Fatelessness

by Imre Kertész

  I have to say that over time one can become accustomed even to miracles. Gradually, I even reached the point, if the doctor happened so to ordain in the morning, of making the trips to the surgery on foot, just as I was, barefoot, my blanket wrapped over my shirt, and among the many familiar odors in the crisp air I detected a new hint, no doubt that of spring, if I thought about the passage of time. On the way back, I caught a fleeting glimpse of a pair of men in prison uniforms just as they were dragging and hauling out of a gray barracks on the far side of our barbed-wire fence a large, rubber-wheeled trailer of the kind that can be hitched to a truck, from the full load of which I was able to pick out a few frozen yellow limbs and emaciated body parts. I drew the blanket more tightly around me, lest I by any chance catch a chill, and strove to hobble back to my warm room just as fast as I could, gave my feet a perfunctory rinse for cleanliness’ sake, then popped swiftly under my quilt, and curled up in my bed. There I chatted with my neighbor, as long as he was there (because after a while he left to go “nach Hause,” his place being taken by an older Polish man), looked at whatever there was to see, listened to the commands issuing from the loudspeaker, and I can tell you that from there in bed, with the aid of no more than these, plus a bit of imagination, I was able to gain a full conspectus and keep track of, conjure up for myself as it were, every color, taste, and smell, every coming and going, each episode and incident, great and small, from crack of dawn to late taps, sometimes even beyond. Thus, the “Friseure zum Bad, Friseure zum Bad” that would be sounded many times daily, with ever greater frequency, was clear: a new transport had arrived. Each and every time, that would be coupled with “Leichenkommando zum Tor, ” or “corpse-bearers to the gate”; and if there was a request for further contingents, then that would allow me to infer the material, the quality, of that transport. I would also learn that this was the time the “E fekten,” which is to say the storeroom workers, were to hurry over—on some occasions, moreover, “ im Laufschritt,” or at the double—to the clothes depots. If, however, the call was, for example, for zwei or vier Leichenträger and, let’s say, “mit einem” or “zwei Tragbetten sofort zum Tor!”29then you could be sure that this time it was an isolated accident somewhere, at work, during an interrogation, in a cellar, in an attic, there was no knowing where. I found out that the “ Karto felschäler-Kommando,” or potato-peeling squad, had not only a day shift but also a “Nachtschicht” and much else besides. But every afternoon, always at exactly the same hour, an enigmatic message was heard that was always exactly the same: “El-ah zwo, El-ah zwo, aufmarschieren lassen!” which prompted a lot of head-scratching on my part at first. It was actually simple, but it took a while before I worked out, from the commands “Mützen ab! ” and “Mützen auf !” that would echo every single time from the ensuing solemn, endlessly vast, churchlike silence and the occasional thin, squeaky-sounding music, that across the way the camp was at Appell; that the “aufmarschieren lassen” accordingly meant that the camp inmates were to form up for Appell, while the “ zwo” meant two, and the “El-ah” obviously LÄ, or Lagerältester, so therefore there must be a first and a second, or in other words, two senior camp inmates at Buchenwald, which, if I thought about it, was basically not so very surprising after all in a camp where they had already long ago started issuing numbers in the ninety thousands, so I have been informed. Gradually things would quiet down in our room too; Zbishek would have already gone by now, if it was his turn to receive guests, while Pyetchka would take one last look around before turning off the light with his usual “dobra nots.” I would then seek out the maximum comfort that the bed could supply and my wounds would permit, pull my blanket over my ears, and immediately be overtaken by an untroubled sleep: no, I could not ask more than this, I realized, I could not do better than this in a concentration camp.

  Only two things bothered me a little. One was my two wounds: no one could deny them, with their surrounding areas still inflamed and the flesh still raw, but at the margins there was now a thin skin, with brownish scabs forming in places; the doctor was no longer padding the incisions with gauze, hardly ever summoning me for treatment, and the times that he did so, it would be over disturbingly quickly, while the expression on his face would be disturbingly satisfied. The other matter was actually at bottom, I can’t deny it, an extremely gratifying event, no question about it. If Pyetchka and Zbishek, for example, should all of a sudden break off their conversation with faces alert to something in the distance, raising a finger to their lips to ask the rest of us to be quiet, my own ear does indeed pick up a dull rumble, and sometimes what sounds like broken snatches of a distant barking of dogs. Then, next door, beyond the partition wall where I suspect Bohoosh’s room lies, it has been very lively of late, as I can make out from the voices that filter across from discussions that continue well after lights off. Repeated siren warnings are now a regular feature of the daily program, and I have now become accustomed to being awoken during the night to an instruction over the intercom: “Krematorium ausmachen!” followed a minute later, and now crackling with irritation: “Khematohium! Sofoht ausmach’n!” from which I am able to decipher that someone is rather anxious not to have inopportune light from the flames draw airplanes down on his head. I have no idea when the barbers get any sleep, for I am told that nowadays newcomers may have to stand around naked for two or three days in front of the bathhouse before being able to proceed farther, while the Leichenkommando too, as I can hear, is constantly at work on its rounds. There are no longer any empty beds in our room either, and only the other day, among the routine ulcers and gashes, I first heard from a Hungarian boy who is taking up one of the beds on the far side about wounds that had been caused by rifle bullets. He had acquired them during a forced march lasting several days, on the way from a camp in the countryside (which, if I heard right, went by the name of “Ohrdruf” and, as far as I could make out from his account, was by and large roughly like the one at Zeitz), constantly seeking to avoid the enemy, the American army, though actually the bullets had been intended for the man beside him, who was flagging and had just slumped out of the line, but in the process one had hit his own leg. He had been lucky it had not touched a bone, he added, and it even crossed my mind that, hell, now that could next happen with me. Wherever a bullet might hit my own leg, there was surely no place where it would not touch bone, there was no arguing otherwise. It soon emerged that he had only been in a concentration camp since the autumn, his number being in the eighty-something thousands—nothing to write home about in our room. In short, in recent days I have been picking up news and rumors at every hand of impending changes, inconveniences, disturbances, disorders, worries, and troubles. One time Pyetchka made a round of all the beds, a sheet of paper in his hand, and asked everyone, myself included, whether he was able to move on foot, to walk, “laufen.” I told him, nye, nye, not me, ich kann nicht. “ Tak, tak,” he rejoined, “du kannst,” and wrote my name down, just as he did that of everyone else in the room, by the way, even Kuharski’s, even though both his swollen legs are covered, as I once saw in the treatment room, with thousands of parallel nicks that look like tiny, gaping mouths. Then, another evening, just as I was chewing on my bread, I heard coming from the radio: “Alle Juden in Lager”—all Jews in the camp—“sofort”—immediately—“ antreten!”— to fall in, but in such a terrifying tone that I promptly sat up in bed. “Tso to robish?” Pyetchka asked curiously. I pointed to the device, but he just smiled in his usual manner and gestured with both hands to lie back down, take it easy, no need to get worked up, what’s the hurry. But the loudspeaker was going the entire evening, crackling and speaking: “Lagerschutz,” it says, summoning the club-wielding dignitaries of the camp’s police force to instant action, and it seems it may not be entirely satisfied with them either as before long— and I found it hard not to listen without shuddering—it was asking the Lagerältester and the Kapo of the Lagerschutz— in other words, explicitly the two most powerful of the camp’s
