by Imre Kertész
I believe I see it clearly now: you fear my confessions. That is of no interest to me, though; far from putting me off, if excites and stimulates me. I am familiar with the fear aroused in people by our appearance alone: that jackbooted, pistol-on-belt, formidably overpowering appearance, in which there was also, against your will, a trace of reluctant, nauseated pleasure, precisely because it was against your will—oh yes, I am familiar with that feeling, which set me off on my career, and which I subsequently, out of revenge for myself as it were, pursued with ever-growing passion, trembling from the desire that others should also experience it; that it should enslave others, eat deep into their souls and stir up in them a licentious freedom, the abominable, soul-destroying pleasure that they live through in their fear—as I say, I am familiar with the fear, which this time I wish to transplant into you as a moral lesson, not by means of my aggressively real but my magical appearance; that is, by the representation of myself through words and language.
And this is the point where I feel, distinctly feel, that I have no reason to blush before the aforementioned blessed souls as far as my intentions go; that in respect of its blessedness my self-revelation is in no way inferior to theirs, assuming you have the courage, in the course of unfolding my excessively and wildly individual career, to recognize what it is in me that is blessed for yourselves. Which is, first and foremost, the fact that it was me who went through my career, not you.
I have the feeling that this way of formulating what I have to say is somewhat abstruse and might give rise to misunderstandings that will then invite your deliberate misunderstanding. I need to speak clearly, like all those who have the aim of struggling against the stubborn resistance that the world has displayed to implacable truths. But then, why should I beat about the bush? My blessedness lies precisely in my implacability, in which all of us should spot our selfish motives, as you shall see later on. So, what was it that I wanted to say? Nothing other than that you should recognize your salvation in my excessively wild fate, inasmuch as it might have been your fate, and inasmuch as I lived it, not despite, but instead of you.
Now that I am saying these words—I first said them to myself before writing them down and then saying them again, to my liking, out loud, which I would suggest the Reader do as well—I am seized by an unprecedented excitement, because I feel that I have finally managed to capture the essence of the thoughts and emotions which are churning confusedly inside me; indeed, the essence of my fate, the essence of the feeling that basically determined my career, which has made me so responsive to the will of my surroundings and is so typical of my covertly intimate relationship with the world. Now, that last sentence of the preceding paragraph is what this strange sensitivity of mine dictated to me. Yes, when I committed my definitive act—the first act of murder, which subsequently proved to be an irrevocable choice, just because it had happened, and because it could have happened—that is, the opportunity was presented to do it, and in point of fact an opportunity was not presented to do anything else—so when, under pressure of external compulsion, I committed my definitive act, that pressure of external force, as you will see in the course of the ensuing plot, was not present at all—it did no more than simply accumulate within me, became an inner compulsion, which is to say that it returned to its original form. Because the external compulsion was merely secondary, nothing more than a projection of a genuine will, which comes true if reality favours it. And the loose strands of an external compulsion which were not the bonds of a genuine will could easily be torn asunder by the world. But no, the world did nothing; it awaited events with bated breath; it wanted to see what would happen, only then to be horrified by it—horrified by itself. When I set off on my career, and steadily worked my way through it, all that happened was that, with my extraordinary responsiveness, I had understood the will of the world, your will—or if you prefer: the will you have conceived against your consciences—and, by the reality of my acts and career, I redeemed and returned to you your consciences. You, however, with an inconsistency typical of the world, will not hear of it, and the more you recognize the vitality of the relationship between us, the more you will deny it, and all the more I shall be seen by you as loathsome. I, on the other hand, stick to my guns, and like a conductor who, at the end of a concert, will point to the orchestra with a sweeping gesture as a way of indicating that the source of the success is to be sought in their common effort, so I point to yourselves—but then, of course, you will know that it is actually me you must applaud; that is, me you must string up.
In itself, though, that would be in order; that is the role which has been reserved for me in the game and which I have taken on, albeit not without some reluctance, and not exactly with good grace, since, as a result of the foregoing, I have a refined sense for ceremonial games; and no charge would distress me more than to be called a spoilsport of such fastidious games, though you will have no reason to do so, I feel, given my performance. There is just one thing I bridle against, which is that people will try to ascribe the moral composure, to which my every word bears witness, to my depravity, though it is nothing other than true inner peace.
I can already hear the question: How can that be? Surely this can’t be someone who wishes to sing the praises of a career which flouted the general consensus so blatantly and deviated from the world so profligately that he has ended up before the tribunal of the court? Yet that is precisely my intention. Because if I were not to do that, I would be misleading the Reader, who otherwise would never understand the strange grace in which I partake.
Yes, grace, I said. Because if someone can look back on his life with composure—burnt-out and weary, immensely weary, maybe, but still with composure—that is grace and, in itself, a victory. For I have to admit that I am as amused as much as I am saddened by the world’s propensity, stemming partly from simple-mindedness, partly from deliberate prejudice, to interpret my career as a failure, as a failure primarily in a practical moral sense, and to force that notion on me with self-important fuss. At the same time, I sense an eager longing in this pushy attempt, an urgent but basically clumsy entreaty, as if it depended on me, on my keenly and anxiously awaited words, for the world to be given back its childish faith in its ideals. Everything here turns on one question, and in this the world now displays what for it is an unusually fine discriminatory power, and that is on whether I feel guilty. Because the fact of my guilt has already been decided, otherwise I would not be locked up in here, subjected to the hassles of interrogations. But that is not what is important here, and, to my greatest amazement, those who have undertaken to be my judges are on the right track when they make a distinction between crime and consciousness of guilt. Because the moral significance of a sentence, the liberating effect to which every sentence lays a claim, if it considers that it is founded on morality, in my case depends solely on me, stands or falls on me, on my endorsing it, on my transfiguring it, on my raising it to an intellectual plane through my consciousness of guilt. How great the sympathy, how great the compassion, and then again how great the contempt with which I view this unfortunate demand, which simply underlines now shaky the ground is on which the world’s moral balance rests!
It is not me, then, who is the spoilsport: it is you. You, who disown me, who wish to hear no word about a tacit agreement existing between us, and fastidiously turn up your noses just on hearing about that possibility; when you now wish to see my fate, which we have transformed into what it has become, by common consent, merely an excessively wild individual, which has nothing to do with what is in common, and which it would be best to be rid as soon as possible, and then, after the obligatory shuddering, quickly forget all about.
You will have to realize that it’s my duty to protest against a bogus solution like that—my duty, for one thing, out of self-awakening, philanthropic unsparingness, for another, in the interests of preserving my dignity, which cannot tolerate being cheated so treacherously for the sake of cheap peace of mind.
> If you are inclined to look more deeply into yourselves, you will understand me. Because, Ladies and Gentlemen, we have been hopelessly locked up together with one another in this world in miserable camaraderie; everything which happens carries such significance that we can no longer disperse it, nullify it, deny it from each other. We have to accept one another and our stories, and, even in the most extreme case, we have no other choice than to weigh up how, in the given situation, we can get away with even the mildest of our past deeds. And if everything that I shall relate to you further on is perceived by you in this way, then both parties, yourselves and I, will be able to get something out of it, although in the final analysis I truly do not know, in this respect, who will have the simpler task: you, who will be living on under the burden of my fate, or I, whom, through my likely removal from your midst, you will charitably excuse from further life. At all events, I draw my composure from the thought that my educationally-intended autobiography has in this way taken sweet vengeance for my fate on a world which allowed, tolerated, and thus wished for, this fate—sweet vengeance, I say, and ultimately I have striven to prepare your minds so carefully in order to make them sensitive to that vengeance.
Grounds, objections and a sad final conclusion
Having let the final sheet of paper drop onto the table, Berg looked up at Köves, who now shifted position on the creaking and uncomfortable seat (he had not dared bat an eyelid during the reading), and asked in a tense, eager tone:
“And then?…,” like someone who was not looking for a breather but rather expecting it to go straight on.
Berg, however, spread his hands slightly:
“That’s it,” he smiled.
“What do you mean?!” Köves spluttered. “You didn’t even get started!”
“To be precise, you heard the preface,” Berg informed him. “That’s as far as I have got. The rest has yet to come.”
“All of it, in other words!” Köves seemed disappointed, if not actually annoyed. “All I’ve heard so far is preaching, a pile of assertions that I can either believe in or not, because …,” Köves searched for the right word, and, it seems, he had not graduated from the hard school of Sziklai’s tuition for nothing, “… because there is no plot underpinning it!” was how he finally phrased his stricture, which was not exactly tactful, and Berg’s brow appeared to darken for a moment, but then he perhaps realized that Köves’s impatience, at root, must have been fed by approbation, or at least involvement.
“At least give me an idea what happens over the course of the plot,” Köves grumbled. “Who is that fellow, anyway? Who did he take as his model?”
“Who would I take it from if he were foreign to me?” Berg responded to the question with a question.
“You mean to say,” Köves was incredulous, “you are that fellow?”
“Let’s just say that’s one of the possibilities,” Berg replied. “One possible path to grace.”
“And what other paths might be possible?” Köves wanted to know.
“That of the victim,” came the answer.
“And then?…,” Köves pestered further.
To this, however, Berg responded:
“Only two paths are offered here.” A short pause ensued, with Berg groping like a blind man in the direction of the petits-fours, alighting upon the green one, grasping it, then putting it back and instead raising the chocolate-coloured one, but promptly dropping that too, hastily, resolutely, as if he were responding to a pledge that had been resuscitated from forgetfulness.
