Fiasco

by Imre Kertész

  It appeared, however, that Berg was not deceived:

  “Some people may be worried,” he said in ringing tones, “but that’s not what brought you.”

  “No,” Köves admitted; then, as though he were loath to admit it: “Cluelessness,” he added, with a slightly forced smile. “Am I disturbing you?” he asked next.

  “As you can see,” Berg cast a sullen glance at the table, “I’m working,” placing a hand on his papers as on a restless animal. Making his way round the table, he dropped his heavy, but not disproportionate body down onto the stool and, like a gaoler over his prisoners, ran his eyes, fleetingly, but severely and appraisingly, over the petits-fours:

  “You’re writing?…,” Köves asked after a short lull, quietly and, involuntarily, with a degree of sympathetic tact.

  Berg, spreading his arms a little and grimacing, made the irritated admission:

  “Yes, I’m writing,” like someone who had been caught in a shameful passion that he himself deprecated.

  “And what?” Köves probed further, after allowing another considerate pause to go by, to which Berg, in wonder, raised a glance, as it were, looking past Köves:

  “What?…,” the question came back, as if this were the first time he had thought about it. “The writing,” he then declared, and now it was Köves’s turn to be surprised:

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “What would I mean?” Berg shrugged several times in what amounted to serene helplessness, any pretence at making an effort suddenly peeling off him, as if Köves were no longer making him feel uneasy: “One is always writing one’s writing,” he carried on, “or at least always should be writing it, if one writes.”

  “Fair enough.” Although Berg seemed to have forgotten to offer him a seat, Köves nevertheless set himself down in the armchair diagonally opposite Berg, cautiously smoothing down the rush ends sticking into his thigh from its frame. “Let me put it another way: What’s the writing about?”

  “Mercy,” Berg responded promptly, without a moment’s hesitation.

  “I see,” said Köves, although he couldn’t really have seen as he followed it straightaway by asking: “And what do you mean by ‘mercy’?”

  “The necessary,” came the answer, as swiftly as before.

  “And what is necessary?” Köves plugged away, as though sensing that the moment was favourable and wishing to make use of it.

  “You’re again posing the question badly,” Berg motioned, his hand suddenly dropping, like an irrevocable decision, cutting a swath through the petits-fours, his glance darting over the table, most likely in search of a serviette (there was no way of knowing, but maybe he imagined he was in the South Seas), which of course he did not find, so he was only able to clean his presumably sticky fingertips by fastidiously rubbing them together. “You should ask what’s unnecessary.”

  “Right,” Köves conceded to Berg, as though it were a riddle he had posed: “What’s unnecessary?”

  “To live,” Berg supplied the answer, with a frosty little smile playing around his mouth, as though after a cruel act, carried out with ruthless purposefulness, although—at least as far as Köves could ascertain—all he had done was polish off a petit-four.

  “I have never heard of a single living soul asking whether it is necessary to live,” Köves objected, perhaps more sharply than he intended.

  “The fact that people don’t pose it doesn’t mean that it’s not a valid question,” Berg said and shrugged his shoulders.

  Maybe,” Köves pondered, “I would understand what you are saying better if I could get to know what you are writing.”

  “And how could you do that?!” was Berg’s response, with a smile that bore a hint of an almost cocky excitement.

  “I know one way,” Köves ventured. “You could read it,” he blurted out, a suggestion that was followed by a prolonged silence.

  “To tell you the truth,” Berg finally spoke, “I was preparing to do that very thing when you rang the doorbell. You see,” and he seemed to hesitate, “… you see,” he carried on nevertheless, “one section has been completed and I … ah! What do I care what you think!… I like to try out how it sounds when read aloud. But I had not been expecting,” he added, “to have an audience as well …”

  “Maybe it would be more natural that way …,” Köves offered.

  “How do you mean?” It was Berg’s turn to be flummoxed.

