Moving Parts

Or rather they could have been better, but someone was evidently against it. And so the narrator is obliged to begin a paragraph in which the desk clerk’s cry will ring out and be broken off suddenly, breathless, at its highest point. Shortly, in the background will be heard the wailing of police sirens and ambulances, first in the distance, then closer and closer. It will prove necessary to mention the portable posts between which plastic tape bearing official diagonal stripes is strung, closing off part of the sidewalk around the entrance; also the crowd gathered behind this makeshift barrier, and the civilian officials of the investigation team picking their way through broken glass. And since all these circumstances have been brought up, it won’t be possible to steer clear of what is most important: a series of shots from an automatic pistol that brought down the two workmen in their blue overalls as they were trapped between the panels of the revolving door. They fell where they stood; only their hands slid down the glass lingeringly, as if in slow motion. Their fingers grasped helplessly at the sharp edges of the bullet holes, leaving disquieting red streaks — an image that is disagreeable and also in its literalness somewhat ridiculous. And all this amid office buildings where work goes on in a frenzy of boredom and routine from morning to night only so as to have money; the more that’s earned, the broader the scope for desires, which are uncomplicated and quickly fizzle out. The image is blurred; a misty suspension of rain falls slowly, enveloping the adverbs of time, place, manner, and purpose in every sentence. No meaning can be discerned in this image, especially if the evening newspapers suggest that the shots missed their presumed target. Accustomed to descriptions of paid murders, readers of the press will surmise the existence of a hired killer who was most probably shooting at a speeding car. The bullets are said to have found their victims at random, which ought not to surprise anyone. It’s all the same to the world who happens to be in the line of fire, one person or another; which person is which is a matter of indifference to it. In certain circumstances a knight can perish at the hands of a bishop or vice versa; but the difference between them in essence will remain unclear and doubtful, explainable only in terms of movement and direction. The latter, as everyone knows, moves diagonally across the whole board, so long as nothing stands in its way; while the former dodges, attacking the other pieces surreptitiously out of the blue. Yet it can’t be understood why one is one and the other the other, which authority decided it would be so and why; they could just as well have decreed that from now on the opposite will be the case. And since a complete reversal of roles changes nothing, it’s all the easier to comprehend that it makes no difference to the bullets either. Afterwards, staring at the corpses, the onlookers succumb to the illusion that the inertia of death is a perfect match for precisely this body lying forlornly on the sidewalk, and so in the end they walk away reassured. Violent scenes always have their complement; after the culmination of tension the crowds pour into movie theaters, stores, and cafés humming with idle conversation about pleasant trivialities. And finally there comes the moment of relaxation that everyone deserves, when the tape and the official posts are no longer needed, the shards of glass all swept away, and in the immaculate panes of glass the rider and the rearing horse beneath him rotate again as if on a merry-go-round.