City guard

 

To this day, I can't describe what actually happened then.

It was definitely night, dark, somehow sepulchral, ​​the fog spreading sticky shrouds of deformation between the sleepy tenement houses. It was cold, more like autumn than winter. I remember because of the dampness of rain. Perhaps that's why everything was completely unclear from the start, irritating with its cold mystery.

Yes, I think I gave the police a precise description, but now I'm no longer certain of a single detail. Or rather, I'm certain that all those details, as I stubbornly call them, I noticed then were an expression of a desire to understand and classify, as illusory as they were erroneous; and nothing follows from these details, just as nothing followed from them then. Because they didn't convey his dreamlike essence in the slightest.

And they certainly don't explain what happened.

He walked slowly, heavily, and gloomily. He came, I think, from the direction of the Old Cemetery (because really, where the hell could he have come from?), though I didn't pay any attention, to be honest, just as I wouldn't have paid any attention to him. I repeat, I wouldn't have, if it weren't for one thing: he was walking down the middle of the street. Krakowska Street, somewhere up there. But the point is: he was walking on the road.

Okay, I admit, there wouldn't have been anything surprising about it (I myself often find myself unable to fit within the awkward width of the sidewalk—so that's not the point either), if it weren't for the fact that there was clearly, from the very beginning, something distinctly "wrong" with him. In fact, everything was wrong.

I know he wasn't who, when I was approached, so insistently—I admit—he claimed to be: a City Guard. I know those guys all too well; he's not that type. They don't go alone, they don't wear tailcoats or top hats at all, they don't wear loose, flowing waves of silver-flecked hair. They don't smell like the illusion of a dream, or rather a nightmare. They don't smoke imported tobacco from a wooden pipe.

He wasn't one, so he was lying. So I started mocking him lightly.

I wasn't annoyed that he wasn't paying attention to me, except for the faintest hint of an ironic smile, barely perceptible at the corner of his mouth. I'd grown accustomed to these smiles by now, so for obvious reasons, I didn't consider them a reaction.

Instead, I mocked him even harder, sharper, less discerning. Perhaps, though I could be wrong, I finally began to call him names, and with each word my sense of self-worth, long since diminished, grew, and I must have felt good about that. In any case, I clearly had to demonstrate it in some pretentious way.

"You know, we're actually similar," he said unexpectedly. "We constitute the invisible color of this city, which seemingly goes unnoticed. Except they'd love to have you removed, because you're a kind of ulcer, and no one seems to notice our existence. But it's we who, at night, rekindle the city's spirit, fading in the light of new eras, guarding the secret of its unique atmosphere. We are the guardians of its inner fire.

It's true that something warm radiated from him. Or rather, something bright, because the temperature wasn't the issue here. No, probably not bright either. I don't know, but it was undoubtedly an overwhelming, irresistible feeling. Some transcendence flowed through him, perhaps it flowed, perhaps he was only meant to be its carrier, or perhaps a mediator, but he undoubtedly had it within him. I don't know why, and I never discovered its purpose. But it was there then."

He pulled a round watch on a gold chain from his vest pocket. He glanced, raised his head toward the western end of the street.

"One minute to midnight, time to go. Go away. "

I moved away slightly, I admit. His tone, though not one that brooked no argument, had a persuasive effect. I staggered slightly, fell awkwardly, and sat down against the wall of one of the many tenement houses on Krakowska Street, shrouded in fog and monumentally dark.

Truly, upon my word, I have no idea where that tram came from. Blurry, foggy, perhaps more of a premonition than an actual vehicle, I don't know, but it arrived, creaking slightly but majestically.

He climbed aboard and drove away.