Flaw by Magdalena Tulli Read Free Book Online Page A

There’s no lack of lawyers. They don’t have to be notaries. Some are judges; others, more handsome, are attorneys. She doesn’t aim so high; in the columns of advertisements, she’s looking, for example, for a sign from a modest law clerk who doesn’t have to be well off. He needs only to be seeking an honest and thrifty partner; prosperity will follow in due course. The maid forgets too easily that she is lacking the most important thing: the right costume, which is indispensable if her fate is to change.
    Could she possibly be sobbing again? No, she’s not the one who is crying. It’s the washerwoman’s son, the newsboy, in his hiding place on the roof of the building at the back of the courtyard. He too is evidently having a hard time, though like anyone he only wants what’s best for himself. The less significant someone is, the more unseemly their self-love appears to all those around them. But even the scrawny mongrel who slinks along by the wall and lives on scraps – even he brazenly wishes for the tastiest morsels for himself. He does not value his miserable lifeso very much as to hold back always in fear of the stick. Just an hour ago he managed to get hold of a loop of sausage and gulp it down on the spot. And if someone promptly let him have it with a walking stick, it wasn’t to rectify the damage, because it was too late for that, but rather out of the natural exasperation that second-rate figures can cause by the very fact of possessing their own will and their own desires.
    Scuttling away with a yelp, the mongrel accidentally tripped the newsboy. The papers went flying in front of the entrance to the local government offices at the very moment when the clerks were stampeding out of the building. Nothing could have stopped them. They were not in the least afraid of their director, especially since he had been the first to abandon his duties – he hadn’t been seen in the office all morning. The washerwoman’s boy tumbled to the ground along with the newspapers. His cap fell off; a handful of coins and two or three battered cigarettes fell out of one pocket, a prized penknife and a large bolt for fastening streetcar rails out of the other. The cigarettes were trampled underfoot, and the penknife vanished instantly. The boldface news headline under the banner, ending in an exclamation point, immediately attracted attention. The government clerks picked up the soiled papers, some bearing heel marks. The newsboy’s knees were bruised and grazed. He took a long while getting up; during this time his newspapers disappeared just like his penknife, and his money went missing. While one coin rolled across the pavement and fell into a crack, anothercame to a stop under someone’s boot; there was no sign whatsoever of his wares. The passers-by were wrapped up in their own affairs and may not have noticed the newsboy’s fall, but they would not have ignored a coin without an owner; their very consciences would have made them bend down and pick it up. All this took place very quickly. Before the newsboy knew what was happening, he was out of business. A moment earlier he had been standing in the middle of the crowd, jostled on all sides, wiping his nose on his sleeve. If I am the policeman, there’s nothing more for me to do here, and I can simply stand at the street corner in my ill-fitting uniform and watch the incident with an absent stare. Yet if I am the newsboy, I’m going to have to pay for those newspapers – to hand over the last pennies that down in the basement of number eight my mother takes out of a worn purse which has seen better times. While he is still stunned by the accident, it’s hard to predict whether his dismay will spill like oil from an overturned lamp and explode in flames of anger, scattered embers of which are always aglow here and there. The newsboy, sore from his fall and robbed by those more respectable than