35

As they were heading down the cellar where all the rags were being kept, the short and calm man made the following comment: ‘We are really lucky with you being as you are.’

A few days earlier Kosef J had noticed that the short, stocky and cheerful man had stored all the leftover materials from his endless adjustment and readjustment jobs in one of the damp corners in the basement. There were patches of all sizes and colours, collars, cuffs, epaulettes, bits of lining, iron-burnt rags, strips of fabric mangled by scissors in random moments of fury or impotence.

‘Pure gold, the man with a cheerful face muttered as his expert eye started to check out the soft and fluffy pyramid.’

The odd metal button or buckle would occasionally gleam in the feeble lantern light. It was past midnight and, as an emotional Kosef J found himself in the firing line of grateful glances, the five men were building up courage to tackle this impressive mountain of rags.

The man with cleft chin was the first to jump in and start digging impatiently at the base of the pyramid, using both hands. He was trying to make his way towards the interior, as if some fur coat could have been awaiting him there. A skinny man with black teeth buried himself up to his neck in rags and then decided to move no further but stay there with his eyes closed as if he’d been enjoying a warm bath. He giggled a few times, then drew the air into his lungs and breathed out loudly, sounding like he’d been doing relaxation exercises.

The short and calm man slowly let himself down onto the floor, leaning against the cellar wall. He looked like someone hoping to contemplate from afar the fruit of this nocturnal expedition.

‘See,’ he said a little later in a sad voice to Kosef J, ‘this is the great tragedy of poor democracies.’

The man with a cheerful face, who meanwhile had climbed to the top of the pyramid and lifted the lantern above his head, burst out in laughter. The man with cleft chin suddenly paused in his devouring battle with the rag mountain. What nonsense was the short and calm man going on about? What tragedy did he mean?

‘Winter,’ the short and calm man clarified, lifting a prophetic finger. ‘Winter is the greatest tragedy of poor democracies.’

The skinny man with black teeth shuffled about in his new bed, which gave everyone the impression that the rag mountain had actually twitched. The man with a cheerful face sat astride at the very top of the mountain. He shoved his hand into the unknown, pulled out a fistful of rags and started to carefully study them in the lantern light.

The short and calm man carried on talking to Kosef J. Did he, Kosef J know that half of the members in the community had been sentenced to death?

‘What the hell!’ The man who’d shoved himself into the rag mountain mumbled.

‘Yes indeed,’ the short and calm man insisted. ‘How many of us are here now? One, two, three, four, five . . . by March next year half of us will be dead.’

‘This can’t be,’ the man with a cheerful face stepped in.

‘Yes it can, everything’s possible,’ the short and calm man observed.

The man with cleft chin let out a victorious cry. He hadn’t been toiling for nothing. He had found an untouched sleeve from a soldier’s jacket and was now showing it to everyone: ‘See? See?’

The man with a cheerful face had also pulled out a fistful of rags and then threw them behind him. He went on to rummage in the pile in this same indifferent way for a few times. The man with cleft chin, however, carried on toiling away vigorously. He believed in motion, effort, and the desperate straining of muscles. And in dignified tenacity. As he uttered the words ‘dignified tenacity’ he paused for a moment and held out his head through a little hole he had carved into the rag mountain. DIGNIFIED TENACITY! Sounds good.

‘There’s no dignity in the face of starvation,’ the man at the top of the pyramid pointed out.

‘Yep,’ the skinny one concealed in the rags agreed.

The man with cleft chin had to sneeze twice in quick succession. This was caused by the dry and bitter whiff of the rag-innards turned inside out. How come there was no dignity in the face of starvation? Dignity was the only thing they had been left with, they the people who’d ensure at all costs that truth, the human sense of truth and, above all, DEMOCRACY was preserved.

‘The democracy of hunger,’ the man hidden by rags snarled.

The man with cleft chin fired up. So what? Was this a mean feat? No. They had already achieved what no one had done before. Their principles were perfect. They had managed to think through and select, from a motley heap much more diverse than the mound of patches, the perfect principles.

‘There is no reasoning in the face of starvation,’ the skinny man mumbled, hidden among the patches. He hadn’t opened his eyes or changed his voice.

These words had hardened the man with cleft chin. Although he was just about to dig out a second jacket sleeve from the depths of the mountain, he gave up pulling at it and came to his feet.

‘You’re such a defeatist!’ he screamed. ‘What do you want us to do? Do you know what to do? Tell us then.’

‘I do,’ the man hidden among the rags replied in a calm voice. ‘We need to break into the food storeroom.’

‘Oh, no!’ the short and calm man stepped in. ‘Under no circumstances. Violence destroys democracy.’

‘There you go!’ The man with a cleft chin replied, sounding less tense.

The short and calm man opined that violence was the equivalent of suicide in a democracy. Violence was a monstrous eczema that devoured, one step at a time, hope and truth, illusion and certainty.

‘Nonsense,’ the skinny man noted. ‘What matters is that we shoot the colonel.’

The colonel? No way. The colonel was the last man that needed shooting. If they ever had an ally within, this could only be the colonel.

‘You know, Mr Kosef J has met colonel,’ the short and calm man added.

They all turned their gaze towards Kosef J. The short and calm man took advantage of this distraction and grabbed the second jacket sleeve, the one the man with cleft chin had abandoned earlier.

‘Is that right?’ He asked Kosef J, coming closer to him and staring him in the eye.

‘It is,’ Kosef J replied.

‘Impossible,’ the man with cleft chin muttered.

The short and calm man smiled maliciously. What exactly did their freedom entail in fact? An illusion. And Kosef J’s freedom? Another illusion. Illusions that, however, had a fairly high pricetag. Would you have wanted to enjoy the illusion of freedom? You had to pay then, even if not necessarily straightaway. At times, payment was due sooner, other times, later. It could even occur that meanwhile life passed by, and one thus avoided being made to pay. This didn’t mean much, however. Someone, somewhere was keeping a tight watch. They’d know everything about your accounts, work out your dues, and follow you closely so you couldn’t run away without paying first. But anyway, where exactly could you run?

‘Right, Mr Kosef, where could you possibly run?’ he pressed.

‘Where indeed?’ Kosef J babbled.

Ever since the short and calm man had started to ask him those nasty little questions that didn’t even allow for a clear answer, he could no longer feel at ease. The triumphant expression he had displayed when leading them to the cellar had quickly disappeared from his face.

‘This is what I’m asking too—where?’ The short man recapped.

Kosef J had no time to respond because all of a sudden a scream, as if of a triumphant animal, resounded in the cellar. The man with a cheerful face stood up. They all looked at him somewhat edgily and with an envy that they no longer cared to hide. The man with a cheerful face was holding a winter cap in his hand. It was a nearly new rabbit fur cap, with ear flaps.

The man with cleft chin sighed and threw himself into his work in his hole. The short and calm man also got started at the task. He opened a sack and began to fill it with rags. The skinny man left his lair with an expression of deep discontent. He, too, grabbed a sack and started to stuff it with rags. Kosef J went up to the short and calm man and asked, ‘Would you like me to hold your sack?’ The short and calm man said, ‘No, thanks.’ After a while the man with a cheerful face announced, ‘And that’s that,’ and the man with cleft chin added, ‘I knew it.’ The skinny man commented that ‘This will never end, it will always be like this,’ while the man with cleft chin noted, ‘So what, if we are to bite the dust anyway . . . ’ ‘We have two options,’ someone else intervened, ‘either give ourselves up or fight them.’