EDA KRISEOV
A
451
So what! he shouted, thirty years of rage propelling him outside. A
glassy pink sun was sinking behind the steeple, fondling the ramshackle
houses across the road. The glowing crown of day still ruled in the west,
but in the east damp night was on the rise, blacking out the sky. The
street was deserted: no one was going anywhere.
That is how it was,
Mr. Blaha typed, back in the house.
I was home
agaill
,
bllt with
110
place to live. My wife alld children n'lOved in with her par–
ellts. I evelltllally
fOil II
d all opening ill K., bllt the pay was low and I slept at
headqllarters. Nice weicollle home, I thollght, bllt I did my best to get to know
the place alld do
In
y
dllty.
Mr. Blaha went up to the window and looked out over the town
that had caused him such grief. It was bleeding now; this was the end.
No living thing would come from its womb. It was bleeding to death.
Water tumbled over the shattered weir beneath the windows; a
bulldozer was raping the river, ripping the flounces from its petticoat,
gouging holes in its body, pummeling it silent. The chief constable was
appalled by the branch stumps, the hurriedly sawed trunks, the general
devastation. His house too would soon be gone. Turning away, he no–
ticed the two sturdy hooks in the doorway where the curtain for the
children's puppet shows had once hung.
How can you do this to us, Lord? To us Christians.
We
didn't cru–
cifY Jesus.
The first time he came to the house back in 1939 (he brought the
mayor with him) the Wallsteins had stood here in the back room as if
they
were the ones being moved in - Wallstein pale as a winter lantern,
his wife weeping bitterly, wringing her hands under her apron. They
sensed what was to come.
I know, the mayor said. You're all paid up. But you have to move.
There's nothing you can do about it. Blaha, the Chief Constable, will
be living here now.
The Wallsteins moved in with the Fogels. The Fogels had seven
rooms and Mrs. Wallstein was Mrs. Fogel's sister, so it was all right.
To this day Mr. Blaha had taken the whole thing for granted; it had
never occurred to him to question the official decision.
The room, its floor littered with the shadows of ransacked
wardrobes, was starting to grow dark. The bleak interval between day
and night, the roar of the bulldozer, and the terrible solitude made him
see for the first time that he might have been in the wrong. And sud–
denly there they were, the Wallsteins, the rightful owners - his face like a
winter lantern, hers wet with tears; there they stood as they had then, she
and her two children with big, black, shining eyes and voices like the
wind in winter woods seeking lairs and hollows to rest in, to die in, and
