The Wardrobe - 6. Yid

Merder in a schoib (Yiddish = Murder(er) in a window/slice/frame/pane)

By now I made no great effort to avoid touching too much of the faded drape fabric as I was standing by the window and throwing a slanted glance down into the glinting alley. After all, there was little use in remaining squeamish when I had already spent a night in this decades-old, stained bed. Now the smell of my own body and cologne dominated this room rather than the mould, the rain and the cabbage vapours from the taproom beneath me. As long as it was busy downstairs I did not have to pay any attention to the suspicious soft crackling and crunching behind the bed and inside the walls. One gets used to most things, and what claimed my attention more than insects behind the wallpaper was the rainwet black cobblestone pavement below me, and its sharp bend around the timbered house's corner that I was staring at. In retrospect, it is startling how black White can look during night, how much Black can glitter when it has rained, and how sharp and tidy everything appears in silence. But while I was spending my life fleeing and keeping watch I had little appreciation for this. What I had preserved for myself was not the old way of thinking, but only countenance. Composure, a coolness of mind, reason and poise. Or that which I believed was all this. In reality, I must have been simply cold. And why not? Sympathy and amiability would have served neither me nor anyone else.

A child screamed... in a drawn out, inhuman wail, that swelled like the long familiar air raid warning, increased in pitch and decreased again, until it crossed my mind that this may just as well be a cat in heat. It howled with so much agony that it sounded as if it belonged to our species.

It would have been pointless to watch the other end of the lane. The light of the only gas lantern in this alley did not reach there, so I would not have noticed the shadow arriving anyway. I had been aware of this. When it finally came, I closed my eyes and listened for the voices in the room below me. They fell silent.

Slowly I opened my eyes and walked to the bed, where my coat, hat and case were laid out. As I was calmly putting on the coat, a step creaked. I looked at the door, the case in my hand, put my hat on and returned to the window. Silently I pulled the drape aside and laid a hand on the window handle. When the doorknob began turning, I opened the window wide.

The crack opening in the doorway threw a yellow stab onto the floorboards, in which black worms danced to the rhythm of boots. I granted it only a passing glance and climbed onto the windowsill. Then I had nothing more to do than to prepare to jump, open my arms and entrust myself to the sudden gust of wind. Thunderingly, it tore me out of the window, dragged me over the rough-glistening roof of the opposite house, and lifted me through fog, clouds that swallowed all sound, to the stars, and so far into the sky that it became so dark that I felt cold, and lost consciousness.

I looked at the door, the case in my hand, the hat in the other, and looked to the window. For a moment I had thought I could fly.

Mad.

But no one could have anticipated that only one volley would carry me to the next roof.