Fatelessness

by Imre Kertész

  Since I was really starting to feel my leg by the time I got to the station, and since, among the many streetcars there, one with the number I knew from the old days just happened to be swinging in ahead of me, I got on. On the open platform of the streetcar, a gaunt old woman with a queer, old-fashioned lace trimming on her dress edged away a bit to the side. Soon a man in cap and uniform came along and asked me to show my ticket. I told him I didn’t have one. He suggested I buy one, so I said I had just got back from abroad and didn’t have any money. He inspected my jacket, me, then the old woman as well, before informing me that there were travel regulations, they weren’t his rules but had been brought in by his superiors. “If you don’t buy a ticket, you’ll have to get off,” he declared. I told him my leg was hurting, at which, I couldn’t help noticing, the old woman abruptly turned away to face the outside scene, yet somehow, I had no idea why, with such an affronted air it was as if I had insulted her personally. However, at that moment, with a commotion already audible from some way off, a burly man with dark, matted hair burst through the doorway from the inside compartment. He was in an open-necked shirt and light linen suit, with a black box slung from a strap on his shoulder and an attaché case in his hand. What’s all this, he was shouting, and then ordered, “Give him a ticket!” handing, or rather thrusting, a coin at the conductor. I tried to thank him but he cut me off and, casting a furious look around, said, “More to the point, some people ought to be ashamed of themselves,” but the conductor was by then passing into the carriage while the old woman carried on gazing out into the street. His face calmer, he then turned toward me. “Have you come from Germany, son?” “Yes.” “From the concentration camps?” “Naturally.” “Which one?” “Buchenwald.” Yes, he had heard of it; he knew it was “one of the pits of the Nazi hell,” as he put it. “Where did they carry you off from?” “From Budapest.” “How long were you there?” “A year in total.” “You must have seen a lot, young fellow, a lot of terrible things,” he rejoined, but I said nothing. “Still,” he continued, “the main thing is that it’s over, in the past,” and, his face brightening, he gestured to the houses that we happened to be rumbling past and inquired what I was feeling now, back home again and seeing the city that I had left. “Hatred,” I told him. He fell silent at that but soon volunteered that, sadly, he had to understand why I felt that way. In any case, “under the circumstances,” he reckoned, hatred too had its place, its role, “even its uses,” adding that he supposed we could agree on that, and he was well aware whom I must hate. “Everyone,” I told him. He fell silent, this time for a longer period, before starting up again: “Did you have to endure many horrors?” to which I replied that it all depended what he considered to be a horror. No doubt, he declared, his expression now somewhat uneasy, I had undergone a lot of deprivation, hunger, and more than likely they had beaten me, to which I said: naturally. “Why, my dear boy,” he exclaimed, though now, so it seemed to me, on the verge of losing his patience, “do you keep on saying ‘naturally,’ and always about things that are not at all natural?” I told him that in a concentration camp they were natural. “Yes, of course, of course,” he says, “they were there , but . . . ,” and he broke off, hesitating slightly, “but . . . I mean, a concentration camp in itself is unnatural,” finally hitting on the right word as it were. I didn’t even bother saying anything to this, as I was beginning slowly to realize that it seems there are some things you just can’t argue about with strangers, the ignorant, with those who, in a certain sense, are mere children so to say. In any case, suddenly becoming aware that we had reached the square, still standing there, only a bit bleaker and less well tended, and that this was where I needed to get off, I told him as much. He stuck with me, however, and, pointing across to a shaded bench that had lost its backboard, suggested we sit down for a minute.

  He seemed somewhat uncertain at first. The truth was, he remarked, only now were the “horrors really starting to come to light,” and he added that “for the time being, the world stands uncomprehending before the question of how, how it could have happened at all.” I said nothing, but at this point he turned around to face me fully and suddenly asked, “Would you care to give an account of your experiences, young fellow?” I was somewhat dumbfounded, and replied that there was not a whole lot I could tell him that would be of much interest. He smiled a little and said, “Not me—the whole world.” Even more amazed, I asked, “But what about?” “The hell of the camps,” he replied, to which I remarked that I had nothing at all to say about that as I was not acquainted with hell and couldn’t even imagine what that was like. He assured me, however, that it was just a manner of speaking: “Can we imagine a concentration camp as anything but a hell?” he asked, and I replied, as I scratched a few circles with my heel in the dust under my feet, that everyone could think what they liked about it, but as far as I was concerned I could only imagine a concentration camp, since I was somewhat acquainted with what that was, but not hell. “All the same, say you could?” he pressed, and after a few more circles I replied, “Then I would imagine it as a place where it is impossible to become bored,” seeing as how that had been possible in the concentration camp, even in Auschwitz—under certain conditions of course. He fell silent for a while before going on to ask, though rather as if it were now somehow against his better judgment: “And how do you account for that?” After brief reflection, I came up with “Time.” “What do you mean, time?” “Time helps.” “Helps? . . . With what?” “Everything,” and I tried to explain how different it was, for example, to arrive in a not exactly opulent but still, on the whole, agreeable, neat, and clean station where everything becomes clear only gradually, sequentially over time, step-by-step. By the time one has passed a given step, put it behind one, the next one is already there. By the time one knows everything, one has already understood it all. And while one is coming to understand everything, a person does not remain idle: he is already attending to his new business, living, acting, moving, carrying out each new demand at each new stage. Were it not for that sequencing in time, and were the entire knowledge to crash in upon a person on the spot, at one fell swoop, it might well be that neither one’s brain nor one’s heart would cope with it, I tried to enlighten him somewhat, upon which, having meanwhile fished a tattered pack from his pocket, he offered me one of his crumpled cigarettes, which I declined, but then, having taken two deep drags, he set both elbows on his knees and leaned his upper body forward, not so much as looking at me, as he said in a somehow lackluster, flat tone, “I see.” On the other hand, I continued, the flaw in that, the drawback you might say, is that the time has to be occupied somehow. For instance, I told him, I had seen prisoners who had already been—or to be more accurate were still—in concentration camps for four, six, even twelve years. Now, those people somehow had to fill each one of those four, six, or twelve years, which in the latter case means twelve times three hundred and sixty-five days, which is to say twelve times three hundred and sixty-five times twenty-four hours, and twelve times three hundred and sixty-five times twenty-four times . . . and so on back, every second, every minute, every hour, every day of it, in its entirety. From yet another angle, though, I added, this is exactly what can also help them, because if the whole twelve times three hundred and sixty-five times twenty-four times sixty times sixtyfold chunk of time had been dumped around their necks instantaneously, at a stroke, most likely they too would have been unable to stand it, either physically or mentally, in the way they actually did manage to stand it: “That, roughly, is the way you have imagined it.” At this, still in the same position as earlier, only now instead of holding the cigarette, which he had meanwhile discarded, with his head between his hands and in an even duller, even more choking voice, he said: “No, it’s impossible to imagine it.” For my part, I could see that, and I even thought to myself: so, that must be why they prefer to talk about hell instead.

  Soon after that, though, he straightened up, looked at his watch, a
nd his expression changed. He informed me that he was a journalist, “for a democratic paper” moreover, as he added, and it was only at this point that it came to me which figure from the remote past, from this and that he had said, he reminded me of: Uncle Willie—albeit, I conceded, with about as much difference and indeed, I would say, authoritativeness as I could detect in, let’s say, the rabbi’s words and especially his actions, his degree of obstinacy, were I to compare them with those of Uncle Lajos. That thought suddenly reminded me, made me conscious, really for the first time in fact, of the no doubt shortly impending reunion, so I did not listen too closely to what the journalist said after that. He would like, he said, to turn our chance encounter into a “stroke of luck,” proposing that we write an article, set the ball rolling on “a series of articles.” He would write the articles, but basing them exclusively on my own words. That would allow me to make some money, the value of which I would no doubt appreciate at the threshold of my “new life”—“not that I can offer very much,” he added with a somewhat apologetic smile, since the paper was a new title and “its financial resources are as yet meager.” But anyway, the most important aspect right now, he considered, was not that so much as “the healing of still-bleeding wounds and punishment of the guilty.” First and foremost, however, “public opinion has to be mobilized” and “apathy, indifference, even doubts” dissipated. Platitudes were of no use at all here; what was needed, according to him, was an uncovering of the causes, the truth, however “painful the ordeal” of facing up to it. He discerned “much originality” in my words, all in all a manifestation of the age, some sort of “sad symbol” of the times, if I understood him properly, which was “a new, individual color in the tiresome flood of brute facts,” as he put it, after which he asked what I thought of that. I noted that before all else I needed to attend to my own affairs, but he must have misunderstood me, it seems, because he said, “No, this is no longer just your own affair. It’s all of ours, the world’s.” So I said, yes, that might well be, but now it was high time for me to get back home, at which he asked me to “excuse” him. We got to our feet, but he was evidently still hesitating, weighing something up. Might we not launch the articles, he wondered, with a picture of the moment of reunion? I said nothing, at which, with a little half smile, he remarked that “a journalist’s craft sometimes forces one to be tactless,” but if that was not to my liking, then he, for his part, had no wish “to push” the matter. He then sat down, opened a black notebook on his knee, speedily wrote something down, then tore the page out and, again rising to his feet, handed it to me. His name and the address of the editorial office were on it; after he had said farewell with a “hoping to see you soon,” I felt the cordial grip of his hot, fleshy, slightly sweaty palm. I too had found the conversation pleasant and relaxing, the man likable and well meaning. Waiting only until his figure had disappeared into the swarm of passersby, I tossed the slip of paper away.

  A few steps later I recognized our house. It was still there, intact, trim as ever. I was welcomed by the old smell in the entrance hall, the decrepit elevator in its grilled shaft and the old, yellow-worn stairs, and farther up the stairwell I was also able to greet the landing that was memorable for a certain singular, intimate moment. On reaching the second floor, I rang the bell at our door. It soon opened, but only as far as an inner lock, the chain of one of those safety bolts, allowed, which slightly surprised me as I had no recollection of any such device from before. The face peering at me from the chink in the door, the yellow, bony face of a roughly middle-aged woman, was also new to me. She asked who I was looking for, and I told her this was where I lived. “No,” she said, “ we live here,” and would have shut the door at that, except that my foot was preventing her. I tried explaining that there must be a mistake, because this was where I had gone away from, and it was quite certain that we lived there, whereas she assured me, with an amiable, polite, but regretful shaking of the head, that it was me who was mistaken, since there was no question that this was where they lived, meanwhile striving to shut—and I to stop her from shutting—the door. During a moment when I looked up at the number to check whether I might possibly have confused the door, I must have released my foot, so her effort prevailed, and I heard the key being turned twice in the lock of the slammed door.

  On my way back to the stairwell, a familiar door brought me to a stop. I rang, and before long a stout matronly figure came into view. She too, in a manner I was now getting accustomed to, was just about to close the door when from behind her back there was a glint of spectacles, and Uncle Fleischmann’s gray face emerged dimly in the gloom. A paunch, slippers, a big, ruddy head, a boyish hair-parting, and a burned-out cigar stub separated themselves from beside him: old Steiner. Just the way I had last seen them, as if it were only yesterday, on the evening before the customs post. They stood there, mouths agape, then called out my name, and old Steiner even embraced me just as I was, sweaty, in my cap and striped jacket. They led me into the living room, while Aunt Fleischmann hurried off into the kitchen to see about “a bite to eat,” as she put it. I had to answer the usual questions as to where, how, when, and what, then later I asked my questions and learned that other people really were now living in our apartment. “What else?” I inquired. Since they somehow didn’t seem to get what I meant, I asked “My father?” At that they clammed up completely. After a short pause, a hand—maybe Uncle Steiner’s, I suppose— slowly lifted and set off in the air before settling like a cautious, aging bat on my arm. From what they recounted after that, all I could make out, in essence, was that “unfortunately, there is no room for us to doubt the accuracy of the tragic news” since “it is based on the testimony of comrades in misfortune,” according to whom my father “passed away after a brief period of suffering . . . in a German camp,” which was actually located on Austrian soil, oh, what’s the name of it, dear me . . . , so I said “Mauthausen”—“Mauthausen!” they enthused, before recovering their gravity: “Yes, that’s it.” I then asked if they happened by any chance to have news of my mother, to which they immediately said but of course, and good news at that: she was alive and well, she had come by the house only a couple of months ago, they had seen her with their own eyes, spoken to her, she had asked after me. What about my stepmother, I was curious to know, and I was told: “She has remarried since, to be sure.” “To whom, I wonder?” I inquired, and they again became stuck on the name. One of them said “Some Kovács fellow, as best I know,” while the other contradicted: “No, not Kovács, more like Futó.” So I said “Süt,” at which they again nodded delightedly, affirming just as before: “Yes, of course, that’s it: Süt.” I had much to thank her for, “everything, as a matter of fact,” they went on to relate: she had “saved the family fortune,” she “hid it during the hard times,” was how they put it. “Perhaps,” mused Uncle Fleischmann, “she jumped the gun a little,” and old Steiner concurred in this. “In the final analysis, though,” he added, “it’s understandable,” and that in turn was acknowledged by the other old boy.

