.

‘This beer is excellent,’ Fabius observed. ‘Next door, at Bruno’s, it’s less good.’

‘Indeed,’ Kosef J replied, pleased that he was also able to pull off talking in sound bites.

‘On our way back we’ll gulp down some bread,’ Fabius added and guffawed, being probably very excited at the prospect of sampling some bread.

The publican brought two more pints over. A darkish fellow entered the pub while two of the elderly men left. A child was screaming somewhere in a nearby house, and an enticingly soft female voice was calling the hens in a courtyard. Kosef J felt beyond pleased.

‘One of the horses died,’ a sad Fabius said after taking a sip from his second pint.

Kosef J startled again, unprepared for such news and yet again taken by surprise at Fabius’s seeming willingness for chit-chat. A horse? Which horse? Where?

‘Last night,’ Fabius clarified with the same sad face, as if horses had been his great passion in life. ‘They didn’t manage to drag it.’

‘From where, a well?’ Kosef J wondered.

They left the pub, followed by the publican. Fabius got in the cart and checked whether all the crates had been filled up and in their proper place. He handed the publican four loaves of bread, and invited Kosef J to reclaim his seat. Then they started off on their way back, following the same route.

When they got to his house, Kosef J turned towards Fabius and said: ‘Shall we pause a little at my place, too?’

‘We shall indeed,’ Fabius confirmed.

Kosef J was the first to jump off the cart, and opened the gate. He stepped into the courtyard, followed by the old guard. He could see his mother through the kitchen window, and knocked gently on the pane. His mother looked up and Kosef J took note of the fact that she appeared unchanged.

‘It’s me,’ he said.

His mother opened the door. For a moment, she felt the urge to run towards him, but then spotted Fabius and held back.

‘Please, do come in,’ she said.

‘This is a friend of mine, Mr Fabius,’ Kosef J announced.

His mother nodded.

‘Take a seat,’ Kosef J said and made sure that Fabius was sitting as comfortably as possible. Then he turned to his mother, and in a very calm and soft voice said: ‘We’ve been to get some bread.’

His mother took a long look at him. Then she turned to Fabius.

‘Would you like something to eat?’ she asked.

‘No, because we’re in a rush,’ Kosef J replied and looked at Fabious, to get an idea of what the latter made of this response.

Fabius looked disappointed.

‘OK, something light,’ Kosef.

His mother produced some rabbit roast and black currant liquor. The two tucked into the food and drink, and the mother soon gave them another helping without taking her eyes off them. Kosef J snooped left and right and noted that everything was in its place, as before. He would have liked to tell his mother that he was free, but he was too bashful so he kept silent.

Fabius ate with gusto and kept mumbling:

‘Thank you, thank you so much.’

At one point the mother laughed, looking rather cheerful, and Kosef J realized that Fabius had winked at her.

Then they were about to leave and the mother accompanied them on their way out, sporting the same cheerful expression on her face. When Fabius handed her a loaf, just as he was to set the cart in motion, she simply burst out in laughter.

They drove away, yet his mother’s roars of laughter kept resounding in Kosef J’s perplexed mind long after they made it beyond the town barriers.