Imre Kertész - Fiasco

He was already at the corner when the sounds of wheezing and a hurried scrabbling of the claws of tiny legs struck his ears, and as he turned the corner a little dog flew like a brown projectile, hurled with great force, at his lap, flinging its tiny head and its shiny nose this way and that in its ecstasy, sniffing, lapping with its lolling tongue at Köves’s hands, fixing its sparkling button-eyes expectantly on Köves, then from farther away a porously woody-sounding voice blared:

“Here this instant, you little rascal!” It was the elderly gentleman and his dachshund, whom Köves had run across not long before. “A shameless flatterer, you are, nothing else!” the elderly gentleman’s grouching sounded more like an expression of affection as he bent down and attached the leash in his hand to the dog’s collar. “There’s no escaping him once he’s formed a liking for someone,” he continued, apparently still grumbling but in truth with barely concealed pride. “But it’s rare for him to form a liking for a person at first sight, take it from me, Mr. Köves!”

“I see you already know who I am,” said Köves, somewhat surprised, “so there’s no need for me to introduce myself.”

“Certainly I know who you are.” The elderly gentleman was jerked vigorously by the end of the leash, as the dog suddenly pulled away in his excitement so as to bless a house wall with a cocked rear leg. “In a certain sense it’s my duty to know. Keep still now!” he scolded the little dog, which was again leaping around like crazy, getting entangled with their legs. “I’m the chairman, you see.” He again turned his head with its fine white hair, ruddy-cheeked face and amiable smile toward Köves.

“Ah! I see,” said Köves. “Chairman of what?” and, to make the question sound airier, even more casual, Köves bent down to stroke the animal, which in gratitude immediately jumped up at him.

“The one that you too, for example, elected.” The elderly gentleman’s smile now beamed broadly and at the same time took on a somewhat impish look. “Come now, Mr. Köves!” he said in a quieter, confidential tone, “let’s not play with words!” and Köves, perhaps less at a loss than before, reiterated:

“I see.”

“We already met the other day,” the elderly gentleman went on, “but you were in a hurry then.”

“I had something to take care of,” explained Köves.

“That goes without saying,” the old fellow hastened to assure him, “but you may have more time now. We’re taking a constitutional.” He glanced at the dog, which, after the initial paroxysms of delight, had now, it appeared, suddenly grown bored with them and was straining at the leash after some scent or other, its muzzle pressed to the pavement: “If you would care to join us, please do. How do you find it in our house?” he then asked. Köves replied with an easy little half-smile:

“Couldn’t be better,” saying it like someone who meant it, make of it what one might.

“Splendid!” said the elderly gentleman. “Mrs. Weigand is a fine, decent lady; you couldn’t have a better place to stay.” He glanced askance at Köves, who, because he could not tell offhand, and he could not discern from the face which was turning toward him whether was he was expected to agree or protest, held his peace. “I gather you’re a journalist,” the old fellow went on. “I know you’re not with a paper at the moment.” Quickly, almost in anticipation, as if seeking to cut Köves short, he raised his free hand (with the other he was trying to restrain the dog, which, on spying the small park in the middle of a square which had suddenly appeared before them, was all for scampering toward the strip of wan grass). “I imagine that has nothing to do with your talents. Nowadays …,” the elderly gentleman was getting nowhere with the dog, which was on its hind legs, straining at the leash with all its might, so he bent down and released it: “Scoot! Off you go and take your poop, you rascal!” only after which did he continue the sentence he had begun: “Nowadays,” and here his face, up to that point sunny and bursting with health, darkened slightly, “it’s not easy to live up to one’s profession. Could you explain to me, Mr. Köves,” he said suddenly, turning his whole body toward Köves, “why I’ve become the chairman, for example?”

Köves, surprised as he was by the question, and having even less clue what the explanation might be, and he chose to respond at random:

“Obviously they trust you.”

“Obviously.” The elderly gentleman nodded, strolling along the gravelled path of the square’s garden, hands clasped behind his back. “I myself can think of no other explanation. They trust me, but they serve someone else. After all,” the elderly gentleman spread his arms as they walked on, “that’s people for you. The battle’s not yet over, and already they’re lining up on the victor’s side. Yet,” and here the elderly gentleman came to a halt to raise a stubby, well-manicured index finger on high by way of warning: “victory is far from assured, and what will decide it is precisely the fact that they already think it’s all over. A strange logic, Mr. Köves, but I’m old now and nothing surprises me any longer,” and with a shake of the head he set off again, Köves at his side: what he had heard may have been enigmatic, but it interested him all the same, and he had just formulated a question in his head when, with a sharp about-turn which ended up as just a half-turn, such that Köves sensed his gaze on him, although he was not actually looking at him, the elderly gentleman got in first:

“Have you seen the houseman yet?” his voice may have been dry, yet it still sounded as if it were concealing a sneaking excitement.

“Yes, I have,” said Köves.

“And did he not say that you should come up and see me?” The customary affability was now lacking from the elderly gentleman’s smile; it was somehow more of a gash, the corners of the mouth trembling slightly as if he were rubbing salt in his own wounds.

“No. Or rather …,” and Köves was suddenly reminded of Mrs. Weigand’s strange hesitation when she had mentioned the chairman the other day, as well as his own visit to the janitor, about which he now thought back, he himself knew not why, with a degree of bewilderment. “If I omitted to do something,” he said, “then I would ask you to excuse me.”

“The omission,” the elderly gentleman now began visibly to regain his previous, amiable poise, “was not yours. Just look!” he pointed to the middle of the little park, “Wouldn’t you know it, but that rogue has again found something to amuse himself with,” and indeed the dog was leaping around a young boy’s ball, then scampering after pieces of gravel that the child threw for it to fetch. “And it’s not the first omission that has been perpetrated against me,” he then went on; they had already crossed the square’s garden and had now set off around its perimeter. “Being the chairman, I ought to protest, of course. Only I’m completely unsuited to the role, Mr. Köves.”

“Come, come,” said Köves, “people didn’t elect you because they saw you as unsuitable …,” he was slowly beginning to understand the old fellow, and as he understood him his distress provoked a smile: that was all it was about, a storm in a teacup, he thought.

“But it’s true,” the old fellow kept plugging away, casting the occasional solicitous glance at his dog farther off as they carried on walking. “I can’t keep a secret, for instance. Then, I’m incapable of the requisite objectivity: what counts with me is always what I feel sympathy or antipathy toward, that’s all that matters, there’s nothing I can do about it.” He spread his arms. “If two people call on me to ask about someone whom I have taken a liking to, then I can’t say anything about that, even though I’m well aware that I’m making a mistake, a mistake, and in a double sense: first of all, I’m contravening the need for official secrecy, then, secondly, I’m throwing myself on the mercy of the person they were warning me about.” He fell silent; with his puckered brow and long, trouble-laden face he now oddly resembled his dog. “What I have to do is no picnic, Mr. Köves,” he sighed. Köves, more as a mechanical courtesy than anything else, remarked: