someone asked his wife softly.
She shook her head.
âNo one,â she said.
Only then did I notice the other members of the family, standing around his wife. His parents and two brothers with their wives were there. Their faces were petrified, as if they too had been splashed with that plaster of eternity.
âNo one,â his wife repeated. But I could not look at her eyes any longer, they were so swollen with weeping.
The countâs scribe asked something of her too, and she gave a short answer. Then she turned to me and said something, but my eyes were fixed on the immured man; I stared at the lower part of his neck, at his collarbone, just where the cavity above his chestâ¦
But at that moment the man standing by with the pail of plaster in his hands splashed him again, and once more the plaster ran down his forehead, igniting and at once quenching his vacant, blind, oblivious white eyes. Then the trickle meandered down his neck, quickly whitening the very spot from which I could not tear my eyes.
The baby had again missed, his motherâs nipple, and was whimpering, I asked the woman whether they had been in financial straits,
âNo,â she said, âHeâd been earning plenty recently.â
Recently, 1 thought. Like many inhabitants of the surrounding district, he had been working as a day laborer on the bridge and must have been receiving a normal wage, as normal as everything else in his life,
Another of the countâs men arrived and whispered the same questions.
âWhen?â
âJust after midnight.â
It seemed that we would all stand rooted to the spot, and people would arrive and mutter the same questions until the end of the world.
Now and again one could hear the words âbrother, brotherâ from his sister. But his motherâs sobbing was more muffled. Only once she said, âThey killed you, son.â And a little later she very softly added, âAs if your mother had no need of you.â
I would never have dared to interrupt a motherâs lament, but the words âThey killed you, sonâ gave me no peace,
âIs it possible someone killed him?â 1 said to her in a low voice, âBut why?â
She wiped her tears.
âWhy? How should a poor old woman like me know? No doubt for nothing. Because he cast a shadow on this earth,â
âHe had always been worried recently,â said his wife by my shoulder, âHe had something on his mind.â
âAnd last night?â
âLast night particularly.,â
My eyes froze again on the dead manâs neck just above the collarbone, as if something were about to appear there, a shadow, a ⦠I do not know what to say. But the plasterer with his usual gesture once more emptied his pail of plaster over the immured man. The grayish white liquid, the very stuff of legend, poured over him.
âLast night particularly,â his wife went on. âI thought I saw him move at midnight and get up. At dawn he was gone,â
The milk from her breast had again missed her baby and trickled to the ground, but she seemed not to care.
âDid you need money?â someone asked.
âWhat can I say?â his wife asked. âLike everyone else.â
The members of the dead manâs family still stood grouped in silence. There was the splashing of the pail again as it was refilled with plaster from the barrel. 1 was completely numbed. 1 would not have been surprised if the man with the bucket had now coated us all with plaster.
39
A LL THAT DAY AND THE NEXT 1 was not at all myself. His open eyes fixed under their film of plaster seemed to stare from every wall around me, Walls terrified me, and I tried at all costs not to look at them. But they were almost impossible to avoid, 1 only then understood what an important and powerful part walls play in our lives. There is no getting away from them, like conscience, I could leave the presbytery building, but even
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