Fatelessness

by Imre Kertész

  The next day too promised to be another hectic one, but then who could keep tabs on each single day, and on every event of each day. What I can relate, in any event, is that the kitchens managed to keep working at their regular schedule throughout, and the doctor was likewise usually punctual. One morning, however, not long after coffee, there were hurried footsteps in the corridor, a strident call, a code word as it were, at which Pyetchka swiftly scrabbled his package out from its hiding-place and, gripping it under his arm, vanished. Not much later, somewhere around nine o’clock, I heard over the box an instruction that was not for prisoners but soldiers: “ An alle SS-Angehörigen,” then twice over, “Das Lager sofort zu verlassen,” ordering the forces to leave the camp at once. I then heard the sounds of battle first approaching then receding, for a while almost whistling about my very ears but later gradually diminishing until finally there was a hush—altogether too great a hush, because for all my waiting, straining of ears, keeping eyes peeled and on the lookout, neither at the regular time nor later did I manage to pick out the by now long-overdue rattling and the attendant daily hollering of the soup-bearers. It was going on 4:00 p.m., perhaps, when the box at last gave a click and, after brief sputtering and blowing sounds, informed all of us that this was the Lagerältester, the camp senior inmate, speaking. “ Kameraden,” he said, audibly struggling with some choking emotion which caused his voice first to falter, then to shrill to an almost high-pitched whine, “wir sind frei!”—we are free, and it crossed my mind that in that case the Lagerältester too, it seems, must have shared the same views as Pyetchka, Bohoosh, the doctor, and others like them, must have been in cahoots with them, so to say, if he was being allowed to announce the event, and with such evident joy at that. He proceeded to deliver a decent little speech, then after him it was the turn of others, in the most diverse languages: “Attention, attention,” in French, for example; “Pozor, pozor!” in Czech, as best I know; “Nyemanye, nyemanye, russki tovarishchi nyemanye!” and here the melodious intonation suddenly triggered a cherished memory, the language that, back at the time of my arrival here, the men of the bathhouse work detail had been speaking all around me; “Uvaga, uvaga!” upon which the Polish patient next to me immediately sat up in his bed in agitation and bawled out to all of us: “Chiha bendzh! Teras polski kommunyiki,” and then I recalled that he had been fretting, fidgeting, and squirming around throughout the entire day; then, to my utter amazement, all of a sudden: “Figyelem, figyelem! A magyar lágerbizottság . . .”— “Attention, this is the Hungarian camp committee . . .”— amazing, I thought to myself, I never even suspected there was such a thing. However hard I listened, though, all I heard of from him, as from everyone before, was about freedom, but not a single word about or in reference to the missing soup. I was absolutely delighted, quite naturally, about our being free, but I couldn’t help it if, from another angle, I fell to thinking that yesterday, for instance, such a thing could never have happened. The April evening outside was already dark, and Pyetchka too had arrived back, flushed, excited, talking thirteen to the dozen, when the Lagerältester finally came on again over the loudspeaker. This time he appealed to the former members of the Kartoffelschäler-Kommando, requesting them to resume their old duties in the kitchens, and all other inmates of the camp to stay awake, until the middle of the night if need be, because they were going to start cooking a strong goulash soup, and it was only at this point that I slumped back on my pillow in relief, only then that something loosened up inside me, and only then did I myself also think—probably for the first time in all seriousness—of freedom.

  NINE

  I reached home at roughly the same time of year as when I had left it. Certainly, the woods all around had already long turned green, grass had sprouted over the great pits of corpses, and the asphalt of the Appellplatz, derelict since the onset of the new age and strewn with the litter of cold campfires, all manner of rags, papers, and food cans, was already melting in the sweltering midsummer heat at Buchenwald when I too was asked whether I had any wish to undertake the journey. For the most part, the younger ones would be making the trip, led by a stocky, bespectacled man with graying hair, a functionary of the Hungarian camp committee, who is to take care of our travel arrangements. There is now a truck, and not least a willingness on the part of the American military, to transport us a stretch eastward, after which it will be up to us, he said, then encouraged us to call him “Uncle Miklós.” We have to get on with our lives, he added, and indeed there was not much else we could do after all, I realized—provided of course one had been given the chance to do so at all. On the whole, I could by now call myself able-bodied, except for a few oddities and minor disabilities. If I dug a finger into the flesh at some points on my body, for example, its mark, the depression it left, would remain visible for a long time afterward, just as if I had buried it in some lifeless, inelastic material like, say, cheese or wax. My face also startled me a bit when I first inspected it in a mirror in one of the comfortable rooms of the former SS hospital, as my recollection from older days had been of another face. Its conspicuously low forehead, the pair of brand-new, amorphous swellings by the oddly broadening bases of its ears, and its loose bags and sacks elsewhere, all under a brush of hair now an inch or so long, were on the whole—at least if I could believe my onetime reading matter—more the wrinkles, creases, and features of people who had gained them in diverse sensual pleasures and delights and aged prematurely on that account, while the beady, shrunken eyes had been retained in my mind as having another, more friendly, not to say reassuring, look. Then again, I had a limp, dragging my right leg a little: never mind, so says Uncle Miklós, the air back home will sort that out. At home, he declared, we would be building a new land, and he promptly taught us a few songs as a start. When we were tramping through villages and small towns, as occurred from time to time during our journey, we were later to sing these as we marched three abreast, in good military order. I personally was very fond of one called “Standing on the barricades before Madrid,” not that I could tell you why that one in particular. There was another too, though for different reasons, that I sang with pleasure, particularly for the sake of a passage that went: “We la-bor a-way all day long, / all but dying of star-va-tion. / But now our hands, hardened by travail, / clutch wea-pons that will pre-vail!” Again for different reasons, I liked the one with the line “The young guard of the pro-le-tar-i-at are we,” after which we were supposed to interject a shout of “Red Front!” since each and every time it rang out I would catch the clatter of a window being shut or the slam of a door, and each and every time spot a figure, German, scurrying under or hastily ducking behind a doorway.

  In other respects, I set off on the journey with light baggage: an exceedingly narrow yet also, by comparison, exceedingly long and therefore somewhat ungainly light blue canvas contraption, an American military kit bag. In it were my two thick blankets, a change of underwear, a well-knit gray pullover, with green bands decorating the cuffs and neck, that had come from the abandoned SS storehouse, and a few provisions for the road: cans and the like. I wore green American army twills and a pair of what looked like hard-wearing, rubber-soled shoes over which were leggings of impervious leather, with the buckles and straps that went with them. For my head I had procured an odd-looking and, as it proved, rather unseasonably heavy kepi which, judging from its steep peak and the edges and corners of its skewed-square crown—what in geometry they had called a rhombus, I remembered from long-past school days—must once have belonged to a Polish officer, so I was told. I might have picked out a decent jacket from the storehouse perhaps, but in the end I made do with the trusty old striped garment, unchanged except for lacking the number and triangle, that had done me good service up till then; indeed, I specifically opted for it, one could say insisted on it, for this way at least there would be no misunderstandings, I reckoned, apart from which I found it very comfortable, practical, and cool to wear, at least right then, during the summe
r. We traveled by truck and cart, on foot, and public transport—whatever the various armies could put at our disposal. We slept on the back of an ox-drawn wagon, on the benches and teacher’s podium of a deserted schoolroom, or simply out under the star-studded summer night sky, on the flower beds and cushioned lawn of a park amid gingerbread houses. We even took a boat along a river—reminiscent, to my eyes at least, of the Danube, though smaller—that I learned was called the Elbe, and I also passed through a place that had clearly once been a city but was now no more than piles of stone with the occasional bare, blackened wall poking up here and there. The inhabitants were now living, residing, and sleeping at the foot of these walls, heaps of rubble, and also what was left of the bridges, and I tried to take pleasure at that sight, naturally, only I could not help being made to feel—by the selfsame people—somewhat uneasy at doing so. I took a trip on a red streetcar, and traveled on a proper train that was pulling proper carriages in which there were proper compartments for people—even if, as it happened, the only place available was up on the roof. I alighted in a city where one could hear a lot of Hungarian being spoken as well as Czech, and a crowd of women, old people, men, all sorts, gathered around us near the station as we were waiting for the promised connecting train that evening. They inquired whether we had come from the concentration camps and interrogated a lot of us, me included, as to whether one had chanced to meet up with some relative, someone with such and such a name. I told them that in a concentration camp people generally did not have much use for names. Then they would endeavor to describe the external appearance, hair color, and distinctive features, so I tried to get them to see that it was pointless, since most people changed a lot in the camps. On that, those around me slowly dispersed, except for one man in very summery clothing of just shirt and trousers, his thumbs hooked behind the belt, just next to the straps of his suspenders on either side, and his fingers meanwhile drumming on the material; he was curious, and this made me smile a bit, as to whether I had seen the gas chambers. I said to him: “If I had, we wouldn’t be standing around talking now.” “Yes, of course,” he rejoined, but had there actually been any gas chambers, so I said, sure, there were gas chambers too, naturally, among other things; it all depends, I added, what type of person was in which camp. In Auschwitz, for instance, you could bet on it. “But in my case,” I noted, “I’ve come from Buchenwald.” “From where?” he asked, so I had to repeat it: “Buchenwald.” “So, from Buchenwald, then,” he nodded, and I said, “That’s right.” “Let’s get this straight, then,” he said in response, with a stiff, austere, yet somehow almost preachy face. “You, sir,” and I don’t know why but I was almost stunned by this very formal and, I would say, somewhat punctilious mode of address, “you have heard about the existence of gas chambers,” so I said, sure I had. “Nonetheless, sir,” he carried on with that same austerity of one who is restoring things to order and clarity, “you personally, however, did not ascertain this with your own eyes,” and I had to admit that I hadn’t. To that he merely remarked, “I see,” and after giving a curt nod strode away, stiffly, erectly, and as far as I could see, unless I was very much mistaken, satisfied in some manner. Soon after that the call came to get moving, the train was in, and I actually managed to grab quite a decent place on the broad wooden steps of the boarding platform. I awoke around dawn to find we were puffing along merrily. Later on, I became conscious that I was now able to read the names of all the places we were passing through in Hungarian. The body of water that was being pointed out and dazzling my eyes was the Danube; the land all around, baking and shimmering in the bright sunshine, was now Hungarian they said. A while later, we pulled up under a dilapidated roof with, at the far end, a concourse full of smashed windows: the Western Railway Terminal, people around me remarked, and so it was, I recognized by and large.

  Outside, in front of the building, the sun was blazing down straight onto the sidewalk. The heat, noise, dust, and traffic were prodigious. The streetcars were yellow, with a No. 6 on them, so that had not changed either. There were vendors too, selling odd-looking pastries, newspapers, and other goods. The people were very good-looking, and palpably all of them had some errand, some important business; all were hurrying, rushing, running somewhere, jostling, in all directions. We too, I was informed, had to take ourselves straight off to the emergency bureau and get our names registered right away in order to receive as soon as possible the money and documents that were now indispensable appurtenances of life. The place in question, I learned, was to be found near the other main station, the Eastern Railway Terminal, so we boarded a streetcar at the very first intersection. Though I found the streets rather shabby, with the terracing of houses showing gaps here and there, while those still standing were run-down or damaged, with holes in their walls or without windows, I still could more or less recognize the route and thus the square too at which we got off. We located the emergency bureau, just opposite what still existed in my memory as—yes, that was it—a cinema, in one of the bigger, ugly, gray public buildings, the courtyard, vestibule, and corridors of which were already packed with people. They were sitting, standing, bustling, shouting, chattering, or just silent. Lots of them were in miserable clothing, the cast-off gear and caps of concentration camps and army stores, some—like me—in striped jackets, but now, as touches of bourgeois tidiness, with white shirt and necktie, hands clasped behind the back and immersed in dignified deliberations about important matters, just as they had done before they went to Auschwitz. In one place they were recalling and comparing conditions in different camps, in another dissecting the likely prospects for the sum and extent of the assistance, still others were considering what they saw as fussy formalities and unlawful benefits, the advantages others were gaining at their expense, injustices in the procedures, but on one thing everyone was agreed: one had to wait, and for a long time too. Except I found it all extremely tiresome; so, slinging my kit bag over my back, I soon traipsed back into the courtyard, then on outside the gate. Spotting the cinema again, it occurred to me that if I were to turn right and go one or at most two blocks, that would bring me, if memory served me right, to Forget-me-not Road.

  It was easy to find the house: it was intact, not a whit different from the other yellow or gray and somewhat ramshackle houses in the street—or so it seemed to me at least. From the dog-eared list of names in the cool gateway, I ascertained that the number also tallied and that I would need to go up to the second floor. At a leisurely pace, I climbed up the musty, slightly acrid-smelling stairwell, through the windows of which I was able to see the outside corridors and, down below, the woefully bare courtyard, a sparse patch of grass in the middle, then the usual disconsolate tree doing its best with its scrawny, dust-choked foliage. A woman with her hair in a net had just whisked out with a duster over on the other side; strains of music could be heard, and a child was bawling its head off somewhere. I was hugely surprised when a door opened in front of me, and after such a long time, all of a sudden, I again caught sight of Bandi Citrom’s tiny, slanted eyes, only now in the face of a still fairly young, black-haired, slightly thickset, and not particularly tall woman. She took a slight step backward, no doubt, I supposed, because of my jacket, and to avoid having the door slammed in my face I immediately asked, “Is Bandi Citrom at home?” “No,” she replied. I asked if he happened to be out just at the moment, to which she responded, with a little shake of the head and closing her eyes, “Not at all,” and it was only when she opened them again that I noticed a glistening film of moisture on the lower lashes. Her lips were quivering a little as well, so I thought it best to make myself scarce as quickly as possible, but then all at once a slight elderly woman in a dark dress and headscarf emerged from the gloom of the hallway, which meant that before I could go I had to tell her too, “I’m looking for Bandi Citrom,” to which she too said, “He’s not home.” She, though, took the line “Come back some other time; maybe in a few days,” but I noticed that the younger woman resp
onded to that by slightly averting her head, in an odd, defensive, and yet somehow feeble movement, meanwhile raising the back of a hand to her mouth, as if she were seeking, perhaps, to suppress, stifle as it were, some remark or sound she was anxious to make. I then felt bound to tell the old woman, “We were together,” to explain, “at Zeitz,” and to her somehow stern, almost reproachful question of “So why didn’t you come home together?” almost apologize, “We got separated. I ended up somewhere else.” She also wanted to know, “Are there still any Hungarians out there?” so I replied, “Sure, plenty of them.” At that, in a tone of evident triumph, she remarked to the young woman “See!” then to me, “I’m always telling her that they are only now starting to return. But my daughter is impatient; she doesn’t want to believe it anymore,” and I was about to say, but then thought better of it and held my tongue, that in my view she had the clearer head, she knew Bandi Citrom better. She invited me in after that, but I told her I still had to get back home myself. “No doubt your parents are waiting,” she said, to which I replied “Of course.” “Well then,” she remarked, “you’d better hurry; let them be happy,” at which I left.