Flaw by Magdalena Tulli Read Free Book Online

managed to forget certain crucial circumstances, and so he is unable to comprehend how, as one who bears responsibility for the welfare of his family and for his children’s future, he could have permitted himself such a risky delay when heknew all along what needed to be done. He never intended to flee to the frozen north, rather to the warm south. And it all came to nothing precisely because he would have had to order a lightweight, bright-colored suit suitable for a lightweight life in bright southern lands. He put the whole matter off till later, until the time when in the place of the movie theater they would open a new fashion store with off-the-rack clothing. The local inhabitants did not understand that this was not possible. If it had been permissible to choose one’s attire according to one’s own preferences, to be one thing or another as one wished, the story would have fallen apart the moment it began.
    As early as ten fifteen, when he took the first telephone call in the café, the notary was asking himself why life was so hard. Hard, and at the same time without meaning, and furthermore cruel, because carrying its weight served no purpose. Since it was without meaning, why could it not be made easier? The notary sensed that the moment was approaching when he would be forced to accept conditions of surrender, and would cease wiping flecks of blood from the bathroom mirror. It was only desires, like half-crazed soldiers assigned to an impossible position by a staff error, that were resisting the invincible forces of inertia, when the whole rest of the army was in retreat.
    The suit jacket is already back on the wooden hanger, its sleeves hanging limply at its sides. The notary pulls off his shoes and his necktie. In this manner his office moves further away and vanishes for good. He has just remembered something andhas rung for the maid. He wants to know if his son has come back home. He has not. And what about his wife, is she up yet? She’s sitting by the window in her dressing gown, watching out for their son, from time to time wiping the steamed-up window with her handkerchief, as if the mist from her own breath were keeping him from view. His wife is being overly dramatic, so the notary believes. The boy has long outgrown his soft cotton baby clothes, and now he needs his independence so as not to become a victim of fate. If I am the notary, in times long gone I too became the victim of fate, for no more profound reason than the softness of cotton and the cut of clothing that my mother continued to regard as suitable when even younger children were dressed in a more grown-up fashion. The memory of that ancient embarrassment, like other memories, was assigned to the notary along with his top-quality wardrobe; it was sewn into it like the stiffener in a shirt collar. Unfortunately, it always reemerges at the sight of his son with his round glasses and his hesitant smile. It does not make the wielding of paternal authority any the easier. Bringing up a little girl is a lot more enjoyable.
    So what is the girl up to? She’s fallen asleep on the sofa in the living room, tired after a long cry. For some unknown reason, the maid delivered this information in a disagreeable and resentful tone before returning to her work. To minding the pots. To the personals in last week’s newspaper. She reads them furtively, ready at any moment to hide the paper from her mistress. She’sashamed of wanting a better fate for herself. Her eyes swollen, she struggles through the tiny print, her index finger pushing the sluggish syllables along. She would get married at the drop of a hat, before dinner even. She would leave the pots on the stove – let them burn. The miraculously acquired provisions, gotten by dint of long waits in long lines, she would abandon just like that, leaving them where they lay in the pantry. She’s had enough of the life that fell to her lot along with the linen apron.