  “I mean, if you’re already writing,” Köves tried to explain, “then it’s natural that … in short,” he broke into a smile, radiating jaunty reassurance, “it’s natural for an artist to have an audience …”

  But he had slipped up, it seemed, because Berg’s face clouded over, as if the effect of the reassurance had been rather to put him out of humour.

  “The natural instinct for man to be an artist is not at all natural any longer,” he muttered. Köves did not respond, whereas Berg launched into a series of little moves, not every one of which was familiar to Köves but which he recognized, in totality, as preparations for giving a reading, so he continued to hold his tongue. Finally, Berg broke the silence, though not at all in order to read:

  “Would you like a petit-four?” was all he asked, in a dour voice, which, unusually for him, was trembling a little from an attack of stage fright.

  “No thank you,” Köves declined. “I had breakfast just before.”

  Berg then seemed to be struggling but in the end only took a sip of water, then, without taking any notice of Köves, articulating clearly in his sonorous voice, began reading very clearly, starting with the title, which in itself was slightly disconcerting, even startling:

  I, the executioner …

  Writing, Ladies and Gentlemen, that strange and inexplicable desire to give form and expression to our lives, is a seductive but dangerous temptation. We cannot, in any case, decipher the dreamy secret of our lives, so we would do better to observe a modest silence and step aside quietly. Nevertheless, something impels us to put ourselves forward, out into the limelight of public attention, and as greedy buskers we strive to grab a scrap of approval and understanding. What can what has happened and what has yet to take place do to change that?

  I may, perhaps, count on your kind indulgence when concerns like this are used to preface my book, which will, in due time, comprise the true story of my life—or at least the authentic story of an interesting and instructive life. Every life, of course, is interesting and instructive. But it is not given to every life to be laid out before the world in a carefully considered analysis, with its contents enhanced by generalization. That, at any rate, is how I intend to speak about my life: this is what I decided during those sterile days when the idea—I might say: the compulsion—to write first arose within me, though I was still struggling and kicking against the temptation. An entire week went by like that, a valuable, irrecoverable week: having definitively resigned myself, I am beginning to value time now that I have so little of it at my disposal. That week—most likely last week, since today is Monday—was the week of decision, then, and with its throes it insinuated eventful variety into my life. But maybe I needed this week of lively hesitations and internal excitements, which set it off from the indifference of recent months and years, for my work, and my internal resistance to writing may have been merely a natural protective instinct, the desire to preserve my sure and, in its own way, comfortable mental attitude, from the siege of expression, which, against my inclination so to say, compels me to view everything vividly and freshly, at a high emotional temperature, and to live through again—even more vividly than in reality—things which have already happened once. That is what I said previously was a seductive but dangerous temptation.

  And yet all the same, as you see, I am buckling down to it. I feel a little bit as though I were commencing everything afresh, even though I cannot move forward with any of the excitement of a new beginning, just the resignation of unalterability, on a path already trodden once—otherwise m
y writing could not lay claim to the moral credence of this is what happened and this is how it happened, and so of reality, but would be just as irresponsible a flight of fancy as any novel. I have to say, however, that the self-assured defiance which precisely this unalterability awakens in me means too much for me seriously to consider, even for a second, any other eventuality my life might take. No, I am not of a mind to change matters that have been settled—and that seemingly lazy expression is, on this occasion, very accurate, because I really do have no mind for it. Not that looking back offers so much joy: my life has not been joyful, but it is a life that has been settled and solved, indeed exemplarily solved. A life that is worth speaking about, or at least so I feel, though the right to the final word necessarily lies with the Reader. Because, Ladies and Gentlemen, in order for us to be able to speak about our lives, we need to know how to appreciate our fate, to wonder with childish enthusiasm over the career that we have taken. My book is the fruit of that wonderment, of the childish amazement that was won back during the tranquil months of my arrest and detention over what has been my life and what now, during the nebulously melancholy time of my captivity, affects me with such a peculiar magic ………

  Let us, then, take courage in both hands.

  It is perhaps unnecessary for me to indicate the exact date; at all events, it is autumn, the sky is very likely covered by grey clouds, as shown by the tiny square of the horizon I can see from the pocket handkerchief of the window of my diminutive room, or, more properly and more accurately: my cell, my punishment chamber, and this leaden glimmer superbly matches my meditative frame of mind. I am in the favourable situation that I do not have to, indeed, it is expressly forbidden for me to step out onto the street, for that is precisely why I am locked in here, under a strict confinement which takes from my shoulders—albeit with punitive intent—responsibility for the further course of my fate. At least for my part, that is how I view my present form of life, and I would deeply deplore it if that were to be laid at the door of my depravity with the unbending prejudice and regrettable lack of comprehension which are so sadly typical of the world.

  So, due to the fact that I have been isolated from the world with benevolent strictness (I could never stand rainy weather, and especially not the wind, the biting, dank wind, one of the curses, among others, of our draughty city, which always made me depressed and irascible) in my pleasantly temperate cell, without the disturbing irritation of outside influences, I can freely give myself up to my pastime of putting down on paper a thing or two, whatever I happen to see fit and necessary, as a refreshing counterbalance to interrogations, with their worn statements and proceedings in court, where I can only respond to what I am asked, and I can only show myself in the light that is forced upon me. Vanity, you will say, and of course you will be both right and wrong, as usual. Because in my opinion, and I speak as a man of some intellect and culture incidentally, or maybe not even incidentally since following the closing of my career in this world, you see, I am returning to intellectual pursuits—in my opinion, then, anyone is worthy of attention who wishes to show himself in a more complete light, thus supplementing the picture the world has built up—always one-sidedly—about him, and such an aspiration cannot simply be dismissed with a reproving word and blindly taken for nothing. At all events, it is fortunate that I still have the time and opportunity to devote to this belated and, no doubt, surprising need of mine, and this points to the advantages of civilized prisons, as opposed to our prisons, which have disadvantages practically to the exclusion of all else.

  I must apologize in advance if, during what follows, I am a little whimsical in the approach I adopt to my own portrait, mixing it, from time to time, with thoughts that are seen as necessary and, after all, belong to the portrait, because, although a man of intellect and culture, I am not a literary man, at least not in the everyday sense. There is nothing to do but to throw myself on my natural talent, my strict sense of form, and my special sensitivity toward the phenomena of life; in a word, on my cultivation, innate and acquired. That is no small thing either, because even if, as I say, I am not a literary man, in the field of confessions and autobiographies the beginner is confronted with wonderful examples, more enlightened, indeed entrancing examples from the Enlightenment era, or even those of great penitents and confessors—examples that I feel called upon if not to outstrip, at any rate to take courage from their finely-nuanced accuracy, their heroic honesty, their gratifying endeavour to strive constantly to draw a lesson.

  You have every right to shake your heads disapprovingly at the mention of these lofty models, to upbraid me for my rash tactlessness, and to regard as sadly typical the brazen unabashedness with which I dare to construct a link with the aforementioned blessed geniuses, I, a gaolbird, as it has become clear from what I have said; even if you know who I actually am, although I have already alluded to that in the book’s title. And even if on top of all that you were to recognize my name, the rightly infamous name that I shall disclose to the Reader in one of the ensuing paragraphs! No matter what I might have to say for myself against such reproaches, I would again only be able bitterly to attribute to the fact that the world places greater weight on the immutability of its notions of morality than on admitting the truth; that it manifests more feeling for condemnation than for judgement, and instead of looking to the bottom of things it thinks it better to dispose of them with a few time-honoured commonplaces. I, who will stand before the court accused of causing the deaths of 30,000 people, am able to transcend my fate, and to my pleasant surprise—obviously to the world’s surprise as well—I still feel that much responsible interest toward life as not to be ashamed of spending my last days and hours with moralising—rather appropriately and not unskilfully, you have to admit. Even if I cannot expect you, against your convictions, to respect the moralist in me first and foremost, at least pause before the phenomenon with the astonishment that it deserves. Because, see here, even in my peculiar career I have been able to preserve my original conviction, based on my upbringing, my spiritual and mental culture, as if nothing had happened, or rather as if everything which happened happened by accident, as if I were not giving it my full attention and commitment, or in point of fact, my consent, solely from the necessity of the recognition that I could not refuse the duty that had been assigned to me, the order and the mission marked out for me by a higher place, however regrettably it might have run counter to my own way of thinking and inclinations.

  Would you believe that this fact, publication of which will probably serve merely to unleash a further outburst of general horror and indignation upon my head, instead of being able to sway you to a little more sympathy toward me (which is not my aim, by the way; I have no aim with you): would you believe that this fact is welcome least of all in my eyes and bestows on me far more bitterness, punishes me with burdensome reflection, instead of my being able to take a quiet satisfaction at this steadfastness of my nature? You can believe that I have done everything, grasped every opportunity in my peculiar career, to coarsen myself, to make myself bestially insensitive, primitively dull-witted, but, sadly, I didn’t succeed. My spiritual refinement was too high, my mind too civilized, and the havoc that was accomplished in others, and to which, out of the necessity to accommodate (and maybe also out of a certain curiosity, a desire to find out about myself), I also contributed with my own efforts; in the end, it was unable to destroy the fundamental determinacy of my character, and that character, in the event, coming to a sensible compromise with the circumstances, gave in merely to appearances, even though those appearances probably became hideously intermingled with reality. Now, here I stand (or rather sit) with the burdensome consequences of all this, and I am overcome by an ever more urgent need, by fleshing out the false reality—my acts, in other words—to furnish a more complete picture of myself; this, in my view, extraordinarily noteworthy need that you called vanity earlier on, but which, you will nevertheless have to acknowledge, is the most salutary form
of vanity, socially speaking.

  And here I come to your disapproving shaking of the head and small-minded reservations. I take the liberty of asking whether we should ascribe a lower value to the self-revelation of one man, who has gone through certain depths of life and is prepared, without any showing-off, to put its lessons at the disposal of the world, than another, who has moved within more innocuous extremes, assuming the former sees and interprets his life on the basis of the same morality and possesses as much human grit and happy creative power, even if in respect to form and artistry, he may leave more to be desired for want of the necessary practice and adequate time. All the same, it is precisely in the name of morality that you protest against my being allowed to speak out, as I have become someone who has forfeited the right to do that; someone who should not be allowed to speak out, only interrogated; someone who is unworthy of your sympathy and cannot supply any useful innovation or self-awakening lesson. Because I am, perhaps, not mistaken if I assert that your interest in grand confessions is attracted not so much by the excessively strange or wildly individual as by what is common, general, manifested in even the most extreme excesses, which pertains to yourselves, too, and which you happily discern, for instance, in the words of an aristocrat of sensitive soul who was blessed with a gift for expression and a vivid imagination, but was otherwise unexceptionable, who was made great by his talent and innocuousness and who in your mutual recognition of each other deliciously satisfies the dreams you weave about yourselves. Under no circumstances, by contrast, do you have any wish to have anything in common with me; you would most happily see me as some kind of savage, a strange wild animal; in any case as a person who is utterly foreign to your nature, with whom you can have nothing at all to do at the level of living contacts, and you derive satisfaction from the fact that the false reality created by my acts serves such assumptions perfectly, because you are not in the least curious about the fuller reality—I understand that endeavour, yet I still make so bold as to furnish the information that it is nothing more than self-delusion, which is not worthy of you. And now that I am modestly but categorically declaring my right to my human condition, my relevance to the general, you wish to have nothing to do with me; you avert your gazes from me in the name of morality lest I impel you to even the slightest bit of understanding or sympathy for me—that is to say, lest in me you should recognize yourselves to even the slightest degree.