Detective Story

by Imre Kertész

  So as I said, this statue appeared on Rodriguez’s desk. It was made for him by a sculptor from down below: there were prisoners of every kind in our jails, so why not a sculptor? This sculptor, by the way, was not a genuine sculptor but a monument mason. Still, he did a good job, I’ll say that for him. He made it of wood and some kind of plastic, if I’m not mistaken. It consisted of a base on which stood two uprights ending in forks. Resting on the forks was a rod, which in turn supported a tiny human figure in such a way that it passed between the bent knees and the wrists handcuffed together behind the knees. A devastating contraption, no two ways about it. Diaz glowered at it.

  “What on earth is that?” he asked.

  “That? It’s a Boger swing,” Rodriguez responded with great affection.

  “Boger?” Diaz fussed. “What do you mean, Boger?”

  “That’s the name of the fellow who invented it,” Rodriguez explained. He flicked the diminutive doll on the head with an index finger. It spun a few times, then the momentum died down, and it just swung on the rod, head down. You could see the thighs and the crudely carved buttocks, not omitting what lies in between. To Rodriguez’s credit, it should be made clear that it was a male doll.

  “This bit here”—Rodriguez traced a small circle over it with his finger—“is freed up. You can do with him what you will.” He looked up at Diaz and grinned. I might as well not have been there—which is just as well as I probably only would have stuttered. That reflects badly on a person. “Or else,” Rodriguez continued, “you can squat down here, by his mug, and ask him whatever you want to know.”

  Diaz hemmed and hawed. He strode up and down the room a couple of times, hands clasped behind him. That was his habit when he was mulling something over, or if something was not to his liking. The day he made his getaway he did that for the entire morning, until in the end I felt dizzy.

  He perched one buttock on Rodriguez’s desk.

  “What in the blue blazes do you need it for?” he inquired in a fatherly tone. “We’ve got every sort of plaything. All you have to do is press a button, and it switches on an electric current. That’s what they use the world over these days: clean and convenient. Isn’t that enough for you?”

  No, it wasn’t enough. Rodriguez didn’t believe in mechanization.

  “A person,” he says, “has no direct contact.”

  “What’s that to you?” Diaz asked.

  He failed to convince Rodriguez, however, who had his own principles. An educated man was Rodriguez; he would follow up on anything that interested him. “It’s too fiddly with machines,” he says. “Pure mechanics. One might as well don a white gown, like an engineer or surgeon. There’s no more interaction than if one were handling the matter by telephone. The offender can’t see the good humor one is in. And yet,” so Rodriguez, “that’s the key to the effect.”

  As I said, I’m reluctant to talk about this. Even then I had nothing to say—I was still a new boy, and then again I was nervous about the stuttering and the clichés. I told Diaz what I thought only after Rodriguez had left the room to attend to business, as the workmen were by then already erecting the frame.

  “Swine!” I said.

  “That he is,” Diaz nodded with feeling, abstractedly twirling the doll. “A swine. A rat. A bloodsucker.”

  He fell silent. Neither of us said a word. Even that poxy doll was by then dangling motionless between us, head downward.

  “And you.” All at once he lifted his eyes to look at me. “What are you so windy about, sonny boy?” Diaz could have a very disagreeable way of looking at you, though he had tranquil, dark brown eyes and did nothing to alter that. I mean, he did not narrow them or glower or stare—he just looked, nothing more. But that was disagreeable all the same.

  “Me?” I retort. “Not windy, absolutely not. Just thingy … that’s taking it a bit too far.”

  “Too far indeed, too far.” He nods. “Well, we have dealings with the far out.”

  “Sure, sure,” says I. “It’s just … how should I put it … I mean, I actually thought we were serving the law here.”

  “Those in power, sonny boy,” Diaz corrects me. My head started to ache. Oddly, it was actually Diaz who made it ache, not Rodriguez.

  To that I say, “Up till now I thought the two were the same.”

  “Fair enough,” Diaz concedes. “Only you shouldn’t lose sight of the order.”

  “What order is that?”

  “Those in power first, then the law,” Diaz says quietly with that inimitable smile of his.

  So, that was how matters stood when we had to decide whether to arrest Enrique Salinas or simply put him under surveillance.

  No.

