George Grossbuchz knew one thing only: that his job, the Anathematician’s job, was to decide on the precise magnitude and character of final denouncements.
This one went to Siberia and this one had to live with a collar of stones around his neck. This one was to be pelted with rotten durians, and still another must be hanged from a gargoyle for five hours while being read an unpleasant text. One was forced to live the rest of his days harbouring a vague sense of unease, raising it as if it were his own son, giving it food and bedding and accounting for its education and medical bills and need for future employment.
George worked in a corner office and never saw the people on whom he pronounced judgement face-to-face, and in many cases, he did not know their names; they came to him initials and left initials, dry ink burdened by formulas.
The mathematics of George’s work – everything was addition. There was no multiplication, for the rules under which he operated did not allow the contemplation of crimes in tandem. Everything was to be considered in isolation, as a set of precise, unrelated facts. This prevented, among other things, the possibility of mitigating circumstances. And in those cases where two sets of facts, leading to different charges, were so interrelated as to be completely inseparable at the expense of logic…
Well, then, they expended logic and got on with it. Logic was not a component of the job, except the cold mathematical logic of fact, plus law, equalling – the imposition of a curse.
So there was no multiplication, and still less was there any hope of subtraction, or of division, for these operations could only lessen the harm to be dispensed, and this was not George Grossbuchz’s job.
There is no need to say that George’s judgments were never appealed, that the defendants always carried out their orders in the swiftest possible manner and to the letter. Mathematics, physics. Once George wrote the verdict, it simply was, it was not possible to counter the judgment, and not only this, it was also unthinkable that anyone would try, like trying to fly by jumping from a high window and flapping one’s hands. Once people were marked, a stigma hung over them and others on the street knew of their anathema and avoided them.
George himself had been cast out of every place he had ever inhabited. His life was comprised of a succession of exiles, first from the home of his birth, then from his marital house, the house he’d struggled towards from the bottom of the hill; he had trudged around the city and occupied one administrative position after another; he had accompanied past lovers on long trips, trips undertaken on charity, meant to thrust the happiness of others in his face, and he had merely taken all in his stride, and become the Court’s right-hand man, the ultimate dispenser of justice, more than the scales in Themis’ hands.
verso folio 