Imre Kertész - Fiasco

He glanced at the pianist, but the latter did not return the look: hidden under the tree, he was watching the trucks with a keen, inquisitive gaze that now as good as pinched his normally soft, doughy features. He was watching them approach; when they got nearer, he almost stood on tiptoe in order to get a look into them, then turned as they passed and did not let them out of his sight until they had vanished in the distant bend in the road.

Then slowly, unfolding virtually every one of his limbs individually in the daybreak, rather like a genie in the process of slipping out of a flask, the pianist struggled to his feet off the bench. He flexed so violently that his limbs almost cracked, like a tree bending its branches; it was only now that it could be seen what a giant he was, with Köves (not himself exactly short) being practically dwarfed beside him when he too — involuntarily — got to his feet.

“We can go and get some shut-eye,” the pianist said and gave a big yawn. “The day’s done.” Köves seemed to pick out from this something like a quiet satisfaction in the voice. However, it would have been futile searching for any sign of the affability he had grown used to: the pianist did not look at him any more, rather as though he had ended the service that, for some obscure reason, had bound him to Köves so far. His face was tired, worn, grey as the morning — grey as the truth, Köves caught himself thinking. A bit later (by then they were walking outside on the street, with Köves virtually not noticing that they had set off), the pianist threw in:

“Well, they won’t come today then; they always come at dawn.”

“Always?” Köves asked, most likely just for the sake of asking something; he was a bit confused, besides which he was forced to step on it, because it looked as though the pianist’s trek had all of a sudden become urgent, and that he did not concern himself greatly with the fact that his own long steps were leaving Köves trailing behind.

“Didn’t you know that?” The pianist looked down at him from the height of his shoulders.

“I knew about it as such,” said Köves, but then, as though giving an answer to something different from, or maybe more than, he had been asked, he exclaimed: “Of course, I knew, I had to, how could I possibly say that I didn’t!” whereupon the pianist gave him a surprised glance. “It’s just that maybe … how should I put it … yes, it wasn’t something I was ready for,” he added, much more softly, still quite flustered but already starting to compose himself, though even so passers-by remarked it, albeit not as though they had been brought up short by curiosity, more in the sense that they hurried along still faster, fearing that even so they might unavoidably be obliged to overhear something.

“But you have to be ready for it,” said the pianist, this time again looking more amiably at Köves, as if he were now striking up a friendship afresh.

“Now I don’t understand,” said Köves.

“What do you mean?”

“The bench.”

“One of the best benches known to me in the city,” said the pianist.

“It’s because of the tree that you find it so pleasing,” Köves nodded. “And also because I was there as well,” he tacked on after some reflection.

“You got it! Two together makes it more entertaining.” At this moment the pianist was quite as he had been, a broad smile wreathing his broad features, just as when he had taken Köves under his wing that night. “And more secure,” he added.

Köves again pondered this.

“I wouldn’t say that,” he said eventually.

“One still feels that way; you’d have to admit that much at least.” The pianist looked imploringly at Köves, in the way that one appeases the quarrelsome.

“Only for them to take the other one off along with you,” slipped out of Köves’s mouth before he had given any thought to the demands of good manners. “Do you know many benches?” he then asked in order to temper his words.

“Plenty,” said the pianist. “Pretty well all of them.”

By this point, the bustle through which they were proceeding was starting to pick up. At times they jostled among other people, at other times being held up by a red lamp.

“And do you imagine,” Köves, in full stride now, turned his whole body toward the pianist, looking up at him as at a lighthouse tower, “do you imagine they’re not going to find you on a park bench?”

“Who’s saying that?” the pianist replied. I just don’t want them to haul me out of bed.”

“What difference does it make?” Köves enquired, and for a while the pianist did not reply; he paced mutely beside Köves, seemingly plunged in thought, as if the question had hit a nail on the head, despite the fact that it was unlikely — or so Köves supposed — he had not already put it to himself.

“The difference between a rat and a rabbit may not be great,” the pianist eventually spoke, “but it’s crucial for me.”

“And why would they haul you out anyway?” Köves probed further. “Over the numbers?”

But the pianist merely smiled with sealed lips at that.

“Is there any way of knowing over what?” he then returned the question to Köves.

“No, there isn’t,” Köves admitted. They had reached a major crossroad, and as the morning light was reaching its fullness Köves looked around without any curiosity, feeling that he would now easily find his way: there was just a short stretch to go until he got home. “All the same …,” he said haltingly, as if he were searching for the words: “All the same … I think you’re exaggerating.” The pianist smiled mutely — the smile of a person who was in the know, more than he was willing to let on. As though triggered by that smile, Köves burst out: “Is that what our lives are about: avoiding winding up as freight on one of those trucks?”

“That, indeed,” the pianist nodded, and by way of reassurance, as it were, patted Köves gently on the nape of the neck. “And then you wind up on it anyway. If you’re really lucky,” he qualified with an expression that Köves this time felt was malicious, almost antagonistic, “you might even wind up at the back, at the rear end.”

“I don’t want the luck,” said Köves, “nor do I want sit at the rear end, but in the middle.” His agitation was in no way about to subside: “I think, he carried on, “all of you here are making a mistake. You pretend that all that exists are benches and those trucks … but there are other things …”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” and it seemed that Köves indeed did not know. Still, he did not let up:

“Something that’s outside all this. Or at least elsewhere. Something,” he suddenly came upon a word that visibly gratified him: “undefiled.”

“And what would that be?” the pianist wanted to know, his expression sceptical yet not entirely devoid of interest.

“I don’t know. That’s just it: I don’t know,” said Köves. “But I’m going to hunt for it,” he added swiftly, and no doubt equally involuntarily, because it seemed as if what he had just said had surprised himself most of all. “Yes,” he reiterated, as if all he were seeking to do was convince the pianist, or maybe himself: “That’s why I’m here, in order to find it.”

But this was where the pianist now came to a standstill and offered his hand:

“Well, much luck with that,” he said. “This is where I turn off, while you go straight on. Drop by to see me at the nightclub one evening. Don’t worry about the money, you’ll be my guest. As long as you find me there,” he added with a wry smile on his big, mellow face.

Köves promised to pay a visit. The pianist then turned off to the right, while Köves went on straight ahead.