30

The man with swollen throat died after a ten-day agony.

On the first day Kosef J visited him, spurred by curiosity and a sort of spite he couldn’t quite explain. He did try to say something encouraging and kind, but words simply kept vanishing before he would have had the chance to utter them. Yet the man looked happy and would stare at him with the same expression of gratitude on his face.

‘Does it hurt?’ Kosef J finally asked, holding out a hand to touch the swelling.

‘No,’ the man replied letting Kosef J touch his neck. The swelling looked like the belly of a small cat. It was warmish and soft, and slowly throbbing.

The next day Kosef J brought along the soft core of two loaves of bread that he’d nicked from the kitchen. The man with swollen throat pecked at them at leisure. ‘It’s bread,’ Kosef J made it clear, watching the nibbling man with delight. ‘Yes,’ the man acknowledged. ‘It’s from the kitchen,’ Kosef J felt obliged to point out. ‘It’s good and soft,’ the man replied.

The third day the man looked really tired. His eyes had turned red and his face blue. Yet this didn’t prevent him from sporting a permanent smile of goodwill. ‘Let me tell you something,’ the man said. ‘Sure,’ Kosef J replied enthusiastically and took a seat on the edge of the bed. The man told him briefly about his life. Kosef J didn’t manage to pay enough attention, but he broke out every now and then in exclamations such as ‘This can’t be true!’ or ‘Extraordinary!’

The fourth day the man was feverish. His hands were shaking as he was trying to bring a bread ball to his mouth.

‘I had a word with the doctor,’ Kosef J said to the man.

The man nodded. The doctor thought that things were looking good. The man with swollen throat agreed that things were looking good. Kosef J showed his dissatisfaction with the fact he didn’t manage to lay hands on more bread. The man didn’t actually need more bread. Kosef J would have liked to say something that was on his mind but he didn’t know how to get started. Was the man able to sense what it was that Kosef J had on his mind? Yes, the man understood it perfectly. So? So what? Was he, the man with swollen throat able to help Kosef J in any way? Sure, he, the man with swollen throat was thinking day and night of Kosef J, and yet he didn’t manage to come up with a solution. Still, he, the man with swollen throat would be on Kosef J’s side, listen to him and try to help him. Great, but how? Wouldn’t perhaps Kosef J like to talk about his own life, too?

The fifth day the man spoke in a strangely quivering voice. Kosef J had barely slept the night before. The man with swollen throat would have liked to get up and walk up and down in the room for a bit. Why hadn’t Kosef J slept during the night? He had no idea. He had helped the man make a few steps in the room. Was he getting dizzy after his walk? No, on the contrary, he had the impression that he was able to breathe in more air. What a horrible day! In the early hours of the morning it started to rain. It was a cold, annoying and endless rain. Nasty, too? Sure. Was another nasty winter on its way? Sure, another nasty winter was on its way. Winters weren’t like this in his childhood. Obviously. In his childhood winters had never been like this. Winters had never been like this in anyone’s childhood. Would the man like to lean with his forehead against the window? It could be very refreshing. No, he didn’t want to lean with his forehead against the window but he did want to have a go at making a few steps by himself. He had been on his own all his life. So, who hadn’t? Who hadn’t always been on their own? He, the man with swollen throat wanted to say something very important to Kosef J. And he, Kosef J, had a confession to make. What confession? No, first the man with swollen throat. Well, this is it. The man with swollen throat was able to feel something strange, something intense for the first time. This feeling of guilt experienced by Kosef J allowed him to die peacefully, saved and almost happy. The guilt that Kosef J couldn’t repress was the equivalent of a great happiness, of a devotion able to turn crime into a good deed. What crime? What guilt? What words were these? What was the man with swollen throat babbling on about?

Kosef J stormed out and didn’t return on the sixth day.

The seventh day the man was waiting for him, looking pale, with eyes staring at the ceiling. Kosef J brought him some bread balls but the man didn’t want to nibble on them any more. The swelling hadn’t changed shape or colour, but was throbbing a lot faster. The rain from the day before had turned into sleet and the air had cooled down. Kosef J said something but the man couldn’t hear him. Kosef J said it again but the man still didn’t catch it. Then Kosef J touched him on the shoulder and the man with swollen throat started to speak all of a sudden. He asked Kosef J not to take this the wrong way. That incredibly cold day and the exhaustion he’d been feeling in his bones had paralysed him and immersed him into a jelly-like aquarium. The patients had been restless all night. Some of them had been chattering till dawn. The majority were frightened. Someone suffering from dysentery was taken away somewhere else, straight after midnight. In his place a white-haired man appeared who just kept sleeping. Many people failed to understand what was going on at the infirmary. But he, the man with swollen throat, knew. What was going on was a lie. And Kosef J knew about this lie, too. No, Kosef J didn’t know anything about this lie. There was a feeble lie, hadn’t Kosef J heard about it? No, Kosef J hadn’t heard about it. Why wouldn’t people call a spade a spade then? After all, things were really straightforward, why was it necessary to convolute everything in this way? Who was twisting things around then? He, the man with swollen throat. No, the man with swollen throat didn’t twist things around. To him, everything was somewhat indifferent. Oh, no, Kosef J didn’t feel able to put up with this state of affairs any further. How far could ambiguity go? Why wouldn’t the man with swollen throat say what he wanted to say? But the man with swollen throat had nothing to say. Lies, lies, nothing but lies. No, there were no lies. If the man with swollen throat thought that he, Kosef J was an assassin, why didn’t he say so? Who considered whom to be an assassin? He, the man with swollen throat considered Kosef J an assassin. How come, had Kosef J killed anyone? Yes, a thousand times yes. And where was the dead body then? Where was the body? Yes, where was the dead body? The dead body was born there, right in front of them in that ambiguity. But the man with swollen throat didn’t yet consider himself dead. How come, didn’t he claim that he considered himself to be the victim of a benevolent crime? No one had said anything like that, and in case there was any such talk, that was about guilt. Yes, Kosef J felt guilty. Really? Yes, he felt guilty and he owned up to it, right in front of the man with swollen throat, he admitted on his knees that he was guilty and that his soul had dissolved into a burdensome void of impossibility, stupidity and uselessness. What could he, Kosef J possibly do when he didn’t understand anything, anything at all from all this burdensome void? Did the man with swollen throat have an answer, was there any light at the end of the tunnel? No, there was no light to be seen anywhere. So things were meant to carry on like this, without any meaning, any truth, any ray of hope? Survival had become the only ray. And no one will ever manage to untangle what was so tangled? No, no one will manage to untangle everything, at most to pull at a thread and hold it tight by the teeth. Every time someone would pull at a thread, the confusion would get greater and become even more entangled, so tangled in fact that later it would be even harder to get closer to it. Good God, what were these two going on about? Who were they afraid of, so they talked like this? He, the man with swollen throat was no longer afraid of anything.

During the night of the seventh to the eighth day, Kosef J and the man with a cheerful face exchanged the man with swollen throat. This was the first time Kosef J witnessed such an operation. Everything had been meticulously planned. Right after midnight the toothless man opened a window in the ward. He flashed two light signals, at which point the man with a cheerful face and Kosef J left the hiding place where they had been waiting for over two hours. They made their way in, helping one another jump over the windowsill. In the dark, the toothless man led them to the bed where the man with swollen throat was lying. They wrapped the man into a piece of sackcloth, and fastened it around his body with two belts. Then they removed the man through the open window. As they were making their way out of the infirmary, they bumped into two other men coming from the direction of the abandoned courtyards, carrying an old man with shaven head.

They left the man with swollen throat in the former wine cellar. When he woke up the next morning, almost frozen to death and with his feet still tied together, the man with swollen throat found himself surrounded by ragged men who notified him that, from then on, he was a free man.