Fiasco

by Imre Kertész

  “Order,” Berg spoke, “is the terrain, the battlefield on which life takes place.”

  “That may be, but it’s still not life,” Köves countered. “You’re banishing the accidental and all other chance …”

  “The accidental?” Berg gaped. “What do you have in mind?” He smiled in the way one smiles at a child.

  “I don’t know,” Köves squirmed uneasily, and in all likelihood he didn’t know, although their conversation reminded him of a conversation he had had with someone else in the dim and distant past, at the commencement of his arrival there, and thus of his life, as it were, during which he had argued in similar terms: he had not learned much since then, it appeared. “The way you talk,” he finally grasped for the words in his helplessness, though this time there may also have been a touch of asperity from knowing he was right, “it’s as if all of us get totally bogged down in the mess, whereas you, I notice, have somehow managed to find a way out, if you please.”

  “Harsh words.” Berg was astonished. “Provide some evidence to back that up,” he demanded grimly.

  It seemed, however, that Köves was not going to take the opportunity:

  “What is that …,” he began a question with a pensive look on his face, “that definitive first act that, if I rightly recall, the hero commits under pressure of external compulsion, yet nevertheless without the external force being present at the time?”

  “Yes,” Berg started as though bringing his mind back from dwelling on other things, “that’s a decisive, I might almost say crystal-clear passage in the construction. Still, what the act is I don’t exactly know as yet—it’s something I still have to work out,” he said, and brushed it aside.

  “In that case,” Köves was curious, “how does he know that he’s going to commit it?”

  “He has to commit it, because, as I say, the construction is ready to hand.” Berg was growing impatient. “The opening and the end for sure; it’s just the path stretching between that I don’t yet see quite clearly.”

  “Yes,” Köves said, “and that path is life itself.” Then with a smile, as if he had just noticed them, he remarked: “You have some fresh petits-fours.”

  “As you see,” Berg got out in a somehow strangled voice, his gaze veritably looking daggers at Köves, “I am trying to refrain from that pleasure.”

  “Oh yes,” Köves hastened to acknowledge, “I see.”

  Then next thing he knew he was asking:

  “And love …,” here he wavered for a moment as if, now that he had got it out, he himself were looking back in astonishment at the word that had popped out of his own mouth, as at an obstacle he had thought was unjumpable. “Is love not grace?” he went on to pose the question nevertheless.

  This time, though, he seemed to have violated some concealed boundary, because the storms of emotion that swept over Berg’s face were such as to truly scare Köves.

  “What’s that got to do with me?!” erupted from him, and he almost jumped up from behind his table. “Even if it is grace, it’s not mine; I’m at best its victim … Yes,” he carried on, “they tolerate me, like this, as I am—you can see what I’m like, can’t you—and by way of, indeed on the pretext of taking care of me—well, I can confidently say they tyrannize me, even though it is, no doubt, experienced by them as suffering …”

  “Why suffering?” Köves’s curiosity, it seemed, got the better of his initial horror at having rattled Berg so thoroughly.

  “Because a tyrant always suffers.” Berg seemed to have been somewhat mollified by being able to expound his reasoning. “Suffering,” he went on, “partly from himself, partly from his unachievable ambition, since he can never rule absolutely over others, that being impossible as there is always an ultimate, unassailable retreat, into madness or death, if nowhere else—so he ends up turning against himself. You know, I sometimes think that martyrs are the most perfect tyrants. At least, theirs is the purest form of tyranny, before which everyone kowtows …”

  For a short while, he seemed to be brooding before suddenly and alarmingly exclaiming “Oh!” and then so much plaintiveness sounded in his expressive voice that Köves felt obliged to lower his head in shame and out of respect, so to say, as Berg went on: “how terrible it is! We long for love, to be loved, but at the same time how it humiliates us! What a victory love is! What tyranny! What slavery!… It forever eats away at the conscience like the disgrace of the bloodiest crime …” After the first, alarming cry, Berg’s voice slipped ever lower, so that Köves barely understood the final words; even after that, Berg whispered something he did not pick out at all. After sufficient time had elapsed for it no longer to look like impoliteness, Köves cautiously got to his feet, remarking that he was very tired, he had not slept much the night before, which after all was true, just as the claim to be feeling exhausted was not an outright excuse, so he would have to take his leave, at which Berg glanced up at him as if he had only just noticed he was still there. Then he too got up with unwonted affability—this rather disconcerted Köves, because it was a little as though something in Berg had broken and he had somehow flopped together more in a heap, and moreover without having noticed, or at most with an awkward shyness, one might even say with humility, moving onto his face—and accompanied Köves to the door, where, hardly giving clear expression to what was on his mind (if indeed his thoughts were dwelling on Köves and on the words intended for him) he declared:

  “I’ll be glad to be at your disposal another time,” and with that Köves, to his undeniable relief, was once more outside, first in the stairwell, then down below in the street. He set off homewards on foot—the fresh air could do no harm, then back at home he could finally have a good sleep: if he had been sacked, he would at least enjoy the advantages of his regained freedom—and it seems his mind must have still been on the conversation with Berg, because on getting close to the house he noticed merely that he had landed in the middle of an excited crowd. He had to push his way though mostly old people, women, and sick people—idle or retired people with time to spare—in order to reach the front door, registering only as much of the words which were flying about around him as were absolutely inescapable: “from the chandelier,” “the end of a rope,” “had to smash the door in,” “monstrous,” “by his own hand,” and “they telephoned her at the office,” he heard while, coming to the house, he noticed that a dark, angular automobile with its doors closed was parked in front. Then two men in caps and some indeterminable uniform stepped out of the house, and on the stretcher that they slid into the load space through the rear door, and swathed from head to toe in some sort of sheet, lay a figure which seemed, from the size of the shape protruding from beneath the linen, to be the body of an adolescent boy. At that moment, an almost implausibly sharp, irregularly broken scream shattered the hush which had suddenly descended just beforehand, almost as if by magic, before Mrs. Weigand appeared in the entranceway, though to Köves—of course, it was just his tiredness, to say nothing of his astonishment which must have shown her in that absurd complexion—it seemed it was not Mrs. Weigand herself, but rather someone or something else who was screaming out of her throat and waving her head and arms about, a foreign being that had taken up residence in her and to which she was completely surrendering herself in her shocked and uncomprehending defencelessness: inconceivable pain.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Köves returns. Changes. The drowning man

  One fine day, Köves turned up again at the South Seas; he had not been there for a long time, he had been in the army, because the same post as the dismissal letter from the ministry had also brought a demand that he immediately discharge his deferred military service, at which the army had sniffed him in and swallowed him up, until the day came when even it could stomach him no longer and one morning—it happened to be during the solemn moments when general orders are read out—he dropped full length on the floor, almost knocking over a chair and two fellow squaddies in the process, then showed no incli
nation to return to his senses, despite being disciplined, punished, taken to task, and pilloried, so he was finally carted off to hospital, where he was surrounded by suspicious doctors who cross-questioned him, took samples of his blood, tapped his limbs, thrust a needle into his spine, and—just at the point when he was fearing he would be unmasked, with the attendant, none too promising consequences—abruptly and most unceremoniously, so he barely had time even to be surprised, though there was plenty of reason for that, he was discharged, because one of the checks had shown that one of his thighs was an inch thinner than the other and, even though Köves was unaware of it, he was probably suffering from muscular dystrophy. Sziklai’s face split into a thousand pieces from laughter when Köves told him the whole story:

  “They could hardly wait to get rid of you, old chap!” he slapped Köves on the thigh in question and put the fortunate outcome of the affair “solely down to the changes.”

  “What changes?” Köves was amazed, being up to date on nothing since he had been recently preoccupied with rather different matters.

  Yet Sziklai did not appear to be much better informed than him:

  “Can anyone know?!” he almost reproached Köves for his tactlessness, and it had been so long since Köves had heard the question that, for the first time since he had been discharged from hospital and the army, he was almost seized by a feeling of having found his way back home.

  “In any event, one can sense winds of change,” Sziklai went on, half rising from his seat to scan round the coffeehouse, as though searching for someone. “Just look over there.” He nodded before long toward one of the distant tables. “Do you know the gentleman who is ensconced at the head of the table?” The aging, stout man with the prominent chin and vigorous nose whom Köves glimpsed in the direction indicated, and whom, under other circumstances, might have struck Köves as imperious, was very likely someone he had seen before somewhere; nevertheless he had to wait until Sziklai enlightened him:

  “Don’t tell me you no longer recognize our all-powerful editor in chief?” At which, suddenly cottoning on, Köves was veritably flooded with grievances which had by now melted into distant, as good as forgivably sunny memories of a long, long bygone age, and now he fancied he also recognized the two thickset, balding men seated on either side of the editor in chief: they seemed to be identical people from the factory, though he was far from certain about that and, with the table standing so far away in a gloomy room, there was every chance he was mistaken.

  “He was sacked,” Sziklai grinned.

  “Sacked?…,” Köves was astonished.

  “No kidding: times are like that now.” Sziklai again settled comfortably on his chair. They had even sought him out, he related, offering him a job back on the newspaper, as a columnist at that, because it turned out that what they had done to him was not just against the law but flew in the face of common sense, as Sziklai had been one of the most outstanding people they had.

  “They woke up to it a little too late,” Sziklai said, shrugging his shoulders. “I’d be crazy to go back to being a reporter when I’ve settled down so brilliantly with the fire brigade.” But no doubt they would take Köves back, he hastened to add; he had already put out feelers along those lines, and …

  Köves, though, writhed on his seat as if he had been suddenly stabbed:

  “I’m not going back to the paper!” he protested as though tormented by bad dreams.

  “So you already have a job, then?” Sziklai enquired.

  “I’m not going to get a job!” Köves declared so adamantly and, with such a cold repugnance, that it was as if he were not speaking for himself but maybe on behalf of someone else with far more important, far more pressing things to attend to than to fritter away his irreplaceable time in any mere job.

  “And what do you intend to live off of?” Sziklai was curious.

