Imre Kertész - Fiasco

Nevertheless, the hard fact of the matter — namely that the old boy’s mother needed to find an extra two thousand forints a month (to supplement her pension) — remained unchanged.

And the old boy did not have two thousand forints a month extra (indeed, there were times when he was that much short).

Which was why, through an advertisement, and in exchange for an undertaking to look after her, she had dangled the prospect of a room (a big room, however, in the green belt with all mod cons) (which is to say the apartment where the old boy was registered, by right of being an immediate family member, as a permanent resident, though he never lived there, not even temporarily) (and from which he would now have to transfer to the apartment where he had been temporarily registered, by right of marriage, even though he had been permanently resident there for decades) (thereby yielding place to a caregiver who, by right of being the caregiver, would be permanently registered but, on the basis of the agreement, would not reside even temporarily in the old boy’s mother’s apartment) (patiently waiting in his or her present place of residence, which presumably did not meet his or her requirements, for the ultimately inevitable fact that the old lady, for all the hopes she would carry on to the extreme limit of human life …) (in short, on being left vacant as a consequence of this ultimately inevitable event, the apartment would pass on to him or her) (which for both of them, caregiver and cared-for alike) (after careful weighing up of the expected costs and the number of years that might come into consideration) (and bearing in mind the end-result, might yet prove, on human reckonings, to be a rational and mutually profitable business transaction).

“So you will have to arrange to be deregistered,” his mother said.

“Fine,” said the old boy.

“As soon as possible; not the way you generally arrange your affairs,” his mother added.

“Fine,” said the old boy.

“You surely can’t be expecting me to do without in my old age.”

“God forbid,” the old boy said.

“It’s not my fault,” his mother carried on, “You ought to have ordered your life differently.”

“No question about it,” the old boy acknowledged.

“I wanted to leave the apartment to you.”

“Don’t worry about it, Mama,” said the old boy. “Was the coffee all right?”

“Your coffee is always too strong for me.”

“Well, that’s my day gone already,” the old boy thought to himself after his mother had left.

“I ought to change that rubber seal on the coffee percolator,” he continued his train of thought.

“But where the hell are the seals?” he then puzzled (not finding them in their usual place) (that is, the place he imagined to be the usual place for the seals).

Thus it was that the old boy came to be standing in front of the filing cabinet and holding in his hands a flat, square-shaped piece of wood.

This chunk of wood, about 3 × 3 in. in size, rough on one side and on the other covered with a layer from multiple daubings of white paint (which had yellowed over time), had come to light from one of the old boy’s two cardboard boxes in which he kept a miscellany of objects (both necessary and unnecessary), among which, or so he imagined, he might chance upon the rubber seals needed for the coffee percolator.

Instead of them, however, he came across the remaining original piece of one of the two ungainly, disparately-sized wardrobes which had once stood there, long defying the steadfast antipathy of the old boy’s wife (and noteworthy for the wax seal that was visible on it) (though the inscription on the wax seal had been rendered almost illegible by the yellowish-white layer of paint from repeated decoration).

“So much for their saying care would be taken to spare the wax seal,” he fumed (mentally).

For which reason, at this point in our story — as the old boy was standing in front of the filing cabinet and holding in his hands a piece of wood (noteworthy for the wax seal which was visible on it) — out of the group of letters arranged in a circle only the fragments SE, ST, and, in front of that, a dot-shaped nubble, as well as — further on, with a bit of imagination — TY could be made out from the original inscription (SEALED BY STATE SECURITY AUTHORITY), the purpose of which inscription, as its sense suggests, was to keep the doors of the hallway wardrobe under seal (not, however, ruling out the possibility that the plywood sheet which formed the back of the hallway wardrobe might be prised open) (which, incidentally, is what happened) (because, whatever the subsequent, by then patently obvious evidence, what else would have explained the fact that when, one summery evening, the old boy’s wife) (at a time when she was not yet the old boy’s wife) (and the old boy was not yet old) (indeed, they had not yet met each other) (anyway, on that summery evening the old boy’s wife-to-be had tried fruitlessly to open the door to her own apartment with her own key and thus, since she saw a light on inside, was reduced to ringing the doorbell) (what else would have explained the fact that the unknown, short, stocky, somewhat piggish-looking woman who opened the door to the ringing was wearing a dressing gown, shortened and altered to fit her own figure, which belonged to her, the old boy’s wife-to-be — a fact which did not escape the old boy’s wife-to-be even in the brief minute while she introduced herself to the unknown woman, who then, after an indignant exclamation) (“What’s this?! You’re still alive?!”) (immediately slammed the door in her face) (in consequence of which, there being nothing else she could do, the old boy’s wife) (who at that time was not yet the old boy’s wife) (and as far as meeting him goes first met him only somewhat later) (faced with the unappealing prospect of spending a summer’s night on the street) (and an even more uncertain tomorrow) (before long returned to the place whence she had set off for her apartment) (that is to say, the State Security Authority) (where she was obliged to ask the officer who had released her earlier, accompanied by the official paper, to provide her with accommodation for the night — if nowhere else, then in her old cell, where the old plank-bed and blanket were certainly still waiting) (a request that it turned out to be impossible to fulfil now that she had been released, accompanied by the official paper) (so that the officer had only been able to offer the leather couch in the corner of his room, while he himself went off duty for the whole night, accompanied by the official papers, and in the morning) (worn out, dehydrated, gaunt, and nicotine-stained from his whole night off-duty) (like one of the countless cigarette butts which had overflowed his ashtray in the course of off-duty nights) (set off with her to the housing office of the competent local authority in order to discover how they could have allocated an apartment that the State Security Authority had sealed off) (a matter that in itself was to be treated as a state secret ) (consequently there were grounds for suspecting that behind not just the procedural irregularity, but also the very leaking of the address there no doubt lay a criminal act of bribery) (though in the end no light was ever thrown on that) (and only after a year of litigation was the apartment itself restored to the rightful ownership of the old boy’s wife) (whom we may now refer to as the old boy’s wife without reservation) (even if the old boy was not at all old at the time) (and his wife was not yet his wife) (but by then they at least knew each other) (indeed, they were sharing a household) (insofar as their joint household could be called a household, that is).

This, then, was the reason why even today, at this late point in our story, the old boy was fuming that — contrary to all the advance warnings he had given — care had not been taken to spare the wax seal (which the piece of wood in his hands preserved).