It happened so quickly that not even destiny could have prepared him for it.
“Damn you, Paul, where the hell have you been?”
Paul had arrived at Prinzregentenplatz with a full cart. Klaus was in a foul mood, as he always was when they worked the wealthy areas. The traffic was terrible. The cars and trolleys waged an endless war against beer sellers’ wagons, handcarts piloted by crafty deliverymen, and even workers’ bicycles. Policemen crossed the square every ten minutes, trying to impose order on chaos, their faces inscrutable beneath their leather helmets. They had already warned the coal men twice that they should hurry up with the unloading if they didn’t want to get an enormous fine.
The coal men certainly couldn’t afford that. Although that month, December 1920, had brought them many orders, encephalomyelitis had carried away two of the horses only a fortnight earlier and they had had to replace them. Many tears had been shed by Hulbert, for those animals were his life, and as he had no family, he even slept with them in the stables. Klaus had spent the last pfennig of his savings on the new horses and any unexpected expense could now ruin him.
It was no wonder, then, that on that afternoon the coal man started yelling at Paul the moment the cart came around the corner.
“There was a huge snarl-up on the bridge.”
“I don’t give a damn! Get down here and help us with the load before those vultures come back.”
Paul jumped down from the driver’s seat and started lugging baskets. It took much less effort now, though at sixteen, almost seventeen, his development was still far from complete. He was rather thin, but his arms and legs were pure sinew.
With only five or six baskets left to unload, the coal men sped up as they heard the rhythmic, impatient clip-clop of the policemen’s horses.
“They’re coming!” yelled Klaus.
Paul descended with his final load almost running, dropped it into the coal cellar, the sweat pouring down his forehead, then ran back up the stairs to the street. Just as he emerged, an object struck him full in the face.
For a moment the world around him froze. Paul noticed only that his body spun in the air for half a second, his feet trying to find purchase on the slippery steps. He flailed and then fell backward. He didn’t have time to feel any pain, because the darkness had already closed over him.
Ten seconds earlier, Alys and Manfred Tannenbaum had come into the square after a walk around a nearby park. The girl had wanted to take her brother out for some exercise before the earth became too frozen. The first snows had fallen the previous night, and although they hadn’t yet settled, the boy would soon be facing three or four weeks when he couldn’t stretch his legs as he might like.
Manfred was savoring these last moments of freedom as best he could. The previous day he had retrieved his old soccer ball from his wardrobe and was now kicking it along and bouncing it off the walls, under the reproachful stares of passersby. In other circumstances Alys would have scowled at them-she couldn’t bear people who thought children were a nuisance-but that day she felt mournful and insecure. Lost in thought, her eyes fixated on the small clouds her breath made in the freezing air, she was paying little attention to Manfred, except to make sure he picked up the ball when crossing the road.
Just a few meters before the door to their home, the boy noticed the gaping cellar doors and, imagining that they were in front of the goal in the Grunwalder stadium, kicked with all his might. The ball, which was made from extremely tough leather, traced a perfect arc before hitting a man square in the face. The man vanished down the stairs.
“Manfred, be careful!”
Alys’s angry shout became a scream when she realized the ball had hit someone. Her brother stood frozen on the pavement, terrified. She ran to the cellar door, but one of the victim’s colleagues, a short man wearing a shapeless hat, had already run to his aid.
“Damn it! I always knew that stupid idiot would have a fall,” said another of the coal men, a larger man. He was still standing by the cart, wringing his hands and glancing anxiously toward the corner of the Possartstrasse.
Alys stopped at the top of the cellar steps, but she didn’t dare descend. For a few awful seconds she looked down into the rectangle of darkness, but then a figure appeared, as though the color black had suddenly assumed human form. It was the coal man’s colleague, the one who had run past Alys, and he was carrying the fallen man.
“Holy God, he’s only a child…”
The injured man’s left arm was hanging down at a strange angle, and his trousers and jacket were torn. There were wounds to his head and forearms, and the blood on his face mingled with the coal dust in thick brown streaks. His eyes were shut, and he didn’t react when the other man laid him on the ground and tried to wipe the blood away with a grimy piece of cloth.
I hope he’s just unconscious, Alys thought, squatting down and taking his hand.
“What’s his name?” Alys asked the man in the hat.
The man shrugged, pointed to his throat, and shook his head. Alys understood.
“Can you hear me?” she asked, fearing he might be deaf as well as mute. “We have to help him!”
The man in the hat ignored her and turned toward the coal carts, opening his eyes as wide as saucers. The other coal man, the older one, had gotten up onto the driver’s seat of the first cart, the one that was full, and was desperately trying to find the reins. He cracked his whip, tracing a clumsy figure eight in the air. The two horses started up with a snort.
“Let’s go, Hulbert!”
The man in the hat hesitated for a moment. He took a step toward the other cart but seemed to think better of it and turned. He put the bloodstained cloth in Alys’s hands, then walked away, following the old man’s example.
“Wait! You can’t leave him here!” she shouted, shocked at the men’s behavior.
She kicked the ground. Enraged, furious, and helpless.