She was not one to cry in front of witnesses. It was evident that her pain was quite unbearable, and it was equally evident that this pain had been inflicted by Egert, who was born into this world only to cause Toria suffering. Heaven, he would happily rid the world of his presence; he just did not know how. The Wanderer had left him no way out.
Egert flung the handkerchief, by this time only a filthy rag, into the canal. He had to return to the university. He absolutely had to find the onetime lodger of the Noble Sword. He must convince the strange and dreadful man; he must implore him: he would beg on his knees, if need be. Just, dear Heaven, let him remove the curse; otherwise Egert would go out of his mind.
Struggling to stand up, he elbowed his way onto the bridge. He started back from a passing cart; then he slowly went along a street that was already long familiar, trying not to walk out into the middle of it and constantly peering about to see if there was any danger. The marks of Toria’s blows still blazed on his face.
Passing through the square where the stone Spirit of Lash gleamed on a pedestal, Egert diligently avoided a small group of silent people attired in the same kind of robes as the Spirit wore. Intent gazes from under those brooding hoods seemed to alight upon him for a second, but in the same instant the gray figures turned and walked away.
A massive cloth rose, the emblem of a guild, swayed over the entrance to a perfume shop; the bloom of this noble flower, which was actually more reminiscent of a head of cabbage, hung listlessly from a thorny, copper stem. Jars and phials were frozen in the wide windows like soldiers lined up by rank. Egert’s head spun from the thick, sweet smell that wafted from the wide-open doors. He hurried past the shop, and suddenly froze. A strange, unfamiliar sensation imperiously commanded him to stop.
In the shop, somewhere in its fragrant depths, a heavy object fell with a crash, breaking into pieces; directly after this a child’s voice cried out thinly and the sound of swearing could be heard. Then a lanky gentleman with a fastidious expression on his face paraded out the door, wiping off his soiled sleeve: apparently an irate customer. Then the owner of the shop—Egert recognized him by that compulsory rose, tattooed on the back of his hand—pulled a boy out the exit by his ear. The boy was about twelve years old and obviously an apprentice.
Such scenes were hardly a curiosity in businesses, but especially so in artisans’ quarters. Easily ten times a day, a person was thrashed here, and the passersby did not pay any special attention to the bawls of those who were being disciplined: they were content to allow the educational process to take its own course. The young apprentice had committed an offense, apparently a serious one, and the owner was moved to anger in earnest. Frozen in place five steps away, Egert saw how the hand that held the whip clenched nervously, and the rose petals on the tattoo stirred slightly from this barely perceptible movement.
The boy was firmly wedged between the powerful knees of the owner. Egert saw a small purple ear beneath a tuft of flaxen hair, round, frightened eyes, and the pink expanse between his lowered trousers and his lifted shirt. The boy submissively awaited his punishment, but Egert suddenly felt low, melancholy, and queasy.
The owner struck, and Egert was immersed in a wave of pain.
He stood five steps away, yet in some mysterious fashion the pain of an unknown boy descended upon him with such force, it was as if he were suddenly without skin, peeled like a carcass under a butcher’s knife. Another feeling was added to the sensation of pain, a feeling that was not a whit better than the pain: Egert suddenly realized that the owner took pleasure in whipping his apprentice, that he was venting all his accumulated frustration on the boy, that it did not matter at all to him now who he was beating, just so long as it was strenuous, just so long as it went on for a long time, just so long as it could soothe his ravenous soul. Egert had no time to ponder how this agonizing new sense had appeared in him, nor did he have time to wonder at it: he vomited all over the pavement. Someone nearby swore, the blows continued to rain down, and Egert realized that he was about to faint.
He fled in whatever direction his feet would go, then he walked, and then he plodded along, barely able to shuffle his feet. From every window, from every entrance to a courtyard, from every side street he felt pain; it ran high, like water from an overflowing well.
These were only echoes: intense or weak, keen or sluggish. Someone was crying, someone was accepting blows, someone was inflicting them, and someone was suffering from the desire to hit someone without knowing who. A stench fell from one of the windows onto Egert: a man, skulking in a darkened room, was thinking about rape, and his desire was so avid that Egert, however hard it may have been to drag his feet, ran away. In another window, despair had taken up residence: impenetrable despair, which would soon lead to a noose. Egert groaned and quickened his pace. In a tavern people were brawling; a chill tugged at Egert’s skin from the alien vehemence, the obscure, insensate passion of heavy fists.
The city loomed over Egert like a fetid chunk of porous cheese, mottled with the pits of windows and alleys. Violence emanated from all sides in waves. Egert could sense it with his skin, and it sometimes seemed to him that he could see ragged clots of it quivering like aspic. The violence was entwined with pain, and pain required violence; at times Egert’s blighted senses blurred and refused to serve any longer.
Some intuition or miracle finally led Egert to the university. Someone hailed him as he neared the entrance, but Egert could not answer. Fox caught up to him, looking stunned.
“Hey, Egert! What in Heaven happened to your face? It looks like it’s been crushed!”
Mischievous eyes the color of honey twinkled sympathetically: Fox had also received such injuries more than once. Gazing at his round, childlike face, Egert suddenly realized that Fox really was sympathizing with him, and that in this sympathy there was not the slightest hint of pretense.
“Don’t worry about it, brother.” Gaetan grinned widely. “Your face isn’t some expensive piece of pottery. Smashing it up now and then can only make it stronger!”
The university building seemed like an island of inviolable tranquillity in a sea of wickedness. Egert leaned against its wall and smiled wanly.
Porcelain beads, which had slipped off the thread of a broken necklace, bounced across the dean’s desk. The bulk of them were lost amongst the papers, but a few of the colored beads fell off the edge of the desk and came to rest in the cracks of the stone floor. Slowly, unreflectively, yet with a precision worthy of a better cause, the dean gathered them up and placed them one by one in his palm. A second after each bead hit his palm, a June bug awkwardly buzzed up out of his hand.
The heavy bugs crawled on the ceiling, flew out the open window, and returned. Toria had been sitting in a corner for a long time, her disheveled hair hiding her face.
“Contrition is beneficial,” noted the dean with a sigh, letting the next insect up onto the ceiling, “but only to a certain degree. Even the deepest lake must have a bottom. Otherwise, where would the crabs go to mate?”
Toria remained silent.
“When you were ten years old”—the dean scratched the tip of his nose—“you got into a fight with the village boys. The mother of one of them then came to me to complain: You had knocked out two of his teeth. Or was it three? Do you recall?”
Toria did not even lift up her head.
“And then”—the dean raised an instructive finger—“he ran to our house every day, asking you to go first on a fishing trip, then to the forest, then wherever. Do you remember?”