And it was she of course who lit the fire, a few days after her return. How long she spent in jail I don’t know, and how she got out she told me only afterwards, when we were sitting on the concrete wall next to the house. The air was so still that we heard Gerda’s soft moans coming clearly from the balcony, high-pitched, with a shrill sound like a tin whistle. Rutchen pretended to be deaf. She was always a wheezer, even when I was a child, she said. She didn’t turn round to look through the window, although the head bobbing in there was visible from where we sat, and the whistling through the cracked pipe didn’t stop. She said: How she swings there in the window. It really looked as if the head were swinging, hanging on the gathered pink curtain from a scrawny pink neck, its jaws sticking out like a skull. I remembered that she was once a beautiful woman with beautiful high cheekbones and how I had liked watching her when she stood at the window. The shrill whistling went on, monotonous, irritating. It was hard to listen. Through the nylon curtain two deep holes of despair poked out and then you could see the pink fabric flapping as if torn and the two holes of despair sinking into some dark pit. Gerda had apparently turned off the light and sat down. Rutchen looked at me, perhaps reading my thoughts. You see, like a skull, she said. There was open hostility in her voice. She said: Oh, no, he won’t leave her, he’ll haunt her after death, he won’t leave her. From behind the window the lifeless mask went on swaying down low and the tin whistle wailed. Rutchen looked, hard. Oh, no, he won’t leave her, she repeated, he’s like the rain, like the wind, he won’t leave her. She stood for a moment, listening. Suddenly she turned to me. She’ll still feel his hands, she said.

The sight in the window was rather unnerving. Again Gerda popped up, shaking her head as if trying at long last to fly out of the window. Rutchen asked again if I knew the story about the cat. A passing car lit her face in a sudden wash of brightness. She blinked both eyes. Then she returned to the subject of the jail, but how long she spent there I couldn’t begin to understand. What I understood was only that they let her out on the day she had a plane ticket home. And that was my luck, she said. It was Herr Zutter who explained it to her. He said that the Swiss government didn’t have to waste a plane ticket on her. It was early in the morning. They opened the cell door early in the morning and Herr Zutter was waiting for her below. He asked if everything had been returned to her. Then he asked what she had had. Here’s the parcel, check and see, he said. She said it was all right. But Herr Zutter said: No, it’s not all right, you must check, and she checked. The ring was there, and the watch. In her purse everything was arranged the way it was before, the bundles of small change too, and rolled up in a little bundle was the shame. That was what she said to them when she came home. In silver foil, wrapped and twisted on top, only she didn’t remember if it was in the bundles of tens or fives, and it was then that he cried quietly, quietly, she said, it was then that he cried, and she said: And in the seams of the skirt that I undid, and in the lining, and he cried, and she turned the lining inside out, and then she turned the pockets inside out, and he, his fingers were crawling over his face, but she repeated it, and how I tore the pockets, she said, how I tore the pockets, how I came back, you see, Papa, with the small change, the small change, that’s what I brought, the small change, and he cried, and she said: You’re falling asleep, Papa, you’re fast asleep, why are you keeping your fingers on your face, Papa, and his face, to see his face, crumpled like crumpled paper, but she kept on: And what did you write on your sick chart, Papa, what did you write on your sick chart, and he, suddenly lean, sharp-eyed, his hair on end: What sick chart? Your sick chart, Papa, your sick chart, you were a driver, Papa, have you forgotten that you were a driver that you were always looking at the road, that you had eyes, you remember that you ran over dogs on the road that you ran over cats, that you drove over squashed bodies, and he didn’t move, and where are you looking, where are you looking, Papa, and he didn’t move, he said: Nowhere, I’m not looking anywhere, and he wasn’t crying any more.

Suddenly she was silent.

Yes, he wasn’t looking anywhere, she said. She asked what the time was. Her voice was wooden. I forgot that they gave me my watch back, she said. I listened to her wooden voice. She was silent again. You think the watch is holy? she said and she was silent again. She looked weak, tired and stupefied, as if she was still hearing her own voice and how that cruel conversation went on day after day. The silence lengthened, and I saw him suddenly, his face really crumpled like crumpled paper, opening the empty albums, fingering the empty cellophane paper and turning the pages, turning the pages, and the evil spirit haunting the house, and him turning the pages, turning the pages, I remembered Rutchen’s wild laughter and Gerda: Stop it, that’s enough, take pity on the child, but he kept on turning the pages, turning the pages, and Rutchen, inside the bubble of light, looking, and in the huge department store the people peering behind her back ran, heads with parcels ran, the slanting little television screens on the ceiling ran, the dent in her father’s chin ran, the cellophane pages in the empty albums ran, the rolls of silver foil the monstrous figures clinging to the walls, the strong hands carrying her—You think the watch is holy? she said again. Now too her voice was dry. That’s it, that’s what it all adds up to in the end, she said.

*  *  *  *  *

The cat’s name was Pudding, but Shlezi called it “The Inheritance”. The Inheritance is hungry, he said. Or: The Inheritance is bawling again. Sometimes he said: The Inheritance is waiting. He, at any rate, was not going to leave any cats to his daughter, and he was going to write it in his will too, he said, it would he written in his will. And sometimes he added: I’m changing it next week, you know. And when neither of the women showed any curiosity he repeated: Yes, yes, next week. But Gerda was crazy about the cat, the one he ran over later on. She really had inherited it from her mother, who really did leave it to her in her will, and in fact that was the entire will, because when she died she took everything with her except for the cat, which had a name as sweet as Pudding and also a yellow body and a flabby belly that Shlezi hated. In its yellow body were two yellow eyes that drew Gerda, bewitched her and this too Shlezi hated, and although Pudding was always guzzling it had a look of permanent hunger and you could say that Shlezi hated this, too. He said that Gerda, like the cat, had a look of permanent hunger, and what was it she lacked, what was it she lacked, always leaning against the door, always silent never answering. She really did lean against the door, pressing her check to it hard, and it was impossible to tell from her face if she heard. The only one she talked to sometimes was the cat, who followed her wherever she went, to the street, to the kitchen, to the store, or lay next to her pressed against the door, looking at her with that hungry look, a look that tore her soul to pieces, and this too Shlezi hated. But more than anything he hated it when it jumped onto his stamp album. It jumped onto my stamp album, he yelled, raving, his eyes meeting as if he had one eye under his forehead.

People told a lot of stories about the cat, especially how once, when it jumped onto the stamp album, Shlezi tied it to a pole and ran over it. Then he drove backward a bit. After that he drove forward a bit again. After that he left the mangled lump of flesh on the road and went inside. He jumped onto my stamp album, he said. There was another version too, Mr. “Everything Cheap”‘s version, for instance. He said that he simply smashed the cat in half, he bashed it and bashed it until it popped. Only the head, whole, flew to the electricity pole, cut right along the seam. He saw it with his own eyes, how the head flew to the electricity pole. He trembled with excitement when he told it. Aiming the wheels like that, he said, aiming the wheels of a bus to cut like a kitchen knife, right along the seam. Because Mr. “Everything Cheap” suffered from asthma he had to take a deep breath, and he took a deep breath and calmed down. Incredible, you could actually see its yellow eyes jumping out and spinning round, he said after he calmed down. But Mrs. Klein told it a little differently. She said that he took an orange crate and tied the cat up inside the crate. Then he tied the crate to a tree and started the bus. They heard the tree creak and after that the dreadful howl of the cat, and then he drove backward a bit, and after that forward a bit again. She liked adding that he left a few oranges in the crate and they stayed whole next to the crushed body, only their color was no longer orange. She also liked adding that Gerda, pale as death, made some dry little sounds, but Shlezi yelled: Yes, he jumped onto my stamp album, can’t you see? And Gerda went on standing there, paralyzed, her neck twisted backwards and her jaw dropping. She couldn’t understand what he was talking about.

That’s what Mrs. Klein said, said Rutchen. She asked me if I hadn’t heard. I said I hadn’t heard. She shrugged her shoulders. That’s impossible, she said. Then she said that Mrs. Klein also liked adding that he had run her over, too, over Gerda, crushed her slowly, without a bus and without a road, on the chair, sitting up. He had put her neck in the plaster cast right front the start. Yes, that’s what Mrs. Klein said. She asked if I hadn’t heard that either. Nasty, she said, but a fact. She waited a minute, as if something important had slipped her memory. And my father did that, she said. He was a quiet man. He was even a good man. He had always worried about her a lot. But it was after that that Gerda stopped talking. She said this quietly. There was a kind of horror in her voice. She asked if he had told me the story about the cats that ate each other. I said he hadn’t told me. She said: Really? Really? And, smiling incredulously, repeated the story about the cats that ate one another alive leaving only their tails behind them. She smiled incredulously again. He can’t possibly never have told you that, she said. Her upper lip quivered slightly. She said: Papa loved that story. He was always telling it to Ma as a joke, but she never laughed at the joke. She looked at me incredulously again. He can’t never have told you that, she repeated. Then she said that once he had brought Gerda some cheese with a picture of a laughing head of a cat and after that Gerda never ate cheese again. Her face burned when she told me this, and she stared at me with pale, sweating, almost yellow eyes, and bent over the stone wall beating on the stone. After that Gerda never ate cheese again, she repeated. The simple words sounded strange in her mouth and she went on hitting the stone. Can a wall give grapes? she suddenly said. Her face was still burning and there was a strange ring in her voice. Walls don’t give grapes, she said wildly and burst out crying.

