Imre Kertész - Fiasco

“At all events,” a strange defiance awoke now in Köves as in someone who knows he is right and has to defend his standpoint: “At all events journalism can’t exist without that,” and, without having a clue why, a recollection of how the pianist had talked that night about his numbers suddenly flashed across his mind.

“So.” This now sounded even more curt and more assertive than before. Then, after a brief pause, Köves heard the following question, slow and precisely articulated:

“And you have no credo … no persuasion?” and Köves suddenly felt like someone sizing up the depths of a chasm — and quite irrationally, too, since if he were going to jump, he would do better to jump with his eyes closed.

“None,” he said. And then he almost shouted once again into the deafening silence which followed that word: “None!.. How could I have any persuasion when I have never once been persuaded about anything at all! Life is not a source of faith, after all, life is … I don’t know what, but life is something else …”

He was soon interrupted:

“You’re not familiar with the life we lead.”

“I’d like to work, and then I shall get to know it,” Köves said, in a low voice now, almost longingly.

“Well, work!” came back the exhortation.

“But I’ve been dismissed,” Köves complained, despondently.

“You don’t have to be with us to work,” the voice exhorted further.

“But I don’t know how to do anything else.” Köves bowed his head, sensing he was behaving like a beggar.

“You’ll learn: our factories are waiting with open gates for anyone who wishes to work!” chimed the voice, and Köves lifted his head again: the recognition, like a judgement, filled him with a calm, dull weariness, but in it he somehow regained his keen sense of pride.

“So, that’s what you intend for me,” he said slowly, almost whispering, searching in vain with his groping gaze for the purchase of any sort of face, as long as it was visible in the light.

“We don’t intend anything at all for you,” came back from over there. “That’s just your misconception: it’s up to you to find your alternatives.” Then, seeming to make do with that for his lecturing, the editor in chief’s voice turned warmer, almost congenial: “Work, get to know life, open up your eyes and ears, accumulate experiences. Don’t imagine we have given up on you and your talent. This door,” the arm swung straight out and pointed to somewhere behind Köves, obviously the door, “This door, you’ll see, will open to you yet again.”

“That may be.” Köves jumped up: with his loss of hope (if there had been any) came that of his patience, his patience for everything which, being neither a constraint on him nor his freedom, was no longer of interest. “That may be, but I won’t be stepping through it!” After which he was again outside in the corridor, he himself didn’t quite know how, and with the abatement of his excitement while the paternoster sank downwards with him, obviously either for no reason, or just as a reaction to the excitements he had endured, but so unexpectedly he was almost frightened by it, he was veritably overwhelmed by a sense of relief, like some indescribable happiness. Everything had happened differently from the way he had wanted, and yet — probably only through being in the sort of worked-up state which cancels shades — he nevertheless felt he had got what he wanted. As if he had stood his ground for something, defended something — but what? The word occurred to Köves: honour. But then, he asked himself in perplexed amazement, like someone stumbling over an unforeseen obstacle, what was his honour?

At the cashier’s desk Köves was paid out what was owed him without a word — a laughable amount, although of course he had not yet informed himself about the prices, so his grumbling might just have been a sudden onrush of an employee’s instincts, the eternal craving which always feels that whatever is tossed at it is a tidbit, swallows it with an unappeased muttering, and then is already opening his mouth wide for the next morsel, never asking whether even the previous one had been earned: as far as Köves was concerned, he had not put in a stroke of work for it, and as a matter of fact they had only made a payment to him so that he would not be in their way for two weeks, nor be able to pester them with his petty worries even that long, while they saw to it that they should also stamp his entry permit, for without that he would never be able to step out of the front entrance; and on getting out onto the corridor he passed a man who, Köves remembered, had happened to be picking up some money immediately before him at the cashier’s desk and was just in the process of counting the bank notes yet again, for he too was visibly not very satisfied with the amount. As Köves went past, without raising his head, the man asked:

“They’ve kicked you out too?”

“Yep,” said Köves.

“But why?” the man asked, though apparently more abstractedly than out of genuine curiosity, as he stuffed the money into his pocket.

“I don’t know.” Köves shrugged his shoulders, perhaps a bit irritated, feeling sick and tired of his own affairs. “I wasn’t even here,” he threw out so as not to look grudging with his words.

“Aha!” said the other, a young man of roughly the same build as Köves, and now they trudged together down the long corridor toward the paternoster. “They sent you off into the country, and by the time you returned,

the notice of dismissal was waiting for you, right?”

“Right,” Köves admitted.

“That’s what they usually do,” the other nodded. “We got out of it rather well,” he added, as he and Köves stepped together into one of the descending boxes, which carried on sinking with them as its load.

“Why?” A spark of interest was kindled in Köves. “Have they kicked you out as well?”

“Darn right!” said the other.

“And why was that?” Köves asked.

“My face doesn’t fit.” Now it was his turn to shrug shoulders, just like Köves before. They were now in the entrance lobby. They handed in their permits to the customs man, then stepped out onto the street; the sunlight, the traffic, even the scanty, small-town bustle worked on Köves, with his all-accommodating and equalizing indifference, rather like an act of kindness. “These recent changes …,” the previous voice caught his ear, and Köves snatched up his head in surprise: he had already forgotten that he was not alone.

“What changes?” he asked, more just out of politeness, as he had a shrewd idea in advance that the answer would be exactly what it was:

“Can anyone know?”

“No, they can’t.” Köves nodded, feeling that he was taking part with obligatory automatism in some ceremony then in fashion.

But then something came to mind, this time a genuine question, touching on the heart of the matter, which he really ought to have addressed to himself but which he posed to the other all the same:

“So, what are you going to do now?”

“What?” Köves’s new acquaintance nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders. “I’m going to have lunch,” and the self-explanatory announcement somehow resonated with Köves and cheered him up, like someone who, after a lengthy exile, feels he is slowly starting to return to the world of human society. “Come with me, if you can spare the time,” Köves’s new acquaintance went on. Köves could now see that he had dark hair, a bulging forehead, and a coarse yet, on the whole, still pleasant face which seemed almost to crack when he laughed, as if a boy were suddenly sticking out his head among the prematurely hardened features. “We’ll go to the South Seas, you can always get something there,” and if before he had merely cheered up, Köves now unreservedly rejoiced, because he gathered that what was in question was a restaurant, and he realized that this was the very longing which was lurking in him: to sit down in a restaurant and to eat and drink his fill without a care, even if it were to be for the last time in his life, with a good friend.