by Imre Kertész
Later on, I came to know a bit about him. For it might happen that the surgery would be very busy and others were present. At such times Pyetchka would set me down from his shoulder onto a bench at the side, and I would have to wait there until the doctor, with a breezily peremptory call of, for instance, “Komm, komm, komm, komm!” and with what is in fact a friendly yet, all the same, not exactly agreeable flourish grabs me by the ear, pulls me toward him, and hoists me in a single motion onto the operating table. On another occasion, I might happen to drop by in the midst of a veritable throng, with orderlies fetching and carrying away patients, the ambulant sick arriving, other doctors and orderlies also at work in the room, and it might happen on such occasions that another, lower-ranking doctor performs on me whatever treatment is scheduled, as it were modestly off to the side, away from the operating table in the center of the room. I made the acquaintance of, and might even say got on friendly terms with, one of them, a gray-haired man, on the short side, with a slightly aquiline nose, likewise bearing a red triangle with no letter and a number which, though maybe not of two or three digits, was still in the highly exclusive thousands. It was he who mentioned, and Pyetchka indeed subsequently confirmed, that our doctor had now spent twelve years in concentration camps. “ Zwölf Jahre im Lager,” he said in hushed tones, nodding repeatedly, with a face that was, so to say, saluting some rare, not entirely plausible, and at least in his view, as best I could tell, plainly unattainable feat. I even asked, “Und Sie?” “Oh, ich,”27and his face changed immediately, “seit sechs Jahren bloss,” just six years, he disposed of it with a single dismissive wave of the hand as being nothing, a mere trifle, not worth mentioning. In truth it was more a matter of him interrogating me, asking how old I was, how I had ended up so far from home, which is how our conversation started. “ Hast du irgend etwas gemacht?”—had I done anything, he asked, something bad perhaps, and I told him I had done nothing, “ nichts,” absolutely nothing. So why was I there anyway? he inquired, and I told him that it was for the same simple reason as others of my race. Still, he persisted, why had I been arrested, “verhaftet,” so I recounted to him briefly, as best I could, what had happened that morning with the bus, the customs post, and later the gendarmerie. “Ohne dass deine Eltern . . .” or in other words, he wanted to know if, by any chance, that had been without my parents’ knowledge, so naturally I said “ohne.” He looked utterly aghast, as if he had never heard of such a thing before, and it passed through my mind too that he must have been well insulated from the world in here, then. What is more, he promptly passed on the information to the other doctor who was busy there, beside him, and he in turn on to other doctors, orderlies, and the smarter-looking patients. In the end, I found that people on all sides were looking at me, heads shaking, and with a most singular emotion on their faces, which was a little embarrassing because, as best I could tell, they were feeling sorry for me. I felt a strong urge to tell them there was no need for that after all, at least not right at that moment, but I ended up saying nothing, something held me back, somehow I couldn’t find it in my heart to do so, because I noticed that the emotion gratified them, gave them some sort of pleasure, the way I saw it. Indeed—and I could have been mistaken of course, though I don’t think so—but later on (for there were one or two other occasions on which I was similarly questioned and interrogated) I gained the impression that they expressly sought out, almost hunted for, an opportunity, a means or pretext for this emotion for some reason, out of some need, as a testimony to something as it were, to their method of dealing with things perhaps, or possibly, who knows, to their still being capable of it at all; and in that form it was somehow pleasing, for me at least. Afterward, though, they exchanged glances in such a manner that I looked around in alarm that some unauthorized eyes were watching, but all my gaze encountered were these similarly darkening brows, narrowing eyes, and pursing lips, as if all at once something had again occurred to them and, to their mind, been confirmed: maybe the reason why they were here, I could not help thinking.
Then there were the visitors, for example: I would look at them too, trying to figure out, to fathom what wind, what business, might have brought them. What I noticed, first and foremost, was that they usually came toward the end of the day, generally always at the same time, from which I realized that here in Buchenwald too, in the Main Camp, it seemed there might well be an hour exactly like at Zeitz, here too, no doubt, likewise presumably between the time the work details returned to barracks and the evening Appell. Those in the greatest numbers, perhaps, were prisoners carrying “P” markings, but I also saw the occasional “J,” “R,” “T,” “F,” “N,” and even “No” and heaven knows what else besides; in any event, I noticed many interesting things, and through them learned a lot that was new to me, indeed in that way gained a somewhat more precise insight into circumstances here, the conditions and social life, if I may put it that way. The original inmates at Buchenwald are almost all good-looking, their faces full-fleshed, their movements and step brisk; many are also permitted to keep their hair, and even the striped prison uniform tends to be put on only for daily wear at work, as I also observed with Pyetchka. If he were preparing to pay a visit, once our own bread ration had been distributed (the usual one-third or one-quarter loaf, along with the customarily dispensed or customarily withheld Zulage), then he too would select from his wardrobe a shirt or pullover and to go with that—while perhaps striving to pretend before the rest of us, and yet, for all that, with a pleasure that declared itself in the expression on his face and his gestures—a fashionable brown suit with a pale pinstripe, whose only imperfections were, on the jacket, a square cut out of the very middle of the back and mended with a patch of material from prison duds, and on the trousers, a long streak of indelible red oil paint down the legs on either side, not to forget the red triangle and prisoner’s number on the chest and left trouser leg. A greater nuisance, or I might even call it an ordeal, arose for me when he was preparing to welcome a guest in the evening. The reason for this was an unfortunate aspect of the room’s layout, for somehow or other the wall socket happened to be right by the foot of my bed. Now, however hard I might try to keep myself occupied at these times, staring at the immaculate whiteness of the ceiling and the enameled lampshade, immersing myself in my thoughts, when it came down to it I could not help but be aware of Pyetchka as he squatted down there with a mess tin and his own personal electric hot plate, hear the spitting of the margarine as it heated up, inhale the intrusive aroma of the onion rings frying on it, the slices of potato that were then added, and eventually, possibly, the wurst of the Zulage that was diced in or, on another occasion, notice the distinctive light clunk and sudden surge of sizzling caused (it was caught by my eyes just as I averted them again, though they long remained near-dazzled in total stupefaction) by a yellow-centered, white-fringed object—an egg. By the time everything was fried and ready, the supper guest himself would have come in. “Dobre vecher!” he says with a friendly nod, because he too is Polish; Zbishek by name, or Zbishkoo as it sounded at other times, perhaps in certain compounds or as a diminutive, and he likewise fulfills the office of Pfleger somewhere across the way, so I have been told, in another Saal. He too arrives all dressed up, in low ankle-boots of the kind suitable for sport or hunting, a dark blue serge jacket, though naturally this too has a patch on the back and a prisoner number on the chest, and under that a black turtleneck sweater. With his tall, burly frame, his head bald-shaven, either of necessity or maybe of his own free choice, and the cheerful, canny, and alert appearance of his plump face, I find him, all things considered, a pleasant, likable chap, even though I, for my part, would not willingly trade him for, say, Pyetchka. They sit down at the larger table at the back, eat their supper, and chat, with one or another of the Polish patients in the room occasionally dropping in a quiet word or comment, or crack jokes, or test their strength, elbows planted on the table and hands gripped, in the course of which—to the delight of eve
ryone in the room, myself included naturally—though Zbishek’s arm looks stronger, Pyetchka will generally manage to force it down; to put it succinctly, I realized that the two of them shared their blessings and disadvantages, joys and worries, all their concerns, but evidently also their wealth and rations, or in other words, they were friends, as they say. There were others too, besides Zbishek, who would drop in for a quick word with Pyetchka, occasionally with some object very hastily changing hands, and although I was never really able to see what it was, this too was always essentially obvious and easy to understand, naturally. Yet others would arrive to see one or another of the patients, hurriedly, scurryingly, furtively, all but surreptitiously. They would sit down on the bed for a minute, possibly set some little parcel wrapped in a scrap of cheap paper down on the blanket, humbly and, even more than that, somehow almost con-tritely. Then, although I could never make out what they were whispering (and even if I had, would not have been able to understand), it was as though they were asking: How are you doing, then? What’s new? and reporting that this or that was how things were going on the outside, passing on that so-and-so had said hello and had asked after him, assuring that greetings would be passed back, sure thing, then realizing that time was up, giving pats on arms and shoulders, as though to say never mind, they would come again very soon, and with that were already on their way, still scurryingly, hurriedly, usually visibly pleased with themselves, and yet otherwise, as far as I could make out, without any other upshot, advantage, or tangible profit, so I had to suppose that their sole reason for coming, it seemed, was for those few words, for nothing other than for them and the patient in question to be able to see one another. Apart from that, and even if I were unaware of it, the haste in itself would be indication enough that they were obviously doing something prohibited that presumably could only be accomplished by Pyetchka’s turning a blind eye and, no doubt, on condition of its being brief. Indeed, I suspect, and on the basis of a fair bit of experience would venture to assert outright, that the risk in itself, that stubbornness, one could even say defiance, was to some extent part of the event, or at least that is what I gathered from their expressions, hard to read as they were but, so to say, lighting up with the successful completion of some piece of rule-breaking, as if (or so it seemed) they had thereby managed to change something after all, to punch a hole in or chip away at something, a particular order, the monotony of the daily routine, to a small extent at nature itself, at least the way I saw it. The oddest people of all, however, were those whom I saw by the bed of one of the patients who was lying along the partition wall opposite me. He had been brought in during the morning on the shoulders of Pyetchka, who then spent a lot of time fussing over him. I realized it must be a serious case and also heard that the patient was Russian. That evening visitors half-filled the room. I saw a lot of “R’s” but also plenty of other letters, fur caps, strange padded trousers. Men with hair on one half of the head, for example, but a completely shaved scalp from the center to the other ear; yet others with normal hair except for a long strip right down the middle, from the forehead to the nape of the neck, corresponding in width precisely to the ravages of a hair-clipping machine; jackets with the customary patch and also two crossed brushstrokes of red paint rather like when one deletes something unnecessary— a letter, a number, or a sign—from what one has written; on other backs a big red circle with a fat red point in the middle stood out from far away, invitingly, enticingly, signaling like a target as it were: this is where to shoot, if need be.
They stood there, hanging about, quietly conferring, one leaning over to adjust the pillow, another—as best I could see—possibly attempting to interpret what the patient was saying or a look he was giving, when all of a sudden I saw a glint of yellow, then a knife and, with Pyetchka’s assistance, a metal mug materialized, a crunchy rasping—and even had I not believed my own eyes, my nose was now able to give irrefutable proof that the object I had just seen was, no two ways about it, truly a lemon. The door opened again, and I was utterly dumbfounded to see that this time the doctor hurried in, an occurrence that I had never previously witnessed at that uncustomary time of day. People immediately made way for him; he bent over the patient to examine and palpate something, only briefly, then vanished just as quickly and moreover with an extremely glum, stern, one could say snappish look on his face, without having addressed so much as a single word to anyone, even cast so much as a single look at anyone, indeed somehow rather trying to avoid the glances that were being directed at him—or at least that is how it seemed to me. Before long, I saw the visitors had fallen strangely silent. One or another separated from their midst to go over to the bed and bend down over the patient, after which they started to drift away in their ones and twos, just as they had come. Now, however, they were a bit more despondent, a bit more haggard, a bit more weary, and somehow even I myself felt sorry for them at that moment, because I could not help noticing that it was as if they had finally lost their hope, however irrationally it might have been sustained, or their faith, however secretly it may have been nourished. A while later, Pyetchka very circumspectly set the corpse on his shoulder and took it away somewhere.
Last of all, there was also my own guy, for example. I came across him in the washroom, seeing that, bit by bit, it no longer even occurred to me that I might be able to wash anywhere other than at the water tap over a washbasin in the bathroom at the end of the corridor, and even there not out of any compulsion, merely out of a sense of propriety, as I gradually came to find out; as time went by, indeed, I even noticed that I was almost starting to take exception to the fact that the place was unheated, the water cold, and there was no towel. Here too you could see one of those portable red contraptions resembling an open cupboard, the invariably spotless inner receptacle of which was maintained, changed, and kept clean by some mystery person. On one occasion, just as I was about to leave, a man walked in. He was good-looking, his brushed-back mop of silky black hair slipping back in unruly fashion over his brow on both sides, his complexion having that slightly olive shade sometimes seen with very dark-haired people, and from his being in the prime of manhood, his well-groomed external appearance and his snow-white smock, I would have taken him to be a doctor had the inscription on his armband not informed me he was merely a Pfleger, while the letter “T” in the red triangle told me he was Czech. He halted, seemingly surprised, even a little bit astonished perhaps, at my presence, from the way he looked at my face and the neck poking out from my shirt, my sternum, my legs. He immediately asked me something, and, using a phrase that had stuck with me from the Polish conversations in the ward, I said “ Nye rozumen.” So he inquired in German who I was and where I came from. I told him Ungar, from here, Saal sechs, whereupon, bringing in an index finger to clarify his words, he said “Du: warten hier. Ik: wek. Ein moment zurück. Verstehen?”28He went off, then returned, and before I knew it I found that my hand was holding a quarter loaf of bread and a neat little can, the lid already opened and bent back, in which was an untouched filling of pinkish sausage meat. I looked up to thank him, only to see the door already swinging shut behind him. After I had returned to my room and tried to recount this to Pyetchka, describing the man in a few words, he immediately recognized that it must be the Pfleger from the room next door, Saal 7. He even mentioned the name, which I understood to be Bausch, though on reflection I think it is more likely he said Bohoosh. That, at any rate, is what I heard later from my new neighbor, because in the meantime patients in our room had come and gone. Above me, for instance, having already taken a patient out the very first afternoon I was there, Pyetchka soon brought a new one, a boy of my own age and, as I later found out, also race, though Polish speaking, who was called Kuhalski or Kuharski, as I heard it from Pyetchka and Zbishek, with the stress always on the “harski”; at times they cracked jokes with him, and they must have annoyed him, maybe even pulled his leg, because he was often fuming, at least as far as one could tell from the irritated ton
e of his voluble chattering and thickening voice and the bits of straw that were sprinkled through the gaps between the wooden cross-boards onto my face by his tossing and turning on these occasions— to the great amusement of all the Polish speakers in the room, as I could see. Somebody also came in place of the Hungarian patient in the bed next to mine, another boy, though at first I had little luck in ascertaining where he was from. He and Pyetchka could make themselves understood, yet to my now steadily more practiced ear he did not sound entirely Polish. He did not respond to my Hungarian, but, what with the carroty hair he was now beginning to sprout, the freckles dotted over a fairly full-fleshed face that suggested a very tolerable manner, the blue eyes that seemed to quickly size up and soon get the measure of everything, I immediately found him a little suspect. While he was making himself comfortable, settling down, I spotted blue marks on the inner surface of his forearm: an Auschwitz numbering, in the millions. It was only one afternoon, when the door burst open and Bohoosh entered to set down on my blanket, as had become his regular practice once or twice a week, his gift—this time too, as usual—of bread and a tin of meat, and without leaving time for even a greeting, and with barely a nod to Pyetchka, before he was already off and away, that it turned out the boy spoke Hungarian, and what’s more at least as well as I do, because he asked straight off: “Who was that?” I told him that, as far as I knew, it was the Pfleger from the next room, Bausch by name, and that was when he corrected me: “Bohoosh, perhaps,” seeing as that was a very common name in Czechoslovakia, he declared, and that was where he himself was from, as it happened. I asked why he had not spoken Hungarian before now, to which he replied that it was because he did not like Hungarians. He was quite right, I had to admit; all things considered, I myself would find it hard to find much reason to like them. He then proposed that we speak Hebrew, but I had to confess I didn’t understand