Imre Kertész - Fiasco

Köves lived in a long but in other respects not particularly distinctive side street; to the best of his recollection — though his memory might well have been playing tricks, of course — there had at one time been some fairly comfortable dwellings in this district of the city. By now, of course, the houses were deteriorating, showing signs of damage and defacement, some of them literally crumbling, with, here and there, a balcony that had once boasted sweeping curves now disfigured and hanging into space over the heads of passers-by, with a notice warning of the threat to life, though evidently no one paid it any attention, and after the first few times of giving a cautionary glance up and dutifully walking round the warning sign Köves too passed beneath them with a nonchalant sense of defiance, and later on forgot even that. In the entrance hall he was greeted with a musty smell. Only a few of the imitation marble slabs that had faced the walls in the stairwell had remained in place, the elevator did not work, and there were gaps and cracks in the staircase as if iron-toothed beasts were taking bites out of the steps by night. Since he could hear sounds behind his front door: movement, a rapid patter of short steps, a shrill female voice as well as a second, croaking one of more uncertain origin, Köves did not even attempt to use his key — that too he found in the envelope he had been given by the chief customs man — but rather rang the bell so as not to embarrass anyone.

Shortly after, a woman who was on the short side and well into her forties appeared in the doorway wearing sloppy men’s trousers and a blouse of some kind, with what looked as if it might be alarm on her wan, peaky face, which disappeared the moment she had given Köves the once-over.

“So, here you are,” she said, stepping aside to permit Köves to step past her into the hallway. “We were expecting you yesterday.”

“Me?” Köves was astonished.

“Well, maybe not you specifically, but …”

“Who’s come?” the previous croaking voice, presumably an adolescent boy, could be heard now, amidst a rattling of crockery, from one side, from the kitchen.

“Nobody, just the lodger,” the woman called out and then again turned to Köves: “Or are you not the lodger?” and again cast a suspicious glance at him, even stepped back a bit as if she were suddenly regretting that she had let someone in who might be capable of anything.

But Köves hastened to reassure her:

“Of course,” and if he felt a sense of some kind of irrational disappointment, he could only blame himself: by the sober light of day, naturally, he could not have seriously supposed that he had been accorded the priceless gift of a home of his own; as it was, they had probably done more for him than they had thought — most likely nothing more than a provision that was driven by the pressure of necessity, so they would not have to immediately start shifting him from place to place as a homeless person. “I couldn’t come yesterday,” he continued, “because I arrived overnight …” Just in time Köves strangled his explanation, for he had rashly almost disclosed his obscure origin, so, as it was, his sentence sounded unfinished, though fortunately the landlady helped him out:

“From the country?”

“Yes, from the country,” Köves hastily acquiesced.

“I thought so right away.” The woman did not hide her dissatisfaction in the slightest. “I hope you don’t want to bring your family here, because in that case …”

But Köves interjected:

“I’m unmarried,” at which the woman fell silent and now for the first time peered more attentively at Köves’s face, as if with those two words — or the way he had said them — Köves had to some extent won her over.

“Can you play chess?” someone chimed in at that moment beside her: he caught sight of a chubby, bespectacled boy of thirteen or fourteen whose spiky hair, podgy physique, wobbly chin, and yet angular features reminded him of a hedgehog; he may have already been standing there in the kitchen door, watching them for a while, holding a half-nibbled slice of bread-and-butter in one hand, while two steaming teacups could be seen on the kitchen table behind him.

“Peter,” his mother chided him, “don’t bother …,” and here she hesitated, and Köves was just on the point of telling them his name — in the confusion introductions had somehow been forgotten — but the woman had already carried on: “You can see he’s only just arrived, he’s probably tired.”

“Well, can you or can’t you?!” The boy seemed not to have heard the admonition, and the peculiar strictness manifested on his face made Köves smile:

“In that case,” he said, “I can. Not very well, of course, just the way a person generally does.”

“We’ll see about that,” the boy clenched his lips as if he were engrossed in turning something over in his head. “I’ll get the chess board right away!” he announced and at that was already running out of the hallway toward a glass door — obviously the living-room.

Hi mother, however, nimbly jumped after him and managed to grab him by an arm:

“Didn’t you hear what I said? Finish your breakfast instead or you’ll be late for school and me for the office!” she reprimanded him. “My son,” she turned with an apologetic smile to Köves, still gripping Peter’s arm, “always sets his priority on pastimes before …”

“That’s a lie!” The boy’s seething anger, the palely clenched corners of his mouth and trembling of his lips genuinely alarmed Köves.

“Peter!” the woman rebuked him in a strangled voice, even shaking him a little as if to rouse him.

“That’s a lie!” the boy repeated, though more as if he was over the worst of it. “You know full well that it’s not a pastime!” at which he wrenched himself from his mother’s grasp, dashed straight into the kitchen, and slammed the door behind him with a great crash.

The landlady looked embarrassed:

“I don’t know what’s up with him …,” she muttered by way of an excuse. “He’s so on edge …”

To which Köves said:

“It’s hardly any wonder these days,” and it seemed he had settled on the right words, because although the woman evasively said no more than, “Come, I’ll show you the room,” her expression relaxed, showing something close to gratitude.

Köves’s room opened onto the other side of the hallway, diagonally opposite the kitchen: it was not particularly large, but it was enough for sleeping in and even gave a bit of room to swing a cat, the sort of place, Köves recalled, that back in his childhood had been called “the servant’s quarters.” It had obviously been designed to be darker, but since the firewall that would normally have overlooked the window — the whole of the next-door house was simply missing, its former site being marked by a dusty pile of rubble on the ground down below — the room was flooded with light; farther off was a disorderly yard beyond which was the back of another house, with its outside corridors, apertures onto its stairwells, its windows, indeed in many cases open kitchen doors with the figures that were bustling inside or before them, rather as if Köves had a view of its innards. The couch promised to be a good place to lie on — Köves was almost dying to try it out straight away — aside from which there was just enough room for a flimsy wardrobe, seat, and table, the latter being something the landlady seemed to be almost proud of:

“You can work on it, if you wish — not that I know what sort of a job you have, of course,” she gave Köves a sidelong glance, and it struck Köves what a surprisingly clear impression her pale blue eyes made in that rumpled face — unexpected pools in a ravaged countryside, so that in the meanwhile of course he forgot to answer the implicit question he had been posed (or rather not posed), so that the woman, having waited in vain for a moment, carried on: