Fatelessness

by Imre Kertész

  There is one other thing I noticed during these idle minutes of waiting. I had already seen German soldiers often enough in Hungary, naturally. On those occasions, however, they had always been hurrying, always with uncommunicative, preoccupied expressions, always in immaculate dress. Here and now, though, they were somehow moving in a different manner, more casually and in a way—so I observed— more at home. I was even able to detect some minor disparities: caps, boots, and uniforms that were softer or stiffer, shinier or merely, as it were, workaday. Each had at his side a weapon, which is only natural, of course, when it comes down to it, given that they were soldiers, yet I saw many also had a stick in their hand, like a regular hooked cane, which slightly surprised me, since they were, after all, men without any problems walking, and manifestly in prime condition. But then I was able to take a closer look at the object, for I observed that one of them, up ahead with his back half-turned toward me, all at once placed the stick horizontally behind his hips and, gripping it at both ends, began flexing it with apparent boredom. Along with the row, I came ever-closer to him, and only then did I see that it was not made of wood but of leather, and was no stick but a whip. That was a bit of an odd feeling, but then I did not see any instance of them having recourse to it, and after all there were also lots of convicts around, I realized.

  Meanwhile I heard but barely paid heed to calls being made for those with relevant experience—one, I recollect, for mechanical fitters—to step forward, while others were for twins, the physically disabled, indeed—amid a degree of merriment—even any dwarfs who might be among us. Later it was children they were after, because, it was rumored, they could expect special treatment, study instead of work, and all sorts of favors. Several adults even urged us to line up, not to pass up the opportunity, but I was still mindful of the warning that had been given by the prisoners on the train, and anyway I was more inclined to work, naturally, rather than lead a child’s life.

  While all that had been going on, though, we had moved a fair bit farther forward. I noticed that the numbers of soldiers and prisoners around us had, all of a sudden, multiplied considerably. At one point, our row of five transformed into a single file. At the same time we were called on to remove our jacket and shirt so as to present ourselves to the doctor stripped to the waist. The pace, I sensed, was also quickening. At the same time, I spotted two separate groupings up ahead. A larger one, a highly diverse bunch, was gathering over on the right, and a second, smaller, somehow more appealing, in which moreover I could see several boys from our group were already standing, over on the left. The latter instantly appeared, to my eyes at least, to be made up of the fit ones. Meanwhile, and at gathering speed, I was heading directly toward what, in the confusion of the many figures in motion, coming and going, was now a fixed point, where I fancied I could see an immaculate uniform with one of those high-peaked German officer’s caps, after which the only surprise was how swiftly it was my turn.

  The inspection itself can only have required roughly around two or three seconds. Moskovics just in front of me was next, but for him the doctor instantly extended a finger in the other direction. I even heard him trying to explain: “Arbeiten . . . Sechzehn . . . ,” but a hand reached out for him from somewhere, and I was already stepping up into his place. The doctor, I could see, took a closer look at me with a studied, serious, and attentive glance. I too straightened my back to show him my chest, even, as I recall, gave a bit of a smile, coming right after Moskovics as I was. I immediately felt a sense of trust in the doctor, since he cut a very fine figure, with sympathetic, longish, shaven features, rather narrow lips, and kind-looking blue or gray—at any rate pale—eyes. I was able to get a good look at him while he, resting his gloved hands on my cheeks, pried my lower eyelids down a bit on both sides with his thumbs in an action I was familiar with from doctors back home. As he was doing that, in a quiet yet very distinct tone that revealed him to be a cultured man, he asked, though almost as if it were of secondary importance, “Wie alt bist du?” “Sechszehn,”4 I told him. He nodded perfunctorily, but somehow more at this being the appropriate response, so to speak, rather than the truth—at least that was my impression offhand. Another thing I noticed, though it was more just a fleeting observation and perhaps mistaken at that, but it was as if he somehow seemed satisfied, almost relieved in a way; I sensed that he must have taken a shine to me. Then, still pushing against my cheek with one hand while indicating the direction with the other, he dispatched me to the far side of the path, to the fit group. The boys were waiting there, exultant, chortling gleefully. At the sight of those beaming faces, I also understood, perhaps, what it was that actually distinguished our group from the bunch across on the opposite side: it was success, if I sensed it correctly.

  So I then pulled on my shirt, exchanged a few words with the others, and again waited. From here I now watched the entire business that was proceeding on the other side of the road from a new perspective. The flood of people rolled along in an unbroken stream, was constrained in a narrower channel, accelerated, then branched in two in front of the doctor. Other boys also arrived, one after the next, and now I too was able to join in the greeting they received, naturally. I caught a glimpse of another column farther away: the women. There too they were surrounded by soldiers and prisoners, there too was a doctor before them, and there too everything was proceeding in exactly the same way, except that they did not have to strip off their upper garments, which was understandable, of course, if I thought about it. Everything was in motion, everything functioning, everyone in their place and doing what they had to do, precisely, cheerfully, in a well-oiled fashion. I saw smiles on many of the faces, timid or more selfconfident, some with no doubts and some already with an inkling of the outcome in advance, yet still essentially all uniform, roughly the same as the one I had sensed in myself just before. It was the same smile with which what, from here, looked to be a very pretty, brown-skinned woman with rings in her ears, clutching her white raincoat to her chest, turned to ask a soldier a question, and smiled in the same way as a handsome, dark-haired man stepping up right then in front of the nearer doctor: he was fit. I soon figured out the essence of the doctor’s job. An old man would have his turn—obvious, that one: the other side. A younger man—over here, to our side. Here’s another one: paunchy but shoulders pulled stiffly back nonetheless—pointless, but no, the doctor still dispatched him this way, which I was not entirely happy about as I, for my part, was disposed to find him a shade elderly. I also could not help noting that the vast majority of the men were all terribly unshaven, which did not exactly make too good an impression. Thus, I was also driven to perceive through the doctor’s eyes how many old or otherwise unusable people there were among them. One was too thin, the other too fat, while yet another I judged, on the basis of an eye tic and the way his mouth and nose twitched incessantly rather in the manner of a sniffing rabbit, to be some kind of nervous case, yet he too dutifully gave a wholehearted smile even as he diligently hurried over, with an oddly waddling gait, to join the unfit group. Yet another—already clutching his jacket and shirt, his suspenders dangling on his thighs, the skin on his arms and chest flabby, to the point of wobbling here and there. On coming before the doctor, who instantly indicated his place among the unfit, naturally, a certain expression on the shabbily bearded face, a sort of smile on the parched, chapped lips, identical though it may have been, was nevertheless more familiar, ringing a distant bell in my memory: as if there were still something he wished to say to the doctor, or so it seemed. Only the latter was no longer paying attention to him but to the next one, at which point a hand—presumably the same one as with Moskovics before—now yanked him out of the way. He made a move and turned around, an astonished and indignant expression on his face—that was it! The “Expert”; I hadn’t been mistaken.