that, so as a result we stayed with Hungarian. He told me his name too: Luiz, or maybe Loyiz, I didn’t quite catch it. But I did note, “Ah! Lajos, in other words,” however, he strongly objected to that, seeing as it is Hungarian whereas he was Czech and insisted on the distinction: Loiz. I asked him how he came to know so many languages, so he then told me that he actually came from Slovakia, but along with the great bulk of his family, relatives, and acquaintances had fled from the Hungarians, or “the Hungarian occupation” as he termed it, and that sparked off a memory of an event back home, long ago, when flags were flown, music played, and a day-long celebration had imparted the jubilation that was felt on Slovakia again being reannexed to Hungary. He had arrived in the concentration camp from a place that, as far as I could make out, was called “Terezin.” He remarked, “You probably know it as Theresienstadt.” I assured him that no, I didn’t know it by either name, not at all, at which he was utterly amazed, though somehow in much the same way as I was used to being amazed at people who had never heard of the Csepel customs post, for example. He then explained: “It’s the ghetto for Prague.” He maintained that, apart from Hungarians and Czechs, and of course Jews and Germans, he was also able to converse with Slovaks, Poles, Ukrainians, and even, at a pinch, Russians. In the end, we got on quite famously; I told him, since he was curious, the story of how I had become acquainted with Bohoosh, then my initial experiences and impressions, what had passed through my mind the very first day in regard to the room, for instance, which he found interesting enough to translate for Pyetchka as well, who laughed uproariously at me; likewise my fright over the Hungarian patient and Pyetchka’s response, which was that it had been expected for days, so it was pure coincidence that his death had come right then; and there were other things too, though I was now finding it irritating that he started every sentence with “ten matyar,” or in other words, “this here Hungarian,” before getting down, obviously, to he says such and such; but this turn of phrase, fortunately, somehow seemed to escape Pyetchka’s attention, as far as I could see. I also noticed, though without thinking about it or drawing any inferences from it, how conspicuously often, and always for a prolonged period, he seemed to have things to attend to outside, but it was only when once he returned to the room with bread and a tin of food, obviously stuff that had come from Bohoosh, that I was somewhat surprised—quite unreasonably, no two ways about it, I had to acknowledge. He said that he too had met Bohoosh by chance in the washroom, just like me. He had been addressed just the same way as me, and the rest had happened just as it had with me. The difference was that he had also been able to speak with him, and it had turned out they were from the same country, and that had really delighted Bohoosh, which was natural enough after all, he maintained, and I had to agree that indeed it was. Looking at it rationally, I found all this, on the whole, entirely understandable, clear, and reasonable; I held the same view as he plainly did, at least insofar as it emerged from his final, brief remark: “Don’t be mad at me for taking your guy,” or in other words, from now on he would be getting what up till now I had been getting, and I could watch while he had a bite to eat, just as he had watched me before. I was all the more astonished when scarcely a minute later Bohoosh bustled in through the door, this time heading straight for me. From then on, his visits were meant for both of us. On one occasion he would bring a ration for each of us separately, on another just one in total, depending on what he could manage, I suppose, but in the latter case he never omitted a hand gesture to indicate that it was to be shared fraternally. He was still always in a hurry, wasting no time on words; his face was still always preoccupied, sometimes care-laden, indeed at times almost angry, all but furious, like someone who now had a doubled burden, a twofold obligation to carry on his shoulders but has no other option than to bear it, since it has landed on him; I could only suppose that this was merely because he apparently took pleasure in it; in a certain sense, he needed this, this was his method of dealing with things, if I may formulate it in such terms, because whichever way I looked at it, puzzled over, or pondered it, I was quite unable to hit on any other explanation, particularly in light of the price that could be commanded, and the great demand there was for such scarce commodities. Even so, I think I came to understand these people, at least by and large. In light of all my experiences, piecing together the entire chain, yes, there could be no doubt, I knew it all too well myself, even if it was in a different form: in the final analysis, this too was just the selfsame factor, stubbornness, albeit, I had to admit, a certain highly refined and, in my experience, so far the most fruitful and, above all, make no mistake, for me the most useful form of stubbornness, there was no disputing that.
