Imre Kertész - Fiasco

“Is it far?” he showed his impatience.

“Haven’t you been in the South Seas before?” his new friend was genuinely astounded. “Well then, it’s time you got to know it,” at which they set off.

A full belly, his thirst quenched with alcohol, even if it was weak, third-rate beer, the dense fug and the snatches of voices which would be cast up out of the constant buzz in the South Seas lulled Köves so completely that it was as if he were rocking on the backs of waves, at a detached remoteness from all the more solid certainties which were showing only indistinctly from a distance. When he had drifted in through the old-fashioned, glazed revolving door, it suddenly seemed to Köves that he was both acquainted with the place — a vast barn of a room, divided up into two or maybe more interconnecting spaces — and then again not, but at all events time had not passed by even the South Seas without leaving its mark: the velvet drapery showed signs of wear, a solitary piano on the podium, forlorn and shrouded in a cover — the whole thing gave the overall picture of a diner and coffee bar, gambling den and daytime refuge which had started to go downhill, where his new friend, Sziklai — on hearing the name something flashed through Köves’s mind, nothing more than a vague memory in a world where the vagueness of memories vies with that of the present — plainly felt completely at home, so Köves relinquished all initiative to him as being someone who wanted, for the time being at any rate, release from a burden that could hardly be dragged a step further: himself. He was again overcome by tiredness, so he only registered events from the periphery of his consciousness as it were. His steps were initially hurried and then more hesitant as they penetrated the interior of the place, no doubt its hub, so to speak — Köves had that impression. They were looking for someone; then the waitress who hastened to meet them, neither young nor old, and who was given a tragic air by the two deep furrows which ran from her nose to her chin, in diametric contrast to her words and the casual gesture with which she pointed to an empty table covered by a tablecloth of a somewhat suspect shade.

“My editor friends should park their carcasses there,” she said, from which it appeared that she already knew Sziklai well. Then there was their strange dialogue: Sziklai ordered fried fillet of pork for the two of them, at which the waitress asked:

“Do the gentlemen like half-cooked gristle?” Sziklai thereupon ordered Wiener schnitzel, at which the waitress, closing her eyes and pursing her lips, asked him:

“Tell me, in all honesty, when and where did you last see a Wiener schnitzel?” At this, Sziklai, seemingly exasperated, started to pick a quarrel:

“But it’s here, on the menu!” he shouted.

“Of course it’s there,” the waitress retorted. “What kind of a menu would it look like without Wiener schnitzel?”

It struck Köves that they were playing some kind of legpulling parlour game with each other, to which distant shouts and the waitress’s sudden impatience put an end. “Enough!” she said. “Our charming guests are already being kept waiting at other tables. You’ll get potato hot-pot!”

And with that she was off, while Sziklai, his features suddenly cracking and the boyish smile surfacing among them, enlightened Köves:

“That’s Alice, the waitress,” which Köves cheerfully noted. That cheerfulness switched over to frank enthusiasm when it turned out that the potato hot-pot was actually not potato hot-pot, and under the mixture of potatoes and eggs Köves’s probing fork prodded a fine slice of meat, whereupon he was just about to open his mouth when Sziklai intimated by vigorous head-shaking that he ought to keep his mouth shut (clearly they were being accorded a privilege of some kind). “You can always count on Alice,” was all Köves was able to get out of Sziklai.

That was not the case with the other fidgeting, gesticulating or, to the contrary, sluggish or even mutely absorbed customers hovering near at hand or farther away in the sweltering half-light, about whom Sziklai seemed to know everything, with Köves taking in only a fraction of what he said about them. Regarding a fat, balding man, whose sickly-coloured face, despite the occasional mopping with a handkerchief as big as a bedsheet, was constantly glistening with perspiration and whose table seemed to be a sort of focal point, at which people arrived in a hurry, then settled for a while before jumping up again, whereas others stayed there for longer exchanges of ideas, a person whom Sziklai himself also greeted (the bald man cordially returned the nod), Köves found out that he was the “Uncrowned,” and although who gave him that nickname was unclear, its import was easy to explain because he was the uncrowned king there, with half the coffee bar working just for him, Sziklai recounted.

“How come?” Köves enquired.

“Because,” said Sziklai, “the chap was actually pensioned off as unfit for service.” And when Köves asked what kind of service he had been engaged in previously, Sziklai responded: “What do you think, then?” and although Köves didn’t think anything, being simply too lazy to think anything at all, nevertheless, pretending to take the hint, he dropped in an “Aha!”, and it seemed that was precisely the answer expected from him. Now, he continued, “taking into consideration his previous merits” (and here Sziklai gave Köves a meaningful wink), the Uncrowned was granted permission to vend scarves and shawls to peasant women at provincial markets, as well as to take photographs of peasants and sell them the pictures. The permit was originally made out in the Uncrowned’s name, authorizing him alone to sell and to take photographs. But then, for one thing, there was so much to do — peasants, normally the most mistrustful of people, Sziklai related, virtually turn into kids the moment someone wants to take a family photograph of them, so much so that it could happen there wasn’t even any film in the camera (given that it wasn’t always possible to obtain film in the shops), so they clicked the machine with an empty cartridge, took the deposit that had been agreed on, and of course the peasants subsequently never received the pictures that had been “taken,” while the name and address given by the photographer, naturally, proved false — so much work that one man couldn’t possibly get through it, besides which the Uncrowned was a severe diabetic and had heart disease. Also, there were plenty of people who needed “papers,” said Sziklai. That was how they would come to be working for the Uncrowned: one way or another, he would obtain an official document for them, which stated that they were working for a non-profit company. That way they would not be open to charges of workshyness or sponging, nor could he be called to account for giving employment to what was maybe a nationwide network of agents. Because of course nobody, not even the Uncrowned, could give employment to any agents, could they; agents, on the other hand, could never work as agents without appropriate papers which certified they were not in fact agents, so they were therefore dependant on each other, said Sziklai, and the Uncrowned was respected not just as a boss but as their benefactor.

“What about him over there?” Köves gestured with his head toward a farther-off table by the street-side window, where he saw a silver-maned man, whose rugged face with its marked unruly features seemed to vouch for extraordinary passions that were held in check only with great difficulty. He wore spectacles with double lenses, the outer of which were dark-tinted and could be flipped up (as Köves could tell because they happened to be flipped up), and he seemed to be immersed in some occupation that could not be made out from where they were — Köves would not have been surprised if it were to turn out he was writing a musical score or painting miniature pictures. Sziklai’s face, however, burst almost into splinters when his gaze swung across in the direction Köves was indicating: