Fatelessness

by Imre Kertész

  I would maintain that there are certain concepts which can be fully comprehended only in a concentration camp. A recurrent figure in the dumb storybooks of my childhood, for instance, was that of a certain “itinerant journeyman” or “outlaw” who in order to win the princess’s hand enters the king’s service, and gladly so, because that amounts to only seven days altogether. “But seven days with me means seven years to you,” the king tells him. Well, I can say exactly the same about the concentration camps. I would never have believed, for instance, that I could become a decrepit old man so quickly. Back home that takes time, fifty or sixty years at least; here three months was enough for my body to leave me washed up. I can safely say there is nothing more painful, nothing more disheartening than to track day after day, to record day after day, yet again how much of one has wasted away. Back home, while paying no great attention to it, I was generally in harmony with my body; I was fond of this bit of machinery, so to say. I recollect reading some exciting novel in our shaded parlor one summer afternoon, the palm of my hand meanwhile caressing with pleasing absentmindedness the golden-downed, pliantly smooth skin of my tautly muscular sunburned thigh. Now that same skin was drooping in loose folds, jaundiced and desiccated, covered in all kinds of boils, brown rings, cracks, fissures, pocks, and scales that itched uncomfortably, especially between my fingers. “Scabies,” Bandi Citrom diagnosed with a knowing nod of the head when I showed him. I could only wonder at the speed, the rampant pace, with which, day by day, the enveloping material, the elasticity, the flesh around my bones dwindled, atrophied, dissolved, and vanished somewhere. Every day there was something new to surprise me, some new blemish, some new unsightliness on this ever stranger, ever more foreign object that had once been my good friend: my body. I could no longer bear looking at it without a sense of being at war with myself, a species of abhorrence; for that reason alone, after a while, I no longer cared to strip off to have a wash, to say nothing of my antipathy to such superfluous exertions, to the cold, and then too, of course, to my footwear.

  These devices, at least in my case, caused a great deal of vexation. In general I had little reason to be satisfied with the items of clothing with which I was equipped in the concentration camp; there was not much of the practicable, and a lot that was faulty about them, indeed they became direct sources of inconvenience; they failed to measure up at all, I can safely say. During spells of fine gray drizzle, for instance, which with the change of season were prolonged when they occurred, the burlap outfit was transformed into a stiff stovepipe, the clammy touch of which one’s skin strove to avoid in any way possible—quite in vain, naturally. A prison overcoat (these were issued, it has to be said in all fairness) was quite worthless here, just another handicap, yet another damp layer, and in my view no satisfactory solution was provided even by the coarse paper from a cement sack that Bandi Citrom, like many others, had filched for himself and wore under his jacket, in spite of all the risks, since this sort of transgression soon comes to light: it only takes the whack of a stick on the back and another on the chest for the rustling to make the offense manifest. On the other hand, if it no longer crackles, I ask you, then what is the use of the fresh annoyance of this soaking-wet pulp, which again can only be discarded?