  Events are now getting muddled and snarled together in my brain: the strands of the investigation that I, as investigating officer, held in my hands; the interrogations; Enrique’s diary; the lengthy chats that I had as ostensibly supplementary interrogations with him and his father, the elder Salinas, that utterly determined old fox; the tape recordings of the conversations they had with each other in prison; and finally my own unformulated thoughts about it all, which have subsequently confused the case in my mind so thoroughly that speaking about it will prove harder, I fear, than I suspected at first.

  At that time we had done nothing more than open a file on Enrique. We already knew about him. He featured in the records as an abstract piece of data, and we knew that sooner or later he would have to play a part in person. We didn’t speak about it: there was nothing to say, but we just knew. We waited patiently, without even thinking that we were waiting; as I have said, we had a lot to do at the time. We had an atrocity to prevent. Whether his case would fall within the scope of the case set in motion by the atrocity, or of some other case, we truly couldn’t have cared less. Any person who was in the records was going to end up as a suspect sooner or later, no question. That’s as sure as the fact that I am sitting and writing in my cell here, until … But let’s drop that subject. The sentence has not been handed down yet, and even when it is, I shall be granted a short time afterward, at least until an appeal is heard. I know how it goes in this sort of case.

  In short, our records had already identified that Enrique was going to perpetrate something sooner or later. As far as we were concerned, his fate was sealed, even if he himself had not yet made up his mind. He was hesitating, playing for time. He roamed the streets or wrote in his diary, raced around in his Alfa Romeo, visited on friends, or popped into bed with some silky-smooth kitten, if he happened to feel so inclined. Enrique Salinas was young, just twenty-two; his long hair, his wisp of a mustache and beard alone marked him as suspicious in our eyes. He brooded, rushed around, and made love. He did not spend much time at home. Maria, for her part, sat by the window and waited for him. Not that she could have seen much from the eighteenth floor of the Salinas luxury apartment building. From up there the milling bustle of the Grand Boulevard looks like the teeming of ants. Nevertheless, Maria Salinas, Enrique’s mother, spent all her time by the window.

  That was where old Federigo Salinas found her when, on returning from the office, he crossed the apartment’s opulent salons in search of his wife. He stood behind her back without uttering a word.

  “I’m scared,” he hears Maria say after a while.

  “We have no reason to be scared, Maria,” he retorts. They fall silent.

  “Hernandez has disappeared. Martino has been executed. Vera was taken away from her home,” Maria recites without even turning around.

  “We’re not the kind of people they take away.” Salinas put an arm around her shoulders.

  Maria was somewhat comforted. A sense of strength emanated from Salinas’s arm. Strength, superiority, and certainty. Slippery as an eel was old Salinas, though one should not picture him as being old: he looked young for his age. He was fifty, in the prime of life in certain respects.

  “Look!” he hears Maria’s agitated voice again. “Federigo, look down there!” She was point
ing at the street. He could see a black limousine. It was one of the vehicles that belong to our department—from time to time we had a job to do on the Grand Boulevard.

  “Come away from the window, Maria!” Salinas spoke firmly to her.

  Don’t go thinking I am just making up these exchanges. I wasn’t there, of course, how could I have been? But they have passed through my hands. I have seen them and heard them, watched them and interrogated them. I made records of what they said, to the point that all at once the records began to take charge of me.

  We interrogated Maria as well—most certainly I interrogated her. That was at Diaz’s express request, incidentally. I objected, because I saw no point. Diaz, however, insisted. So I interrogated her. I interrogated her once, and then again on several further occasions, as Diaz wished. Maria was an attractive woman, slim, trim, and elegant. She had left her dark hair undyed, with good reason: the few gleaming silver strands only heightened its sheen. She was forty-eight, and it was still possible to fall head over heels in love with her, you bet! Those eyes! I was glued to them like a fly to flypaper. Sometimes I almost felt as if she were interrogating me, and not the other way around. But then I would notice the fear in those eyes, and that would at least restore order between us, even if I was unable to fully regain my composure. No, if a woman like that is afraid, that is alarming.

  We were not going to be able to learn anything from her—all of us were clear about that. I have no liking for senseless work, and I said as much to Diaz, as I have already mentioned.

