25

Kosef J could only see rubble, rusty rail tracks, stacks of switches, disused traffic lights and large spills of petrol. When they reached some old train engines, frozen behind one another for donkeys’ years, a darkish man wearing a motorcycle helmet appeared menacingly in front of them.

The man with a cheerful face came to a halt and motioned Kosef J to stay still. The darkish man came so close to Kosef J that he had the impression that their faces would touch. The man looked very mistrustful, and checked him out for a few seconds before motioning him with both arms to turn around. He then started to search him conscientiously.

‘What could he be possibly looking for?’ Kosef J wondered. He turned his head to ask the darkish man what exactly he was looking for, but the man gave such an evil eye that he lost heart.

‘We’re going to see the committee,’ the man with a cheerful face said.

The darkish man appeared not to have heard this. He finished with Kosef J and moved on to the man with a cheerful face, searching him just as thoroughly. When he was done, he withdrew beyond the row of engines without saying a word.

‘This man had escaped four years ago,’ the man with a cheerful face pointed out.

They were walking along the row of train engines in silence, and Kosef J couldn’t make any sense of what he was experiencing. What was a man who had escaped four years ago doing there? And how did these engines get there, and what was the story behind these railtracks? Had the railway station in town gotten to such a state of abandon and dilapidation? Or he was dealing with one of those buildings that were once quickly started but then suddenly abandoned?

‘This way,’ the man with a cheerful face said, pulling him towards something that looked like a loading ramp. Once they had made it to the ramp and were already helping one another to climb onto it, the man asked: ‘Is it true that you went on your own to town to get bread?’

‘Yes,’ Kosef J said.

They headed towards some cement domes that looked like astronomical observatories sunken into the ground.

‘Is that bad?’ Kosef J asked.

‘What do you mean?’ The man with a cheerful face wondered.

‘That I went to town on my own,’ Kosef J clarified.

‘No idea. We’ll see,’ the man said.

‘We’ll see what and where?’ Kosef J wondered. And he chuckled to himself. The free world! The words the man with a cheerful face would choose. Then they suddenly came to a halt in front of a dome and waited.

‘What are we waiting for?’ Kosef J asked.

‘They can see us,’ the man with a cheerful face replied.

‘Who’s they?’ Kosef J asked.

‘The members of the committee,’ the man with a cheerful face responded.

‘He’s driven me crazy with this committee of his,’ Kosef J said to himself.

The man with a cheerful face lit a cigarette butt, and Kosef J was dead sure that it came from the rubbish heaps.

‘We are just like one big family here,’ the man with a cheerful face said.

‘Really?’ Kosef J reacted.

The man kept silent, and continued to smoke looking cross, as if he had talked too much and now regretted it.

‘We’ll be soon allowed in and given a seat,’ he said in a neutral voice.

Someone shouted from above.

‘You’ll have to answer some questions. I recommend you don’t try to hide anything.’

They climbed up a narrow iron ladder attached to one of those cement domes, and then descended a similarly narrow ladder on the inside of that same cement balloon. Inside there were about a hundred people huddled together on wooden benches. Kosef J looked at them in amazement. He wasn’t frightened, only astonished, because those people smelt terrible and were in a deplorable state. The first thing Kosef J caught sight of looked like a bunch of stacked heads. Heads with eyes deep seated in their sockets, gaunt cheeks, and beards unshaven for donkeys’ years. Toothless mouths, cracked lips and nostrils enlarged by some kind of a thirst for air.

It was fairly dark inside. Kosef J was led into the midst of this gathering. The people kept roaring as Kosef J went past, and they muttered the odd word to one another or to themselves. Someone spat through their teeth. Most of them were still wearing their old prison uniforms, worn out by time and patched up here and there, now soiled by petrol and soot.

Kosef J was asked to sit on a chair. At his feet, there were displayed all the items he had bought in town at the request of the man with a cheerful face: the shovel, the pickaxe, the nailbox, the ball of string, the sawblade and the other carpentry sundries. The man with a cheerful face patted him on the shoulder and blended into the crowd, so Kosef J lost sight of him.

‘Good afternoon,’ someone in the front row said and everyone burst out laughing.