  After that, I sat between the two of them for a while, it having been a long time since I had sat on a comfortable settee with claret red velvet upholstery. Aunt Fleischmann appeared in the meantime, bringing in a decoratively bordered white china plate on which was a round of bread and dripping garnished with ground paprika and finely sliced onion rings, because her recollection was that I had been extremely fond of that in the past, as I promptly confirmed I still was. The two old men meanwhile recounted that “it wasn’t a picnic back here either, to be sure.” From what they related I gained an impression, the nebulous outlines of some tangled, confused, undecipherable event of which I could basically see and understand little. Instead, all I picked out from what they had to say was the continual, almost tiresomely recurrent reiteration of a phrase that was used to designate every new twist, turn, and episode: thus, for instance, the yellow-star houses “came about,” October the fifteenth “came about,” the Arrow-Cros
s regime “came about,” the ghetto “came about,” the Danube-bank shootings “came about,” liberation “came about.” Not to mention the usual fault: it was as if this entire blurred event, seemingly unimaginable in its reality and by now beyond reconstruction in its details even for them, as far as I could see, had not occurred in the regular rhythmic passage of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months but so to say all at once, in a single swirl or giddy spell somehow, maybe at some strange afternoon gathering that unexpectedly descends into debauchery, for instance, when the many participants—not knowing why—all of a sudden lose their sanity and in the end, perhaps, are no longer aware of what they are doing. At some point they fell silent, then, after a pause, old Fleischmann suddenly asked: “And what are your plans for the future?” I was mildly astonished, telling him I had not given it much thought. At that, the other old boy stirred, bending toward me on his seat. The bat soared again, this time alighting on my knee rather than my arm. “Before all else,” he declared, “you must put the horrors behind you.” Increasingly amazed, I asked, “Why should I?” “In order,” he replied, “to be able to live,” at which Uncle Fleischmann nodded and added, “Live freely,” at which the other old boy nodded and added, “One cannot start a new life under such a burden,” and I had to admit he did have a point. Except I didn’t quite understand how they could wish for something that was impossible, and indeed I made the comment that what had happened had happened, and anyway, when it came down to it, I could not give orders to my memory. I would only be able to start a new life, I ventured, if I were to be reborn or if some affliction, disease, or something of the sort were to affect my mind, which they surely didn’t wish on me, I hoped. “In any case,” I added, “I didn’t notice any atrocities,” at which, I could see, they were greatly astounded. What were they supposed to understand by that, they wished to know, by “I didn’t notice”? To that, however, I asked them in turn what they had done during those “hard times.” “Errm, . . . we lived,” one of them deliberated. “We tried to survive,” the other added. Precisely! They too had taken one step at a time, I noted. What did I mean by taking a “step,” they floundered, so I related to them how it had gone in Auschwitz, by way of example. For each train—and I am not saying it was always necessarily this number, since I have no way of knowing—but at any rate in our case you have to reckon on around three thousand people. Take the men among them—a thousand, let’s say. For the sake of the example, you can reckon on one or two seconds per case, more often one than two. Ignore the very first and very last, because they don’t count; but in the middle, where I too was standing, you would therefore have to allow ten to twenty minutes before you reach the point where it is decided whether it will be gas immediately or a reprieve for the time being. Now, all this time the queue is constantly moving, progressing, and everyone is taking steps, bigger or smaller ones, depending on what the speed of the operation demands.