Fiasco

by Imre Kertész

  “Could it be that you too were kicked out?” he asked, because he seemed to recall having heard something of the kind about Berg, though he did not remember precisely, of course, for in the South Seas, as Köves had begun to notice bit by bit, people knew everything about everybody and nothing about anybody.

  It seemed, though, that Berg, too, was sparing with accurate information:

  “You could put it like that,” was all he replied, nibbling the pink icing off one of the petits fours and placing the pastry base back on the plate.

  “And”—it went against his practice, but this time Köves, for some reason, did not wish to concede the point—“do you know why?”

  “Of course I do,” Berg said coolly, resolutely, indeed even raising his eyebrows slightly as though exasperated by Köves’s obtuseness. “Because I was found to be unsuitable.”

  “For what?” asked Köves, who in the meantime had likewise tucked into his supper.

  “What I was selected for.” Berg bit into the second petit four, which was chocolate-coloured though of course it did not contain chocolate, just a paste that resembled it.

  “And for what were you selected?” It seemed that Köves, in his bewilderment, was unhesitatingly adopting Berg’s curious ways with words.

  “What I am suited for,” came the answer, with the same effortlessness as before.

  “But what are you suited for?” Köves kept plugging away.

  “You see,” Berg’s face now assumed a ruminative expression, not looking at Köves, almost as though he were not talking to him but to himself: “that’s the point. Probably for everything. Or to be more precise, anything. No matter. Presumably I was afraid to give it a try,” and, returning to the real world as it were, Berg now looked around the table with a searching gaze until his eyes alighted on the serviettes, on one of which he proceeded to wipe his fingers, which were clearly sticky from the petits fours. “And now we shall never know,” he continued, “because I have been excluded from the decision-making domain.”

  “How was that?” Köves asked.

  “By recognizing the facts,” said Berg, “and the facts recognizing me.”

  There was a clattering: Alice carried away a number of plates and sets of cutlery from the stock piled on their table, with Berg closing his eyes, as though the woman’s scurrying around and the attendant skirmishing were a cause of physical agony, while Köves made use of the opportunity to ask for a glass of beer from Alice, who, leaning over the table and articulating as if she were speaking to a deaf-mute, asked Berg:

  “Aren’t you thirsty?” to which Berg shook his head, his eyes still shut, his face anguished, now somehow childishly imploring, merely held up two fingers, at which Alice hesitated a bit:

  “Won’t that be too much?” she asked, at which Berg folded one finger down, to leave just the index finger raised beseechingly upright.

  “Fine,” the woman said after some further reflection; “You’ll upset your stomach,” as she hurried off. Köves, who by that point could hardly wait to make a remark, was at last able to trot it out:

  “That all sounds very interesting, but I don’t quite understand.”

  “What was that?” Berg opened his eyes, having visibly forgotten what they had been talking about before.

  “What do you mean,” Köves was growing impatient, “by the facts recognizing you?”

  “I said that?” Berg asked.

  “You did,” Köves urged, rather like a child waiting for the next instalment once a story has been begun.

  “No more,” said Berg, and now cracking a smile, as if he were seeking to tone down his words with the smile, “than that I am just like a certain gentleman who tasted vinegar.”

  Impatience was gradually beginning to curdle into irritation for Köves. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “It’s not who I’m referring to that matters,” said Berg, “but what he said.”

  “Well then,” Köves pushed, “what?”

  “That all this be accomplished.” Berg smiled, whereas Köves, in whom the last vestiges of politeness were swept away by this smile, contrived in its raggedness, and this way of talking, with its riddling and quackery, and who was now aroused to unconcealed exasperation, remarked almost aggressively:

  “It’s all very well that the person in question said that, but you—forgive me!—you are sitting here, on a comfortable café seat, and you’re not sipping vinegar but scoffing petits fours, and with great relish too, as I can see.”

  Berg, though, was not perceptibly in the least put out by Köves’s irritation, if he even noticed it:

  “Don’t blame me for that,” he said, almost appeasingly. “They seem to have forgotten about me.”

  “Who has?” Köves regained his self-control, all that was left of his irritation being an unspoken aversion, though that aversion was somehow still thirsting to be satisfied. His question, however, was succeeded by silence, and Köves had given up on an answer—he had also nearly polished off his supper and was hankering only for the beer that he had ordered—when suddenly, in a sonorous tenor voice, his head bowed so that Köves could hardly see his face, Berg started to speak after all:

  “In the room where they run through the list of names, from time to time, and they reach my name, which is quite soon, given that my initial is B, someone will cry out: ‘What! Is he still around?! Let’s get rid of him.’ His colleague will just wave that aside, saying, ‘Why bother?! He’ll snuff it of his own accord anyway!’ ” at which point he looked up suddenly, though not to look at Köves but at a small dish Alice had set down in front of him, this time with a white-coated petit four on it, while Köves got his beer and promptly emptied it in one draught. Whether it was because of the drink going to his head, or because the question, against his will, had been ripening in his head and now wanted to pop out, he asked smilingly, like someone who, purely for the fun of it, of course, was going along with the game:

  “And what they will decide in that room about me, for example, do you suppose?”

