Imre Kertész - Fiasco

“It would be too small as a drawing table, say, but papers would fit on it, for instance.”

Since Köves still said nothing — after all, he couldn’t know what he was going to use the table for (not for drawing, for sure, but then who could know what the future might hold for him?) — the woman, now somewhat put out, added in the same breath:

“Right, well I won’t intrude any further. I don’t have the time, anyway; I need to set out for the office, and you no doubt have business to attend to …”

“I want to sleep,” Köves said, halting the stream of words.

“Sleep?” the pools in the woman’s face widened.

“Sleep,” Köves confirmed, and with such yearning, evidently, that the woman broke into a smile:

“Of course, you said already that you were travelling all night. You’ll find bedclothes here,” and she pointed to the drawer under the couch, “and that’s a wardrobe for your own stuff.”

“I don’t have any stuff,” said Köves.

“None?” the woman may have been astounded, but not so much that Köves was obliged, and this is what he feared, to enter into explanations: it seemed that, being someone who ran a household in which there was a constant turnover of lodgers, she must have seen all sorts of things by now. “Not even any pyjamas?”

“No,” Köves admitted.

“Well, that won’t do at all!” she said so indignantly that Köves felt it was a matter of general principle, quite irrespective of himself personally — as it were, in defence of practically a whole world order — that she considered it wouldn’t do for a person to have no pyjamas. “I’ll give you a pair,” she said with the excitement of one who had been spurred into action forthwith by this intolerable state of affairs. “As best I can judge, my husband’s will be about your size …”

“But won’t your esteemed husband …,” Köves was about to start fretting.

Except that the woman curtly brushed that aside:

“I’m a widow,” and with that was already out of the door then promptly back again to toss a folded pair of pyjamas onto the couch. “And what’s your thinking,” she asked, “about here on in, when you don’t even have a change of underwear to your name?”

“I don’t know,” said Köves with his suitcase fleetingly coming to mind, though only as the flicker of a memory which barely impinged on him. “I’ll do some shopping later.”

“Is that right!” the woman said. “You’ll do some shopping,” and she gave a brief, nervous laugh as if she had been struck by an amusing thought. “It’s no business of mine, of course. I only asked … so, good night!” she got out quickly, seeing that Köves was already starting to take off his coat. “The bathroom is on the right,” she said, turning back at the door. “Naturally, you are entitled to use it.”

Köves heard them moving around for a while yet, the exchanges between the shrill and the more croaking voice — at times just whispering agitatedly behind the door, again bickering with each other, perhaps, like cats left to their own devices — and his head had just touched his pillow when the front door slammed, and with that silence fell. Köves now started to sink, and he was dreaming before he had even fallen asleep. What he dreamed was that he had strayed into the strange life of a foreigner who was unknown to him and had nothing to do with him, yet still being aware that this was only his dream playing with him, since he was the dreamer and could only dream about his own life. Before he finally got off to sleep, he sensed that a deep sigh had been torn from him — a relieved sigh, he felt — while his face was cracking a broad smile, and — for whatever reason — he breathed into his pillow, “At last!”

Köves awoke to a sound of ringing, or to be more specific, to having to open the door: it seemed that the impatient ringing, which kept on repeating, at times for protracted periods, at times in fitful bursts, must have pulled him out of bed before he had truly woken up, otherwise he would hardly have gone to open the door, given that there was no reason for anyone to be looking for him there.

He was mistaken, though: at the door stood a postman who happened to be looking for ‘a certain Köves.”

“That’s me,” Köves said, astonished.

“There’s a registered letter for you,” said the postman, and in his voice Köves picked out a slight hint of reproof, as if receiving registered mail in this place was not exactly one of the most commendable affairs, though it could have been that it was just the postman’s way of taking him to task for the repeated futile ringing on the bell. “Sign for it here.” He held out a ledger in front of Köves, obviously a delivery receipt book, and Köves was about to reach into his inside pocket when he became conscious of how he was standing there, in front of the postman: probably tousled, his face rumpled from sleep, in someone else’s pyjamas — anyone might think he had idled away the morning, though that was his intention, of course.

“I’ll get a pen right away,” he muttered disconcertedly, but the postman — without uttering a word, as if he were only doing what he had been counting on from the outset — was already offering his own ready-to-hand pencil as if, merely for the sake of making his point, in the end he had delayed doing so up till now in order to make Köves feel ashamed.

In his room, Köves immediately opened the letter: it informed him that the editorial office of the newspaper on which he had been functioning up to that point as a journalist was hereby giving him notice of dismissal, and although, in compliance with the provisions of such and such a labour law, his salary would be paid to him for a further fortnight—“which may be collected at our cashier’s desk during business hours on any working day”—they would be making no claims on his services from today’s date onwards.

Köves read through the letter with a mixture of confusion, anger, and anxiety. How was this? Did life here begin with a person being dismissed from his job? Nothing of the kind, for of course Köves had not been working recently for the paper that had dismissed him; secondly, as far as that was concerned, he could, as it happens, have worked — now that he had been given the boot Köves felt truly drawn to this opportunity which had barely been dangled before him before it was being denied. And what if it was not his opportunity? How could he find out? The answer could only be given by experience; but then it was no longer an opportunity, but life — his own life. If he thought about it, Köves was not in the least attracted to journalism; it was possible, indeed highly probable, that he wasn’t suited to the profession. Journalism — he felt deep inside — was a lie, or at least preposterous folly; and although Köves was not at all so bumptious as to consider himself the sort of fellow who was incapable of telling a lie, nevertheless — or so he believed — he was not capable of being up to every lie at all times: some of them were beyond his strength, others beyond his ability, or, as Köves would have preferred to put it, his talent. On the other hand, undoubtedly, he was clever with words, and it seemed that this was appreciated by people here — naturally after their own fashion; besides which — even though, of course, he was not there in order to be a journalist, or to cultivate any other idiotic profession — he had to have something to live off of, and journalism, leaving the lying to one side, was a cushy job which gave one a fair amount of spare time. Whatever the case might be, Köves decided in the end, his imagination could not latch on to anything other than what was on offer; the letter had turned him into a journalist, and more specifically a journalist who had been dismissed, so he had to follow up on that clue — and Köves was by now racing into the bathroom (the hot water — an unpleasant surprise for him, even though he somehow expected it — did not work) and at once started dressing in order to get to the editorial office as quickly as possible.