Moving Parts Read Online Free PDF Page A

subsequent events, at least to the end of the paragraph. The boy will break away from the elderly gentleman and will run into the roadway, right in front of an approaching van. The vehicle will brake with a squeal of tires. Two men in blue overalls will jump out. One of them carries the photograph of a little girl in his wallet. The girl and the boy are the same age and look very much alike, but for obvious reasons this is hardly the moment to be showing pictures. The elderly gentleman finds no response to the angry gestures of the man in overalls; he merely shakes the boy without mercy. The umbrella trembles in his other hand, while rain drips down their necks. But nowthis is of no significance to the narrator; the van is already in place – where it was meant to be, expressive and indispensable as a chord closing an overture.
    It has stopped, then, in front of the hotel, one wheel riding up onto the sidewalk. In it are long flat styrofoam packages. And for sure also a toolbox. Sets of handy screwdrivers are carried in the pockets of the blue overalls. The two men take them out and set about removing the revolving door. In the required sequence they unfasten everything attached with screws and everything clipped into place. The bronze armor first, then the horse’s head, then the forelegs and hind legs. And all the events that have flashed past the hotel door with the monument in the background now equally become subject to dismantlement. Strips of paper are soaked by the rain; the wind blows scraps of styrofoam along the sidewalk. Four axleless panels stand for a moment in the lobby alongside four new ones, which glisten just the same, almost indistinguishable. And now the men in overalls have finished the job; they set in motion that which they have taken from the factory packaging and assembled into a new whole. They’ve done this dozens of times. They hang on the handrails and turn in a circle, checking that the mechanism works as it should. In the panes of glass, instead of the rider and horse, a fountain is reflected. A fountain that stands in the middle of the square in place of the monument. Its bronze bowl is covered by the same green patina. For a moment it looks asthough the narrator will manage to escape into a different story. Things are better this way.
    Or rather they could have been better, but someone was evidently against it. And so the narrator is obliged to begin a paragraph in which the desk clerk’s cry will ring out and be broken off suddenly, breathless, at its highest point. Shortly, in the background will be heard the wailing of police sirens and ambulances, first in the distance, then closer and closer. It will prove necessary to mention the portable posts between which plastic tape bearing official diagonal stripes is strung, closing off part of the sidewalk around the entrance; also the crowd gathered behind this makeshift barrier, and the civilian officials of the investigation team picking their way through broken glass. And since all these circumstances have been brought up, it won’t be possible to steer clear of what is most important: a series of shots from an automatic pistol that brought down the two workmen in their blue overalls as they were trapped between the panels of the revolving door. They fell where they stood; only their hands slid down the glass lingeringly, as if in slow motion. Their fingers grasped helplessly at the sharp edges of the bullet holes, leaving disquieting red streaks – an image that is disagreeable and also in its literalness somewhat ridiculous. And all this amid office buildings where work goes on in a frenzy of boredom and routine from morning to night only so as to have money; the more that’s earned, the broader the scope fordesires, which are uncomplicated and quickly fizzle out. The image is blurred; a misty suspension of rain falls slowly, enveloping the adverbs of time, place, manner, and purpose in every sentence. No meaning