  “I don’t know,” Köves declared, this time in a tone of grave concern: he appeared only now to have woken up to his hard and seemingly extreme decision, as if he had not taken it himself but rather had been impelled by some external force, and at that moment one had the impression that he himself was, perhaps, even less prepared for the implications of this than was Sziklai, who assessed these things from a practical standpoint and considered that Köves could make a living without having a job. In his opinion, they would just be happy that Köves did not “come forward with any claims against them,” in return for which they would clearly offer—Sziklai “would have a thing or two to say about that too”—to take him on as a special correspondent: if Köves was smart and industrious, he might be able to “place an article with them” every week.

  “Besides which,” Sziklai smiled, “the Firefighters’ Platform is naturally waiting for you with open arms, old chap,” and he related to a happily dumbfounded Köves that while Köves had been away in the army, he, Sziklai, had not been “loafing about” either. It may have taken time, and it was not without its difficulties, but he had managed to get “the managers” to understand that rather than using their own amateur-dramatic society, the job of gaining the fire brigade mass appeal would be done much more effectively and successfully by well-known professional actors who were beloved by all, insofar as he could persuade them to place their talents in the service of the fire brigade, at least for one night. Now, one could not expect professional actors “to play any old role,” so that meant professional writers needed to be won over, like the actors, to the idea of placing their skills at the fire brigade’s disposal and each put together an evening of entertainment which, at a professional level, skilfully and effectively blending tragedy and comedy, was drawn from the subject matter of firefighting, or at least somehow touching on it. Consequently, since they were talking about professionals, it would not do to forget about the customary fees which would be owed them; indeed, it would do no harm—given that they had to be won over to a line of duties which was out of the ordinary, not to say special—to offer something a touch over the customary. That was how the Firefighters’ Platform had come into existence: a small touring company which played in towns and villages alike, and every other month presented a new programme, generally consisting of a compering role and “sketches.”

  “The compere’s lines are always written by me,” Sziklai pointed out with an obdurate expression on his face, as though Köves might have some idea of denying him, “and I always write one of the sketches, as does my boss, the deputy commander … seeing as how he has lately discovered the inner writer in himself … you know how it is,” he winked at Köves, “… and from now on you will write one of them, and then we could even do yet another one as co-authors, under a pen name, though we’ll actually write all three of them together, of course, old chap.” Provided he could make do with little, then, Köves would be able to make a living from sketches and newspaper articles—that is, until the light comedy was completed, of course, when they would be dealing with success and never again be tormented by financial concerns, Sziklai spurred him on before raising an arm to ask Alice over to their table, more than likely wishing to anoint their high hopes with a higher-class hooch, except that in Alice’s place a greasy-faced, flat-footed, paunchy waiter waddled over, for one fine day, to the great sorrow of all the South Seas’ regulars, Alice had vanished from the coffeehouse.

  “Where to?…,” Köves was astonished, but he asked Sziklai, and later others too, in vain. She had handed in her notice one day and just vanished, and her post had not been filled since: obviously at the back of it was that dubious, disagreeable, and freakish character, likewise not seen since, on whom Alice had wrongheadedly squandered her time, her attractions, and, no doubt, her earnings as well—that was about all he managed to find out, though when he probed a bit more thoroughly it immediately became clear that this was all just speculation, the only certainty being that Alice was no longer in the South Seas.

  Another face that, although once so familiar, had been missing even longer now, rather like Köves, turne
d up again out of the blue. This face had changed, everyone agreed on that: it had become longer and yet somehow wizened, a bit decrepit, but it was still the same face that, even so, looked down on the others from a towering height from over a bow tie of uncertain colour: it was Tiny, the pianist, and his appearance, as Köves was able to observe with wonderment, was by no means greeted with joy on all sides, more with a certain amount of embarrassment. There was a rumbling in the South Seas, rather like the rumble of a wave suddenly dashing on a rocky channel, and that was how backs and heads moved, rising and falling in alternation on the wave, though only a few people—at the musicians’ table, for example—stood up to welcome him, and rather hesitantly at that, with a cautious, somehow crooked smile on their faces, whereas others carried on their momentarily interrupted conversations as if nothing had happened, particularly a large male group, all in black tails underneath which each wore a red silk cummerbund: the members of the Tango String Band, until all at once there was a scraping of a chair being pushed back, though with a noise more befitting a throne than a mere chair, and from it, with the assistance of nimble hands placed under the elbow, the Uncrowned staggered to his feet, threw his stubby arms apart, and with much puffing and blowing, sweating profusely, embraced the stupefied musician (or to be more precise, leapt at his neck), and however strange the spectacle offered by the embrace of these two portly men—the smaller one and the giant—the South Seas regulars were nonetheless able to regard the Uncrowned’s act as constituting some sort of solemn proclamation, so to speak, an authorisation, indeed invitation, because, as if waiting for a signal, all at once now almost everyone jumped up, so that they too might hug the pianist or shake his hand, or at least touch the hem of his jacket, pass him from hand to hand, to celebrate and ask him about his sufferings.