Fatelessness

by Imre Kertész

  Then there was also an odd little guy with a very distinctive nose, a large rucksack, dressed in “plus fours” and huge walking boots; even his yellow star somehow seemed larger than usual. He was more of a worrier, moaning especially to everyone about his “bad luck.” I more or less registered his case, since it was a simple story and he went over it repeatedly. He was meant to be visiting his “very sick” mother in the Csepel district, as he related it. He had procured a special permit from the authorities; he had it on him and showed it around. The permit was valid for today up till 2:00 p.m. Something had come up, however, a matter that, he said, “could not be put off”—“for business reasons,” he added. There had been others in the office, however, so it had taken a very long time before it was his turn. He was by then beginning to think the whole trip was in jeopardy, as he put it. Still, he had hurriedly boarded a streetcar in order to get to the bus terminus, in accordance with his original plan. On the way, though, he had checked the likely duration of the return journey against the permitted deadline and worked out that it would, indeed, be rather risky to set off. But then at the bus terminus he had seen that the noon bus was still waiting there, at which, so we were informed, he thought, “What a lot of trouble I’ve gone to for that little bit of paper! . . . Besides which,” he added, “poor Mama is waiting.” He remarked that the old lady was a big concern for him and his wife. They had long ago pleaded with her to move in with them, into the city, but his mama had kept on flatly refusing until it was too late. He shook his head a lot, being of the opinion that, in his view, the old lady was hanging on to her house “at all costs.” “Yet it doesn’t even have any amenities,” he noted. But then, he went on, she was his mother, so he had to be tolerant. On top of which, he added, she was now both ill and elderly. He had felt “he might never be able to forgive himself,” he said, if he were to pass up this one opportunity. As a result, he had got onto the bus after all. At that point he fell silent for a minute. He raised, then slowly lowered, his hands in a gesture of helplessness, while a thousand tiny quizzical wrinkles formed on his brow, giving him something of the look of a sad, trapped rodent. “What do you think?” he then asked the others. Might something unpleasant come of the business? Would it be taken into consideration that his overstepping of the permitted deadline had not been his fault? And what, he wondered, must his mama be thinking, whom he had informed about the visit, not to speak of his wife and two small children at home if he failed to get back by two o’clock? Mainly from the direction in which his gaze was pointed, it seemed, as far as I could tell, that he was expecting an opinion or rejoinder on these questions from the aforesaid man with the distinguished bearing, the “Expert.” The latter, however, I could see, was not paying much attention; his hand just then was holding a cigarette that he had taken out shortly before, the tip of which he was now tapping on the lid of a gleaming silver case with embossed lettering and engraved lines. I saw from his face that he was absorbed, lost in some distant reflection, giving every sign that he had heard nothing at all of the entire story. At that point, then, the man reverted to his bad luck; if he had reached the terminus just five minutes later, he would not have caught the noon bus, for if he had not found that one still there, he would not have waited for the next, and consequently, assuming this was all through “the difference of just five minutes,” then “he would now not be sitting here but at home,” he explained over and over again.

  Then too I still recall the man with the seal’s face: portly, stocky, with a black moustache and gold-rimmed eyeglasses, who was continually seeking “to have a word” with the policeman. Nor did it escape my attention that he always strove to have a go at this separately, a little bit away from the rest, preferably in a corner or by the door. “Constable,” I would hear his strangled, rasping voice at these times, “may I have a word with you?” Or: “Please, constable . . . just a word, if I may . . .” In the end, on one occasion the policeman actually asked what he wanted. He then appeared to hesitate, first mistrustfully flashing his spectacles around rapidly. Even though this time they were in the corner of the room quite close to me, I could pick out nothing at all from the ensuing muffled muttering: he was apparently proposing something. A bit later a treacly smile of a more confidential nature also materialized on his features. At the same time, he began to lean just a little closer, until bit by bit, he was right over toward the policeman. In the meantime, as all this was going on, I also observed him make a strange movement. I did not get an entirely clear impression of the thing; at first I thought he was preparing to slip his hand into his inside pocket for something. It even occurred to me, from the evident significance of the movement, that he might be wishing to show an important paper, some remarkable or special document. Only I waited in vain for what might emerge, because in the end he did not complete the movement. All the same, he did not exactly abandon it either, but rather became stalled in it, forgot about it, suddenly somehow aborted it, I might say, just at the climactic moment. As it was, in the end his hand merely fumbled, brushed, and scrabbled for a moment in the general area of his chest, like some big, sparsely haired spider or, even more, some kind of smaller sea monster that was, as it were, seeking the crevice that would allow it to scuttle under the jacket. While that was going on, he himself kept talking, with that particular smile frozen to his face. All this lasted maybe several seconds. After that all I saw was the policeman putting an end to the conversation there and then, very brusquely and with conspicuous decisiveness, even to some extent indignantly, as far as I could see; although I really didn’t get much of what it was all about, his behavior struck me too as somehow fishy, in some not readily definable way.

