by Imre Kertész
Later on we went out to a bar. We laughed the whole evening, laughed and laughed!
I turn the page:
Happiness makes you lose your mind. That doesn’t matter, but then happiness paralyzes you. I forget about everything else. I’m living as if I had a right to live; I’m living as if I were really existing. I make plans, dream of the future, build a life for the two of us, want to marry her—as though no one else but us were alive. Meanwhile I sense how absurd this all is, as there is no future, only the present, a state, a state of emergency.
I turn the page:
I talked it over with her. I let her know what I am thinking. She understood; she agreed on every point. I felt inexpressible gratitude and relief. I gripped her hand. And then all of a sudden she began talking about the wedding and how we would furnish the home.
I turn the page:
I can’t stand it anymore. I’m an idiot; I myself don’t know what I want. I have to decide finally: her or … And what about both? No, that’s impossible … But nevertheless, what if? … I can’t see clearly; the trouble is that I don’t see clearly. In point of fact, I am now beginning to grasp—dreadful feeling—that I don’t really know her. And not just her but myself, or at least not enough. I have to know what I want. I have to get to know both her and myself. But how? Talking is not enough; words don’t clarify anything. I’ll have to hit upon something, but what?
He hit upon driving.
So I’ll have to describe that car trip. Not that it will be difficult, as I am familiar with every detail. Enrique put down an outline in the diary, but I also spoke to him in person about it. Whatever gaps were still left, Estella filled in, or rather let’s stay with just Jill.
We interviewed her too at the time. We didn’t make much use of her. We accepted her statement that she had been embroiled in the case unsuspectingly. So that was how it went: we didn’t look to Jill for anything. But then order is order. A transcript has to be made of everything. In this case we could again point to a transcript, which again merely corroborated the all-embracing thoroughness of our investigations and their impartiality.
I felt a sort of respect for Enrique at that time. His fate was already assuming a definite shape; his sentence appeared to have been sealed in the course of the proceedings. Jill was his fiancée, and that can be embarrassing for one at times.
I only got to meet her again six months later. Enrique was no longer alive. I was starting to get a proper perspective on the whole story. I was being assailed by my headaches around then, excruciating, unrelenting headaches.
So I looked Estella up (or rather let’s stay with Jill). She was married by then, to a certain Anibal Roque T., a highly reputable entrepreneur. I asked to have a chat with her in the morning. How scared she was, the lambkin! And how amenable once she was over the big relief! …
I am mulling over what could have drawn Enrique to Jill. Something irresistible, some kind of compulsion. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I understand nothing about what makes the mind tick, my own least of all. I sensed one thing only, but that I was sure about, which is that everybody would have a price to pay in this case, everybody. I therefore had to enlighten her too that she would not get out of it scot-free. Maria was grieving; she had to pay in a different way. Jill was aware of that, don’t think she wasn’t, or why would she have agreed? Maybe out of fear primarily—I gave her reason enough, there’s no question. But not solely out of fear—I’d be willing to swear to that whenever you wish. Jill was crafty: she tried to give our relationship the appearance of blackmail, and she could have come up with a pretext for it, as I say, but she never managed fully to convince me of this. As for herself, that’s a good question. Did she perhaps wish to make amends in the way that I sought an accomplice in her? Did she pity me or despise me? I considered that was her business, but the case would not permit anyone to remain clean who had played any part in it, and Jill too must have learned that, I suppose, whatever she might have dreamed of when she hastily got married.
A sweet yet anguished relationship it was, inexcusable, I admit it. But in all likelihood that was precisely the attraction. Some crazy compulsion once drove me to the point of reading to her from Enrique’s diary. That wasn’t out of meanness, please believe me. What I mean is that I didn’t read it to her in order to torment her, or so that I might—how the devil should I put this?—get a kick out of it. No way was there anything sexual in it. It was just that Enrique’s shade was settling on me, and I felt it was too massive. I wanted it to settle over both of us. I had that right, whatever you may say, I had the right, since we owed each other. Enrique’s shade settled on both of us. I wanted us to carry it together, to go around together beneath it, as if we were under a huge, monstrous umbrella, two lost souls in a storm …
It was a silly thing to do! She became upset, threw herself onto the bed, and screamed. She called us all murderers: me, Enrique, all men, life as a whole.
“Murderers!” she screamed.
“And you?” I ask. “What about you? You’re a whore, an out-and-out tramp!” And believe it or not, I suddenly caught myself accusing her of treachery, and reproaching her for not having swung from the same rope as the accused, which is to say Enrique. I, who am supposed to be a flatfoot, after all.
Yet I understood Jill well: she was a woman, a woman first and foremost.
…
Anyway, there was this highway that led to the coast—you know, to the bit where the peninsula pokes out into the bay. Anyone traveling to the Blue Coast has to use that road. That day Enrique and Jill drove to the Blue Coast. They wanted to bathe. And Enrique was also looking for someone at the beach.
He found who he was looking for—I’ll be damned if he didn’t. That’s where they all gathered, those shaggy-haired weirdos. It was a shrewd choice: it’s a big beach, and they picked a secluded spot on it. They set down their transistor radios, which put an end to our listening devices. We photographed them, ten dozen rolls: they let us do that, they were aware that they were known to us anyway. We could have cracked down on them, sure we could. But then what? They were pros; they weren’t doing anything. We wouldn’t have dragged a word out of them; what we would have been able to get from them we knew anyway. It was all window dressing. They didn’t run many risks: it wasn’t they who undertook the actions. So what the hell were we supposed to do? We kept them under observation until events caught up with them. Then they all disappeared as if they had been swallowed up by the earth. A confounded line of work ours is; I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
Among them was this C., whose name I won’t spell out. Enrique already mentioned him in his diary, if you recall. But Enrique wasn’t the only one to document him, rest assured. I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if he didn’t have a hand in the atrocity. But by the time we got wind that an atrocity was brewing, we could only snatch at thin air.
They would have nothing to do with Enrique. No way was it due to his money. There were wealthy kids in their ranks, more than one. Still, Enrique’s money would surely have come in handy for them. No, the trouble was he was a greenhorn. They, as I said, were real pros. It would never have entered their minds to run risks. It was only Enrique, in his child’s mind, who imagined he could just go up to them and enlist as if he were at a recruitment office.
He went over and found a happy bunch of students who amused him with their funny tales of university life. Each knew about a case, and the others would split their sides laughing.
Well, that’s what happened. Enrique then trailed back to Jill. She looked stunning in her jazzy dress on the beach that day, and even more stunning out of it. Enrique, however, was furious.
“Forget them,” Jill consoled him. “You aren’t one of them.”
“Why?” Enrique fumed. “Because my name is Salinas? Does that define a person?”
“You’re bourgeois,” Jill teased. She poked an index finger into the curly fuzz of hair on Enrique’s chest and gently scratched with her
nail. That is a detail I got from Enrique’s diary. “You’re bourgeois, bourgeois. My little bourgeois,” she purred.
Enrique, however, was furious.
“Forget them,” Jill said. “It’s me you should concern yourself with now. Isn’t it great here? Why don’t you want to be happy?”
“Happy! Happy! …” Enrique fumed. But then, nice and slowly, he calmed down. From the scratching, I suppose. “Of course I want to be happy,” he said. “I love you, don’t I, God help me! But there are times when being happy—just happy, nothing else—is simply vile.”
“Why?” Jill inquired, her eyes half closed. The sunlight was blindingly strong that day.
“Because,” Enrique reasoned, “one can’t be happy in a place where everybody is unhappy.”
“Everybody?” Jill opened her eyes. “Look at me. I’m not.” She smiled. One could well believe that she was not unhappy.
What could Enrique do? He kissed her. After that they walked out to the water. The sea was warm, there were not many people around, and they swam out a fair distance. In Jill’s arms Enrique soon forgot about his frustration as well as his philosophy.
Only on the way home did it come to his mind again.
On the highway.
Enrique’s Alfa Romeo was speeding homeward with him at the wheel, Jill beside him. Their hair was fluttering, they raced along—until they came to a minimum speed sign. At that point Enrique took his foot off the gas and slowed to less than half the stipulated speed.
I need to say something about this highway. Some of you may not have been down that way, or else you don’t recall it too well. Or maybe you never noticed anything special about it. That can happen: after all, that’s what the minimum speed limit is for. Then again, some people only ever keep their eyes to the front. Lucky dogs: I always envied them.
In a nutshell, one of our establishments was situated out that way. Not exactly by the side of the road, but not far from it either. Those of you who have been there will know what I’m talking about. Our post was equipped with all the necessary paraphernalia: fences, electronics, watchtowers, and whatnot. Anyone who passed by and looked would have seen it—the outside, that is, not much more. We could hardly have shut down the highway as that would have forced the already-faltering commercial traffic into a detour around half the country. We could not force a bypass through, on account of the mountain chain: that sort of thing is pricey and might not even have been approved by parliament. You will have to ask their honors, the parliamentary representatives, whether they were aware of the situation and see what answers you get. Of course, they didn’t have a clue about anything. The only option that was left, therefore, was to set a minimum speed limit. That way people would not be able to see very much, though undoubtedly something. The Colonel didn’t mind that: a good citizen should be able to turn such a warning to his advantage. We set a fifty mph limit, but Enrique slowed down to twenty, according to the report that was issued on the traffic violation, and as was borne out by the appended photograph.
Jill was nervous—you bet she was. On top of which, Enrique wanted her to look in the direction of the establishment, but she didn’t feel like doing that.
“What do want from me?”
“Why don’t you want to look at it?” asked Enrique.
“Because it’s none of my business,” Jill fretted.
“So what is any of your business?” he pressed.
“You,” she said.
“Well then,” he plugged away, “that too is your business, because that is part of what I am.”
“That’s not true,” she protested. “You’re kidding yourself, Enrique. A normal person doesn’t concern himself constantly with that sort of thing. To you it’s nothing more than a drug. Whereas I, on the other hand, am sincere. Why can’t we love each other, Enrique? I want to be happy. I want to bear your children. Nothing else is of interest to me.”
“You’re a clever girl, Jill. I envy you. You don’t groan under the iron fist of dictatorship, you purr,” so Enrique. At least according to the diary, and Jill later confirmed it. “Why don’t you wish to take notice of it?”
“Because it doesn’t interest me,” she said. She was starting to get nettled.
“Jill,” he said, “you’re talking as if you hated the people who are being kept over there, behind the fence.”
“That’s right,” she confirmed. “I hate them, because they’re standing between us.”
Right then a police car howled up alongside, overtook them, then cut across to block the way ahead. Enrique was obliged to stop.
I dare say you know how it goes. A screeching of brakes, doors bursting open, boots thudding on the concrete highway. A pair does the work, one covers with a semiautomatic handgun. “Step out of there! Make it snappy, or I’ll drag you out! Upper body against the car, arms to the front, fingers spread!”
Something like that. A bit of jostling is unavoidable. Then the frisking. Women’s dresses are particularly suspicious—they have room for all manner of things. A lovely female body, for example. Jill carried a bruise on her breast for a long time afterward.
Luckily, no camera was found either on them or in the car, I should note. Nor any other suspicious articles. Even so, the senior patrolman wanted to arrest them. And then he set eyes on Enrique’s driver’s license.
“Salinas,” he reads. He casts an eye at the car. “The department store fellow?” he inquired.
He did not get an immediate answer.
“Right,” he heard finally. Not from Enrique, but from Jill.
“I’m asking you, Jack!” The patrolman gave Enrique a tap on the leg with a boot tip.
“You heard,” growled Enrique. The officer got ready to let fly, but his senior held him back.
“Didn’t you see the speed sign?” he asked. It was not exactly keen cross-questioning, but then they don’t always put the brightest men on highway patrol duty.
“Yes, I did,” said Enrique.
“Then why didn’t you keep to the limit?” the patrolman probed.
“I think one of the spark plugs is on the blink,” Enrique ventured.
“On the blink, my ass,” the senior patrolman opined. “You’d do better hitting your study books than bumming along the highway!”
“Then they should reopen the university,” Enrique suggested. Now the senior patrolman was about to let fly, but he thought better of it. A Salinas was a Salinas, after all.
“Clear off,” he ordered them. “I’ll be making a report. I hope your father wrings your neck.”
They continued their journey, side by side, Enrique at the wheel, Jill beside him. They were wordless, as if they did not know each other.
“Even so,” Enrique broke the silence, without casting a glance at Jill, “it wouldn’t hurt me to have at least an idea about what’s going on.”
“What would that be?” Jill shrugged. “Nothing.” She fell silent. “Except I just hate you.”
“I don’t hate you, Jill,” he said. “I’m just sorry that this is the way you feel.”
“It makes no difference. The main thing is we don’t wish to see each other ever again,” she stated.
“True,” he concurred.
They said no more. That was how they reached the city: wordlessly.
Enrique felt that at least now he knew what he wanted to know.
Something else happened that evening, something important, Enrique noted in his diary. Those few pages are like the record of a grilling—a genuine police interview in which he incriminated himself.
That was Enrique for you. He loved and hated, he was secretive and yet kept exhaustive records of his secrets.
I am opening Enrique’s diary. Listen to this.
It’s all been decided. Utterly unbelievable, and yet the most natural of all. It’s as if, at the depths of my most hidden instincts, I had actually long suspected it. I must write it down: I can’t go to bed now with this experience on my mind.
Let me try t
o sum up. That will be hard, so much has happened today, and now, late in the evening, all the complexions and events of this whole implausible day are spinning around at once in my head. Let’s get on with it, then.
So I drove Jill home: I owed her that much. Then I came home myself. I parked the car in the garage, stepped into the elevator, and came up. As I entered the apartment, I caught sight of Mother and Father somewhere in the deceptive succession of interconnected rooms. They were a long way off, each seated in an armchair. Father was wreathed in fragrant clouds of smoke. He was stretching out his long, muscular legs, his black patent-leather shoes gleaming in the twilight. He had unbuttoned the jacket of his impeccable suit and loosened his fashionable necktie.
Mother was sitting with a straight back, hands resting in her lap.
It was as though they were just waiting for something.
When they spotted me, Mother immediately jumped up and rushed toward me. The usual stuff: “Where were you?” “At the beach.” “You took a long time about it.” “Because the weather was fine.” One thing and another.
The old man did not stir, just kept on puffing on his cigarette. Finally, I said I needed a word with him. “Very well.” He got to his feet and let me go first, gesturing toward his study with one hand, the other loosely gripping my shoulder. I sensed his aroma: a smell of tobacco, cologne, and Father. All at once I also sensed the hand resting on my shoulder. Strength emanated from it. Strength, superiority, and assurance. It was stupid, but I nearly burst into tears so that he might take me in his arms, as he had done when I was a child. Maybe on account of Jill.
No matter. Anyway, I briefly told him the about business on the highway, just the essentials. He didn’t bat an eyelid.