‘Quiet!’ a high-pitched voice shouted through a loudspeaker. Then, addressing Kosef J, he asked: ‘Could you tell us your cell number prior to being released?’

Kosef J didn’t immediately understand the question. He also didn’t expect to be asked any questions.

‘Pardon?’ he said in an innocent voice.

The crowd laughed again. A few people whistled. Kosef J would have been able to swear that they whistled with two fingers in the mouth, the exact same way he would have done this, too. Someone threw a roll of paper at his feet.

‘Your cell, what number was your cell?’

‘50,’ Kosef J replied.

‘50,’ the megaphone repeated. ‘Who stayed in 50? Did anyone stay in cell number 50?’

For the last two questions, the megaphone turned towards the audience and Kosef J could clearly gather that these didn’t concern him.

‘Me,’ someone shouted and started to elbow their way through the crowd.

Everyone fell silent, expecting that the man who said ‘me’ should come forward. Kosef J slid forward in his chair a bit, so he could have a better view. A tall old man, with white hair on the back of his head, appeared in the middle of the room. There was utter silence. Kosef J was left standing in front of the old man. He didn’t know whether he should sit back or hold his hand out to this double of his. So he waited. All of a sudden, the old man hugged him. All started to clap and stamp their feet.

‘I am 50,’ the old man said, with tearful eyes. ‘You are 50A.’

The entire crowd started to shout ‘50A! 50A!’

Kosef J felt overwhelmed with emotion, and shed a tear.

‘Which way was the window facing?’ the old man with white hair asked.

‘The kitchen garden,’ Kosef J replied promptly.

‘How many paces was the cell on the diagonal?’ the old man asked again.

‘Eight,’ Kosef J replied.

‘A tile had four cracks. Which one?’

‘The third one, viewed from the right.’

‘Correct!’ the old man cried out and hugged Kosef J again.

The crowd started to shout and whistle again, throwing paper balls at the two men. The old man raised his hand to indicate that he wanted silence, and when they were all quiet, he started to speak.

‘This man must be killed,’ he said.

The entire audience got to their feet as if a storm had broken out in the room. Kosef J couldn’t tell whether he was living a dream or finding himself the butt of jokes cracked by someone all too keen to amuse.

‘I shall explain what I mean,’ the old man continued, at which point the crowd showed signs of settling. Nevertheless, Kosef J found the time to observe that not everyone agreed with the old man. In fact, some had made a very violent point about their disagreement. The old man’s explanation was as follows: this man you see here was released so that he could be of use to them, and only them!

‘Not true!’ someone shouted.

‘Perfectly true!’ someone else shouted back.

‘Let him speak first,’ a third person yelled.

‘Here you go, talk,’ the old man said, making Kosef J sit back on his chair.

There was silence again, but Kosef J didn’t manage to utter a single word.

‘See!’ The old man yelled. ‘See the kind of people they chose to release!’

‘This isn’t fair,’ a toothless man bellowed. ‘The man doesn’t even know where he is, and besides we didn’t bring him here for a trial.’

A storm of phrases broke out again in the air, blasting Kosef J’s eardrums. Everyone would talk at once, putting their views across and taking Kosef J by surprise with their energetic commitment. Kosef J had never seen such people and such attitudes . . . A few of them were in agreement with the old man and hence with the fact that he, Kosef J, represented a potential danger. A man released by those on the other side could only be a man entirely subject to those on the other side, or a man who’d sooner or later would play into the hands of those on the others side. And even if he personally, Kosef J that is, wouldn’t play into the hands of those on the other side, he’d nevertheless remain a symbol of this dodgy game that those on the other side had actually invented. It was common knowledge that those on the other side aimed to transmit a message through this release, and that he, Kosef J was the bearer of this message by virtue of his status as a released man.

‘What message?’ someone inquired. A message of hate and menace to those who had freed themselves through their own will. ‘Don’t forget that this man had purchased a shovel, a pickaxe and a roll of string for us!’ another voice added.

‘To hell with the roll of string!’ a man with a lisp howled, as if completely out of his mind.