  What I said to him was:

  “There’s no sense in this. If it were up to me, I’d leave the woman out of the case.”

  “That’s not possible. Besides, she would be offended,” he brushed me off. A helluva witty guy Diaz could be. At the time I just put that remark too down to his wit, but then things turned out differently. As I say, I was the new boy, and I was not yet in a position to appreciate all the subtleties of our work. Maria Salinas had to survive so as to grieve and bring us into disrepute. No one was left without a role in this game, and that was her role. So we handled her with kid gloves. She underwent formal interrogations, with polite questions and tactful expectations. These were more in the line of visits to a clinic, with a tidy transcript attesting to each of them. That sort of thing is important as proof of the impeccable legality of our procedures.

  With Salinas I was able to speak more freely. Over time, once we were able to regard his case as closed, I managed to gain his trust. Later he even came to welcome the chats. That’s understandable, since he was then able to bring up all the things he had ever been fond of. He was thereby able to relive the various episodes of his life and ponder his misfortune. I, for my part, was able to forget who I was supposed to be (the case was closed, after all) and, as a faithful witness, listened to him like some kind of reverential pupil.

  So I am very well aware what they talked about, better than if I had been there in person.

  “Federigo … how long can this go on?” Maria asked.

  “The name says it all: a state of emergency,” said Salinas. He was getting a bit bored with the matter. He had already said it all a hundred times over, but he’d say it another hundred times if necessary. He lit a cigarette. Salinas smoked fragrant cigarettes—a stylish brand, in this as in everything. That was something in which he could indulge himself, that’s for sure.

  “Not long, then?” Maria badgered him some more, but this time she got no answer. “It won’t be for long?” she pressed him. “Not for long, Federigo, will it?”

  “No,” Salinas reassured her. “It’s always like this. I can give you any number of examples. They come and they go; the worse they are, the quicker.” He paused. “One only has to get through it. And we have every chance of doing that, Maria,” he finished off with a smile.

  A nice line, for domestic consumption, and Salinas had by now carefully polished every detail. Maria knew the follow-up herself:

  “Provided we stay outside both circles,” she said, as if intoning it.

  “That’s right.” He nodded staunchly. “That of the persecutors and that of the persecuted.”

  “Is it that simple, Federigo?” she inquired. The query was unexpected and was not in keeping with the rules of the game. Salinas shot a quick, suspicious glance at his wife. He had to think.

  “No,” came the cautious reply. “Obviously, the circles are expanding all the time.”

  “Like the eddies of a whirlpool,” she said.

  “If you like,” he gracefully conceded. He waited. Nothing happened. Maria contented herself with the simile. Salinas could relax. “It’s all a matter of timing,” he remarked.

  “And the pace of events,” she said.

  “Naturally.” He nodded. They had again sorted out their differences. That was how they played the game nowadays, every evening: a delicate game it was, requiring them to heed the rules.

  “I’m suffocating!” Maria said unexpectedly.

  “No, just choking,” Salinas comforted her. “As am I, as is everybody.” He suddenly became nervous, this time genuinely nervous. “Don’t look at your watch,” he entreated his wife. “He’ll be back home.”

  They then fell silent. Each sank into an armchair. Salinas blew fragrant smoke rings. He stretched out his long, muscular legs, his black patent-leather shoes gleaming in the twilight. He undid the buttons of his impeccable suit jacket and loosened his fashionable necktie.

  Maria was sitting with a straight back, hands resting in her lap.

  They waited. They were waiting for Enrique, both of them—for the Enrique whom we had already entered into our records and for whom they were anxiously longing as for their destiny.

  …

  Enrique’s diary lies before me. I am leafing through it. I have long ago cracked his in-places-indecipherable lines; I’m familiar with their content. The diary was confiscated in the course of a house search, and I purchased it after Enrique’s death. I have brought it with me even in here. No particular difficulties were raised; I told them I would like to write my memoirs, and I needed the note-book for that. They went through it, as is only proper, but then handed it over. I have it really soft in here, I can’t complain. There’s no two ways about it: with us, requests like that were unlikely to have been honored, as the wiseguys who make the rules are in the habit of phrasing it. I told them that it was my diary, and in a sense I wasn’t lying: after all, I had bought it.

