Agamemnon's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

how it was written on their cards: “Left or right side of grandstand.” Whereas we who had seats still had to plow our way through this seething ocean. I’d already aroused suspicion and jealous pangs by getting this far, but when people realized I was supposed to go even higher, how much more animosity would be coming my way! Anyway, the real nightmare would presumably begin only at that point. I imagined that when people realized what I was set for, they would grab my coat tails, haul me back down, and raise the alarm.
    Instinctively, I slowed my pace to deflect any suspicion I might have aroused by marching forward too eagerly. I wanted to look like someone who, in common with all the other recent arrivals, was simply bent on finding the best spot.
    Shortly after, I realized that the sidewalk had been transformed into a promenade. Since the best seats for watching the parade had long been staked out, everyone not yet ensconced was sauntering up and down, running into old acquaintances, greeting them with guffaws, and so on. Here and there you could make out a glinting medal. On rare occasions it was a star of the Order of Heroes of Socialist Labor. Seen from outside or by the goggle-eyed people who’d just been watching us make our way to the platform, the place must have looked like a corner of paradise. A contingent of the Socialist elite in glorious May Day sunshine, right next to the heavenly choir . . .
    Well, I thought to myself, even if none of that is true, even if there’s not a sliver of paradise here, maybe it’s not exactly the total opposite either, not the hell on earth I had imagined it would be . . . Things were probably much simpler, and my fevered mind was making everything seem blacker than it was.
    Slightly reassured, I looked at my watch. It was almost half past nine. Maybe it was time to go up into the grandstand. Out of the human mass on the street, a line had formed and was making its way in orderly fashion in that direction, and to my great surprise no one betrayed any sign of guilt, shame, or hesitation. On the contrary, most people were holding their invitation cards in plain sight, with a touch of pride, and stopped to look at them close up or at arm’s length as they pretended to be checking where their seats were (as if they hadn’t already done that at home a dozen times over!) and then, with serious faces, moved straight ahead.
    I was about to join the line without any further self-doubts. After all, they had been coming here for years, and I was discovering it all for the first time. For the last time too, in all probability . . .
    “Keep moving! Keep moving!” a voice bawled from the nearby loudspeaker, as if to bolster my resolve. I thought that a smile was about to break out on my face, but it never got that far. For on my right, in a group of quite young fellows most of whom I knew (some were employees of Zeri i popullit, the daily newspaper, and others worked at the Central Committee), I saw G. Z.
    I can’t imagine what else in that crowd could have brought me back so sharply to the very worst that the world has to offer, to its most deathly and abominable manifestation. A somber chasm, then a great fall, then a desperate jerk to try to escape at any cost from the chaos . . . But wasn’t that the ancient tale of Bald Man Falling?
    One night as he was walking in the dark, Bald Man fell into a hole and kept on falling and falling right down to the netherworld . . .

5
    I had known G. Z. since the time he was employed at our TV station, and I’d never thought very much of him. His complexion was gray, but more sickly than pale, probably a symptom of his lack of personal hygiene which, combined with his unwashed shirts and self-proclaimed taste for plain dressing (which was more likely just miserliness) and with his constant harping on his orphan status at meetings (Comrades, I never had a father or a mother. No! The Party is my only family.), which itself provided an