I looked at her. It was a soft whimper, a kind of whine unconnected to time or place or any particular event. Upstairs the telephone rang and went on ringing. Gerda didn’t answer. She was still standing in the window, still swaying as if she wanted to fly out of the window. Since the room was dark her face was brightly lit, casting a long, vulturous shadow. Her hair was tied wildly around her head and you could see it falling sideways against the window frame and her neck moving heavily in the plaster cast. Rutchen swallowed her tears, sinking into her place on the stone again. It seemed to me she said something, but I didn’t hear what she said. Low clouds came down on the street, after that a figure emerged inside them and a clearly legible word appeared. After that the figure disappeared and only the word remained, hanging in the air in the low dense mist, but it was hard to read the word. Rutchen said something again, but again I didn’t hear what she said. A young man walked down the street whistling a very pretty, merry tune. She raised herself and watched him heading away. He was wearing a shining black coat and his steps were very soft and so was the merry tune receding into the distance. In the meantime the decor changed and the sky suddenly grew high, opening into the high air, full of disembodied stories creeping over the balconies and over the roofs. Then the mist like a soft sponge blotted out the roofs. The streets looked like deep crevices. The mountain was full of wind, and the air was shaken by a mighty voice, whose source was hard to tell. It’s going to rain, said Rutchen and turned toward the window where Gerda’s head still loomed whitely, but now she seemed amazingly calm, standing in some distant time in some alien existence. Her face looked very big and very white, emphasizing the coal black of her hair, and even in the darkness you could see her look of permanent hunger. Rutchen observed her with intense attention. Papa used to say that once people used to have funerals in the evening, for the air, she said. Her voice was almost compassionate and her lips trembled like the lips of a sick child, as if she wanted to cry her heart out. She stiffened again and turned sharply toward me. Her mouth twisted wryly. That’s it, what’s left is the small change, she said and rubbed her hands as if they were stained with her own blood.

The young man in the shining black coat came back again, whistling the merry tune. She mumbled something, wanting perhaps to get into conversation, but he apparently didn’t notice us sitting on the stone fence, and she watched him move away in the opposite direction, her eyes fixed on his back in the shining black coat, repeating slightly off-key the tune that sounded even better off-key, enriched with a grotesque melancholy sound. It was clear that somewhere, behind her, in the window, the silence had deepened, and she turned her head slowly round to face the window, where Gerda was still standing with elongated limbs and a face of wax. Her hands were spread out, holding onto the window frame, making the shape of a cross in the window. It seemed as if behind the cross, in the darkness, there were other, invisible windows, and other hands multiplied there, holding on to the frames. Rutchen turned round, still whistling off-key, swaying slowly and pensively in time to the tune. In the meantime the telephone stopped ringing and it was silent inside. She asked if I had ever been in jail. I said no. Strange, she said. A couple coming down the steps, out of the house into the street, passed us, very deep in conversation. The man spoke quietly to the woman. He said: The orchestra began playing and they hanged him and the rope broke and they brought another rope and it broke again and they hanged him again and the orchestra went on playing. We said we wouldn’t talk, we said we’d walk without talking, said the woman. Rutchen apparently caught only the last words. Her face was burning now like fire. With Ma it took years, the madness of not talking, she said.

*  *  *  *  *

She lit the fire, as I said before, a few days after her return. They weren’t in the home, of course, or more precisely they were at the other end of the home in Mr. “Everything Cheap”‘s flat, having their weekly game of cards. It was a boring game, and Shlezi was particularly apathetic, brooding and withdrawn and not his usual self. He was wearing his working clothes, although he was no longer a bus driver, and they looked as if they weren’t his, hanging clumsily on his body. He forgot to sweeten his coffee and drank it bitter, letting it get cold, pulling a face with every sip as if he were drinking poison. His remarks were mean, his face sour, and whenever he threw down a card he sank absentmindedly into the armchair, as if the pile of cards was disintegrating in front of his eyes, which were bleary and half-shut. Then he got up and left before the end, and Gerda of course followed him. The two flats were joined by a long passage, and already in the passage they could sense something suspicious and a charred smell, and Gerda thought that the toaster element had burnt out. It had already happened several times before that the toaster element had burnt out, usually causing a short and blowing the lights in the house. But there was no short. The passage was even brightly lit, and apparently so was the flat, as they could see even through the closed door, and when they opened it Rutchen was sitting on the floor, her hair pinned around her head, the ends singed. Her sleeves were rolled up and there were little round marks on her arms. There was a dead cigarette in her mouth, and her torso swayed slightly forwards, bending over the flickering pile of charred silver foil and burnt tracing paper that gave off a smell of hot metal. On her knees was her leather purse, gaping and empty, and she was staring with glassy eyes at the flame. Shlezi stood still in the doorway, stunned, and Gerda, alarmed, let out a little shriek. Rutchen raised a puppet hand in a gesture of reassurance. It’s nothing, she said, just a bit of small change. Her look was cold with triumph. There’s nothing to worry about, she said, it didn’t burn. Only the paper did.

Shlezi didn’t move. He looked at her fearfully. His face was bloodless and he stood, petrified, hardly comprehending what was in front of his eyes. The air around him was very bright and trembling with bits of the charred silver foil, swarming like little black worms. At the bottom of the pile the coins lay quietly, faded and lusterless. Rutchen went on sitting there, looking alternatively at the two people frozen in the doorway and the dream writhing on the floor. Her face was damp and now two white diamonds were shining in it, and Shlezi looked at her dumbly. A terrible heat ran through him and he went out to the balcony, looking at the illuminated building surrounding him, suddenly understanding that he had never understood anything. For a moment he knew what he wanted to say with a clarity he had never known before. He felt grace, and something new, cool and mysterious, touching his body and enveloping his whole body in a soft robe of silk. He tried to breathe deeply, to fill his body with the touch of the silk, and then he felt his body shrinking, too small for the new understanding. He stood still, too frightened to budge from his place, not remembering what he had understood a moment before. The terrible heat pierced his chest in the direction of his arms and through the bones to the depths of his back, and he felt a terrible pain splitting his back. He moved his head in terror. The head moved, alive. He heard the blood pounding in his neck and be stretched his neck for a minute, feeling the aorta with his fingers, seeing clear pale sky surrounding him like a river. Again he stretched his neck, floating up again, but something in his stomach plunged and he began treading on the spot, already sensing he was treading on nothing. Big cold drops fell onto his eyes and he raised one hand and wiped the sweat from his forehead, stumbling into the room. Rutchen was still sitting there next to the fire and he stood gazing at her in horror, patting his lips to say something but not hearing his voice. He opened and shut his mouth a number of times without managing to say anything, and went on standing, gazing at Rutchen in horror, trying for one more minute to suck his daughter’s eyes into himself, feeling her face coming close to him perhaps for the first time, and he clearly saw the black line dividing it down the middle, the birdlike movement and the hostility wiping away any other expression off her face. He clearly saw the crack opening in the floor and the yawning pit. The cold climbed to his neck, his head swayed slightly, and he licked his lips as if he felt a terrible thirst.

*  *  *  *  *

The funeral took place a few days later, because it happened on a Thursday and they needed time to get the notices in the paper and let the drivers know, so that there would be drivers at the funeral. On Sunday the cemetery was full up and they couldn’t find a good time, so they put it off to Monday, although Gerda didn’t like Mondays. Luckily the hospital didn’t put any pressure on them, because the refrigerator wasn’t full and one more corpse didn’t bother them. But the truth is that he had a small funeral, only a few neighbors and a few drivers, who whispered together throughout the ceremony. Mrs. Klein said that he died of sorrow, and Mrs. Borak said it was because he couldn’t live without small change and he was afraid to go near it, yes, he was afraid to go near it, she said. One of the drivers said that it was part of the job, you couldn’t do without small change, and the man who eulogized him said that it was true, he was a first-class driver, always on time and never short of change, he always had enough small change. He prepared it in advance. He was always prepared. He was very loyal to the job. He understood the job. He understood that driving a bus was no laughing matter, and he loved it, he said, he was the type of person who enjoyed serving others. Mrs. Klein tittered and Mrs. Borak whispered something and Gerda stood without moving, with the plaster cast round her neck making her seem even more mummy-like. The sun began sinking early. Weeds grew on the surrounding paths and a wind blowing from the sea shrouded her tall silhouette and its look of a skeleton standing erect looking at the fresh earth. Rutchen too stood very still. She bent down and placed a small stone on the grave. Then she turned around, walking slowly, receding slowly towards the main path and walking along the path, keeping to the side with the light, like a person laboriously crossing a plain. Afterwards she went up to the beggars and pushed the pile of small change she had in her pockets into their tins. Afterwards Gerda’s silhouette sat at the window, as on every evening, frozen, and Rutchen stood on the balcony, her sleeves rolled up, looking at her hands, and I saw her cautiously stroking one hand with the other, as if fingering the nonexistent tattoo, perhaps feeling the ink swelling in her veins, slowly but steadily poisoning her blood.

Afterwards she brought her mother food, and from our balcony I saw her bending over Gerda, who was sitting and picking at the green oilcloth with the little pink flowers crumbling on the table like roses.

All evening long they did not exchange a word.

It was a clear night with low stars. The wind changed to a hot wind passing dumbly, without a sound, from the mountain to the balconies in the courtyards below, and the sense of evening came down early on the courtyard which always looked particularly beautiful in the evening, the sinking light enveloping it like a large coat with gigantic sleeves full of resonant air still echoing earth to earth ashes to ashes dust to dust. For a moment it seemed that the twilight was permanent and the plunging ball of fire would never sink. The air was full of pensive sweetness. The gigantic sleeves waived madly. Then all at once an ominous darkness descended. Rutchen’s nervous giggle was heard and she could be seen bending over her mother saying something in a lowered voice. But Gerda did not move. The beam of light from the opposite window crossed her tall silhouette and from my balcony I saw her back tensed against the back of the chair, as if she were tied to a pillar.

Late at night, when I stepped onto the inner balcony, the tired neighbors were still clustered cosily round Mr. “Everything Cheap”‘s table, enclosed in the ring of their own consuming curiosity, and there was still a question hanging in the air, as if someone unknown had been temporarily defeated. Mrs. Klein said that when all was said and done it was a sad story, and Mrs. Borak said that all stories were sad. And let’s not forget, she said, that it was an easy death, and that’s a blessing, that’s definitely a blessing. She seemed to like the sound of the word “blessing” very much, because she repeated it a third time: That’s definitely a blessing, she said, and added that they mustn’t forget that there was still the small change, too, which was continued by “Mr. Everything Cheap”, who had more detailed information about the bundles in the closets and the beds and even in the storage space above the bathroom and above the kitchen. He expressed the opinion that it was because of this that the funeral had been postponed, because of the shroud, because they must have wanted to sew deep pockets in the shroud, and he licked his lips, making a little sucking noise when he added that it would take very deep pockets indeed to hold the piles of small change. If it was bank notes, it would have burnt, said Mrs. Klein. Mrs. Borak was silent, and Mr. “Everything Cheap” remarked that he certainly knew what he was about, hoarding that small change, a remark that gave rise to a peculiar hilarity, which he immediately made a conspicuous effort to control out of respect for the dead and the recency of his demise. But the timing turned out to be unlucky, and one week later the currency was changed again. Mr. “Everything Cheap” was the first to hear the news and he hurried to pass it on to Gerda, with the same peculiar hilarity, hinting with exaggerated concern at the stacks of coins in the closets and the storage space, and giggling irrelevantly a little. Gerda didn’t answer. She straightened up, as if his voice was reaching her from a long way away. Now too her face was long, smooth and empty, and she thrust her body forward, throwing herself into the air. Late at night she was still staring into the empty street, then into the opposite house, then up into the sky. Mr. “Everything Cheap” heaved a tender, commiserating sigh, and added that they would have to start going to the bank, and Mrs. Klein, with the expression of pensive sweetness on her face, said they would need a bus for it. Back to the bus, she said.

As for Rutchen, they said she shrugged her shoulders, and they said she even breathed a sigh of relief, smiling blandly and not reacting. From my balcony in the evening she could be seen, sitting very still. The bus, as I said before, was no longer standing in the street, and it was a long time since Shlezi sat in the window. But sometimes, in the evenings afterwards, I too saw him, sitting and counting small change. I would say to myself then something I learned a long time ago, that just as life carries in it death so death carries in it life, and that must surely be what Rutchen thought too when she said: You see, he’s still sitting in the window, arranging the small change. The two silver tacks inside her eyes burned erratically as she said it, flickering like a failing battery, fluid with invisible tears, repeating fanatically: Every day, arranging the small change. It seemed to me that I could actually hear the sentence, said out loud, like a conversation continued in the next room or behind a tree, as if the words were coming out of her body. Now her face was netted with tiny red veins and it bore an extraordinary resemblance to her father’s face, as if there was nothing between them now but the short distance at the end of the road. She covered them with her hands, crushing them slightly. Every day, every day, she said.