Fatelessness

by Imre Kertész

  Then it was time for me too to say good-bye to Father. Or maybe more for him to say good-bye to me. Hard to say. I don’t even clearly remember the circumstances; my father must have gone outside with the guests, because for a while I was left on my own at the table, covered as it was with the remains of the supper, and I only came to with a start on Father’s return. He was alone. He wanted to say good-bye. There won’t be time for that at dawn tomorrow, as he put it. He too recited much the same sorts of things about my responsibility and my growing up as I had already heard before that afternoon from Uncle Lajos, only without God and not so nicely phrased, and much more briefly. He also mentioned my mother, suggesting that she might try now “to lure me away from home to herself.” I could see that notion troubled him greatly. The two of them had battled for a long time over my custody until the court eventually ruled in my father’s favor, so I found it quite understandable that he would not wish to lose his rights in regard to me now merely as a result of his unfortunate situation. Still, he appealed to my judgment, rather than the law, and to the difference between my stepmother, who had “created a cozy family home” for me, and my mother, who had “deserted” me. I started to prick up my ears at this, because on that particular detail I had heard a different story from my mother: according to her, Father had been at fault. That is why she had felt driven to choose another husband, Uncle “Dini” (or Dénes, to be more correct), who had incidentally gone off just last week, likewise to labor camp. In truth, though, I had never managed to figure out anything more precise, and even this time my father immediately reverted to my stepmother, remarking that I had her to thank for getting out of the boarding school, and that my place “is here, by her side.” He said a lot more about her, and by now I had a shrewd idea why my stepmother was not present for these words: they would no doubt have embarrassed her. They began to be a bit wearisome for me, however. I no longer remember now what I promised Father. The next thing was that, all at once, I found myself enfolded between his arms, his hug catching me off guard and somehow unprepared after all he had said. I don’t know if my tears stemmed from that or simply from exhaustion, or maybe even because, ever since the first exhortation that I had received that morning from my stepmother, I had somehow been preparing all along to shed them unfailingly; whatever the reason, it was nevertheless good that this was indeed what happened, and I sensed that it also gratified Father to see them. After that he sent me off to bed. By then I was dead tired anyway. All the same, I thought, at least we were able to send him off to the labor camp, poor man, with memories of a nice day.

  TWO

  Already two months have passed since we said good-bye to Father. Summer is here, but it’s been ages since, back in springtime, the grammar school let us out on holiday, adverting to the war that’s going on. Indeed, aircraft often come over to bomb the city, and since then they have brought in still newer laws about Jews. For the last two weeks I myself have been obliged to work. I was informed by official letter that “you have been assigned to a permanent workplace.” The form of address ran “Master György Köves, trainee ancillary worker,” from which I could see straightaway that the Levente cadet movement had a hand in the matter. But then I also heard that people like me who are not yet old enough to be drafted as fully fit for labor service are nowadays being placed in employment at factories and places of that sort. Along with me, for much the same reason, there is a group of eighteen or so boys who are also around fifteen years old. The workplace is in Csepel, at a company called the “Shell Petroleum Refinery Works.” As a result, I have actually acquired a privilege of sorts, since under any other circumstances those wearing yellow stars are prohibited from traveling outside the city limits. I, however, was handed legitimate identity papers, bearing the official stamp of the war production commander, which provide that I “may cross the Csepel customs borderline.”

  The work itself, by the way, cannot be said to be particularly strenuous, and so as it is, given the gang of us boys, is even fairly entertaining, consisting of assisting with bricklaying duties. The oil works was the target of a bombing raid, and it is our job to try and make good the damage done by the aircraft. The foreman whom we have been put under treats us pretty decently as well; at the end of the week he even adds up our wages just like for his regular workforce. My stepmother, though, was thrilled most of all about the identity papers, because up till then every time I set off on any journey, she always got herself worked up about how I was going to vouch for myself should the need arise. Now, though, she has no reason to fret as the ID testifies that I am not alive on my own account but am benefiting the war effort in the manufacturing industry, and that, naturally, puts it in an entirely different light. The family, moreover, shares that opinion. Only my stepmother’s sister moaned a little, since it means I have to do manual labor, and with tears all but welling into her eyes, she asked if that was all my going to grammar school had come to. I told her that in my view it was simply healthy. Uncle Willie took my side straightaway, while even Uncle Lajos advised that we must accept God’s ordinances in regard to us, at which she held her tongue. Uncle Lajos then drew me aside to exchange a few words of a more serious nature, among which he exhorted me not to forget that when I was at the workplace I was not representing myself alone but “the entire Jewish community,” so I must mind my behavior for their sake too, because on that basis judgments would be formed with regard to all of them collectively. That would truly never have occurred to me; still, I realized that he might well be right, of course.