‘Let’s explain to him first what this is all about,’ another two or three people opined. ‘Sure, let’s lay the law down,’ others agreed. ‘He won’t be able to understand any of that,’ the man with the shrill voice stressed. ‘Do you realize that all of us here are starving?’ someone shouted behind Kosef J’s back. ‘That’s another matter, don’t get mixed up,’ the toothless man pointed out.

‘Quiet!’ the megaphone yelled.

‘Still, he has the right to defend himself,’ the man with a cheerful face claimed.

‘He should defend himself when he’s actually accused!’ a man with a baritone voice yelled.

There were rigorous arguments, people standing up and throwing phrases above one another’s heads, contorting their bodies while waving their arms as if they wanted to make more room for themselves. In all this time they carried on throwing small paper balls left and right, which astonished Kosef J even more, making him feel as if he was at a gathering of naughty children, or worse still, of madmen.

Opinions of the most varied kinds followed one another. So what if 50A was a man working for those on the other side? They could still use him against those on the other side. How to make use of a man working for those on the other side, to act precisely against those on the other side? Perfectly well, everything is possible and justified in the fight against those on the other side. But Kosef J hadn’t done anything wrong. This wasn’t about doing wrong. For God’s sake, he, 50A, hadn’t done anything wrong because he was no longer able to do good or bad. ‘Had he ever tried to escape? If so, he should say so!’ the man with white hair shouted. ‘Or at least he should have come straight to us,’ the man with a lisp howled. ‘He didn’t come because he didn’t know,’ the man with a baritone voice proclaimed. ‘He’s a leper,’ someone with a hoarse voice opined.

‘This really doesn’t work,’ the megaphone proclaimed proudly.

‘The man has the right to know where he is, and is entitled to have some options,’ the man with a hoarse voice insisted.

‘To opt for what?’ the man with a lisp asked.

All of a sudden, a wave of insane bursts of laughter resounded at one end of this cement dome, and everyone turned that way. Someone seemingly started to make their way down towards Kosef J, rolling over the shoulders and heads of the others in the room, which amused everyone no end.

Someone from Kosef J’s immediate vicinity sighed angrily: ‘Good grief, is this the sort of impression we want to make on him?!’

‘Let’s take a vote!’ a firm voice urged.

A few others endorsed the idea and shouted: ‘Let’s vote! Let’s vote!’

More and more voices demanding to take a vote were heard, and at the end the entire gathering of hungry and ragged men had started to howl the words let’s vote! Kosef J was caught up so closely by the course of events that for a second he also opened his mouth to demand the same thing.

The entire room was throbbing to a shared scream as everyone present kept stamping their feet and shaking their fists in the air. Several minutes went past like this and Kosef J became seriously concerned because he was unable to work out who was against this unanimous desire to take a vote and also why they wouldn’t move faster to action.

‘OK,’ one could hear the megaphone, and everyone stopped fidgeting at once.

There followed a highly solemn moment, and Kosef J felt really tiny and humble. He would have liked to do something to win the support of this gathering of men but no suitable idea came to his mind. The only thing he was able to pull off was to stay standing in as respectful a manner as possible.

‘Who agrees to take a vote?’ the megaphone enquired and everyone raised their right hand above their head.

They remained in this position for a while, in a suffocating silence. Kosef J mused that had there been a fly in the air at this particular time, it would have certainly been felled mid-flight by the tension inherent in this silence.

‘OK,’ the megaphone concluded.

Everyone lowered their hand, yet this happened so slowly that it made the air vibrate and resound in a sort of prolonged hiss, the rustling of hands in the course of being lowered.

‘Who’s for?’ the megaphone asked again.

This brutal question made Kosef J hold his breath. The question was much more serious than he had expected, and it seemed to concern him most directly. He was overwhelmed by a sense of suffocation also because this time not everyone had raised their hand. Besides, on this occasion the passage of time seemed even slower than at the earlier count, so Kosef J had the chance to look in the eye almost all of those who had raised their hand.

‘OK,’ the megaphone noted and hands were lowered with a hiss, while someone in the front row whispered in his ear: ‘It’s OK, you passed.’

Kosef J sighed with relief but then immediately heard the sound of the megaphone.

‘Who’s against?’

A number of hands were raised this time too, but Kosef J realized at a glance that they were considerably fewer than before, and felt overwhelmed by a terrible sensation of warmth and happiness.