  “You see, that’s the big mistake people generally make.” Berg too now smiled, and all at once everything strange now peeled off him (or maybe it was precisely his strangeness which had now become familiar to Köves), though he was suddenly struck by the queer, albeit possibly deceptive hunch that Berg was also a foreigner—who knows, possibly an older compatriot who had fetched up there longer ago and therefore knew the ropes better than he did. “It’s you who has to decide,” Berg went on. “Here they merely give you the opportunity, and then what they do in the room is take cognizance of your decision.”

  “And do you suppose,” the scene that Berg had, as it were, painted for him seemed rather incredible, yet—possibly through its very vividness—it still gripped his imagination, “do you suppose that such a room really exists?”

  “It may be that in reality it doesn’t exist,” Berg shrugged his shoulders almost absent-mindedly, “But the possibility exists. And the worry is: What if it exists after all, and adding to that the uncertainty over whether it does, indeed, exist?—that’s enough.”

  “For what?” Köves asked.

  “To permeate every single life.”

  But Köves was not satisfied with that answer:

  “It’s not enough for me,” he said. Then after an interval, pensively and showing his puzzlement in confidence to Berg, he noted, “I don’t see any method here.”

  “That is precisely what is methodical about it,” Berg countered immediately, his face twitching slightly as if he were offended by Köves’s doubts.

  Köves, however, resolved that he was not going to be won round as easily as that:

  “The fact that I don’t see it,” he asked, “or that it is unmethodical?” Berg’s response to which:

  “The two together”—only dissatisfied him even more.

  “That is just an assumption, he said, “empty words, no evidence. It lacks something …,” Köves searched for the word. “Yes,
” he eventually said, “it lacks life.”

  “Life?” It was now Berg’s turn to look surprised. “What’s that?” Köves was frank in quietly admitting:

  “I don’t know.” But he added straightaway: “Perhaps no more than that we live.” Glimpsing in the corner of his eye that the man in the uniform was taking his leave of Sziklai, and Sziklai was already searching round for him, Köves suddenly got up from the table:

  “I’ll see you!” he said, to which Berg nodded without a word, plainly not seeking to hold him up, whereupon he hurried over to Sziklai and beheld, with a warm, cosy feeling, the way his friend’s face was transformed by the laughter which was wrinkling his countenance:

  “I’ve joined the fire brigade!” Sziklai relayed his news.

  “How’s that?” Köves joined in the laughter as Sziklai related that the “guy” with whom he had been “negotiating” just beforehand was the city’s deputy fire chief, whom he, Sziklai, had got to know quite some time before:

  “When I was with the paper, I did him a few favours,” he said. “At the fire brigade they have now woken up to the fact that fighting fires is actually a daring, hazardous and heroic calling that the public at large, and even the firemen themselves, are not fully alive to: they just put out fires, but in effect without being aware of what they are doing. In short, every trick of the letter, the word and conceptual impact has to be mobilized to awaken a sense of self-esteem in them, and public esteem toward them, to which end they would be willing, moreover, to allocate a substantial sum of money, if they were able to find an appropriate expert.”

  “Which would be you?” Köves enquired.

  “Who else?” Sziklai laughed. “Born for it, I was.” The guy, he related, offered him the rank of lieutenant, but he would only have to wear the uniform on official and festive occasions.

  “I have a hunch,” he mused, “that for him I’ve come at just the right moment.”

  “How’s that?” Köves asked.

  “Because I’ve been fired and it’s the only chance I’ve got,” explained Sziklai. “Don’t you see?” he looked at Köves, at which Köves admitted:

  “Not exactly.”

  “Get away with you!” Sziklai fumed. “They need the publicity, they have the cash for it, money to burn, but he can’t get at it directly, so what do you think he wants?”

  “Aha!” Köves said, just to be on the safe side, and:

  “There you are!” Sziklai too finally regained his composure. “Now all we have to do is find something for you,” he continued.

  “Me?” said Köves, “I’ll find a job tomorrow.”

  “Where’s that?” Sziklai was surprised, with Köves replying:

  “Anywhere,” and recounting that two men had been asking after him. “They were from customs,” he added. Sziklai scratched his head:

  “Yikes!” he grimaced. “Let’s try to think it over,” he suggested, though Köves reckoned:

  “There’s nothing to think over,” and Sziklai had to concede, albeit grudgingly, that he was right.

  “All that worries me,” he fretted, “is that you’re going to vanish, that you’ll be lost to me in the depths of somewhere.”

  And as if the smile with which Köves had greeted his words were bearing out his anxieties even more emphatically, he exclaimed:

  “And what’s going to become of the comedy?!” Yet evidently, even now, he could not have read anything encouraging from Köves’s expression, because he went on: “I won’t forget about you; I’ll definitely find something for you sooner or later,” he hastened, agitatedly, to assure him. Köves expressed his thanks, and they agreed that “whatever might happen” they would continue to meet there, in the South Seas, after which Köves said good-bye, saying he wanted to get up early the next morning, paid Alice for his supper, then came to a halt for a moment by the exit, because at that very moment the revolving door spun and in came Tiny, the pianist, who greeted Köves with an expansive and overdone gesture.

  “Which bench,” Köves asked after returning the salutation, “will you be gracing with your presence tonight?”

  “None,” the pianist said: he looked more uncared-for than usual, his face shone greasily, his polka-dot bow tie was missing, and Köves caught a sour whiff of alcohol.

  “Are you not worried any longer about being taken away?” asked Köves.

  “Sure I am,” the musician replied, “but I’m even more worried that I’ll get rheumatism!” at which, mouth open wide, he laughed long and loud at his own joke—if that’s what it was and he was not speaking in all seriousness—as if he never wished to stop, during which Köves noticed that there were a number of gaps between his long teeth, which was a rather belated observation, or so he thought, considering that he had once spent a whole night in his company.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Matutinal intermezzo

  One morning when Köves hastily pulled the front door to behind him (in reality it was closer to dawn, as nowadays Köves was working in a steelworks, and the factory was far away, so Köves always ought to have set off from home earlier than he did), he was brought to a standstill by an unusual clamour in the normally still stairwell. Sharp, explosive sounds prised at and reverberated against the walls: the innocuous barking of a dog, but magnified to an intolerable pandemonium by the resonant stairwell, and in the turn of the stairs above Köves there now appeared a ruddy-cheeked face in a frame of snow-white hair. Köves’s first sensation—no doubt the product of ceaseless dashing around, which was gradually making him blind to his surroundings and view every chance event, whatever its nature, as representing merely another obstacle—was one of frugal grouchiness: he would now have to waste some of his precious time on unavailing courtesies. Even so, the old fellow’s garb almost brought a smile to his face: although the promise of a sweltering day ahead had already crept into the closed space of the stairwell, the elderly gentleman was wearing heavy walking boots, thick woollen socks, shorts, and a windcheater, with a large rucksack pressing down on his shoulders, a heavy suitcase in one hand, and the other clutching his dog to his chest, and on spying Köves the dachshund instantly started barking again, while his tail, that animated spokesman of canine delight, drummed like a rain shower on the windcheater’s fabric. Köves was just about to move on, a perfunctory greeting on the tip of his tongue, when two other men attracted his attention. They were behind the old fellow and were young, each of them also carrying a suitcase, doubtless not their own but the old fellow’s—they were travelling cases of sorts, flaunting on their sides the faded remains of gaudy stickers; Köves was sent off into a daydream on spotting on one of them surf and the sun-shaded terrace of a bathing resort hotel—clearly assisting him, forming a single, cohesive group, so that Köves might well have taken them for the old fellow’s porters had he not noticed the uniforms they were wearing and their sidearms.

  It was too late for Köves to hurry down the stairs in front of them as if he had not seen them, or perhaps to give voice to some degree to what he felt, along with a disapproving shaking of the head; nor could he jump back into the apartment (the idea of doing so fleetingly crossed his mind, but Köves would have considered that bad manners, for want of a better phrase on the spur of the moment); then again, of course, the paralyzing effect of surprise could have played a part in his just standing there, frozen, rooted to the spot.

  The old fellow, who at first, it seemed, had wanted to pass him without a word—and that would have been the best as Köves, with hardly any loss of time, would have been able to hurry down straight after them and race out of the entrance hall and on to the tram stop, in blind haste, so to speak—all at once now came to a standstill after all, and partly by way of an explanation, partly just a little, perhaps (although quite likely it only came across like that to Köves), by way of an apology, yet also, at one and the same time, as if he were calling on Köves to act almost as a witness to his case, spoke in his wooden voice, which was even less sonorous than usual:
/>   “So, it’s come to this, Mr. Köves.”

  Köves was just about to ask something (though as to what, he didn’t know, of course, as this was hardly the place for questions: he might at most have wished the old fellow good luck, if that had not sounded absurd even before he could get it out), but instead one of the customs men broke the silence, and although Köves didn’t make a precise note of his words the gist of them was that the old fellow should stop “loafing around” and “get a move on.” He even raised a free hand, and Köves became seriously alarmed: for him to become a passive onlooker to an act of violence was something which—or so Köves felt, at least at that moment—would be too much for him.

  Yet nothing happened, whereas the old fellow, as though suddenly awakening to the strengths residing in his defencelessness, went on unperturbed:

  “Fortunately, I’ve been permitted to bring my dog along,” and he gave a wry smile, as though that were now the sole concession granted him in life, and he should be thankful for even that. The dog, as though sensing they were talking about it, started to wriggle in the old fellow’s arm, barking to be set down on the ground, wanting to get at Köves’s feet, while the customs men looked impatient (they may have feared that the yapping might draw people out of the apartments, on top of which it could not have been fully in line with regulations for them to be hauling the old fellow’s luggage after him like servants: no doubt they had been constrained to do it solely by their haste, for who knows what sort of night, and how much work, lay behind them, or who may have been hurrying them along in turn, as a result of which the second customs man, in irritation, which seemed to be intensified by his inability to do anything with Köves present, told the old fellow off for speaking when he was forbidden to do so, while the first one, by way of underlining the point as it were, swung round to address Köves: