Fiasco

by Imre Kertész

  “No,” he replied, and the girl now fell silent, as if she wished to be left on her own for a while with Köves’s answer.

  A little later she said:

  “It’s still early.”

  “For what?” Köves asked.

  “To go up to my place,” the girl responded, and the promise implicit in those words was distant enough for Köves to win time, but on the other hand sufficiently enticing to make him restive and spur him to some sort of action: Köves felt his arm moving and encircling the girl’s shoulder.

  Later on, Köves recalled a restaurant, a kind of beergarden where a third-rate Gypsy band squeaked and squealed stridently as a clutch of shirtsleeved men at some table or other defiantly bellowed some song, their faces red as lobsters, while at other tables solemn, overweight families sat stiffly, wordlessly, stricken in their incommutable presence as it were; it was here that Köves—his head now starting to throb, which may well have made him somewhat preoccupied—learned that the girl had come to the city from somewhere farther afield, against the will of her parents, who had intended their straitened peasant fate for their daughter, but she had run away from her parents and the future that had been lined up for her by starting work at the factory:

  “You have to start somewhere, don’t you?” she said, and Köves keenly approved, even though every nod he gave sent a pain shooting through his head. They later got on a tram which jolted along, taking them farther out of the city, where they alighted somewhere and the girl led Köves among squat, newlybuilt housing, which, in the uncertain glimmer of the sparsely sited street lamps already—perhaps on account of all the planking, sand heaps, and unfilled holes that had been left there—looked like ruins, until they turned in at a gate, climbed a dark set of stairs, and the girl groped with her key to open a door and in the hallway signaled Köves to remain quiet, which he, although not knowing the precise reason, accepted as self-explanatory, as if there was no way of reaching the place he and the girl were approaching other than stealthily. In the end, they slipped into a tiny side room, where the girl switched on a table lamp with a pink shade and Köves cast a fleeting glance across the objects which, so to speak, consummated the room’s perfection: a cracked mirror, a rickety wardrobe, crocheted doilies, a grinning rubber dog sticking out its tongue under the lampshade, a line, discreetly strung up in a dark corner, from which hung a few pairs of stockings and items of underwear, an artificial flower poking up from a chipped vase, a chair, a table, and, above all, a fairly broad but springy bed which would presumably be squeaking later on, while his nostrils were assailed by the smell of poverty, cleanliness, some cheap perfume, and adventure, though he had a hunch that the latter was the sole volatile scent among all the other durable odours.

  After which, the next thing Köves caught himself doing was making love—despite everything and over and beyond everything that he had shared in there, how was it possible that he had been made to forget that he was a man? All at once, he now awakened to his insatiable primeval thirst: it was as if he were seeking to douse his throbbing, burning member, yet finding it had plunged into bubbling lava, which burned it even more, with the girl, to start with whispering but then aloud, as it were, egging him on, Köves, like someone in whom a protective concern had suddenly awakened with the passing of the initial half-hours of recurrently erupting self-oblivion, so to speak, asked the girl:

  “Aren’t you worried about having a child?”

  The look the girl gave might have been, if anything, more worrying for him:

  “Why should I be worried?…,” she asked, but she was unable to follow on as she had heard a noise (Köves did not notice it), and she now bid Köves to be quiet, quickly slipped out of the bed, her body white before Köves’s eyes as she bobbed down here and there to search for an item of clothing, which she then draped round her shoulders before dashing out of the room, though her nimble feet soon brought her back, as if she did not wish to leave Köves on his own for too long in the bed, lest he be overcome with loneliness or a fit of absurdity and fear, and she uninhibitedly discarded her negligee, leaned over Köves, and switched off the lamp before nestling up to him with a total confidence which t slightly astonished Köves, like a discreet assault, yet at the same time also disarmed him.

  “It was the old lady,” he heard the girl say in the dark.

  “Which old lady?” he asked.

  “The old lady,” the girl repeated.

  “I see,” Köves murmured.

  “She was thirsty,” the girl said, then after a brief pause added: “She has cancer; she’s dying,” the girl’s voice rang firmly, almost optimistically, and on hearing her Köves himself did not know why he winced a little. The girl, though, as if she now wanted quickly to interpose herself between Köves and the questions that were assailing him:

  “Don’t worry, she’s already gone to sleep. She won’t disturb us any more,” she whispered, and after some wavering hesitation Köves meekly sensed that he was again gradually being suffused by a wave of ardour.

  Köves is summoned. Forced to have second thoughts

  Köves was called in; he was just in the middle of filing away when the foreman came over to him to say that he was urgently wanted upstairs, in the office. What sprang immediately to Köves’s mind was his recent lateness, and although the foreman insisted that he should drop everything and get his skates on, Köves—who after all was merely a worker there (he could hardly sink much lower than that), but then it was precisely through this that he had attained his freedom, even if that freedom did not consist of much more than not having anything to lose—reckoned he was in no hurry to be hauled over the coals. First of all, therefore, he put down the file he was holding, shook the iron filings from his trousers and shoes by stamping a few times, wiped his hands on an oily rag with a few big, easy movements (the way he had seen real machine fitters in the nearby workshops do it), and only then, having as it were disposed of the more important matters, did he set off out of the workshop at a leisurely, ambling pace, responding to the girl’s questioning look only with a wink of the eye: since the first time, Köves had several times spent the night at the girl’s place, reaching the point that they had breakfasted together in the pocket-handkerchief kitchen and set off together for the factory, with the girl delighting in covering the short stretch from the tram to the steelworks hand in hand, although Köves usually found some pretext (such as an urgent need to blow his nose) for withdrawing his hand from the girl’s. In the meantime, Köves learned that the old lady, whom fortunately they never encountered, was some distant relative of the girl’s; the old lady had taken her in, and the girl looked after her in return, and when she died the girl would get the authorities to hand over to her the big room in which the old lady was presently living, and in point of fact, it would be possible to obtain the whole apartment, or at least there would be a greater chance of that if the girl had a family, and especially a child; to all of which planning Köves listened with approving nods, but always in the manner of a well-disposed outsider who, although of course not indifferent to the girl’s life, was nevertheless not, by any means, a part of it, and yet it seems that this did not dampen the girl’s spirits: she just smiled at Köves, as if she knew something better than he did. The previous night, indeed, Köves had not spent with the girl, excusing himself on the grounds that he needed to pay a visit on an uncle, but tossing and turning in his bed, unable to get to sleep, he had been surprised to find himself missing the girl. Yes, if he was a worker, then (so it seemed) he needed a wife; but then, on the other hand (it crossed Köves’s mind), if he had a wife, that would turn him into a worker for good, not that it made such a big difference (he was already one as it was)—Köves no longer knew, in his restless half-slumbering state, where he stood even with his own affairs. In the end, the girl would be right: if she gave it time, that would tie him, without his noticing it, to the girl’s life, and that in turn to the works and promotion, as they waited for the cancer-stricken old la
dy’s death, and meanwhile along came children, one after the other.

  Köves was supposed to look for the shipping department (the head of the department wanted a word with him), and for a while he wandered uncertainly along various corridors, until he finally spotted a group of men who, with laboured care, were lugging heavy crates out through a door, but the female clerk sitting inside (who, having first asked Köves if he was a truck driver, had found out he was not) informed him that he was in the wrong place: this was the haulage department; shipping, she said, was something different), at which Köves begged pardon, remarking that he hadn’t known that.

  “No?” the clerk was amazed. “Oh well, you’ll learn,” and with that gave directions to Köves, who, in another corridor, indeed on another floor, finally spotted, hanging one of the doors, spotted a sign that read SHIPPING, with below it, in smaller lettering: CUSTOMS MATTERS – PERSONNEL MATTERS – MATERNITY BENEFIT. Slightly nonplussed, especially by the “Maternity Benefit,” Köves entered a relatively plain office, where, apart from the customary female clerk, there was a man with the outer appearance of a machine fitter, pacing up and down, hands in his pockets, with obvious impatience, though when Köves took a closer look, of course, he immediately noticed it was only his clothing that made him look like a machine fitter, more specifically the unbuttoned, faded-blue overall jacket, and especially the peaked cloth cap that, for whatever reason, he was wearing indoors in the great heat; under the jacket were a white shirt and a necktie, and though sagging slightly and wrinkle-creased, and despite the thick locks of greying hair peeping out from under the cap, he had a soft, youthful-looking face, his piercing blue eyes glinting at Köves as he stepped through the door:

  “Köves?!” he shouted, and on receiving an affirmative answer almost set upon him: “Where have you been all this time?!” at which Köves, acting the dumb worker, shrugged his shoulders, having come when he was told to and being there now, but when it came down to it, of course, he could answer for himself in his own way.

  “Right! Come along anyway, come!” The man seemed to relent, ushering Köves with a cordial gesture in through a side door marked, HEAD OF DEPARTMENT, which he carefully closed after them, then offered Köves a chair while he himself sat down behind a desk, directly in front of Köves. He stayed silent for a while, running his gaze keenly over the piles of paper and bundles of documents which were heaped on the desk, pulling out one or another to look at, only to toss it back testily:

  “Well then,” he eventually spoke, abstractedly, as he was doing that, and to Köves’s astonishment in an undeniably friendly, if not downright intimate, tone of voice. “How are you finding it here, with us?” Köves, who on the spur of the moment did not know whether he should consider the cordiality inherent in the question an aberration, or suspect a trap in it, or even whether he should take the question seriously at all, hesitated a little before replying, as though he thought the formalities could be dispensed with and wanted to get straight to the point.

  As nothing happened, however—the man was still hunting through his papers and seemed to be waiting for an answer—Köves said:

  “Wonderfully,” so as to say nothing, yet still break the silence.

  “Wonderfully!” the man repeated the word, even Köves’s intonation, while he pulled out one of the desk drawers and leaned over to take a look in it. “And here I am, unaware of how wonderful it is to be a machine fitter with us,” which shut Köves up for good. “You’re a shrewd one …,” the man went on, pushing the drawer back in irritation and straightening up again: “Very shrewd …,” and now his face suddenly brightened, but only so to speak incidentally, and just momentarily at that: most probably he had come across the document he had been looking for, and on the desktop after all, and he now immediately became engrossed in it:

  “With your talents …,” he went on, he was all but griping. “With your knowledge …”

  Like someone who had suddenly concluded his dual activity and wished to devote his attention solely to Köves from now on, he now slapped vigorously on the desk and flashed his piercingly blue eyes at Köves:

  “How long do you intend to laze around here?!” he almost snarled. “Did you think you would be able hide from us?! Tell me frankly, are you really satisfied here?!” at which Köves, who had been fidgeting on the seat in growing astonishment, was genuinely stunned. What was this? Was this a joke? He gets kicked out of everywhere to find they are only willing to take him on at a steelworks, forcing him, a mature adult, to become apprenticed as a machine fitter, and then they have the nerve to throw it back in face, as if it had been his idea to become a machine fitter? Had he not been driven there by necessity, in the face of duress? Had he not come here because he couldn’t go anywhere else? And now here they were, all at once pretending that among all of life’s boundless, rich parade of options he, Köves, had happened to choose this, as it now turned out, the very worst of all, and on his own whim at that? In what way could he be satisfied?… Köves had hardly given any thought to that so far; indeed, it had not occurred to him (he had not come to the steelworks in order to be satisfied, after all); but now he was being asked, even if it was hardly in all seriousness of course, and possibly was even expected to answer—for which he would still remain in their debt, of course—Köves felt that the entire time he had spent there was a single day, with its mornings and evenings maybe, but still a single, long, monotonous day, running constantly in the grey colours of dawn, that he kept scraping away at with his file as at an unerodable piece of steel, with its alternations of boredom and the deceptive relief of the end of the shift, and with the fleeting distraction that the girl offered, for which he had to pay with a feeling of belonging together. Köves had supposed that he was now going to live his life like that—in truth, of course, maybe he didn’t think that, in truth he more likely thought that he would only have to live that way temporarily, for today, tomorrow, and then maybe the day after tomorrow, because it wasn’t possible to live that way, though it had occurred to Köves to ask himself: Does man not live in a way he is not supposed to live, and then does it not transpire that this was his life after all?—at all events Köves was, in a certain sense, undeniably calm, and now that the department head was poking around at his composure, as he had been with his documents just beforehand, a hunch vaguely took shape in Köves that in that composure he had, to some extent, lighted on himself, perhaps more than in anything else before.

  Now, therefore, he enquired, sharply, coolly, like someone whom emotion had made to forget he was a machine fitter:

  “Why? You know of something better for me, perhaps?”

  The department head, however, did not seem to be put out in the least by Köves’s manners.

  “Yes, I do,” he smiled. “That’s why I summoned you.”

  Casting a swift glance under the now part-way raised palm of his hand, which had been resting on the document that had been located with such difficulty, he continued:

  “You’re a journalist. From tomorrow you’ll be working for the press department of the Ministry of Production, the ministry which supervises us,” and he had maybe not even got the words out, or Köves heard them, when, slipping out of Köves, brusquely and harshly, as if his life were under threat, came a:

  “No!”

  “No?” the department head leaned over the desk toward Köves, his face unexpectedly softening and sagging, his mouth opening slightly, his eyes staring confusedly at Köves from under the cap: “What do you mean, ‘No’?” he asked, so Köves, who by then had visibly regained his poise, although this seemed to have reinforced rather than shaken his determination, repeated:

  “No,” like someone shielding something tangible against some kind of fantasy. And so as not to appear like the sort of uncouth bumpkin who could not even speak, he added by way of an explanation:

  “I’m unsuited for it.”

  “Of course not.” The department head too had meanwhile calmed down and plainly resigned himself
to the utmost patience he could muster in order to acquaint Köves with one thing and another. “Of course you’re not suited: we are quite clear of that ourselves.” There was a momentary pause as a slightly care-laden expression flitted across his face, then, overcoming his doubts as it were, he slowly raised his blue gaze and trained it straight on Köves: “That’s precisely why we’re posting you over there,” he went on, “so that you will become suited,” and now it was Köves’s turn to lean forward in his chair in surprise.

  “How can I become suited for something I’m unsuited for?!” he exclaimed, making the department head crack a smile at his bewilderment.

  “Come now, don’t be such a baby!” he soothed Köves. “How would you know what you’re suited for and what not?”

  “Who but me?” he yelled, even more vociferously than before, “Surely not yourselves!” in his excitement he seemed involuntarily to take over the use of the plural from the department head, even though there was just one of them sitting facing him.

  “Naturally.” The department head’s eyes rounded and one eyebrow shot up almost to the middle of his forehead at the sight of such ignorance. “Look here,” he said, an unexpected tinge of gentleness creeping into his voice. The free hand which was not covering the document moved, stretching forward, and Köves was now beset with a vague feeling that the department head might be seeking to grasp his hand, though of course it could only have been his confused imagination playing tricks on him, it was too far away anyway, so nothing of the sort happened. “Look here, I could tell you a great deal, a very great deal, about that. Who could know what he’s suited for and what not? How many tests do we have to go through until it becomes clear who we are?” The department head was warming to the task, gradually bringing the colour of more briskly circulating blood to his pallid features. “Upstairs,” and at this point the hand which, just before, had been reaching forward was now raised, fingers spread, as if he were raising a chalice above his head, “in higher circles, they’ve come to a decision about you. How do suppose you can defy that decision?”