  The wooden shoes, though, are the most irksome. It all started with the mud, in actual fact. Even in this respect, I can tell you, the notions I had formed hitherto turned out to be inadequate. Naturally, I had already seen, even trampled in, mud back home, yet I still had no clue that mud can at times be the arena for the bulk of one’s cares, one’s very life. What it means to sink up to one’s calves in it, then put all one’s efforts into freeing one leg from it with a single, loudly squelching tug, only to plunge it in anew, no more than eight or twelve inches farther forward—in no way was I prepared, indeed it would have been pointless to be prepared, for all that. Now, one thing that has become clear about the clogs is that the heels wear down over time. When that happens, one has to go around on a thick sole that at a certain point suddenly thins and thus curves up in a gondola shape, requiring one to rock forward on the rounded sole like a sort of tumbler toy. On top of that, at the place where the former heel had been, a gap, widening day by day, opens up between the stiffer uppers and the extremely thin sole, so now cold mud, not to speak of tiny pebbles and sharp bits of debris of all kinds, can stream in unobstructedly at every step. Meanwhile those stiff uppers have long been chafing one’s ankles and abraded countless sores on the softer tissues below them. Now, those sores by their very nature suppurate, and that pus is definitely sticky, with the result that it becomes impossible to free oneself from the clogs: they become stuck to the feet, veritably fused to them, rather like new body parts as it were. I wore them during the day and also wore them on turning in to sleep, if only so as not to waste time when I got up, or to be more precise, jumped down from my bunk two, three, sometimes even four times during the night. That’s all very well at night: after a bit of bother, stumbling and slipping around in the mud outside, one somehow manages to find one’s way to the goal by the glare of the searchlights. But what is one supposed to do by day, exactly what, if the urge to empty one’s bowels seizes one— as it inevitably will—in the work detail? At a time like that, one plucks up every ounce of courage, bares one’s head, and begs the guard’s permission: “Gehorsamst, zum Abort”22— assuming, of course, there is a privy nearby, and specifically a privy that the prisoners may make use of. But let us suppose they do exist—suppose one’s guard is well disposed and grants permission once, grants it a second time; but then—I ask you!—who is going to be so rash, so desperate, as to test that patience a third time? The only thing left at a time like that is mute turmoil, teeth clenched, bowels continually quaking, until the dice have rolled and either one’s body or one’s mind wins out.

  As a final means, there are the beatings—whether expected or unexpected, sought or sedulously avoided—anywhere and at any time. I had my fair share of them too, naturally, no more but also no less than normal, the average, the ordinary, like anyone, any one of us—as many as are consistent with purely routine conditions in our camp rather than any particular personal accident. Inconsistent as it may be, I have to relate that I came in for these, not from an SS serviceman—someone who is in fact to some degree professionally called upon, authorized, even obliged in that respect—but from a yellow-overalled member of a more shadowy semimilitary “Todt” organization that, so I gather, has some sort of supervisory role over workplaces. He happened to be around and spotted it—Oh, what a yell! what a sprint!—when I dropped a bag of cement. Now, carrying cement must be welcomed by every Kommando—rightly so, in my opinion—with a peculiar joy that is accorded only on rare occasions and to which we would find it hard to admit, even privately among ourselves. You bow your head, someone lays a bag over your shoulder, you amble over to a truck with it, and there someone else picks it up, after which you amble back, taking a nice wide detour, the bounds of which are determined by the vagaries of the moment, and if you are lucky they will be queuing up in front of you, so you can snatch another breather until it’s your next turn. Then again, the bag itself weighs around twenty to thirty pounds altogether—child’s play compared with back home, one could even safely play ball with it, I reckon; but here I was, stumbling and dropping it. Worse still, the bag’s paper had burst and the contents spilled out, leaving a heap of the material, the treasure, the costly cement, powdering the ground. By then he was already on me, I had already felt his fist on my face, then, having been decked, his boot on my ribs and his grip on my neck as he pressed my face to the ground, in the cement, screaming insanely that I scrape it together, lick it up. He then hauled me to my feet, swearing he would teach me: “Dir werd ich’s zeigen, Arschloch, Scheisskerl, verfluchter Judehund,”23so I would never drop a bag again in the future. From then on, he personally loaded a new bag onto my shoulders each time it was my turn, bothering himself with me alone; I was his sole concern, it was me
exclusively whom he kept his eye on, following me all the way to the truck and back, and whom he picked to go first even if, by rights, there were others still ahead of me in the queue. In the end, there was almost an understanding between us, we had got the measure of one another, and I noticed his face bore what was almost a smile of satisfaction, encouragement, even, dare I say, a pride of sorts, and from a certain perspective, I had to acknowledge, with good reason, for indeed, tottering, stooping though I might have been, my eyes seeing black spots, I did manage to hold out, coming and going, fetching and carrying, all without dropping a single further bag, and that, when it comes down to it, I would have to admit, proved him right. On the other hand, by the end of the day I felt that something within me had broken down irreparably; from then on, every morning I believed that would be the last morning I would get up; with every step I took, that I could not possibly take another; with every movement I made, that I would be incapable of making another; and yet for all that, for the time being, I still managed to accomplish it each and every time.

  SEVEN

  Cases may occur, situations present themselves, that no amount of ingenuity could possibly make worse, it would seem. I can report that, after so much striving, so many futile attempts and efforts, in time I too found peace, tranquillity, and relief. For instance, certain things to which I had previously attributed some vast, practically inconceivable significance, I can tell you, lost all importance in my eyes. Thus, if I grew tired while standing at Appell, for example, without so much as a look at whether it was muddy or there was a puddle, I would simply take a seat, plop down, and stay down, until my neighbors forcibly pulled me up. Cold, damp, wind, or rain were no longer able to bother me; they did not get through to me, I did not even sense them. Even my hunger passed; I continued to carry to my mouth anything edible I was able to lay my hands on, but more out of absentmindedness, mechanically, out of habit, so to say. As for work, I no longer even strove to give the appearance of it. If people did not like that, at most they would beat me, and even then they could not truly do much harm, since for me it just won some time: at the first blow I would promptly stretch out on the ground and would feel nothing after that, since I would meanwhile drop off to sleep.

  Just one thing inside me grew stronger: my irritability. If anyone should encroach on my bodily comfort, even just touch my skin, or if I missed my step (as often happened) when the column was on the march, for example, and someone behind me trod on my heel, I would have been quite prepared instantly, without a moment’s hesitation, without further ado, to kill them on the spot—had I been able to, of course, and had I not forgotten, by the time I raised my hand, what it was I had in fact wanted to do. I even had rows with Bandi Citrom: I was “letting myself go,” I was a burden on the work squad, he would catch my scabies, he reproached me. But above all else, it was as if I somehow embarrassed or worried him in a certain respect. I became conscious of this one evening when he took me with him to the washroom. My flailing and protests were to no avail as he stripped me of my clothes with all the strength he could muster; my attempts to pummel his body and face with my fists to no avail as he scrubbed cold water over my shivering skin. I told him a hundred times over that his guardianship was a nuisance to me, he should leave me alone, just eff off. Did I want to croak right here, did I maybe not want to get back home, he asked, and I have no clue what answer he must have read from my face but, all at once, I saw some form of consternation or alarm written all over his, in much the same way as people generally view irremediable trouble-makers, condemned men or, let’s say, carriers of pestilence, which was when the opinion he had once expressed about Muslims crossed my mind. In any event, from then on, he tended to steer clear of me, I could see that, while I, for my part, was finally relieved of that particular bother.

  There was no way I could shake off my knee, however, and an increasingly persistent pain in it. After a few days I inspected it, and for all my body’s accommodation to many things by now, I nevertheless thought it advisable to promptly shield myself from the sight of this new surprise, the flaming red sac into which the area around my right knee had been transformed. I was well aware, naturally, that a Revier24was functioning in our camp as well, but then, for starters, the consulting hour coincided with supper time, and in the end I placed higher priority on that than on any treatment, and then too various incidents, this and that bit of knowledge of the place itself and of life, did not exactly boost one’s confidence. For another, it was a long way off, two tents farther over, and unless forced by absolute necessity, I would not willingly have embarked on such a lengthy excursion, not least because my knee was by now extremely painful. Eventually, Bandi Citrom and one of our bunk-mates, forming a cradle with their hands, a bit like storks are said to carry their young to safety, took me over anyway, and after I had been set on a table I was given a warning, well in advance, that it was most likely going to hurt as immediate surgery was unavoidable, which for lack of any anesthetic would have to be done without that. As far as I could make out what was going on, a pair of crosswise incisions were made above the knee with a scalpel, and through that they expressed the mass of matter that was in my thigh, then bandaged the whole lot up with paper. Right afterward I even mentioned supper and was assured that this would be taken care of, as indeed I soon found to be the case. That day’s soup was turnip and kohlrabi, which I am very partial to, and the portions doled out for the Revier had palpably been taken from the bottom of the vat, which was another reason to be satisfied. I also spent the night there, in the Revier tent, in a box on the uppermost tier that I had all to myself, the only unpleasant aspect being that when the usual time for a bout of diarrhea came around, I was no longer able to use my own legs, while my efforts to call for help, first whispering, then out loud, and finally yelling, were likewise fruitless. On the morning of the following day, mine and a number of other bodies were hoisted up onto the soaking-wet sheet-iron flooring of an open truck to be transported to a nearby place that, if I heard rightly, goes by the name of “Gleina,” where our camp’s actual hospital is situated. En route a soldier seated on a neat folding stool, a damply glistening rifle on his knees, kept an eye on us in the back, his face visibly surly, grudging, and at times, presumably in response to an occasional sudden stench or sight he could not avoid, grimacing in disgust—not entirely without due cause, I had to admit. Particularly upsetting to me, it was as if in his mind he had come to some opinion, deduced some general truth, and I would have liked to excuse myself: I was not entirely the only one at fault here, and in fact this was not the genuine me—but then that would have been hard for me to prove, naturally, I could see that. Once we had arrived, first of all I had to endure a jet of water from a rubber pipe, a sort of garden hose, that was unexpectedly unleashed on me and probed after me whichever way I turned, washing everything off me: the remaining tatters of clothing, dirt, and even the paper bandage. But then they took me into a room where I was given a shirt and the lower of a two-tier bed of boards, and on that was even able to lie on a straw mattress that, although obviously tamped and pressed down fairly flat and hard by my predecessor, and mottled here and there with suspicious stains, suspicious-smelling and suspiciously crackling discolorations, was at least unoccupied and on which it was finally left entirely up to me how I spent my time and, most of all, to have a decent sleep at long last.

  It looks as though we always carry old habits along with us even to new places; in the hospital, I can tell you, I had to struggle at first with what even I myself found to be many inveterate and ingrained reflexes. Conscientiousness, for instance: to start with, it invariably awakened me at dawn on the dot. At other times I would start awake thinking I had slept through Appell and outside they were already hunting me; only after my racing heart had calmed down would I notice my error and accept what lay before my own eyes, the evidence of reality, that I was where I was, everything was all right, over this way someone was groaning, somewhat farther away people were chatting,
and over there someone else had his pointed nose, stony gaze, and gaping mouth trained mutely on the ceiling, that only my wound was hurting, and besides that at most, as at all times, I was very thirsty, presumably due to my fever, quite clearly. In short, I needed a bit of time until I had fully taken it in that there was no Appell, that I would not have to see soldiers, and, above all, did not have to go to work—advantages from which, for me at least, no inconsequential circumstance or illness, at bottom, could detract. From time to time, I too was taken up to a small room on the floor above, where the two doctors worked, a younger and an older one, with my being a patient of the latter, so to say. He was a lean, dark-haired, kindly looking man, in a clean uniform, with proper shoes, an armband, and a normal, recognizable face that put me in mind of an amiable, aging fox. He asked where I was from and recounted that he himself came from Transylvania. In the meantime he had stripped off the peeling and by now caked, greenish yellow wad of paper that had been rolled around the knee area, then, putting his weight behind both arms, squeezed from my thigh all the pus that had accumulated there in the interim, and finally, with some instrument resembling a crochet hook, poked a rolled-up length of gauze between skin and flesh—for purposes of “maintaining an open passage” and “the drainage process,” as he explained, lest the wound heal prematurely. For my part, I was happy to hear this as, when you came right down to it, I had nothing to do on the outside; if I really thought things through, of course, my health was hardly of such pressing concern to me. Another comment he made, though, was less to my liking. He reckoned the single perforation on my knee was not sufficient; in his opinion, a second opening ought to be made on the side and connected with the first by yet a third incision. He asked if I was prepared to brace myself for that, and I was utterly amazed that he was looking at me as if he were actually awaiting an answer, my consent, not to mention authorization. I told him, “Whatever you wish,” and he immediately said that in that case it would be best not to delay. He duly set to on the spot, but then I found myself obliged to act a little bit vocally, which, I could see, got on his nerves. He even commented several times: “I can’t work like this,” for which I tried to make excuses: “I can’t help it.” After making an inch or so of headway, he finally abandoned the attempt, without fully completing what he had planned to do; even so, he seemed tolerably well pleased, noting, “It’s better than nothing,” since now, he reckoned, he would at least be able to expel the pus from me at two sites. Time also went by in the hospital; if I happened not to be sleeping, then I would always be kept busy by hunger, thirst, the pain around the wound, the odd conversation, or the event of a treatment; but even without anything to occupy me, I can say that I got along splendidly merely by bearing this pleasantly tingling thought in mind, this privilege and the unbounded joy it always afforded. I would interrogate each new arrival for news from the camp: which block they were from, did they by any chance know of a guy called Bandi Citrom from Block Fünf, medium height, broken nose, front teeth missing, but no one could recall such a person. Most of the injuries I saw in the surgery room were similar to mine, likewise mainly on the thigh or lower leg, though some were higher up, on the hip, the backside, arm, even the neck and back, being what are known scientifically as “phlegmons,” a term I heard a lot, the presence and particularly high incidence of which was neither odd nor amazing under normal concentration camp conditions, as I learned from the doctors. A little later on, there started to arrive cases who had to have a toe or two amputated, sometimes all of them, and they recounted that it was winter out there in the camp, so their feet, being in wooden shoes, had frozen. On another occasion, some manifestly high-ranking personage, in a tailored prison uniform, entered the bandaging station. I distinctly heard a quiet “Bonjour!” from which, along with the letter “F” on his red triangle, I immediately worked out he was French, then from the “O. Arzt” inscribed on his armband that he was clearly the chief medical officer in our hospital. I stared at him for a long time, because it was ages since I had seen anyone so elegant: he was not particularly tall, but his uniform was nicely filled out by appropriate bulges of flesh on the bones, his face similarly padded, every feature unmistakably his own, with expressible emotions, recognizable nuances, a rounded chin with a dimple in the middle, his olive skin gleaming softly in the light that fell on it, the way skin had generally done once, in the old days, among people back home. I assessed him as being not very old, maybe around thirty. I saw that the doctors too perked up a lot, striving to please him, explaining everything, but noticed this was not so much in the way that was customary within the camp as somehow in accordance with the old and, as it were, instantly nostalgic custom back home, with the sort of discrimination, delight, and social graces that one displays when given an opportunity to display how capitally one understands and speaks some cultured language like, as in this instance, French. On the other hand, though, I could not help noting that this cannot have signified much to the chief doctor, for he looked at everything, gave an occasional monosyllabic answer, or just nodded, but taking his time, quietly, gloomily, listlessly, with an immutable expression of some despondent, all but melancholic emotion in his hazel eyes from first to last. I was dumbfounded as I could not work out what might give rise to that in such a well-off, well-heeled Prominent, who had moreover risen to such a high rank. I tried to search his face, follow his gestures, and it only gradually dawned on me that, make no mistake, when it came down to it, even he was obliged to be here, of course; only gradually, and this time not entirely without an element of astonishment, a sort of serene awe, did the impression grow on me, and I reckoned I was on to something, that if I was right, then it must, it seemed, be this situation—in a word, captivity itself—that was troubling him. I would have told him to cheer up, since that was the least of it, but I was afraid that would be temerity on my part, and then it occurred to me that I didn’t speak French anyway.