  Father’s letters also arrive promptly from the labor camp: he is in good health, thank goodness, he is bearing up well under the work, and the treatment is also decent, he writes. The family is also reassured by their tone. Even Uncle Lajos takes the view that God has been with my father so far, urging us to pray daily for Him to continue to look out for him, given that His power has command over all of us. Uncle Willie, for his part, declared that in any case all we had to do now was somehow hang on through “a brief transitional period,” because, as he argued, the landings by the Allied powers had now “definitively sealed the fate” of the Germans.

  So far, I have been able to get on with my stepmother without any differences of opinion. She, by stark contrast, has been obliged to remain idle as she has been ordered to close the shop, since those who are not of pure blood are forbidden to engage in commerce. Yet it looks as though Father was lucky in placing his bet on Mr. Süt, for as a result every week he now unfailingly brings round what is due to my stepmother out of the profits of the lumberyard that is now in his hands, just as he promised my father. He was punctual the other day too, counting out a tidy sum of money onto our table, so it seemed to me. He kissed my stepmother’s hand and even had a few friendly words for me. He inquired in detail after “the boss’s” health, as usual. He was just preparing to say good-bye when one further thing sprang to his mind. He took a parcel out of his briefcase. There was a slightly embarrassed look on his face. “I trust, my dear lady,” those were his words, “that this will come in handy for the household.” The parcel contained lard, sugar, and other items of that kind. I suspect he must have got them on the black market, perhaps because he too must no doubt have read about the decree that from now on Jews would have to make do with smaller rations in the domain of food supplies. My stepmother tried to protest at first, but Mr. Süt was very insistent, and in the end, naturally, she could hardly object to the attentiveness. When we were by ourselves, she even asked me whether, in my opinion, she had acted correctly in accepting. She had, I considered, because there was no way she could offend Mr. Süt by refusing to accept the parcel; after all, he meant well. She was of the same opinion, saying she thought my father would also approve of her course of action. I cannot say I supposed any differently myself, but anyway, she usually knows better than I do.

  Twice a week I also visit my mother, as usual, on the afternoons to which she is entitled. I am now having more problems with her. Just as Fathe
r predicted, she really is quite irreconcilable to the idea that my place is beside my stepmother, saying that I “belong” to her, my natural mother. But as best I know the court awarded in my father’s favor, so in that light his word is surely what goes. Yet this Sunday too my mother was badgering me about what kind of life I want to live, because in her view all that matters are my wishes and whether or not I love her. I told her, of course I love her! But my mother explained that love means being “attached to someone,” and as she sees it I am attached to my stepmother. I tried to convince her that she was wrong to see it that way, for after all it wasn’t me who was attached to my stepmother but, as she knew full well, that was what Father had decided. Her response to that, though, was that this was about me, my own life, and I should be making that decision for myself, and furthermore, love “is proved by actions, not words.” I came away feeling rather troubled: naturally I could not allow her to go on supposing that I didn’t love her, but then on the other hand I could not take entirely seriously what she had said about the importance of my wishes, and that it was up to me to decide on my own affairs. When all is said and done, it was their quarrel, and it would be embarrassing for me to pass judgment on that. Anyway, I cannot be disloyal to Father, particularly not now, while he is in the labor camp, poor man. All the same, I boarded the streetcar with uncomfortable feelings, for of course I am attached to my mother, and naturally it bothered me that again I could do nothing for her today.

  That lousy feeling may perhaps have been the reason why I was none too eager to take leave of Mother. It was she who insisted it would be late, given that those with yellow stars are only permitted to show themselves on the street up to eight o’clock. But I explained to her that now that I have the identification papers, I no longer need to be so dreadfully punctilious about each and every regulation.

  For all that, I still climbed onto the rearmost platform of the last car of the streetcar as usual, in compliance with the pertinent regulation. It was getting close to eight when I reached home, and although the summer evening was still light, people were already starting to set the black- and blue-colored boards in some windows. My stepmother was also showing signs of impatience, though in her case that was more just out of habit, because I have the ID papers, after all. That evening, as usual, we spent at the Fleischmanns’. The two old codgers are well, still arguing a lot, but even they had been as one in favoring the idea of my going to work, in their case too due to the ID, naturally. In their enthusiasm, they still contrived to quarrel a little. With my stepmother and I not knowing the way out toward Csepel, we asked them for directions the first time we went. Old Fleischmann suggested the suburban train service whereas Uncle Steiner plumped for the bus, because it stops directly by the oil works, he said, but one was still left with a walk from the train—and that is, in fact, the case, as it turned out. We weren’t to know that then, however, and Uncle Fleischmann got extremely worked up: “It’s always you who has to be right,” he groused. In the end, the two fat wives had to step in. Annamarie and I laughed about them a lot.

  As to her, by the way, I am now in a somewhat peculiar situation. The incident occurred the day before yesterday, during the alert on Friday night, down in the air-raid shelter, or to be more precise, in one of the deserted, dimly lit cellar passages onto which it opens. Originally, I only wanted to show her that it was more interesting to follow what is happening on the outside from there. But when, about a minute later, we heard a bomb actually go off nearby, she started trembling all over. It was really good, because in her terror she clung to me, her arms around my neck, her face buried in my shoulder. All I remember after that was searching for her lips. I was left with the vague experience of a warm, moist, slightly sticky contact. Well, and also a kind of happy astonishment, for it was my first kiss with a girl after all, besides which I had not been reckoning on it right then.

  Yesterday, on the stairwell, it emerged that she too had been very surprised. “It was all because of the bomb,” she considered. Basically, she was right. Later on, we kissed again, and that was when she taught me how to make the experience more memorable by also doing certain things with your tongues.

  This evening too I was with her in the other room to look at the Fleischmanns’ ornamental fish, because in truth we have frequently been in the habit of looking at them at other times anyway. This time, of course, that was not quite the only reason for us to go there. We made use of our tongues as well. Still, we returned quickly, because Annamarie was afraid that her uncle and aunt might suspect something was up. Later on, while we were talking, I learned one or two interesting things as to her thoughts about me: she said she would never have imagined “a time would come when I might mean something else” to her other than merely “a good friend.” When she got to know me, she took me, at first, for just another adolescent. Later on, though, she admitted, she had looked a bit closer, and a certain empathy toward me had sprung up in her, maybe, she supposed, due to our similar lot with regard to our parents, while from the occasional remark I made she had also concluded that we think about certain things in a similar way; yet even so, she had not suspected any more than that. She mused a little on how odd that was, and even said, “It seems it was meant to happen this way.” She had a strange, almost severe expression on her face, so I didn’t argue with her, even though I was more inclined to agree with what she said yesterday about it being because of the bomb. But then, of course, what do I know about anything, and anyway, as far as I could see, this other way was more to her liking. We said good-bye soon after that, as I had to go to work the next day, but when I took her hand, she dug sharply into my palm with her fingernails. I understood it was her way of hinting at our secret, and the look on her face was as if to say “everything’s okay.”

  The next day, though, her behavior was decidedly odd. In the afternoon, having come back from work and first washed myself down, changed shirt and shoes, and run a wet comb through my hair, I went with her to visit the sisters, because Annamarie had in the meantime carried out her original plan of arranging to introduce me to them. Their mama too was pleased to welcome me (their father is away on labor service). They have a fair-sized apartment with a balcony, carpets, a couple of larger rooms, and a separate, smaller room for the two girls. This is furnished with a piano and lots of dolls and other girlish knickknacks. We usually play cards, but today the older sister was not in the mood. She wanted to talk to us first about something that has been preoccupying her recently, since the yellow star has been giving her plenty to puzzle over. In fact, it was “people’s looks” that had woken her up to the change, because she finds that people’s attitudes toward her have altered, and she can see from their looks that they “hate” her. She had observed that this morning as well, while she was out shopping for her mama. To my way of thinking, though, she was making a bit too much of it. My own experience, at any rate, is not quite the same. At the workplace, for instance, everyone knows that some of the bricklayers there can’t stand Jews but they have still become quite friendly with us boys. Not that this does anything to change their views, of course. Then again, the example of the baker came to mind, so I attempted to explain to the girl that they did not really hate her, that is to say not her personally, since they have no way of knowing her, after all—it was more just the idea of being “Jewish.” She then said she’d been thinking the same thing right before, because when you get down to it she doesn’t even know exactly what “Jewish” is. Annamarie, admittedly, said to her that everyone knows: it’s a religion. What interested her, however, was not that but its “sense.” “After all, people must know why they hate,” she reckoned. She confessed that at first she’d been unable to make any sense of the whole thing, and it had hurt her terribly that they despised her “merely because she is Jewish”; that’s when she had felt for the first time that, as she put it, something singles her out from those people, she belongs to some other category. That had started her thinking, and she had tried to find out
more about it all from books and conversations, which was how she had come to recognize that they hated her precisely for that. It was her view, in fact, that “we Jews are different from other people,” and that difference was the crux of it, that’s why people hate Jews. She also remarked how peculiar it was to live “being aware of that differentness,” and that sometimes she felt a sort of pride but at other times more a shame of sorts because of it. She wanted to know how we felt in regard to our differentness, whether we were proud of it or rather ashamed. Her younger sister and Annamarie didn’t really know; I myself hadn’t so far been able to find a reason for these feelings either. Anyway, a person cannot entirely decide for himself about this differentness: in the end, that is precisely what the yellow star is there for, as far as I know. I told her as much, but she dug her heels in: the difference is “carried within ourselves.” According to me, however, what we wear on the outside is the more crucial. We argued a lot about this, though I can’t think why, because to be honest I didn’t see any of it as being all that important. Still, there was something in her line of thought that somehow exasperated me; in my opinion it’s all a lot simpler. Besides which, I also wanted to win the argument, naturally. At one point or another, it seemed that Annamarie wanted to say her piece, but she didn’t get a chance even once, as by then the two of us were not paying much attention to her.