The child, at least, seemed to be changing. Only a few days before, she had gone down the Métro stairs haltingly, always advancing the same foot and drawing the other behind it; now her movements as she walked down the steps to the playground were one smooth continuous flow, left foot right foot, left foot right foot. At first she only stood at the edge of the playground, looking on. The streets had been almost deserted, but here on the square there was suddenly a crush of children and grownups; most of the grownups were elderly Frenchwomen and young foreign women. Keuschnig sat down on a bench. Agnes was standing there deep in thought. He touched her gently with his foot, and without looking around at him she smiled, as though she had been waiting for this touch. In her self-sufficiency she radiated a pride so objective that it carried over to him. If only he could perceive with her! That would drive away his surfeit and disgust. Who was he to look down on these tired, discontented women dragging behind them and occasionally slapping their screaming children, who now and then forgot their misery long enough to hop-skip-jump for a moment. One of these women, plagued by a bawling, wriggling child, was covertly getting ready to strike when she noticed that Keuschnig was looking at her. Suddenly she let down her guard, and her eyes revealed all her anger and hopelessness, as though she knew she was being looked at by a kindred spirit, from whom she had no need to hide.
How much there was to see, and no trace of disgust dismissed the sights as familiar! The tall, tall ash trees and the dark, dark square … So little sun shone through that the women, especially the younger ones, kept moving their chairs into the few sunny spots. Now and then one of them would stand up and toss a plastic shovel into the sand to stimulate her child — who would scarcely take notice — or to reassemble a collection of toys around a child, who had scattered them … Often, when a child misbehaved, the mother would clap her hands menacingly, without getting up from her bench, and at the sound the pigeons, which had been strolling around in the sand among the children, would fly up into the air. One woman, while watching a child, who had just called out to her because he was about to let himself drop from the climbing bars, rocked an occupied baby carriage with one hand, and held the other over her once again swelling belly. Another woman was counting the stitches on her knitting needle, and still another blowing sand out of the eyes of a crying child. Many foreign names were called: TIZIANA! FELICITAS! PRUDENCIA! … Misery and loneliness descended like a last possible harmony on the swarming, dust-veiled square, on the women with their plastic bags beside them, on the park guardian dozing in his octagonal sentry box yet ready to take action at any moment, on the children, who drummed with their heels on the sheet metal before starting down the squeaking slides, while the next in line were impatiently hopping about at the foot of the ladders, on this constantly repeated, spasmodic to-and-fro, in which nothing happened — even the sewer gratings were plugged with dust and sand; on this whole wretched playground that smelled of soap and resounded with the children’s shrill clamor, the women’s cries, the guardian’s police whistle, and the rasping of roller skates on concrete.
It gave him real pain to expel his breath after looking for so long. Suddenly the child fell heavily against him and almost knocked him over; her cheeks were soft and she was crying over something unconscionably heartbreaking — what? a trembling toy pinscher being carried past in somebody’s bag. “That’s nothing to cry about,” he said. Where the tears stopped, the light was refracted on her cheek and made the skin lighter … A butterfly hovered around his fingertips and refused to go away; as though its clinging to him would stop him from killing it. He caught sight of a black-clad Portuguese woman with a knitted vest over her arm. A white petticoat showed below her skirt. She attended absently to everything, and nothing seemed beyond her reach. Radiating the charm of an idiot, she seemed infinitely untouched, and oh, how infinitely sheltered were the movements of the child in her care! She smiled at a wish another child had expressed to its mother, but here again as though caught up in some serene memory, which — since the child’s wish was immediately satisfied — may have been quite unrelated to the scene before her eyes and in any event was totally free from envy. The knitted vest and the showing petticoat turned Keuschnig’s thought to the poor peasants among whom he had grown up, and he recalled how, as a rule, they were fond of their kin despite all their peculiarities, but were repelled by the same oddities in others, and how he himself had been no different!
He sat in the square for a long while, one among many, with no thought of the future. He expected nothing; just once he had a vision of all these people taking on a strange look and beginning to sob heartbreakingly, but all the while excusing themselves on the grounds that they hadn’t slept the night before, that the sun didn’t agree with them, and that their stomachs were empty. Who could possibly tell them they had nothing to be ashamed of? — When for once he turned away from himself and looked up, he was at a loss to understand why everything hadn’t changed in the meantime. — At last Agnes, now comforted, spoke to him as if she trusted him. She told him a little about herself, and he saw how many SECRETS she already had. She has secrets! he thought, with a glow of happiness. All at once, out of friendliness, she began to use some of his words and phrases. And in everything, in clouds, in the shadows of the trees, in puddles, she saw SHAPES — which he had stopped seeing long ago …
While she was running about with the other children, he was contentedly reading one of Henry James’s frequent descriptions of women’s dress. At last something that wasn’t a newspaper article. “She was dressed in white muslin, with a hundred frills and flounces, and knots of pale-colored ribbon. She was bare-headed; but she balanced in her hand a large parasol, with a deep border of embroidery; and she was strikingly, admirably pretty.” He read on and on, and while reading he looked forward to buying something for the first time in ever so long. He thought of himself walking across a square in a new, light-colored summer suit. With all the new things that were happening to him and the old things that he mustn’t forget, he was sure to have a most extraordinary experience.
When Keuschnig looked up, the child was gone. And the other children were playing quite naturally, as though Agnes hadn’t been there for a long time and they had arranged their game differently without her. He jumped up but sat right back down again, and even read a few lines in his book, unable to skip a single word. He must paint his face — this minute! And cut off all his hair! The trees set up a rustling, and he experienced that moment when suddenly, in the middle of the summer, one shudders at the thought of darkest, coldest winter. He held his breath and tried to stop thinking, as though that would stop the course of events. Frantically he tried to make ready for what was to come. A woman looked at him as though she knew something he did not. Who would be the first to tell him? The women screeching behind him weren’t laughing; they were prognosticating doom. Up until then everything had been flimflam and foolishness. This was the real thing. In that moment Keuschnig resolved, as though everything humanly possible had been tried, that he would not go on living.
He searched the whole square, peered into every car that drove up, but only as a matter of form. The unthinkable, because it was unthinkable, was all the more frightfully real. He wanted to go mad immediately; that seemed the only escape. Only in madness could everything be undone; then THE DEAD WOULD COME BACK TO LIFE! Then one could be with them forever, with no thought of death … But powerless to transform himself into a madman, he could only imagine what it would be like. He remained hideously awake. Automatically, with a pleasure he had never known, his hands passed over the bones of his face. Calmly and deliberately, as the guardian would testify later on, he gave him his addresses, said he was going to notify the police, and started eastward through the city streets.