  As for the other faces and incidents, I no longer recall much. In any case, as time went by any observations of this kind that I made became increasingly vague. All I can really say is that the policeman continued to be very considerate toward us boys; with the adults, on the other hand, or so I observed, it seemed as if he was just a touch less cordial. By the afternoon, though, he too looked exhausted. By then he would often cool off among us or in his room, paying no attention to any buses that went by in the meantime. I also heard him repeatedly trying the telephone, and every now and then he would even announce the outcome: “Still nothing,” but with an almost plainly visible expression of dissatisfaction on his face. There was another incident that I also recall. It happened earlier on, sometime after noon, with one of his pals, another policeman who came by on a bicycle. First of all, he propped the latter against the wall where we were; they then carefully closeted themselves in our policeman’s room. It was a long time before they emerged. On parting, there was a lengthy shaking of hands in the doorway. They said nothing, but the way they kept nodding their heads and exchanging glances was something I’d sometimes seen with tradesmen in the old days, back in my father’s office, after they’d chewed over the hard times and the sluggishness of business. I realized, of course, that this was not very likely to be the case with policemen, but still, that is the memory their faces conjured up in my mind, that same familiar, somewhat harassed dejection, that same forced sense of resignation so to say, over the immutable order of things. But I was starting to grow tired; all I remember of the remaining time thereafter is that I felt hot, was bored, and even grew a bit drowsy.

  All in all, I can report, the day came and went. The order eventually came through, at round about four o’clock, exactly as the policeman had promised. It said that we were to make our way to the “higher authority” for purposes of showing our documents, so the policeman informed us. He, for his part, must have been notified by telephone because prior to that we had heard bustling noises, indicative of a change of some sort, coming from his room: repeated, peremptory ringing of the apparatus, then he in turn sought to be put through to somewhere to dispatch a few terse pieces of business. The policeman also volunteered that although they had communicated nothing absolutely specific to him either, in his view it could be no more than some ki
nd of cursory formality, at least in cases that were as clear-cut and incontestable in the eyes of the law as, for instance, ours were.

  Columns, drawn up in ranks of three abreast, set off back toward the city from all the border posts in the area simultaneously, as I was able to establish while we were en route, for at the bridge and at one turnoff or crossroad or another we would meet up with other groups that were similarly made up of a smaller or larger bunch of yellow-star men and one or two—indeed in one case three—policemen. I spotted the policeman with the bicycle too, accompanying one of those groups. I also noticed that on each occasion the policemen invariably greeted one another with the same certain, so to say businesslike briskness, as though they had reckoned on these encounters in advance, and only then did I grasp more clearly the significance of our own policeman’s previous phone transactions: it seems that was how they had been able to synchronize the time-points with one another. Finally, it hit me that I was marching in the middle of what was by now a quite sizable column, with our procession flanked on both sides, at sporadic intervals, by policemen.

  We proceeded in this manner, spread over the entire road, for quite a long while. It was a fine, clear, summery afternoon, the streets thronged with a motley multitude, as they always are at this hour, but I only saw all this in a haze. I also lost my sense of bearings rather quickly, since we mostly traversed streets and avenues with which I was not all that familiar. Then too my attention was rather taken up and quickly sapped by the ever-growing sea of people, the traffic and, above all, the kind of laboredness that goes together with the progress of a closed column in such circumstances. All I remember of the entire long trek, in fact, was the kind of hasty, hesitant, almost furtive curiosity of the public on the sidewalks at the sight of our procession (this was initially amusing, but after a time I no longer paid much notice to it)—oh, and a subsequent, somewhat disturbing moment. We happened to be going along some broad, tremendously busy avenue in the suburbs, with the honking, unbearably noisy din of traffic all around us, when at one point, I don’t know how, a streetcar managed to become wedged in our column, not far in front of me as it happened. We were obliged to come to a halt while it passed through, and it was then that I became alive to the sudden flash of a piece of yellow clothing up ahead, in the cloud of dust, noise, and vehicle exhaust fumes: it was “Traveler.” A single long leap, and he was off to the side, lost somewhere in the seething eddy of machines and humanity. I was totally dumbfounded; somehow it did not tally with his conduct at the customs post, as I saw it. But there was also something else that I felt, a sense of happy surprise I might call it, at the simplicity of an action; indeed, I saw one or two enterprising spirits then immediately make a break for it in his wake, right up ahead. I myself took a look around, though more for the fun of it, if I may put it that way, since I saw no other reason to bolt, though I believe there would have been time to do so; nevertheless, my sense of honor proved the stronger. The policemen took immediate action after that, and the ranks again closed around me.

  We went on for a while longer, after which everything happened very quickly, unexpectedly, and in a slightly astonishing fashion. We turned off somewhere and, as best I could see, we had arrived, because the road carried on between the wide-open wings of a gateway. I then noticed that from the gate onward a different set of men stepped into the places of the policemen on our flanks, in much the same uniforms as soldiers but with multicolored feathers in their peaked caps: these were gendarmes. They led us on into a maze of gray buildings, ever farther inward, before we suddenly debouched onto a huge open space strewn with white gravel—some sort of barracks parade ground, as I saw it. I immediately glimpsed a tall figure of commanding appearance striding directly toward us from the building opposite. He was wearing high boots and a tight-fitting uniform jacket with gold buttons and a diagonal leather strap over his chest. In one of his hands I saw he had a thin crop, rather like the ones used by horse riders, which he was continually tapping against the lacquered polish of his boot uppers. A minute later, with us by then waiting in stationary ranks, I was also able to make out that he was handsome in his fashion, fit, and all in all with something of the movie star about him, given his manly features and narrow brown moustache, fashionably clipped, which went very well with his sun-bronzed face. When he got nearer, a command from the gendarmes snapped us all to attention. All that has stayed with me after that are two almost simultaneous impressions: the stentorian voice of the riding-crop wielder, akin to that of a market stall-keeper, which came as such a shock after his otherwise immaculate appearance that maybe this is why I did not take in much of what he actually said. What I did grasp, however, was that he did not intend to conduct the “investigation”—that was the term he used—into our cases until the next day, upon which he turned toward the gendarmes, ordering them, in a bellow that filled the entire square, to take “the whole Jewish rabble” off to the place that, in his view, they actually belonged—the stables, that is to say—and lock them in for the night. My second impression was the immediately ensuing indecipherable babble of commands, the bellowed orders with which the abruptly reanimated gendarmes herded us away. I didn’t even know offhand which way I was supposed to turn, and all I remember is that in the thick of it I felt a bit like laughing, in part out of astonishment and confusion, a sense of having been dropped slap in the middle of some crazy play in which I was not entirely acquainted with my role, in part because of a fleeting thought that just then flashed across my mind, which was my stepmother’s face when it finally dawned on her that it would be pointless to count on seeing me for supper this evening.

  FOUR

  On the train, it was water that was missed most of all. Food supplies, taking everything into account, appeared to be sufficient for a substantial period; but then there was nothing to drink with them, which was disagreeable, that’s for sure. Those on the train immediately declared that the initial spasms of thirst soon pass. Eventually we would almost forget about it, after which it would reemerge, only by then it would allow no one to forget it, they explained. The length of time that someone could last out, for all that, should the need arise, taking into account the hot weather and assuming he was healthy, did not lose too much water as sweat, and ate no meat or spicy food, if at all possible, was six or seven days, according to those in the know. As things were, they reassured us, there was still time; it all depended on how long the journey was going to last, they added.

  Quite. I too was curious about that; they did not inform us at the brickyard. All they announced was that anyone inclined to do so could present himself for work, specifically in Germany. Just like the rest of the boys and many others in the brickyard, I found that idea immediately attractive. In any case, we were told by the men, identifiable from their armbands as belonging to a body called the “Jewish Council,” one way or another, willingly or forcibly, everyone would sooner or later be resettled from the brickyard to Germany, and the better places, not to speak of the concession of being able to travel no more than sixty per carriage, would be granted to those who volunteered first, whereas later at least eighty would have to be fit in, due to the shortage of wagons—the way they laid it all out to everyone did not really leave too much to consider, I had to agree.

  Nor was I able to deny the validity of the other arguments, which concerned the shortage of space in the brickyard and its possible sanitary consequences, as well as the growing concern over food supplies: that was how it was, I could attest to all that. By the time we arrived from the gendarmerie (many of the grown-ups had registered that the barracks were called the “Andrássy Gendarme Casern”) every cranny of the brickyard had already been filled to overflowing with people. I saw among them both men and women, children of all ages, as well as countless old people of both sexes. Wherever I stepped, I would stumble over blankets, rucksacks, all manner of suitcases, bundles, and other impedimenta. Naturally enough, I too was soon tired of that, not to mention the myriad petty nuisances, ann
oyances, and vexations that, it appears, are inevitably bound up with communal life of that kind. Contributing further to that was the inaction, the senseless feeling of idleness, not to speak of the boredom; that too is why I don’t remember distinctly a single one of the five days that I spent there, and barely even the occasional detail in aggregate, though certainly the relief at having the boys there around me: “Rosie,” “Fancyman,” “Leatherware,” “Smoker,” Moskovics, and all the rest. As far as I could tell, not one of them was missing: they too had all been honest. Nor did I personally have that much to do anymore with gendarmes in the brickyard; I saw them more just standing guard on the other side of the fencing, mixed up with the occasional policeman here and there. The latter were in fact later talked about in the brickyard as being more considerate than the gendarmes, readily inclined to be decent, particularly in return for certain negotiated terms, whether in the form of money or any other valuables. Above all, so I heard, many commissioned them to pass on letters and messages; indeed, some insisted opportunities were even open through them—albeit rare and risky, they admitted—for escaping, though it would have been hard for me to know anything really definite about that. But then I recalled, and in doing so also came to a somewhat more precise understanding, I believe, what the seal-faced fellow at the customs post must have been wanting so much to have a word about with the policeman. That is how I realized that our policeman, by contrast, had been honest, which may well have explained how it was that every now and then, while knocking about the yard or waiting for my turn in the area of the communal kitchen, I would spot the seal-faced guy in the melee of unfamiliar faces in the brickworks.