  We waited around for another few minutes. There were still a great many people in front of the doctor, while there must have been something like forty of us, app
roximately, in our bunch here, boys and men, I estimated, when the word came: we were setting off for a bath. A soldier stepped up to us (on the spur of the moment, I couldn’t see from where), a short, placid-looking man, getting on a bit in years, with a big rifle—I took him for a common soldier of some kind. “Los, ge’ ma’ vorne!”5 he announced, or something like that, not quite in accordance with what books of grammar taught, I ascertained. However that may be, it was music to my ears, since the boys and I were by now just a bit impatient, though not so much for the soap, to tell the truth, as, above anything else, for the water, of course. The road led through a gate of woven barbed wire to somewhere farther inside the area behind the fence where, it appeared, the bathhouse must be: we set off along it in slack clusters, not hurrying but chatting and looking around, with the soldier, not saying a word, listlessly bringing up the rear. Under our feet there was again a broad, immaculately white, metaled road, while in front of us was the whole rather tiring prospect of flat terrain in air that all around was by now shimmering and undulating in the heat. I was even anxious about its being too far, but as it transpired the bathhouse was located only about ten minutes away. From what I saw of the area on this short walk, on the whole it too won my approval. A football pitch, on a big clearing immediately to the right of the road, was particularly welcome. Green turf, the requisite white goalposts, the chalked lines of the field of play—it was all there, inviting, fresh, pristine, in perfect order. This was latched onto straightaway by the boys as well: Look here! A place for us to play soccer after work. Even greater cause for joy came a few paces later when, on the left-hand border of the road, we spotted—no doubt about it—a water faucet, one of those roadside standpipes. A sign in red letters next to it attempted to warn against it: “Kein Trinkwasser,”6 but right then that could do little to hold any of us back. The soldier was quite patient, and I can tell you it had been a long time since water went down so well, even if it did leave a peculiar stinging and a nauseating aftertaste of some chemical in my mouth. Going farther, we also saw some houses, the same ones that I had already noticed from the station. Even close up, they were oddly shaped buildings indeed, long, flat, and of an indeterminable shade, with some sort of apparatus for ventilation or lighting protruding from the roof along the entire length. Each one had a little garden path of red gravel running round it, each one a well-tended patch of lawn to separate it from the metaled road, and between them, to my delighted wonder, I saw small seedbeds and cabbage patches, with flowers of assorted colors being grown in the plots. It was all very clean, tidy, and pretty—truly, I had to reflect, we had made the right choice back in the brickyard. Just one thing was rather missing, I realized: the fact that I saw no sign of movement, of life, around them. But then it occurred to me that this must be only natural, since it was, after all, during working hours for the inhabitants.

  At the bathhouse too (which we reached after a left turn, a farther barbed-wire fence, and again a barbed-wire gate into a yard), I could see they were already set to receive us, happily explaining everything to us well in advance. We went first of all into some sort of stone-flagged anteroom. Inside there were already a great many people whom I was able to recognize as coming from our train. From that I gathered that the work here too was presumably pushing ahead unremittingly, with people being continuously brought in groups from the station to bathe, it would appear. Here too a prisoner was again of assistance, an exceedingly fastidious convict, I could not help noticing. He too wore a striped outfit like other prisoners, that was true, but it had padded shoulders and was tapered at the waist, tailored and pressed, I would even say, in almost conspicuous conformity with the highest fashion, and just like us, free persons, he had a full head of carefully combed, darkly glossy hair. In greeting us, he stood at the opposite end of the room, and to his right, seated behind a small desk, was a soldier. The latter was very squat, of jovial appearance, and exceedingly fat, his belly beginning at his neck, his chin rippling in a circle over his collar, and no more than funny slits for eyes in his crumpled, hairless, sallow features; he put me a little in mind of those so-called dwarfs whom they had been looking for at the station. Nevertheless, he had an imposing cap on his head, a gleaming, evidently brand-new attaché case on the desk, and next to it what I had to admit was a beautifully crafted lash, braided from white leather, that was obviously his personal property. I was able to observe all this at leisure through gaps between the many heads and pairs of shoulders while we newcomers did our best to squeeze ourselves in and somehow come to rest in the already cramped room. During this same period the prisoner slipped out then hastily back through a door opposite in order to communicate something to the soldier, leaning down very confidentially, almost right down to the latter’s ear. The soldier seemed to be satisfied, and straightaway his piping, penetrating, wheezing voice, more reminiscent of a child’s or perhaps a woman’s, was audible as he spoke a few sentences in reply. Then the prisoner, having straightened up and raised a hand, at once requested “silence and attention” from us—and now, for the first time, I tasted that oft-cited joyful experience of unexpectedly hearing the familiar strains of one’s own language abroad: it meant I was confronted with a compatriot. I immediately felt a bit sorry for him too, for I could not help but notice and be forced to admit that despite his being a rather young, intelligent convict, the man had a charming face, and I would dearly have liked to have found out from him where, how, and for what offense he had been imprisoned; however, for the time being all he told us was that he intended to instruct us about what we had to do, to acquaint us with what “Herr Oberscharführer”7 required of us. Provided we did our best—as was indeed expected of us in any event, he added—then it would all be accomplished “quickly and smoothly,” and although that, in his opinion, was above all in our own interest, he assured us it was equally the wish of “Herr Ober,” as he now called him for short, somewhat dispensing with the formal title and also, I felt, somehow more familiarly.

  We were then informed of a few simple and, in the circumstances, obvious matters, which the soldier also endorsed with vigorous nods, as it were confirming for us the truth of what, after all, were a prisoner’s words, and meanwhile turning his friendly face and jolly gaze first toward him, then toward us. We were given to understand, for instance, that in the next room, the “changing room,” we were to undress and hang all our clothes neatly on the hooks that would be seen there. We would also find a number on each hanger. While we were bathing, our clothes would be disinfected. Now, it maybe went without saying, he ventured (and I reckoned he was right), why it was important for everyone to commit the number of their hanger firmly to memory. Equally it wasn’t hard for me to see the point of his suggestion that it would be “advisable” for us to tie our shoes together as a pair “in order to avoid any potential mix-ups,” as he added. After that, he promised, barbers would attend to us, then the turn could finally come for the bath itself.

  Before that, however, he continued, all those who still had any money, gold, jewels, or other valuables on them should step forward and place these voluntarily “on deposit with Herr Ober,” as this was the last opportunity they would have “still to get rid of such belongings with impunity.” As he went on to explain, trading, buying, and selling of any description, and consequently also possessing and bringing in any articles of value, were “strictly forbidden in the Lager ”—and that was the expression he used, which was new to me but at once readily comprehensible from the German term. After bathing, every person, so we learned, would be “roentgenographed,” and “in a special, purpose-built apparatus” at that, and with an expressive nod, conspicuous jollity, and unmistakable assent the soldier gave particular emphasis to the word “roentgenograph,” which he obviously must have understood. It also crossed my mind that it looked as if the gendarme’s tip-off had been correct after all. The only further comment the prisoner could make for his part, he said, was that any attempt at smuggling—for which the perpetrator woul
d incidentally place himself at risk of “the gravest punishment” and all of us would put at stake our honor in the eyes of the German authorities— would therefore, in his view, be “pointless and senseless.” Though the issue had little to do with me, I supposed he must no doubt be right. That was followed by a brief hush, a stillness that toward the end, so I felt, became a touch uncomfortable. Then there was a shuffling up toward the front: someone asked to be let through, and a man made his way out, placed something on the tabletop, then scurried back again. The soldier said something to him, laudatory by the sound of it, and immediately thrust the object—something tiny that I was unable to get a good look at from where I was—into the desk drawer, having first inspected it, appraised it so to speak, with a quick glance. As best I could tell, he was satisfied. Then there was another pause, shorter than the previous one, again a shuffling, again another person, after which people sprang forward ever more fearlessly and with growing alacrity, by now uninterruptedly, proceeding one after the other to the table and setting down on it some shining, chinking, twanging, or rustling object in the small free space between the whip and the attaché case. Except for the footsteps and the sound of the articles, not to forget the soldier’s occasional terse, piping, but unfailingly jovial and encouraging comments, this all went ahead in complete silence. I also noticed that the soldier adopted exactly the same procedure with every single object. Thus, even if someone set down two items at once, he still looked at each one separately, at times giving an appreciative nod: first the one, separately pulling the drawer out for that, separately placing it in there, then again closing the drawer, usually with his belly, before turning to the next item and repeating exactly the same thing with that. I was utterly flabbergasted at all the stuff that still came to light in this way— after the gendarmes and everything. But I was also a bit surprised by the hastiness, this sudden burst of enthusiasm, on the part of the people there, given that hitherto they had accepted all the troubles and cares that went with possession of these articles. Maybe that was the reason why the same slightly embarrassed, slightly solemn yet, all in all, to a certain extent somehow relieved expression was to be seen on virtually every face returning from the table. But then, in the end, here we all were, standing at the threshold to a new life, and that, after all, I realized, was of course an entirely different situation from the one at the gendarmerie. All this, the whole business, must have taken up roughly around three or four minutes, if I wish to be strictly accurate.