  It’s good that I have it with me. It was smart of me to buy it. Even now I don’t know what on earth possessed me to do that. I acquired it simply because I felt it couldn’t possibly end up anywhere else; it had to be with me. So I purchased it from the head of our confidential archives, who handles deposited documents of this sort. I readily came to an understanding with him, because I knew his weakness, and it so happened I could be of assistance to him in the matter. In the matter of certain top-notch brands of liquor. At the time shortages had sprung up as a result of humdrum disputes about reciprocal customs tariffs and foreign-exchange considerations—no doubt you all recall those dry months. He didn’t want a lot: I would have been willing to put up even five times as much for Enrique’s diary. Fortunately, he wasn’t to know that. He then did the necessary paperwork.

  Surprised, are you? Why? I can tell much stranger tales than that one. If I were to get going, there’d be no end to them—all manner of things happened in our setup. After all, the people working for the Corps are only human. People everywhere are only human, and of all sorts, what is more.

  Enrique began keeping the diary when the university was closed. After Victory Day, in other words. Opening it at random:

  To give an account of my days is impossible. To give an account of my plans: I have none. To give an account of my life: I’m not living.

  They have smashed my hopes, smashed my future, smashed everything, the scum!

  Leafing further on:

  I exist. Is this a life still? No, just vegetating. It seem
s that only one philosophy can succeed the philosophy of existentialism: nonexistentialism, the philosophy of nonexistent existence.

  That, I have to confess, is a little over my head. I know nothing about philosophy. It may sound odd, but sometimes I have the same trouble with Enrique as I do with Diaz: I can’t follow him. He too gave me a headache—a different sort of headache, of course, utterly different.

  I turn the page:

  Nonexistence. The society of the nonexistent. In the street yesterday a nonexistent person trod on my foot with his nonexistent foot.

  I took a stroll in the city. It was infernally hot. The usual evening hubbub around me. Lovers on the pavements, hurrying to cinemas and other places of amusement as if nothing had happened, nothing. Living their nonexistent lives. Or do they exist, and it’s me who doesn’t? Every other guy in the street seemed to have lost something. There are these police types everywhere, eavesdropping, sniffing around, and they think nobody is paying any attention to them. They’re right too: people don’t pay them any attention. All it has taken is a few months, and already they have grown accustomed to them.

  I dropped in on a café, flopped down on the terrace. I was boiling with anger, the heat, and impotence. A packed terrace, a waxwork gallery of the petty bourgeoisie. People chattering on about business, fashion, and entertainment. One woman was cackling interminably in a shrill voice. The perfumes of the ladies mingled with the soft, glutinous smell of bloated, greasy bodies. To my right was a swarthy fellow, his oily, short-cropped black hair combed back in the American style, his chubby cheeks swollen at the base of the ears as if he had mumps, and he was wearing black-rimmed spectacles. His lips were continually in motion and smacking, as if he were talking to himself or sucking a sweet. But then I noticed that he was trying to achieve a compromise, a modus vivendi, with an oversize set of dentures. He had his wife with him, a faded beauty. They were joined later on by a bald guy, likewise with his wife, and a drab young man who was evidently Baldy’s son. I shamelessly eavesdropped. The son considered it timely to remark that it had been a hot day, to which False Teeth responded: “Never mind what it was like. The main thing is we’ve got through it.” Then he unexpectedly declared: “In any case, we all check out six feet under.” I jerked up my head in astonishment: could he possibly be aware of where he was living? But no, I satisfied myself that it was only the choppers that had made him such a skeptic. The lower and upper rows of teeth were like two camel’s hooves (though come to think of it, camels don’t have hooves) that had been crammed into his mouth in an absurd and mad fit, and now he had to go around with them forever, out of some sense of obstinacy and grim determination. His wife, the faded beauty, babbled on incessantly in an effortlessly prissy voice. She joyfully reported that a new consignment was in, and listed all the things that could now be obtained at the market. Baldy’s wife also chimed in, then Baldy himself. They agreed that life was getting better as the consolidation was taking hold. They were pleased to establish that distinct signs of life were detectable in the business sphere. Conditions were improving—that was Baldy’s view. A mood of optimism sprang up. They ordered another round of refreshers. With the greatest of pleasure I would have tossed a bomb among them.