“And writing?” Köves piped up again. “Isn’t writing grace?”
“No,” Berg’s high voice snapped back as a curt yelp.
“Well what, then?”
“Deferment. Ducking. Dodging,” Berg itemized. “The postponement—impossible of course—of the election of grace.”
“In other words,” Köves asked, “you are either executioner or victim?”
“Both,” Berg answered in a slightly impatient tone, like someone who is required to provide information on matters that have long been known. His glance skimmed over the table until it stopped on a slip of paper, which he now lifted up from amongst his papers. ‘ “It might perhaps be pleasant,’ ” he read off it, “ ‘to be alternately victim and executioner.” ’ Berg put the slip down and again glanced at Köves. “That’s what the writing says, and I am its realizer,” he said.
“What writing is that?” Köves inquired. “Did you write it?”
“No,” Berg replied. “When it was written the time had not yet come. The time,” his clear voice chimed out as if he were not speaking but singing, “is here now.”
He fell silent, leaned back against the tile stove and, perhaps to stop them from being able to move, folded his arms on his chest and bowed his head. A little bit later he spoke the same way again, head bowed, as if he were not speaking to Köves, just as he had done in the South Seas when they had got to know each other:
“For a long time man was superfluous, but free. It was up to him to beg for what was necessary, or in other words, for grace—as I have already said, they are the same thing. Now, though,” he raised his voice, “man is just superfluous, and he can only redeem his superfluousness by service.”
“What sort of service?” Köves asked after the passage of what he judged to be a decent pause.
“The service of order.” Berg again raised his discomfitting gaze.
“What sort of order?” Köves was a rather timid about putting a further question, fearing that Berg might get sick of the conversation before it was time, but he could not miss out on a chance to possibly learn something.
An answer came back, however, even if it bore a noticeable touch of irritation:
“That’s a matter of indifference; it’s enough for it to be order.” Berg again hunted, and this time he took hold of a scribbled sheet. “Here we are,” he said in doing so, “a few words that were left out of the preface but will definitely have to be fitted into the work somewhere else,” and then started reading: “Because, Ladies and Gentlemen, if things go on like they are, life’s demands will soon exceed the bounds of man’s moral capacity, and believe me: man will only be redeemed by order, by setting those demands into an enthralling system …”
It seemed it was now Köves’s turn to lose his patience:
“You’re constantly using words that,” he didn’t even wait for Berg to stop speaking, “that I never hear anyone else using. ‘Moral capacity’!” he exclaimed. “What do you mean by ‘moral’?”
“Sensitivity to crime,” Berg replied.
“Crime!” Köves fumed on. “And what’s a crime?”
“Man,” said Berg with a short, cool smile.
“Man!” Köves reiterated. “And what is man’s crime?”
“That he is accused,” said Berg.
“Accused of what?” Köves dug in.
“Of being guilty.”
“But of what does his crime consist?” Köves wouldn’t give way.
“Of being accused,” and although this had brought them full circle, Köves cried out as if there must still be some way of breaking out of this:
“But what’s the good of that?”
“Of what?” Berg asked.
“Of accusing man!” and here a cold, bloodless smile again appeared around Berg’s fleshy lips:
“To make him understand his superfluousness, and, having understood his superfluousness, to yearn for grace in his misery.”
“I see.” Köves fell silent for a while, though it seemed he was far from reconciled to the answer.
He then suddenly asked:
“Does there exist another world, besides the one in which we live?”
“How could it exist?!” Berg appeared to be truly hurt. “It is not allowed to exist,” he added severely, as if he were forbidding it.
“Why not?” Köves enquired.
“Because it would complete our spoliation. Plus it would make even our superfluousness superfluou
s.”
“In that case,” Köves now posed the question, “who is your ‘executioner’ addressing all along?” In so doing he may well have touched on a sore point for Berg, because only after a protracted and visibly difficult struggle did he commit himself to answering:
“Even if it seems that another world comes into existence while one is writing, it is only on account of the blasted demands of the genre that it seems so, on account of the blasted demands of the game, the blasted demands of irony … anyway, it can only seem that way because the other world doesn’t exist,” he said in the end.
“But it must still exist in our hopes all the same,” came Köves’s quiet objection.
“It can’t exist, because there is nothing in which we can hope,” was Berg’s instant retort.
“Yet you write nevertheless.” Köves was doubtful.
“What do you mean by that?” Berg asked.
“That you hope all the same,” Köves asserted.
“In other words,” and a faint, affronted smile appeared on Berg’s lips, “you’re accusing me of deception?”
“You draw the boundaries too tight.” Köves strove to avoid giving a straight answer. “Something,” he faltered, “something is missing from the construction …”
“Yes,” there was a glint of mockery in Berg’s eyes, “I know what you’re going to say now: life.”
“Precisely,” Köves agreed. “You speak about order, and you confuse that with life.”
