Free Flaw by Magdalena Tulli Page B

the policeman laboriously composes his clumsy sentences; the nib creaks torpidly, and ink spatters on the sheet of foolscap. It’s all for nothing. His only reward is scorn and disregard, and perpetual injustice done to him and his family. After all these years of service there has been no raise, even though he has a wife and children to support. His uniform allowance goes towards the costs of daily life, and even so he’s barely able to make ends meet. On top of everything, he even has to pay for the ink out of his own pocket. Since this is how things are, the policeman with his rather watery gaze cannot be expected to see through the falsifications in the invoices circulating far beyond his reach, nor to notice the actions of the true perpetrators of the confusion, since there has not even been a notification from which he could have learned about the existence of the back areas. How then could he have perceived the connection between it and the catastrophe brought about deliberately so as to kick over the traces? All the more, then, the policeman cannot be expected of his own volition to gather evidence in a matter forwhich the arms of even the highest-ranking functionaries are not long enough, and their eyes too slow; or that he alone will set the bureaucratic machine in motion. He would have to be mad to exert himself to such extremes.
    By midday there was not a single wedding picture left in the window of the photographer’s studio. The portrait of the movie actress in the white fur coat had also disappeared, and in its place there was a brand-new display: a greatly enlarged and therefore blurred picture of a man with a row of medals on his snow white marshal’s uniform. Instead of a lingering glance from beneath long lashes there was a piercing, supercilious gaze that penetrated the viewer like a bullet from a shotgun. When it was already clear that the political upheaval had turned into a dictatorship, this photograph was put on special show, as if a new kind of service were being offered. The owners of the local stores, which had been emptied of goods, felt obliged to order a copy. One could also buy the picture already mounted. In this way, properly framed, it was seen in every shopwindow round the square, without exception, in every case draped with ribbons in the national colors decorated with artificial posies, and propped up behind with brown glass bottles. If a fly were accidentally to have fallen into one of those bottles it would have remained there, drowned in the remains of stale beer. Amid static and white noise, radio sets kept announcing a speech that would be broadcast soon, at twelve o’clock precisely. Even those who had no radio understood that they were not to missthis address. Before the intently awaited voice was heard, for some time the sky was crisscrossed by the trajectories of sharp glances from beneath the military cap that had been duplicated ahead of time in the photographer’s darkroom. They intersected above the square, above the streetcar, above the crowd in their warm overcoats huddled together on suitcases and listlessly chewing their last remaining food. In the meantime, one concierge after another stopped the policeman and complained that the refugees were continually disobeying the ordinance, crossing the iron ring of the tracks, and furthermore with bad intentions, namely, to pee in a gateway. So with a heavy sigh, for he had had enough, the policeman finally ordered the faucet in the middle of the square to be turned off – if the newcomers don’t drink water then at least they won’t need to pee.
    Bit by bit, for the moment only outside the streetcar tracks, what the concierges called order began to be restored. But true order was still a long way off. For example, no one gave a thought to the abandoned government offices. Since there were no clerks at the desks, someone else had to take matters into their own hands. A handful of grammar school