prisoners that one could think of—to report to the gate, “aber im Laufschritt! ” Another time, the continually badgering, summoning, ordering, popping, and crackling box was full of questions and reproaches: “ Lagerältester! Aufmarschieren lassen! Lagerältester! Wo sind die Juden?”30 and Pyetchka would just give an angrily dismissive wave or talk back to it: “Kurva yego mat!”31So I leave it up to him, he should know after all, and I just keep quietly lying there. But if the previous evening had not been to its liking, by the next day there were no exceptions: “ Lagerältester! Das ganze Lager: antreten!”32then shortly afterward a roaring of motors, barking of dogs, cracking of rifles, thudding of clubs, pattering of running feet, and the heavier pounding of boots in pursuit shows that, if it comes down to it and some people would prefer it that way, then the soldiers themselves are quite capable of taking the matter into their own hands, and what comes of such failure to obey—until finally, goodness knows how, there is a sudden stillness. Not long after that, the doctor pops in unexpectedly, his customary ward round having already taken place that morning as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening outside. Now, though, he was not so cool nor so well-groomed as at other times: his face was worn, his not entirely immaculate white smock was stained with rusty flecks, and he hunted his grave-looking, bloodshot eyes around, obviously looking for an empty bed. “Wo ist der . . . ,” he asked Pyetchka, “der, mit dieser kleinen Wunde hier?”33making an indeterminate gesture around thighs and hips while letting his searching gaze rest on every face, mine as well for a moment, so I very much doubt that he failed to recognize me, even if he immediately snatched it away in order to rivet it again on Pyetchka, waiting, urging, demanding, obliging him, as it were, to answer. I said nothing, but I was already preparing myself to get up, don prison garb, and go out into the thick of the turmoil, but to my great surprise I noticed that Pyetchka, judging from his face at least, hadn’t the slightest idea to whom the doctor was referring, then after a brief moment of perplexity, it suddenly dawned on him, as though the penny had dropped after all, and with an “Ach ja” and a sweep of the arm he pointed to the boy with the gunshot wound, a choice with which the doctor seemed straightaway to concur, he too like someone—yes, that’s it— whose concern has been lighted upon and addressed in one go. “Der geht sofort nach Hause!” he ordered straightaway. And then a very peculiar, unusual, and, I might say, indecorous incident occurred, the like of which I had hitherto never seen once before in our room, and which I was barely able to witness without a certain discomfiture and embarrassment. The boy with the gunshot wound, having got out of bed, first merely placed his hands together before the doctor, as if he were about to pray, then as the latter recoiled in astonishment, dropped to his knees in front of him and reached out with both hands to grasp, clutch, and enfold the doctor’s legs; after which all I noticed was a swift flash of the doctor’s hand and the ensuing loud smack, so I only understood he was angry and did not quite follow what he said when, having pushed the obstacle aside with his knee, he stormed off, his face drawn and even rawer red than usual. A new patient then arrived in the vacated bed, another boy, an all-too familiar stub of tight bandaging revealing to my eyes that his feet no longer had any toes at all. The next time Pyetchka came my way I said to him in a low, confidential tone, “Jinkooye, Pyetchka.” But then, from his “ Was?” his look of total incomprehension and complete blankness in response to my attempted explanation of “Aber früher, vorher . . .”—“just before, earlier on . . .”—and the bemused, baffled shaking of the head, I realized that it was now me, apparently, who might have been committing the faux pas, and thus, evidently, there are certain things that we are obliged to straighten out purely in our own minds. But then, to start with, it had all happened in due accord with justice (that was my opinion, at any rate), as I had been longer in the room, after all, and then he was fitter too, so there was no question (to my mind) that he would have a better chance on the outside, and above all, in the final analysis it seems I find it easier to reconcile myself to accidents that happen to someone else than to myself—that was the conclusion I had to draw, the lesson I had to learn, however I might view, ponder, or turn the matter over. But most of all, what do such concerns count for when there’s shooting going on, because two days later the window in our room shattered and a stray bullet bored into the wall opposite. Another feature of that same day was a perpetual stream of suspicious-looking characters who dropped by for a quick word with Pyetchka, and he himself was often away, occasionally for prolonged intervals, only to turn up again that evening with a longish package or bundle under his arm. I took it to be a sheet—but no, it also had a handle, so a white flag then, and from the middle, well wrapped up in it, poked the tip or end of an implement I had never previously seen in a prisoner’s hands, something at which the entire room bestirred itself, gave a sharp intake of breath, and was abuzz, an object that Pyetchka, before putting it under his bed, allowed all of us to see for a fleeting moment, but with such a broad smile, and hugging it to his chest in such a manner, that I too could almost imagine myself under the Christmas tree, clutching some precious gift that I had been looking forward to for ages: a brown wooden part and, sticking out of that, a short, bluishly glinting steel tube—a sawn-off shotgun (the word for it all at once came to mind), just like the ones I had read about in the old days in the novels about cops and robbers that I was so fond of.